The Anarcho-Hedonist Daily

This fella Lane (sp?) works and lives in the Presidio. He does habitat restoration and the federal government pays his rent. He just walks around the Presido all day learning about edible plants, native animals, and what have you. An ideal (idyll) life if you ask me.

Last night, Beth, Annie and I went to meet him there and he took us to a lean-to that he built out of invasive plant species. We built a little fire out of twigs and bits of paper that we had on our persons. The smoke got in our hair and in our clothes. Better than any incense, primeval and comforting.

I passed out briefly around the fire, but I woke up and everyone was getting into their sleeping bags in the lean-to. So I did the same. I slept like a lamb.

The morning was overcast, cool and calm. It wasn’t cold, but cozy, like the clouds were a blanket. We woke at eight when Beth had to go to work, but then the rest of us went back to sleep after eating muffins and pecan rolls.

9PM- Did the Wiggle

Drank Wine.

Ate Pot Brownies.

Drank Jägermeister.

Changed Houses.

Drank Whiskey.

Ate Grilled Cheese.

Went Camping.

PADDY SUNDAES

1 can Guinness draught
1 tub vanilla ice cream
2 large red wine glasses

Fill the two wine glasses with vanilla ice cream.

Open can of Guinness and pour immediately over ice cream until glasses are full.

Let settle for two minutes

Slainte!

In San Luis Obispo, they have this junior police task force called Snuffs that go around to parties and write up noise complaints. They are dullard collage seniors that have walkie-talkies and ticket books and wear yellow polo shirts.

I first came across a pair as I was leaving a frat party after it had run dry.

“Do you live here?” one of them asked me as I walked out the front door.
“Nope,” I stated flatly as I walked past, not evening looking him in the eye.

My friends were already outside on the porch swing. Apparently, they had called a taxi and were waiting for it. As we waited, I observed the actions of the Snuffs. Although it was a stupid frat party full of idiots, I couldn’t help but despise them for what they were doing. How could one bring themselves to stop the fun? It was the epitome of Anti-Hedonism.
As my hate grew, an malicious idea formed in my pickled head. I went back into the house, grabbed a beer cup and filled it up with water. When the taxi came and everyone climbed in, I ran up to one of the Snuffs and doused him with the water. I ran quickly to the waiting car, climbed in the back seat and told the driver to hit the gas.

He didn’t.

“You can’t have that cup in here, son,” he said. I threw it out.
“Go go go!” I yelled. The Snuffs were running across the street at me.
“I can’t run from these guys,” said the taxi driver. The Snuffs made it to the car.
“I need to see your ID,” said the lady Snuff through the driver side window.
“Sure, just a minute. I’ll come out to talk,” I said and opened the car door.

Then I took off bolting down the street. They yelled at me to stop, but I didn’t. I kept running as fast as I could down the street, occasionally stumbling and falling, just like in the movies. They were chasing after me. I ran for about four or five blocks going left, then right. In order to catch my breath, I hid in someone’s front yard behind a shrub, hoping I’d lost them.

Shortly, from around the corner I could see the beams of their flashlights and hear their radios, still hot on my trail. They ran down the street, right past me and then stopped at the next house down. I moved ever so slightly to obscure myself more. This was a mistake. A twig snapped, and they began to come toward me.

I panicked and hopped the fence that was to my back. The shrub went up to the fence so it was a tight and noisy squeeze over the fence. I made it over, just as they had entered the front yard. I ran as fast as I could through the backyard and hopped another fence. Here a security light came on. So I hopped another fence and then another, trying to put enough distance between us as possible.

I finally found a dark side garden in which I laid low for about twenty minutes, my heart racing. I could see flashlight beams reflecting off the tops of the trees as they searched for me. By now, the police may have been called. Perhaps they would use dogs. No, they couldn’t. They didn’t have my scent. My paranoia eased a bit after the twenty minutes and I finally made the decision to venture out onto the street.

I hopped another fence and then went out through a gate into someone’s driveway. I could hear a group of frat kids walking down the street so I joined up with them, hoping to blend in the best I could. I didn’t know the streets of San Luis worth shit except for the fact that we were staying near Murray and the railroad tracks. I didn’t even have the phone number.

By asking directions, I finally made it to a major street that intersected with Murray and made it to a 7-11 which I suspected was close to home. I checked the New York voicemail, just to see if Shaun had left me a message. Luckily he did. I called them and they came and picked me up. I had made it into the clear.

I was glad to be leaving San Luis Obispo the next night. Shaun and I caught a train back down to Orange County.

Things may have been out of control last night when you wake up and are confronted with “Did you drink my contact lens?” and you stare at them blankly while an “Uh…” emanates from your parched throat. “They’re $700 contact lenses. I’ve had them since I was 12.” This last statement instinctively invokes an immediate and firm “No.” Meanwhile, you are slowly comprehending what is being said. Images of last night’s debauch roll in like dark sky.

You remember the Malibu rum, the endless quantity of Corona in the fridge, contemptuous frat dudes, you smashing a gourd on the street outside, collecting the pieces from the pavement, cooking them, it tasting delicious with cheese, malevolent stares, more contempt, it is time to leave, riding in a car, home, vodka, bathroom, thirsty, glass of water, drink, salty, floor, sleep.

“It could have been anyone,” you shrug.

Central Coast Odyssey- General Summary

Shaun meets me @ the Amtrak station in Oxnard, CA last Tuesday night (jan23). Warm weather. Sleep on rooftop downtown.

Wake up. Took bus to Ventura. Man on bus gives me 13 old pesos. I give him 250,000 Turkish Lira. 9AM in Ventura, met dirty kid carrying 3 22s of malt liquor. “What? You guys aint drinkers?” he asks us. “No,” we say, acknowledging that we are way out of our league. Carry on to beach. Eat breakfast on beach. Walk to railroad tracks. Wait for northbound freight to San Luis Obispo. Think it may come during the day. It doesn’t. Sleep on the beach beneath a grove of palms.

Next morning: Walk to railroad tracks via downtown. Find hardware in my breakfast burrito. Make dice out of tennis balls found at the nearby courts. Dice’s ability to function questionable. Game of hot dice ends in bitter dispute. 4PM. No train. All looks hopeless & doomed. Train comes. Hop into an open boxcar. Sun sets into Pacific Ocean as we watch from moving boxcar. Breathtaking.

Shaun loses peso that I gave him. Finds it. Train stops in San Luis just long enough to disembark. It’s 9:30PM. Call Shaun’s friend. Friend is too drunk to pick us up. Sends less drunk friend in her place. Weekend of frat parties & plutonic walks on the beach ensue.

TWO CRAWL TO, THROUGH GRAVEYARD

Neighbors were awoken at 2AM Saturday night when dogs began barking at what witnesses described as two intoxicated youths scrambling on the ice behind the cemetery.

“From what I could see, it looked like two punk kids slipping and sliding on the ice, falling down, and laughing hysterically,” commented Abe Rothsfield, 72, who was awoken by the dogs and security lights. “They appeared to be on drugs or really drunk. Maybe both. You never know anymore.”

The snow and ice that Portland received last week has made the sidewalks and streets very slick, especially late at night, when temperatures fall below freezing.

Apparently, the individuals were trying to make there way into the graveyard via a back alley lot. Locals say that the wooded area, which lies just beyond their backyard fences, is a popular hangout for delinquent teens and also provides a “secret access” into the graveyard.

The dirt alleyway, which runs 500 feet along the wall of the mausoleum, has been completely frozen over all week. As to why the two youths, who witnesses say were in their early to mid-twenties, were out at all in such conditions, let alone trying to make it to the cemetery, remains a mystery.

“I’m baffled,” says Julie Heathers, 34. “Granted, I’ve only lived here two years, but I’ve never seen such a ridiculous sight out back. They were down there, belly-down on the ice, pulling themselves along with their elbows. One guy seemed pretty determined to stay on his feet, but he kept falling and sliding down the slight decline into the bushes.”

The commotion last for approximately twenty minutes before the individuals finally reached the secret entrance and slipped, no pun intended, into the graveyard. They were not available for comment and remain at large, perhaps recovering now from a nasty hangover.

My Dad took me out to dinner and to a few bars Friday night for my birthday. Before dinner we stopped in at County Cork, which was three doors down from the restaurant, to have a few pints before hand. It wasn’t a bad pub and I deem it safe to call it a pub do to the fact that there were little children running around.

Among the Irish beers they had a wide selection of local beers on tap, which there are aplenty right here in the Great Northwest. The Irish themselves don’t have a great selection of beers. There’s Murphy’s, Beamish, Smithwick’s, and Harp. That’s pretty much it, but if you think about, it makes sense. Having already concocted years ago the perfect drink, Guinness, why would there be much incentive to make anything else?

The place was bursting at the seams with people. Standing room only. From across the room, my Dad and I spied a stool and a chair on the stage and made a beeline for it. This whole week, Portland has been frozen over, shut down. Schools were closed, malls were closed, the library was closed, and there was very little traffic on the slick, icy roads. This kind of thing hasn’t happened here in ten years. The only thing to do outside your house was to go sledding. But Wednesday and Thursday were so bad that you couldn’t even walk to the hill without slipping and falling on your ass.
Come Friday, though and the ice began to thaw and the cabin fever finally broke. People were out in droves. The restaurant that we went to was crowded and so was the bar that we went to afterwards.

Despite being an English bar, The Moon and Sixpence is a fine establishment. The clientele are very amiable and it’s one of the few nice places that one can smoke. We managed to find a table to enjoy our cigars and sip back on a little bit of the ole Jameson’s. My Dad and I both share a fine taste in Irish Whiskey and the odd stogie.

It Cures what Ails You

I awoke this morning with a splitting headache, which provoked me to consider an ante-jentacular hefeweizen to smooth things over, but finding that we were fresh out, I climbed back into bed for another hour to sleep it off instead. When I reawakened, I didn’t feel much better. But then, while offhandedly digging around in my nose, I managed to excavate a nice-sized nugget of leftover cocaine. As soon as I rubbed it into my gums, my headache magically disappeared, which reminded me of something I had heard before about people of old using this stuff for that very purpose. Is this true?

Inner City Golfing

Let us take a minute to observe one of life’s many joys: the projectile. Whether it be a rock, snowballs, an empty 40oz container, or a wayward golf ball, the thrill of letting one fly and the sudden rush of excitement as it hits connects with its target is unsurpassable.

Last night, four of us stepped out into the night with a bag of golf clubs slung over our shoulder and trudged through the slush-covered streets of North Portland until we came to the Bluffs that overlook the Albina train yard and the Swan Island Industrial Park. The lights of industry below glowed through the light fog that covered the city, and off in the distance the skyscrapers struggled desperately to be seen.

We set the clubs down on the bench and fished out the balls. We sunk the tees into the cold mushy earth and positioned our projectiles on them. The goal, see here, was to hit the boxcars sitting in the yard, but in between the tee and the boxcars lay the slope of the bluffs, a tree or two, and an arterial road. Not being a professional golfer, my first two balls made a cracking noise as it passed through the branches of the trees. The third and fourth balls also fell short of the target and could be heard seconds later bouncing on asphalt.

My friend Matt, however, had had some practice with driving golf balls. At least two of his connected with the steel of the railroad cars, which elicited cheers of delight and gave us encouragement. But, as it turned out, the rest of us never got it over that road.

When we were out of golf balls, we slung the clubs over our shoulders and marched back home to have a cigar.

It snowed, it snowed! A very exciting event in the small town of Portland, Oregon. It hasn’t snowed worth a damn in Portland since I was a kid. At about seven o’clock yesterday evening, snowflakes began to fall. By nine, we had about three inches! Three fucking inches! Yes, I know, to the New Yorker, this is nothing, but to the Portlander, this was a miracle. Such high spirits soared that we even had a snowball fight indoors at my parents’ house. My dad came in through the backdoor and hit me square in the eye with a perfectly formed snowball. The snowball hit my eye and exploded all over the living room carpet. My mom was next to be hit. Luckily for her, the snowball only grazed her shoulder.

My younger brother and his friend coerced me out of the house and proceeded to nail me with snowballs in the driveway. Then they ran off down the street. I followed them in hot pursuit until they came to my brother’s friend’s house. Here we made teams with the other neighborhood kids who were out in droves. It was a long and dreary battle that lasted long into the brightly illuminated night. After we couldn’t feel our toes or fingers, we decided to go in for some warm eggnog. I searched the house high and low for a spot of rum, but couldn’t find any. Nevertheless, the warm eggnog hit the spot.

Sometime later, around 11:30, my other brother came home from work and attacked us indoors with a salvo of snowballs. Soon, we found ourselves involved in a one on one snowball fight, duking it out on the front lawn. We tired after a half-hour of hurling snow at each other, tendons pulled, and hands freezing.

Snowfall is really something here in Willamette River Valley.

I suppose an entry is long overdue. This is for two reasons: the first is that I’m back in Portland and it’s raining, and the second is that I have been sick with the flu. There is nothing hedonistic about rain (unless you’re running around naked in it) or illness (unless its mental).

But, anyway, I want to tell of a most wonderful outing to an all-you-can-eat buffet-style seafood restaurant, parents’ treat. Seafood is the primary reason that I am now Post-vegan and this place had it all. Unlimited Alaskan Snow-crab, a sushi bar, and a myriad of weird oceanic creatures served up on ceramic platters for my enjoyment. I think that’s my favorite thing about seafood, how weird half the shit is. I had a giant prawn on my plate, split right down the middle and butterflied, exposing its shriveled dark red heart that clung for dear life to the wall of the inner body cavity. Then there was the regular shrimp, boiled whole, with its face and tentacles still attached. I tried to rip his head off, but instead I ripped his face off and he remained staring at me with his brain fully exposed.

The sushi bar left nothing to be desired. Octopus, salmon row, giant clam, slimy mackerel, the slick and chewy squid. All raw, all natural, all savage! What more was there, let’s see. Ah yes, the mussels with its beautiful emerald trimmed shell, and then there was the giant scallops, also served in there own shell with a creamy sauce.

I stayed as long as could, hoping for a chance to go to the toilet and make some room for another go-around. But, my little brother was getting impatient and this was the first meal I had had in days due to that awful flu so my body felt no urgency to defecate. Nonetheless, I still proceeded with dessert: caramel custard, cubes of cheesecake, and grapes. For some reason the grapes really hit the spot.

Saturday’s Pub Crawl was a long, grueling experiment in endurance and innovativeness that left me at the end of the night completely sapped. Hereitype found us, Southern Seth and I, at 9PM on the couch in Grand Press silently staring at the floor, where lie the half-devoured remains of three birds. It had been a tiresome journey: two and a half blocks of Grand Avenue, six hours of conversation, twelve chicken legs, and fifteen bottles of Budweiser each.
In its self, this may not be such a great feat, like the climbing of mountain, but damn it we did it alone, just the two of us, without any Sherpas to assist us in our accent (or rather descent) to the top (or rather the bottom). It was just the two of us, relying on each other for moral support, ordering more beer, making tough decisions regarding the fried birds, and for conversation which we had run out of by the end of the six hour pub crawl into oblivion.
As you can see, by the time Hereitype found us, the morale was a bit low. However, this all changed with her arrival and the arrival of my friend Shaye. I guess we looked pretty pathetic there, just the two of us, three feet between us with blank expressions on our faces, because Hereitype said, “Let’s get the fuck out of this dump.”
So we did. We left and went to Mug’s to have a real pint of real beer. It wasn’t free, but fuck was it worth it. After a pint and a few baskets of fries, my spirits were renewed and off I went with Shaye, drunk as a loon to some Tran-Gender, queer party in Bed-Stuy that had free booze. Owww! What a night. I didn’t stumble home until 3 in the morning, making for a full twelve-hour bender.

In only ONE HOUR, I have a date with the Chicken Lady at Iona's on Grand where they have Free Beer! Free Chicken! Free for ALL! This is the stuff what Saturdays are made of!

THE TRUST GAME: Psyche Experiment #3

Right, so what we have here is a little experiment called the Trust Game. It’s all about sharing with “people” and trusting these “people” to share with you. First, let’s meet the “people,” my partners:
We have Steve Thompson, a graduate from Iowa State, who, while partying in New Jersey, rescued a girl from burning nightclub. Next up, there’s Alex Rhine, who avoided a fatal runway airline crash due to being stuck in heavy traffic. Sends his condolences to the family of Whittaker, who was the standby passenger that took Rhine’s place and perished in the wreck, but does not feel guilty. “I can’t control fate,” says Rhine, who took the next flight out. And last, but certainly not least, we have Jonathon Tudor who was arrested for selling heat resistant tiles from the Columbia space shuttle on eBay. “I was just out hiking in the woods and came across pieces of the wreckage. I didn’t think it was wrong. After all, the investigation was wrapped up weeks ago and frankly, I didn’t think that those little tiles would provide the investigators with any helpful information.”
After reading the bios of my partners, the game began. On the computer, a headshot of one of my partners would appear, (wearing some kind of gray doomsday cult robe!) followed by a screen with different amounts of money would appear on the screen. For example, if $1.50 appeared, you could choose to either keep it, or share it with one of the partners. If you kept it, you would get $1.50, but if you shared it, the money would be tripled and then divided by half and returned. But not all the partners were so willing to share. More often than not, my generosity was taken advantage of and I ended up stiffed.
Naturally, I initially trusted old noble Steve, but after being ripped off on several different occasions, I stopped sharing with him and just pocketed the money. I was also getting mixed messages from Alex so I began to favor badboy Jonnie. But even he proved disloyal in the end. I couldn’t trust anyone! Bunch of scumbags the lot of ‘em!
When it was over, I had gained fourteen bucks and lost the ability to ever trust again. But before I was paid, I was handed a questionnaire to fill out. It reads as follows:

1. A I like "wild" uninhibited parties.
B I like parties where I know everyone and there is no excessive drinking

2. A I would like a job that requires a lot of traveling.
B I would prefer a job in one location.

3. A I am invigorated by a brisk, cold day.
B I can't wait to get indoors on a cold day.

4. A I get bored seeing the same old faces.
B I like the comfortable familiarity of everyday friends.

5. A I would prefer living in an ideal society in which everyone is safe, secure, and happy.
B I would have preferred living in the unsettled days of our history.

6. A I sometimes like to do things that are a little frightening.
B A sensible person avoids activities that are dangerous.

7. A I would not like to be hypnotized.
B I would like to have the experience of being hypnotized.

8. A The most important goal of life is to live it to the fullest and experience as much as possible.
B The most important goal of life is to find peace and happiness.

9. A I would like to try parachute-jumping.
B I would never want to try jumping out of a plane, with or without a parachute.

10. A I enter cold water gradually, giving myself time to get used to it.
B I like to dive or jump right into the ocean or a cold pool.

11. A When I go on a vacation, I prefer the comfort of a good room and bed.
B When I go on a vacation, I prefer the change of camping out.

12 A I like to explore a strange city or section of town by myself, even if it means getting lost.
B I like to stay in areas that I am familiar with.

13. A I prefer people who are emotionally expressive even if they are a bit unstable.
B I prefer people who are calm and even-tempered.

14. A I try any drug that comes my way, regardless of how dangerous it was.
B I would like to try a few psychedelic drugs.

15. A People who ride motorcycles must have some kind of unconscious need to hurt themselves.
B I would like to drive or ride a motorcycle.
Needless to say, I found this survey highly entertaining and took great pleasure in filling it out. With a few modifications and a little fine tuning, this could be the Are You an Anarcho-Hedonist survey! (stay tuned)
This is the how I answered, by the way: 1 a, 2 a, 3 b, 4 b, 5 b, 6 a, 7 b, 8 a, 9 a, 10 b, 11 b, 12 a, 13 a, 14 b, 15
Take note that the a-b choices in the questions are at random, unlike a Seventeen survey in which a b choices coincide for easy tallying.
“So what exactly is this experiment about, doc?” I asked when I completed the survey.
“It’s an experiment about risk taking,” he said. “You have to take risks in order to trust people, right?”
I agreed. I took a lot of risks sharing money with those pricks.
“Where doing a whole thing on people who like to take risks. Downstairs, they’re taking MRIs of the brains of risk takers and sensation seekers. The test you took was called the Sensation Seeker test.”
“Did you say MRI! I’ve done that before. They pay good money for that. Sign me up!”

PSYCHE EXPERIMENT 2

A couple of days later, I was back for more. This one was run by a cheerful fellow with a strong Northern European accent who was more than happy to have me as his guinea pig. The test was thirty minutes long, paid ten bucks, and involved electrical shocks. “De are not painful,” I was told, “Only a liddle uncomfortable.” Well, shit, that’s twenty bucks an hour. “Sign me up doc!”
I was escorted to a small room by the research assistant and made to watch a video of someone else doing the same experiment. The video showed a man watching a computer screen on which appeared our blue and yellow squares. Both of squares stayed true to the characteristics of my previous experiment: the safe and harmless yellow and the vicious, unpredictable blue. When the blue square came up, I could see the man swallow, and wait nervously for it to give him a shock on the forearm. Which it did sometimes. The shock came right before it disappeared from the screen, so he would be kept waiting the whole five or ten seconds the blue square was up, waiting to see if it would shock him or not. When the blue square did shock him, his whole arm would suffer a jolt and he would wince slightly. It didn’t look pleasant.
Then it was my turn.
“This experiment will be a little bit different than that one you just saw,” the assistant told me. “Instead of the shock only coming at the end of the blue squares appearance, the shock can come at any time during its appearance.”
She proceeded to hook me up to the skin conductance sensor, (which detects emotions such as nervousness, relief, etc) and then strapped the electrode to my forearm, just above the wrist.
“When I leave the room, just press the space bar to begin.” The door slammed and was left alone in there with my arch nemesis, the Blue Square. Hesitantly, I pressed the space bar. At first it was the friendly yellow one. It lingered for a few seconds, than disappeared. Next up was the Blue Square. Oh shit, I thought, here it comes. I could feel a bead of sweat break out on my forward while I waited for that fucker to shock me. As the FBI and the CIA will tell you, fear of pain is far more persuasive than pain itself, and the fact that I didn’t know what the shock would feel like, made me fear it.
The Blue Square disappeared off the screen without electrocuting me. Then the yellow appeared again. Relief. Then the blue one again. Anxiety returned. Blue Square off. No shock. Yellow. Relief. Blue. Anxiety. No shock. It went on like this for fifteen minutes. No shocks. Then it was over. The assistant returned.
“I didn’t get shocked,” I told her, somewhat relieved, somewhat disappointed.
“Yes. Well, you see, you were part of the control experiment. How did you feel when the blue square appeared on the screen?”
“I was a bit nervous. I didn’t know when the shock was coming or what it would feel like.”
“If you want to feel what the shock feels like, I can administer one to you.”
“Um...okay.”
She bent down and toggled with some switches on an electrical box.
“Did you feel anything?” she asked.
“No, why? Is it not working?”
“I can’t get it to work. Hold on just a minute.”
“Well, actually...” The suspense was too much and I was having second thoughts. “...It’s okay. I change my mind.” They had already gotten me worked up for nothing. Artificially generated anxiety. I hopped up out of the seat and went in to the other lab to get my money.

The first experiment I participated in was called the Money Reward Card Game, an exercise in cruelty, if you will. The test was administered by computer. On the screen, blank cards appeared and I was to guess if it was a high card or a low card, which was indicated by the number on the other side. Numbers one through four meant it was low and numbers six through nine meant that it was high.
Before the test began, a sensor was placed on my left finger to detect the conductance of my skin, which indicates stress and excitement, etc. It was hooked up to a machine behind me that looked like a Richter Scale.
Every time I guessed the card right, I would be awarded four real dollars. And every time I got one wrong, I would lose two dollars.
The test began with a trial or rest period, where I was able to feel around for a pattern. Then the real deal began, the winning and the losing of hard cash. At first, the cards appeared at what seemed like random, but after a few trial and errors, it was evident that there might be a vague pattern. The test continued to alternate between the rest period and the real deal. By the end I was doing fairly well. I managed to score 36 dollars.
“Holy shit!” I thought, “Thirty-six bucks for one half hour of work. Hot damn!”
I was so happy and proud of myself and that little rat bastard machine was surely detecting it. I rang the buzzer for the psych student to come back in.
“Now, this is the part of the test where the computer takes all the money away,” she said nonchalantly.
“What!?” I screamed. “Not all of it?”
“No, not all of it,” she replied. “Now, you just sit back and do nothing. Just pay attention to the screen and keep that left hand very still.”
The student left the room and I pressed the space bar to commence the computerized thievery. A blue square appeared on the screen. It stayed there for about thirty seconds and then disappeared, but not before mentioning that it had just subtracted two dollars from my earnings. Then, a yellow square appeared and hung around for the same amount of time, but it left without incident. Ah, I thought, blue square bad, yellow square good. The blue square popped up again and sure enough, I was out another two bucks. That was followed by the benign yellow square once more. I could see a definite pattern here and I began to hate the blue square.
But, then the blue square came and went without stealing any of my money. So not all blue squares were bad? The next blue one that came up also refrained from jipping me. But, sure enough, the one after that robbed me another two bucks. I became to hate the blue square once more, to loathe it with passion, to curse it for its treachery. It went on like this for some time, me getting nervous and hateful every time a blue square showed its hideous azure face, then relaxing when the yellow square would pop up, so cheerful and honest, relieved to know that my small fortune would go undiminished for the next thirty seconds.
Finally this torturous experiment came to end and I rang for the tester. She came in.
“How did it go?”
“I hated it,” I growled. “How much did that bastard square take from me?”
“Well, you get twelve dollars.”
Twelve dollars! You mean to say that that blue square stole twenty four bucks from me? That’s what I wanted to say, but I didn’t. I went in and signed the release form and left with my twelve bucks, feeling set up and used. They used me for my emotions, Goddammit! Mind games, I tell you! Oh, the humanity!

Money has been tight lately, ever since I got laid off from my high paying job with the theatre, promoting Golf: The Musical (a round in 18 songs). I was getting ahead of myself with that gig, which paid ten dollars an hour under the table for ‘six’ hours of unsupervised work a day on the streets of New York City. Over the course of this brief three-week stint, I had developed a weekly tradition of champagne brunch, an unquenchable thirst for fine stouts and hand-pulled ales, and was even, at one point, in the market of renting a room for upwards of five hundred dollars per month. But, if you can believe it, the show, Golf: The Musical, was...CANCELED. For lack of sales.

Now, I couldn’t very well give up my newly found pleasures in high end alcoholic beverages, so I was forced to continue renting out half of my friend’s bed for three-hundred dollars a month. Not a big deal that was, but seeing as how the drink would need to be paid for, I had to find a new source of income. So, I turned to the Psychology Department at NYU.

ANARCHO-HEDONIST REVIVAL

Okay, so I haven’t been keeping up with this page. I started it in the summer as an incentive to write everyday. Needless to say, that plan was very short-lived. Unfortunately, I find it much easier to write in the sweltering heat of the summer than in the stuffy heat of an apartment in Brooklyn during the winter. I need to move somewhere where it is perpetually warm. Puerto Rico comes to mind. Ahhh, a slight ocean breeze comes in off the Atlantic, blowing through the glassless windows to where I sit at my computer with a glass of rum and a cigar. Yes, that could be me.

Well, shit. It isn’t going to happen anytime soon. That is why I’m going to attempt to start up this site again and hopefully some people will read the damn thing. Okay, howbout I post at least three times a week at the bare minimum (Hot damn! One down, only two to go! Wait, this isn’t the right attitude, is it?). Then, maybe, if anyone is looking at this site in first place, they may feel compelled to check back again later.

And yes, I realize the site looks hideous at the moment. That is because I don’t know shit about html. But hopefully, Hereitype will help me out with that. I’ll bring it up over a few pints this evening.

Coming soon: the wonderful world of psychology experiments.
Starring: me, Captain JoyceLeslie as The Guinea Pig.

Posted by: JoyceLeslie / 7:33 PM

Death of a Rope Swing

Sacramento: Where the Rope Swing Swings and the Dumpsters Sing! Yep, that’s Sacto, with dumpters bursting at the seams with Odwalla and the big ole tree hanging over the American River with the rope hanging down, suspended just above the waterline. I’ve been going to Sacramento at least once every summer for the past three years, sometimes more, and every year I look forward to the refreshing waters that await at the end of the swing.

But this summer, as we pedaled our bicycles along the trail by the river, we could sense that there was something wrong. Very wrong. At first, we thought that maybe we were not at the right place on the trail where we would normally drop our bikes and then shuffle down the embankment on foot. Upon closer inspection, we found that we were definitely in the correct spot, it was just that the tree was NOT THERE. Baffled at this finding, we parked the bikes and walked down to the water. There, laying in the water like something that had died and fallen into the water, was our beloved tree. NO! I screamed in disbelief. No, no, no, I shook my head.

It was hot, there by the river, so I took off my clothes and crawled onto the tree. I sat there, naked, with my head in my hands and cried. So many wonderful summer days with you, gone. All gone. WHO DID THIS TO YOU? I screamed in agony. Goddammit! They will pay.

Finally, minutes later I was over the grieving period and dove off into the cold water. But still, damn it, I miss that tree. The swing, especially. We dove under the water and untied the rope and then tried to retie it on another tree. But, it just wasn’t the same. It just wasn’t the same. So here, old rope swing, here is a poem that I dedicate to you (although it is not about you) in your loving memory and in the memory of all rope swings that have passed away. RIP


Baptized by Way of Rope Swing

The sun of God beat down on the town of Tiberias.
I could feel it burning down on my neck as I walked through the old streets
Towards the lake.
It was the Sea of Galilee, but really it was lake.
In Israel they over exaggerate.

I bought some dates and walked the shore of Galilee.
I wanted to swim, but everywhere I looked it was polluted with algae
And floating garbage.
They had developed the shoreline into neglected
Recreational facilities.

Miles later I happened to come upon the River Jordan.
Where it flowed into the lake was where Christ himself had been baptized
By John the Baptist.
The Christians had built a baptismal center there.
You could get baptized in the river.

It was only spring, but it was a hot day in the Holy Land.
I found a trail and decided to walk down the river away from the Christians
And into the shade.
The slow moving water was refreshing and cool.
Trees hung over on both sides.

There was a Jewish man praying by the river for Jerusalem.
I walked past him and looked up and hanging from a tree was a rope swing
Waiting for me.
I took off all my clothes and grabbed hold the rope.
I pulled it back up to shore.

There I was, a rope swing in my hands in the land of Israel.
I tightened my grip and jumped off the bank and swung out over the river
Bathed in by Christ.
I let go and plunged into the water of everlasting life.
Baptized by way of Rope Swing

Sacramento!!!!

Movie Reviews

Another hot day in P-town. I went over to Texas’s for dinner. He put liquid smoke into everything. Afterwards we went over to Congress to see if anyone wanted to join us for a movie.
“Hey, you want to come see a movie with us?” Texas asked Amy Moon.
“No,” she replied, “I want to drink.”
“So do we!” Texas said. “But, were going to get drunk in the A/C.”
“I think I’ll pass,” Amy said.
No one else wanted to come with us either. So it was just the two of us. As always. No one else wants to do anything.
We stopped by Safeway to get a few beers. I didn’t feel like drinking a whole lot, so we split a six pack of Weinhards. They were having a sale. They had all different flavors for the same price. We decided on the Pacific Trail kind.
At the Lloyd Cinemas, we looked up at the marquee, but the movie we wanted to see was not playing there. It was playing across the street inside the mall. We wanted to see Grind, that new skate movie.
“I’ve never sneaked in to the mall one before,” I told Texas.
“How hard could it be?” he said.
I shrugged.
It was almost 8:30, an apparent lull in business at the Lloyd Mall Cinemas. There was no ticket taker at the entrance. Our movie again, was not displayed on the marquee, but we knew for sure that it was playing there. As we walked on through the entrance, the girl behind the concessions asked us for our tickets.
“Oh, I was hoping you could tell me if Grind was playing here. It’s not listed on the marquee.”
“Yes, it is,” she said and then looked at a little piece of paper to the left of the register. “The next one is at five past ten.”
“Okay, thanks,” I said and we walked away from the counter.
“Let’s go back out to the car,” Texas suggested. Wink, wink. There were exits that went out to the parking lot from inside the theatre. They were at the end of the hall. We walked the length of the hall and Texas ducked into the last theatre. I took a few more steps and opened the exit door, so that if she happened, for some ridiculous reason, to be looking down the hallway at us at that moment, she would see the door closing. I turned around to make sure that the coast was clear and then hurried into the theatre.
There was a movie playing. It took place in New York City. A young lady caught a cab to 81st and Fifth and later a little girl ran away from her midtown home after her father died and was found a few minutes later in Coney Island on the tea cups by the young lady in the beginning of the film who caught the cab to midtown. For the next half hour we watched scenes of New York City and drank beer until the credits came on.
We still had another hour to kill. There were not any more movies playing in our wing, so we had to walk by the concessions to get to the other wing, where our movie would be playing. In the meantime we ducked into Freaky Friday. It seemed as though it had only started about twenty minutes ago. The mother and daughter had just found out that there bodies had been switched. (Like, oh my God!) It was an ancient concept, seen more than once before in a movie, but set in the modern city of L.A. It was a cheap movie with no big-time actors or actresses, but it still provided some laughs. The mother was supposed to marry this old man, but the 15 year old daughter, who was in her mother’s body unbeknownst to the groom to be, found him repulsive and refused to go through with wedding which was the next day. Apparently, they had been switched at a Chinese restaurant when they read a fortune from a fortune cookie. The fortune had to come true for them to be switched back. It said something about being selfless toward one another. I don’t know, but the movie ended happily and both characters walked away with new respect and understanding, blah blah blah. More beer bottles were left in our wake.
Our movie was to begin in five minutes. We were the only two people in our theatre during the opening advertisements. Twenty minutes later, we were still the only people in there. It was a private showing.
“No one has bought tickets for this show and their showing it anyway,” Texas observed. We could talk as loud as we wanted to.
Grind turned out to be the most horrendous movie in existence. A group of amateur skaters are obsessed with becoming sponsored like their hero, Mikey something or other. They decide to form an unregistered skate team and follow Mikey’s bus around from one skate demo to the next. They are turned down at every demo for not being preregistered and end up skating in the parking lot. They make enemies with a sponsored team of ‘wiggers.’ It was so bad. The whole movie was as if someone had given a fifteen year old skater a couple million bucks to make a movie based on his fantasies of skateboard fame. The movie was chock full of ‘chicks’ and skateboarding scenes and skating duels. By the end of the movie my buzz had worn off completely and I was bored stiff. We stuck it out though, and were the last two people to leave the theatre.
“I like the two other movies much better than that piece of shit,” I said.
“Yeah, I kind of want to go see them both from the beginning,” Texas said.
“I don’t. I don’t think I’ll see another movie for a long time.”

The wisdom teeth came out on Monday. All four of them. It wasn’t that bad, really. I spent all afternoon in an anesthesia daze and it lasted well into the evening time. I had to anchor my foot back in reality every few hours to change the bloody gauze and pop more pills, but other than that, the first day was quite nonexistent.
By Tuesday evening I was just barely able to eat solid food, despite my cheeks being swollen to chipmunk proportions. Nevertheless, I had some friends over for dinner that evening, including the esteemed Mr. Tugboat. Afterwards, I entertained my guests by playing for them the latest in Turkish dance hits that I had brought back from Istanbul.
I lounged around all day on Wednesday reading a couple of books. I’m still reading A Confederacy of Dunces. I’m savoring it. It’s one of the most well-written books I’ve ever read. Highly recommended. Later that night I called Dana to see if there was anything going on and she said that there were talks of a game of Risk. Sometimes there’s nothing like sitting around with a bunch of drunks trying to take over the world. I rode all the way over to Congress only to find that the interest in the game had waned considerably. I went home a few hours later, not a country conquered.
Thursday was a hot day. Texas called me up and asked if I was up for some air-conditioned activities.
“What are our options?” I asked him.
“We could catch a movie. Or go bowling.” I was feeling too lazy to go bowling so I opted for the movie idea. I met him a half hour later and we snuck into the Lloyd Cinemas and drank beer and laughed at the picture.
Afterwards I went home to sleep before the evening activities. I was still not completely recovered from the operation. During the bicycle ride, when my heart rate increased, I could feel the blood pulsating through my jawbone. It was not pleasant.
At ten I met up with Texas and Swamprat at the Witch Elm house to decide what to do for the evening. Swamprat was not of age and had no ID that said she was, so CC Slaughter’s was out of the plan, which didn’t bother me at all. That’s the one thing about CC Slaughter’s, you need ID to get in. No cover, but they were strict about that ID.
Texas knew of a place up on Killingsworth where Swamprat may be able to avoid being carded. We headed over there and locked up outside. Upon entry we found it to be some kind of speak-easy. You had to ring a buzzer for them to unlock the steel-barred door to let you in. There was a pool table in the middle of the room and against the back wall the local lushes were pumping quarters into video poker machines. We ordered a pitcher of Pabst and sat down at one of the Formica-topped tables in the middle of the room. The beer was $4.50 and we used the change to feed the juke box.
“So, what’s the plan for tomorrow?” I asked Swamprat. We were planning a bicycle trip up the Columbia River Gorge to Hood River. We talked about it a few days before when she was over for dinner, so now we needed to work out the logistics of it all.
“I don’t know, what time do you want to leave?”
“I would like to leave around nine if that’s not too early for you.”
“No, nine’s fine. Where should we meet?”
“You’re out at 92nd and Foster. We could meet at 92nd and Stark at nine. How’s that?”
“That’s fine,” she said.
“And remember, my friend is having a prom at his house. So you need to bring a dress, something fancy to wear. I have a nice suit I plan to wear.”
“Yes, I have a nice dress.”
“Excellent.”
With that settled, we went back to the beer and the juke box and we invited Texas along as well. He had one of those ridiculous fixed-gear jobs, but he said he could make it up there. It was about sixty miles. We drank two more pitchers and then decided to call it a night. Nine o’clock was a pretty early time to be waking up.
Leaving the bar, we decided that it would make more sense if we all slept at one place so we could wake up in the morning and leave all at once. It was decided that we would sleep at Swamprat’s mom’s house out on 92nd since all of our houses were on the way to it. First we stopped at Texas’s house to pick up his gear, and then we pedaled on over to my parent’s house to pick up mine. It was about one thirty in the morning and I had to sneak past my slumbering parents to retrieve my dad’s fine woolen vintage suit from his closet. I had a suit of my own, but it wasn’t as fancy as his. I ran around the house, gathering up provisions and gear with a head full of alcohol, frantically trying not to forget anything. I hadn’t planned on packing at this hour.
It was a long ride out to Swamprat’s. It was already three in the morning by the time we arrived there, exhausted and still drunk. I wondered if we would be in any shape for a long distance bike ride in the morning. All I was concerned about was going to sleep, but foolishly I neglected to drink any water before doing so.
The morning was horrible. I awoke at eight thirty and went to use the bathroom. I stepped out of Swamprat’s room and almost ran over her mother who was coming out of her room into the hall. Terrified, I quickly shuffled to the bathroom and closed the door. Standing over the toilet, I felt like shit. My head throbbed and I felt nauseous, but I didn’t want to throw up. I just returned to bed.
The minutes slowly passed by in a half sleep. At quarter past nine, I had to piss again. Nearly the same scenario repeated itself. God, was it embarrassing. Such bad timing. When I crawled back to bed, Swamprat awakened and left the bedroom. I could hear her in the kitchen. I snoozed for a while alongside Texas until Swamprat came back with news that her mother was going to cook us breakfast and was, currently on her way to the store. I hoped that it would be something really greasy.
Swamprat crawled back into her bed with us and we just lay there as the minutes ticked by. Some time later Texas and I were roused from bed with good tidings of a ready breakfast. Out in the kitchen, Swamprat’s mother had cooked up some greasy scrambled eggs, the greasiest scrambled eggs I had ever seen, and served it up with some fresh mango. I introduced myself to that wonderful woman and tried to be polite as possible to make up for the early morning rudeness.
After breakfast, Texas looked at his watch and laughed, “It’s almost eleven o’clock.” We got on the road soon after and began heading up 92nd toward Stark. Stark led all the way to the historic highway. The first couple of miles were a bit difficult. I had a headache and the nausea, although slightly diminished by breakfast, was still making me miserable. I wasn’t too pleased about the late start, but there was nothing we could have done about that.
Thirteen weary miles later, we finally reached the beginning of the Columbia River Historic Highway. I felt like shit, but I was determined to make it to Hood River, even if it was an unimaginable fifty more miles of misery.
Texas led the way, the science of fixed-gear riding dictating his pace. The faster the pedals are kept turning, the easier it is to continue pedaling. But as one can imagine, this relentless concept can take its toll. Texas began to contemplate turning around and heading back into the city. At the top of a long grade, he was waiting for us to catch up with him.
“I think I’m going to head back,” he announced. “I don’t think that I will be able to ride like this for forty more miles, or however long it is.”
I was disappointed to see him go, but I could imagine the difficulty of riding those worthless one speed fixed-gears all the way to Hood River. He raced back down the hill while Swamprat and I continued on our way.

As we all know, Thursday night is normally allotted to CC Slaughter’s and their seventy-five cent well drinks. We upheld the tradition last Thursday, which coincided with the downtown First Thursday art walk, which grows more grotesque every month. I hadn’t been there since the last time I was in Portland, which was last summer, and I was taken aback at the immense proportions it has taken on. Where it was once safely contained to a few select blocks in Old Town, it has now spread like the plague, breaking the confines of its petri dish and infecting the whole damn town. Even Southwest Portland is involved in this The Pearl District has gone to hell completely, a sterile, ultra modern horror of its formal industrial self riddled with yuppies and new-agers and bad taste. I can barely go down there anymore, remembering how beautiful and empty it once was, four or five years ago, when I was a wee lad exploring the dilapidated streets and crumbling warehouses before the real estate agents and property developers sank their rotting teeth into it.
Unfortunately, we were a little late in getting down there, so the kegs were tapped out and the wine was scarce. We ended up going from one shitty place to the next in a frustrating attempt to pillage. When we finally did find some place with a few bottles of wine, it was everyone for themselves and we somehow became separated in the frenzy. I could not find Texas for quite sometime and when I finally did, I was agitated and sober. By the looks of him when I came across him, I could see that he had found struck gold and found the mother load. I said I was done with this scene and suggested that we go to Chinatown and get a drink at Hung Far Low, a bar whose name had stirred up curiosity in my little mind for quite some years now. Now that I’m of legal age, I was going to finally discover what was beyond the large boasting marquee.
The door at Hung Far Low is always open from the street and immediately leads to a long staircase. When Texas and I climbed up to top I was surprised to find a stark and brightly lit restaurant. Hardly a soul was dining amidst the bleak décor at the cheap plastic tables. In one corner of the place was the bar, a dark cave of a place lit with small candles in red glass holders on each of the tables. It was the extreme opposite of their restaurant. So far the bar had met my expectations and hopes for the place.
I sat at the bar, as my classy NYC anarcho-hedonist comrade strongly advocates (see hereitype) and ordered a drink. But, when I looked up at the bartender, I was horrified. The bastard was white! Young and white! What the fuck? This whole town is going to shit. Nothing is authentic anymore. It’s being overrun by hipsters and yuppies in a blatant attempt to commodify every goddamn thing. Due to my aggravation and lack of active vocabulary, I find it hard to put my anger in words and to form a decent argument or an intelligent objection, but if you’ve lived in Portland for more than five years you can probably empathize with me here, the outrage and the betrayal I feel. They’ve taken my city away from me and I can barely stand to be in this town for more than a few weeks, let alone live here anymore.
Two or our friends joined us. Molly and a friend had been out pestering the First Thursday crowd for spare change and dumping cups of piss into the bucket seats of convertibles. She was completely crocked when she came in and plopped a pocket full of cash and coin down on the bar. She paid for all our drinks. We moved to a corner table and drank it down. When we finished our drinks, we got out of there and headed for CC Slaughter’s.
I wasn’t in the best mood to dance the night away in full abandon. The drinks that night were unusually large. I only ordered one and then hit the dance floor, but my heart just wasn’t in it. I wasn’t feeling it. The liquor nor the beats. I ended up leaving before last call and riding home. There was no point in trying to ride a dead horse.

On Monday I got up at the ass crack of dawn to phone the dentist’s so they could refer me to an oral surgeon. My wisdom teeth were coming in and my gums were enflamed and swelling around my back molars. It was getting hard to eat and sleep. The vicodin I scored on Sunday night afforded me a decent night’s sleep, but by morning I only had one left. After I made the necessary telephone calls, I crawled back to bed and savored that last vicodin. The bed and I fused together as one as the pill diffused throughout my blood stream. I may have to try this drug later on more recreational terms.
I made an appointment for three o’clock that afternoon with an oral surgeon. My plan was to get those fuckers extracted right then and there. But, when I showed up, the doctor had other ideas. He said that the swelling and inflammation must go down before the teeth could be pulled. Despite much bitching and moaning, the bastard sent me away with a mouthwash and two prescriptions: one for antibiotics and the other for vicodin. He assured me that the pain would subside by tomorrow and scheduled me for surgery the following Monday.
The vicodin was much stronger than what I had been taking before and it worked wonders. The pain just evaporated. I had some friends coming next week and since the first part of that week was shot and this week there was nothing much going on, I decided to take a much-promised trip to my grandmother’s house in Bingen, Washington. I hadn’t seen her in six months. I left Tuesday around noon.
It was usually a quick hitch up I-84 to the Gorge, but for some reason I had a hard time. It took a while to hitch out of Portland and that ride was only to Troutdale. Then I got distracted eating blackberries on the side of the freeway. In Hood River, I instantly caught a ride over the bridge, but on the other side they were doing road construction and there was a great delay in traffic. I decided to just walk the two miles into town. It was late in the afternoon when I came walking up my grandmother’s street. From a block down, I saw her cross the street to the neighbors’ house. They were standing in the street chatting. As I walked closer, I could hear them talking.
“I don’t know where he is. He called me hours ago to let me know when he was coming,” I could hear her say.
“Where did you say he was hitching from,” said the neighbor. Then he looked up. “Could this be him now?”
My grandmother turned around and smiled. “That’s him!” she said. I came up to her and gave her a hug. “This is our new neighbor, John,” she said introducing me. A few days earlier my grandmother had told me about her new neighbors. College professors from Santa Barbara. She told me that they had wanted to meet me after she told that I was out travelling the world and shit. We would have them over for dinner, she had told me. “And this is Kathy,” she said, motioning towards John’s wife. They were both in their mid-fifties, out-doors types who had bought a summer time in my grandmother’s shit hole. I had been told that Kathy was some sort of health-freak and that we would get along. I smelled fermented patchouli in the air.
Well, the next evening John and Kathy came over to have dinner with my grandparents and me. While Kathy was helping my grandmother in the kitchen and my grandfather was asleep in his easy chair with the newspaper laid over his chest, John poured himself and me a preliminary glass of wine.
“So tell me,” he said in a peculiar whisper, “you’ve been to Europe recently. I’m dying to hear all about it. I want to know how much ole G.W. has fucked up the world. What was it like as an American over there? Did you feel any anti-American sentiment?”
He seemed a little intoxicated, but I couldn’t pinpoint which drug. He didn’t smell like he had been drinking beforehand, although I wasn’t in close enough proximity to get a more precise whiff. Whatever it was, it was a depressant of some description.
“Well, not really. People, for the most part, were pretty nice to me. There were anti-war signs everywhere and on the sidewalk in Berlin I saw a pile of dog shit in which someone had stuck an American flag. The disdain was directed toward the US government and not it’s people. But, I wasn’t in Europe after the war had started. I was in Israel and Turkey for the entire duration of the war.”
“I’m getting a month off next fall to do the whole back packer thing. What do you know about the Euro-rail deal?” he whispered.
Nothing much I told him. I took buses most of the time. He asked me about backpacks and such, and when I showed him my small, worn, Dutch army bag, he was quite surprised. It had been across the country many times I said, and he mentioned that he had crossed the country five times or maybe it was eight. But in any case, he was quite the hitchhiker back in the day and we exchanged hitchhiking stories, which was far more interesting than the European talk. He was a hippie in the sixties and seventies and used the phrase ‘I’m hip’ on several occasions when we were on the same page. I almost died when he called me a hippie in passive conversation. But, I let it slide, giving him some slack on the count of his bizarre intoxication.
When dinner started, the conversation turned ugly.
“Wow!” John said, “Your only 21 and you’ve been more places and done more things than any one of my college students. I would really like you in my class. I have you ever thought about college?”
Here we go, I thought. “No, I don’t think college is for me. I can barely stay in one place for six months, let alone four years.”
“You’ve been out there in the school of the road, now you need to get a formal education. Where will you be without a bachelors degree.”
I looked over at my grandmother, thinking that she had set this whole thing up. She’d been begging me to go college ever since high school was over.
“I don’t know what I would use a bachelors for. Or college for that matter. I just want to work shit-jobs and then travel.” The conversation went back and forth like this for a while. He tried to entice me with the temptations of the flesh.
“Think of all the babes you’ll get to meet. The college life, man, that’s something to experience.”
Please, I thought, I’ve seen the college life, and for the most part, it’s ugly. Too many pretentious fucks wandering around spreading their juvenile drama all over campus. I’ve done some time as a live-in observer on several college campuses around the country and although I’ve had some pretty good times with the parties and the free booze and all, they became stale after a while. After the buildings fell down in New York, I did some time up at Sarah Lawrence where a friend of mine was studying. I went up there, met a girl, and stayed with her for a week, sneaking in to eat in the dining room, reading books on the lawn, and attending the parties. Since it was the beginning of the year, the other students had assumed that I went there and would ask me what classes I was attending. It was fun for a while, but that part of my life is over.
The John went into a spiel about how his parents, or maybe it was his grandparent’s, were immigrants from Sweden and had come across the ocean and done the whole American Dream thing. They had instilled in him the importance of a good education. What this had to do with me, I don’t know. The only thing a bachelor’s degree would get me was a career. I didn’t want a career.
Finally, he says, “It would validate my life’s work as a college professor if you considered going to college.”
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll consider it.”
After dinner, we drank some coffee and then they left.
“We’ll have this conversation again sometime,” he said as he walked down the street. Kathy said goodbye too. It was one of the few things she had said all night. With John talking, she didn’t get a word in edgewise.
After they left, I put on another pot of coffee. My grandmother and I killed a few hours together doing the daily crossword. When one of us was stumped for a while, we passed the paper over to the other. Eventually, we got the whole thing filled and I went upstairs to read a little and then do some writing.
It was a productive night that lasted well until the wee hours. I went to bed then, and not being able to sleep, began to read again. A thunderstorm had been moving in over the course of the night, and suddenly the house was shaken by a tremendous thunderclap. No sooner had the lightning flashed, the thunder had struck. It was directly over the goddamn house! I shut off the light and opened the window to wait for the next bolt of lightning. With the lights out, everything outside the window became crystal clear. The mountain was strikingly there, practically in the backyard, in the middle of the storm. I waited maybe three minutes until it the lightning struck again. It lit up the whole sky behind the mountain, a million bony claws striking at the night. Then the roar of thunder erupted all over the hillside from east to west in a series of rumbles like a chain reaction. The whole thing only lasted a few seconds and then I went to bed, satisfied with what I saw.

Ever since Friday afternoon, I’ve been experiencing a terrible pain in my mouth. My wisdom teeth are coming in on the bottom right side of my mouth and my gums are swelling around my back molars. It’s been getting progressively worse with every passing day. Now the pain is excruciating. To counteract this, I’ve been eating Ibuprofen like it was candy but that has done no good whatsoever, so yesterday I stopped doing that. I also tried drowning out the pain with beer and more beer, but to no avail. Cigarettes have provided temporary relief, for some reason. I know, it makes no sense, but it works. Maybe because I’m not a regular smoker.
Last night, I took a brake from drinking, and went to a root beer party. There were rumors going around that there was going to be a root beer keg. The party was at Dawn Riddle’s house; her roommate was turning twenty. It was an under-21 party and you had to show ID to get in, so if you were 21 or over, like I am, you either had to present a fake ID or sneak in through the back. I spent an hour yesterday afternoon, amidst awful pain, making myself a fake. I was disappointed when I discovered, after all my hard work, that there was no color cartridge in the printer. I would have to settle for a cheap black and white forgery, but I had no choice but to make do with what I had. I cut it out, glued it to a piece of cardboard from a six-pack box for thickness and the barcode, and then laminated it with clear packing tape. When it was done, I signed the back and stuck it in my wallet.
I showed up around eleven. The carding wasn’t very enforced, but I decided to show my ID to Dawn Riddle who was sitting on the steps of the front porch as I walked up. She thought it was funny. I showed it to a few more people and everyone thought that it was great. Then I walked up the steps. Opie was there on the porch.
“Hey Joyce! Did you know that someone snapped some photographs of us in the tub last night?”
“Goddamned Paparazzi!” I stammered.
“I hear it’s going to be on the internet,” added Texas.
“Well, won’t be the first time my naked ass has been online! There was this naked cocktail party a few years back and they had a little webcam in one corner of the ceiling and…oh never mind. Where’s that root beer keg?!” And with that I made my way into the house. While passing through the living room, a familiar looking guy said hello. Then he asked me, “How did you guys get that bath tub so dirty?”
“You’re one of the fellas who lives there, huh?” I asked him.
“Yep,”
“Sorry about the mess. I think some beer spilled in there too.”
“Oh no, it’s cool. No problem at all. I thought it was great, but I’m just wondering how you guys managed to get it so dirty. There was a black ring around the edge of the tub!”
“Well, you see, Opie had been looking for a place to take a bath for quite some time. Ever since he got into town, in fact. That was a while ago. And me, I don’t think I’m that dirty. I just went swimming on Thursday night. Well, I’ll talk to you later. I’m going to go check on that root beer situation.”
I eventually made it into the kitchen. The birthday girl was there, so I introduced myself. Her name was Adrian. We had seen each other around, but had never met. I wished her happy birthday and asked her where the keg was. She said that they couldn’t find one, but that there was microbrew root beer in the refrigerator. I took a look in the fridge, but all that was in there was bargain brand root beer in two-liter bottles.
“It looks like it’s all gone,” I said.
“Here, let me look,” she said and began rooting around in the fridge. “Oh, what’s this? No, that’s something else. Yeah, it’s all gone. Sorry. But there is fixings for a root beer float.”
“Alright, that sounds good,” I said smiling. I love root beer floats. I took the tub of ice cream out of the freezer, put a few scoops into a cup and then poured the root beer over it.
“There’s crazy straws over by the cups,” Texas said, suddenly appearing in the kitchen. I said thanks, grabbed one, and then walked back out to the porch with him.
“Hey Joyce!” It was Opie again. “Are you still looking for some Vicodin?” I had mentioned the other night to him that I was in need of a decent painkiller.
“Why yes, I am.” I said. “How much are they? I don’t want to spend a lot on them because I’m going to the dentist tomorrow anyway.”
He was standing with a girl. She was the one with the goods.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said nicely. “A couple bucks for like five. It doesn’t really matter because I take them for medical reasons. I have a prescription.”
“Well, I have two dollars. You can give me however many you want for that. I don’t need that many.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a handful of pills. All sorts of pills. White pills, red pills, striped pills, big pills, small pills.
“Here, hold these for a second,” she said and put a handful into Opie’s hand.
“Jesus,” I said “you got the whole damn candy store in there! Oooh! What’s that one?” I pointed to a big, fat jelly-like one. It looked very potent. I needed something potent.
“That’s a vitamin!” she laughed. It must have been a very comical sight, seeing the three of us on the porch, Opie with a handful of multi-colored pills, the girl still digging them out of her purse, and I holding my two dollars out.
Finally she picked out four or five Vicodin pills and gave them to me.
“How many do I need to take?” I asked her.
“Oh, you’re not taking them for recreation?” she seemed surprised. She’s probably used to selling her prescription drugs to her friends who are not in pain.
“No, my mouth is fucking killing me. It’s my wisdom teeth. They’re coming in and causing my gums to swell over my back molars. Very unpleasant.”
“Ooh, that’s awful. You just need to take one every few hours.”
“Thanks.” Then I walked back to the kitchen to swallow them down with root beer.
Suddenly, everyone was rounded up and herded to the basement where a performance artist was about to play. As the beats came from the speakers, the medication began to do its thing too. Waves of relief washed into my mouth, bathing my nerves with temporary numbness. The artist began to talk over the beats. It was almost like rap, but really he was just talking and it sounded it good and his words were good and they flowed nicely. The Vicodin flowed nicely too.
After he was done, dance music was turned on and a dance party was encouraged. Many people went upstairs, though. I tried to dance for a little while, but I wasn’t really into it and eventually I went upstairs. All the good dance parties have always been comprised of drunk people. Because when you drink, you lose your inhibitions and dancing just makes the most sense. But, this was a sober party, and everyone was a little self-conscious and awkward.
Texas told me he was going to take off.
“Already?” I asked him.
“I’ve been here since seven o’clock.”
“So that’s where all the good root beer went to!” I didn’t really feel like sticking around either. I was tired and my plan was to wake up really early in the morning and call the dentist first thing and have them recommend me an oral surgeon so I could get those fuckers pulled out as soon as possible. I left with Texas and Opie. We ended up going over to the Witch Elm house to see who was there. We knew a lot of people who lived there and Texas was planning on moving in there as soon as a room opened up. We went over there and shot the shirt for a few hours before parting our ways.

BEGINNING OF THE NIGHT

There were two mini kegs of beer in the basement. No cover.
“How’s the beer?” “Very hoppy.” “Execellent.”
One or two hours of free beer go by. Then the kegs gone. There was a fair amount of people there.
“I feel like a bath,” Opie says to me. He'd been wanting to take a bath for the last couple days now.
“All right. Let’s get that shit started,” was my reply.
We got the water running. Opie dumped in a half bottle of bubble bath or maybe it was just shampoo, but there was a lot of bubbles. We climbed in and splashed around a little. People came in to use the bathroom. “We don’t mind, go right ahead,” was what we always told them. You couldn’t see the toilet from the bathtub. And to be polite we covered our penises with suds.
Neither I nor Opie knew any of the people whose house it was, nor most the people who were there. We did have some friends there, but for the most part, everyone thought it pretty strange that we were taking a bath in the middle of a party. Especially the people whose house it was. And Opie and I were quite drunk and rowdy.
Then that bastard Texas barges in with a few other onlookers and takes a can of shaving cream and sprays all over me and it gets all in my beer, my last cup.
“You bastard!” I screamed at him and tossed my beer in his face. I don’t remember what happened after this, but Opie and I were feeling pretty clean and decided to rinse ourselves off and get out. When we got out, there were no towels to be found anywhere in the bathroom.
“Where the fuck are all the towels?” I hollered into the living room. Then I came out into the living room, buck naked and stood there on the hardwood floors waiting for a reply.
“We hid them before the party,” came one reply.
“Smart thinking,” I said, “you woulda had yourself a pair of wet towels.”
Then I ran through the house looking for some piece of cloth. I found a shirt hanging up on a hook in the stairwell that went down to the basement and wrapped it around my nether regions. I walked around like that for a while until one guy came up to me and said, “Hey buddy, that’s my work shirt. I need that for tomorrow morning and its wrapped around your ass.”
“Sorry about that, man. Here you go.” And I gave it back to him. I was left with nothing again. I decided to just go ahead and put my own clothes back on. But, when I went into the bathroom, my shorts were nowhere to be found.
“Who the fuck hid my shorts?” I hollered again. I was doing a lot of hollering that evening. Ten minutes go by and I still hadn’t any leads. Then I guy came up to me, laughing and puts his hand on my shoulder and says, “Alright, I can’t hide your shorts from you forever. They’re behind the front door.”
I was skeptical, but sure enough, there they were. I put them on, and resumed my evening affairs. There were a few more parties lined up.

END OF THE NIGHT

I stumbled into the Congress house at three in the morning after a night of party hopping. Texas, Ms. Mancini, Opie, Caleb, and three girls from the bay area where sitting around the kitchen table. Texas and I had rode from party in SE to a party in North and we had lost each other along the way.
“Where the hell have you been, Texas?” I asked him. “Did you not go to the party on 12th and Ainsworth?”
“I was there. Where were you?”
“Well,” I began, “I spent most of that night face down on the back lawn behind a old van. When I finally came to, I saw that I was on the edge of a small sinkhole so I puked into it.”
“Before I left, I remember you running frantically through the living room to the kitchen sink,” one of the girls from the bay area said. “What were you doing at the sink?”
“Washing the puke out of my nose.”
People started laughing. When they stopped, I said, “Did you know that that house had a fucking outhouse?!”
“Really?” they asked.
“Yeah! I needed to shit real badly, and also I felt a puke coming on so I rushed up the stairs and barged into the bathroom. There were two naked women on the toilet seat and a few more standing around.”
“I saw those ladies too, I think,” Mancini said.
“Well, before I knew what was happening, the women who weren’t naked hustled me out of the bathroom, and my friend, Shelby, who may have been in the bathroom, offered to take me out back to the outhouse. I couldn’t believe that there was really an outhouse, but sitting out back, there it was. Crescent moon and all! I sat down on it and tried to shit. I can’t remember if I did or not. When I was done, I didn’t feel like sticking my head over the hole and barfing, so I stumbled out into the backyard and fell down and went to sleep for a while.”
“What a night, huh?” said Opie.
“I’ll say,” I replied. “And you know what? The girl who owned that house was a fucking asshole! After I had washed my nose out, I was kind of milling around the place and it looked like the party was ending. But she comes up to me and says, ‘you have to leave! The cops are here.’ And I said, ‘here? Outside right now?’ ‘Yes’ she said. ‘you must leave.’ And I say, ‘let me get this straight, you want me to go outside, while there are cops everywhere and get on my bicycle in this condition?’ ‘Yes, I don’t care. Go. Now.’ ‘Are you crazy?! They’ll give me DUI! Look lady, I’ll leave when they go.’ And with that I turned around and walked away from her. I couldn’t believe this woman. It would be like if my house was surrounded by wolves, attracted to the home by the smell of human flesh, and I kicked her out so they wouldn’t come into my house and get me. Jesus Christ, where’s the compassion these days? Can I sleep here tonight, Texas?”

I Saw U

Friday night. I caught a glimpse of your beautiful figure silhouetted against the porch light, your head tilted far back, taking a swig from a 40 ounce bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon. The bare bulb light refracted through the brown glass bottle and shined a spectrum of unsurpassed style and class into my eyes.

CC Slaughters

Jesus Christ, does the name not say enough? It was a few years ago when I had first noticed this bar and the clientele walking in and out of the place. Very butch men, clad from head to toe in black leather and chains. They had huge muscles and lots of chest hair and were holding hands. I looked up at the sign above the bar and in jagged letters it read: CC Slaughters.
At that time I was under age and it never even crossed my mind that I would someday enter this bar. But, for the last week, ever since I came back to town, Texas and I had been planning on going there. We met up at the Congress house and rallied up some folks who were hanging around. It was Potato’s last night in town so a bunch of kids had congregated at the house. Molly, NY Sam, Finn and Courtney who I recognized from Asheville, NC and some random people I didn’t know were there. Opie was there too. Opie was a crazy bastard from Vermont who turned 18 last summer in Portland. During the five days leading up to his birthday, he became progressively more drunk every night, pushing the bounds of acceptable behavior. On the last night, much to our surprise and dismay, we found ourselves naked in the large fountain in Peninsula Park and I was freaking out screaming, “Oh my god! I can’t believe we are swimming in the duck pond. Holy God!” But then someone explained to me that it was only a fountain. The third night was a memorable night as well, when sneaked into the swimming pool of an apartment complex in Southeast. It was a crazy scene with ten to fifteen kids running around drunk and naked from the hot tub to the swimming pool and we tossed in lawn furniture and stacked it up from the bottom of the pool to make islands.
We mounted up and rode down to Old Town where the bar was.
“So, Texas, are there going to be a lot of men in black leather there?” I asked him. He had been there last Thursday and maybe even the Thursday before that.
“No, not really. Not on the crowd on Thursday, anyway.”
I was a little disappointed, but then I changed my mind, realizing a whole bar full of super butch gay men might be a little overwhelming. Especially since I was still wearing my bright orange short shorts.
“Is there a lot of ass-grabbing?” I asked.
“Oh yeah! I always get my ass grabbed a few times on the dance floor.”
I would probably get my ass grabbed some, I thought. I’m a young, healthy male and there’s no reason that I wouldn’t.
Dawn Riddle was already there, with a girl friend and had a table. I just met her recently and decided that I was very interested in her. Last month’s Last Thursday, Texas and Dawn Riddle, and one other guy stood outside an art gallery and just pissed themselves. She was the one, in fact, who had introduced Texas to CC Slaughters. Everyone knew who she was and she had made quite a name for herself. The way Texas talked about her she was a real scream, a lot of fun to be around, a kindred spirit of sorts. Dawn was the most fun girl in town, he would say. She was also very beautiful.
I went up the bar and ordered a Whiskey Sour for myself, a Whiskey and Coke for Potato since it was his last night, and Vodka and Cranberry for Dawn Riddle. She had given me a dollar and sent me up to the bar. I couldn’t believe that it was true. Seventy-five cent well drinks!
I downed my first one, got a second one, drank that, and then hit the dance floor. It was hot. Everyone was having a ripping good time. Not only was there lots and lots of gay men, but also there were bi-men, straight men, tranny boys, tranny girls, straight girls and dykes. The whole spectrum of love. We tore up the dance floor, one techno song at a time, loosing ourselves in the beats and liquor and the ass-grabbing.
Every now and then I would have to come back to the table, order up another drink and rest a while and maybe have a cigarette. Potato kept pestering me to buy him drink after drink. I gave in each time. He was getting stinking as were the rest of us.
“You want to hear something crazy about Joyce, here?” Texas slurred at Dawn Riddle’s friend. He had his arms around the both of us.
“I know. That he got kicked out of all the art galleries tonight?” He had already told her that story.
“No. He’s actually from Portland! Can you believe it? How many people have you met who were actually born in Portland? Huh?”
She kind of laughed, not really knowing what to say. I mean, who cares? It was just drunken conversation. She left to go hit the dance floor one last time before her and Dawn Riddle went home. Dawn had to be a bike messenger in the morning.
The rest of us partied on for at least another hour. I believe I took off my shirt at one point, and a dyke came up to me and told me that berets were out. So out.
“No, no, no,” I tried to explain, “you don’t understand, I was…” But it was too loud in there and what was the point anyway. Some people are just too serious about fashion. I just kept dancing.
Inevitably, last call came around and we ordered one last round. It was a great night, but I didn’t feel like going home quite yet.
“Swimming!” I blurted out over my Whiskey Sour. “Let’s go swimming! I know a place downtown where there’s a hot tub and a swimming pool.”
Molly and Sam and the folks I didn’t know went home, but Texas, Potato, Opie, Courtney, and Finn were into it. We left the bar and rode down Third, making a pit stop at Voodoo Donut, open 10 to 10. They offer donuts with Pepto Bizmal and Tums in them, but I settled for a regular one that was in the shape of a voodoo doll.
We hopped over the fence into the bushes that surround the pool deck.
“This is it, folks!” I said, which was rather redundant.
We promptly shed our clothes and slid into the hot tub. It was very hot and we alternated between the hot tub and the swimming pool. The pool felt really good. We splashed around for a long while.
Unfortunately, we are only allowed these pleasures for so long until some bastard with a flashlight and a hard-on kicks us out. There were three of them this time, all shining lights on us as we struggled to clothe ourselves. We made it out of there before the real cops came.
We took the Inebriatia Highway, aka the eastside esplanade, into Northeast, avoiding traffic and the police who are all to ready to pull you over for not having lights on your bike and then giving you a DUI.
We pulled over at a gas station to part ways. Potato was leaving in the morning.
“Do I have a bump on my head,” Potato asks me.
“Jesus Christ man, what did you do?” His nose was flattened and there was a large bump on his brow.
“I dove into the pool and hit my face on the bottom.”
“How the hell did you do manage that?”
“I really drunk.”
“Damn right you are.” With that we said our goodbyes and parted ways.
“Come back to Asheville!” he hollered at me as he rode away. God, I love that kid. I rode back home, thinking what a swell night it was. All my favorite things to do in Portland all summed up in one night: drinking art fag wine, dancing, and swimming in forbidden pools.

Yesterday was the last Thursday of the month and in Portland, that means that the art galleries all along NE Alberta Street are open. It’s a half-ass version of downtown’s First Thursday and a humiliating attempt to revitalize what was once, ten years ago, one of Portland’s most dangerous streets. First the punks moved in, followed by all sorts of yuppie restaurants and new age businesses. At the end of every month the street turns into a sort of street fair: vendors selling hot dogs, artists selling their crap on the sidewalk, face painting and, most importantly, the art galleries opening their doors and uncorking their wine bottles.
As I do every First and Last Thursdays, I make the rounds, seeking out the more generous wine givers. I greeted good ole Texas down on 20th and Alberta with a glass a wine in my hand and a cigar in my mouth. He was quite impressed with my getup. I was wearing bright orange floral print swim trunks that went up to mid-thigh and a neon print New York City T-shirt, already stained with wine as Texas was quick to point out. My brown leather shoes and black socks contrasted dramatically with my white hairy legs. To top it all off, though, atop my head, a French beret…er…Freedom hat.
“You look like a French tourist,” Texas said.
“Maybe so. I am here to buy art for my extensive collection,” I said.
And off we went gallivanting down the street in search of drink. We met various people we knew along the way who gave us tips as to which gallery offered wine. At first we had the tact to take a quick glance around the place before filling up, but as the evening progressed and the wine became scarce, we could not afford the precious little time we had until some art fuck would sip away the last drop.
Many people, I found, where offended by my cigar. The art world has quit smoking. In the first gallery that I went to, I had just poured myself a cup when the lady, presumably the owner, politely informed me that this was a nonsmoking establishment. I acknowledged this and walked across the room to the veranda and smoked out there whilst sipping my 1999 California Merlot. This, apparently, wasn’t good enough for her and she called over one of her assistants and I could see that they were giving me dirty looks and whispering in each other’s ears. Finally I says to Texas that I should probably leave now, figuring I wouldn’t last long enough to down this cup and get a refill to go. I walked across the room to the exit, and while passing the owner and her assistant, I could hear her mutter, “how rude!”
“What if I richest art collector in the Northwest? What then, Texas? Would I be allowed to get away with doing whatever I pleased in these smalltime galleries?”
“Maybe. You need Gucci shorts and an expensive brand shirt. Then maybe you could pull it off. People would know then.”
I got kicked out of a few more places along the way, and then we found ourselves in a large building with many suites, most all of them art galleries or music studios. They had a few bottles of wine out on the table. After I had my full cup, I began perusing the walls, looking at all the crap up there, killing time until my cup was empty again. Then some lady had the nerve to announce, “Who’s smoking? Who’s smoking that cigar?”
I looked around innocently and kind of shuffled out the back door before she could confront me. It led to a hallway and I walked around and came to a room where an old-time band was playing. They were singing a song about the mighty River Jordan and was going to, when they were done, go up to the mike and tell everyone a story about the River Jordan, about how it wasn’t so mighty and how I was baptized there by way of rope swing not to far from where Jesus Christ Himself got baptized.
Before the band was even finished, though, I was asked to smoke outside the studio, because they had a nonsmoking policy due to the sensitive equipment in the room. So I left and stood in the hallway so I could listen to the band. But sure enough, he came up to me again and said, “well, actually, the whole building has a nonsmoking policy.”
“Jesus Christ,” I said, “whatever happened to art and smoking. You guys are a bunch of sellouts!” and I stomped down the stairs in a mock-huff. Artists don’t like to be called sellouts.
Texas came down the stairs a few minutes later.
“I just stuck up for you in there,” He said. “I told him that he just kicked out the richest man in Portland.”
“Wow. Thanks man.”
“And you know what he said? He said that it was more of a non-jerk policy. He called you a jerk!”
“So. I am a jerk”
And so the night went on. The only art gallery that didn’t seem bothered by my bad, yet classy, habit was an art show of newborn baby photographs. They had turned the family photo album into an art show. How ironic. With all the art galleries trying to be hip, cutting edge, avant-garde, etc. it was the most square and boring of all the art shows that had no problem with my cigar. Maybe they thought that I was some eccentric millionaire and were playing it safe. Who knows?
After we had had enough we went back to North Congress to round folks up for the pilgrimage to CC Slaughters, a gay bar downtown with $.75 well drinks on Thursdays. More on this later. I’m still getting over the sheer magnificence of the night, not to mention the hangover.

There’s a heat wave in Portland, Oregon. The temperature is in the high nineties and I thought that it would be a nice to ride my bicycle out to Blue Lake Park, about 20 miles east of the city. I met Texas down by the bike shop on MLK Jr. Blvd and Fremont. All he had was two bicycle wheels.
“Where’s your bike?” I asked him.
“It’s in the shop. Frame’s bent.”
“All right, hop on.” We tied his wheels to the back of my bike crate and I pumped him all the way home to North Congress. His roommate let him borrow his frame and Jeremy promptly put the wheels on and off we went.
“What about food?” I asked.
“I’m sure there’s a grocery store on the way.”
There was. We stopped by. Jeremy filled up a grocery bag full of fruit and fake meat and some Cliff bars and some Fig Newtons. I waited outside until he came out of the store and then we got back on the bikes and swung around to the front of the store to heist a watermelon. I picked a good one, threw it in the crate on the back of my bike and rode off.
When we got to the lake, we ate a little something and then got into the water. The name is quite deceiving. Opaque Green Lake would be more appropriate. The water was filled with all sorts of vile things: apple cores, glass bottles, red vines, little children.
Texas was quite disgusted with it. He peed in the lake and then we got out. We decided to just lie in the grass.
“Did you bring a book?” I wondered.
“Yes, two actually,” he replied.
“Me too.”
We found a picnic table to sit at and I cut open the watermelon. We ate watermelon and read our books.
“I see you picked up a copy of A Confederacy of Dunces. Very good.” We had talked about this book before. It was his favorite.
“Yes. I’m beginning to get into it. What are you reading?”
“Four Blondes.”
“Is it smut?” Texas has been into smut lately.
“Yeah. Pretty much. It’s about four blondes living in New York and how they are all fucking each other to fuck each other over. It’s by the same woman who wrote Sex and the City. Do you want me to read you an excerpt?”
“If you want. Is it good?”
“Yeah. I just like reading things out loud to people.”
“Okay. Shoot.”
He read me something about a woman who thinks that her husband has been cheating on her and how she hates him and everything else in her life. In the morning, after her husband had come late the night before, she pretends to be sick while he gets up and gets ready to go to the office, that stupid office that she hates so much. While he’s in the shower, she snorts some coke and then runs into the bathroom to puke in front of him. He doesn’t care that much. When he’s off at work, she talks to an old friend of hers. She tells him about how she rejected a shoot for Vanity Fair because they said that they would call back in five minutes, which was preposterous to begin with, but then it was eighteen minutes before they called back. ‘I shall not be kept waiting for more than two and a half minutes!’ she shouts into the receiver.
“So are all these people famous?” I asked when he was done.
“Yeah. They are all famous people who hang out with other famous people, dodging the paparazzi, who write stories about them and sell it back to them. They all love hearing about each other in the paper, seeing their names in print and what not. I’ve been reading a lot of books lately about the high life in New York City. I’m fascinated by it. Completely.”
“Yeah? Someday I’m going to live that life in New York too. Endless wine and parties and being lazy all day. Sounds like the life. But how are we going to get in?”
“Well, we need to start off with fake jobs. There’s so many ridiculous jobs out there. If you can think of it, someone there will pay you to do it.”
“I know someone who feeds Cindi Lauper’s cats,” I mention.
“I’m going to start off by delivering weed. It’s easy and it pays well. I just need to find the connection.”
“Are you going to do it on bicycle?”
“Yep.”
“I have a friend in New York, who, whenever she needs a bag of coke, she calls up this guy, who shows up in front of her house in a white sports car within ten minutes.”
“We must plan a trip out there soon.”
“I’m planning to make the permanent move out there next spring. I’m going out there in November to hang out with these kids who own some land north of the city and I want to ask them if I can live there. It’s over 70 acres and they don’t pay any rent on it. It’s only a day’s bike ride from the city.”
“I have a friend who lives on Division and Bowery.”
“Whoa! What am I talking about, living way up there? I too have a place to stay for free on the Bowery. I just heard that the squat that I used to live at will be open until next June, if all goes well.”
“Yes, we’ll start at the bottom, on the Lower East Side, and work our way into Midtown!”
“And then the Upper West Side!” I added.
“We’re already doing better than most people. We’re starting off in Manhattan!”
“Yep,” I replied.
We were very excited as we realized our dream. And we talked more about it, making all kinds of plans after we had made it in the big apple. He was going to buy a gambling boat and put a velodrome on it and revive the classic sport or track racing. Bicycle racing used to be huge in America. Madison Square Garden was the main venue for these gambling events. He was going to get this boat and sail it up and down the Mississippi and on special occasions he would sail it to my ocean front house in the Hamptons, which had a water slide that went from my second story window, off the cliff, and then into the sea below.
In the height of it all we come to the sudden realization that it is probably everyone’s dream to become rich and famous.
“Everyone in this park is probably dreaming of dreaming of making it big in New York City and we’re just thinking about it now.” Texas finally says. We packed up and rode back to Podunk Portland.