Amarama's Journal

Subject:	The Flea and Me
Time:	8:26 am.

I really love a flea market. I especially love the Alameda Flea Market because the sellers come from all over California and Nevada, and who knows where else. There's a lot of sellers who are old bikers and weatherbeaten hippies, with gnarly handmade wooden frames barely clinging to trucks overstuffed with junk, that remind me of my youth. I'm not much of a nostalgic person, but I get my nostalgia on at the flea market. It makes me feel like I went into town when I go to a flea.

I also love the Alameda Flea because it's on a scary old naval base, with big decomissioned ships looming in the background. I feel like a lot of the Bay Area is an apologetic place, but not the Alameda Naval Base. I'm mostly down with living in the American apologists' homeland, but sometimes I forget where I came from, which is more like the Sovereign Nation of Maniacs and Whackos, who are not an apologetic people. Sometimes I really wish there was a city in the SNMW, but sadly, it's mostly a rural nation. I forget sometimes that I'm a child of utopians, essentially, under all my parents' crazy bluster, and that I am a second-generation utopian. Recently I've been less scared of my family and more proud of them for trying like motherfuckers. If you've got to grow up progeny of the insane, insane live-free-or-diers are a pretty good option, all things considered. But I digress.

I like how everything is subjective at the Flea, and if you play your cards right, you can get a good deal. It's a good practical lesson in establishing boundaries. I feel like the Flea Market is a giant psychology board game, and this makes it enjoyable to me. I like all the people and their various quests. I like a pack of fags from the Castro who are trying to complete their rare Wedgewood dish set. I like some Alameda housewives who are single-handedly carrying off rattan furniture through miles of stalls. I like some old people who are pushing around empty carts because they're too picky and curmudgeonly to buy anything. I like self-conscious punk girls who sneakily evaluate me as friend or foe, and their boyfriends, who I find myself facing competitively as we scour together through record bins.

There is a weird phenomenon at the Flea Market, which is the Guy Who Tries to Pick Up Women by Using His (not so) Obscure Knowledge. Two days ago I was at the Berkeley Flea and this guy was hitting on women serially in each stall. He was expounding on the kitsch value of this early chemistry set that he had found to this hipster woman, and then about the natural ingredients in the soap he had bought to this pretty, blonde, hippie girl. I thought I was safe because those women were both skinny and conventionally attractive, and well, I'm fat and conventionally attractive, I guess--but sure enough, I was self-possessedly poring through a big jumble of tools, when he started demonstratively shouting at me about this ancient jigsaw he had located. "Do you know what this is?" he asked me. "Yes," I answered. That's all I gave him, and I went back to my quest. "It's a jigsaw, from the early 20th century," he came back. "Clearly," I answered. I didn't give him much because his serialism reminded me of a story a friend told me about her recent trip to Istanbul. She, a gorgeous femme, her butch girlfriend, and their fag pal were all there together. Apparently, a man they encountered in the street hit on her really hard, and then, when she turned him down, hit on her girlfriend, and then, when she turned him down, hit on their man friend, all in succession. Oh, to be number three. It's a position I generally loathe, and have been in a lot lately. Sorry, fella.

I really enjoy watching gender dynamics at the Flea Market, in general. I enjoy watching the fag and hag relationship, which is sort of a preferred coupling of mine these days. I enjoy the newly primary relationship, in which people are thinking about what home means to them together. I enjoy a catty intense girl relationship, also my favored coupling these days. There are two types of gender dynamics which I abhor at the Flea, however. I absolutely HATE to see a man complaining to random other men about his female partner's spendiness in that barely-concealed hostile tone of voice, that results in a slew of misogynistic insults and culminates in laughter at her expense. I also hate to see a woman running her boyfriend ragged, while he carries all her shit and she barks orders at him, simultaneously talking on her cellphone, and carrying only her water bottle. A pretty fat girl with a hot boyfriend carrying a pink Samsonite suitcase for her is likely to make me cry. Similarly emotional for me are old, identical-looking lesbians, bickering quietly, but still holding hands.

I am becoming a Flea Market afficionado. I am nervous about this, because those maniac collectors who know every edition of every year of every missing piece of their collection seem to be missing some perspective. I am definitely headed in that direction, but fortunately, my financial situation and the confines of my studio apartment put some real-world limits on my obsessive pack rattery. It is nice, however, to spend some time at the Flea Market visiting with my kind.

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