The Finger Tip Club

From the front porch and back garden of my house in El Cerrito, I had a rifle shot view of the iconic Golden Gate Bridge. Now, standing on the roof of my building amidst the cranes and rail lines of the Port of Oakland, my view is of the graceful Bay Bridge, dipping and rising and dipping again like a bird in flight toward San Francisco.
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The new summer smiles down on all of this, allowing us to wear our skimpy clothes if we are young or straw hats if we are not. I am on the roof surveying that non-stop ramble that is Jack London Square, the Warehouse District, the Port of Oakland, and West Oakland. For those at ground level, that’s more or less a rectangle at the back of San Francisco Bay outlined in cement lanes, steel tracks, and every known form of transportation: 880 on the north cuts us off from escape downtown should any shit hit the fan; the estuary and railroad yards to the south where cargo ships from China arrive day and night to ensure that we have enough hair dryers and microwaves. Oakland is a huge port, stretching east to encompass Oakland International Airport, once the size of a Dairy Queen and now poaching business from San Francisco and San Jose. Finally, we are contained on the west side by Mandela Parkway, our main drag out of here through West Oakland and its superfunds, train tracks, the old Army base, and, rising from this miasma, the economic miracle that is Emeryville.
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I am living my first summer in my new home here among the artists, chefs, musicians, surgeons, drag queens, cop and train conductor, suits, and growers that make up my building. I sip wine and gaze out to the windy bay, my hair whipping about my head, and think: I am happy. It is the people, yes; the architectural wonder that is my loft, yes; the many recreations within a short walk in any direction, yes; but it is also very much of the season. The Square and summer are good to each other and, like Paris and lovers, make an attractive pair. The roof, particularly, is again in season.
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It is our communal backyard and we gather up here weekends to have a family dinner around a long table bearing plates, dishes, towers of food and bottles of booze and to talk of the things that mean something to us. I am contentedly sitting between the two sexiest men in the building, the Square, Oakland, the United States and Europe. They are so equally adorable even their names cannot distinguish them, both are Michael. Michael is talking of food and cooking, describing one of the meterosexual dishes he has brought to dinner and complaining he once cut himself so badly making it he almost lost a finger tip. He thrusts his digit toward us revealing a thin, craggy white line circumventing the end of his finger. We gasp. I am keenly interested although one finger means nothing.
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“Does it still hurt?” asks Michael, as he pushes his own finger displaying a matching gutter in the same finger, same hand, toward Michael’s . We gasp. A second self-inflicted knife slice that damaged a nerve. I cannot believe my Ugly Duckling luck at finding this tribe.
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“Legio Irus Actica," I whisper adding my finger to the compass of collective injury. We gasp. We share the same ruined finger tip that twitches randomly with pain from a long ago injury. Kismet. We hug.