This one time I went to San Francisco and got rejected
Reading time: 8 minutes
By Alice Austin
Part 1
It began when I met Laura in The Green Tortoise Hostel where we were both studying at SF State University for the semester. She’d hitchhiked her way down the coast from Montreal with her boyfriend. Between raucous games of beer pong in the colossal hostel ballroom we were both desperately apartment-hunting, trying to find an affordable home for the semester.
Laura and her boyfriend found a place before I did; a share house on 21st and Mission. It was a ‘share house’ in the literal sense. The landlady, Mrs B. rented out every square inch of her detached Edwardian home. The high demand for affordable housing in SF meant that Mrs B. could get away with turning her house into a year-round slumber party, ever-littered with young bodies. The couple were put in the bunk bed room, sharing with 2 other people, 3 if you count Mrs B’s bug-eyed pet Chihuahua, Ricky*.
I went to visit Laura soon after she moved in on a hot afternoon in late August. I climbed up the steep wooden stoop into the mecca of beds where Laura introduced me to her housemates. Cole and Matthias were sharing the living room together; arguably the least private room in the house as it adjoined one other bedroom and led to the kitchen. I thought the two had been friends for years but discovered they’d only met last week when Cole had moved from LA. Matthias had been there for 3 months, Mrs B’s second longest tenant, a good indication of the living conditions.
We all sat around chatting for a while. Matthias was a film student from Indiana. He was tall with intelligent eyes, and wore an old dark green crew neck jumper and cords. Just before I left that day he and Cole invited me along to a gig that night. I thought about going but I was caught up in life at the hostel, playing UK/OZ vs. Rest of World at flip cup and going on bar crawls in North Beach.
The following week I saw Laura on campus, she said “Matthias likes you. He said that there’s something about you he finds really attractive.” I gave it some thought and decided I was happy about this.
My life in San Francisco was picking up fast. Through various coincidences I’d met a large group of friends at university, similar to my London friends but with American accents. We’d sit outside a bagel stand in between classes drinking cappuccinos. I clicked with a Jewish girl in particular. Cat was from LA, she’d been to school with Cole and had a perfectly situated apartment on the corner of Dolores Park. We became friends. I decided to take my time with the inevitable romance between Matthias and I.
*Real name
Part 2
I was introduced to Four Loko on my second night in San Francisco. The colourfully branded malt liquor drink came in a tall can and in obscure flavours. It contained 12% alcohol and around 5 times the recommended daily caffeine in-take. I bought a can of Watermelon Four Loko and a bottle of wine for the evening. I didn’t need the wine. After a quarter of the can I had reached the kind of drunk I didn’t think possible beyond the age of 16. And $1.50 for a can? Yes mate.
I remember drinking my new favourite beverage one hot night in Dolores Park. Cat, Cole, Matthias, Laura and I were lounging on the grassy bank looking out over the blinking city. Matthias wore a similar moth eaten crew neck as before. He showed me a short film he’d made; a music video directed over the song ‘Bad Kids’ by Black Lips. It featured short interviews and various shots of his friends drinking beers in garages, lighting stuff on fire, riding bikes indoors.
It was all so gloriously suburban, exactly what my pop-punk heroes had whined about in the ‘90s, lightyears from my adolescence in South London. Matthias was a talented film maker, too. And here he was, the end-product of all that suburban angst, living in San Francisco and inviting me to gigs. It was all just crushingly exciting potential potential potential.
Soon it was time for me to get back to my hostel because I had class the next morning. I called a taxi and Matthias walked me to the street to wait for it. I knew it could happen then but I thought, this can wait. We’ve got all summer. We hugged just as the taxi pulled up. He looked disappointed and I felt euphoric, knowing I would see him again in the next few days. No rush, I happily thought to myself.
I went round to Mrs B’s sharehouse the next weekend and was introduced to their new flatmate Victor. He was from Canada and didn’t seem as warm as the others, not interested in getting to know me. It was another hot day, we wandered around Dolores Park with cans, sat on the top of the hill, ate Cheetos. I had somewhere to be so shot off, promising to catch up with everybody later. That evening I met up with them but Matthias wasn’t there anymore.
An evening early the following week I went to the apartment again. Ah, there he was. I sat next to him, chatting. A couple of minutes later he jumped up, he had to be somewhere, a gig I think? He’d left before I had a chance to ask.
Things went downhill after that. There’s nothing quite like disappointment after near certainty. I had hard proof that he had liked me and I couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t interested anymore. I quizzed Laura – did she have any idea what had happened? She said no, he wasn’t seeing anybody, she had no idea.
My initial impartial interest grew quickly into an obsession. Any plans were made strategically in the hope that I’d see him and that he would have changed his mind and whatever strange reason for his sudden disinterest would be cleared up.
Soon I found my own apartment, unfurnished. Everything was a blur of panic and disorganization. I wasn’t mature enough to cope with the stress of being in a foreign country and things going wrong – a near-death experience transporting a double bed down a near-vertical hill, Bank of America giving me wrong account details, messing up my class registration.
Amongst all this, perhaps as a device to see Matthias again, I decided to have a house-warming party. I only had nine people to invite on Facebook but I was optimistic that friends of friends would come. Interestingly, that’s exactly how it turned out. My party popped off. We had no table so we played floor pong, drank Four Loko and danced to frat party bangers like G6 and I Love College. Matthias came with Victor and Cole. As I drank and played floor pong I tried hard not to show that the attention of every cell of my being was turned in his direction.
Part 3
We sat on the steps of my fire escape, looking out over a landscape of telegraph poles and tram tracks. Golden Gate Park’s luscious silhouette was dark under the moonlight. The ocean was ten blocks away; I could hear the waves.
Something had to be done. I’d suggested we go for a cigarette while our friends played flip cup on my coffee table.
Our conversation was flowing completely naturally. No interruptions, no excuses to leave, light-hearted laughter, in-jokes. I thought for a second that I had imagined the whole thing, that he’d been interested all along. My over-analytical 20-year-old brain had conjured up nonsense.
As I completed that thought Victor popped his head out of the window. “Matthias, we have to go. Mrs B. just called, she said we left the gas on. She’s furious, she’s going crazy.”
Matthias jumped up and said goodbye before my heart even had the chance to drop like lead into the pit of my stomach. It stayed there for a few days.
The next time I saw Matthias was at a club in The Mission. Everyone was out; the contents of Mrs B’s crazy share house minus Ricky the Chihuahua. I was prepared for the occasion and had made sure I looked my best.
I knew it was time to be put out of my misery. I’d spent my first crucial 6 weeks in San Francisco obsessing over this. I had to know where I stood. I downed a Long Island Ice Tea and walked over to Matthias. We chatted, I went for it. I leaned in. He jerked back. “You’re too drunk” he jabbered. I told him I’d only had two drinks. He stalled, then said “I’m not over my ex-girlfriend.” It sounded unconvincing but I was more than willing to accept it.
In blind embarrassment I faced towards the bar, I didn’t know what else to do so I said “Do you want a drink?” He said – this was somehow the worst part – “You don’t need to buy me a drink.”
Thank God for Victor that night. I think he must have seen what happened. He was so kind, thoughtful and made sure I was engaged and preoccupied all evening. Matthias went home and Laura, Victor and I stayed out. We found a giant concrete slide near the Castro and slid down on pieces of cardboard. Despite the trauma of my embarrassment, I felt calm. I had my answer, I knew where I stood.
A couple of days later Laura called. “Alice, I should probably mention, I knocked on Victor’s door the other day and let myself in without thinking. Matthias was in there and was rushing to do his trousers up, they both looked quite sheepish. Then I asked Mrs B. if anyone had left the gas on the other night – she didn’t know what I was talking about.”
As I hung up the phone I remembered a comment I’d noticed on Matthias’s Facebook wall the day we met. All it said was “BI-SECHS-YOU-ALL.”
