Blookers and Ho! Or, Frisco Day Three: In which the hunnids actually get spent, though not on hookers or blow. But they're there

Action Items
1. Make way to deYoung Museum
2. Get pretty for fancy nosh at Chez Panisse

It's always the days that seem most straightforward that go shockingly awry.

M was up at 5:43 Friday morning.

Do you hear me? 5:43.

She wanted to go to a 6 a.m. spinning class in the hotel gym. I'm serious.

She may or may not have attempted it with C. I think she went, but it was cancelled. I dunno. See my response from the previous day for further information.

It is raining. None of the weather sources I checked before the trip predicted rain, and yet, there it is. Lucky I've brought my miracle hat, which keeps blowouts fresh in inclement weather, for when I get back to New York. Later, I will lose this wonderful hat on a train, another sacrifice to the gods of travel. I had tried to make an offering of an unmated earring, the other having been lost on a prior trip, but that sacrifice was rejected.

By 8, we are all on our way out to get breakfast. M and C have planned spa treatments to last most of the morning and into the afternoon. My original plan had been to get a new tat, but I decided against it, so my only plan was to see the Hatshepsut and Art Deco exhibits at the deYoung in Golden Gate Park.

We wander down Powell and find a bustling, promising spot near Union Square called Sears Fine Foods (439 Powell). I get my standby, French toast, poached eggs and this time, sausage. M gets little silver dollar pancakes with lingonberry topping and C gets steak and eggs, you know, since he's the one with cholesterol issues. He's trying to lower it with reverse psychology, I reckon.

Breakfast is great, and our waitress, though busy, is like Johnny-on-the-spot with the coffee and attentiveness.

After, with a little time still to kill, we all visit the nearby Sephora and I pick up a few things. As does M.

Then M and C head off to their respective appointments and I set off to find the deYoung.

Did you know that trying to puzzle out San Fran's overlapping, interlocking systems of mass transit is like trying to shove your left arm through a meat grinder without shedding blood or feeling pain? It is. It is just like that.

I go through a lot of strife and suffering on my way to the museum. (I had originally written a very detailed account, but then realized no one would care.)

1. deYoung Museum
I hop off at the appropriate stop and find myself back near the Blackthorn. I wander in the general area for a bit before moving on to Golden Gate Park and the deYoung.

Unfortunately, when I get to the museum, there is a line that stretches out the door and two thirds of the way down the length of the building. The people in line behind me send a member of their team to do a little recon, and discover that the wait is at least an hour long.

Fuck that, I think, and jump out of line to wander back to Nob Hill. Along the way I stop at Hagiwara Tea Garden, because it is there and I came to see something damnit and my coworkers are both nosy and judgmental so I have to have something on the up-and-up to report when I get back. Pictures of fucking bonsai trees and gentle streams bubbling over rock ought to shut--er, satisfy them. Plus, it's only $3.50 to get in.

I return to Nob Hill and pick up some more chow fun before retreating to the hotel. Both M and C are still out, so I have a little lie-down. Then C returns and shows off his mani and new cache of man-products. Oooh. Hawt.

We head down to the hotel bar for drinks. By the end of the first round, M has returned. We decide to head over to the Top of the Mark, the restaurant and bar atop the Intercontinental Mark Hopkins Hotel. The view is grand, but the hostess is catty and the server is so-so. Also the Negroni I order is goddamn disgusting. M and C taste and concur with suitably contorted faces. We have another round and then return to get pretty for dinner at Chez Panisse (1517 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley).

2. Dinner at Chez Panisse
C is loving the idea of living large and hires a car to take us out to the restaurant, in Berkeley, before we get ready. When we all reconvene in our finery, we head down to the Fairmont bar again for a final round before heading off to dinner. Our driver is a tall russet-haired drink of water named J. She's right up C's alley. (Or not. Later, he keeps exclaiming, "Man, she was tall!" I don't know quite what that means.) When we arrive, our table is not ready, so we wait upstairs at the bar.

You see where this is going. It's close to 9 and we are already on round eleventy-five. Okay, like, four, in about five hours, but still.

When we are finally seated, we are presented with an aperitif...wine.

Then we get a gorgeous salad of greens and cheese, butter-soft lamb with onions, a dessert of hazelnut ice cream and chocolate fondant. All incredibly, amazingly, wonderfully delightful, truly the most delectable meal I think I've ever had. And all really quite small. No problem for the girl who had fatty chow fun and beef for lunch, or the gal who picked up maki and sashimi on the way back from a spa treatment in Japantown. Big trouble for the fellow who has had nowt but booze since his steak and eggs twelve hours earlier.

By the end of dinner, C is mumbling things like, "I wan' go home" and, "I love you both, but I wan' go sleep," and has, in his own words, X's over his eyes. The waiters, with impeccable service and timing, bring us bread and cheese and ignore the fact that one of our party is falling asleep and the other two are a touch too loud. M wants to snog the maitre'd and sends C, all junior high-style, to get his info on the way out. Sigh.

Eventually, we get back to the hotel to find our message light blinking. It's IB. He's now off for the evening and wants to meet us...for drinks. At OSB. See "Dodgy, Tenderloin, Day One."

M and I are up for it. Especially me, since I've had the presence of mind to realize we ate very little actual food during our foray into fine dining, and I am now sucking down the copious leftover fatty lunch noodles. M takes exception to this, claiming I am befouling the memory of dinner. Meh. It wasn't about quality at that point. It was about quantity.

She and I change into proper whorin'brawlin'drinkin' attire and continue to try to rally C, who is damn near passed out on our bed. He pretends to be going next door to change, then returns. In his pajamas and hotel-issue plush bathrobe. Clever bastard.

We poke at him some more, and at some point, I try to pants him in an attempt to, I dunno, humiliate him into more drink? Yell, "Well, now you've GOT to put something else on!" while I sit on the pants I've just pilfered? I have no bloody idea what I was thinking at that point. I do know, however, that despite the fact that both of his hands were tucked up under my pillow, those pajama bottoms did. Not. Budge. It was amazing. Truly. If everyone had a pair of those bitches to wear, why, rape and molestation would be history! (Later, I discuss the wonder that is C's pajama-bottoms with M, who says, "I think he's very protective of his package." To which I respond, "And well he should be! But I don't care about the why, I care about the how!")

C sneaks back into his room and off to sleep. M and I grab a cab and zip down to OSB.

We get there before IB and take up posts next to two very unconvincing but perfecly acceptably-fabulous trannies. I generally ignore such non-conformity, but M apparently was giving them the hairy-eyeball, in a lovingly admirational sort of way, she says, so not so much hairy eyeball as The Eye. Or something. Whatevers. Shortly thereafter, the trannies took off.

This is where it all goes to hell.

This is where we meet "Chuck," a lanky, stick-thin hipster type who decides we will be his new best friends for the night, as his attempts to tangle with the strippers next door have failed. Not that he's horrible or anything. But it's just, well, he's odd. For instance, despite telling us that, if there were a fabulousness contest, the three of us would come in first, second and third, he proclaims it irksome that some folks think he's the gay. Wha? you are holding fabulousness contests in your head, and are puzzled by this? Also, he keeps trying to invite himself back to our hotel to do coke. I cannot believe I am even writing this down. Who looks at me and thinks "Oh yeah, she looks like she'd like to dance with the white lady." Or whatever, I don't even know how the kids refer to it these days. Um, no, captain, not a chance. Also, at some point, he spanks me, and not particlarly well. It is a rather limp-wristed spank. I have gotten much better spanks in my life, and will in fact get better before the trip is out. Hm. Perhaps I should have left that bit out.

M has also picked up an admirer, named E, who she decides is the saddest human being she has ever met, and who just will not stop fucking touching her face and mooning over her. I am spotting a trend for M and the San Fran boys. But I digress.

Periodically, a crackhead wanders in and hits up the classy clientele for lights, drinks, etc. He is white. I wish I could have it on tape to send to newsrooms across the country. Just as evidence. I also realize I never want to tend bar in a place like this, as fun as it is to visit now and again. Onward.

By this time, IB is in the house and stirring up trouble. He is already lit when he arrives and says "Fuck you!" an hilariously awful lot. Like this: "Fuck you! Drink the shot!" or, "Fuck you! You're gay!" to Chuck. Generally, everything is preceded by "Fuck you!" but it is okay because he is cute and buying and Irish.

Also, poor boy is likely very frustrated by the fact that M has spent the bulk of the evening alternating between sitting in his lap and sucking his earlobes and yelling, before assembled company, "Oh IB, we're never having sex, you know!" While everyone points and laughs. (For the love of god, woman. Why didn't you just slice off one of his testicles in Central Park? Much less publicly embarrassing, lol).

Eventually, IB is buying (?) so many rounds M starts hiding them. Hiding her drinks. Behind the limes and shit, like they were broccoli. This is the funniest thing I have seen in my life, ever. Until later, when the bar is closed and a bunch of us are sitting around shooting the shit and M almost gets into a mock-brawl with a little ambiguously hispanical man with a face like a Toltec head. Yay, first actual brawlin' of the trip! Of course, by this point, I don't notice the near brawl, because I am behind the bar getting drinks for the bartenders who are now seated at the bar waiting for our cabs. I learn about the near-brawl later, along with another one she almost started. Crazy.

M, IB and I all pile into a cab and speed on home. When we get in, it is after 4 in the morning. The day has been a good 20 hours long. God help us. But it was fun.