Hipster no more

Tonight I went to a reading at the Make Out Room in San Francisco's Mission District. "Reading" isn't really the right description. It was a hipster event featuring words, humor and music. A salon of sorts. The Make Out Room is a hipster joint, one I used to frequent in my 20s. They sell PBR in cans, there is tinsel hanging from the ceiling and everyone has a sloppy unkempt beard. Needless to say, I felt out of place. I had on a high shoe and was carrying a designer handbag. I was me.

But I was there to hear my old friend Mark Sundeen read from his new book The Man Who Quit Money so I put my discomfort aside (I was the enemy - I work in corporate America and drive a relatively new car with leather seats) and bellied up to the bar to order a beer. One not in a can. How is it this was my home not too many years ago? Is it terrible that I don't fit now? No. I'm grateful I fit in once... an old person who was never a hip/liberal is just a Republican. Yuck.

I sat alone at the bar checking my email, waiting for Mark to read. I endured a not so funny comedian / former meth addict (he admitted this) and a medium-ly funny humorist (Top 10 reasons why you shouldn't sleep with poets) awaiting my friend.

Mark is the real deal. He writes books from time to time. Good books that don't sell all that well (though I suspect this one might). He occasionally has a travel piece that shows up in the New York Times. He leads people down rivers, or he did once. He lives in a shack (one that he owns, mind you) and does yoga. He has a beard but not really the hipster kind, though he could pass. He still wears big chunky belt buckles and western style vintage shirts (he's done this for years - we used to say he was Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy - back in 1990). He's hip. But not because he's trying. Not anymore anyway, even if he once did, but I don't think he did. Mark is a unique blend of sweet, awkward, handsome and rugged. And smart and literary. He doesn't live in Brooklyn, he lives in Moab. And sometimes Missoula. He's not trying too hard. No one who tries too hard lives in Utah. Do they?

Boy did I used to have a crush on him in college. He's still charming no doubt. But since I'm not the Moab kind of girl and he's marrying a Buddhist, it's all well that he never liked me.

I sat at the bar feeling remarkably uncomfortable in a place I used to frequent, albeit fifteen years ago. I brought no friends. So I had no choice but to sit there, drinking my beer, waiting. I chatted with Mark. He said: Catch me up. I hear you're single. I'm sorry. And he meant it. He said: You'll be ok. You have a good heart.

It was hard not to cry at that one. Do I?

He left and chatted with some other friends. And then he read. He was quirky but confident. Comfortable on the stage. Utterly charming. I have my book here at my bedside. I can't wait to read it.

Congratulations Mark.