I am tired

The car comes for me at 5:45 AM. I stayed up all night, but everything is done — the cats went to the kennel, the clothes came out of the dryer, the legs got shaved, the TiVo received its marching orders. I walk through the dark lobby and throw my stuff into the trunk of the Town Car and buckle up in the back seat. Whipping through the Midtown Tunnel, sipping my lukewarm coffee, I can’t wait to leave the city and step out of my own life for a few days.

I also can’t wait to see what people-watching opportunities the morning’s flight affords. I fly National Airlines to California, always, because in exchange for the minor hassle of stopping in Vegas, I get a relatively inexpensive first-class ticket, thereby preventing claustrophobia- and nic-fit-induced carnage on a grand scale. The arrangement affords me oodles of leg room, food that doesn’t taste like asphalt, and a handy one-hour smoking layover in McCarran Airport — not to mention reams of material for my “The North American Chipster: Behavior And Societal Structures” file.

And it’s a Thursday, so the flight is packed to the rafters with Chipsters on their way to do the craps-and-strippers thing for three days. Chipsters sleeping under their battered white baseball hats in the boarding area. Chipsters high-fiving each other to the point of bruising. Chipsters baboon-grooming bits of dried McMuffin off their shirts and then unapologetically eating said bits. When I file onto the plane, a Chipster bachelor party is clogging the aisle, doing finger-snaps and ordering cognac. The flight attendant, who will not have the luxury of sleeping through or otherwise ignoring the in-flight par-tay, already has that Ray Combsian crying-on-the-inside dead-eyes look. It’s 7:20.

I squeeze into Seat 6B and nod to my seatmate, a Steve Perry look-alike in a shiny navy sweatsuit and Linda Richman eyeglasses, and open up my New Yorker to fit in a little reading before take-off and the nap I have so clearly earned.

I am apparently wrong about something

Prior to today, I believed that The New Yorker functioned as a universal shorthand for Nothing Personal, Buddy, But The Goddamn FAA Won’t Let Me Smoke On The Goddamn Plane, So Do Yourself A Favor And Don’t Talk To Me, Because Believe Me When I Tell You It Won’t Go Well For Either Of Us.

It doesn’t.

Prior to today, I believed that lying as prone as possible in one’s seat, with one’s eyes closed, not responding to external auditory stimuli, functioned as a universal shorthand for Yeah, Trying To Sleep Over Here, Thanks.

It doesn’t.

Prior to today, I believed that exaggerated snoring noises would discourage a fellow traveler from sharing at length with the back of my head the reasons behind his not playing much golf when he goes to Vegas.

They don’t.

Shut. Up. Frank.

I am an excellent driver

Hi! Sorry! Totally sorry! Not used to driving a Dodge…uh, Behemoth! Thought you’d maybe merge, since it’s the merge…lane, and whatnot! My bad! Got a little too happy about vacation! Spazzed out, started going eighty! Didn’t mean to! Waving now! Waving cheerily to acknowledge blame! Pulling exaggerated “oops” face! Sorry, really! Okay!

I am a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a bed-and-breakfast

I’ve never stayed at a B&B before. It’s a charming place; Victoriana isn’t my taste, usually, but it’s not overdone here, and although the room is tiny, it’s the cozy Merchant-Ivory kind of tiny. Candy is provided, that chewy fruit-wedge candy I love but never think to buy for myself.

I don’t quite belong here, though, because it is an “I” staying at the B&B and not a “we.” No husband arriving later, no girlfriend or sister bringing the car around — just a single girl and her big green sunglasses getting directions to Union Square at the front desk. It’s an anomaly in B&B culture, evidently. The owner takes to introducing me to other guests by my Indian name, She’s Here On Her Own, and the other guests always nod gravely at me, and God knows what he’s telling them outside of my hearing, but I hope he comes up with a properly dramatic story. “Terrible thing, really. The husband died in a bank robbery — bled to death in her arms on the floor of Chase Manhattan. Now she’s all by herself with nobody to fold the map, poor dear.”

I don’t know how he’s going to fit my repeated exits for parts drinking into the narrative — “working through the loss,” maybe? — but I’ve got a date with a pint of Sierra Nevada, so he’ll have to figure it out for himself.

I am immature

Midday on Friday. The Widow Bunting (heh) has nothing to do for a few hours, so she goes out to the garden to smoke and read a book. She is momentarily distracted by what sounds like the yip of a Pomeranian coming from a second-story window, but shrugs and returns to her reading. A few minutes later, it becomes unmistakably clear that, unless you can teach a Pomeranian to moan “ohhhh Edward” while banging a headboard against the wall…yeah. Not a Pomeranian, so much. For the next ten minutes, The Widow Bunting leaves aside her grief in favor of snickering, because she is five years old.

Another guest joins her in the garden and lights a cigarette, and she manages to compose herself, but it seems that the talented Edward is going for a record, because moments later the yipping resumes, followed in short order by the moaning and the banging. The Widow Bunting is biting the inside of her cheek so hard that she will probably require stitches; the other guest is clearing his throat manfully in an attempt to keep a straight face. Silently, The Widow Bunting begs Edward to please get on with it already, because she is one of his grunts away from guffawing in a fashion most unseemly for a woman in mourning, or any other adult for that matter.

Edward’s partner orders him, in a voice audible to the entire Mission district, to “take me from behind.” Before she knows what she’s saying, The Widow Bunting mutters, “Better get on that, Edward.” The other guest snarfs a gulp of hot coffee. Game over. Widow and Guest succumb to one of the most violent bouts of church giggles ever recorded.

I am shy

Driving down to register at JournalCon, I feel all buzzy and nervous. I think there’s An Idea Of Sarah that comes from reading Tomato Nation, maybe, but in person, I don’t know how well I match up to that idea. I don’t think of myself as having a persona, and I find that each reader tends to use a different shorthand for me anyway — the New Yorker, the feminist, the cat lady, the English major, whatever shows up in my writing that he or she happens to plug into — but in that first few minutes, it’s hard to tell what’s expected of me, and I panic and start pushing jokes out of the plane all “GO GO GO” and I can’t relax until their little parachutes open and a few of them land in the meadow.

Of course, it’s totally fine — no ripcord malfunctions of any kind — and I know for sure it’s totally fine when AB puts two fingers together, waves them, and jerks her head towards the door. Oh, thank God. Smokers. My people. We stand around on the sidewalk and bitch about traveling and bitch about hills and bitch about having to stand around on the sidewalk, and we giggle and dig each other’s company and AB met Matthew Perry and it’s totally fine.

Then it all overtakes me. The jet lag, the nerves, the dead husband…I need a nap.

I am happy

After my nap, I pick up Savage, and we elbow our way into the Lone Palm, which is crowded and loud and heaven on earth because it’s not New York and the others got there first and scored a table. We all get settled with the drinks and the smokes and the struggling out of layers of clothing, and then the six of us have more fun than a clown car. Everyone at the table is, like, speed-dating each other — everyone’s getting up and changing seats and shouting to one another and sloshing drinks and pairing off into conversations and then switching again, taking pictures in the bathroom, knocking over candles, talking like it’s our last night with these voices, laughing and laughing. I’ll tell you, there’s a chemistry to these things, and to get it to blow up right is harder than it sounds, but tonight it blows up real good.

And then, at around one in the morning, I reach down into my bag for a piece of gum.

But my bag is gone.

I am anonymous

My bag is not on my chair. My bag is not under my chair. My bag is not in the bar anywhere. My bag is gone. Everything in it is gone. Passport. Driver’s license. Cell phone. Keys. Credit cards. Address book. Make-up. Medicine. Map.

Gone.

Everyone fans out. AB peeks under every table and chair in the bar. Savage asks at the bar to see if anyone turned it in. Pineapple questions the other patrons. Pamie calls my missing phone to see if it rings anywhere nearby. I stand on the corner and scan the pedestrians, and I go into neighboring bars, and I pigeonhole a sketchy-looking guy to see if he’s seen anything, but I know as soon as it turns up missing that it’s gone, miles away by now, lifted off the back of my chair and picked clean and dumped.

The five of us walk the streets anyway, just in case, calling my phone over and over again, checking trash cans. No bag. No phone. Nothing. Pamie’s phone rings, and I have a moment of sheer stupid hope — a kindly soul heard my phone ringing! A kindly soul is calling us back! A kindly soul will reunite me with my bag! Well, it’s a kindly soul — specifically Omar — but Pamie tells him she has to go: “We’re waiting for the thief to call us back.” The thief never does call us back. Eventually, AB takes her boots off, and it’s over. The bag is so gone that it doesn’t exist anymore.

I should freak out, probably, at that point, but I don’t. It’s a wicked fun bunch of people to get robbed with, after all, and it’s not like I got beaten up or stabbed or anything. The bag is just…gone. It will live on as a great story, an adventure I had in a city not my own, legendary in its absence. I feel kind of bad for the others that we couldn’t all just finish our drinks and go about our evenings instead of acting out my identity-theft drama, but we keep laughing and having a good time, at least. I look into doorways for my bag and crack “if that’s my real name” jokes. The contented calm of denial suffuses my being.

The girls pile into a cab. Savage and I truck over to the police station, where Officer Lozano tells me that I shouldn’t have hung my bag over the back of my chair in the first place. I wonder brightly why he couldn’t have told me that two hours ago. Officer Lozano doesn’t smile. So, I have no money, I have no identity, and now my material is bombing with the peace officers. Do I let that bring me down? No sirree! I just hum “I Who Have Nothing” and fill out a report on the contents of my bag. Said report is one of the weirder documents in the annals of law enforcement, because as a third-generation Girl Scout, I carry a metric ton of weird crap with me in the name of preparedness. In addition to the customary contents of the average wallet or purse, my list contains Xanax, a knitted finger puppet in the shape of a whale, a single earplug, a tiny flashlight, four Bic pens, Chanel lip tint, and a swatch of cloth that says “Buckaroos” on it. I make sure to note in the report that Chanel has discontinued that particular shade of lip tint, and that I do have a prescription for the Xanax at home and didn’t just Winona it from somewhere, and hey, you know that other keychain with the actual keys on it, the tomato one? It’s from Tiffany, and my mom went to a lot of trouble to surprise me with it — it took her months to get the right one because they sent her a pumpkin the first time. Also, one of the pens doesn’t have a cap, and there’s purple stuff on it from this time when — okay, never mind. Ooh ooh, wait, I just remembered that my phone has a skull and crossbones glow-in-the-dark sticker on it. That’ll help, right? For you to find it? And there’s an inhaler in there too, in the front zip section, because I might get stung by a bee. Long story. Oh, and sunglasses. Big green buggy-looking sunglasses. And a copy of Bust. And tampons — o.b. tampons. See? Prepared. Prepared for anything. Well, except the theft of the bag.

Sigh.

I’ve done everything I can do, so I go home. I cancel a few credit cards, but the freak-out is still pending, so I leave the rest of it for tomorrow, and when I finally go to sleep, I sleep like the dead.

I am inarticulate

A few hours later, the alarm goes off. I run through the shower and out the door with sand in my eyes and a borrowed bag; the bag doesn’t hold anything meaningful, but I feel utterly naked without that strap across my chest. I know there’s only nineteen dollars and change in my pocket, but a false sense of security will have to do for the moment. Anyway, I can’t think about the bag now. I haven’t had enough coffee to obsess properly, and besides, it’s time for my panel.

“Writing For Fun And Profit” goes well, or seems to. The number of people who have heroically risen from bed at nine on a Saturday morning is quite touching. Evany and Scalzi have retained the ability to speak complete sentences in English where I have not, and when I wander into Ralph Wiggum territory, Mo bails me out deftly. I can’t seem to stop myself from rambling, partly because you could count the minutes of sleep I’ve had on one hand, but also because I keep thinking about how it’s weird that I don’t exist anymore but nobody can tell that just by looking at me. I look like Sarah D. Bunting. I sound like Sarah D. Bunting. The hair, the tattoos, the undercaffeinated stammering — all known elements of Sarah D. Bunting, and yet there’s no proof. I have no proof of me except me.

Still, the attendees laugh politely at my jokes, and at the end, they clap. Mo lends me money unprompted, and I almost cry at her generosity, but I don’t want to freak out yet, so I go to another panel and try to listen while writing up a list of things I need to get my identity back. I lounge around and smoke with AB and Pineapple and Pamie. All three of them listen politely as I wax neurotic about my poor bag, out there all alone with no way home. Pineapple admires the fact that I haven’t freaked out.

I am freaking the fuck out

Back at the B&B, I phone my parents to see if they can send my birth certificate or something so that I can get on the plane. I reschedule plans. I cancel my phone service. I check my home voicemail. I arrange to have a new key cut for the rental car. I leave messages for friends around town. When I’ve done all that, I just sit on the bed because there’s nothing else to do, and all of a sudden I feel a sharp longing for my fictional dead husband. My fictional dead husband would have his own credit cards, and my fictional dead husband would have photo ID, and he’d get me a nice cold soothing Diet Coke and a packet of peanut-butter crackers, and he’d stroke my hair and say, “Calm down, Bunting, we’ll take care of it, I’ve got traveler’s checks, let’s just watch the baseball.” My fictional dead husband would tell me what to do, but my fictional dead husband bled to death on the floor of a bank and left me here to wait for instructions that will never come.

I curl up on the bed and feel very very sorry for myself.

I am, pound for pound, the biggest baby in the world

Sniffle. Snurfle. Boo hoo. Booooo hooooo. Ohhhhh, poor me. Ohhhhh, woe. So, sooooo saaaaad. Poor, poooooor me and my sad, saaaaad life. Ohhhhh, it’s so unfaaaaair. Why meeeee? I don’t waaaaant to melt into the crowd, a faceless assaaaaassin, a woman of mystereeeee, a — hmm. Actually, now that I think about it? That sounds kind of cool. Women of mystery have wicked cars and great hair. Women of mystery have theme songs.

Right, then. Enough with the crying — let’s get a beaker of acid in here and scrape off these pesky fingerprints so that I can embark on my new life as…as…Sadie Something-Or-Other, Shadowy Figure Of Intrigue!

I’ve always wanted to stride around in slo-mo. This is going to rule.

I am okay now

Chuck comes by. Chuck lends me money. Chuck supervises the buying of a new red bag. Chuck distracts me with gossip about mutual friends. Chuck listens patiently as I blather on about the old red bag and its bizarre contents and how I will have to live in California because what if I can’t get on the plane and oh my God maybe Dad could call that senator we kind of know and get me a passport and what if I can’t buy cigarettes Jesus what if I get into a wreck with the rental car on the way to the airport how will I explain that one they’ll take me to jail but hey maybe that’s not so bad at least then they’ll know it’s me because of my fingerprints and oh crap I can’t get into my apartment when I get home I can’t believe they took that mascara it took me years to find a mascara I actually liked and they boosted it if they wanted money couldn’t they have just asked me I’d have given it to them I do nice things like that they’ll never let me on the plane without ID in this day and age I’ll have to live here I can’t make the rent in this city fucking kill me okay I have to go dress for a dinner party now.

Thank you, Chuck.

I go to the dinner party. God bless the dinner party. God bless the alcohol at the dinner party. God bless the wonderful people at the dinner party who prevent me from thinking about the bag for several hours — in a row, even — while we eat lasagna and get drunk and tell stupid-crap-we-did-as-kids-or-possibly-last-year stories and laugh. It’s another unseasonably lovely night in San Francisco, and out the window, I can see a thousand stars.

Thank you, Savage. And Savage’s friends. And Savage’s lasagna.

I am filled with rage

I hate you, new red bag. I hate your annoying little shoulder pad thingie that I can’t cut off, I hate your weirdly placed compartments, I hate your psychotically strong Velcro, I hate your teardrop shape, I hate your myriad buckles and straps, and I hate your failure to contain all the stuff that got stolen. I want to throw you into traffic on South Van Ness, and after you get run over a few times, I want to stomp on you until you fall apart, which you will, because you suck and because my hate, she is powerful.

I hate the B&B too, now, irrationally enough — I hate Edward and his yippy wife, I hate the James Cromwell manqué at the front desk, I hate the shower head that forces me to do a back bend to wash my hair, I hate the chintz, I hate the skittish cats in the yard, and I hate the other guests with their photo IDs and their ATM cards — but it’s you I really hate, new red bag. I hate you a lot.

I am lucky and grateful

To everyone who offered me a place to stay if I got stuck, who lent me money, who got their friends who worked at the airport to advise me, who bought me dinner, who came over with coffee and prevented me from hyperventilating, who patted my knee and clucked sympathetically, who listened to me go on and on and on about the bag and the plane and the blah blah blah — and I will bet money that none of those fine human beings has even read this far, because they have all gotten so tired of hearing about the bag and the plane and the blah blah blah that they saw the headline on this week’s entry and said out loud, “Oh, for the love of beer and skittles, not again,” and clicked over to The Onion instead because they just don’t want to hear about it anymore, and I don’t blame them one bit, because I can’t even stand talking about it — you all have my undying appreciation. Only the kindnesses of friends old and new kept me from imploding into a black hole of aerobic fretting. I mean, I worried five pounds off, but I still had a ton of laughs and met a bunch of cool people, and God knows it never got boring. And I come in a twelve-inch action figure now, so really, everybody wins. Rock on.

To the buttwad who nicked my bag — bite me, jackass. I mean, thanks for not knifing me, I guess, but still. Way to cast a pall over the rest of my trip. Also, way to bore the shit out of my friends, more than a few acquaintances, and a whole bunch of very nice strangers who never want to hear the word “bag” ever again in their lives, because if you hadn’t stolen my stuff, I could have spoken wittily on the subject of film instead. Dickwad. Oh, and that Xanax? Two years old. Take ’em all — you won’t feel shit. Yeah, you heard me. Now go get your own goddamn bag.

To the Fed Ex guy who delivered my birth certificate to the B&B — sorry about the hugging. It won’t happen again.

I am terrified

I get to the airport without wrecking the Behemoth, although it takes a while because I carefully drive exactly 50 miles per hour the whole way. Disembarking from the rental car shuttle, I stand in front of the terminal and smoke three cigarettes, and I pray. I pray out loud. “Okay, God — here’s the deal. I like San Francisco a lot and everything, and I certainly don’t blame the city for the whole bag flapdoodle, but I can’t live here because I don’t have any of my books and shoes and stuff, and I don’t think my brother is going to go for the whole ‘yeah, hi, could you just truss up the cats in a roll of postage stamps and send them out here, thanks, bye’ thing anyway, so You really have to let me on the plane. You have no reason to hook me up, at all, and I acknowledge that, but if You could just find a way to get me back to New York, I will really try to cut down on the cursing and the coveting and stuff, and the next time I come to San Francisco, I promise not to make fun of Alcatraz, because Alcatraz is great, and to keep a closer eye on my personal belongings. Oh, and I also promise to stop taking kitty litter as a tax deduction, because it’s a victimless crime, but it’s still wrong, and I know belching isn’t a sin, technically, but I could stop doing that too if you want — just let me know. Okay, um, amen.”

At the check-in counter, I gasp out my sad story to the ticket agent, and she doesn’t blink. I don’t even have to take the birth certificate out of the envelope; she just marks my bag for x-raying and sends me down to the gate. I nearly faint from relief. Security doesn’t blink either, just waves a wand over me and sends me through, and at the gate, I get searched, and then I get onto the plane and I take my seat and I inhale that smell of boiled fabric and feet as deeply as I can, and God is into me for a convent stay but I don’t care. The shadowy figure of intrigue is going home.

I am home

It’s very late when I get back to my apartment. I haul my stuff through the front door, and then I lie down full-length on the floor and grin up at the ceiling, imagining a satirical baritone voice-over of my continuing adventures. “Tomorrow, the faceless assassin will immerse herself once more in danger as she rescues her feline companions from the clutches of the evil V.E.T., but tonight — tonight she is safe. Don’t miss the next thrilling installment of The Unbelievably Melodramatic But Still A Pretty Good Time Vacation Of Sadie Something-Or-Other, Shadowy Figure Of Intrigue!”

October 14, 2002

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