Crows flap up into the blue sky & I'm just cruising down this bright street, hungover & happy.
posted by jeremy on February 09, 2004
I purchase my delicious dark beverage from one of the more beautiful baristas at the Fresh Pot & step outside to snag some sunshine. Sitting on the walk is a familiar face though I can't place his name. "I know you, right?" I ask him. "Yeah," he responds "My name's Jeremy." Jeremy. Tough name to remember, I think, mentally kicking myself in the old ass. He's my ex-girlfriend Rachel's newish boyfriend. "Hey, good to see ya." A hello & a goodbye all wrapped up nice & tight. I sit down & crack open Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, an excellent chunk of science-fiction that resides somewhere between satire, pseudo-realism & Saturday morning cartoons.
A few minutes later, Jeremy approaches me & ask if he can ask me a personal question. Rachel-talk, I think immediately. "Shoot." I say. "Did Rachel ever tear you apart?" He inquest... & I just laugh. She's just chewed up another boy, this strange hobby of hers. He's sad, fucked up, bleak face & so I talk to him for a while, trying to help out. He describes to me his last month or so. Going back east to Boston with Rachel, then coming back to Olympia with her where they were promptly snowed in together & where apparently she turned on him, maybe not just him, but the entire amalgamation of concepts & principles underlining his very existence. The poor fucker.
Yes, I tell him, Rachel did try to dissect me, attempted to disassemble me like a frog in an 11th grade anatomy class but shit, man... I never took it serious. She's rarely worked a day in her life, spoiled east coast brat that she is. She's got a sharp tongue, witty as hell, eager to analyze anything overly much, especially those creatures right in front of her (such as boyfriends & roommates)... but she's living on a different level, in a far more affluent, much safer world. Plus she can't spell worth a shit. Don't dwell on it. Write her a letter, a venting, explaining, pissed off kind of letter & send it, then move on, quickly. You can't win. She's a stubborn bitch & a Gemini, slippery, full of snakes & duplicity.
This is the gist of what I told him. Some of these things, though, are why I still like Rachel, spoiled art-brat that she is. I'm a Gemini too, full of snakes, duplicity. I feel a strange connection to her still. Maybe it's not that I like her but that I respect her & her, me, I think. We had a relationship based on antagonism & it didn't work but it was incredibly passionate at times, no matter how negative that passion happened to be. Rachel's a beautiful girl with an intellect like a box cutter, bringing down high-flying planes if your intelligence agencies aren't careful. Given enough years, she might grow out of some of her issues & begin to comprehend that the universe doesn't revolve around Rachel, god-hope.
This is the gist of what I didn't tell him.
The sun slips & I'm moving on. I buy some new brake pads from the bike shop down the street, all the while gazing longingly at the uber-hip goddesses floating about & then, resigned to another night of masturbation, I mount my steed, take off, dodging idiots in cars. I swear people are driving worse everyday. It's like watching drunk chimpanzees try to pilot the space shuttle. Total disaster at any given moment.
I ride to Whole foods, I mean New Seasons, uhhh, Natures, err, Wild Oats or what-the-fuck-ever & lock up my bike, pet a dog. I return Lost in Translation to Hellywood Video, rent another called Tokyo Eyes cause apparently "This Japanese-French coproduction expertly combines the post New Wave French filmmaking with the exuberance and surgically precise detail of contemporary Japanese vanguard cinema. From breathlessly urgent start to shocking finish; TOKYO EYES is an unusually authentic window into the dispossessed youth and street level fury that seethe beneath the neon radiance of Tokyo after dark." I'm sold, rent it to me, baby.
Next, I hit Natures itself. I grab a carrot, a tomato, a yellow onion, a jalapeno, a lemon, a 12-pack of Pabst (as ever) & nothing else. Pretty in Pink starts playing on the store radio & as I start singing along, sad array of produce in hand... 'Caroline talks to me softly sometimes. She says I love you way too much...' & then I spot Monique, boy in hand.
Fuck-shit-damn, evasive maneuvers required.... Monique (Mentioned briefly in Shrike 2) is a coffeshop crush from way way back, when I first moved to PDX. I met her in a... yeah, coffeshop. The Fresh Pot in Powells on Hawthorne, to be exact. (I go where the action is) & I made my introduction by writing a poem about her in the margins of a newspaper & then dumping it on this beautiful girl's table on my way out, telling her that she "...should check out the article on page eight. It really applies." I also wrote my phone number down & guess what? She called & guess what? We became friends & not a thing ever happened but alas, so be it, I was damaged goods anyway, a total wreck. But somehow, over the years, we lost contact & whenever I see her these days it seems to be to a song of inexplicable trauma & right now is no different; Here I am, singing along with the Psychedelic Furs, bopping along & here is Monique suddenly & we both completely panic, I can sense her freaking out, edging slightly behind her boyfriend, hopefully out of view & I know I'm fucking panicking though I don't fucking know why. I just keep my eyes straight ahead, keep singing, walking, ignoring & once past, I head straight for the checkout aisle... Gasp.
...Where I get in line behind the ex-roommate of an old neighbor-girl (Beautiful bike messenger but also a Reedie which 9 times out of 10 = Insane) who I once had a crush on & seemingly, vice-versa & who also, eventually, for some reason, decided that I was an asshole-freak. (It was probably the time I got really drunk & went & pounded on her bedroom window at 4AM asking if she felt like hanging out. I was completely baffled, at the time, at her irritation but I think I get it now.) & we too, politely ignore each other.
Sometimes, when I think about it, you cannot meet anyone in Portland who isn't but slightly removed from your prior or current situation. Lets say that you meet some nice new girl but it isn't long before you find out that she's your best friend's ex-girlfriend's roommate who fucked your co-worker's now-ex-boyfriend at some party last fall & that, my friend, is where your co-worker thinks she got her genital herpes.
Portland is an incubator, an incestuous maze thru which one must walk with a certain amount of trepidation... or else.
I get out & unlock my bike, pet a dog. As I'm pulling my bike out of the rack somebody screams in my ear: A horrible violent yell... & it takes every bit of my precious control to suppress jumping out of my very thin epidermal layer. Amazingly, I don't twitch at all. I slowly swivel to find a pissed-off face staring into mine. A ragged black dude, looking a little cracked out maybe or maybe just full of hate for my own white skin. I don't really know but we just lock gazes & time expands. I'm trying to radiate something & so is he. I know what signals I'm sending. Fuck you, ear-yeller. You think I'm just some scared kid? Wrong, bitch. Walk on. Or else. But despite this snap reaction, I want to know what his deal is, why he would yell in the ear of some stranger, is he OK? Time blossoms back to normality & he strides past me, out into the parking lot. I watch him go & get over it, this coda, quite quickly. Maybe he was just a wandering Zazen master, I think, waking up fools.
Fuck all, ride on.
I get back to my house intact. Check the messages, clean the kitchen, shake out the bathroom rugs, start my laundry. I ponder my day while listening to the Spinanes. The sun begins to set & I open my first beer. I go downstairs & begin to write about nothing.
I begin to write this.
