Friend's Of The River

In the immediate after math of Christine's departure I managed to finish a project her and I'd started together, I put on a Vegan food festival at the State Capitol building. It was there that I met Stacy of The Sacramento Bisexual Alliance. Being bisexual sounded great. I mean, I obviously couldn't be gay, as I adored women oh so much, but being an oppressed minority was just too cool. I flirted with the idea, and even tried flirting with a few guys, but I just didn't have it in me (ooh, bad pun not noticed until hours after writing.) All I succeeded at was pissing off a gay man named Brent who I guess I prick teased though I didn't intend too, I was just being friendly. I also fell in love with several lesbians but I don't think that helped anyone at all.

Stacy worked managing a phone bank for Friends of the River, an environmental activist organisation that fought the gratuitous damning of rivers. She offered me a job on the phone bank and I took it. I became a fundraiser for Friends Of the River.

I sat at a desk and called from a list of members, people who had donated in the past. This was great as I knew I'd be talking to people who were into the issue and who believed in what we were doing. A lot of the folks were rafters. It seemed strange to me that folks who want to do this silly sport on the river would be so much more enthusiastic about saving than folks who just lived on this planet and enjoyed water and trees and sitting by a river with a good book. It was like a game of the Rafters vs boaters (Damn make big lakes for boats.)

I was glad we were not cold calling out of a phone book. Really we had it made.
I was more passionate about the environment than I'd ever been about car insurance and I did very well at raising money.

It actually struck me as absurd how much money I could earn with bonuses thrown in for surpassing my quotas. I tried not to question it too much.

Stacy's right hand girl (she'd kick my ass for not saying woman) was Nicole, a hardcore lesbian feminist and one of the most well intentioned and passionate people I've ever known. Nicole's girlfriend (woman friend?) at the time was Terry, one of the first lesbians I fell in love with. I fit in well at Friends of The River and I brought Bryna around to meet the crew. We were one big happy family.

Nicole was so obsessed with being healthy. With confronting one's demons and becoming the best person you could be. She constantly worked on her self, but this work involved being a better citizen as well and was altruistically selfish or selfishly altruistic. She struck me as a bit wacky, a bit too much, and a wonderful inspiration all the same.

The main river we worked on was the American River, threatened by the Auburn Damn for years. When the Auburn Damn seemed temporarily defeated, we worked on the Klammath River in Oregon and so Dan and I took a trip to Klammath to check it out ourselves, dragging Bryna along for the ride. We met a few folks and tried to get the local sentiment regarding the river, but mostly we just camped and drank wine.

I worked with a man named David who would go on to become a lobbyist and he convinced me to go to some poetry readings. Most of the poets were entertainingly bad but I liked the scene and read in public for the first time. The audience's faliure to raise me up on their shoulders and march about cheering my name was dissappointing and I didn't read often after that but I enjoyed the experience.

There was a deli by F.O.R. offices where I'd stop for Halva and Falafel and good chocolate.
I have one odd, detached memory of riding my bike to work in the pouring rain with a ridiculous sized smile refusing to let go of my face. These were good times. I was living life on my terms, I was successfull and I was happy.

Another wonderful memory was being caught by my co-workers kissing Bryna in the rain. I wanted to kiss Bryna in the rain in San Francisco, a city I'd recently fallen hoplessley in love with, but this was certainly enough for the moment. Bryna and I were best friends and more. We resisited the and more part occasionally but we seemed powerless to stop it. Christine had decided to keep our relationship vague, and she was seeing other people, like Dan my best friend and roommate, so there was no guilt in what continued to grow between Bryna and I. She was a best friend who I could enjoy kissing in the rain and what could be better than that?

I quit my day job at Coffee, Tea and Company as part of my quest to be a good and healthy person and I found a new day job at The China Cafe, a Chinese bakery trying to become a cafe. I worked these two jobs happily until an opportunity I couldn't pass up came along. An opportunity to escape my ambiguous relationship with Christine, an opportunity to greatly expand my traveling distances, an opportunity that meant quitting both of my jobs with no notice.

I would eventually return to Friends Of The River.

>>Go to next job where I get yelled at and laughed at by Chinese folks>>