San Francisco is for Lovers

I hadn’t seen F in three years when I peeped on social media that he’d just flown into the city where I happened to be vacationing with my family.

I hadn’t seen F in three years when I peeped on social media that he’d just flown into the city where I happened to be vacationing with my family. I opened his Instagram Story to see a video clip of his plane landing. It was soundtracked by the classic song “San Francisco” by Scott McKenzie, cluing me in on his location. I immediately shot him a direct message.

“You’re in SF?” I asked.

“Yep! I’m here until Monday,” he replied with a smiley face emoticon.

“See me tonight!” I wrote back excitedly.

F and I had loosely kept in touch in the years since we met at a rooftop pool in Los Angeles. After our steamy hookup I figured we’d forget about each other, as he lived across the country in New York City. But in the weeks and months that followed, he displayed fervor in wanting to find time to meet again. 

Looking back, I’m not sure why I didn’t match his level of enthusiasm and make an effort to see him all the times I went home to Jersey. Maybe it was because our sex was characterized by a painful breakup I’d been experiencing at the time. Whatever the case, this time around my emotions were intact. 

At Local Edition moments before F arrived

In an unprecedented move, I invited him to meet up with my family and me at a bar called Local Edition. He wasn’t the least bit intimidated. “If you want to stay with them, I can come over there no problem,” he wrote back to me on Instagram, our sole medium for communicating. 

When he showed up at the sprawling basement bar I gave him a big hug before introducing him to the group I was with. My uncle drunkenly gave him a hard time, repeatedly telling F he’d “kill a motherfucker” over me. It could’ve been off-putting, but F handled it just fine.

While I was ready to make out with him then and there, I kept my composure in front of my 82-year-old grandmother. I was even hesitant to meet him at his hotel after a quick refresh at mine, where I was sharing a room with my family’s matriarch. I didn’t know if it would come off sleazy, or disrespectful. But both she and my uncle assured me I had their blessing.

“You’re a grown woman. You pay your own bills,” my grandmother shrugged, giving her approval. And my uncle advised, “Be safe,” not-so-subtly telling me to use a condom. With that, I was off to spend the night with F at the swanky Clift Royal Sonesta Hotel. 

It was almost 3am when I arrived. We met in the lobby before F led the way to the elevator, and then his room. It took no time for us to start making out and then shed our clothes. “I missed you,” I said, immediately realizing how full of shit I must have sounded. If I’d missed him, why hadn’t I reached out to link up until now?

The truth was I hadn’t thought about F much since the last time we’d seen each other, except for when I wrote about him. But in this moment, his touch felt like what I hadn’t known I needed. So, I missed him.

Being with him again was mesmerizing, although it felt a little strange having sex with him while my family knew where I was and what I was doing. It was a slight distraction, but I quickly got over it.

We took a shower after hooking up, and even that was dreamy. With hot water pouring down on us, sleepy from the spirits and satisfied from the sex, our affection was nearly nonstop.

After F left for work, I snapped a selfie in his hotel bathroom to freeze the moment

Stripped of makeup, truly bare in front of F for the first time, this felt way more intimate than our previous time together back in 2019. When I got out before him, we pressed our lips against either side of the glass and kissed as if we weren’t about to see each other in bed minutes later. And before we finally fell asleep, we wrapped our arms around each other and kissed about a dozen more times.

I was on cloud nine. Things had gone so well that in the morning I woke up with anxiety that had my stomach in knots. It felt too good to be true and my mental health disorder was telling me something was bound to go wrong. I left earlier than I wanted to take care of my stomach ache, but we met up again that night.

This time it was just the two of us — no company to distract or keep us from putting on a public display of affection. We sat at a quiet bar and talked about our parents and our love languages. If we weren’t stealing kisses I was gazing into F’s brown eyes, or gently tugging at his shirt, or stroking his hair, finding any way to touch him. 

While sitting there, we also exchanged phone numbers… so no more chatting exclusively on Instagram. After drinks, we held hands as we walked back to his hotel. In this city, where neither of us had a life, we could pretend to be the couple we weren’t. 

The next morning F woke up early to head to work — he was on a business trip after all. “Babe,” I called out to him while he was in the bathroom. “I’m gonna get an Uber.”

Fully naked, F flung the door open with his eyebrows furrowed, showing a concerned look on his gorgeous face. I couldn’t help but stretch my hand out to caress his cheek. Instinctively, we both leaned in for a kiss. “You can stay here,” he told me in his Italian accent, prompting me to get back into the luxurious king size bed. Eventually, after bustling around the room to finish getting ready, he bent down to kiss me goodbye.

He was leaving that night and we wouldn’t be able to see each other again before then. Texting him ahead of his flight, I felt a sting of sadness come over me. “Estoy triste,” I said. “I want u in my life.”

“I’m in your life since the day we met,” he reassured me.

“Ok,” I replied.

We would have to wait two weeks to see if we could recreate the magic in New York City.