I’d written off the 25th of November long before I ever got the plane to California. The day after Annie’s birthday party, I’d imagined, would be an empty one: spinning heads and groaning and human duvet-mounds shuffling back and forth between sofa, bathroom and fridge.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I woke up at 10 the morning after the party and felt… actually… fine. I definitely wasn’t fresh, of course, but I had no urge to vomit or weep or call myself an ambulance, which, when that’s what you’re expecting, you have to admit is a minor sort of win.

At midday the three of us went back to the party venue to grab everything we’d left behind, then it all home and got sort-of ready; that is, I changed my underwear, pushed my hair into an affable scaffold, and brushed my teeth. I didn’t shower because by the time we’d sorted all the residual party stuff, there were only a few hours of daylight left. This meant that all of the temporary tattoos we’d given ourselves the previous evening were bright and on display. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d just stuck to my arms, but tipsy Dan had thought it gigglesome to give himself a neck tattoo as well, a little neon cactus that in the cold light of day resembled a barbarous love-bite. That said, I must admit: I quite liked the look of it in the mirror. It gave me the visual edge that’s eluded me for years – for once, a faint whiff of naughtiness that was not immediately dispelled by my fluffy yellow angel hair.

Annie and I – Tayler got high and stayed home – set off for San Francisco at 2pm. Hangover be damned, I was monstrously giddy. It was my first time seeing the full enormous span of the city: when you drive from west to east, Oakland-bound, you ramp down onto a kind of suspended sub-road, like a very wide hamster tunnel, hanging beneath the bridge. It’s only when you drive east to west, towards San Francisco, that you actually drive on top of the thing – and thus, this is the only way to see the city slowly drifting into view.

The sky was white and threatening to rain, and SF’s famous fog – the locals anthropomorphize it, they call him ‘Karl’ – had rolled in early. The tops of skyscrapers loomed like brachiosaur heads from the mist, streets far below lost to the haze. We came off the Bay Bridge and followed the exit loops down into the city proper, and appeared quite suddenly at ground level amongst the skyscrapers. We drove down a long tilted road towards the waterfront, and at the end of a long avenue of tall buildings, a strange optical illusion occured: the Bay Bridge, filling the end of the vision-tunnel, appeared monstrous, bigger than the city, white and curled to the sky like the carcass of some Biblical, world-ending creature.

We took a left and drove past an enormous bow and arrow sculpture, famous apparently, but I wasn’t very impressed with it because it was textureless and plastic-looking, like a Happy Meal toy blown up with a Rick Moranis ray gun.

“See that car ahead of us?” said Annie. “It’s driverless.”

“Bollocks.”

“I’m serious boys, they’re everywhere out here. It’s a company called Waymo, they make driverless taxis. I always try to get Tayler to take one with me but she won’t do it, she says it’s too weird.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“I’m not fucking with you dude. They’re testing them in San Francisco at the moment but in a couple years they’ll be everywhere. Silicon Valley bruv, innit,” she said, finishing up in her Artful Dodger English accent.

“Jesus Christ.”

“I’ll pull up alongside so you can look in.”

We stopped beside a bulky white car waiting at the lights. The body of it looked like a regular modern car – white, squat, spacey – but on each corner and on the roof, little cameras sat pointing out at the world, along with spinning vertical tubes like miniature merry-go-rounds. I looked through the half-tint windows and saw a young girl, rich-looking and bored, slumped in the passenger seat engrossed in her phone. Beside her the driver’s seat sat empty – only a steering wheel, unmoving, waiting patiently for the lights to change so it could begin to turn of its own accord.

“Well, that’s a million more jobs gone up in smoke,” I said. “Fucking hell. Who is that benefitting?”

I hate the last decade’s greedy, devouring, morally-vacuous technological march with a deep and burning passion. How is it not glaringly obvious to everyone that this AI shit is a terrible idea? It’s not as if we haven’t done this loop-de-loop before: the internet, mobile phones, social media. It’s always the same thing. Money-hungry gilet dorks develop technology to resolve lifestyle inconveniences that most of us weren’t even aware of before we were told they needed fixing (oh how I love scanning QR codes instead of reading actual restaurant menus) – and we enjoy the novelty of interacting with one another in a new flashy way for a few months or years, until – again and again – that creeping feeling sets in. The feeling of something missing – something lost. Shortcuts and conveniences are never free, and bloody hell we should know that by now. There’s always a cost somewhere.

The human body is too complex, too miraculous to be tricked by simulations. The hubris of thinking that a screen can replace a hug, that a nutrient shake can replace a meal, that algorithms can replace the humans we interact with on a daily basis with no repercussions. We’re gleefully deleting, piece by piece, every part of the lifestyle our brains and bodies have adapted for over millions of years. Ostensibly all these conveniences are to save time – but to save time for what? Creating art? Writing poetry? Making music? We’ve now got AI to do that for us too.

“It’s funny though,” said Annie, as we moved off from the lights and left the Waymo behind. “Everyone cuts them off in traffic all the time because they’re so slow, and there’s no human inside so they can’t get mad at you. They just stop dead when you drive in front of them, it’s hilarious.”

Well, good.

Perhaps the one thing that will save us from the human instinct to be a dick is the human instinct to be a dick.

*****

We parked up and crossed the street to the long squat Ferry Building on the riverside, a structure that used to welcome people crossing the waters but now is home to artisanal shops and restaurants. I bought a glass bottle of Coca Cola because I was flagging hungover, and we browsed trinkets listlessly. We passed a seafood place and Annie pointed it out.

“They do amazing caviar there. You eat it right off the back of your hand to get the purest flavour, and they serve it with champagne.”

As we passed, the chef waved to Annie.

“Eyy, what’s up,” she waved back.

Two girls on stools in the restaurant turned to look at us.

“Hey Annie,” they smiled. “Happy birthday!”

She thanked them, beaming, and we walked on.

“Who were they?” I asked, when we’d passed.

“Uh, I’m not really sure,” said Annie.

“How much time do you spend eating caviar?”

“Honestly dude, with Tayler, a lot.”

I thought about my own life in London – Monday afternoons spent queuing amid the mournful soft beeps of Lidl’s self-service checkout, waiting to scan my 22p tins of beans. I felt the familiar pang of yearning – of wanting just a little more than I have. It’s such a familiar pang by now that I’m well-versed in soothing it; I run through the same old series of mantras one after the other, almost on autopilot: you’re on your own path – it’s not a race – you chose this lifestyle – good things take time – there’s no rush – remember why you’re doing this – it’ll all be worth it in the end. 

We walked up into the city and I gawped at everything we passed and tried inarticulately to express the awe I was feeling. Awe – I’ve missed it. You lose it when you travel too much, I think. A couple of years working quietly have done wonders for my capacity to be wowed.

We passed SF’s tallest building, the ‘Transamerica Pyramid’, and I took a picture of the top of it lost to the fog, and then we passed the Church of Scientology which gave me the willies. Making our way uphill, away from the skyscrapers of the central business district, I was charmed to see that many buildings in the area still had those jutting, 1950s-style neon signs outside, the ones you see in old footage of Las Vegas. They advertised beers and burgers and, increasingly, exotic dancers.

“This area used to be where all the brothels were,” said Annie. “There are still a few strip clubs around.”

We crossed the road and walked towards Chinatown, and just outside, down an empty, colourful alleyway strung with Chinese lanterns, Annie turned to face me with a smile.

“And this,” she said, “is Jack Kerouac Alley.”

It came upon us so fast – and I was so distracted by everything else – that it took me a minute to understand what she was talking about. Beside us at the entrance to the alley, on opposite sides, was a bookshop and a bar.

“That’s City Lights Bookstore, boys.”

“What?”

“It’s where Kerouac and Ginsberg and everyone used to meet and read their poetry. This was like, the main spot, and all these Beat writers and poets would come here. The bookstore owner helped promote them and publish them. And the bar, that’s Vesuvio. They all used to drink there. You’ll love it boys, it’s got pictures on the walls and it’s super old inside, they haven’t changed the decorations since the 50s.”

I felt a lot of things at once, then. Surprise, firstly, that the names ‘City Lights’ and ‘Vesuvio’ didn’t ring a bell – but then it’s been years since I read my last Kerouac book. The surprise abated quickly, however, replaced by a quiet feeling that I don’t get very often and don’t have a good name for, but which I would describe as humble, tender, warm, small, happy and sad. I get it when I finish the first draft of a book, I got it on my last day in India, I got it when I saw Sir Ian McKellen reciting Shakespeare on stage in London.

Because Jack Kerouac’s writing changed the trajectory of my life. It changed the way I saw things – changed my perception of what was doable. It gave me a sense of what was out there, and more vitally who was out there, living and dreaming. I wanted everything he talked about, and filled with inspiration and desire to find my own ‘mad ones’, I moved to Berlin. I’d never have done that if I’d not read On The Road – and none of what happened after would have come to pass. I can’t imagine a life without the friends I’ve made since I started that journey. Kerouac changed the way I lived, the way I wrote, even the way I dress – to this day! With the exception perhaps of Tolkein, I can’t think of a writer who has impacted my life more.

There was a quote on the ground, written in a golden spiral:

The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great.

Somebody had dropped a coffee cup and a couple of cigarette butts on it. I picked them up and put them in the bin.

I stood and stared down the alley, doing my appreciation trick – the secret game I play when I want to really feel a place, not just look at it. I imagined a clock winding backwards, faster and faster, and all the decorations and colourful graffiti vanishing. I imagined the models of cars getting older and boxier, sun zipping round and round overhead as the years ticked back, haircuts and fashions changing, and all while the bricks of this alley remained unchanged – one long tunnel of time stretching from the present moment to 70 years ago – and it’s night in my imagination now, stars overhead, and the lights are on in Vesuvio. There’s a warm glow through the windows; there’s music and laughter inside, and suddenly the front doors open and spill light into the street. A group of friends step outside, weary and woozy but merry, and as they begin to say goodnight, one of them lights a cigarette and leans alone against the wall of the alley – and that’s him – there he is, the hero of my youth, in his shirt and jacket. He doesn’t know I’m watching him, doesn’t know the influence he’ll have on some kid whose parents weren’t even born yet. He doesn’t know the movement he’ll create, the people he’ll inspire. He doesn’t even know what’ll happen to Neal Cassady and himself in just a few short years – the downfall, the bitter end. For now it’s all friends and joy.

I gave Annie a hug, misty-eyed.

“Thank you for bringing me here. It means a lot to me.”

“I’m so happy you like it,” she said.

We went into City Lights and I felt abysmally-read, and Annie showed me poetry books she liked as a teenager. I took photos and imagined the scenes that had played out in the room. Did you know that the founder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, lived to be 101 years old? He died in 2021. It blows my mind to think that in one human lifetime you could have read poetry and hitchhiked around the USA with Jack Kerouac at the dawn of the Beat movement… and also used Tiktok. Some Beat contemporaries, Gary Snyder being one of them at 94 years old, are still alive today.

It was Annie’s birthday the next day, and I still hadn’t gotten a present for her. I’d already warned her it couldn’t be anything fancy or expensive, but she said it wasn’t important. In the end, I found something I thought was perfect: a postcard with Kerouac and Cassady, arms round one another, leaning against a wall with the inimitable style of a bygone era. I bought two, a dollar each, so that we could each put them up on the wall by our respective desks: one for me, and one for my silly dear friend.