A man is being held prisoner, but only part-time. He's allowed to meet his girlfriend in a bar just outside the prison gate.

She's of the Middle Class, a cohesive group who all speak like English Victorians, have practical bobbed hair, and wear tan slacks with saddlebag pockets and a wide distinctive belt. So she stands out a lot in this Lowlife place. But she likes the Lowlife girls, and learns their slang and even starts sometimes wearing the required miniskirt and big hair and makeup.

Her boyfriend, though, asks her not to hang out here. Fears for her--Lowlives resent the Middle Class. And the owner doesn't like her--assumes she inhibits his customers, especially the men. But the bartender doesn't think she's a problem: whenever a Lowlife man suspects she's a Middleclass slummer, he swears at her to drive her out--Middles can't stand obscenity, but this ambiguously dressed girl just swears right back at them in Lowlife. So the customers get used to her.

Her worried boyfriend suggests she could stay in a place across the street. The bartender could send someone over to fetch her whenever her boyfriend's allowed into the bar. Great for him, but dull for her, waiting in some hotel room!

So when the owner and her boyfriend want to banish her, she gets mad and swears at them, too.

The owner snorts "You got two personalities, don't you, lady."

The bartender says "Naw. Several. Several." He's seen her more than either of them, and, as he tells me later, "I'm not a lover of the Middle Class, but frankly, I'm more impressed with her than that boyfriend."

NOTES ON WAKING UP

• Slumming = I biked through the slummy Tenderloin district in San Francisco today.
• Prisoner only let out into Lowlife place = part of me only feels safe in slums! Where they won't arrest you for being unable to pass as normal. I learned that fear from my Uncle Hugh, who DID get locked up as crazy. It wrecked his life.
• Girlfriend in Lowclass outfit = local artist Jane In Vain got a painting on the front page of Street Sheet--a girl wearing a classic whorish Lowlife ensemble. I liked her.
• Boyfriend and owner conspire to pop girlfriend into a hotel = my over-protective training wants to lock up my sexy femme playful side until my paranoid side is free too. Only she's not willing to wait!
• Bartender says girlfriend has MANY sides = there are even more of me itching to get out, in a broader range of environments.

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