HOW TO, AND ALL THAT JAZZ

as we were headed south, somewhere north of lafayette on 65, the lights on the turbines of the wind field flashed red and in unison around and ahead of us every couple of seconds. some of the turbines closer to the interstate were unlit, and most of the ones further away were invisible except for their lights. the expansive, quasi-futuristic effect of the field past dark was even more expansive and inspired even more saccharine future nostalgia than it had when i'd seen it in the daylight from a car headed north three days before. i sent her a text to mark my impression. she said that she'd seen the lights through the snow storm that had blown through northwest indiana on friday night as she was driving back. i dropped that, but then i turned to the driver and told him that i had a saint christopher medal in my pocket so not to worry. there wasn't any cause for worry, though, except -- apparently -- over whether i was superstitious. i told him no, but that the point of the medal was the cloying romance of embracing it. forgetting it in my pocket until the anecdote. like my soppy appreciation of the turbines in the frozen fields.

the snow storm that blew through northwest indiana on friday was likely part of the system that hit ohio the next day. the five inches that fell on evanston on thursday night might have been the beginning of the same, but more likely they were just the effect of the lake. there had been snow on the ground and on the tops of the buildings when we'd arrived in chicago that same day but nothing falling. the lake seemed to have had more of its effect farther north. and it was snowing again on saturday at noon when we left lucky platter and pushed our way through the bluster to the chicago-main newsstand. a quiet marvel, and a survey of the intellectual situation, the meek cashier and the man talking too long and too loudly on his phone. i might have bought all of the everything that they had -- or at least given it a long, library browse -- if we hadn't had to move on (and away). we'd been in university village the night before, and i had discovered a gem on halsted.

there, i'd been a bookmark which i'd guarded in the copy of the lobo antunes book i bought. (what can i do when everything's on fire?) it had almost been too right to be true. i'd asked for a book store tour of the city and found myself at powell's. the store on halsted was the newest, but the bookmark gave  addresses for the other two. so after being driven away from the newsstand we made our way down lincoln avenue to drive up alongside the powell's in lakeview. and there was the writing on the wall. facing north: "used books." (it didn't mention the overstock.) i took a picture. inside, i found myself a copy of will self's psychogeography to fill the hole that i'd dug for myself when i hadn't bought the copy i'd seen at spartacus in vancouver. i didn't buy the schiele catalog that i had been almost specifically searching to find, but i did take some pictures. "the torment of the loner, the distress of the seeker beset by visions...the sorrow of the hopeless." in hindsight, thirty-five dollars was a steal. in the moment, however, i distracted myself by looking up the ladders at the shelves.

when we're old we're going to buy old lincolns and spend our weekends clogging the drop off lanes at the departures terminal at midway. but that afternoon we were just dropping off. and since we were already so far south, we decided to see hyde park. that's when we found powell's number three (which was actually the first). but down south it was the university library that stole the show. the future nostalgia there, however, was reductively ironic. the 57th street complex was straight out of truffaut's vision of "farenheit 451."

i can't remember all of the places we ate or the names of most of the buildings we saw. we made it to intelligentsia, but i didn't make it out of the car either of the times we drove through wicker park. i'm retired.

i did, however, make a point of seeing the muse's apartment before i left town sunday. i took a picture of her in her tattered, thrifted rabbit fur coat with the taxidermy weasel in the foreground. then we laughed about the ryan lewis thrift store song, but that didn't inspire her not to give up on mastermind. i snooped, and in the bedroom i found a painting. with the rain clouds subdued behind her, three doves flew out of saint scholastica's mouth. he'd painted it for her because of a cemetery experience they'd shared. hours later, i suggested that maybe the reason we'd been spared more snow for our trip back together through the wind field was scholastica, but he didn't get it. so i got smug about my medal and held on to the sham future that we were passing by.

EL SECRETO IBÉRICO

we weren't supposed to talk about it, i know; but in the bath, as i was reading the beginning of the book that she said was about me, i remembered the erstwhile subhead of this blog and happened to think of that show. and in thinking of that show i happened to remember the preview for it that ifc was running on cartoon network during my christmas vomit vigil. apparently, the new thing for hate-lovers of portlandia to laugh about is flamenco. indeed. and so verily last year (if not really the year before). then we all take a moment to remember last year's vigil of choral dissipation, which, as we might have tried to forget, marched on through the epiphany, upon which we had our own revelation regarding the advisability of madrid. it was the spirit of the season, and of course we went back for subsequent drinks. this year, however, was conspicuously dry, as a result of -- and unfortunately in addition to -- the dehydration that followed all the puking. but then on boxing day -- the forgotten feast of a forgotten saint stephen in spain -- behold, yet, the angel of the lord is come upon us! and in the box it came to leave through the level one snow emergency, all of the sanctifying graces of the immaculate: under a tin of olive oil from jaén and a bag of artesenal picos from córdoba, two packages of the finest iberian ham. si estuviera aquí la angel, bailaría este tango con ella.

LET THEM SUCK LEMONS, A HOW TO; or, QUÉ HA PASADO CON EL COMUNISMO, REVIVAL

we're talking behind the dumpster that's next to the garage across the alley from the apartment because the wind has picked up. although the winter storm hasn't come through yet on its promise of snow, at least the rain has stopped. it might be snowing if it hadn't though, because it's definitely getting colder. and the wind makes our sense of it worse. but we have the dumpster to shelter us from the full force of the wind, which we'd gone out into in order to shelter ourselves, momentarily, from the party. in such a litigious society, it's cruelly ironic that a lawyer wouldn't encourage his client to sue the local police department -- if not for a violation of due process, then at least for the damage to his client's property -- just because he'd already dispatched himself of his obligation to defend that client against his d.u.i. charge. doesn't she agree? but those people (in clark county, i think it was) just live differently, the lawyer turned real estate agent had said. (the system works!) this is what we're talking about behind the dumpster. this and other systemic wastes. she'd found the light box that they'd rigged with flashing christmas lights for the party in the alley the day she arrived. at the thrift stores we visited the evening of that same day she had bought a rocking chair upholstered in vinyl for her host and the pogo stick that we'd used later in the park. we'd already put the chair and the unicorn print in his apartment and were in the park waiting for the word to go pick him up. she'd also gotten a german wall scale for ninety cents, but had passed on each of the pairs of red motorcycle boots that we'd seen at both stores. behind the dumpster i tell her that i'm happy that she decided to visit. i'm happy to have met her. i'm only wearing a light sweater and i'm cold, but if i catch cold i can just follow her example. "lemon sucking now hailed by science as influenza cure," goes the title of one of the articles on the front page of a los angeles evening herald from october, 1918. maybe that's why she always has one in her pocket ready to suck. but the habit isn't good for her teeth. (without insurance, which way would be the wrong way to go?) she says that she's happy to have met me too, and if i want i can stay at her apartment in humboldt park while i'm in chicago between the holidays. she'll give me a key. from what she says (and what i've already gathered), i should be excited to see how she's decorated. she has a good eye, and she says she has a great collection. it's only possible to work as a floriculturist during the spring, summer and fall, so she has all winter to browse estate sales. her apartment is in the puerto rican neighborhood, she says; and i say like that part of brooklyn, until it went the way of wicker park. i haven't been to chicago in two decades, so i don't really know if that's accurate. but i have been to williamsburg, and she says that's where her sister lives. the muses: by all accounts they're an interesting bunch. i'd known before tonight that this one liked alleys and dumpsters. the issue of wisconsin swingers that's inside the apartment came from the dumpster of a half priced books. what do you get for the girl who can find everything. cigarettes. there's that. then i remember having seen a vodka beverage called sucking lemons at a bc liquor store and think that i could try to find her one to leave at her apartment as a gift. she doesn't drink, but she does suck lemons. i think that she'll think that it's funny. if i can tell her that i got it at a drive thru it will be even better. they apparently don't have those in chicago or milwaukee, and when i took her to the one across from the salvation army thrift store in merion village she'd been uncommonly impressed. she'd bought a tiny bag of candy corn and a packaged carrot cake. (the peasants have no bread!). i don't know if i'll actually end up staying at her apartment, but i accept her offer. just say yes, i think, because that's what makes life interesting, and now that's exactly what we're talking about behind the dumpster as the wind picks up again.

SPECIAL AGENT DALE COOPER

every boy with a blog watches "girls" and imagines that he would be hannah (and the gay boys especially so after that bit of dialogue between hannah and the woman who sees her at the std clinic in episode two). but then i got a text message. he'd watched the show, and the one who reminded him of me was adam. huh. but i took it. if only because he looks so good out of those pants. and anyway, adam wouldn't give a shit.

but then we're in bed, and at one particular moment in the action he tells me that with my mustache i look particularly like dale cooper. i couldn't recall kyle maclachlan ever sporting any facial hair in "twin peaks," but i took it. adam, after all, wouldn't give a shit.

but then i went online. and as it turns out, this dale cooper looks pretty good out of his pants himself. what's more, it might very well be that my peers (and the gay boys especially so) are more familiar with dale cooper the porn performer than they are with the character from that early nineties david lynch series. i watched some videos. and i enjoyed them instead of wondering what my enjoyment of porn videos starring a performer who i'd been told looked like me meant about the dimensions of my fantasies. but i don't think that dale cooper would give a shit.

i'd found some videos, but i'd also found dale's website, as well as links to the articles he's written for the "gay voices" section of the huffington post. and i might have been surprised at the quality of the latter if i hadn't already checked out the books on the amazon wish list that's posted at the former. granted, the articles are a bit overly jargony. they smack slightly of the zealousness of a first foray into sexuality studies and postmodern cultural theory (check that wish list). this dale cooper is ultra-keen on social praxis and agency. and that's not to say that we shouldn't be, only that maybe not in so many words. some of us have read that book or been to that lecture before. some of us have had our lives affected directly by one or another of his topics. on the other hand, cooper's chosen lexicon is also a demonstration of the keenness of his pursuit of the knowledge represented by that wish list; and to hear a person so responsible for the construction and perpetuation of (certain) sexual fantasies hold forth on the less fantastic social and economic implications of the market for those fantasies isn't just refreshing, it's refreshingly welcome. i'll take it.

but maybe this dale cooper, for the simple fact of being a porn performer, isn't as responsible for the construction of those fantasies as we might like to simply assume. as cooper himself writes in his response to the new york times obituary of erik rhodes: "unfortunately, as in similar cases, the escapades [and death, in this case] of a porn performer are ultimately tied to some abuse by the industry, as if the explicit erotica business were the only or even the chief producer of sexual fantasy, not hollywood, or the advertising business, or the tabloid industry, or television. as consumers, of this obituary and of the overall story of mr. rhodes as told through his social-media outlets and his porn, we need to be aware that we are complicit in the structuring of a double bind that says, 'give us our sexual fantasy,' and, at the same time, 'you will get what is coming to you.'" rhodes' life ended at thirty as a result of maybe cooper's interest in perceptions of the porn industry -- and of sex work in general -- are self-interested, but every industry should have such an articulate advocate. what's more, cooper's writing on the porn industry (which i trust and respect more for his proximity than for his reading) also poignantly address problems surrounding general perceptions of homosexuality.

i won't go much further. i'll assume you've read the book or have already been to this lecture. we know that gay is only okay if it's male, affluent and white, and that the fight for gay marriage is battling us paradoxically toward our general conservatization. and we know that all of that is part of a more general anti-feminist trend. we know that we need to universalize health care, and that the system of capital that denies it from the people most in need is the same system that underclasses them. we know that what sex workers do is valuable, legitimate work. hiv/aids isn't over, and complacency isn't just frustrating, it's dangerous.

but there's something special about a picture of a man who's been idealized primarily for his sexual prowess reading barthes (while stroking that prowess) bespectacled in bed. unfortunately, i wonder if enough people are reading him. of all of cooper's articles, the one that drew the greatest response (and by far) was his article on the growing trend toward "douchebaggery" on the gay app grindr. and don't get me wrong: in the article cooper very much addresses some important issues of queer identity and community as they're being affected by tech-driven interactions in the age of the smartphone. it's just that the dozens of people seemingly concerned with the hegemony of the (white) "masculine young professional" on grindr could probably stand to lend an ear or a voice to the other issues raised by cooper in his other articles as well. but oh well. at least there's a dale cooper writing the articles he does at all.

then again, if you watch a smattering of his performances, it definitely seems like cooper has put on some handsomely toned weight during his time in the business. and the characters he plays don't seem to break any sort of molds. does that represent a double standard? or is it simply an example of the very contradictions of the industry standard on which the porn performer dale cooper writes? i don't know anything about his background and so i can't speak to issues of social or economic class, but this dale cooper isn't someone that anyone would reject on grindr. (after watching one particular performance of his, i realized that i'd sent him a couple of messages myself while i was in l.a. in october.) should we give a shit?

i suppose that the important thing is that he's bringing it up. plus, one of his bios at huffington does say that he's a social worker and activist in addition to being a porn performer and writer. (incidentally, although he doesn't play one himself, in one of his movies he does blackmail a secret agent.) given cooper's professional vantage -- and its potential stigma -- is he due any extra credit? should there something to be said for just putting it out there? shall we take it at that? i will.

WAY TO GO OHIO, part 7; or, HASHTAG SIGNAGE, WE TWO RIVER CITY KINGS

i had called the number listed for the charley harper art studio, but the man who answered the phone wasn't at the reynard avenue address in finneytown with which that phone number had been given online. that was mr. harper's stuido, yes, the man said, but people who wanted to visit the studio were now visiting whatever it was that was at 1741 east kemper road, which is where we'd reached the man on the phone. but we could also visit one of the many locations of fabulous frames & art, one of which was definitely closer than kemper road if we were downtown. what was our goal, he asked; and i didn't know, so i had to pass the phone.

it had been raining since just before we'd gotten off the sidewalk on vine and gone into lavomatic, so when we'd left we'd decided to find somewhere else in the neighborhood to sit and wait out the end. so it was that i'd called the man on the phone from a sofa at the coffee emporium on east central parkway, and so it was that we'd had our goals questioned as the rain stopped and we went out to take a look at the rest of over the rhine. there seemed to have been ample monies made available for new business development in the new old neighborhood. but although the bombed out facades of the post-riot dmz still greatly outnumbered the trendy establishments of the revival entrepreneurs, the important question regarding the future of the community seemed to be whether such a small area could sustain so many closely clustered boutiques and stationers. easy come easy go? we said we'd have to think about the dress and left.

the american sign museum is in a new old warehouse adjacent to the neonworks of cincinnati on monmouth avenue east of interstate 75. it's closer to downtown than kemper, so we'd decided to go there before deciding on whether to pursue what we considered to be the most authentic charley harper (informed by the decision of the man on the phone to keep us in the dark). and anyway, the designer felt more his amateur sign historian self that day than he did in line with the professional demands of being an illustrator. that's what i joked, anyway, to the man at the reception desk when he asked how we'd heard about the museum. as for the designer himself, his goals were his own. i was just driving -- and the truth was that i knew the city better by bike.

it was two-thirty, but the man at the reception desk said we had time. tripadvisor had said that the museum closed at three, but that man, he told us we had until four. we could even join the tour being given by the founder, he said. but we had to be out by not too much after four, because that's when people from the wedding were coming to set up. after charging each of us the fifteen dollar entry fee (paid separately), he gave us each a tin, foldover "i <3 about="about" after="after" also="also" and="and" as="as" bad="bad" badge="badge" bathroom="bathroom" center="center" contents="contents" description="description" didn="didn" directions="directions" does="does" for="for" four.="four." gave="gave" giving="giving" he="he" his="his" i="i" inspecting="inspecting" justice="justice" me="me" mine="mine" museum="museum" nearly="nearly" no="no" now="now" of="of" old="old" p="p" pieces="pieces" realize="realize" said="said" scathing="scathing" schmaltzy="schmaltzy" seem="seem" showed="showed" signs="signs" something="something" t="t" the="the" them="them" then="then" to="to" until="until" us="us" wedding="wedding" when="when" which="which">
i started looking around, but i didn't really know what i was looking for. to be sure, the american sign museum wasn't just another haphazardly curated roadside collection of curiosities. way to go, ohio. and the amateur sign historian seemed impressed. "a really nice museum," he says, and that, "the space is perfect." (in one subsection of the warehouse conversion there are windows onto the neonworks.) neon. opal glass. vacuum molds. gold leaf. toolboxes and toolboxes of brushes. smalt. (schmaltz?) and half of it along an old -- half real, half simulated -- main street of painted storefronts and brick wall signs (and that of course filled with old metal and neon monstrosities from hojo and mcdonald's). a big old bear of a big bear sign is on top of the collection of signs still in their crates, which is in the same room as the satellite. and the whole lot documented in photographs and on placards. it's as much a nostalgia museum as anything else, both for designers and the rest of us (what are you now, the building formerly signed in tiki as kona lanes?); and in the last section of it we visit, a history of 3d letters, i sit down and wonder in writing where it is that we look for -- and where it is that we might find -- intrinsic value. why don't i ever let the designer see this notebook (all of it in the gold leaf beverly called "nice on the eyes")?

then we went, but we only got as far as the reception desk. this space, the man told the amateur historian, had just been inaugurated this year. the museum used to be downtown. since 1999? i'd stopped writing. the founder, the former editor of a trade publication for sign makers, had gotten a million dollars to let himself be gently pushed out of the family business. i asked about the electric bill. it must have been why the museum needed to host events. but the incandescent bulbs sucked more than the neon, the man said. huh. and i said that you don't see much outdoor neon in ohio, although it seems to be everywhere in the pacific northwest. then the man complimented vancouver and said that we should check out terry's. we'd passed it that morning on riverside, i said. then he said something or other about the museum's mission to restore (revive or revivify?) the old signage of all of the different neighborhoods of the city. i don't remember exactly. what i do know is that he mentioned northside, which, when we finally left the museum at just about four, is where we went.

it was relatively close. and the thing was, we'd been there the night before looking for food after just arriving in the city. but as the blonde, incredibly handsome faced but wart nosed man coming out of the northside tavern told us, there wasn't any place closer than clifton with anything good to eat at close to ten. now we were back, and the tavern was closed. unfortunately so was the serpent, and the beautifully midwestern line about trouser snakes in its online description had been a big part of our decision to head in that direction. way to go. we might have given it a try the night before when we'd been walking up and down hamilton -- food or no -- but we hadn't seen it. there's hardly any signage.

we had, however, been thinking about that dress, and after a couple of drinks at who cares wherever we wound our way back downtown. she'd said she wanted something sequined for the party. this wasn't exactly that, but we bought the poof sleeved, one shouldered, shimmery gold leopard mini dress anyway. for forty-five dollars, the question of intrinsic value wasn't even raised.

at noon the next day, at breakfast, all signs pointed to a good party. and better, there was enough left over to send us home with some. i accepted. and i loaded it all into the car before we left to reconvene at terry's before the two of us drove back to columbus. terry's turf club, verily the second american sign museum in cincinnati. and i would say that the place could make some serious money selling its impressive collection of old beer neon to new bars in the pacific northwest if it didn't seem to be doing such great business. the bigger signs on the adjacent knoll to the east aren't to miss either, and i took them in as her husband was leading us to his car so that we could take more extra beer from the cooler that he had in the back. (had he been santa clausing the entire afternoon?)

where is it that we look for intrinsic value? i looked up, and what i saw through the fog at the very top edge of the windshield was one of the new signs. but what happens in the parking lot of the tanger outlets stays in the parking lot of the tanger outlets, that is until we got back on the highway and drove away. back. again.

(she'd said she wanted something sequined for the party, 

HOW TO GET IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME...AND EVERY TIME THEREAFTER

it's tuesday, which means extended happy hour at yellow brick, where they'll be playing episodes of twin peaks in uncomfortably clear and flattened high-definition on the screen above the bar, with laura palmer's beauty queen smile presiding benevolently over the taps, the pizza oven and all of the exposed brick from where her picture is enshrined on the big chalkboard over the waiting area. portland, ohio, the staff would like us to think. and what do we think? before microcosm publishing moved back to portland, it had left the rose city to set up shop in bloomington. there were other cities with interesting architecture that hadn't over-happened (and had cheaper rents). so when "the simpsons" got the joke, it was probably already played out. and "the simpsons" joking about the new york times being the herald of the next end probably means that it isn't long before they get the joke too and it's all finished. but, for this week at least, we can be sure that most of america knows that the new portland is having lived in portland and blithely talking about how portland is over. cool. that should be good four at least four happy hours at twin peaks tuesday. but then the sneers will probably win out over our humble braggadocio as we're trying to figure out how to get back behind in front of the times. meanwhile, we've got an extra two weeks to figure out how to finish the inside joke about that wall on east broad. they've extended the deadline again. have people already lost interest in portland, ohio? or is the point of it all to be part of the joke. america the beautiful new cool. it's all over, folks (including being over it). let's never, ever speak of it again.

WAY TO GO OHIO, part 6

after the disappointment of sunday morning's breakfast burlesque (which was more a failure on the part of the venue in getting our breakfast orders right than anything else, but nonetheless also a failure of the show), we were excited for that night's drag pageant, and especially so after we'd found out (that evening) that we'd been identified in a photograph as the perfectly disinterested party to another (better) party and chosen as guest judges. unfortunately, although we showed up almost too promptly at five until eight to judge them, the contestants had apparently decided that this wasn't their sunday to be judged, and we heard from a man in the parking lot that the disco would be shut until it opened for church at eleven-thirty. way to go. at least the restaurant out the covered driveway and down the street had all day sunday happy hour that included a guided tour of all of its twenty-first amendment cans.

and fortunately, that gave us time to review our schedules, set a date for the company holiday party, and then to remember that this week was the week we had slated for our overnight in youngstown, which we'd identified as one of the places where motel 6 had brought together its special combination of "modern style, functionality and value" in the rust belt. finally. from the ashes: "phoenix" by priestmangoode, and only a few years behind the times at the date of our reservations. so out of the frying pan and into the fire, with the hope was that there would be a decent hamburger grilling somewhere nearby. and, fortunately, the new suit arrived from the ladies at duchess via priority mail on monday afternoon, so we packed three changes of our almost best clothes into the volvo bat pod and headed into the tepid december downpour toward steeltown, u.s.a. the next day.

unfortunately, as a result of the downpour we weren't able to enjoy the more normal, (sometimes) less inclement late fall bleakness of the buckeye state as we drove. even the relative splendor of the goodyear campus was obscured by the sheets of rain coming up from the wheels of the semis doing eighty in the left lane as we passed through the curves out of akron. fortunately, we had the remnants of the style and opinion sections left over from sunday's breakfast; and, maybe unfortunately, we had the leftover torment and comfort of two relationships that we had left behind us in columbus. i read, and we jawed. i stumbled over an articulation of my confusion, and she drove through the rain with the surety of her understanding. and there we were when it got too dark to read.

darkness fell fully about ten minutes after we'd finished our thirty seconds on kent state when we passed that exit. then the lake, and then the reservoir, and then we noticed that we were hungry but fortunately we were almost to the motel. i'd called from those curves in akron to cancel one of the two king rooms that she'd reserved, and when we arrived she left me in the car to go get the key for the room that we'd be sharing from the jennifer that i'd talked to on the phone. she had just known it was her as soon as she'd walked into the lobby, jennifer had said. jennifer had also given her a guide to every motel 6 in north america which specifically designated those which had undergone a redesign.

room 115 wasn't, as they say, at all bad. with adjustments made for relative cost, the motel 6 in youngstown -- if not arguably comparable -- at least elicited a comparison with the general ambience of the thompson chain. no? perhaps, i'll admit, not the views. our room was on the first floor, and although the rain had abated the dark still kept us from gauging the appearance of our surroundings.  for the time being, however, that was for the better, because it meant that we needn't rally to try to find something closer to the center of town. they weren't at the denny's that jennifer had recommended, but we'd gotten wind of some good burgers through the rain, and they were there to be had at a place just down the road. so we dolled up -- better than sufficient for dinner out in any of the places where that other chain had a hotel (although i had regrettably forgotten to pack cufflinks) -- and put ourselves back in the bat pod. his and hers grasping, imperative misadventure. jennifer was right to have suspected.

the internet had advised us that shaker's bar & grill was dimly lit, and that, in fact, had been an encouraging factor in our making our decision (since drawing too much attention to our likely celebrity would be just gauche ostentation). and to be sure, the entryway off the nearly empty parking lot on belmont avenue near the cluster of budget motels was dim. we might have figured it was closed if a man hadn't come out of the door as we were walking over from the nearly empty lot of the vacant whatever next door where we had mistakenly parked. inside, however, shaker's -- if nearly uninhabited -- wasn't all that dark. but that might have been the holiday lighting, which included white lighted miniature christmas trees between the triangular booths across from the bar. as we were finishing our burgers, which we agreed must be the best in town (and were definitely the best of what we'd sampled), we joined the only other conversation in the restaurant, which was taking place between the booth behind us and the two stools closest to us at the bar. there was supposed to be a gaudy display of lights at a house at the end of kingwood lane. the neighbors invited us to have a look. and our waitress, who we suspected at that point might also be the mayor, told us that we should probably take the treasurer's wife up on her offer. so we finished and left, smiling and eager, having also given our compliments to the cook, who it turned out might have also been the steel town's barber/dentist. the one night carnival that might have been the surreptitiously fabled best of youngstown, ohio met us that night at shaker's by tacit appointment and, for better or worse, we got its best.

unfortunately, the display on kingwood was hardly gaudy enough to warrant a photo. the treasurer's wife had probably just exaggerated as the result of too much holiday cheer. it probably wasn't every day that she and the other regulars had a chance to sing the praises of their city to anyone from -- "where were you from?" -- and there didn't seem to be much else shaking outside of shaker's. and regardless, we'd only been hoping for good burgers, which we got. and we also got a warm (almost feverish) welcome at the giant eagle where we went to buy drinks and scratch offs for our television party back at the motel. like jennifer, the adorably excited checkout clerk had recognized us as someones from somewhere else. the luck he wished us went with us, and we netted eight dollars on our lottery tickets before stripping off the finery and planting ourselves on the bed: three bottles of water, a glass of emergen-c and all of the takeout to make sure that the party didn't carry over into the morning.

awake, fortunately unearly. unfortunately, the cufflinks weren't the only things we'd forgotten, and the motel 6 redesign didn't include toothbrushes or hairdryers (the latter of which seemed to be an unfortunately glaring oversight). the man at the front desk who wasn't jennifer offered me toothpaste, but i had that. then he obliged with directions to the dollar general. then quickly into outfits number three and out the door. it was colder than it had been on tuesday, but the skies were clear. the certified escort vehicle that had been in the parking lot when we got back from the carnival the night before was gone, so after checking out with the man who wasn't jennifer, we got back in the volvo and headed downtown.

fortunately, we hadn't missed anything for the rain and the darkness the night before. there's hardly anything downtown. the coffee was good at the independent cafe that seemed to have replaced a seattle's best across the street from a vacant middle-rise that stood at the northwest corner of the main square. and the management was happy to give us easy directions to the oak hill cemetery. otherwise, there was nothing to indicate that youngstown was one of the ten best places to start a new business, as a banner on the side of one downtown building (likely vacant) proclaimed had been decreed by entrepreneur magazine. (who knew what was on display at the museum of labor and industry advertised by a highway sign near the motel.)

the factory by the river was still spewing smoke from some of its smokestacks, but it was hard to say what workers might have been making in the half of the factory buildings that still seemed to be operational. to the northeast, the onion domes of the holy trinity ukrainian catholic church and its adjacent stone cross (not unreminiscent of the cross at the valley of the fallen) commanded the skyline. there is a higher percentage of ukrainians in youngstown than there are in the world, so we'll say they have a presence. that presence must, however, be recent, because the headstones at oak hill don't show any earlier signs. whether or not the ukrainians were involved in the boom times of steeltown might be adressed at the labor and industry museum, but we'll just have to speculate because we didn't go. we spent all of our time trying to find breakfast on market, which, although it was obviously the main commercial drag of the area (and was advertising big dicks), didn't seem to host a single diner. the motel 6 redesign might have made its way to youngstown -- however late -- but the brunch trend never did. (way to go?)

in the end, after making our way through the modern love and draft columns of the opinion section, we found ourselves back past akron in seville. (we hadn't, however, made it so far south on market that we ended up in lisbon.) there was a mexican restaurant and there were churches. so we kept moving. and not that we needed anything exactly, but we'd already saved the sunk cost so we took the outlet mall exit, threw our beautifully tailored sleeves in the air and sat down to breakfast at two-thirty at the bob evans in lodi. not that we needed anything exactly, but we couldn't leave the pendleton outlet without a purchase. (way to go portland.)

when we exited 71 at the 97 exit, it might have been getting dark. we got gas and cashed in our scratch offs, and the cash we got we used to buy two more. and then it was certainly dark. and then home. no luck. we'd made it to that motel 6 on the night of the carnival, but somehow, with all the non-activity, we never managed to finish with the leftovers of that comfort and torment.

WAY TO GO OHIO, part 5

our inside joke without a punch line hasn't developed any since the first half of the month. they've extended the next contest deadline until the tenth of december. so we'll have to wait to see how brooklyn decides to play the columbus bicentennial's last hurrah. meanwhile, however, something appreciably local. even if the columbus emerging artist series doesn't seriously update its tumblr, it purports to throw monthly events. and even if it happened at the pizza place that purports to be portland in columbus, this month's installment in the series was a welcome opportunity to get some good stuff cheap. the matting around the new-urban-blue-collar-throwback (schiele style) grotesquery that i put in a friend's car when i got on my bike was alone worth the thirty dollars that i had to make change for before handing it to the artist and pulling the portrait down from the wall. as i was leaving, the organizer told me that there aren't auctions every month, that sometimes the group just hosts talks...and i cut him off there. because, as they say, talk is for fags. and i said so, and then he didn't seem to want to talk anymore. but wait! because my friend is a puppeteer. he could make something with that skull if you got us some cold cuts. but he was gone. and way to go?

anyway, i've got my painting, made in emerging columbus; and maybe we'll check out december's event. meanwhile, however, we're going to crash the party in youngstown.

AND THEN THERE WERE THREE

"we should say hello," he says, because he hates it when he runs into people whom he's met and they turn away when their eyes meet, as soon as he's about to greet them. i agree, more or less, with the sentiment, although i don't always act on it in practice. to be sure, i'd been the one who'd turned us away when the man we'd met those weeks before near the dart board at that other place had seemed to recognize us. it was less awful if we didn't see his face make the transition to familiarity. but then later i ask if he doesn't remember meeting that other guy that other day, and he says that we should put ourselves back in a position where we can say hello. because he hates that. i, i say, hate that we're going to force ourselves into a conversation. but he says that we'll just say hello and leave. because he wants to have friends here when i inevitably leave, he says. i turn to him slowly, and i quickly give him a smirk that smacks of a recent transition to too much familiarity. and then we go to the bar and say hello. the man from those weeks ago remembers us but doesn't remember our names. he is all smiles. and of course he wants to go to that other place and play pool or something with us, and of course we have to say yes, and not just because that other place was the place where we'd been planning to go after we'd said hello and left. these things are, of course, the things that always start with something like a friendly game of pool. but before we can get to all the other things we have to get to that other place and to the pool table to have that game, which turns into a few or several, during which i find myself proclaiming that of course there were nazis in the government of the federal republic. and when he tells me (after telling us about his three years in cologne) that my appeal to incontrovertible "historical fact" smacks of religious fanaticism, i remind him that (my cousin) his beloved chancellor is a representative of the christian democratic union. and so yes, the sovereign debt crisis (as the north has decided to term the fallout of its colonization of the south) is just german business as usual. i pontificate. we argue about extraterrestrial life. is the concept related philosophically to our perception of our happiness on earth? a tallboy of labatt blue is just two dollars, and so he still thinks the both of us are really cute. plus, he likes contention. and then there were three. that's what you get for saying hello. but at breakfast the next morning i don't have a puzzle so i have time to think, and all i can think, over the worrisome pound of my heartbeat and so far away from my soapbox, is that i can't be sure who it was who picked up whom -- although i was absolutely right about those nazis.

WATCHING THE RAIN IN SEVILLA...NUNCA MÁS (LE VOLVÍ A VER)

"se despertó de la siesta cuando jordi hurtado citó a nina simone.
 

siempre que escuchaba su música le recordaba a él. fue él quien le descubrió a la cantante negra un día gris de lluvia, mientras comían pastel de chocolate y bebían cerveza. comida de dioses, según él.
 

había días especialmente duros. sobre todo al principio. el tiempo lo cura todo. pero a veces ese tiempo tardaba tanto en pasar… y con nina era la segunda vez hoy que él aparecía en sus recuerdos.
 

la primera fue cuando salía de clase. mientras apagaba el ordenador, el retroproyector y las luces, pepe, aquel alumno que tanto se parecía a él, se quedó rezagado, esperando a estar a solas con ella y le preguntó: ¿de qué parte de galicia eres? a ella, no le gustaba hablar de su vida, y menos con sus alumnos. no quería establecer ese tipo de vínculos con ellos. pero claro, es que cuando lo miró lo vio a él. esa sonrisa, su boca, su ropa. así que lo primero que se le ocurrió, pretendiendo no parecer grosera, pero intentando esquivar la pregunta, fue decirle '¿y tú como sabes que yo soy gallega?' la respuesta sí que no se la esperaba, y menos la ternura de su voz: 'es que cuando hablas escucho a mi madre, que es de arzúa.' la dejó sin armas. se vio obligada a explicar sus orígenes. pero lo más curioso es que cuando regresaba de camino a casa, se sentía bien. cómo si la fugaz conversación con pepe, en la que le había mostrado parte de su vida y le había abierto retazos de su alma, la hubiera reconfortado. le había removido una parte de su vida que sabía que ya no se iba a repetir nunca.
 

cuando llegó a su casa rebuscó en el cajón los calcetines que él se había dejado allí la última vez que se vieron. le quedaban un poco grandes, pero se los puso igualmente. se acurrucó en el sofá y se quedó dormida con la tele puesta en la 2."

ay...tantas cosas. para no dejar pasar al ovlido. y para agradecer. 

THE 60th ANNUAL COLUMBUS INTERNATIONAL FILM AND VIDEO FESTIVAL (THE DAY THAT I WENT); or, COLUMBUS STILL SUCKS BECAUSE YOU SUCK

so maybe i'm a hypocrite. but there's a popular legend about columbus that i'm partial to repeating in hopes that it might improve my hometown's credibility...or desirability...or maybe just my own. and it goes: that as a result of the police raid of the stonewall inn in 1969 there were riots in three american cities, the first two being the obvious new york and san francisco, and the third being the almost unthinkable columbus, ohio. columbus considers itself to be very gay, and mayor mike coleman was the first ally talking in the video made to promote the stonewall community center that screened tonight. the center is a strong and storied fixture of the gay community in columbus, and if my memory of the legend serves me correctly, it even used to hold father-son bridge nights -- the mere possibility of which, as the son of legendary columbus bridge player, has been enough for me to perpetuate the legend. unfortunately, columbus isn't as gay as all that. or maybe it's that the homos here just aren't as supportive of the arts as they'd like to think. or, maybe, stonewall columbus is just falling behind the times. then again, the film festivals that i've regularly attended in portland and vancouver have always skewed older as well (and, truth be told, i never made it to as many screenings at the gay and lesbian film festival in portland as i would have liked -- although i was, to be sure, often deterred by the crowds). in any case, tonight's evening of lgbt shorts, a program of short films sponsored by stonewall columbus as part of the 60th annual columbus international film and video festival (the longest running festival in the country, apparently) was sadly, shamefully under-attended. and no, none of the selections were local; and maybe all the anachronistically hip young gays of columbus were out tonight supporting one of their own. who knows. and so maybe i'm a hypocrite. but i'd bet more money than my father ever won at bridge that there are more people at the theater now for the free weekly screening of "american horror story." what's to do? write out into the ether about some short films. gay short films. because there's apparently no one here who cares.

in short:

"i like my boyfriend drunk," u.s.a., written and directed by josef steiff

it's one guy in a kitchen with a window that looks onto a backdrop of tallish buildings. he talks with a twang. he's drinking a beer and he's opening one for his boyfriend (off screen). "i like my boyfriend drunk," he says. when his boyfriend is sober, he's "a stereotypical guy." but. when he's drunk he says i love you. "when you're drunk," the guy on camera says, "you turn into a real bottom." enough said. i dedicate this film to all of the masculine young professionals of columbus, ohio.

"coffee and pie," u.s.a., directed by douglas horn, written by andrew stoneham

i'm guessing that andrew is a man. so this film was intriguing because it's about a lesbians. more specifically, it's about a breakup conversation between two women, and the fact of their being two women is the only reason that this short could be considered an lgbt film. (do we know if this is a less competitive category for festival submissions? for the record, this year's lgbt shorts program -- which was either the second in the history of the festival or the second to be sponsored by stonewall, i'm not sure -- was competitive and judged.) the thing is, it didn't have to be two women. the dynamic (and the ultimate reversal) would have been believable between a couple of any gender or gender presentation iteration. "we need to talk...because i think i'm unhappy." "do you think or do you know?" not quite ad nauseum. because you realize that this short is about the power dynamic of the conversation, which is a conversation i had the other day (a conversation about the necessity of that conversation, that is). who is that talk for, and what is she expecting as far as a reaction? okay. that and a straight talking lady waitress named billy.

"alone with mr. carter," canada, written and directed by jean pierre bergeron

the jury chose this one. the director was in attendance. the lady who coached him through his q&a was really just stumping for the jury. they chose this one because there aren't examples of young men's (or women's) desire for older men (or women) in film like there are of, say, young men's desire for older women. ...aren't there? actually i couldn't think of any either. but it still just seemed like a coming out story to me. maybe it wasn't for my generation, and i didn't want to sound overly critical in asking why the director so consciously decided to set the film in 1994, the year of ellen. the year that gay ended (and the year in which most of the gay in columbus, ohio continues to thrive). mr. director had already confessed to having had a crush on walt disney as a child (which would have been nowhere around the time of ellen) and had related how the release of the film marked his coming out to an industry in which he had worked as a closeted actor for forty years. this is getting long. you'll probably have a chance to see this one somewhere else, though, so nothing else. wait. nothing other than that woman who looked like amy sedaris playing the protagonist's mother and telling him that she had replaced all of the pineapples in her collages with pictures of snakes eating mice. that and mr. carter's hilarious latina girlfriend.

correction: ellen came out in 1997. but i stand by my assertion that gay ended in 1994. (could bergeron be unfamiliar with bert archer?)

"the commitment," canada, written and directed by albert chan

the only non-comedy of the lot. super gay. i think that we were supposed to have been moved by the tenderness and emotional vulnerability of the two men trying to adopt a baby. they're two men! and they cry and sometimes get hysterical (...and without uteri! or else, you know, they could have a baby more easily). the message, though, is that these guys should just be happy that they have someone with whom they would want to have a baby. (some straight people don't have that!) ultimately, though, just hokey in too much makeup. seriously, when the one guy was crying at the end it was streaking. that and the birth mother (who ultimately decides she wants to raise her own kid). her story about her gay brother running away from home before her dad could kick him out was unexpectedly welcome after the opening. but the thing could have ended with that first conversation at the agency.

"el nido vacío," spain, venezuela, u.s.a., written and directed by francisco lupini-basagoiti

almodóvar does a short about a sex therapist who can't deal with issues of sexuality under her own roof. drunky slapstick in bright colors with a mecano soundtrack all over the walls. that and two shots of a huge, huge dick. enough said.

you decide what you're missing. columbus still sucks because you do. 

WAY TO GO OHIO, part 4; or, REWATCHING THE RAIN IN GALICIA

"columbus never came here, but when the city sleeps, what our dreamers discover is that we have always created our own collective inside joke, one still looking for a punch line, that begins with 'columbus never came here, but..."it goes on (and on, apparently). and i made sure that i walked us down broad street when i was walking back north with the illustration professor from the art and design college. he didn't seem to think it remarkable that the artist wasn't local (nor that the artist who had done the awful cutout sculptures for the plinths of the bridge down the street wasn't either) -- even after i made my reminder that the "finding time" public art project was supposedly mounted in celebration of the city's bicentennial. columbus wants to show that it's involved in larger culture, he said. and i, i told him that columbus might as well make its motto "we're not that behind." and i suppose that i had been setting myself up for it as i was waiting at the pizza place on 18th and oak for my call to karaoke to come last monday evening. i was sitting at the bar in front of where the bartender was circumcising the paper covers on the bendy straws. her former coworker (who it appeared had just been fired) was sitting one stool away from me. both of them encouraged my encouragement that he continue to escalate his raucousness. after he'd gone and one of the others who was waiting for the call to karaoke had come to join me, i told the bartender that the pizza place and its personnel dynamic reminded me of a place where i might have spent a little too much time once upon a time in portland. and of course she told me that i might as well consider columbus the portland of the midwest. you'd like that, wouldn't you. touché?

but now the election was over, there was some nice weather, and a lull, and that meant that i actually got around to immediately reading the paper that i'd lucked into after finishing my cold breakfast at katalina's on sunday. in the styles section there was an article on "finding the courage to reveal a fetish," and although the titular one was rather mild, i still felt warmed by the empathy and hilarity i would have shared with the author had i had the chance to tell her a recent story of my own. and then there was the "tour de farce" article in the book review about the book by tyler hamilton and daniel coyle on doping in professional cycling. of course, people, of course! but it felt nice to be in keeping with the times (or at least with the times). ...or was that nearly behind them? touché.

and in the magazine an article about the new economy as epitomized by the ace hotel and the battle for 29th street. feeling ill. then today, on top of the rain, i had a head cold, and i didn't feel like finishing the magazine article on inditex. "galicia, on the atlantic coast of northern spain, is the homeland of generalissimo francisco franco [as well as of mariano rajoy], but is otherwise famous for being a place people try to leave." my morriña. its paradox. get behind the times or get stampeded, columbus says. we've gotta get out of this place, all of us. (and, well, they're saying anyway that we might just be forced off this fiscal cliff.) but today was the perfect day for staying in bed and just reading something else.

WAY TO GO OHIO, part 3

"columbus never came here, but when the city sleeps, what our dreamers discover is that we have always created our own collective inside joke, one still looking for a punch line, that always begins with...," it continues. hopefully the joke won't be on us tomorrow when the heart of the heart of it all finishes up at the polls. all eyes on ohio. if somehow you hadn't heard: they're letting us pick the president. so, neighbors, expect us to call. expect us to knock. but for tonight it's karaoke. the not so calm before...whatever happens tomorrow...while far away at holocene, the site of the big election night party in 2008, tin house will be celebrating the release of its newest issue. "portland, brooklyn." you think you've been there, you say? and we all struggle to organize our reactions, caught off guard at having not been the first to jump (in writing) to that retrogressively prophetic conclusion. rats. if it weren't for the election, we'd have liked to have gone. what's important? the war of the culture wars. way to go, ohio.

WATCHING THE RAIN IN GALICIA

06/10/12 UA3542 depart CMH 6:40 a.m. arrive ORD 7:06 a.m. UA477 depart ORD 9:26 a.m. arrive PDX 11:41 a.m.

09/10/12 depart portland greyhound station 12:05 p.m. arrive grants pass 5:20 p.m. old ford pickup to fort freedomland (via the kerby mart) via the oregon redwood highway (number 199).

13/10/12 depart grants pass greyhound station 9:00 a.m. arrive portland 2:20 p.m.

17/10/12 DELTA9100 depart PDX 11:30 a.m. arrive LAX 1:52 p.m. culver city bus to santa monica/sunset blvd metro rapid to silver lake.

20/10/12 red line metro to union station flyaway bus to DELTA4678 depart LAX 1:59 p.m. arrive SFO 3:20 p.m. to BART to civic center.

22/10/12 DELTA9051 depart SFO 8:35 p.m. arrive PDX 10:13 p.m. (two hour delay)...rose city taxi to terwilliger and taylors ferry.

24/10/12 amtrak cascades depart portland union station 12:45 p.m. arrive seattle king street station 4:30 p.m king county bus 255 to kirkland transit center.

25/10/12 king county 245 to 255 to amtrak bus depart seattle king street station 10:45 a.m. arrive vancouver pacific central 2:15 p.m.

28/10/12 amtrak bus depart vancouver pacific central 9:00 a.m. arrive seattle king street station 12:45 p.m. amtrak cascades depart seattle king street station 2:20 p.m. arrive portland union station 5:50 p.m.

29/10/12 UA321 depart PDX 12:19 p.m. arrive IAH 6:15 p.m. UA4341 depart IAH 7:20 p.m. arrive CMH 10:54 p.m. (no delay despite the efforts of the edge of superstorm sandy).

and on october twenty-sixth, after at least three prior visits, i finally succeeded in being talked to by a staff member at solder and sons at main and cordova on vancouver's downtown east side. nonetheless, having already eschewed a book purchase that day, i considered it unfair to consider buying the copy of granta number 10 that was on the fiction shelves of the small store. travel writing. and "in this issue," just as it had started coming down outside, márquez's essay "watching the rain in galicia." but because of more immediate commitments, i only gave myself a moment to smile at the thought of shedding a tear at the title.

on the thirty-first (which was as early as was possible for me), under the sway of the urgent tone of that article in the next morning's article globe and mail, i voted. way to go ohio. or, i guess, we'll see. then i went to the library. i had a book overdue. but the main branch also had a copy of a book that included that essay.

"i don't know where the shame of being a tourist comes from," márquez writes. ...and i don't know how i feel about that statement. but it was better, perhaps, that i hadn't read the essay in that issue of granta, because even more than the author's observations on the galician rain -- and on the wind, "that sows the lunatic seed which makes so many galicians delightfully different" -- i appreciated the poem by lorca that this other collection had included as an inset on one of the pages. "it rains in santiago, my sweet love. white camellia of the air, shadowy shines the sun/it rains in santiago in the dark night. grasses of silver and of sleep cover the empty moon/see the rain in the street, lament of stone and crystal. see in the vanishing wind shadow and ash of your sea/shadow and ash of your sea, santiago, far from the sun. water of ancient morning trembles in my heart." and in those words by the poet from the vega of granada, my own (unknown) far away lament for the delightful galician lunatic i had met in andalusia. and then for everyone i had met there. and then for everyone i had more recently left. my morriña for all of the places i was already missing, and that which was even deeper, maybe, for all the ones that i hadn't yet been able to see.     

 

DOUBLE DOUBLE; or, CONSCIENCE BURN...AND REAL ESTATE BUBBLE?

when the bars closed early sunday morning, there wasn't a single cab to be had anywhere on main street in vancouver. i mean, there were swarms of cabs, they just weren't for the having. flagging was pointless, not to mention the danger of approaching the curb (let alone leaving it) and getting closer to the aggressive flow of traffic. the only vehicles with their top lights lit up were ambulances, and although they weren't as numerous as the occupied cabs they were screaming past regularly in both directions collecting party casualties, some of whom might possibly have staggered themselves too close to an unavailable taxi and been hit as they were trying in vain to hail a ride. zombies.

most everyone was in costume. vancouver, they told me, loves halloween. or, rather, vancouver loves costumes, they told me, and halloween is an easy excuse to indulge. as for us, we had indulged the night before and so were the exception on the streets when we went out. i had never seen so many people on the sidewalks of...anywhere, really, who were in costume simply for the fact of the holiday and a saturday. the entire city all dressed up and, it seemed for the most part, with nowhere in particular to go. so they went places. to the places that were available to them to go. and unfortunately that meant a long lineup of costumes outside of "hot one inch action," which meant that we didn't get the opportunity to trade any limited edition buttons -- or even see which ones had been made for the event this year. true, it's what we'd been looking forward to throughout the long afternoon aftermath of our indulgence the night before (including throughout the overlong only one mop cleanup of the toast collective where the dance party had been), but we hadn't come prepared to wait in rain with the characters of "adventure time."

it's easily possible that the gallery had planned this year's action for halloween saturday in order to make itself a place to get dressed up and go. it's also possible that the event had just gotten big. since i'd last visited, the city had been dressing itself up. maybe dubiously, but indubitably. gastown had definitively annexed the part of the demilitarized zone to its east/southeast and solidified its borders around a moodily gleaming design and lifestyle district. with the bulwark of chinatown pushing back along the vector of the opposite diagonal, the dmz had been squeezed essentially flat, into a cross of sidewalks with the heart of its squirming, dispossessed body at the intersection of main and east hastings, its feet milling up and down both sides of the latter as the street made its way through strathcona. the safe injection site at 139 hastings street east marks the edge of the western front at the bottom of the downtown hill. even the rents at the remaining residence hotels must be skyrocketing (not to mention that their old neon would probably look fantastic against refurbished facades and that they were likely already the subject of speculation). the panhandlers who had made their way through the architects, diner-shoppers and post-hipster tattoo artists all the way up to water street were panhandling for fives. but anymore, it's not so much the social services crowd bleeding back against the redevelopment push as the reverse ingress of the well heeled and costumed onto the sidewalks of the main/hastings cross that illustrates the tide of the conflict. from in between the grocery cart pushers, the junkies and the fawn legged prostitutes in miniskirts: the unmistakable drag of the contemporary young professional.

i had been driven by it a number of times in the past but had never before made it inside of spartacus books, which is located at the bottom of the cross across from the avalon on hastings as it makes its way through strathcona. on this visit, however, i made a point of passing by on foot during decent weekday hours. and on that friday noon i was part of the ingress (indubitably if maybe also dubiously), coming as i was from near the east van cross at clark and great northern way snapping photos (although i never got around to getting a photo of the cross itself). the non-profit, volunteer staffed store has a surprisingly large selection of journals for its size, many of them (of course) canadian and many of them (of course) with an obvious leftward lean. but there are poetry and fiction journals too. that friday, the staff was reorganizing the bookshelves, but i still found a used copy of the psychogeography collection edited by will self for under eleven dollars. inexpensive enough, yes, but too big and too heavy to have to carry around all day and then later have to pack with all the others and carry around for the rest of my trip. so i bought a magnet and a button as souvenirs, the button a bit of a crossword puzzle showing the words "mend," "melee" and "vneck." something for my lapel for the weekend, and good thing, since we wouldn't be waiting in the rain for the one inch action the next night.

afterward i walked through strathcona and onto main street from behind the train station, then up the hill to spend the rest of my afternoon looking for something signature secondhand that would be all the more special for my having not bought it in the states. from past experience i'd considered c'est la vie to be my best bet, but the woman there didn't seem to want anything to do with customers that day. luckily, i'd already found a vintage tote at woo when i got there and didn't feel at all put out by her inattentiveness. anyway, there wasn't a thing in the scaled back men's section that i wanted. plus, i needed to stop...although that didn't stop me from getting something else from the fancy thrift store on cordova when i'd made it back down the hill and into gastown. mercifully, my bandmate confirmed the advisability of the purchase when i met her back at the flower shop. an old piano key belt was definitely something that someone in our group would wear (offstage). we'd just been talking about the development of our new project the previous afternoon as we were making deliveries in yaletown and on granville island. rosehip & wax flower was a serious group about unserious shit. or something in between that and the other way around. unsarcastic songs about the bitterness of first world problems. "it's the sherry again." that was going to be the hit.

 

but sorry. it's the sherry again (or the warm lucky beer chaser). my canadian person costume got an apathetic reception at the toast collective party, but people were drinking enough that at least one of them was willing to overlook my obviously american half-effort to compliment the elegance of my vomiting into the bushes before i headed face forward for my bandmate's couch. still, the general canadian eye was on other mid-fall american high jinks that morning -- or afternoon, in our case, when we finally made it to slickity jim's. the focus article in that saturday's globe and mail was on the election in ohio. "like us or not" was the message i decided to imbue, take and project, but as soon as i was finished with the article i drowned myself in the blurb about the forthcoming book of illustrations by rené gruau, which was set below an almost full page reproduction of an illustration (probably) from the book. dress-up!

we hadn't planned to dress for the occasion when we left for the button event later that evening, but by early the next morning my bandmate and i were changing. at a bus stop in front of the train station, just several blocks from east hastings on main, i was going barefoot. if there weren't any cabs to be had and we were going to have to walk, she wasn't going to have to walk in the heels of those boots. so she went as a clown in my shoes, and i went as a survivor of the zombie/"adventure time"/young professional apocalypse happening on the streets around us, stumbling and laughing through another end of the world. then our third, dressed in a toned down version of the train robber's getup that he'd worn the night before, ran off to steal us the cab with its top light on that was headed into the parking lot of the station across the street. and none too soon. in the short span of the walk to where the robber was holding the car, i knew that i would have had a difficult time making it back to mclean in my costume.

the cab that took me back to the station five hours later had been on duty since just after we'd gone to bed. the underage parties, he told me to my surprise, were the worst. and the driver had another eight hours to go on his shift. i didn't have much time before i needed to catch my bus back to seattle, but i wanted the coffee. so i left the station parking lot and went across the street to the tim hortons on terminal way. give me: coffee. two sugars, two creams. i'd saved just enough of my remaining cash after tipping the cabbie. i should have gotten that book at the radical bookstore, but i really didn't want to carry it. that morning, my backpack was especially heavy, and i had another bag waiting in portland -- plus whatever i added to the load once i got there. so i crammed my great white guilt into my new vintage tote bag and doubled down on my double double. there was room in the tote because i hadn't made it to the cbc shop. and that was fine, i thought, really a very petty worry; that and the customs officer at the border was going to give me trouble as i was.

    

...CONTINUED

my train was late in arriving at king street station, and i wanted a coffee. i'd been late arriving at union station in portland myself and hadn't had time to get back to courier like i'd planned. the beginnings of a sore throat had helped me excuse sleeping in. because, anyway, i had already repacked. when, however, my train arrived late at king street station, i did want that coffee. the zeitgeist! and a (new?) roaster by that name just down the street. and then didn't force me to wait for a pour over. still, with the train delay and the detour i took to walk my coffee around the vicinity of pioneer square, i didn't board my bus until five. i should have gone directly to the transit mall from the platform, but i made my excuses to myself again and imposed. the good lady was waiting for me across the lake.

it wasn't until almost half past six that i dropped my bag in her hall. i'd imposed again after getting off the bus and asked to be excused to the restroom at the public library near the parking garage. hail mara, ever so full of grace. and after my bag was down she let me take the time to change, too, even though our canceled then remade reservation was for almost just then. but it would have taken even more time to cook. plus, we'd already re-excused ourselves the indulgence of the restaurant in the car, and as soon as she was home she was on the phone getting us back our table. time was short, but we wanted to enjoy each other within the limits of it that we had, so we didn't rush. i hadn't yet seen the house and took another extra moment after changing to take in the living room while she attended some work that had been kept waiting while i'd made her wait. above the birthday couch in the living room there's a photograph of me. i'm kissing her husband.

at dinner, i didn't join her in a prosecco apertif. the beginnings of a sore throat, i told her. but maybe i could get her sick, and then she could keep up with the escape by calling in the next week. and say (she said) that i think i caught something while i was having dinner with the man who wasn't my husband? so when our server came back before serving us our dessert to ask if we were celebrating any special occasion (she'd recognized my date but hadn't been able to locate her customer history), i made sure make my meaning clear in my response: she was married to another man. a smile from the greener grass on the other side of the table. so maybe we could have a candle or something to celebrate her husband. her husband who was doing a stint abroad.

between the prosecco and dessert there was food. i liked it. it was very likely very very good. the gay date in the corner looked to be of the sort that only went to restaurants with food like that. but what i liked better was that it lasted. the courses, which i could still enumerate but will say that i can't, whichever they all were, the fact of the food just helped us take our time, which was short, but which we were able to savor by drawing out dinner. with dessert we had coffee, like we'd used to. but this time we had decaf, because even though time was short we needed some of it to sleep. and at that point i lapsed for a moment and remembered that night at nopa. after dinner i'd had coffee, but he had opted for tea. my sore throat hadn't been beginning yet, so we'd both had a drink. it would have been nicer to have been less distracted over that meal, but i didn't let that thought distract me for long. she wouldn't have minded me sharing my thoughts, but i'd been in the middle of trying to share a different story. it's a good story, but sometimes it's nice not to have to live it alone. so we savored our decaf over some dumb shit that was just our wanting to savor our decaf. maybe we were quiet, but i think that we talked. talked quietly, maybe. (that's some dumb shit.) but we did whatever we did and drew it out until it was time -- not yet out of time -- for her to take me with her home. the night i spent, i'll tell the story, with the most beautiful woman in seattle. and in the morning, i woke up early, packed, picked up, and just missed the bus i should have taken if i wanted to get coffee before getting back to the station.
  

ANOTHER SUITCASE IN ANOTHER HALL

sans purses, packed for maximum efficiency. the white of my blaq backpack looks grubby even in the worst light. it hasn't been to the shower in a while. and it would feel like too much of an imposition to use his body wash on my bag. but by the end of it, the smell of every man jack in the bathroom that fights for attention with the smell of the bedroom on the other side of the hall will be my smell, too. (i won't impose myself on the more expensive shampoo.) my plain, grey travel sweatshirt (which i've become convinced is the mark of fine style this fall) smells like the combination of that dolce & gabbana (the one that reminds me of the dkny i wore in tokyo) and of jo malone orange blossoms, which i've alternated rubbing under the arms and around the collar of the shirt before each of my arrivals and departures. it must be really grubby too, but that doesn't much show away from the pilling that's happening where my backpack rubs it just above my ass. when, on monday morning, two nights after arriving, i first open my notebook to note some things about the weekend, the first thing i write is about the man at madrone on divisadero who was the only person really listening to the tired old new folk duo on the stag, but doing it dressed in my same fall styleway. his beard was shorter, his glasses blacker and his sweatshirt baggier, but he definitely could have passed. we'd gone to the bar to wait for our regular mezzanine table at nopa to open up. we needed hamburgers, and we could wait at madrone, but we weren't going to wait until the late night menu went on offer at zuny. then i write about how i'm wondering why that guy at the bar made my first note, ahead of our drive across the golden gate to marin at four on sunday morning or our ride along the east bay trail later that day...or even our date at the restaurant that night. or ahead of the mugging that we'd avoided on our way to breakfast that morning by just scowling and walking through those three guys in ski masks on hyde street between geary and bush. what fear or displaced priority was it that had me noting that other, almost insignificant man first? on satruday night, i'd happily danced with his friend in her living room at her husband's birthday party; and as he'd said at the donut shop after we'd driven back to the city from the bridge, we must have struck the city as quite the figure in tandem that whole night long (or had, that night, in common parlance, looked undeniably good in pants). all of this true. and after finally visiting city lights and finding the door of the center for the art of translation forestallingly closed (i left the building by the stairway and never signed out at reception), i had some time to think. hard knox. on 3rd. but that's not actually true. i brought him coffee and cookies from piccino first. (they were out of the flower-less orange cake.) then i went to happy hour lunch. time to think. but that's not actually true. i wrote some postcards, too, so my reflection might not have been as deeply probing as it should have been. or at least not inwardly. but after we'd taken the muni away from the only place to be in san francisco (according to travel + leisure) and back to where we'd started (and left off the first time); after our parisian goodbye against the rails; and after the second train ride between the city and the airport that i'd had to pay for as a result of my leaving my clipper card in the wallet i'd left in portland, my airline had the grace to delay my flight and extend me some time. which i used to do a bit of work. and to eat, because the airline had given me a food voucher. to distract myself, like the french guy next to me on the plane from lax who only took his attention away from the video playlist on his phone for heavy breathing, frantic forehead tapping and happily delivered reassurances from me as we'd landed at sfo. (i think he'd thought we were headed into the bay.) get back to work. come back to san francisco? fly, for the moment (and perhaps symbolically), back to portland. it was too late for the train by the time we arrived, so i had the airline write me another voucher for ground transportation. the taxi ride would be at least fifty dollars, i said, and the somewhat welcome delay had nonetheless not been my fault. as it turned out, it was $44.50 for the nearly seventeen miles, plus the one single i had for a tip, which i gave to the rose city driver with my apologies and in exchange for his reassurance that the airline would make sure he got paid. i needed to do the same. had i thought ahead to check the status of my flight before i'd gotten onto the train, i might have been able to stay in the city for another dinner. but there weren't vouchers for that. the time would have been borrowed as it was. it's no big deal, i told the driver, you really can just let me off here. i can find the rest of the way to bed on my own.

LALALANDIA; or, WHO THE HELL IS CARRIE BROWNSTEIN, part 2

it was a good thing that we didn’t run into each other during the couple of days i spent in portland between when the bus brought me back up from the lawless wilds and fire dangers of  josephine county and when i flew south a few days later. i made the decision to race that sunday in large part because it was sure to keep me out of harm’s way for the day in rainier. i did, however, flirt with potential disaster the next day in choosing the course of my ride, but lucky for the both of us -- and probably for the rest of the city -- the james john café is closed on mondays, and so i couldn’t stop to keep procrastinating there, even though i was having my flat fixed at the bike shop down the street. tuesday i either holed myself up in order to get back to work, or didn’t and did my best to get myself away from all of it and forget. needless to say i was happy to put and end to all of the panicked apprehension on wednesday morning by just switching her places. she could have the overdone (over and done) city that the aughts had essentially done for her so that all she had to do was show up and do it over. i was going to los angeles. it was sunny there. and hot, too, when i left the airport and stood in line for the parking lot c/city buses shuttle. by the time i got to silver lake where my big shot l.a. friend was waiting for me it had taken me more time to get between there and the aiport on the buses than it had to fly from portland. but i was enterprising and i’d already contacted a composer. i asked him if he could write me a song about a sweaty guy full of too much coffee on a two hour bus ride through culver city. of course, he said, so then i followed up with a question intended to confirm that he was famous, and he said seemed to be saying that he was working on it. (and i would have liked to have heard that song, too.) then he came back, with a rejoinder. and of course i was. the song was for my show, which was bound to be super popular because it was about me coming to l.a. and getting famous, so it was pretty much just an ifc serial comedy version of that new ben affleck movie, and there were already a million billboards up for that. it was also about a guy who goes to hollywood thinking that the idea of starry eyed midwestern kids moving to l.a. to make it in hollywood was just a popular myth that had been made up in hollywood. it was also about a guy who goes to hollywood and finds out that scientology was, apparently, a thing, and one of the episodes of the show centers a hilarious story that a starry eyed midwestern kid tells at a party about how he got mixed up and showed up to the church celebrity center in nothing but a pair of those mormon underwear hoping to ingratiate himself to some kind of kinky casting couch. but the thing is that it worked because that musical about the mormons was having such a great run at the pantages. also, guess what? someone had incepted me with the whole idea, and another one of the episodes would be about how the show was fake but the mission was real. meta-irony, like the bourgeois pig and the trashcan and all of the broke people faking it under the auspice of assumptions on the strip in franklin village -- only, like i said, the ifc version. could he write that song? but then i was on the strip and forgot about the soundtrack because there’s a sudden plot twist when the guy on the franklin strip selling the two principal characters a couple of last call cigarettes tells them that, yes, he will take a dollar because he’s more careful now about overdrafting his checking account. you see, his dad is a big money guy, and his brother does something with hedge funds. everyone watching will laugh when they find out that being sarcastically ironically poor is the new drunk (had been the new rich had been the new gay). in that episode, i tell the guy that the conversation is going to be in my show and he tells me that now i’m acting (which, in the show, the character playing me will be). the guy tells me that he actually has a script being looked at by someone that knows his dad, who is a big money guy, and his friend asks me in french if i can speak that. (not even on the show, i tell her.) but then everyone drops their lines because someone breaks a glass. cut. we should just shoot the episode where the jaded redhead bombshell is telling the story about when she rolled over in bed and crushed daddy’s cognac glass with her ass. then he kept drinking. there’s another episode in which i’m thinking about throwing it all in until an inopportune cloudy afternoon (another bus song) turns into an opportunity to walk across a deserted venice beach and frolic like a giddy toddler in a pacific ocean that i have entirely to myself. what? my show, i tell her. the french speaking oe. it’s kind of like that one that carrie brownstein does about portland, except that the overdoneness is exactly the point it’s making. so it’s actually eternally timely. or it can maybe ride some coattails and be the smart kid series for the people who live in portland and can’t stand that other show and won’t see the new ben affleck movie. or maybe it's just "girls" in franklin village. i don't fucking know. “but who the hell is carrie brownstein?” she asks me. um, duh. she’s a character in my show.

THE OREGONIAN FAMILY ROBINSON; or, FORT FREEDOMLAND: MARRIAGE OF NOT SO OPPOSITES

it was with trepidation that they headed southwest on the 199 toward the turnoff for takilma happy camp and the shooting spot...well, he was trepidatious as he was being driven, but she, the experienced shot, was probably just driving...although both caroline and christopher were proud to have announced the marriage of irony and barbeque sauce a short while earlier as they passed the restaurant advertising sushi, bbq and family fun. (although they had also passed.) and after he'd killed a can from...the fifties?...with a rifle from 1911 (and then sniped that elusive bottle on a fluke with the first of three test shots from the nazi gun they'd borrowed from ephysema tom), they found another can in the shrubs while they were picking up their spent rounds, alive and unopened but recalescent from the indian summer sun, and they stopped at the kerby mart before going back to the picnic table at the fort so that they could toast the marriage of hamm's and hot coors. the marriage of toplessness and hard labor, which had been scheduled for earlier in the day had been not so unceremoniously delayed because of the shooting expedition (and then further because of all the toasting), but caroline and christopher were proud to announce that it was tentatively rescheduled for the following morning. you want some? get some at got somes. what they didn't have was that coveted small town signature sweatshirt, because caroline must have thrifted all of cave junction fresh out. not at get somes, but christopher did manage a las vegas rodeo tee from one of the other stores, and in the light of the lantern, the saddle in the middle of the print didn't look too different from a diagram of the female reproductive system. in gold. and they laughed as they finished the next round of hamm's (recalling the thirty from canada and the thirty-six in the photograph from spain), proud to announce the marriage of outdoor urination and home cooking. it might not have seemed possible after those first two nights and days, but the spirit of camaraderie that floated with the smoke in the lantern light that third night was even more intoxicating than it had been when caroline and christopher had proudly announced the marriage of cat tattoos and illegal fire pits. when the shirt came off for the wood chopping on the morning of day number four, however, his tattoo had been, in the meantime, rubbed off or faded; but it was nonetheless with pride that caroline and christopher (she still in her shirt) announced the marriage of precious moments and filthy hands (but not of the filthy hands to the precious moments figures that they stole from aunt judy's junk store in morristown, tennessee all those years ago). everyone in attendance smiled and wished the couple well, and the light of their benefactions shone all the way down from the army tent on the slope at the back of the freedomlands to the reception offices in the airstream at the entrance to the fort at the bottom of the hill.

when anything with sirens tears past the kerby mart and through cave junction southwest down the 199, everyone within earshot looks up and goose necks. and the brotarians who hold their daily afternoon meeting on the patio of dos gringos are anything but the exception. the sheriff's building in cave junction is empty, and when it isn't raining, the cruiser in grants pass is usually sitting under a layer of dust. the residents of josephine county don't want to pay the gas. the situation might be different on the other side of the ridge in jackson county, in applegate where the mountain homos have their man camp, in the hot springs around ashland, but for the length of the 199 to the california border, the law is just the mountain man itself. or that's how they'd like it. and they like you. the law of the mountain man is inclusive. it passes the nazi sniper rifle, and it doesn't give a second thought to caroline leaving the truck to walk in the opposite direction of get somes and buy ammunition at the store on the other side of the parking lot. the mountain homos from the man camp on the other side of the ridge are welcome too. (it's a shame that we hadn't more closely watched the weather so that we could have organized a river swim.) and there i was in the middle of it, an esteemed friend of fort freedomland, lost in a place called america, where i could be a mountain man too. so i ventured a joke. the biker walks into the place with an alligator under his arm. he walks up to the bar and plops his dick out on it. then he sets the alligator down, and it bites down hard on his dick. after about twenty seconds, the biker pokes the alligator in the eye, it opens its mouth, and he puts it back under his arm. then he asks the bar if there's any one there man enough to give that a try. and i say that i will, i told them, just so long as he doesn't poke me in the eye. then i proceed, without a trace of trepidation.

GOODBYE COLUMBUS; or, PORTLAND IS BURNING, ALL OVER AGAIN

in the men's bathroom at the tip top lounge there's a photo. and it's screwed to the wall. i know because i'd thought about trying to take it at least once, on the occasion of my next visit to the bat after none of the photos of the leveque tower in the archives of the ohio historical center had been that one that i'd wanted. funny thing, though, that i'd forgotten about that photo until i saw it again on the wall of the living room of a friend. the framed digital copy that my mother had somehow produced for me to warm the old house, and that i had given to that friend of mine on the occasion of my leaving. and funny thing that i'd re-encountered that photo -- which shows a man in hat and suit with coat and briefcase in hand walking away from the camera across the broad street bridge toward the tower -- on columbus day, having myself recently re-departed from columbus. i don't know how the bridge looked back in the fifties (sixties?) when that photo was taken, and the photo doesn't give much indication. today, however -- or at least as of last month -- it's decorated at intervals with bronze plaques. "por castilla y por león, nuevo mundo halló colón," just a couple of blocks west of where the statue of christopher columbus stands in front of columbus city hall and a few more from where that dubiously conceived bicentennial public art project announces that to columbus the man himself had never come. but today, his day was recognized even in the rose city. and what do we have here? a confoundingly boring gallery reception for the wedding of two former ravers. downtown, later, dead on a saturday night. a revisit of the clyde that left us wanting more...although not in a way that would take us back. and then, the afternoon after, none of the stars that we'd expected to see at the season opener (although the moon rose early). old friendships, however, would seem to die hard, and the free pints that they afforded me on my columbus day rounds were indescribably appreciated after my first weekend back in the saddle, a saddle which, it warrants mention, should definitely have been ridden in padded shorts. but what of seville, and the perpetuation of the cult of columbus there? we're still awaiting the news. but in the meantime it seems clear: you really can't ever go home again, even if the neon sign that i gave to that same friend when i left the last time is blaring a hopeful declaration to the contrary over the dinner table. it's about time that i read that story by philip roth. "goodbye columbus." not that i think it has anything especially pertinent to say about our particular situation, but before this blog left portland the last time, i think i remember it having something to do with books. and whether we like it or not, the author might be about to win the prize. to the future. and to the possibility that the beers might still be free.

MR. CHRISTOPHER

mr. christopher said that he would make the sandwiches himself. for his mother had her work cut out for her. the grandchildren had gone off their hinges; their parents were coming. and then, thought christopher, what a morning -- fresh as if issued to children on a beach. what a lark! what a plunge! for so it had always seemed to him, when, with a little squeak of those shaky hinges, which he could hear now, he had discovered the cucumbers and the cream cheese and plunged at the crust of the bread with the window drawing his senses out into the open air. how fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a boy of thirty-one as he was then) solemn, feeling as he did, standing there at the open window, that something portentous was about to happen; looking at the kitchen, at the trees outside with the fog winding off them and the squirrels darting, changing direction; standing and looking until his sister said, “musing among the vegetables?” -- was that it? -- “i prefer men to zucchini” -- was that it? she must have said it at breakfast one morning when he had gone out onto the patio -- his sister. she would be back from the boondocks one of these days, next year or the one after, he forgot which, for her letters were awfully cryptic; it was her sayings one remembered; her eyes, her stilettos, her smile, her grumpiness and, when millions of things had utterly vanished -- how strange it was! -- a few sayings like this about zucchini.

and a picnic, off season, tea sandwiches, cake and sparkling wine. he was tipsy before they got there, and all the better for the color of the light, under which, for the fact of what the morning had given way to, the belatedness appeared well worth the wait.

what is this terror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. what is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement? it is i, he said. for there he was.