In Portland tattooed baristas pull espresso shots in between couldn’t-be-bothered glances and talk amongst themselves. And for a lunch, a vegan eats a curried tofu dish made with fish sauce; he finds the detail easy to ignore. The world is full of people with nowhere to go and everything to get done. In kindergarten class the kids color their skies grey.
During the week, Shelley peddles pharmaceuticals and saves her commission checks to move back to Chicago. She’s sick of the rain and sick of the sensitive beard rockers who never return her text messages. Brian lives in the Alberta Arts district and collects Japanese comics. He makes his own wine at a custom crush facility downtown. Brian sells his private label, Toon-Out, to a few friends but gives most of it away to the girls he meets on Craigslist.
Skinny Steve makes short films on his handheld cam and edits them on his laptop at a microbrewery in the Pearle district. Steve aspires to take the film festival circuit by storm. Benji grows lots of facial hair and roasts coffee for a living, writing songs every body dreams of. Meanwhile, for a nominal fee Brad will produce podcasts for eBay users. Katrina pretends she can play the piano and writes commercial jingles; her heart is a worried thing. There is so much to do and she rushes through her day worried about the big quiet that awaits her every night.
Moppy-topped, funky-spec clad ladies named Orlando work in health food co-ops and carry hello-kitty lunch boxes and paint their nails with glittered polish. Orlando will turn thirty-eight in a week but doesn’t look a day over twenty-three. Her boyfriend drives an old Golf with a converted bio-diesel engine. They have a pet rabbit named Italo Calvino. There is so much to get done.
Eliza owns a vintage shop on S.E. Division and holds a bi-monthly Betty Paige burlesque show for women only. Rick owns his own business building and repairing fences and drinks with his old Vietnam War buddies on Wednesday nights at the bar with the cheap drinks and the familiar faces. Andy wears a purple leather jacket with a matching purple helmet and rides with scooter buddies every Friday night for happy hour. He makes blow-up turkey balloons with surgical gloves he steals from the medical offices he cleans at night.
As seen in the Willamette Weekly, a local paper, a hippie-goddess seeks female models for creative nude outdoor shots and an esthetician at the Soft Serve who goes by the name Beaver Believer is offering Brazilian bikini waxes for only $50. In Portland, gourmet waffles sandwiches and super-sized bento is sold from food carts set-up in empty lots throughout the city and the donut is high art. Hipsters in skinny jeans and black hoodies stock organic produce at the grocery store and think about clever names for their electro-folk-pop bands. In Portland believers are everywhere.
It was over today. You were over me and I was over you and it all felt so completely, over. My mind raced through the picture book of memories, flipping past morning smiles, evening kisses, and heavy laughter pouring out of our bodies like lava. We were never going to fight. We were never going to share angry words. We were in love. We were going to be the first couple in the history of couples to never, ever, ever argue. And then it happened. Continue Reading…
A banner strewn across the storefront reads, “Snack Nasty Week. Get it While it’s Rotten!” The sign has been up for over a month now but whatever. I’m not the market slogan patrol. I need a crate of fresh mangoes and I’m willing to deal with nasty snack displays of moldy sourdough slices dipped in expired sesame oil in order to get my fruit. Super Fantastico Mart loves irony.
It’s already ten minutes past the time I’m supposed to meet Horse. Continue Reading…
The deceptive thing about pairing is in the word itself. To pair implies a sense of compliment. But we all know pairings come in all sorts of flavors and sizes and not all adjoining parties obviously compliment one another. We taste, we touch, we feel, we smell, but most of all, we take into consideration the most important factor when deciding if “this good” or “this bad” in any given situation, and this factor is obviously our sense of self delusion. Continue Reading…
“Clean-up on aisle nine.” A nasally voice interrupted the low drone of soft rock tunes that I was humming along with. “Can we get a clean-up on aisle nine, immediately please.” The second time around, the voice on the intercom spoke louder, enunciating each and every syllable.
Simmer down, I thought to myself. What’s the urgency at eleven o’clock in the evening on a weeknight? Continue Reading…
Beginnings are not always a romance and a romance is not always true love. Everything in between consists of groceries picked up along the way. I stare at a jar of kalamata olives with cornichons, pepperoncinis, and all things otherwise cured. Then, lingering in my peripheral vision, a guy passes. I look over at a leggy guy with an infectious grin and we exchange smiles. Continue Reading…
Cinnamon is a spice. A spice I put on toast. I rarely use cinnamon in the form of a cinnamon stick except for the festive mug of hot cider. I rarely decorate my beverages. Well, I dash them with spice but I use nutmeg. Some rare occasions my beverage gets hit with a packet of pink or yellow, one of those cancer causing sweeteners. It’s fitting that I decorate my soy latte with a touch of cancer. I live life on the edge. Continue Reading…
I pick my groceries according to weight, since I have to walk home with them. Men on the other hand, I pick according to who will take me home. In my twenties, I was taken home by many a dude at the toothpaste-scraping income level; struggling would-be musicians who razored open the tube to scrape out every last bit cavity-fighting formula. Groceries and love can get expensive on different levels. Continue Reading…
