There are days off
and then there are days off. It was one of the latter for me
on that mid-December day back in 2011. Janice had gone to Denver for
the weekend. This meant that I was not only left alone in Portland,
but I was completely unsupervised. And to make the whole ordeal all
that much better, I did not have to don my white polyester dinner
jacket and go to work.
I started in the
early afternoon at The Commodore. Bobby and I had made plans to meet
for drinks at The Rose and Thistle on NE Broadway. Afterward, we
planned to see Brian's band play over at The Ash Street Saloon.
Seems like a regular sort of day. Just a day off, and a plan to do a
little drinking and honky-tonking.
Admittedly, there
comes a point in the night when I say yes to everything. I don't say
yes to everything because I'm a pushover. I do not even say yes
because I'm drunk. No, I say yes because, there is adventure lurking
behind ever y-e-s.
I made it to The
Rose and Thistle. I met Bobby there. On our walk back we happened
to find a little money in the gutter which translated very easily
into a few Dewar's and rocks. We made it to Ash Street Saloon. In
the men's room there, I pissed in the urinal while some crazy woman
pissed in the toilet next to me. It was a strange shared experience
that I have not said anything about. Soon after Bobby left on some
“family” business, and I secretly suspect that they were off to
hide a body—an experience I wish I could have shared. I went to
Shanghai Tunnels with Brian and Rose and Andrew. After a shot,
Andrew and I went into Chinatown (something I never do) and hunted up
a dance club he knew. I danced with very tall girls there. Then,
out the side door, we went to an art opening where we were separated.
I got mixed up with crazy artists. Now, twelve hours into this
adventure, this unsupervised journey, I went to the Silver Dollar II
to see if anyone was there. There, I met Caroline, my MFBF, Jenny
and Eric. With them, I left the comforts of downtown on a December
night and went to some undisclosed neighborhood bar where I sundowned
the night with Frito Pie. All in all is was a great day. I saw
boroughs of Portland I would not otherwise have seen. I hung out
with friends. I meet fun people. If anything, I'm still bitter that
I did not hide the body with Bobby and his clan.
But fun is fun,
right? The next day I was disturbed that I was not hungover. The
next day, alone at our Goose Hollow apartment, I missed Janice. That
day, also a day off, I thought about the past, the present and the
future.
The past: it was
past.
The present:
Portland, Oregon. Portland City Grill. My ongoing and agonizing
relationship with VSAC (Vermont Student Assistance Corporation). My
ongoing schedule of daily events: get up, try to write, go to work,
go to the bar, get liquored up, pass out and do it all over again.
It was a fun time, but I was floundering.
The Future:
Mid-December 2011 I was going to do only three things. First, get
back to reading and writing rather than drinking and being hungover.
Second, I was going to pay off my student loan. (It took just under
nine months to pay it off.) Third I was going to find a publisher
and get a book contract. That happened the following April, and the
book released in September.
But there were
things that I did not foresee. For instance, Janice and I found out
she was pregnant about a week after I made these “future” plans.
I did not foresee how much I would love being sober. Being sober
made me better at my server job and Portland City Grill. It also
made me enjoy going to work. It was weird. The biggest thing that
happened was this: I read more books than I had since college. I
mean college-college, my days at Metro back in the 1990s. I could
not read enough.
I began to write
earlier in the day, and I got more done during the day. The decision
to take things more seriously made everything happen more easily.
Sure, blame it on the maturity I had just acquired. Blame it on
sobriety. Whatever. I think that if I can do this, anyone can do
it.
When I went to
work, I still had plenty of things to talk to my coworkers about. We
still shared stories and talked shit. This only happened at work.
After work, they went out or went home, and I escaped into mid 20th
century novels. I enjoyed solitude. I asked my good buddy Eric how
he'd been one afternoon. “How's things?” I asked. “Good,”
he said. “You?” “I've been reading,” I said. “I heard
that you've been reading the Library of Congress.”
The moral? None.
If you live a life you don't like, things must change. I recommend
change. These are the steps: 1) remember what you intended to do
with your time and your life. 2) start doing it. 3) get rid of
anything that squeaks, rattles or annoys you. 4) read as much as you
can, I recommend starting with Henry David Thoreau's Walden.
Next:
Where there was once 2 there are now 3
Ring of Fire
The Lovecraft
Totally love this!
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