And that any of this annoys me kind of annoys another part of me.

Though I do appreciate that one of the iconic paintings from the exhibit is The Floor Scrapers. Looks familiar.

And today, someone opened their front gate into me as I passed by. I managed to deflect off of it with my hands but it startled us both. And it probably would be been all right if I hadn’t, since I was bleeding anyway. I couldn’t have looked any worse.

So why do I keep running? Because it makes me feel so healthy.

I knew Sam online before he was even out of the military, back when he was a pseudonym dodging Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. When he had just moved to San Francisco, while he was together with Jeff, the God Of Biscuits, we’d finally met—we’d had cocktails together once or twice, had hung out at house parties, had said hey at street fairs. We were hardly close friends, but between the small town that is San Francisco and the targeted intimacy that is the Internet, you can’t help but get into everybody else’s business; you feel like you know a person as a confidant, not just a member of their studio audience. And while you rarely expect someone to die, you particularly don’t when they are young and vibrant, finally righting themselves out of chaos, doing things they enjoy, being with someone they love.

I admit I am new to the business of death. My grandparents have passed on, and some aunts and uncles as well, but I have been able to separate myself from that emotionally, or generationally. I grew up just after generation of men felled by AIDS. I don’t know yet what to do with death right here among my peers. What I will do when it happens closer in my family. Not quite sure where to put grief after it has outstayed its welcome. Still uncertain and slightly guilty to allow mine to sit next to the grief of someone who has lost more deeply. But here is all we have, so here is where I have to learn to get used to the feeling of knowing someone is gone. That they affected me, like I hope to affect others once we have ceased to be. Even if we are little more than a Twitter feed or a Facebook status update, maybe a little of us remains in everyone we know.

I haven’t met Sam’s partner Greg yet, but I hope to shake his hand at the memorial for Sam at the Eagle on Wednesday night. Greg was kind enough to keep Sam’s extended internet circle involved up until the last moments. Knowing only secondhand, and only through the same narrow internet channels where I’d known him before, that Sam had fallen so suddenly and so far…I couldn’t help project myself in and imagine the dark place I’d be sitting at the side of The Boyfriend, or being unable to comfort him as I tended to the business of dying. As the Cowboy Junkies sang, “To Love is To Bury.” I can only hope to be as strong when it happens.

Jeff posted a comment about the Flying Dutchman recently, the three-mast tall ship I had never seen before which pretends it’s the top of Sutro Tower. As it’s that time of summer, the tower is frequently engulfed in fog. And since we’ve moved upstairs, the tower is now my regular view out the bathroom window. So I see the ship there almost daily, start singing the Tori Amos song of the same name, and, these days, think of Sam.

Though neither Sam nor I actually believe in that sort of thing, it is comforting to pretend that the dead look back somehow, aren’t gone forever. That they are out there somewhere, sailing across the sky. Smiling in our windows.

And in Sam’s case, probably while making an obscene gesture and activating the inflatable slide, too.

I suppose my ridiculously white legs in black shorts with a yoga mat were too exquisite a target to ignore. I was late out of the house trying to make a 4pm yoga class at the gym on a Saturday, only the second class I’ve ever taken in public. I decided to save time by heading there in my workout clothes. Picked up my yoga mat and shuddered. I was going to be one of those people walking around in public with my yoga mat. I always projected that those people walking around the financial district were ready to hit people with their soft rubber emblems of superiority. “Move it, people; enlightened one coming through! Namaste, motherfuckers!” I readied myself for a new kind of walk of shame and hotfooted it out the door.

I knew I was going to miss the start of the class but hoped I wouldn’t be too much of an interruption entering late. Yet again, I was going to be That Guy. My self-opinion was starting to waver. I considered turning around, but marched on, down 15th street past Truck. (Yes, this happened right outside a gay bar. I’m not convinced that was mere coincidence either.) Suddenly something hit the pavement with a crack in front of me, and I leapt back a step and saw the egg splattered there. I looked for open windows; I looked for cars and bikes passing; I looked for a chicken’s nest in the trees above me, incredulously. No sign of whence it came.

Angered, I thought again about turning around, but something had steeled in me. Thank you for my rage, egg thrower. I went on, determined that I would make my class, that I will do my thing no matter what the universe throws at me—literally or figuratively. That’s a lesson I keep having to learn, to persevere on my path and to wear persecution at worst as a talisman, or as an award, or ideally as nothing more than a meaningless souvenir I picked up on the road to a goal.

A short while later, in the middle of Head-to-Knee pose, while trying to concentrate on my posture and my breathing, my eyes focused instead on a small yellow stain plastering down the hairs on one leg. And all I could was laugh.

It’s been complicated.

And in the time that I’ve been looking at this entry thinking about all this, of course, the District Courts in California overturned the ban on gay marriage, and gay weddings here might start again as soon as Friday. (I expect not, but possible.)

I have had a number of feelings on all of these matters. They’ve all been complicated.

I’ll try to get them out eventually, hopefully before I trip over any more milestones. Who left all these here?

But I soldier on. I’ve got MC Frontalot on my Nike+, and I don’t even pay attention to her or to the tanned jocks passing me on their ninth mile (“Just a quick workout today, bro; I’ve got a Tri this weekend.”) It is sheer NerdCore pushing me up the hill. It is what lets me walk into a gym for the first time since 1987 and not run back to the safety of an office chair and an LCD monitor.

I could slow down and walk on the stairs in the park, but I keep pushing. I am a middle aged nerd and I am claiming this body just as hard as anyone else on this hill can claim theirs. I may be slow going up but I am pulling fast downstream speeds here. And I check my email at the top of the hill.

WORD.

(Shout-out to my friends at the Original BANC. I would have posted this on Tumblr but it turned into a blog post. Go figure.)

It stopped making the noise.

Had it actually sighed in relief like I expected, there would be one more occupied bed at the psychiatric ward this evening.

Emiril I am not. Authentic it wasn’t. But it wasn’t that bad, considering that it was the “easy” recipe. That it was the “kids” recipe. That it was, I later discovered, the “semi-homemade” recipe.

Gods help me if I’m turning into Sandra Lee.

As penance for my foodie sins I will take a cue from Courtney’s new food blog and braise some leeks, or make some seitan, or bake up a shoo-fly pie. (Confession: I bought frozen pie crusts for this. But they’re vegan and organic, if that helps.)

OK, that’s totally not fair. There was a lot of food at the potluck, and I hadn’t heard of anyone else who got sick from eating the food there. And just because a food has seven very-brightly-colored layers does not mean it’s harboring ill will against me. So William of Ockham would probably agree, I was most likely down for four days with the stomach flu, which I could have picked up at any number of places.

But I still don’t think that William would have eaten the cake.

Regardless…now that I’m recovering, The WiiFit is getting angry with me. Unwisely I let it measure me after my fourty days in the porcelain desert, and it was elated that I was losing weight so quickly! Wow, congratulations on doing such a good job shitting out your insides! Only a few more organs more and you’ll reach your goal weight!

Now it wants to know WHY; WHY on earth have you gained so much weight? What could you have possibly been thinking? The options don’t really give you much room to wiggle out of it either. (“OVEREATING” “INACTIVITY” “PMS” “MAINLINING MILKSHAKES” “UTTER MORAL FAILURE.”) I said “INDIGESTION” and it suggested I eat more fiber. Look, I’ve only just recently gotten back into solids. I’ll work up to it, I promise.

“WORRY” was not an option that Wii Fit would accept either. I never learn my lesson not to browse WebMD for symptoms. Especially not the week before my health insurance is set to expire. But at least I know more about diarrhea, gastroenteritis, neck pain, fever and bloating than I ever wanted to.

Oh, about the neck pain? Never assign to viral meningitis what can be properly explained by hours of World of Warcraft.