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.
