Seen and Not Unseen

Well, No, Not Like This

It's a 50-degree day with rain and wind in San Francisco's Castro district. I'm running a shared ride on relatively low energy, having already done the hustle for too many hours that week. After dropping off several passengers, I'm left with one woman in the front seat, and she's praying to her phone. I don't usually disrupt prayers, so the car is quiet.

As I'm waiting for a light to change, I see... well, dude is naked. Well, almost entirely naked. He's wearing a red swimmers' cap and sandals, and nothing in between. White dude, probably in his '40s or '50s, no big tattoos or piercings that I can see on my very cursory glance.

Now, naked in the Castro isn't all that unusual; it is the Castro, for heaven's sake. But normally there's *context*, some event or group or protest or *something* better than I Just Teleported Out Of A Naked Pool.

And I want to ask my passenger if she knows if there's something special going on today, or just to acknowledge that I'm not hallucinating this from too many hours behind the wheel. It's not as if anyone else is paying him any mind.

But it's creepy if your driver is like "Hey, lady, lookit the nekked guy!", right?

So we drive on in silence... until three blocks later, when I just have to know.

"Hey, did you also..."

"Yeah, yeah, I saw him."

"What the hell, right? I mean, it's cold outside..."

And we had a fun five minute conversation after that, until I dropped her off.

So thanks, Naked Teleporting Swimmer!

Which is a sentence which has probably never been written before, and I really hope I don't have to ever write again...