public transmissions: Dolores Park

Yeah, I jog a little bit. It feels good to get my heart rate up, breathe heavy and sweat. The other night, I’m jogging laps around Dolores Park in the Mission Dolores neighborhood of San Francisco. The lights towering above the tennis courts are beaming while folks chase the yellow ball. People are scooping up after their dogs, walking with friends, and laying on blankets in the grass, overlooking the city and the Bay Bridge. The night is gorgeous.

I pass a guy on lap one around the park. He’s talking to someone on a cellphone; the kind with an earpiece. He’s lighting a joint. Hovering above him is an exhaled cloud of what could have been Humboldt’s finest.

I pass him on lap two. “This is my queer life, that’s just what it is,” he says into the ear piece.

And on lap three, still surrounded by scented smoke, he says, “Man, fuck it.”