I think everyone has those moments when they just shoot straight up from their ergonomically incorrect desk chair, bed, park bench, bathtub or barstool and say, “I have GOT to get OUTTA HERE!” To be able to take said departure as a tax write-off though, well that’s a special kind of happiness.

It was with a combo platter of giddiness and trepidation that I learned that the completely awesome Natasha Yruel, catering manager/goddess at the Serrano Hotel San Francisco’s uberswank Ponzu Lounge, wanted to throw SWiSH a one-year anniversary party/fundraising brunch. The trepidation was mostly due to the fact that I am fucking petrified of airplanes. I don’t understand how they get up, stay up, or keep from shaking to pieces in midair. I don’t like the crummy snacks, the cramped seats or the holier-than-thou flight attendants, who always seem to be smirking during the safety demonstrations, no doubt picturing me scrabbling feebly under my seat for a life vest as the baseball-sized dent in my forehead caused by luggage plummeting from the overhead compartment slowly fills with swamp water from the godforsaken turd patch of a town our state-of-the-art aerial conveyance has just crash-landed in. Or perhaps I’m just paranoid. Regardless, I hate flying. Thank heaven for the little orange pills I swiped from my mommy’s medicine cabinet. One of those on top of a sleepless night just before my 7AM flight and I was in dreamland all the way to sunny California.

As the only SWiSH representative who was traveling without either a significant other or a partner in crime (my various partners in crime being either broke or otherwise unavailable) I was a little worried about how to amuse myself once I got there. As I’ve stated in previous TOTIFH installments, I am perfectly content in my own company, but had hoped to share San Francisco’s charms with someone special to me. The last time I’d been in California was Christmas 2000, and I instantly bonded with a friend of my host, a bitchy, totally foul-mouthed NYC transplant named Raphael. We spent my entire trip mocking the bad fashion sense and social awkwardness of every passer-by who had the misfortune to draw our crosshairs (which is not at all unlike how I spend most of my time here). The six other SWiSHers I’d be meeting later that evening were all friends, but largely in the context of our shared undertaking, and the brunch was only one small part of a long weekend. Would I be able to relate to them out of the New York setting and the familiar party vibe of our business interactions? It sounds slightly ridiculous, considering how closely I’d been working with them all for the past year and change, but there it was. In general, people make me nervous or contemptuous. It’s extremely rare that I find ones I like, and when I do I worry continuously about the flexibility and resonance of our relationship. Recent developments have sadly proven the veracity of my fears, but that’s a story for another column. Maybe.

My arrival at the hotel was relatively uneventful; I navigated the BART with the ease of the seasoned urban traveler. One of the biggest pet peeves I have with most tourists is that they don’t seem to know how to get anywhere without making a huge, dimwitted production out of it. This is especially unforgivable in New York, where the whole goddamn city is on a GRID! (Okay, except for the Village and below, but that’s what taxicabs are for.) All you need to get around in any city, as far as I’m concerned, is a little common sense and a detailed map. Hell, I was running happily around Berlin without much assistance, and I had barely a year of college German under my belt. A dash of goodwill from the locals doesn’t hurt either, since I did have to ask directions when I got off the train. But only once, and not an impatient pedestrian (I know from personal experience that people will point you in completely the wrong direction just for spite); instead I asked a hotel valet, who actually walked me to the end of the block and pointed out exactly where I needed to go.

The Serrano Hotel is smack-dab in the center of downtown San Francisco, and while it wasn’t exactly Utica Avenue in Brooklyn, there were some definite skeeveworthy moments, most memorably the guy who was standing in the middle of the street, his car well and truly out of commission, alternately begging and threatening people to give him a jump. The Ponzu Lounge is all glass on one side, and we had a perfect view of this scruffy lunatic growing increasingly more unhinged with every car that sped by him. The hotel itself is perfectly gorgeous, all bronze marble and sweeping columns in the lobby and delicious scarlet and gold-striped wallpaper in the rooms. It has a 1940s bordello feel to it (although I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a picture of a 1940s bordello so I may be talking out of my ass) and I felt right at home the moment I arrived (which doesn’t sound so good considering the whole bordello thing). I spent most of the day knocking around my room, acquainting myself with the minibar, and somewhere during a showing of Misery on TBS, plunging into a three-hour coma disguising itself as a nap.

Around eleven-thirty or so we all assembled in Sue and Sean’s downstairs suite, which was totally tricked out with a bathroom practically the size of my room upstairs and TWO refrigerators, to engage in our usual servings of chat and dish. The excitement in the room was palpable—we all felt so incredibly flattered to be where we were, doing what we were doing at that moment. However, the next day I was suffering the unpleasant effects of iced tea and cheap vodka, which manifested themselves in a combination of churlishness and noisiness. Truthfully, though, it was probably another onset of nerves. The day had started off overcast and a bit chilly, not exactly the best weather for converting the masses (okay, yeah, we were in San Francisco, which is totally like preaching to the choir, but you know what I mean). But we were nothing if not game, and set off to shop, nosh and canoodle, though not necessarily in that order of importance.

The old saw about Californians being pathologically friendly extends even to its homeless population, which is truly alarming (coming from a New Yorker this is a statement bordering on the surreal). But there was none of the dippy, vacant “hiiiii” quality I’d previously encountered in LA and its outskirts; the people we met in almost every quarter were undeniably engaging and lovely. Even later that night, when I was unceremoniously ditched by sleepy and er, otherwise focused board members, I perched my cowboy hat at a jaunty angle on my head and sallied forth to an adorable bar/lounge a few blocks from the Serrano, where I spent a delightful evening chatting up (and possibly making out with, I honestly can’t remember) the bouncer. Later it was a high-spirited political debate over shrimp nachos with the manager of a fast food joint further up the street. This type of Saturday night interaction was so far out of the realm of my usual experiences I felt like I was in some alternate universe. Hey, any alternate universe where martinis cost $6 gives this one a run for its money in my book.

The main event on Sunday came off beautifully. We could have done with a few more guests, but the ones we had left full, happy and with a renewed sense of purpose about SWiSH. The food was absolutely spectacular—I took great glee in watching Laszlo, who was on the South Beach Diet, methodically remove the smoked salmon from the tops of canapés and carefully deposit the rest in a waste can (22 pounds down though—boy looks GOOD). Vistamix (aka Sean) spun his typically seamless grooves and Ma’am Marie (aka Aaron, Mark’s BF) graced us with a fabulous performance, cha-cha heels on display for all to envy and admire. Natasha could not have been more gracious and pleased to have us, and we presented her with her very own month in the sensational SWiSH 2005 calendar (on sale November 2004!). We mingled, nibbled and posed for photos with all of the easy, comfortable élan that makes every board meeting a slumber party, every volunteer outing a cause for celebration, every email a spirited, high-kicking volley of ideas that always ends with a “Love you all!” so no one takes offense to anything.

But I would have to say that the event that truly set the tone for my weekend was what ultimately led to the semi-incapacitation of the board that Saturday night—the most hilariously drunken game of Clue ever attempted. The Serrano Hotel offers two especially delightful perks: a large selection of board games and a wine tasting hour. Combine the two and chaos naturally ensues. Wine actually makes me loopier than martinis; the fact that we made a booze run a half-hour later didn’t help matters any.

The Clue game was spearheaded by Mark with the approximate levity of a Nazi Oberleutnant with a nasty case of hemorrhoids. Mark informed us repeatedly and with rapidly decreasing humor and increasing volume that if we were unsure of which tinted person was wielding which instrument of death in which room of the house, we needed only to “consult the board.” This of course, made his inevitable slurred query of “who has what now?” all the more delicious when the entire group roared at him in unison, “CONSULT THE BOARD!” I lost interest in the actual game well before anyone actually won, and spent the remainder of the time yelling and poking fun at the other players, which was much more entertaining.

What a wonderful group has been assembled here! I realized somewhere during that weekend, probably at the Castro bar we found later that Sunday afternoon, how completely silly I’d been to worry for a moment that the company of these bright, volatile, stunningly creative individuals would be anything less than a dizzying joy. The sheer strength of our mission was enough to inspire a woman who’d never met us to throw us a fete, for goodness sakes! In the past year we have accumulated an insane amount of press, brought off two fabulous Pride March appearances, been the subject of a Canadian documentary, caught the attention of numerous prominent figures in politics and entertainment, donated money and time to organizations we believe in, and won two awards. There seems to be no end to what we can accomplish and who we can reach. I believe with all my heart that there will be a “SWiSH Prejudice Down the Drain,” bright pink RV rolling through the square states in the next five years, spreading a message of tolerance and understanding as far as the eye can see. And I mean that last part sincerely—can you imagine a bright pink RV in a cornfield? It’d probably glow in the dark.

Consult the board, indeed!

Yours in hagdom,

Jamielah