A student said he didn’t like characters who have eating disorders, as if this were a standard category of character, and since I’m always yammering on about embracing disenfranchised female experience, I told him about Anne Carson’s Simone Weil.  I wish I were so weird I was mystical, that my weirdness were fetishized, famous.  To spell “weird” correctly, I was told, remember that it contains the word “we.”  The next morning I stood at my bedroom window and watched a homeless woman on the sidewalk across the street.  She had a shopping cart beside her and several layers of blankets laid out neatly on the sidewalk, pillows in pillowcases.  It was all quite colorful and comfy looking.  She was an attractive woman, 40ish, though perhaps younger, her hair hanging past her shoulders, dark with gray streaks.  She was tanned, of course.  She may have been Latina.  Her clothes were J Jill casual, flowing gray knit pants that fit around her trim butt and stomach, long sleeved blue knit pullover.  Barefooted.  A man came up to her and she yelled for him to get away.  “Don’t do your drugs here, go away!”  He left and she was consulting with the guys from the autobody shop she was camped out in front of.  They seemed indifferent to her situation.  When she saw the man reapproaching she put on her shoes, slip-ons, she yelled again, get away from here, go do your drugs elsewhere, he came right up to her bed and she kicked him, he backed off a few yards and she grabbed a collapsible metal rod, which she snapped open, one length at a time, dramatically for the man’s benefit, as she kept moving in circles and shouting “get away.”  There was no question she’d use the rod, had used it before, her bed on the concrete, totally exposed.  Another man appeared and started coming at her as well, these creepy men just keep coming, never stop coming, their faces cruel as vampires, and she’s out there, this lone warrior, fighting them off—even Buffy had backup—I rushed out to my balcony and started screaming, “Leave her alone, I’m going to call the cops if you don’t leave her alone.”  The men left and the woman looked up at me, not in thanks, but in recognition, with a touch of distain.

To my left, in the glass that separates the Starbucks from the Ramada I see the reflection of a blind man in a suit and tie and sunglasses, he’s moving quickly, rocking back and forth, his lips going a mile a minute.  He was doing that when I entered, when I could see the real him, not just his reflection.  I couldn’t hear what he was saying, don’t know if he’s emitting sounds or if his lips are just moving—or if his rocking has anything to do with the lively music that’s playing.  He seems very happy.  On a weekday evening, I saw the woman again, standing on 11th, in jeans and a black pullover, a black baseball cap turned backwards.  I almost didn’t recognize her.  She was looking expectantly towards Market Street—the same nervous pose I’ve seen repeatedly, of men waiting for dealers.  The way it works is that the dealer arrives and the two men walk together towards Mission, as if they’re just hanging out.  Arms loose at their sides, their hands perform a quick unacknowledged exchange.  The dealer turns and walks back towards Market.  The other continues on to Minna Street, where I live, and smokes his crack.  The woman stood in the noir glare of the streetlight, leaning against the B of A parking garage, her body tense, she glanced at me once, casually, then refocused her gaze on Market Street, refusing me any further details or evidence, refusing to be an analogue for my own eager victimization.  That final image lingers, she’s still there, peering from the darkness, waiting.

Dodie Bellamy’s chapbook, Barf Manifesto, is just out from Ugly Duckling Presse.  Other books include Academonia, Pink Steam and The Letters of Mina Harker.  Her book Cunt-Ups won the 2002 Firecracker Alternative Book Award for poetry.  In January, 2006, she curated an installation of Kathy Acker’s clothing for White Columns, New York’s oldest alternative art space.  She lives in San Francisco with writer Kevin Killian and three cats.