The bright side of a Moon
In response to people “reserving” their parade viewing spots early, the lovable activists at The Mercury are apparently going to be spending their Friday night ripping up tape, washing off chalk, and hauling away chairs downtown.
The popo PIO has said that, as long as there’s no fighting, they don’t have a dog in the fight.
I might join them… that sounds fun!
I used to think that the tradition of marking off sections of sidewalk with tape and chalk (and sometimes chairs and cones or even barrier tape) was cute.
This year, I’m having a little trouble seeing it that way.
Portland City Council passed what’s called a “sit/lie” ordinance that declares people who block the sidewalk persona non grata, and lets the police round ’em up and ship ’em off to jail. Portland’s tried this before and when it gets challenged in courts, the courts say it’s unconstitutional since the measures that get passed (last time, through some back-door shenanigans rather than a straight-up vote) are drawn broadly enough to impact our basic rights of assembly and free speech. The last such ordinance was used to arrest Iraq war protesters, for example. All in the name of “livability” of course.
The driving force behind the “need” for a way to round up the undesirables is largely seen as the being the Portland Business Alliance, a trade group of business owners. And sure enough, another sit/lie ordinance was pushed through city council this year just in time for enforcement during Rose Festival. But this time, City Commissioner Randy Leonard is registering his objections.
See, this year, the sit/lie law was tied to some concessions that were aimed at giving the homeless a day center, with lockers and showers, installing some public restrooms downtown, and providing benches outdoors for people to sit in (hopefully away from the shopping district so as not to scare away the paying customers, I’m sure). Homeless advocates kept up pressure on the city council until that was put into place.
But even though enforcement of the sit/lie law is going to start next week, during the Rose Festival, when tourists flock to our fair city and drop loads of cash… there ain’t no day centers, there ain’t no public restrooms, there ain’t no showers. OK, we got some benches. Big whoop-de-do.
I’m sorry, but the image of the PoPo sweeping up the undesirables in order to make room for the tender eyes of the paying suburbanites who lay down their tape and chalk on our public sidewalks just angers me this year. I used to buy into the image of Portland as a friendly, happy, progressive place, but I’m increasingly seeing the authoritarianism and disregard for civil rights that lies just under the surface, and no, sir or madam, I don’t like it.
How do the parade-viewers see themselves? You’re not gonna believe this. They’re protecting themselves from the “selfish” people! From a story in the Trib:
Yvonne Moore of Portland was out this week marking her spot with sidewalk chalk along Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
“It’s not greedy,” Moore said. “You want to be able to enjoy the parade, but a lot of times you come [and] some of those selfish people that don’t get out here and mark their spaces want to be in your spot, which is not nice.”
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh… It’s the people who have the nerve to show up on the day of the parade and want to stand near the fearful shoppers who are “selfish”. How fuckin’ rude of them!
You go, Randy Leonard.
Cute barista, dressed in black with her green apron, reddish brown hair, blue eyes behind sexy librarian glasses, responding to the question “How was your day?” by describing her bike accident. Startled by a dog, collision with a tree. She turns half away, looking over her shoulder at us, and points to the tears in her shirt, starting on her back, left side, and continuing down towards her butt and thigh. “I’ve got road-rash-by-way-of-tree-bark all along here,” she says, gesturing. “And I tore my shirt.”
Tracy thinks, “That poor girl! Ouch! And then she has to work, too? That sucks!. I wonder if Brian notices how cute she is? Wait, he’s male. Duh.”
Me: “When she poses like that… I am totally picturing her naked…”
At the Acropolis, as per usual. S. is dancing a private dance for me. She’s amazingly beautiful, long brunette hair, lean body but not hard and muscular. The word “lithe” was invented for women like her. If dark eyes can flash, then that’s what her eyes do.
And then she gives me a silly-sexy look, and I mug back at her, giving her an Austin-Powers-esque double-take, and she laughs and out comes a snort and it only makes her laugh more, and me, too.
“I can’t hide it,” she admits to me. “I’m just a big dork.”
“I think that’s why we get along so well,” I say, hoping it’s true.
“We laugh a lot,” she says. “I dig that.”
Me, too. It’s why I like spending time with her.
After the private dance, she asks me if I’m going to stick around. I say yes, of course, and she tells me that she’s got some funny pictures to show me. When she sees me again she brings up a pile of 5 by 7s. I look through them. They’re of several Hispanic men in flannel shirts and slacks and wearing bandanas. They’re stone-faced. One, in close-up, sneers and has a teardrop tattooed coming from one eye.
Oh shit. “Is this… you?” I ask.
She nods and giggles. “Yes!” She explains she went to a club in town that had Drag Night. “We went as Mexican gangsters! It was so funny!” She says she even came to the Acrop still dressed up, sat at the rack and wasn’t recognized until she gave herself away.
Later, out in the club, I look at the other dancers and wonder if they, too, are big dorks. A., probably, but with her body-builder physique and ink-covered skin and dozens of piercings most might not see it. T., definitely; she plays the airhead role well enough but she also has a fun energy. Most of the other dancers tonight are hard-body types – bolt-on boobies, hours spent in the gym and the tanning booth, they’ve built their looks up to the point of being plastic.
And then there’s L. Hollywood looks and a petite, soft but slender body. Perfect nose. Brilliant blue eyes. And although I’ll likely never know for sure, I get the sense that the whole package is natural. No scalpel has marred her skin.
The last conversation I had with her I was babbling about being in New York last Christmas and not taking the chance to go to Harlem to see James Brown’s body at the Apollo. I remember ending that conversation and leaving her with the impression of me being morbidly obsessed with death. The details are foggy. But since then she’s seen me at the club, having fun, and seeing the other girls treat me like a mascot, and maybe that previous impression has worn off, or never sunk in in the first place.
I sat at her stage for a set, and tip, and smile, and mugged a little to see if I can get her to smile. It’s stifling hot in the bar, has been all night, and after her second or third song, while she’s going around scooping up the money from the rail and from the floor, she looks at me, and scrunches up her face. “Ugh” she says. “It’s hot in here.”
I take my fedora off and fan her with it. She laughs.
Then it was S.’s turn again.
The next time L. was up was on the main stage. It was getting later, and the club, once filled with party people, was starting to empty out. I could actually sit at the main rack and have almost an entire section to myself. I sat there and watched L. dance and spin on the pole. I watch the other customers’ reactions to her, and they all look like they’re thinking the same thing I do: wow, she is seriously beautiful. Ethereal. Somehow above this dive-y bar with its smoke and its beer and whiskey and the sticky floors and dirty everything – she’s somehow untouched by it all. “You’re so beautiful,” they say to her: the tough bald biker guys, the smartass frat boys, the geeky emo boys. Even the girl patrons admire her in a way that’s very different from the more carnal appreciation the other dancers get.
Second or third song, again, and she laid on the bar in front of me, tits up. She smiles her angelic smile at me from her cloud of platinum-blonde hair (OK, so not everything is natural) and arches her back.
I lean in, close enough to be heard over the thumping music but not close enough to alarm. Thinking of my earlier conversation with S., I say, “I’ll bet, secretly, deep down… you’re a big dork.”
Her smile freezes, just for a second. She slides off the bar, completing the motion she began before I spoke up, turns to face me and leans over.
“What?” she asks.
I know that if I want this to come out correctly, I need to suppress any hint of apology. I’m just speaking of what I see, even if I’m wrong. “I’ll bet that most of the time, you’re a dork. Silly.”
She leans back, her smile gone as she processes what I’m saying. “I don’t know how to take that,” she admits, slowly. Her song is ending and she’s starting to move back towards the bar in the middle of the stage. She turns back to me, her smile returning. “But you’re right.”
I laugh. “I knew it! I like being right.” She laughs with me, but it’s an uneasy one, as if she’s afraid of being exposed and not just naked.
Another song, and she dances. I smile when she dances for me, and I thank her when she thanks me for the tip. Another song, and the same, except I turn when S. walks past me to get a hot cocoa from the bar (she doesn’t drink anymore) and chat with her.
After L. has collected all her money from the floor and the bar, and has put her panties and bra back on, and is in that in-between mode, waiting for the next girl to take over, she walks over to me where I’m still sitting at the bar.
“Why did you say that about me?”
I didn’t know what to say. Honestly, I said it because I wanted it to be true. I said it because, out of all the girls here tonight, L. was the one who seemed least likely to be… human. Except for S., of course. But most of the dancers had an edge to them, or showed their insecurities in little ways, or would vent and get angry. But L. seemed perfect, and therefore not quite Earthly. So I thought it would be great if she had a goofy side. I thought that somewhere, there’s someone who makes her laugh so hard she farts.
“I don’t… I just thought… I could see… It’s just second nature…” I stammer out, still smiling and trying to summon the confidence I had had just two songs ago. “I just think you’ve got a funny side you don’t show very often.”
“Well… thanks. You’re right.” And she turned her perfect naked ass and walked up the stairs.
Damn. Did I really pick up on something she thinks about? Or did I just demonstrate the Forer Effect by stating a complimentary generality that anyone would find flattering and therefore hard to deny?
Whatever I did, I rather like the effect.
New rule: Inside many beautiful women is a big dork waiting to be noticed.
I’m on a road trip with two geeky friends and Superman. We’re all in a rental car.
My friends and I keep pelting Supes with questions, like “If you’ve got X-Ray vision, can you see out the back of your own head?” Superman gets cranky because he’s supposed to be on vacation and relaxing, and we won’t stop pestering him.
We get lost, and can’t find our way back to the highway. We ask Superman to pick up the car and fly us back to the main highway. He refuses and sulks in the backseat.
Interlude: Smacky scratches at the window, wanting in. I wake up. I let him in, go check my email, get a drink of water, use the bathroom. I go back to sleep.
I’m following Ken around the building where I work. He’s trying to get stuff done, and all I want to do is tell him about this really cool and funny dream I had about going on a road trip with Superman.
Bright colors and happy people in my neighborhood. I made a cute brunette with tats smile when I grabbed a sample cookie in the grocery store. Waited for the bus… Rode the bus to the bottom of the hill, Mount Scott. On top of there was Willamette National Cemetery.
Waited for the shuttle bus… Driver immediately took a 15-minute break. Decided to walk uphill instead.
Ate my carmel corn. It was all I had brought for lunch, along with a half-liter of water. Cars drove past. Warm day. Sting sang about being the King of Pain. I reached the gates to the cemetary.
I stepped over a mouse body, belly-up in death. I wondered if the mouse was a veteran.
Took my hat off in the heat. Glad I had the water. Cars drove past. The hill was steep.
People everywhere. Found mom’s gravesite with only a little effort. It was on the backside of the cemetery, with a view of Mt. St. Helens barely showing above the foothills.
She’s here, and not here. Everything that she was is in the ground here. There’s nothing left that I would recognize as my mom. It’s the same way I felt when I stood in the room with her dead body, only an hour or so after her death. She’s not there anymore. She’s not anywhere anymore.
I was sad, but I didn’t cry. I cried when she was alive.
A stick-thin and tall man with a woman’s reedy voice sat reading a book on top of a grave. Middle-aged women and men dragged teens and younger kids to view a spot on the ground where their ancestors lay.
It was at least a 30-minute walk back down the hill. I made my way past the fields of flags.
“Excuse me?” – an older Asian lady asked me to help her find her number. Of course I could. A laminated card with the name and a number and a section and directions. I walked back and forth and found the pattern and quickly located the gravestone.
“Here he is,” I said, not actually thinking he was there but realizing this place wasn’t for philosophical debates. I walked her over and showed her. She didn’t think it was right but then it clicked.
“Thank you,” I said, thanking her for the service, and for her devotion to this man, and for the opportunity to be of some small assistance to her.
“Thank you,” she said back. “God blessing you now.”
I smiled and again silently renewed my intention not to argue. If there is a God I’m sure He’s not too happy with my lack of belief. But I enjoy helping humans when I can. I put my hand on her shoulder, simple human contact, and left her to her visit.
The mouse’s body was still there on the way down.
Happy Memorial Day. I’m just writing off the cuff, having just awakened (Smacky let me sleep in today) so I don’t have much profound to day beyond a hearty thank-you to all the veterans and those who supported them out there.
To my friends and family who have served, thank you.
Thanks especially to my dad, who served in both the Navy and Coast Guard, and told me early on that military service wasn’t worth what you’re asked to put in to it. Although it served him well; he learned a trade, electrician, and that trade carried him, my mom, and my sister and I through some tough times. Plus it gave him a lot of stories to tell… He was on hand to see a nuclear bomb test in the South Pacific. I’d often hoped that would be where I gained my mutant powers, but if it had any such effect, the powers have yet to materialize. Thank you, dad, for your service.
Dad was lucky (or smart) enough not to have to serve in any actual conflicts during his service. That wasn’t true for my uncle Lavere, who was a gunner in World War II. His plane was shot down and he was detained by Germany in a prisoner of war camp, an experience about which he never talked, at least to curious nephews like myself. Thank you for your service.
To my friends Ken and Merry and Jake and Starr – thank you for your service.
Even Taij – I wonder what ever happened to him? A sarcastic, caustic, scheming geek-y ex-Marine. What an odd friendship we had for a year or so, but, still – thank you for your service.
I’m likely not mentioning many more folk, but don’t think it means I’m not grateful. Thank you all for your service.
“So, do you live alone?” she asked me.
She and I sat outside on a warmish Friday, sharing lunch and finding out about each other. I was having delicious Thai red curry, with a lake of coconut milk and spices bathing chunks of pineapple and chicken and an island of white rice. It was disappearing fast. She poked at a plate of pad Thai noodles.
Was she too nervous to eat, or did she not like pad Thai? I couldn’t tell, and in my own nervousness I disallowed the more flattering answer.
“Yes, just me and a grumpy black cat,” I said.
Her dark eyes sparkled and she laughed. “See? I knew you had kids, after all!” Her long straight Latina-black hair half-hid her face.
I paused, fork in mid-trip to my mouth, and considered Smacky. “Hmmm. I guess he is like a kid sometimes.”
A kid with teeth and fangs that brings home snakes to play with. I didn’t mention that part. First dates are no place to mention snakes.
I guess I was tired. Just like I kept saying all day Friday.
Tomorrow, May 24th, is both Bob Dylan’s 66th birthday and Talk Like Bob Dylan.
Not as fun as Talk Like a Pirate Day, but still… fun!
And for those of you who may be confused by the relevance of the above post title to this topic – Jimi was doing a cover.
