Out and About

This hostel would be fantastic if it weren’t for two major issues.  First, they blast whatever shitty music is on the staffs’ iPods in every common area.  It makes having a conversation a chore and leads to times, like now, when nobody wants to hang out in the areas designated to actually hang out.  Their music selection is absurdly horrible as well.  They’ll have Dave Brubeck rocking with some Take 5 one minute then turn it down to swap iPods so some band like the Arctic Monkeys can get airtime.  The worst is when they play hip-hop.  Whoever on staff likes the hips hops loves the hips hops.  They feel like everybody needs to hear Eminem loud enough to drown out a jet engine.  Especially in common areas where people may want to talk, or read, or write, or do anything other than have their eardrums pounded out by a depressed white man who wishes he were a black man ranting about his ex-wife.  Second, is the Internet access.  I just spent almost an hour writing a post.  I felt quite good considering I had to tune out everything from jazz to rock to unknown foriegn band who loves the synth.  The Internet connection was eerily stable for this place.  It goes out regularly for extended periods of time and rarely comes back for more than a few minutes.  Well, I guess I got lucky today because it has been usable.  Little did I know that they randomly forward web pages to their homepage.  That means the autosave feature of WordPress was thwarted when the autosave was instead redirected to the hostel’s homepage.  I lost about an hour’s worth of text.  Good show USA Hostel.  You win this round.

So, with that out of the way, let me try this again.

These first couple of days in San Francisco have been rather strange.  Maybe it’s to be expected considering how this all came about.  I’m fairly certain that people questioning my sanity may be onto something.  It might not be unnatural to leave home for something new, but this just feels really fast and somewhat unplanned.  My only option now is stick to my loosely-throw-together plan of going to school.  With that in mind, at least one really awesomely hindsight-hilarious thing has happened since I got here.

6:30 am flight

My flight left at 6:30 am July 13th.  That gave me the entire Sunday to look at housing and find my new school.  It also meant I got a total of maybe 2 hours of sleep the night before.  There’s something about making life-changing decisions that impedes any possibility of restful sleep for me.  Eli with 2 hours of sleep is not something I’d like to achieve again, but it was a very interesting experience.  It inhibited my ability to censor my actions.  So, when Alaska Airlines gave me that center seat when I requested an isle, I grumbled but didn’t complain.  I figured I’d sleep either way.  When the rude thoughtless jerk in the isle seat next to me decided to put his feet up on the armrest in front of him and shove my arm off the armrest between us, I got a little passively aggressive.  I put my arm back up and started rubbing his arm with mine ever so softly.  You know, just feeling our masculine armhairs as they mingle.  He moved a bit for me and I fell into a state of mild sleep.  I guess he got brave again because there his arm was again.  The dance had begun.  For 2 hours it was a test of wills.  Every time I even looked like I was falling asleep, there he’d be again.  End result:  No sleep on the plane, but I did accidentally elbow the guy in the head as I was getting up after the plane landed.

drunk roommates

Like I said earlier, this hostel is pretty awesome except for those couple of things I mentioned.  My room is only 4 bunks and has its own bathroom.  Unfortunately, roommates are an unforseeable variable.  I’ve been lucky as far as roommates go.  The worst was a dude in Japan who drunkenly snored for hours on end.  It sucked, but I dealt with it.  Last night was, by far, my most horrifying roommate situation.

These guys stumbled in at about 3:30 am followed closely by the enchanting scent of stale alcohol.  I was only able to fall asleep a few hours earlier because I have difficulty sleeping when I have a severe lack of sleep.  They started by trying to be quiet, but their level of intoxication limited their ability to control how loud their voices were.  So the door was quietly shut and people were tiptoeing around while laughing uncontrolably and speaking French loud enough where I’d be surprised of they didn’t wake people in the next room.

The room was dark, but from what I could tell it was 3 guys and a girl.  They split off into pairs and took two different beds.  The guy and girl took the bottom bunk next to mine and the two guys took the bunk above mine.  Now this is where it gets a little more strange.  I could swear I heard kissing coming from the bed above me, but I thought they were both guys.  It took me a little longer than maybe your average world-traveled individual, but I realized they were gay.  I got like sooo grossed out!  The French-speaking girl belted something in French and they stopped for a bit before moving to the bunk above her and what may have been her boyfriend.

This, however, did not stop things.  The girl kept laughing while saying they should be quiet because I was trying to sleep.  I agreed, but everyone continued to do what they were doing.  The girl proceeded with her insane laughing and the men on the bunk above her kept dry humping causing baby Jesus to cry.  I asked them several times to go to the lobby or a common area where they could talk all they wanted.  They were in no mood to listen to me, though.  I had to think of something more drastic.  The more time passed, he more intense the guy-on-guy action got and the chick wasn’t going to stop laughing.  A few options went through my mind.  First was to yell.  That’s always the first reaction in situations like that, I think.  Even with a total of maybe 6 hours of sleep in 2 nights, I knew this was a bad idea.  I’d become the asshole and they wouldn’t respect me.  I had to assert dominance some other scarring way.  Whatever I did couldn’t be physical or show signs of anger.  I opted on turning on the light and having a conversation.  This would let the humping dudes know I could see them and induce a sense of shame that even their drunk brains could comprehend.  The conversation was simply because if the lights are on, then everyone is awake and we might as well get to know each other.

I started off just asking where they were from, where they were travling, and for how long.  It was as though I just met someone in the lounge and I was getting to know them.  Not only did this stop the sweet, sweet manlovin’ but it also allowed them to see me as the friendly guy who was sleeping until they burst in.  At one point the girl got up and turned the lights out.  The humping stopped, the giggling subsided significantly, and I tossed and turned for another half hour or so before falling asleep.

Conclusion

I found a roommate situation that might work.  It would require me to buy a bike or get used to a long walk, but the guys are cool and it’s in a nice area.