Jeff is back in the hospital as of noon today for round two of chemo. Uncle Tom is here. It is totally awesome to have his help and Stella and Lydia are becoming big fans of him. We are all doing pretty well. Stella has a sniffle, so I will be home with her and Lydia tomorrow while Tom keeps Jeff company. Jeff gained about four pounds since last he weighed in. The pie for breakfast must have helped!
So, since there is relatively little to report on the lymphoma front, I will relate a bizarre story of something that happened today. I'm typing fast while Lydia dozes before she and I both head to bed. Apologies for typos. This story - though weird - is 100% true!
Tom and I were driving back with Lydia from UCSF at about 4:45 this afternoon. We passed by the intersection of Castro and Market and I warned Tom, jokingly, that he might witness more skin than he perhaps wanted to see. Fortunately for him, there were no nudists hanging out in the plaza. It was pretty windy. Perhaps too cold?
A few minutes later, as we approached Mission Street on 17th, lo and behold, I saw a naked guy sitting on the flat-topped roof of a store. The store in question is just to the right of the Kadampa Buddhist Temple of San Francisco - Saraha Center, pictured below. To orient yourself, Mission Street is to your right in this picture, Valencia Street is to your left.
At first glance, it looked like the guy was sitting in a hot tub. But I realized that would be a really odd location for a hot tub, given the apparent commercial nature of the property. And then the dude stood up. He was indeed totally naked, and he was not wet. That ruled out the hot tub scenario.
We were stuck at a red light, so we witnessed all of the following happen next. An elderly man walks up towards the temple. In the picture above, he was walking in from the right, approaching the blue sign that reads "Saraha Buddhist Center." Naked man, meanwhile is on the roof of the building to the right. Being on the street, elderly gentleman cannot see nude man above him. And suddenly, naked dude shimmies off the roof and tries to place his feet on the fence above the blue sign. It's not easy to see in the picture, but this fence has spikes. Big iron spikes. They are gold, which makes them kind of difficult to see for lack of contrast, but they certainly looked spiky from our vantage point in the car.
Wisely, naked man reconsiders his plan to put his feet directly on the spikes. Somehow managing to avoid impalement - he scampers over the edge of the roof he is on and places his hands between the spikes and then jumps down from the rooftop fence and lands on his bare feet. Lands, right in front of the elderly pedestrian.
The elderly man, who probably assumes he is hallucinating, barely has a second to react before the naked guy bolts down 17th towards Mission Street and darts across 17th Street. At that point, I lost sight of him, traffic began moving, and Tom and I were left to surmise what on earth had occurred to create this spectacle.
My first inclination was just to assume... drugs. I figured, maybe this guy is just completely off his rocker on some substance or other? A la the recent naked guy at the 16th Street BART? (Note: one image in that link is not terribly offensive in and of itself, but it is probably NSFW [not safe for work].)
While drugs, or perhaps mental instability, could be the explanation here, I think that the most likely scenario is infidelity. Why else would the man find himself naked on a roof? I imagine him escaping an imminent confrontation with an angry boyfriend and then events transpiring to where he is suddenly stark naked and alone on 17th and Mission. Next, I see him dashing kitty-corner into Thrift Town and grabbing the first item(s) of clothing he needs to cover himself and somehow walking (?) home in his haphazard ensemble to wherever he hangs his hat. Well, he has no hat, but you get the picture.
While I think that the infidelity story line is most probable - I think the likely ending for this naked hombre was an arrest or citation of some sort. After all, being naked in public in SF is no longer acceptable (with a few exceptions: read the article in the link if you need specifics).
And with that, I leave you, dear readers, to come up with your own back story for this truly absurd episode. And I also invite you to come visit us. If I drive you back to our place from UCSF, I can now practically guarantee that you will witness something crazy, or if not crazy, just something nude.
[I shudder to think what search terms will now point to this blog, but I am posting it anyway.]
Yours,
Katina
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