24 February, 2004 - 10:32

I was visiting Katrina.

She was living somewhere in the U.S. because I remember thinking about guns as I walked down the street. We were all contemplating going out to the gay bar but for whatever reason, I went first, just a short jaunt around the block. The streets looked very small, in a narrow, grotty part of the city wherever it was.

I went in the almost-empty gay bar (it was far too early), which was very dark, and headed to the toilet, which was enormous and blocked by an unlocked chain door which swung open when I pushed it. I stood inside the pitch black of the gigantic room before I realised I didn't want to cruise or piss in a place that was so dark - the thought of getting a knife wound played vividly in my head. So I left to go back to Katrina's apartment.

There was a lot of commotion and anti-gay comments being thrown around at the entrance/exit of the bar. As I trudged through the snow, a group of five year olds starting yelling at me, calling me incomprehensible homophobic names followed by a kid who kicked me in the back of the knees. I kept walking until another kid threw a snow ball at my back. I made a conscious decision to reason with the kid and asked him why he threw the snowball and he responded with a curt, "I dunno" and then pointed to his friends who were much further ahead of us.

I walked with the kid, who turned out to be nice and harmless (remember, these kids are all five years old) and we talked about why he would throw snow balls at me. He told me I went into the bar to "pick up" and I told him unconvincingly that I hadn't anticipated picking any guys up. We turned right onto the main, wide street and walked within view of his friends who were still walking ahead of us. At some point, I realised that I had walked too far and headed back toward Katrina's apartment after saying goodbye to the kid. Her door was at street level and was surrounded by shops, in particular a big glass window to a wedding shop to the left of her brown wooden door.

Inside I had to climb a few flights of stairs, passing through industrial-type doors, ducked under ventilation pipes and drains. Katrina lived in an old building, probably originally designed as a factory. I was passing up between the 4th and 3rd floors when I realised that she lived on floor 3 1/2 and there was some special way of getting to it. So I descended some stairs into a very wide, open space with high ceilings where there probably around a hundred or so people. I think they were getting ready for a protest although I never found out. As I was looking for the sign which would point me to floor 3 1/2, a hippie-ish woman offered me some "coffee" which was actually a small plastic bowl with a top-layer of hard crusty sugared almonds under which there was a translucent liquid that tasted nothing like coffee. It was delicious though, and I was appreciative.

SMACK!

my neighbour dropped something on the floor and i woke up.