O ROTTEN GOTHAM, part 5

edie windsor decided to hijack the dyke march right ahead of where we joined it. we'd been waiting at the plaza that gives onto a view of the 23rd street corner of the flatiron building for probably two hours when we finally saw the vanguard of the march slowly pushing south down 5th avenue, and when the march had finally pushed close enough for us to get a good look at the banner bearers, edie and her parade crew stepped in front of them with their rainbow flag for a photo op. i had a camera out so i obliged them (and my friends), despite of what i later decided i thought about the image of the wealthy widow surrounded by her media and police detail under a banner that had been stopping traffic without permission down a manhattan thoroughfare inciting onlookers to raise their fists. the front of the march passed us, and i don't know whether or not edie kept marching ahead of it. for my part, i felt much finer at the center of the throng behind a crude cardboard sign that was lamenting the recently invalidated parts of the voting rights act while also reminding the marchers that marriage equality didn't equal queer liberation. a school age girl on the shoulders of a woman marching a few yards ahead of me had a drawing of what looked like it might have been lady gaga as the tooth fairy stuck to her back with blue tape. the girl (at the almost certain behest of the woman carrying her, who was wearing a sign of her own in protest of the traditionalization of her family) had written "democrazy" above the fairy's head, which i noticed for the first time as we were marching past the new school. i could speculate on which of them had the better chances for winning grand champion of the weekend (and among those only edie had made an appearance at the march), but it was humbling and inspiring just to have the overwhelming sense that everyone would be showing their sacred cows. i was humbled, i was inspired, and i was proud. the sheer beauty of the march kept stopping traffic, and we all finally finished the slow putsch to the park. jd samson overheard us making plans to head to the stonewall in from the bench next to ours but decided not to follow us there. we all opted out away from a picture with the fountain in the sunset.

we only had one drink on christopher street, because everywhere was getting crowded and because we'd had quite a bit of protest prosecco. we'd also stopped somewhere on franklin for an afternoon refresher before we'd left brooklyn to meet the march. before that, we'd put ourselves in the mood and in the mindset for debating edie's inclusion among the dykes by sitting down with judy chicago and valerie hegarty at the brooklyn museum. and before that we'd been at brunch, where there might have been more sparkling wine. (it was the weekend, and one of us at least was on vacation.) a little baby queen had been sitting next to us telling his female companion about how a friend of his, at twenty-six, should really be thinking about settling down. he could, feasibly, be marrying a boyfriend soon if he made the effort. and he wouldn't want to be one of those guys in his thirties creeping at the bars. but we had a full schedule, so i didn't want to take the time to tell him that he definitely didn't have anything to worry about from those guys in their thirties. they weren't looking at anyone like him. i did, however, give him my ass as i squeezed out from between our tables. to put him at ease. then we left, in a huff of our own questionable privilege and dubious inclusion, but nonetheless with our fists in the air.

O ROTTEN GOTHAM, part 4

the night before the morning on which i didn’t find an airbrushed tee shirt of a crying clown smoking a blunt at coney island, i went to the doctoral student’s place. he was still awake when i had finally made it on foot to bedford and dean from the wythe hotel (where i’d succeeded in making the portland transplant djing the rooftop party uncomfortable by my surprise appearance), and his relationship was still open at just past midnight that night. i don’t remember what he told me about what he’d done for pride weekend, but i do remember him telling me that he wasn’t teaching any classes over the summer. because he was studying for orals. then i remember there was some really great rimming. like i told the man himself after i’d looked over his bookshelves: i don’t know anything about poetry.

a couple of hours later, after i’d made my graceful (and classical japanese-ly poetic) exit, i stopped to ask a couple of girls on the street how many streets i had to go until i got to halsey, but they didn’t know. (they were out of towners too.) and the man on the bicycle riding slowly next to them trying to start up a conversation must not have known much of anything, because he obviously couldn’t read that one of the girl’s shirts was telling those of us back on bedford at two-thirty in the morning that she liked vagina. the other girl should have probably been given away by all of her rainbow swag.

the four of us must have seemed a funny little parade of our own to the no one paying attention until i spotted a couple of cops and walked ahead to have them tell me that i was already several blocks past my turn.

i hadn’t gone to the official parade earlier in the day because it had been time for everyone to finally make it to the beach. the last time i’d visited we’d all been too lazy, i think. so instead i’d just cut my lip on an oyster shell and let it bleed over two bottles of wine and a heaping sunday special plate of commiseration. this time, however, i was full committed, because i’d already trekked all over midtown to find myself a bathing suit that would be worthy of a hard femme towel fort. so we got on the train, got off the train, got some provisions and a terrible chocolate muffin, got back on the train, got off it, asked directions to the bus that was going to the gay beach, got directions, got on the bus, and got off the bus to see that you couldn’t even see the ocean from where the bus stopped at the beach because the weather was so bad. but when we were settled at the encampment we took of our clothes anyway. because we were at the gay pride beach party and we were going to have fun. the fuzzy tall guy who had given us directions to the bus stripped down too, but he and his friend were sitting too far away from the fort for me to fully appreciate him. i swam, and the ocean was rough but surprisingly uncold. i stumbled back up the beach, and the sparkling water back at the fort was perfect.

then i saw someone. i hadn’t tried to get in touch, even though i knew she was living in brooklyn, and it was probably unlikely that we’d just run into each other on the cloudy beach that day, but i wasn’t surprised that we did because we’d always just run into each other wherever we were whenever we happened to be in the same place, the last time at a bookstore on the other coast (maybe). before and after she’d gotten her graduate degree in poetry in missoula. (we’d never run into each other there because i’d never been to montana.)

she was one of the few topless queers at the party without a surgical scar. i told her that i was finally doing something about those old conversations, and she told me that she’d finally found someone to let her live in that empty place in the hasidic part of williamsburg that she’d been after. i should have gotten the address so that i could have gone to see her there before i had to leave on the chinatown bus, but i told myself that i didn’t need to just then because i’d probably talk to her again before we left the beach. but that wasn’t how it happened. and i don’t think that i’ll ever get her a copy of that spivak chapter on translation, probably so that we’d always have reason to keep running into each other. a buildup to dirty looks. for the moment, just eye rolling. the parade-goers could have their palatably planned families, and we, we would occupy this swathe of unwanted cloudy beach in our tiny swimsuits.

until the rain started. then we went back for the bus. and then we caught a second one instead of retracing our earlier steps via the train. but we should have dealt with the rain and waited for the express. the local was something else, and there was an announcement about the streets that had been closed in manhattan because of the parade. i didn’t want to hear about it, and i wanted the bus to go faster: not so much away from that beach, but definitely toward the promise of the evening, which wasn’t even anything very provocative. people like poetry, but this slut just wanted to get laid.

O ROTTEN GOTHAM, part 3

that monday morning i took the train to coney island. it wasn't a day for the beach, but i needed to go to get a tee shirt. the airbrushed one of a sad clown smoking a blunt that i'd seen on the venice boardwalk. the clown looked like jim morrison, and i'd get text written below his crying face that read "mcdonald rules." it would make the perfect gift -- even if she was expecting it. unexpectedly, however, i didn't find a single airbrush tee shirt stall. it wasn't a day for the beach, and touts at the carnival games on the ground between the cyclone and the wonder wheel were just starting to shout out across their empty alleys as i was heading back to the train station at two in the afternoon. ("try your luck!" and "bump your ass off!") i saw the sign counting down the seconds until the next fourth of july hot dog eating contest, and i ate a chili cheese dog at an affiliated counter that faced the beach. it had been raining intermittently since the morning, but the worst of it all was still the humidity. the local trains platform of the nostrand avenue station served by the a and the c hadn't smelled nearly as bad as it had over the weekend, but it still sweltered. on the q to coney island i shared a smile with a woman across the aisle who was also fanning herself in her seat. commiserations and desperations. at least we were getting out! too bad though that i couldn't get that shirt. there were places selling commemorative tees, but if they didn't have to do with hot dogs, then they were just more of the depreciated cultural capital of the borough, designed and pitched to the middlingest of the middlebrow (come for a hot dog but leaving now with a portable banner of breukelen kewl). i left with a coffee and a bag of dunkin' donuts.

i'd talk about killing time at the discount carts outside of the strand on broadway, or about buying lottery tickets at the newsstand where the man behind the counter sold me the magazine from the previous day's newspaper for just a dollar, or about how we won a little bit of money playing bingo scratch offs at the izakaya on st. mark's place after the coffee place we'd designated as our meeting spot was closed, but i've gotten distracted by these drag makeup tutorials on youtube. the show at fuel last night got me thinking. what better way to mark the prodigal summer of an f-list celebrity hobo? full circle to an airbrushed tee shirt of a crying jim morrison clown smoking a blunt. and we've already got a concept for our gowns -- as well as a business plan for selling vintage tee shirts at midwest street fairs. the vintage arcade (+ bar) wasn't open (and was far from being open) after we'd checked out the competition, so when we'd finished loitering in a nearby parking lot and the police copter started poking around, we did our best to get involved in a manhunt. then later we accessorized prostitution. and a stoned jim morrison clown wept. mcdonald rules.

O ROTTEN GOTHAM, part 2

none of the boys of the smartphone chat boroughs came through on their offers to take me for a run in prospect park, so i went for one on my own. i wasn't not going to make it before i had to leave on the chinatown bus the next day, and that next day in the morning i needed to do laundry.

on my way to eastern parkway i saw a nice pair of black dress shoes in a free box, but i didn't come back across them on my way back toward bed-stuy. i did, however, easily reencounter the library, and i decided that i'd go back there with my coffee to catch up on my correspondence if the cute guy with the missing mandibular incisor wasn't working at lincoln station. (then, i was almost back to the intersection of dean and bedford before i decided that this other one was a stalk that i shouldn't pursue. ...for dealing with the poetry post grad, a veil of night seemed more poetic.)

after i'd showered and made it back through crown heights, the boy was not, in fact, there where i'd left him -- smiling -- behind the coffee counter, so to the library i did indeed go.

that evening i met my friend in midtown as she was finishing work so that we could go together to the high line. we walked up and down the northern half of the park from nineteenth before going down for the end of happy hour. "broken bridge ii" by el anatsui had still been hanging on one of the walls between twenty-first and twenty-second. i'd been introduced to the artist's work at the brooklyn museum when we'd visited there after getting coffee from the boy with the missing mandibular incisor a few days before, but because we hadn't gone any further than the entrance to the botanical gardens we hadn't gotten far enough down eastern parkway for me to find the library (although i knew, theoretically, about the entrance to the park).

over manhattans (because you can be sure they'll be boozy) i told her about the public library experience in brooklyn. sitting next to henry miller, i'd caught up on some correspondence, but then i'd run out of cards.

other things to do at the brooklyn public library: pace, laugh loudly at music videos, have a twelve count variety pack of chobani yogurt while arguing with someone at an information desk about internet access. and not have the book i might have been looking for if i'd had more time to stay at the library and read it,

(we got back up to do most of the rest of the high line before it really started to rain, and one of her bodyguards stepped in at the last moment to take the glob of spit that i spat at cher.)


"walls reveal more things than they hide." -- el anatsu

O ROTTEN GOTHAM

the intercity chinatown bus is full as a tick with humanity. (and the new yorker would have us believe that more likely than not it has late stage lyme disease.) i don't think it matters whether it's coming or going, or where it's coming from or going to. it has its characteristic stink (which is peculiar to each of its different collections of passengers), but as compared to other means of transportation on and off of manhattan island it could definitely smell worse. of more immediate concern for me, however, in the late evening of that third of july, was that the chinatown bus to columbus would probably be free of the rain and the rats that had made it too difficult to enjoy the very end of the end of my sojourn to the city in nearby seward park. there'd been a rainbow over la esquina in soho after i'd gotten through the end of the end of my goodbyes and then had waited out the ensuing downpours in a convenience store around one corner and then under some scaffolding around another; but by the time that i'd made the not-so-long walk to where the bus would be stopping on canal street i was soaked well enough with sweat and the magic was fading. it had been too hot -- and i'd been too tired -- for manhattan before happy hour. instead: a brooklyn laundromat, some dog walks, and some goat (bone) curry by the pound from a jamaican jerk buffet on fulton. i hadn't had it in me to stomach any more confused, latter day brooklyn exceptionalism at the organic italian steak house (i think he'd called it) down halsey back in bed-stuy, and there on canal i didn't have the wherewithal for another shirt change at another cool kids bar. so i went to the park to wait until i'd be able to board the sky horse. but the rain had started again by that point (and all of the surfaces where i might have rested my bags were already wet anyway), so the park turned out not to be an easy place to be with my luggage either. it was, however, a great place for piling trash, and the rats there liked that. mostly i couldn't see them until they were almost on top of my bags because my glasses were misted over with sweat fog. there's air conditioning on the chinatown bus, but only when the bus is running -- and the bus doesn't run until it's full. it gets hot in there with all of that teeming humanity, but you don't want to have wait for the mythical second bus. i was already sweating through the shirt that i'd changed into under the awning of the bus depot, but i stayed put in the open seat that i'd found next to a briefcase that was eventually going to be ousted from its own. seats aren't assigned until they're oversold, after which point they're designated out from under anyone who isn't on that first bus when the latecomers climb the stairs. that vitiate tick has its best in a designer handbag, and the rest in the plastic garbage bags that clog the overhead storage spaces and the aisle. it had been too hot -- and i'd been too lazy -- for manhattan before happy hour. sit tight! the bus starts, the air comes on, and the worst is over -- if you can fall asleep.

the bus went all the way to cincinnati (via dayton), but i didn't make it there myself until a couple of days later. and there, the day after the party, before heading to the contemporary arts center across the street we ate fancy tacos and drank white wine sangria while calmly discussing the boutique hotel next to the museum that had forced two hundred low income residents to relocate from the affordable apartments that had been allocated to them from the ruins of the rooms of the old metropole (the 1920s glory of which developers were sure they could restore). to keep downtown burning hot! let them eat art! the humanity...munch, sip, munch. o rotten gotham: your ruthless intransigence has had a painfully wide reach. but the pork belly in the tacos is, admittedly, hard to resist when you've had a taste.

SUMMER FUN SUN BUZZWORD BEACH COCONUT

"squirrel! ...don't eat THAT!" she bolted up from her chair beside the paper press and was screaming as she ran out of the house. but after she'd made it out the front door and onto the porch she might have been screaming mixed messages. "that isn't FOOD!" she shreiked as she pelted the squirrel in the mimosa tree with squirrel food. but there was the desired effect, and the beast dropped the rose. a neighbor tried to pass unnoticed along the sidewalk on the other side of the hedges, but i could see her through the big bay window that frames the rose bush under the mimosa tree as she quickened her pace. summertime, and the living is...distracted. and it tries to go unnoticed. meanwhile, all kinds of things are passing the cat palace by, but i haven't been paying much attention, whether i notice or not. i guess that robbie rogers can expect me in l.a. now. and i guess that everyone else can't expect much. distracted, i can't read books, because the theft of these stolen magazines needs justification. which happens in a chair on the lawn, on the opposite side of the walkway from the mimosa tree. i get sweaty, so i take off my pants. photographs. the neighborhood. later i'll get the pants back out of the freezer and press them so that they're perfect. i'll walk to the door of the bar imagining the looks, then i'll turn around, walk back to the palace, and carefully put my pants away. maybe i'll pick up a book. me, one hand, and the other one for anaïs nin. artists and models... goodbye, world! hello summer. pick me up at lax so that i don't have to take the bus to hollywood.

DISPATCH: PROPOSITION BIENNALE

"So, the Biennale is fancy, right? Every country sends an artist or two to represent its best creative minds. It's hosted in several places around the city, but primarily the ornamental gardens with these permanent buildings for each country.

1. Spain was first, of course. The magnificent art in their building was in the form of three piles of stupidity. Wood chips, dirt, bricks. BRILLIANT!

2. Belgium was actually great. I have been affectionately referring to the singular, huge piece in their building as "Meat Tree," which is pretty much what it sounds like: a huge, huge fallen tree sculpture made to look like it was cut from a thousand animals and held down with sand bags.

3. United States. Organized office supplies. A lot of string.

4. Israel. YES. Most impressive was a film of several people sculpting their own heads out of clay. These heads were monstrous and insane. One middle aged woman shaved her head, put the hair on her sculpture-self, put clay all over her actual face...and screamed into the microphone that she violently jammed into the clay head. SURPRISE TWIST! Everyone violently jammed a microphone somewhere into their self portraits! And they all moaned, cried, screamed, gurgled, whatever, into the microphone as the audio portion of their portraits -- in this film. THE OTHER video was of a fucking DJ remixing their moaning...endlessly. The third part was the actual sculptures, which were in some corner and absolutely not the point of the exhibit. And the final part was a giant fucking hole someone dug into the floor, and who knows why that was there.

5. The Etsy Pavilion, which is almost certainly not actually called that, was pretty great. Inside, a wealth of weird doll houses, a print of a fishsnailicorn, a huge mural that includes a skeleton flipping the bird, someone's sketch of their dad in drag, and some other shit I took pictures of.

Today and the next couple days are sort of the pre-party for this thing. It's all press passes and critics. Uma-Thurman-in-Pulp-Fiction haircuts with white linen tunics and big beaded necklaces, all of the mercilessly expensive glasses intentionally made to look cheap, all of the haute couture blazers in awkward sizes, all of the avant garde uncomfortable shoes, huge expensive cameras and film crews, self-important conversations about art left and right, exclusive promotional materials... AND YOURS TRULY AS THE REPRESENTATIVE FOR MIDWESTERN SLOBS WHO GET WEIRD IN HUMIDITY! I spent most of my time pulling out my weird little tourist camera and blocking the shots of the professional photographers for The Times or whomever. They loved that. But! Then it became clear that there were press packs! GUESS WHO DOESN'T NEED TO BUY EXPENSIVE ITALIAN SOUVENIRS ANYMORE!!! I went around scooping up all the swag bags and fliers and offending everyone by wanting their fancy goods for no reason. I have four tote bags with weird phrases on them so far, and I hope to get more.

The best part was actually leaving. A guy who looks like *****'s dad in a construction vest and ball cap silently hands you a tiny flyer with random letters on it. About fifty feet later, an identical man TAKES IT FROM YOU QUIETLY AND SPEEDILY AND BY FORCE IF NECESSARY. When you look back at them to try and understand what the fuck just happened, you can seen that the backs of their vests list the letters on the flier, one matching it, the other in the opposite order. My secret hope is that one of these men was actually *****'s dad. If so, dude, I am sorry your dad is so into rewarding people with material goods and then stealing away their brand new possessions almost instantly that he came to Italy to be an art about it. Growing up with that kind of values probably fucked you up pretty bad. (But seriously, that was the best, most simple, impressive, effective piece I've maybe ever seen. I watched them do this for a while, and the concept of give and take outside the gates of ALL OF THE PRIVILEGE and ALL OF THE FREE SHIT was fucking brilliant. People were really confused and annoyed, or conversely super entertained.

There was also an Indian guy lighting spaghetti noodles on fire and putting them in a row on the ground very, very carefully.

I found tiny, crustless tuna sandwiches with olives for two euros each, in a sort of cafeteria place that looked like a set for some kind of Pee Wee Herman nightmare. I ate three while I listened to some rich old lady talk about board meetings and traveling and charity events and lighthearted upper class problems about pretend stresses. I was really happy to see that her bajillion dollar white leather Prada jacket had some kind of red shit from the table all over the sleeve that was definitely going to stain it forever.

I came back to the apartment and almost immediately ate like twenty dried apricots in the bathtub, so I'm probably going to shit myself pretty soon."

recap.

THE LOST WEEKEND

every room of the cat palace is filled with top notch stuff that i could pawn, including, in fact, a veritable visual chronology of the development of the typewriter. plus, the big old house with the big old everything and the precipitate servants' staircase that shoots you straight up from the cats' bowls in the kitchen to the hallway that gives onto their four second floor rooms, well, the block it's on has been run back up in the past several years, but it's only several blocks' walk to the pawn shops on main. not so far to have to carry, say, an old underwood. still working, friend! but i'm saved that ignominy and the more daunting excusing of it that there's no way i'd be able to excuse when the time came later, because the kroger in the brewery district has six packs of keystone light on sale for three ninety-nine through june two. that's four twenty-six with tax, which i know because that's the number on all the receipts in the pile. after night number three there's a man in the alley digging for cans, and he saves me another uncomfortable excuse by accepting my pile of those. the cat palace is haunted by an insomnia ghost, and the alley is haunted by her attendant early morning trysts. there's a line of variable thickness that winds its way around exultance, reverie and concentration, and its unpredictable course makes it difficult for me to make progress with foucault. luckily, i'm saved by the shelf of violette leduc in one of the cases in the room with the canopy bed. she comes with me when i'm chased by the ghost to the bath, then she attends the trysts. the cats get morphine or bathwater. i get more keystone light. on thursday evening it felt almost like fall was setting in early, but by tuesday morning the stick of summer had come back heavy over the rose bushes in the front garden. when was their scent more rarified? amber and lavender. the to the right, across the highway, there's the inviting ramshackle of what's still left run down in olde towne, which would be nice for a ramble, but not at night. take a book in the afternoon, maybe. to the left, the junior league grows peonies for all the vases on the block. past that, the topiary garden and the main library. frustratingly, they don't have a copy of charles jackson's book, and hindsight is making that look like the perfect read. hindsight, pathetically would-be. a typewriter through the window. no excuse, but i've got time until i'll have to make one, and i'll save it.

OLD WORLD UNDERGROUND WHERE ARE YOU NOW? part 4; or, HOW TO PREDICT A RIOT

after the pre-party, dinner and digestifs, there wasn't any question that it was time to go out for a beer. and although a pint (or two) of anti-hero would probably have been better suited to the tenor of the weekend as it had begun (and had been planned to continue), the revolution taproom was well out of walking distance from downtown, and it probably would have been closed by the time we were able to make it there otherwise (if it weren't closed already). haymarket, however, wasn't too far, and our hope for its association with a bit of radical history had its own special appeal. too bad, unfortunately, that the pub and brewery seemed only to have been named for the neighborhood, the name of which didn't seem to connote much anymore. i flicked off a taxi. there was a wait if we wanted a table, but we could seat or stand ourselves anywhere we wanted in either of the bars. at the end of the hallway with the windows that give onto the brewing tanks there's a quote from brecht. "theater without beer is just a museum." go left to the bathrooms; the bar is to the right. and although there's a bookcase full of books on political economy and performance next to a battlement of mixing boards and other sound equipment, the people in the bar (and in the adjacent second dining room) are all acting in a different play. in which the high school cafeteria gets off work and goes for drinks, as the poet observed. so a single beer each was all of the show we could take.

in the morning, the race was run without event. or: there was the event itself, with more than a few of the participants running to wrigley field for boston, but there weren't any bombs. we screamed, drank our complimentary kefir smoothies, and left. myopic books appeared to have disappeared or relocated by the afternoon, so there were three dollar breakfast cocktails under the damien stop of the blue line. there was ladieswear and there were art books. the illustration for which the artist hadn't been paid was just out in the magazine that i wouldn't buy for twenty-five dollars. i might have stolen it if i hadn't respected the mission and the mainstay of quimby's. i did want it, because it probably won't see an issue two. but... or, then again, i'd probably just gone soft, like wicker park. and the bloody marys couldn't have been very strong, because after three i was still well on my way to lake view. powell's didn't have either of the books i had wanted, but, luckily, they'll always have something i want. when it was time to meet for dinner, i'd been lost for long enough that i felt completely renewed. some respite. some sweet potato fries, a feast of seitan, and a vegan milkshake. afterwards, the one of the book stores we'd planned to visit on broadway was closed, but all of the design firms turned coffee shops and coffee shops turned designer were still doing their things, the thing that everyone's doing. and if i hadn't been encouraged to make good on my talk about crashing the wedding, i probably would have just put myself to bed.

so i went back to the room to change instead. and in the time it took my hair to dry i picked up the party where we'd left it to chase our disappointment in haymarket. then i went to dance, but my heart wasn't it. the high school cafeteria off for the weekend and come to pat backs around the open bar. and i was too full for cake. but worse, when i left the ivy room to pick up the glitter trail (to the fun to which i should have acceded on my way to dinner) i couldn't find a trace of it anywhere. so i helped a kid from pilsen find his way to where his cousin's boyfriend was spinning instead. and then i smiled as i was leaving the restroom and said that i'd had enough to want any cocaine. with the glitter trail lost, the city was the freehold of the closeted judges and the horny nows. until someone threw a bomb. and the sirens screamed. and a taxi swerved. and i flicked it off. then the driver rolled down his window and complimented my suit, to which unexpected approbation i responded by stepping back up onto the curb and dropping my pants. curtains! then, out of his cab now, he handed me a beer. here's to hoping! because otherwise it's all just a museum.

OLD WORLD UNDERGROUND WHERE ARE YOU NOW? part 3

at second glance, the lady at the drive through window at the starbucks on chili avenue in south rochester did not actually have a haircut that i like. but it was okay, and she'd done it herself -- which is to say that she'd stuck herself in rochester of her own volition, and although she didn't answer me when i asked her where she'd come there from, my bandmate answered our dykey barista la roux resoundingly when she asked us if we'd enjoyed the area. we made her an invitation to toronto, but she didn't take it.

i wondered, however, if she'd taken my debit card when we stopped at a perkins just past the border and i went in to use the toilet, not buy anything and realized it was gone. i might have noticed earlier if i'd tried to buy any of the postcards that i'd seen at the rest stop outside of niagara falls (our last minute run-in with rochester's last hope had been on our second coffee drive through, and the band was peeing a lot), but it's also possible that that's where i lost the card, in the parking lot when i remembered i'd wanted to take off my top layer before getting back behind the wheel. it might also have been at any of the toll booths along the highway in new york. but whatever, i'd just leave a credit card at the front desk of the hotel to cover the incidentals, and i'd call the bank after getting upstairs, where i would have already all but forgotten that barista.

toronto isn't the new york of canada, and i say so not to dispel any impressions that might be popularly held about the city, but because i found a comparison to be too simply multifariously made. new york is the new york of ontario, just like london is the london of spain, and although the tate and the reina sofia bear no comparison, london and madrid have them both, and both of them have the art gallery of ontario if they're willing to go to toronto. and although toronto may variously resemble both vancouver and chicago (which resemblances resemblances, for the record, aren't its unlikeness with new york), we only had twenty-four hours (during which we never went to the art gallery), and there simply wasn't time for making comparisons.

undeniably, however, toronto is a city of the sort that bears comparison with cities like new york, vancouver, chicago, madrid and london, and i say so only because of the glad day book store on yonge, which is where we decided to walk as we were walking east away from the thompson hotel toronto, the fashion and the gallery districts. there used to be a book store like the glad day on high street in columbus, until columbus decided to use what became its better gayborhood (i.e. nascent arts district) to try to become nothing more than becoming other cities. (ironically?) but fittingly, the glad day had sarah schulman's the gentrification of the mind on its featured display shelves, and everywhere else the shelves were filled with the sort of theory, photography, journalism, fiction and smut that used to distinguish an open book on high. toronto is a city like the rest of them, the likes of which haven't been seen in cities like columbus ever since those cities (ironically?) gave up on themselves and started trying to be like the rest of them.

there were other book stores i would have liked to have visited, but we only had (now less than) twenty-four hours, and before we could be concerned about being hungry we needed to be concerned with dressing ourselves for the rooftop bar and beyond (where the city would probably still have made sure that we had a good view of the cn tower). unfortunately, the queen didn't seem to have anything special prepared (although, granted, we didn't give her very much time). we didn't have much time for rest or freshening up back at the hotel, but we made what we could before going back out. and we hadn't made any inquiries into eateries in the area (or beyond), so we ended up sitting down in the bar at weslodge. (could she help us, the hostess had belatedly asked, and i'd told her that we were hungry, had seen a restaurant and so came inside.) the place wasn't bad, even if it was just a late, taxidermy-ed clyde common in custom leather tablet holsters for the wait staff. we had the beef tenderloin and the cornish hen. (i wasn't feeling the clams. they sounded okay, but...) and i might have preferred a roast chicken in little portugal, but at any rate i had the consolation of the conversation of those better heeled portuguese at the tables adjacent to ours and in the stools in front of the beards behind the bar.

what's else to say? touch down, look around, everyone's the same. but you know that dancers are disposed to fucking well. and so after we overpay for some bottles of steam whistle, bad service and a view included in the price of our room, i leave the band to enjoy the hotel and make my way to college and ossington. in the absence of the artist -- and without time to be concerned with finding bruce mcdonald and maureen medved, scott pilgrim or the arts districts so inspired -- i was happy for some fun. some easy vulnerability. courage and belonging, to the sticking point of an absconded community. and after the dances of three disco oracles and four hours of having fucked well, i left. o espirito santo on college. back to the hotel because we needed to check out in the morning, after which i only got one postcard written (all hail ms. toronto!), but we did eat arenas, because they're delicious and they're the new things to eat. then we were out. that was it. and toronto had been like any other city, although it was certainly not the new york of canada, nor the chicago, london, madrid or vancouver, bundle of high rise plate glass art galleries or not. but you play where the tour takes you. and who you are is who you'll be: the best haircuts, as they say, are taken.

CAPTIVES OF SEXUAL ABERRATION

the band, five hours after being pulled over in willoughby, ohio, pulled into the parking lot of the lao thai restaurant on university avenue in rochester. after the owner finally figured out reconnecting his credit card machine, gay uncle fester let us stay parked in the lot of the restaurant while we walked through the "neighborhood of the arts" to the bachelor forum. empty. so we walked back past the art cathedral at the memorial gallery, where the seminarian we spotted up the stairs and down the hall from the set of locked doors we tried turned out to be a cater waiter. on and off the inner loop, a police cordon, and the wrong way down all the one ways. kodak. xerox. genesee. motel 6 and little caesars. visibly parked, making late night money at the hess. art attempts everywhere, but they don't seem to have done much for the stuff. the original boomtown bust. but you play where the tour takes you.

OLD WORLD UNDERGROUND WHERE ARE YOU NOW? part 2; or, WAY TO GO OHIO...SERIOUSLY, WAY TO GO

one of the two susans who occupy the beautiful 3rd (?) floor space at the rear of the building at 26 north 3rd street in downtown zanesville is working on one of her (primarily) appliqued, quilted and embellished fiber art pieces, and at the center of the panels of the piece (still yet to be quilted) is a big, black, volant, wool crow. so i interrupt her, because i want to ask while i remember. we'd been walking, he and i (he, the artist, and i, who, well, just like art and stuff), from downtown to destinations as yet unknown the night before, and we'd decided not to take the y-bridge because it was a shorter distance to where we thought we might be going via underwood street, which is state route 60 until it goes over the muskingham and becomes adair ave and state route 146, and the north banks of the not so world famous underwood-adair (60-146) bridge across the muskingham are overflowing (you might say) with giant trees. i couldn't tell what kind of trees they were that night because we hadn't gotten into zanesville until after eleven and it was dark. but i could tell that the trees were giant, and that they were dark too. actually, i hadn't been paying any attention to them at all until we had already started crossing the bridge and had made noise enough to wake up several hundred of the crows that had been roosting in the giant corona of branches of one of them. the crows scattered, and i jumped into a crouch behind the artist's back with my hands gripping his shoulders so as to brace and direct him as my shield. so we decided to talk more quietly, even for our amazement at realizing that the giant trees had been so dark because they were roosted with thousands of tens of thousands of crows. (the bridge was tall, and it was literally up to there with them.) because if we upset any more of them there was the chance that the sum of the drama might get the artist pushed over the railing and into the muskingham.

we walked, then, not in silence, but in whispers: aware, and in awe, but not quite frightened. we did walk almost frighteningly close to the birds in the treetops that were closest to the bridge, but none of them moved and no one fell. then we were on the other side of the river -- moved maybe, but thankfully not fallen -- and we turned right off of aiden (which actually doesn't turn into 146 until 60 turns right at maple) and onto linden. that's where the internet said the bars were, and those bars was where we were headed because the internet hadn't had anything to say about things that might be happening downtown at close to midnight. we passed the first two of them and passed on both. the third looked okay, but we passed on that one too because we wanted the first place we went to have, if possible, more people. surely zanesville must go out to bars...but maybe it didn't go out to the ones on linden on valentine's day? and that's how we ended up at the blue front cafe. it's just a half a block up and across the street from the third place we'd passed, and at least (our thinking went as we passed the window next to the door) it was crowded.

at the blue front cafe we ordered a couple of bud lights, and we might not have stayed for more than those first ones if we hadn't met lisa. lisa was with a friend at the jukebox. the kj (lisa told us later that there was karaoke at the blue front on thursdays) had stopped playing dj, and a man who had been sitting among some patrons at the bar when we came in was now behind it and was yelling for people to play some music, buy some drinks and have some fucking fun. i don't know if we spent enough time with lisa to decided if she was fun. she was definitely something else. and she was definitely looking for fun (although her friend, who was just as conspicuously stuffed into what little she had on in addition to her scanties, was apparently just looking for songs). but when lisa found out that we were into art and stuff our conversation (which up until that point had only been between lisa and the artist) changed course. our beers were almost gone and lisa wanted to buy us more. it was our choice, she said (chirpy baby voice), we could leave if we wanted. we didn't necessarily want to leave, but we didn't feel comfortable taking lisa's money. we did, though (take the money, that is), although we didn't end up feeling bad about it because lisa helped herself to a couple of bottles from the crate on the bar when the bartender had taken a couple of bottles himself and had ducked below the bar to restock a cooler. she put them up on a ledge on the wall where we were standing near the jukebox and only needed to ask us once, indicating the ones on the ledge (sideways, chirpy...drawl?), if she could have one of our beers.

that night at the blue front lisa was wearing a giant red bow in her hair that either did or did not perfectly match the intersection of the persona she was presenting and the one that we presumed upon her. otherwise she was wearing stretch pants and a zane state t-shirt. she's a student, and despite or because of her age she assumes that everyone else she meets is a student too (although maybe, to give her the benefit of a probably unreasonable doubt, that's only at twelve thirty on a thursday night). lisa is forty-seven years old, and she'd never stopped liking art (and stuff). she got her associate's degree from the art institute of pittsburgh in 1985 and then moved to columbus, where she stripped. then lisa probably stole the tv. now she's back in zanesville and back in school. she's going to transfer to franklin, and she's going to be your therapist. she just moved her painting studio into her bedroom so that she can wake up and just be, like, fwaaaahhhhh! but in zanesville you can only really make money doing commissions, she says (and does the artist know what those are?). someone asks you to draw their dog, and you're like, how do you want your dog drawn, you know? that's why she's going back to columbus. and she just moved her painting studio into her bedroom so that she can wake up and just be, like, fwaaaahhhhh! you know? she was incredulous that we would have come to zanesville just to see zanesville. we asked her what there was to do, and she told us to check out the mall.

she also told us that if we were looking for fun that night we should hang out with her friend, because her friend knew how to have fun. at the blue front i thought that she'd said his name was trevor, but when he shook our hands at the goat (across the street, the third bar from before), he introduced himself as matt. he wondered what we were doing in zanesville, and he was incredulous. he wondered where we were staying, and we told him the econo lodge downtown. he told us that he lived downtown, and we asked him what was happening there. everything happening downtown happened at the econo lodge, he said. but it turned out that he wasn't just a motel whore. the bar there was apparently where they did all the live music in town. neil patel had suggested it when he was checking us in, but we hadn't gone because we wanted to make it further than there before there was nowhere else to go. it was half an hour before last call when matt suggested that we join him et al. back at his place. nothing weird, he said. (but he said it really weird.) we asked him about the crows, and he told us that zanesville is just where the crows came home to roost. it's probably difficult being the only one in the village, but matt didn't make it too easy for us to want to follow him anywhere (and i should underscore that sentiment by saying that at that point we wondered if matt or someone else from the blue front might follow us if we walked back downtown alone).

but we walked back downtown alone. we passed the other two bars that we had passed on before, and then we passed through the intersection of linden and adair without turning, which took us past two other bars. we decided that the lone woman playing keno inside the first one must have had an in and kept walk. terry's was obviously already closed. we kept making our way, crisscrossing linden to make sure we kept walking on a sidewalk. the factory at the end of the avenue (an old grain mill?) didn't appear to be operational. the light on in the basement storage (?) room lit up piles of trash and detritus. the artist counseled me against kicking the charity of out potential horror story too hard in the mouth by going inside. so we just let the world famous y-bridge ease us over the confluence of the licking and the muskingham, past the canal -- where we didn't press the flashing green button that was begging us to push it -- and onto main street, where the sheriff was doing laps. romance.

in the morning, we woke up and then went back to sleep. we didn't make it to the econo lodge bar, and we weren't going to make it to breakfast. when we checked out at a minute before noon, neil patel (who lives in a suburb of columbus himself) asked us how we'd enjoyed our night. had we been to weasel boy? i'd told him the night before that after years of driving through it on interstate 70 and seeing the churches and the courthouse from the highway, i'd only ever thought to visit zanesville after finding out that the brewery there made a beer that i liked (after finding out that there was a brewery there, really). (it was a version of the truth.) excuses, excuses, and all of them welcome. i told neil that we hadn't really thought about going until today since the brewery would have been nearly closed by the time that we would have gotten there the night before. so we'd be going that day after it opened at four. and in the meantime we could enjoy the city, neil said, maybe go to the mall.

we went to muddy misers. it's on another bank of the muskingham, across the river to the southwest of downtown. the restaurant is zane grey themed. (the author wasn't the city's namesake, but he was descended from the zanes.) when heidi the waitress asked us where we were from and why we were visiting, we told her something of a mix between what we'd told lisa, matt and neil patel. she was incredulous. but weasel boy didn't open until four, she said, so maybe we could go to the mall.

we left muddy misers and went up the hill toward pioneer park instead. the view of the city from the very top of the hill was probably even better, but the one we got from where we couldn't drive the car any further wasn't bad. we thought that maybe the park was closed for the season, but then we saw that the pedestrian ingress to the side of the driveway was permanently fenced off. (maybe we would have had better luck staying on the other side of the river and trying putnam hill.) the flight of cement stairs that led up from the brick apartment building at the front of the hill ended in chain link. we three pointed around and went back down into town via the crumbling asphalt drive in front of the apartment building. halfway down i asked the artist to stop. it did look like the little pool of water might have been part of a decorative waterfall or a fountain at some point, but it didn't look like anyone had paid any attention to keeping it circulating for a while. someone had, however, put a dozen or so thumb sized gold koi into the two inches of water that had accumulated in the two foot indent that was still in the dirt. and someone must have put them there just that day? someone should have told us about that.

we drove the three miles of state route out to the mall, but neither of us wanted to go in, so we drove back into downtown.

it was good, though, that we went, because the way that we went back in took us right by the muskingham county welcome center. maybe someone there could tell us what to do with our next hour and a half. the snow that had started falling was rainy, and we weren't much for walking around and finding something for ourselves just then. unfortunately, the woman at the reception desk told us, most of the museums were closed. and the churches were hit or miss. they didn't have regular hours for tourists, and it wasn't really the season for going around and knocking on doors. we did, however, get a guide to downtown that briefly described the histories of each of them, and we got it because i asked about one church in particular. it's christopher columbus, the woman at the desk confirmed when i asked her about the facade of st. nicholas. and yes, he has his foot on that native american's neck. the church was much older than i'd thought, and it sounded like the ceramic tile mural had the inertia of history behind it. zanesville, after it was the state capital, came to be called the pottery capital of the world (until it wasn't), and there are big, painted urns all over town (some of whom look like women lurking behind entryway pillars and smoking as the sheriff passes by again in the middle of the night). the internet had also told us that downtown was home to an artists' colony, although neither i nor the artist knew exactly what that meant. but at the mention of it a man came out from a back office and gave us another guide, with a map. he'd just come from studio 202 and told us that the susans should still be there if we wanted to stop by.

when we got there, the one susan was down on the main floor talking to mike, and the other was up in the loft. we looked at the art. then mike left, but not before giving us directions to his old studio (he was in the process of moving) and telling us that he would put out his flag. the space at the rear of the building at 26 north 3rd street in downtown zanesville is beautiful, and the space at the front is being made into apartments. we got a tour. the late middle aged professional artists of the artists' colony are gradually taking over more and more of the unoccupied spaces downtown and turning them into places like studio 202. the city's first friday art event is getting more and more popular. they may not spend the night, but people from columbus (and maybe from pittsburgh) probably visit the city to shop the (expensive, pottery heavy) antique stores on main street all the time. it needs more than a little work, she had told us, but there's a four story building downtown on sale for twenty thousand -- in case we were looking to relocate. i wanted to know about the crows. but the susan working on that fiber art piece with the crow in the center of it didn't have anything in particular to say about them. the banks of the muskingham are, apparently, just where they come home to roost.

the snow had gotten snowier during our time in the studio, so we decided to make our visit to mike's brief. (but we should at least go to say goodbye, we figured, since he'd been nice enough to make a point of putting out a flag.) i was cautioned against taking photographs of his paintings when mike saw my phone in my hand, but i did get one picture of the old masonic temple across the street through a window of the studio and the snow. mike explained to us how he paints with asphalt. i learned, in many ways, about lability.

when we left mike's the snow was coming down even thicker and had accumulated even more, and downtown zanesville looked entirely different than the place into which we'd followed the y-bridge the night before. it was a few minutes past four o'clock, but we went to take another look at the muskingham county court house before we went back across the river to the brewery. it has public restrooms with outdoor access, and you only have to press the button to get out. the court house was the ohio capitol from the fall of 1810 until the spring of 1812, but against my experience of zanesville i prefer to imagine that its more interesting history has been the one that decided to take up matt on his invitation that night at the bar. maybe the sheriff has been involved too.

across the river at weasel boy we run into one of his friends from the night before. he says hello and pats me on the back. i have a growler filled of the bitter sable imperial black ipa. the view of downtown through the window of the taproom and the snow is dreamy, and we've decided to spend the first hour or so of happy hour there. the snow looks wet, and it will probably be easier to drive through on the highway after it's been driven over for a while. i think that we maybe should have tried harder to get to the mexican restaurant where lisa works, but i also think that maybe we shouldn't. then i think about what we'd done instead. the canal had been frozen when we'd driven across it last. those fish we'd seen on our way down from pioneer park had never had a chance.

STAR POWER; or, WAY TO GO OHIO, part 10

the wexner center for the arts is undeniably something. and -- it should hope -- columbus will always have that. through the 30th of december, 2012, its gallery displayed annie leibovitz's master set, a collection of one-hundred fifty-six photographic prints selected by the photographer herself to document the story of her legacy. the daily mail reported that leibovitz hadn't intended for the set to be a show, but that the idea for a show at the wexner center just clicked. it is, apparently (this also by leibovitz's word), a legendary place among artists, and it was the place that, apparently, came up with the idea of showing the set. not surprisingly, it was the first place to have shown it. not being an artist (or what the wexner center considers to be an annie leibovitz, anyway), i hadn't had a sense of legend myself, although i suppose i wasn't without an inkling. about a decade before i went to see the master set at the center i had seen issey miyake get an award there (the award from the wexner center, the wexner award), and a few years ago i had been to see that andy warhol exhibit (remember other voices, other rooms?) when it was up at the wexner as its only stop in north america. and i'll admit that there was a special something about standing in front of a print of leibovitz's portrait of warhol next to the same friend with whom i'd experienced the portrait of warhol put up those few years ago in the same gallery. and that, although the moment with warhol itself may not have been the stuff of legends, might be the best way of describing the experience of the master set. i don't know that i'm a particular fan of annie leibovitz. in particular, that photograph of scarlet johansson that the wexner center used for its promotional enlargements is not a favorite of mine (neither among the photographer's other work or among photographs at large). but the master set is about contexts: the context of the set, the context of the artist and the context of her subjects. like her or not, annie leibovitz is famous; and both by definition and as its result, annie leibovitz has had access to fame. i liked leibovitz's photo of linda ronstadt because it was a picture of linda ronstadt. but i wouldn't have known if i hadn't been told by the placard -- although you might have, simply because people might know this particular photo of linda ronstadt by annie leibovitz. no part of linda ronstadt's face is visible in the photo, but because we know that the subject is her, we look at the photo and think that the picture of a woman in hose and a romper-nightie sprawled across the hastily made bed while she fumbles for something on a bedside table is so very linda ronstadt. wild chicken-and-egg goose chase: had linda ronstadt always conducted herself to make us see her this way, or did annie leibovitz decide just what people would be seeing of linda ronstadt? why do i have the reaction that i have when i know almost nothing about either figure? the stuff of legend. and the thing about annie leibovitz is that, regardless of whether she was photographing a decision by linda ronstadt or she was making a decision about linda ronstadt on our behalf, the most important thing is that annie leibovitz got to be there. the one-hundred and fifty-six portraits in the master set are a portrait of annie leibovitz, both assertedly and implicitly so, and each one is essentially just a photograph of something being photographed by that one photographer in particular. their various stylings are just the famous personae of the famous artist. it's only because you've taken the time to stop to look at a very possibly unremarkable photograph of linda ronstadt that was taken by annie leibovitz that you then have made the time to see and to remark that the pattern on the lamp on the bedside table is almost identical to the pattern of the wallpaper.

fast forward and rewind. this past weekend i was in cincinnati. and although i wasn't there specifically for the exhibit, i wanted to see a specific exhibit there before it closed. on sunday, we drove up through eden park to the art museum at just before noon. unfortunately, the exhibit was at the taft museum downtown and was ending that day, so we couldn't stay to take advantage of everything else that we hadn't gone specifically to see. fortunately, the taft is free on sundays too.the exhibit -- which i'd seen advertised on the back of a bathroom door on the last day of a visit to the queen city in december (and before i'd been to the wexner to see the portrait of leibovitz) -- is also collection of photographs. star power: edward steichen's glamour photography. on the bathroom door advertisement that i'd seen there'd been a picture of greta garbo: that most famous one, the one on the cover of that life magazine from 1955. but as it turned out, that photo of garbo was taken by steichen in the twenties, and it was originally published in an issue of...vanity fair? steichen photographed for both that magazine and for vogue, and back when the both of them were under the relatively recent redirection of condé nast. does that say anything? condé nast himself said that he'd wanted to make taste for the taste makers. to deliver to his advertisers, out of those millions of americans, the one-hundred thousand who mattered. the other poster image for the exhibit is a closeup photo of the face of gloria swanson, taken with the intercession of a black lace veil. that famous photo. of the famous gloria swanson. steichen also photographed marlene dietrich, joan crawford, fred astaire, katherine hepburn and gary cooper. winston churchill and amelia earhart. who knew anything about june maccloy from toledo, ohio? but we find her famous in the taft because she was photographed by him. he also did high fashion photography, and the placards explained, without nuance, the nuances of his techniques. the blackest blacks and the whitest whites, and every necessary piece of lighting to make sure they appear as they should. the important parts of a celebrity portrait are the most obvious features. they should stand out. the enduring stuff of legend. fay wray is best known for playing the female lead in king kong, but steichen photographed her as ophelia, the role she never played. one of his most famous photos, one of the placards says, is neither of john barrymore nor of hamlet, but of the latter being played by the former. what the placard forgets to assert (although maybe it's understood implicitly) is that john barrymore playing hamlet was being photographed by edward steichen. which is the most remarkable? what are these silver screen and other legends? who is it that has and keeps creating celebrity? condé nast's elite empire hardly survived the first depression, but the legacy it imparted to edward steichen has been inherited by the legendary photographers of the present. the master set, annie leibovitz's glamour photography: one-hundred and fifty-six figures playing themselves being photographed by annie leibovitz. i have another invitation to the wexner center for this sunday. supposedly it's free that day too. i haven't even looked up what's showing, but i don't expect it to be the stuff of legends. nonetheless, i'll go and i'll see something else where i saw annie leibovitz's portrait of the legendary artist of whom i'd seen another, different portrait in the same place. hmm. in that other leibovitz photo, linda ronstadt's romper-nightie is red, but i doubt that anyone cares.

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.

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, 

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.

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.