When we reached Ricki’s flat above the bar, the spread made me happy that I had skipped out on that last tamale back in Modesto. A transplant from New York, Ricki had created a dining table reminiscent of home. Her Thanksgiving recipes included sweet potatoes with marshmallows, stuffing with raisins, and properly-whipped mashed potatoes with butter that melted on top. The meal lay out before all of us, an army of fifteen in this city of orphans, from age twenty-three to eighty-four. We were a melting pot of unspoken family histories, diverse sexual orientations, not to mention the number of flats we had probably moved in and out of over the years.
After balancing Ricki’s china on our laps throughout each room while savoring our meals and getting to know one another, we congregated in the living room for pumpkin pie and San Francisco’s favorite desert, the joint. The twenty-three year old shared his hopeful dreams as the city’s newest recruit, while the eighty-four year old shared how she still had it, and lifted her shirt to show us how good she looked in a bra after taking care of herself throughout the years. I passed the joint to the next guest and then sipped my wine, and I wondered what my family might think if they had a telescope through time. Then I turned to Gareth after it all and said, “Well, it’s official. I am officially a San Franciscan.”
