Tour Diary (Part 2): San Francisco

I always feel uneasy in San Francisco. No, more than that. I feel… bereaved. And the beauty of the city just makes it worse—like someone smiling sweetly at you after delivering terrible news.

It’s almost impressive at this point how potent the painful nostalgia of this city still is for me. I’ve visited literally dozens of times over the last two decades. San Francisco is the city I pass through to visit my grandmother and uncles; the city where one of my best friends lives. It’s a place I’ve traveled to for work several times, and vacationed in with my husband. But despite all those other layers of association, San Francisco will always be—first and foremost—the last place I lived with my father, and the last place I saw him alive. How much do you have to water down a poisoned drink before it’s no longer poison?

As soon as I landed, it hit me from every direction: the quality of light so particular to San Francisco, somehow both hazy and sharp, the fog draped over the hills in the distance, the damp chill in the air. It casts a time travel spell on me every time, so that no matter what else I’m doing, I’m also seven years old, sitting on stoop and eating a banana while my father tells me that he and my mother are splitting up; I’m nine years old, walking the steep hills collecting berries to make ink with on one of the precious short weekends I spend with him; I’m eleven and hugging him goodbye for the last time.

My flight from LA landed just a few hours before my event at the Booksmith, but I was still determined to fit in a burrito. So I checked into my hotel, quickly got dressed and made up for the event, and took a cab to La Taqueria. This is where I always go for burritos; because they’re the best in the city, but also because it’s around the corner from the apartment where some of my happiest and most vivid memories of my father are set. Because it’s on a stretch of Mission Street that looks startlingly unchanged from when we used to walk it together; across the street from the Cultural Center where we silk-screened our drawings onto t-shirts. Because part of me still expects to see him there, every time.

So I was already feeling a bit raw (understatement) when I showed up at the bookstore, where I was greeted by a genuinely astonishing number of friends and family—friends of my father’s, including one person I last saw at his funeral; my best friend from seventh grade, who I’d seen only one other time in the last 20 years; someone I used to bartend with in New York; my uncle and his new fiancé, who I met for the first time; the first friend I made in college; the aforementioned best friend who lives here now. Almost all of these people had told me they would try to make it to the reading, but then… they all actually did! I felt completely overwhelmed, in a good way but still. When a friend of my father’s introduced herself to me with the nickname I gave her as an eight-year-old visiting their jobsite, I almost cried. But I held it together.

I had a great conversation with the brilliant and kind

Esmé Weijun Wang

, who not only asked great, thoughtful questions, but also brought a camera and took some lovely photos. People I love asked me questions about my book. One of the booksellers told me that First Love gave her a new appreciation for being 24 and getting to hang out with her friends. A group of girlfriends came to the event together and called it “the literary version of going to see the Sex and the City movie.” Honestly, it was perfect.

photos by the multi-talented Esmé!

The next day I went to a bathhouse with my friend Courtney, and soaked and sweat and recovered a bit from all the travel so far; followed by ramen and a heart-to-heart. Also perfect.

Now I’m on my way to Seattle, and tomorrow (Monday) I’ll be at Elliott Bay Book Company, with Jane Wong!