Moving to San Francisco on New Year's Eve

 
Thanks to sitting in the wrong seat and the flirting of two straight me to my right, I got free drink on my flight from Denver. It was the eve of 1998, and I was moving to San Francisco. I was very tipsy in the air and drunk by the time we landed. Somehow, I managed to grab my bags, hop on a Super Shuttle, and find my way to my ex-boyfriend's apartment.

No one was home as they were all out partying. I entered the apartment thanks to a key left discretely behind and set down my bags. A few minutes later gun shots were fired outside the window. The alcohol mixed with the anxiety of being in a new place, and I knew I wasn't leaving the apartment that night. A quick telephone call from my ex confirmed I wasn't joining them. They were in the Haight. I was in the Outer Mission, and I had no clue how to get there. So I settled in and laid down on his bed.

I awoke early that morning when he came home. He was high and drunk. He popped two ecstasy before entering the apartment. I got up to chat and flirt. We talked briefly. He welcomed me to San Francisco. I went back to bed. He jerked off in the kitchen thinking he was quiet, but the noise of the porn was loud and distracting.

When I awoke the later that morning, I was violently sick -- the kind of sick you catch on planes. I ran to the bathroom and threw up. My ex was pissed. I was ruining his day and his high.

He moved me from his bed to a futon mattress in the hallway. All I got was that mattress. I had to use my backed bag as my pillow and my winter coat as my blanket. I was shaking from my fever unable to get warm.

"Uh...where can I grab something to eat?" I asked.

Dismissively, "There's a grocery store across the street," he replied.

I stumbled there dizzy, sickness swirling in my head. I picked up some oranges and saltines that eventually found their way to the toilet. I almost passed out in the middle of the store.

I returned to the apartment, and he had taken off. I laid back down on the futon and passed out. A few hours later, I awoke crying and terrified. I was so ill I was hallucinating all the horrible possibilities of gun shots and missing people.

His roommate followed me around the apartment sanitizing everything I touched -- the phone I used to call home, the toilet, the glass from which I drank water.

"Sorry," she said. "You look like shit. I'm sorry he isn't helping you. Is there anything I can do?"

"No," I replied. "I just need to sleep and get out of here."

I was there only a day or two more. A call I placed to my parents resulted in my grandparents driving up from their home in Sun City West, Arizona. They picked me up, and we drove to the place I was moving to in a couple of days, a group home for severely emotionally disturbed youth ages five to thirteen that I was going to intern at.

We were greet by a woman wrapped in a bath towel, another intern who wasn't expecting us. She was sweet and told us where to find a hotel and the hospital. We left.

The doctor said I had bronchitis and the stomach flu.

I slept for two days in the hotel room my grandparents got for us.

That was my first week in San Francisco, and, thanks to family, I survived.

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