just a normal weekend in sf

at the interact symposium

after i finished drinking my mushroom-infused matcha, i stroll into a speculative fiction writing workshop hosted at an oddly formal tea setup above a venture capital firm. a man with his japanese mom sit on the tatami. i overhear him boasting about his blob shaped white lamp with 4 holes.

"pu er tea is harvested from the mountains of yunan" the host breathes deeply,

"local villagers hike 3 days into the forest to these 800 year old trees and hand pick the leaves."

she pours the tea in a straight line, spilling the 800 year old tree's soul on the table for the price of magically "connecting us together"

pu er tea is a tea my mom drinks every day. its basically black tea. i didn’t understand the deal.

wincing, i sip the tea as people share their science fiction stories. when it was my turn, i share my satire about a fictional planet named starbucks where lucky guests try a very special type of tea brewed in a proprietary volcano

people laugh uncomfortably, then go silent.

i retreat upstairs, where i encounter a weird shaped chair that hypnotizes me for a good 10 minutes. i honor its role of a chair and make awkward eye contact with a guy who clearly didn't feel the same magic.

i walk over to the outdoor patio and hear some substack journalists pose as experts on china. i cringe as one of the panelists dismisses economic and political concerns with china as "non-humanistic" referencing buddhism as a solution to our world's issues.

i go for a stroll and come back with some takeout poke. i sit on a table warmly accompanied by three phallic wood structures, a cutting of a cherry tomato vine, and an ocean rock in resin. the girl next to me announces she was in hong kong a few weeks ago, where she met an 89 year old billionaire who told her to come to his hotel and showed her his wife's collection of labubus.

i take a detour to go to noisebridge, a communal maker space in the mission. looking at the piles of electronics, i see glimpses of what technology in san francisco used to be. i talk to an old moroccan man named mohammad about life. he asks if i think there's a creator of our universe. i'm not sure.

i attend a session titled "how to listen to unreleased music" and listen to grimes' unreleased album. she is dubbed “redacted” for the evening. we spend 40 minutes listening in silence, clearly about her past relationship with elon. i tolerate her yelling "liar liar liar" and how "he told her it was love," then cringe in the post-discussion as people dance around asking whether it's clearly about elon. they end the discussion before anyone brought up the elephant in the room.

the next day, my friend hypes me up for a matchmaking event that i signed up for. it was hosted by a prolific substack writer. i go by a pseudonym for the evening.

i suffocate as bodies of dozens of sweaty tech bros scramble to write name tags and find their matches. i make eye contact with early balding men asking for my age.

"what's the oldest you'd date?”

i mumble 30 and then immediately regret it.

oh! i'm right at your cutoff! i'm 29."

i meet a guy who found some other guys whose matches didn't show up. i meet two women who tell me that they're besties now because they found each other at another matchmaking event.

i talk to other people at the symposium but every person feels like another caricature. a tv show where i'm the only audience member and the only one laughing.

i stare into space, wondering how i might find more people to join the audience.

on the plane ride home, i look at the buildings below and they start to look like little computer chips. i wonder if mohammad was right.