Close Your Eyes. The Dark Outside Can't Hurt You.

Everybody, take a minute to appreciate the fact that I’ve only been in Portland for one week. Well… one week and several hours as of now. Weird, right? Doesn’t it feel like a lot longer? I know it does to me. That said, let’s get into this!

On Thursday roomies and I discovered a fantastic karaoke bar. After a brief debate about whether we wanted the well-lit, upstairs restaurant or a sketchy underground Lounge/lair, we picked the latter. This was the best decision we made all night. Seriously, things go downhill from here. The Hutch on Holgate features a lot of wood paneling. I think their bar may have been built with a chainsaw in somebody’s backyard. This is the kind of place that has a construction paper skyline pasted in the windows. Also, their drink special during Happy Hour was a $2 tequila/soda. Obviously I had found my new home.

The actual karaoke singing didn’t start until 9:30, but it was well worth the wait. By “worth the wait” I mean I had consumed several drinks and a platter of homemade tortilla chips by then, so I was ready for anything. The K.J. (which apparently stands for Karaoke Jockey, not Kelley Jo) is absolutely adorable. In my head I called him Glen Coco. Don’t ask me why, I think his name was Rob, but he’ll always be Glen Coco to me. We didn’t do any actual “performing” (because the first round of singers appeared to be contestants from the last season of American Idol), but I did subject my tablemates to my usual vocal display: eyes closed, head thrown back, ambitiously singing along to songs I vaguely remembered hearing that one time on the radio.

Lo says: When you sing I like to watch your eyes. Sometimes when you close them it’s like you’re willing yourself to go somewhere else and you open them to find you’re still here, but you went so far away in that moment.

[Note: Lo says beautiful things. Sometimes she lets me share them with all of you!]

Also we discovered The Hutch has jello shots. Also I accidentally got roomie drunk. Also she had to catch a 6am flight the next day, and may or may not still hate me a little.

“I wanna know what it’s like to be awkward and innocent, not belligerent. I wanna know how it feels to be useful and pertinent, and have common sense…”

Luckily, Friend was there and fresh from work (AKA theoretically sober) and willing to give us a ride home. This is the point in the night that I don every article of clothing I own and smoke a clove alone in the backyard. Let’s take a minute to discuss clove cigarettes, and the many ways they’ve impacted my life. For example, one of the first times I smoked a clove in Seattle:

Montana Friend: Were those gunshots? I think those were gunshots! I wonder what’s going on out there…

Me: Ohmygod. Let’s smoke on the porch and see if we can see anything!
Seattle Friend [AKA Voice of Reason]: You idiots need to stay inside, you’re going to get shot…

Did we listen to her? No. Did we get shot? Definitely not. We didn’t even see any flashing lights. It was thrilling though, because it was novel. It was my first road trip without a parent or a chaperone, the first time I realized I was responsible for myself and my own decisions, for better or for worse.

If cloves had been banned years ago, I’d be deprived of yard couch and Vagina Tree and hours of sitting, smoking, star-gazing. I’d be robbed of the foundations of one of my deepest, most meaningful friendships. They weren’t just cigarettes. They were secrets, tears, hopes, dreams. They were the taste of laughter. They were our first taste of independence. Adulthood. They were poetry. They were music.

“To tell you the truth I prefer the worst in you. Too bad you had to have a better half.”

Sitting alone smoking, I can feel the blood rushing in my ears, and the traffic of a new city rushing in my feet. I can feel the world spinning around me while I’m sitting still, and unless you can stop the world spinning, I’m afraid the war on “gateway cigarettes” will be pointless. I guess I’m just too far gone.

Yesterday Friend introduced me to a food cart called The Potato Champion, which specializes in poutine. For anyone who doesn’t know, poutine consists of French fries, brown gravy (or in this particular case a peanut curry satay) and cheese curds. It’s probably not something you should eat every day, but my god is it wonderful! And it looks like this!

Courtesy of: http://www.potatochampion.com

Me: Will you hold my poutine for a second?

Friend: I bet that line works all the time in Canada…

[Note: I think the poutine in this photograph also has BBQ pulled pork on it, something I am definitely going to have to investigate.]

I think all of my long nights are beginning to catch up with me. You know when you go on vacation and your body decides to completely shut down after about a week? I don’t know if this happens to everybody, but my body literally demands to be taken home, like when kids hold their breath until you buy them a candy bar. I’m not sure how to convince body that this is home. I can’t tell which scares me more: falling asleep or being unable to fall asleep.

 “I’ve been sleeping so strange at night,

side effects they don’t advertise.
I’ve been sleeping so strange.
With a head full of pesticides…”

The other night I dreamt about running sprints in the snow at Dornblaser. As I was coming around a corner Lopez completely blew out on me. I was alone and it was that weird almost-twilight time of day. I started trying to drag myself off of the pitch, but I could feel the cold creeping into my body. I could feel myself dying, alone, in the cold… Some of you know this, some of you don’t, but dying alone definitely makes my Top 3 in the Worst Fears category. Granted, this freezing-to-death brand of dream may have been prompted by the fact that my heater is a little boisterous, so I turn it off at night…

But! One week down. I’m sure some day my ridiculous body will realize we’re staying, and settle into a routine. I’m sure someday soon I’ll be able to fall asleep before 3am (although my productivity with these late nights has actually improved!). Someday soon I’ll wake up and see Portland outside my window and know this is home.  

“And morning will come in all its simple glory
and you will find the light
and I will be there
standing in your shadow
knowing that you once were mine
all mine.
My baby”

Lucy, I found that mystery Bright Eyes song. It’s called Lila.
What if it's the dark inside that we're afraid of?