Bedroom Swapping

The last few weeks our house has looked like a packrat’s nest as we swapped bedrooms. When we moved into the house decades ago, we put The Child into the bedroom that overlooked the back yard and ourselves into the bedroom overlooking the sidewalk and street. The bedroom swap prompted a thorough cleaning of The Child’s room and a repainting of ours. During all of this painting and cleaning, the beds, the desks, the chairs, the dressers, the rugs, the paintings, the bulletin boards, and the tapestries had to be schlepped into the garage or the living room. Including The Books. About thirteen banker’s boxes filled to bursting with books have blocked off the fireplace mantel, and about thirteen more have crouched in front of the front window during this whole operation.

Whether it’s through childhood exposure to expansive family libraries, or a past life at the Library of Atlantis, I have a large number of books. It’s not a problem at all—I have managed to refrain from procuring a wheeled library shelf ladder for the purpose of reenacting Belle’s opening song from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. It does, however, provide a friction point between Mark and myself, and sometimes I think it motivates Mark to outlive me for the sole purpose of disposing of all my books, books, books, books, books. Obviously, I will have to secure a fortune so that I can be interred in a mausoleum/library (pause to imagine writing workshops in “The Dead Writer’s Library”).

The Child’s old bedroom had been repainted when he left for college, so it was mostly a matter of dusting and scrubbing at the more curiously persistent blemishes to prepare it for the switch. Our bedroom still had the original paint job we did when we moved in.

Before we bought the house, the owners had painted the walls a color best described as sandstone meets khaki. I could never decide if it wanted to be dull yellow or olive drab—but what I could tell you was that it sucked all of the light out of the air; we toured the house on a rainy June day and it was like stepping into a dark, dismal, dingy cave.

I told Mark that we’d have to repaint because if the darkness was this bad on a rainy June day, I’d want to slit my wrists from February seasonal depression if we didn’t. We ended up choosing colors from a French Art Nouveau book of patterns that went with the oak floor: sunflower yellow for the walls, red-orange for the window trim, and a pine green for the door trim. Mark liked it for about a month, and then said that our house looked like, “The Honeybun Café.” I will admit that there were times when our home’s interior put me in mind of a high-end McDonald’s. Over the years, the living room, the kitchen, and the bathroom got repainted in much less saturated versions of yellow and green.

In our old bedroom—which we’re beginning to refer to as “The North Bedroom”—we replaced the pine green trim on the windows, doors, and bookshelves from twenty years ago with “aurora brown,” a chocolatey color, and the wall color with what looked like white when it first went on but turned out a light lemon color. (Afterward, when I compared the new yellow with an old patch, the old yellow looked dirty.) For some reason, the colors make the room look like an Edwardian room that Eliza Doolittle would practice her diction in. We’re thinking the Edwardian style will dictate some sort of motto in the corner above the windows: “memento mori” seems a little dark, but E.W. suggested “sic itur ad astra.” Now, of course, I want a sarcastic version of something like “live, laugh, love,” or maybe a PDQ Bach quote like, “Donna nobis pacem cum what mei”. Or maybe something about finding the grail in the Castle of Aaargh.

I really do want to get the books back onto the shelves. I used to have a string of white LEDs snaking along the front of the shelves, and I think I might re-affix them along the back of the shelves so that they provide a more indirect backlighting while avoiding a cantina aesthetic (they are currently strung over the living room window, which makes it look like we’re living in a department store diorama). After that, the trick for The North Bedroom will be to get a floor lamp, a writing desk that’s large enough to accommodate a workstation on it, and some more book shelves into the room without crowding it. I had a vague notion of moving a Stickley Chair from the over-furnished living room into The North Bedroom for a formal reading room feel, but it’s looking like both it and The Child’s bed won't fit. (I’ve always loved the Stickley Chair ever since I first encountered it in my Grandpa Burridge’s home; however, it really wants to be on a short dais, like the throne of Brian Rose’s father in the painting by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, which can be awkward.)

Our new bedroom (The South Bedroom?) has our bed and some minimal furniture in it: a small, medieval style chest for laundry, a narrow secretary desk for Mark to work from, and a glass mosaic night lamp. Mark is aiming for an Arts and Crafts/William Morris look for the room, so if we still have some money left after all of the painting, we’ll purchase a long, Morris-inspired tapestry to go along with a smaller one already hanging in the room. Mark has forbade me from placing glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling (although he is open to a projection of stars for the living room ceiling), and a (ironic) Cicely Mary Barker Cornflower Fairy tapestry has been excised from the room. The string of multi-color LEDs under the bed has, however, been approved and acts as a handy nightlight.

The final round in this game of House Tetris will be reorganizing the closets. We decided that we should each take one closet; Mark didn’t care which, and I’m thinking I’ll consolidate all of my clothes and costumes and props and files into the closet in our bedroom. Mark will combine his clothes and toiletries into the closet in The North Bedroom. This will free up a hallway linen closet.

I’m not entirely sure what will happen to the Old Burridge Chest of Drawers. It was sitting in a corner of our old bedroom. If I put it into a closet, it won’t exactly be the most efficient use of space. If I banish it to the garage, I’ll need to find a new place to put my personal altar and Portable Stonehenge. If I get rid of it entirely, it will make my ninety-year-old father sad (pause to wonder exactly why I still store a Scottish sporran and garb for a three-year-old me in the bottom drawer—I’m never going to fit into those clothes again).

Unfortunately, what is also falling out of all of this house reorganization is dedicated craft space and storage space for filing bills, correspondence, and old manuscripts. I suppose if we really wanted a room for crafting, writing, costuming, and archiving, we’d move or convert the garage into living space (considers old plans to extend the one-and-a-half-butt kitchen into the garage and give it a pantry).

I’m pretty sure Mark would chime in here, “or you could get rid of half of your books.”

Valentine's Day Flying Yoga

On what I think counts as a Valentine’s Day Date, Mark and I went to a Flying Yoga class. This is where one goes to a yoga studio at the local YMCA that has reinforced girders along the ceiling where one can use carabiners to hang silk ribbons or TRX suspension exercise equipment or, as in our case, little short hammocks with side stirrups for one’s hands or feet.

I went into the class expecting it to be more like silk flying than it actually was. While I do some yoga-inspired stretches—I’m a “yogi-by-marriage”—I’d much rather do something like tai-chi. It’s a safe bet to say that I’ve got some of the world’s tightest hamstrings and hips. It was probably a good thing that the instructor reminded us to breathe.

There was an erotic (and distracting) moment seeing Mark swinging in his hammock, and I had to think unsexy thoughts and remind myself that a Y studio wasn’t an appropriate space for a visual orgy of passionate, tantric yoga. We did a few showy power-lunge swings, but no fear that things got out of hand: I had a protein bar snack about ninety minutes before class, and I had sipped some tea about an hour before; this combined with some of the rotational swinging and extended periods upside-down was nauseating. In retrospect, I should have stopped all consumption two hours ahead of time.

Hanging was more comfortable once I unraveled my hammock from a rope into more of a stretchy band. Meanwhile, Mark was hanging upside-down, back arched, holding both feet behind his back. I think my best stretch was a hanging moment early on with my left ankle on my right hip. Mark’s best stretch was a “cheating crow stand” that the instructor was ecstatic about. I would try Flying Yoga again, on an emptier stomach and with the recognition that it’s still yoga, and not an intro to Cirque du Soleil Power Silk Moves.

Old Parents Being Old

Another year.

Foremost on my mind since Halloween has been the fall-out from a traffic accident my dad was in. His health was not exactly the best, and after crashing into a parked car at 25 miles-per-hour and being tossed around with air bags (at 90) he hasn’t completely bounced back. Even after a week in the hospital. Even after three and a half weeks spent in a post acute facility for physical therapy, occupational therapy, and voice therapy.

The oddest part of my father’s situation is the sense of premonition surrounding it. As someone who probably needs to dial back his personal “Sees Patterns in Things” setting, my own experiences the week before my dad’s traffic accident seemed to presage it. Now, of course, I’m poised to divine meaning from a Winter Solstice New Moon visit to the Emergency Room.

Of course there’s the typical family drama surrounding Old Parents Being Old, the usually unexamined archetypes of the Lion in Winter, and tarot cards such as the Nine of Swords (mental anxiety), the Ten of Cups (fairytale happiness), the Ten of Wands (burdens), and the Ten of Pentacles (legacy).

I have to keep admonishing myself that I won’t write current family events into stories and to instead record happenings, impressions, and rantings into my physical, non-virtual Book of Art instead of blogging them.

I know, I’ll blog about politics!

Knots Untied

The Halloween weekend brought three undoings with it.   

A few weeks ago, I bought some blue dichroic glass earrings.  They sit closer to my earlobe than my original green zircon studs, are less pokey than my silver star earrings, and less dangly than my crescent earrings.  And they flash between sapphire and cobalt.  

I have a tendency to fiddle with whatever earrings I'm wearing; Saturday night, I reached up and discovered that the blue glass sphere on my right earring had fallen off of the post.  (At first, I thought the glass had been partially pulled through my earlobe.) Presumably, it's somewhere in the house.  

Later, I was eating a power bar in preparation of going out dancing with Mark—it doesn't do to have a carb crash thirty minutes into the night. I regularly consume a power bar about an hour before working out to keep from fading out during exercise sets.  After three high-protein bites, the sticky mass of the power bar lifted a crown off of my lower back molar. Luckily, I didn't swallow the crown and my tooth wasn't causing any pain.  (Although at first I wasn't sure if my molar was topped with tooth decay or decades' old dental adhesive.  Thankfully, it was failed adhesive, and the dentist glued the crown back on Monday.) 

Mark and I went dancing anyway and got back home shortly after midnight and before the change to standard time.  

Sunday, I slept late, and had a lazy morning in the bath reading The Two Towers.  I wondered what the third thing to come undone would be.  Would it be something connected to my elderly parents?  Would a button pull away from a dress shirt?  Would it be another inconvenient loss?  Would one of my unicorn socks develop a hole?  Would it be a sudden momento mori punchline?  

I wouldn't discover until I found a parking citation (for nine times the cost of a daily permit) on my car Tuesday.  I typically order parking permits Sunday—it's apparently a universal law that university parking is complicated and a pain.  Somehow I missed reminders on various devices and failed to order a parking permit Sunday (and Monday) morning for Tuesday (and Wednesday).  

An earring, a crown, and a permit undone on Autumn's cross-quarter.  It sounds like a nursery rhyme or fairy tale.  Fingers crossed for a happily ever after ending.

Dancing like it's 1978

The other week I went dancing. It was mostly fun, but there was something off.

I got there before anyone else was really dancing, so I ordered a cola product before hitting the dance floor.

The DJ is always welcoming, and he actually remembered my name this time around—of which I am in awe as I can only remember his name because it’s lit up in neon pink at the DJ booth every time I go to one of his shows.

I danced and danced, and slowly the dance floor filled up.

The university students are back in town, so there was more of a twenty-something presence in the room. This was evidenced by the GenZ habit of five or six (mostly) guys circling up and dancing in a ring. I’m not sure if it was them or The Women Who Go Whoooo who spilled their drinks on the dance floor.

It wasn’t all circle dancing and floor lubrication; there were plenty of couples dancing together, too.

A sped-up version of “Pon De Replay” came on and I smiled because I had been thinking the day before how much fun it would be to dance to the words “shake it ’til the moon becomes the sun.”

I danced and danced. It was a few days before the full moon, so I did a little bit of dancing down the moon, but for whatever reason, it wasn’t a numinous moment.

Maybe it was the oddly disturbing, gay-men-in-prison movie clip playing at one point in between the much more fun clips from “Jeffry,” “Xanadu,” “Flash Gordon,” and the YMCA sequence from the Village People movie, “Can’t Stop the Music.”

I danced and danced, and fixed my gaze on the needles of green and purple light bouncing from the disco ball.

Maybe it was the dude who would suddenly move his upper back in exaggerated motions as if he were dancing like Doctor Strange at Woodstock while he walked past me to the restroom. Maybe it was flirtation; imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Maybe it was the photographer connected with the event, who kept on stepping in front of me to take pictures of the folks dancing next to me, or the folks dancing inside the cage prop, or people placing bills into a Go-Go Guy’s underwear.

Maybe I didn’t dress up in enough leopard print and should have found more faux fur than the leopard print scarf I wore as a sash.

At least I probably won’t have to explain to anyone why there’s pictures on the Internet of me dancing at a club filled with shirtless (and in some cases, pantsless) men.

I danced and danced. During a break I complemented a fine looking man’s amethyst-slice pendent.

Maybe it was the realization when looking into the venue’s mirrors that I was easily twice the age of many of the folks on the dance floor. And the most dressed.

I danced and danced and watched the hands and forearms of the Go-Go Guy with the LED poi, which moved with the intricacies of a spinning carnival ride.

Maybe it was the four guys dancing together in a clump, who seemed like friends, and who seemed relaxed with each other.

I danced and danced, and thought about how much fun it would be to dance with Mark if he liked to dance.

I danced and danced… and then I was having a sugar and caffeine crash.

So it was time to leave.

Before the night could descend any further into a middle school dance reenactment.

Autumnal Rituals

The other week I was in rituals back-to-back. The “order of service” (to borrow terminology from the UU’s) in the Wicca-lite rituals I do begins with creating a sacred space for the ritual by calling in and imagining a protective circle of blue flame. I wound up speaking the invocation for both rituals.

For the first ritual, a four person New Moon Meditation Ritual, the invocation gelled; the imagery of the circle was clear in my mind and the words flowed; folks said afterward that that part of the ritual was very effective. The second ritual, a twenty person Equinox Ritual for Community, was also effective, but felt more forced. That there were twenty folks involved instead of four might have had something to do with it, but my sense is that I was more focused on recalling what words I had used earlier than on calling the circle.

Over the following days, I played around with words and sounds and came up with the following:

Blue flame, blue flame
Circle of blue flame
Be whirling earth
Be wheeling stars
Be flowing veil
Between the worlds
Make this space sacred space
Make this time sacred time
Negative spirits, begone! (clap)
You have no power here!
Blessed Be

Late September

It’s just after the Equinox, and I’m still able to sit outside and write. This will become less and less likely as autumn progresses. We can pretend it’s still summer (especially when the afternoon temperatures reach the mid eighties), but sometime before Halloween there will be a Great Rain which will knock all of the leaves from their stems, and plunge the valley into average temperatures in the fifties.

Probably the deluge will coincide with (and obscure) a notable astronomical event, like the two comets that are supposed to be visible in the sky at the same time as October’s new moon.

And there will be mud.


Dreams:

Image from the other night:

A blocky, clear cologne bottle with a cubic stopper. Etched onto the front of the bottle, like frost on ice, in bold san serif font, are the words “STONE MASS”

Of course, now I'm wondering what a ceremonial mass centered on stone would look like.  

Dodging on the Dance Floor

I went dancing the other night. It was mostly fun, and I will admit to some bemusement.

I arrived fashionably late, paid the cover, scampered over to the dance floor, and started dancing. There were Go-Go Guys on the stage with the DJ. With a faux cage to one side of the stage. Apparently, they are a package deal. After attending several dance events in this venue, I’m fairly certain the Go-Go Guys there are more on the “strippers who dance” end of the “strippers who dance” / “dancers who strip” spectrum.

Upon reflection, I think I would have found the Go-Go Guys sexier if I had come to the event to ogle raunchy Go-Go Guys instead of coming to the event to dance to sped-up pop music. I would suppose that I am still allowed to appreciate their dancing.

The music was mostly something you could dance to: there was a lot of Lady Gaga—although it might be more accurate to say that the music I recognized the most was from of her latest album. Very occasionally, the music would turn into “Your lizard brain called, they’d like their sequencer back” music. There was one song with mean/angry lyrics that drove me off of the floor for a water break.

Every now and then at these events I remember that music by Madonna, Juno Reactor, Utah Saints, Darude, and Aqua is pushing thirty years old. And then I put my hands over my ears and tell myself, “La la la! I can’t hear you!”

The crowd of dancers ebbed and flowed in front of the stage. There was the obligatory young man and woman who stood in the middle of everything reviewing photos on their mobile. There were also The Young Women Who Go “Whooooo!” — granted, this is a step up from the Young Women Who Shout, “Oh my God! I am sooooo drunk!” I am trying and failing to imagine Dykes of a Certain Age going “Whoooo!” — instead of, say, “An army of lovers / can never be defeated!” — and I think “Whooooo!” is a generational ululation.

Although it was a full moon night, it was difficult to dance down the moon. I stared up at the disco lights as I danced and imagined that I was dancing on beams of red and blue and green. I also watched beach balls tossed around by the crowd. These would occasionally strike the lights. I made sure not to dance under any hardware.

I’m not sure what discourses are in play when the Go-Go Guys are... er, dancing(?)... with a giant, inflatable phallus. Is it an expression of male eroticism? Is it confronting the audience with a spectacle that forces them to evaluate their own relationships with male sexuality? Is it camp? I’m pretty sure it’s not a critique of the commodification of sexuality.

At one point in the evening, I’d found a place on the dance floor to dance that was close to a wall so I wouldn’t back up into anyone. As I was dancing on a variation of a Bulgarian washer woman’s steps, something arced down toward me out of the corner of my vision. I side-stepped just in time to avoid being struck by the giant, inflatable phallus as it poked out of the Go-Go Guys’ faux cage and kept on dancing to the music.

It’s just occurred to me that possibly this was flirtation. It’s also just occurred to me that maybe I should have screamed “Whooooo!” and splashed my (hypothetical) drink around while “dancing,” wide legged, with the inflatable phallus.

The Go-Go Guy with the LED poi is limited by the lower ceiling allowance of the stage area. Should he dance in front of the stage, which would give him more room for large, overhead orbits? Or should he explore more moves that have the poi grazing his body? What exactly is the dance vocabulary of poi, anyway?

Likewise, is the well-endowed, naked male blow-up doll representative of a shadow self? When a Go-Go Guy grasps the blow-up doll by the penis and whirls the doll around, is this a statement about the power of dance to sublimate or move sexual energy that is inanimate and only in potential? Technically, the male doll on the stage is a proxy Go-Go Guy—I’m pretty sure this is a critique of the commodification of sexuality.

I mean, folks were placing tips in skimpy booty shorts and Speedos, so I guess it’s supposed to be sexy.

I danced and danced and danced. A woman grabbed my hand and we improvised a kind of swing-dance around her canned drink. I would have tried some Lindy moves, but we didn’t have enough shared dance vocabulary for any social dance moves. At the end, I was grateful that she hadn’t backed into my back, somehow interlocked our arms, and, while we were still back-to-back, bent forward at her hips and hoisted me off of my feet as if I were some sort of backpack. Which stranger women have done to me in other venues. Twice.

I did wish Mark had come with me, but he isn’t a fan of dancing. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say I wish Mark enjoyed dancing as much as I do—it’s more fun to dance with someone, especially if you both understand the steps and each others’ bodies.

I danced and danced and then the music shifted and I knew it was time to go home and to bed. I got a lot of steps in, and my fitness tracker awarded me with several badges.

As I headed home, I had to reflect: Beach balls thrown and kicked into the crowd + folks with drinks on the dance floor = getting smacked by alcohol-drenched balls. Just sayin’.

Return of the Teeny-Tiny Cameras

THE WEEK BEFORE

It’s been a decade since I’ve reached that certain age where I get to have selfies taken where the sun don’t shine. In some ways it feels like just yesterday—I’m not sure if that’s denial or something worse.

Actually, something worse would be colon cancer. So of course now I’m thinking about former age-mate, fellow Wordo and author, Jay Lake, and writing, and mortality—and because it’s Jay, macabre clowns of baroque literary excess.

So maybe it is denial.

One thing I don’t recall from last time is not being able to eat whole grains or nuts for five days before The Procedure. It’s nearly impossible not to get a sandwich made with organic wholesomeness in this hippie town. Apparently, I graze on almonds and raisins a lot more than I’d realized.

Somehow, I survive on Greek yogurt and slices of turkey rolled into lettuce. At least chocolate is not on the list of forbidden solid foods, and tea counts as a clear fluid.

THE DAY BEFORE

I actually dragged myself to the pool to get in some swimming. It was also a day when I physically go into work, so I did that. The swimming wasn’t so bad, as I usually only have a handful of nuts before a pre-day-jobbe workout. Today it was a half-glass of lemonade.

2:00PM — According to my notes from ten years ago, I felt a little like throwing up during the first Suprep round—I’m not sure if this is because of the awful taste or if it was upsetting to my digestive tract in general. In any case, a dose of ondansetron odt came with the Suprep kit, and—whoa! they give this stuff to chemotherapy patients?

2:30PM — Having delayed a little, I take the first swig of Suprep. The stuff tastes just as bad as it did ten years ago. Blaech.

2:35PM — Ah yes….although this time around the Suprep isn’t as reminiscent of grape mold and The Kool-Aid Man’s tears, each successive swig is somehow logarithmically worse than its predecessor. Yeuck!

2:40PM — Thank God for the lemonade I bought. Just a little chaser of it washes out the Suprep before it can chemically bond with my mucus membranes. Drinking Suprep is still like licking a twelve-volt battery, though. Mark mostly manages to stifle guffaws.

2:45PM — I appear to have lost my appetite. This is probably a good thing, because it will make me less likely to accidentally wander over to the kitchen in a low-glucose haze and absent-mindedly eat a bandana.

2:50PM — The Far Side cartoon ‘Gross Stories’ comes to mind: “And then, he slowly lifted the bucket of lard to his lips, and with a low, guttural sound, began to drink!” Can’t think why.

2:55PM — It is the Time Of Gurgling.

3:00PM — “You Have Died of Dysentery.” (I mean, I live in Oregon…)

3:05PM — About two years ago, we installed a bidet toilet seat—and I’m never going back. I don’t know how I got through this ten years ago without it.

7:00PM — Mark queues up ‘Ehrengard: The Art of Seduction’, a fun, silly Nordic film about a 19th C painter and the noble families he paints. We did wonder for a moment if the Young Heir might be gay, but he wasn’t. Less sexy than ‘Bridgerton,’ less mean than ‘Dangerous Liaisons.’ Wonderful costuming.

THE DAY OF

3:15AM — An alarm wakes me mid dream. I stumble into the kitchen and open the second bottle of Suprep.

3:20AM — Hello Darkness, my old friend / I’ve come to—hey, you know, this stuff doesn’t taste like grape juice as much as I thought. It’s still hideous. I have to wonder if the grape flavor is some artifact of memory paired with my brain trying to convince itself that I’m not being poisoned with corrosion from ancient copper pipes. Or maybe Kool-Aid issued a cease-and-desist.

3:25AM — I pick up a copy of “Flash Fiction” and read stories at random, starting with a literary description of someone caught too close to a nuclear explosion. Another sip of Suprep and I’m randomly off to another piece about a paring knife lost and found and lost again under a fridge.

3:40AM — It’s kind of weird. According to my recollections, I was almost disablingly hungry at this point. Granted, it was later in the day—perhaps, when I’m in a waiting room in four or so hours, I will want to lick pictures of meals in glossy lifestyle magazines. Also it is hard to feel hungry with the taste of battery in your mouth.

3:53AM — The Second Gurgling.

3:55AM — The Second Gurgling, only a little lower down and to the left.

3:58AM — The Second Gurgling, only how did it get down *there* ?

4:20AM — The last of the Evil Brew is consumed. I go outside and look at the Summer Triangle and Venus. The moon is new and hidden. And then I feel a gurgling as of a distant host and hurry inside.

4:30AM — Now begins the time when I channel my inner Elizabethan Groom of the Stool and make comparisons of hue and clarity with the Prophesies of the Endoscopologists.

5:10AM — I sip the last tea of the morning. I’m hoping this will stave off any headaches.

5:30AM — Mark arises. The animals begin their morning, “No one has fed me, ever” routine.

6:08AM — Mark has been doing yoga stretches while dressed in a post-shower towel. He mentions something about joints and I ask, “So can octopi do yoga?”

He replies, “A good yoga teacher would be able to make adjustments.”

Then he turns to his closet and proceeds to get dressed, which calls to mind last night’s movie when the Lady Ehrengard strode, nude as Venus, into a pre-dawn lake to bathe.

While I’m appreciating his assets, Mark says, “I suppose I have to find a T-shirt,” and walks to our bedroom closet.

Interpreting his tone as almost Eeyorish, I return to the keyboard, only to hear him say.

“Where’d my lover go? He didn’t follow me. How can tease my husband getting dressed if he’s not here?”

“What? I heard you say you wanted a shirt and thought you didn’t want to be pestered.”

Mark channels his inner C+C Music Factory: “Hey ladies / have you had your man / walk away and spoil your plans …”

I sing the guitar riff: “Doot doo-doo, doot-doot-doo. Doot doo-doo, doot-doot-doo.”

Mark: “Things that make you go poo.”

John: “Things that make you go poo. Eeuw-Eeuw-Eeuw!”

Mark: “It’s those things that make you go, things that make you go poo.”

My stomach gurgles.

6:35AM — Mark takes the dog to the dog park and I get ready.

6:50AM — Emerging from the shower, I decide what to wear. I want something that’s easy to get into and out of, since I’ll probably be wearing a gown without a back when I’m at the center. My athleisurewear sweatpants are the obvious choice for the bottom, and for the top I choose…The World’s Most Favorite Cat Shirt.

I empty out my purple grab-and-go bag—which I’ve been using as a gym bag at the YMCA—and throw things like Ada Palmer’s “Inventing the Renaissance”, a spare sweater, a soft folder with paperwork, my Book of Art, the Bag of Pens, an emergency applesauce pod, spoon, and blue starry napkin into it.

THE PROCEDURE

7:15AM — As we are driving to the center I realize that I actually am pretty hungry. My head feels a little light and I feel slightly dizzy; not too bad, but still I would like to eat something.

7:20AM — We arrive. Early. Too early. Mark drives around the roundabout and empty parking lot, past an urology building, and a dialysis building, and an AAA. After five minutes of this, he parks.

7:25AM — Mark decides that the windshield is filthy and needs to be cleaned. He goes to the back of the car and gets some Windex and wipes. I am shamed into cleaning off the wipers.

7:30AM — I walk into the center. The receptionist is there and Very Awake. Since I am wearing The World’s Best Cat Shirt, we are instant friends and share cat stories.

7:40AM — in the ten years since I’ve been here last, they’ve switched from Versed and other twilight drugs to a sedative called Propofol.

“Oh man!” I say, “This is Eugene! How can I have a crystal vision if I’m knocked out?”

My new best cat friend (whose cat’s name is Alejandro) thinks this is pretty funny. Maybe I’ll fall into a wisdom dream.

7:45AM — The ward nurse calls me back before I have time to read more than a paragraph’s worth of Ada Palmer’s, “Inventing the Renaissance.” This is a Good Thing, as it prevents me from having to hunt down a lifestyle magazine with an article on meals in order to be taunted by (and tempted to lick) photographs of food. Not that I’m that hungry. Yet.

7:50AM — I’ve been inducted into a sick bay. I change into a medical patient’s smock and am tucked into a hospital bed with railings.

8:00AM — Somewhere around here I notice a paper stop sign taped to the ceiling instructing patients to call a nurse for help if they need to sit up, stand up, get dressed, go to the bathroom, or pretty much anything except lay in bed.

I suppose in an attempt to get me to nap, the nurse turns off the light, so it’s a bit dim. I briefly consider napping. My procedure isn’t for a while so I’ve got some time. But I want to keep a record of today’s events for posterity. Alas, my IV is in my right hand so I can’t write. I’m going to have to dictate into my phone instead of writing into my Book of Art.

Someone turns on an Eighties Station and quiet strains of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” plays. I keep expecting to hear David Bowie sing “Let’s Dance” like he did ten years ago, but this never happens.

Despite my smock’s fabric pattern looking like something one would find on the PDX airport carpet, the off-one shoulder cut contributes to a Renaissance Market Girl mystique. I try my best to look like Henri Regnault’s Salomé, but I don’t have a large brass tray or a leopard skin throw. Mark opines later that the IV bag of saline in the background spoils the effect.

At least the ward nurse complimented me on my silver star stud earrings. And she liked The World’s Most Fabulous Cat Shirt.

—Oops, my phone is dictating the nurse’s induction to the patient next door.

8:20AM — just met with the doctor and the anesthesiologist so of course Christine Levine’s “Music To Operate By” is in my head (“Oh it must be great / to get to operate / on sensitive patients like me / who care about your / stupid, petty problems / that you should have left outside the door / because right now / all you should be focused on / is me me Me ME ME!”). I’m under the impression that they think I’ve got good blood pressure and heart rate for a sexagenarian.

8:30AM — a nurse stows away my glasses and phone. So I can’t write, dictate, or see. I get wheeled into the operation room.

“Do you get to wheel in patients every day?” I ask.

“No, we trade shifts and this is my day.”

“Cool, oh there’s the monitor; darn I was hoping to see it, but I can barely read the clock.” This really is too bad, as last time I got to see the folds of my colon, but there’s no way that’s happening this time.

“Okay,” says the anesthesiologist, “I’m going to put this oxygen feed on your nose. It might smell bad.”

“Probably not as bad as the Suprep,” I say.

“No, but it’s still a little plasticy,” the anesthesiologist says.

There’s a moment where my hair gets in the way of the left ear loop, but then it’s on. The plastic nose feed isn’t some giant, spiky pronged device that goes halfway up my sinuses, for which I am grateful.

“Okay,” says a different tech, who was a blonde haired blur, “I’m going to put this heart monitor on.”

“Cool, EKG?” I ask.

“Yes, one pad here. Another pad here—let me get your hair out of the way.” She hooks wires over the electrical contact stud sticking out of the adhesive pads. “And another one here.”

“Okay; which one’s ground?”

“Um,” —apparently, I’ve gone off script and this is an unexpected question—she points to the one on my arm. “That one.”

A series of instructions to lay on my side follows, and then I’m thinking the anesthesiologist is speaking to me.

“I’m sorry, what?” I ask.

“I’m repeating procedure to the doctor so he knows that I’ve started the propofol.”

“Oh. Right. Repeating thing’s the procedure.” If I had been thinking a little more clearly, I would have asked my favorite research question: “What things do books or movies get wrong that bug you the most?”

A new dimension subtly reveals its rotational axis.

“Hmm,” I say. “I think I can feel it working.”

(This is me, knocked out. Whoa, that was abrupt.)

9:00AM — A nurse’s voice calls me out of darkness. It might be more accurate to say that my name floats out of a sea of medical machineries’ clicks and beeps and brings my awareness to the surface.

I open my eyes. “Oh. My glasses are on my face. I can see.”

“Yes,” she says. “I handed them to you.” (Wow, The Void has that memory.) “How do you feel?”

“Okay….” Being able to see the wall clock in focus was not quite the crystal vision I was expecting, but I’ll take it. “Uh, I feel a little dizzy.” I’ve had worse spins with tequila. It does not occur to me at the time to start singing, “Give Me One Margarita,” which is probably for the best.

“Just rest for a few more minutes and I come back to see how you feel.”

I lean way over the bed rails and fish my phone out of my grab-and-go bag. The patient in the bay next to mine is wheeled back, coughing, and I am thankful I didn’t have an endoscopy. Or apnea.

The doctor appears with a packet of results: nothing super-serious, and I get to do this again in seven or ten years. He slips the packet into my bag and says goodbye.

9:15AM — Wow, underwear, pants, and shirt whipped out and on—and I’m whisked out to the patient pickup area faster than you can say diverticula. Okay, not quite fair… I did get debriefed on resting; not driving cars, doing yard work, drinking, or smoking marijuana; and walking/farting off any carbon dioxide they pumped into me during the procedure. The nurse handing me off to Mark says something about helping me in and out of the car.

RECOVERY

9:25AM — We stop at the Community Cup for tea and breakfast protein. Getting out of the passenger seat requires some thought. I’ve opened the door, grabbed my purple grab-and-go bag, and slowly pivoted ninety degrees to my right when Mark stops me.

“Wait, John. Let me come over and help you.”

“Oh,” I say, “I can get out of the car.”

Mark pretends to address my father: “Yes, Harry.”

Sigh. (Imitating my Ninety-Year-Old-Father As If He Were Speaking Face Down From Where He’s Fallen Onto The Floor): “I’m fine. I’m fine.” I let Mark help me up.

“The nurse did tell me to help you in and out of the car,” Mark says.

In the crosswalk, I realize that the street is maybe rotated a half-degree in that newly discovered dimension and is out of phase with my feet, and am extra thankful for Mark’s hand (which is also maybe in another dimension) in mine.

We play Word Scape on Mark’s phone while we have quiche and tea. I suppose playing a word game together in a cafe is Cute Old-Couple Behavior, but I use it as an opportunity to test that I can still form words out of random letter tiles.

Occasionally the room jumps a half-inch in a random direction. I’m going to guess this is caused by sudden head movements.

9:55AM — As we drive home, I still appear to be slightly loopy. Er, dizzy? Er, processing three-dimensional objects as if I were having a mini out-of-body experience: everything seems extra-solid and displaced by half a degree? I’m noticing that my lexical ability is impaired: mostly choosing the occasional wrong word or mispronouncing things like isopropanol alcohol. I sing “The Time Warp” under my breath: “It’s a slowed down sensation / like you’re under sedation!”

10:00AM — We achieve the driveway. I recite: “to sit in solemn silence on a dull dark dock in a pestilential prison with a lifelong lock, awaiting the sensation of a short sharp shock from a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block.“ Well… that mostly works. Granted, that still usually works after two margaritas, so it’s really not an accurate measure of Mexican impairment… er… *lexical* impairment.

10:15AM — Mark reminds me that I have already had two cups of tea at the cafe. I retire to the deck and the patio sectional couch with a banana and some lemonade and my grab-and-go bag.

The day passes with much less writing and reading than I expected, and much more napping.

I’m sure that farting is in my future.

Memento mori.

July Fitness

July is almost half-way done and our yard is flowering. This year we have an abundance of artichokes blooming; their purple crowns are a favorite with the bees. The gladiolas Mark planted earlier are growing taller than the foxglove; the hummingbirds love them. And the iris has given way to purple phlox.

After about six months of Mark dropping hints that I could join him for yoga at the local YMCA (yoga isn’t my cup of tea, though), I’ve re-started my fitness regime. This involves wearing a fitness tracker that talks with my mobile, and spending time on a health app keeping a food diary of weighed out serving portions. And waking up early and going to the Y to either swim, or run on an elliptical, or clink weights. Or sit in the hot tub.

I want to say the increase in activity has been good for my mood, so yay. If I can continue to exercise consistently through September, I’m hoping habit will carry me through the Very Very Long Grey Months around the Winter Solstice. I also want to say that my body is thinking about beginning to look a little more toned, so also yay.

I’m surprised by my sleep patterns: based on motion and heart rate, I wake up a lot more during the night than I realized and I actually sleep a lot less than the seven or eight hours I thought I was getting. It would be interesting to correlate when the tracker thinks I’m in REM sleep with an actual EEG.

---

The other weekend I went dancing. Mark opted out. The producers of the dance were the same folks who produced the Pride After-party.

I arrived at a local Queer/Pagan bar a little after 9 PM, when the event started. The music was pumping out, folks were around the bar and tables, and the dance floor was empty.

The theme of the dance was “Hanky Panky”; folks were supposed to wear a colored bandana in one of their back pockets to signify what kind of sexual activities they’re into. Since there is no hanky for “My husband stayed home, and I’m just here to dance,” my back pockets were bare and I wore a black T-shirt with a rampant rainbow unicorn on it. In retrospect, I should have worn a mirror-ball keychain… perhaps with a T-shirt reading “My ball-and-chain is a disco ball.”

I ordered a cola product and inspected the decor. This is somewhere between a theatre production of the Addams Family, an occult bookstore, a Hot Topic shop, and a leather bar—with a covered and fenced-in porch on the side.

I finished my drink, figured someone had to be the first person dancing, and headed to the stage end of the bar. The DJ, smiling, left his control panel, bounded past a Saint Andrew’s Cross and a bondage bench, underneath the big screen showing campy and risqué videos, through the strobing and whirling stage lights, past a dancer’s cage, and met me on the dance floor. “You’re early!” he said, and then introduced himself. Technically the dance’s start time was 9—but things wouldn’t get started until about 10 or 10:30.

This was fine by me, because I wouldn’t have to worry about stepping on somebody or thwacking them with an upthrust arm accidentally while I shook the rust off of my dance moves—which I’ll be the first to admit are a cross between cha-cha, the fox-trot, an aerobics routine, and a ritual summoning.

The music was a fun repeat of the mix during the previous week’s After Party, and, luckily, not quite as loud, as I had forgotten my ear plugs at home. The video on the big screen was a slightly more X-rated version of the previous week’s PG-13 video.

The dance floor filled up, and then go-go boys in day-glow fetish-wear jumped onto the stage. I’m not sure if they were dancers who strip, or strippers who dance, but at least they seemed to be having fun. Especially in the cage. My sense is that they had friends in the audience.

I danced and danced, and briefly re-connected with a queer pagan acquaintance I hadn’t seen in about two years; he went back to dancing with his partner, who was in a wheelchair.

Just a quickly as it had filled up, around 11:30, the dance floor cleared. I remember this used to happen thirty years ago at Perry’s On Pearl: you’d be dancing to the music, look up, and realize that about half of the dancers had left, presumably with each other. The energy of the room would shift from summer lovin’ to autumnal lean and prowling.

When I stepped out onto the smoking patio looking to chat up my acquaintance and his partner, I realized A) it was cooler out here; B) oh yeah, this was where people actually smoked, and; C) a bear in a leather jockstrap and harness wasn’t just waving hi, he was offering me a joint.

Actually, I’m pretty sure he was offering my hair a joint.

I smiled and said, “Thanks; I don’t smoke.”

“What?” he said in mock-horror. “A man dancing with long grey hippie hair doesn’t smoke weed?” (See, I was right; my hair had scored.)

“It’s true,” I said. “Thanks anyway.” —Not realizing until the next day when Mark told me that the leather bear was flirting with me that I missed the sub-text and was completely off script.

Note To Self: Next time, compliment a leather bear on his gear and ask him where he shops.

I went back inside. While the fantasy cater-waiter dance scene from the movie “Jeffry” played on the screen behind him, a lone go-go boy whirled some LED poi in front of a mostly empty dance floor. Which was too bad, because if I had to choose, the go-go boy with the whirling lights was the most interesting one on stage, and he deserved more of an audience.

The night had reached an inflection point. A long time ago, someone taught me the difference between staying at a party because you’re having fun and staying at a party because you’re waiting for something to happen. If one is waiting for something to happen, one either needs to make something happen or leave. Even with the disco nap I’d taken that afternoon, I was feeling a little tired after about two and a half hours of almost solid dancing. So it was time to leave.

The next day my fitness tracker reported that I’d taken 6,183 steps and that I’d burned through 586 calories during my 95 minute “Aerobic Workout.” I can tell from the graph of my heart rate when I was enjoying dancing the most, but, alas, I can’t tell from the valleys and peaks where the poi-whirling go-go boy or the leather bear are.

I can, however, find Mark.

Eugene Pride 2025

Last Saturday, I wanted to march in the Eugene Pride parade while holding Mark’s hand. Retrospectively, I had an unconscious desire to recreate the magical NYC Pride float experience of 2023, only with Mark this time. This was probably at odds with Mark’s disinclination to participate in public events, like dancing, or the Saturday Market, or Eugene LGBTQ+ choral performances, or the Eugene Bright Parade. Which can bring out his contrarian side.

On one hand, two over-fifty, gay, married men holding hands while one of them waved a small rainbow flag is a political statement about gay life, gay liberty, and the pursuit of gay happiness; on the other hand my imagining of the moment involved fast-paced 1970’s disco, and gauzy rainbow on the edges—I’m pretty sure in my vision we weren’t marching so much as gliding. So probably more fabulous than what was going to happen.

This year the Pride Celebration was moved up from August in Alton Baker Park to June in the Lane County Fairgrounds. Of course this caused controversy. I prefer having Eugene Pride in June when it’s typically cooler; and I’d much rather march in the rain at the end of grass pollen season than under a 95°F August sun in the middle of wildfire smoke season. Security was also a concern: it’s easier to put up fencing around the fairground venues than it is a city park. The security measures also meant a bag-check for non-clear bags and no signs, banners, or flags larger than 11X18 inches.

Mark wanted to skip the rally at Kesey Square and just join the 10:30 parade from the square to the fairgrounds. Since dealing with the car would probably be a rigamarole, we opted to walk downtown—which takes about twenty-five minutes. Between yoga, looking after a neighbor’s animals, dealing with some of The Child’s childhood junk treasures, slathering on sun screen, and taking the dog to the dog park—but no gay brunch—we started out not quite as early as I would have liked. Which necessitated a brisk walk—water bottle swinging from my belt; 12X18-inch pride flag in my hand; and keys, tickets, mobile, and wallet in my back pockets. It was already a clear-skied 72°F.

Somewhere along Willamette Street my paper ticket to Pride worked its way out of my back pocket.

We got to Kesey Square at 10:32. It was quiet. And empty. An abandoned, pink, open, VooDoo Donuts box did its best tumbleweed imitation next to the statue of Ken Kesey. I still don’t know if the parade started early, or if the rally decamped to a different march staging area.

We walked west on Broadway Street toward the fairgrounds and met some other folks also looking for the march.

Mark noticed my rising Sun-in-Capricorn-Moon-in-Virgo-You’re-Doing-It-Wrong-This-Is-Why-We-Can’t-Have-Nice-Things sense of frustration and advised me to breathe out frustration and breathe in calm. Or something. We found a bakery with chocolate brownies, macarons, and coffee for Mark.

As we were paying, someone behind the register took in my black T-shirt with a Progress Pride flag on it, my Rainbow flag, and very likely my Hair and asked for a social media photo.

Fortified with the photo-op and some little white bags of baked goods, we soldiered on, ever westward.

As we neared Franklin Street, I caught the sounds of drums, and we could see police blocking off streets. We were just in time to insert ourselves into the tail end of the parade and jockeyed for a space between various other groups based on whatever it was their signs and banners read. No one resurrected the chant, “Hey-hey, ho-ho…”.

I waved my little Pride flag. “Hey, Mark,” I said. “Give me those bags.”

“I can carry them,” Mark said.

I eyed the small cup of coffee in his other hand. “But I wanna hold your hand.”

“Where’s your brownie?” he said.

“I snarfed it as soon as we left the bakery.”

I held the flag and the bags in one hand and Mark’s hand in the other. It was nice for about sixty seconds until I had to let go of Mark’s hand to push my hair out of my face. Which prompted mock-protests of a typical Leo nature from Mark about being abandoned.

Five blocks later the parade transmogrified into a fairground entrance line. After an interval of shuffling, during which I realized that I could display my ticket on my phone, we made it through the Event Center back entrance doors and emerged next to a stage where dancers we wanted to see were scheduled.

We sat down in the audience section and got blasted by loudspeakers during a sound system accident.

Mark thought having Pride in the Fairgrounds venue made it seem like a combination of the Eugene Holiday Market or Boat/Home Show, which was a little cramped and overwhelming for him. He would have liked vendor booths arranged circularly around a central performance area instead of the grid layout they used. He also missed being able to picnic on the grass (which is hard to have inside).

I did like being in the shaded, if not air-conditioned, indoors; but it would have been nice to have picnic tables set up.

The dance groups were entertaining and interesting.

Prompted by the experience with parade, I made a point of asking someone at the information table where the after-party dance was going to be held (since the location wasn’t clear). We bumped into four folks we knew and had quick updates with them.

And then we were done.

We walked back home.

I spent the afternoon digging through an unorganized collection of mostly papers looking for my party ear-plugs. I found them behind some coffee-table books on Ancient Egyptian Art.

Around 7 p.m., I drove to the 21+ after-party dance event, which was located next to the Lane County Events Center, in an old Quonset hut. In some ways, it was a throw-back to the dance floor, twenty years ago, at Perry’s on Pearl; only with newer songs. And much less clothing. With go-go boys.

The music was danceable, and I was glad for the earplugs. I had fun, and I was dancing by myself in a Quonset hut filled with people. I thought about braving the long line to purchase a soft drink or mocktail, and wound up paying $3 for a 16oz bottle of water. I danced to the four quarters, and stayed in my body. I danced and danced, and only realized the music kept on playing a half-hour after the dance’s official end when I looked at my phone.

The crescent moon hung above the western horizon as I walked past folks breaking down chairs and booths; past the deflated rainbow arch at the Event Center front entrance; through the main parking lot and over a creek, to where the car waited in auxiliary parking.

Signs From Beyond the Veil

It’s a writing day and of course I ate something, possibly too much of something, last night and this morning my digestion is out of sorts. I’m going to blame the Brussels sprouts—apparently gas and bloating caused by fiber and sulfur in them is a thing on the internet. I will have to limit my sprouts intake and be extra certain to chew them thoroughly. In the old days, I only encountered them on Thanksgiving, and could avoid eating them with a well-placed table napkin. Okay—that only worked once, and has become an annual family story. 

Lately, The Child has been dropping by the house somewhat unannounced to borrow the car. Aside from the typical parental concerns around young sons’ driving habits, borrowing the car is fine. However, it did prompt Mark last Thursday night to make a sign out of red construction paper that read “Private Event (wink wink nudge nudge)” and hang it on the door nob of our front door to prevent The Child from randomly crossing the threshold and being Deeply Psychologically Scarred by the Unsettling Sight (and Sound) of His Fathers Engaging in Cis-Gay-Male Gnosis. 

Being raised Corvallis-Nice, and having never had a Noah in the Tent moment with my parents, I appreciate Mark’s directness in preventing a retelling of Lot’s Fathers. I suspect The Child appreciated The Sign when Mark showed it to him Friday, but it was a little hard to tell by his deadpan poker face. 

It was easier to partition The Child from our Moments of Epiphany when he was younger, naps were more regular, and sleep was thickly swathed in oblivion. Our nearest Moment of Revelation was decades ago, when The Child woke and rushed into our room with the report of a dream of roaring lions. I’m glad for our record, and sometimes miss the old certainty that our curated Moments Beyond The Veil would stay Beyond The Veil.

Impressions on Penczak's "Gay Witchcraft"

After at least twenty years, I've finally managed to get my hands on a 2003 copy of “Gay Witchcraft: Empowering the Tribe,” by Christopher Penczak. It’s a Wicca 101 book, highlighted with gay overtones. It’s the sort of book I would have loved in the 1980s; it appears to be grounded in sources like Margot Adler, Janet and Stewart Farrar, Marija Gimbutas, Charles Leland, Starhawk, and Native American practices. Early chapters are a survey of world pantheons with a focus on gay, lesbian, and transgender deities where applicable. Later chapters are quick sketches of astrology, reiki, crystal healing, and herbal remedies.

It’s more same-sex centered than “The Gay Wicca Book,” by Bruce K Wilborn. It does have some ritual and practices for same-sex lovers, but it’s not really a gay essentialist tome in the way Storm Faerywolf’s more earthy “Satyr’s Kiss” is. Specifically, the Great Rite—placing an athame (ritual blade) into a chalice—is presented as a symbol for the heteronormative union of the Horned God and the Great Mother, i.e. Heiros Gamos, which in itself is a symbol for the union of cosmic principles. While I appreciated the handful of paragraphs exploring the Oak and Holly Kings recast as lovers, I did wish for more exploration of cis gay male eros, agape, and amore as a source of gay gnosis and as a lens for queer praxis within the framework of American Wicca.

To work beyond the book, it could be fruitful to one’s personal practice to explore decoupling elemental tools and directions from a male or female view. I’m not sure if that would make, say, a wand both masculine and feminine, neither male nor female, or some other intersection of the gender continuum. Perhaps it could be useful to move linguistically from statements like “fire is male” to “fire has male” (in the same way that one might say “he has hunger” instead of “he’s hungry.”) At the very least a reexamination of how gender and desire are woven into symbolic correspondences would result in more mindful symbolic acts, i.e. rituals.

I suppose to continue the decoupling, one could explore silent, mimed ritual. (Pause to imagine Wiccans trapped in a glass box.) Hmm. Maybe not. I’m sure there’s a metaphor in there, somewhere.

Portland in April: Sunday

Palm Sunday, April 13

Sunday morning was sunnier, colder, and windier than the previous day. Walking the early morning streets Mark pointed out that the lighting on the embossed brass doors of the U.S. National Bank Building was diffuse and at a low angle. I’d mused about photographing them yesterday, but the lighting had been more harsh. I skipped across the street to photograph them. The doors are similar to the ones on the New York City Exchange building in that eight square panels show scenes of “progress”—except the New York doors show more Art Deco styling and the Portland doors are more “Empire” or “Romanesque” (I don’t know when they were made, but based on the naturalistic poses I would guess 1890 or something).

I didn’t register it at the time, but the panels are a history of Western Expansion, starting with half-naked Native Americans witnessing a clipper ship in the top right square, Lewis and Clark (and Sacagawea’s papoose-carriered back) on the top left square. Transportation and arrival seems to be the underlying theme, with the Native Americans watching locomotives in one panel replaced with settlers watching a steam paddle boat in another. The last panels along the bottom depict senes from the 1920’s or 30’s; the rolling landscapes have been replaced with power lines, model T cars, and metal draw bridges. While I appreciated the artistry, the doors are really Colonialism (and Capitalism) on Parade. (Pause to consider replacing the panels with ones that rotate with scenes restoring the narrative of Native Peoples; pause to consider how the concepts of capitalism are embedded within the architectural details of the vault-like doors, and what a post-capitalism bank might look like.)

After the photo session, we walked south. An ornamental cherry had shed its petals over the white marble steps of another financial institution, and I briefly entertained the vision of scooping them up and throwing them up into the air as if we were in a procession—but then I imagined the unsavory items and liquids that might be commingled with the petals and checked the impulse.

Mark and I breakfasted at “La Boulangerie” (or something), on things like quiche, croissants, and macaroons. Across the street, in a corner courtyard with the cherry tree, a vortex played with black sheet of plastic, possibly an extra-large garbage bag. Against the sunlit buildings and tree, the plastic looked like a Dementor from the Harry Potter series. Every time I though it would come to rest, it would jump up again and circle, over the cherry, around a building corner and back again, gyring up eight stories and slinking on the wind over the street in a way that looked less and less like a tumbling bag and more and more like cloaked and serpentine wraith. This was made all the more incongruous by a chocolate croissant and loud, vaguely French music coming from the kitchen’s sound system. Eventually, the apparition blew around a corner and out of view.

We returned to the hotel for a quick refresh and to meet a local friend, NH. She photographed us as we processed down the grand staircase from the mezzanine, in front of the great mirror, and into the lobby proper. I’d like to say that we looked regal as we went down the stairs, but we were dressed for an urban hike and looked like we were attending an Elderhostel Orientation (I blame my Tilley Hat’s inability to contain my hair).

The three of us headed to the Willamette River and the Steele Bridge. We chatted about our elderly parents and what our children are up to. Along the way we passed by a sheet of thick, black plastic crumpled on a corner. The temperature rose, but the wind was cool, especially if we were in the shade. Cyclists and joggers and families on outings passed us in both directions.

As we were making our way along the eastern river bank below OMSI, I looked out and saw a sea lion in the Willamette. The sea lion was so high out of the water and swimming so swiftly that it looked a little like the Loch Ness Monster. Another, smaller sea lion swam on its side and appeared to be sailing with one fin held up in the air; we weren’t sure if it was in distress or not. We seemed to be the most excited folks on our section of the path to see the sea lions—normally they are on the coast; Mark opined that they must be following the salmon as they spawned up the river.

Continuing forward, we crossed the Tilikum Crossing back to the west side of Portland. We ate at what we thought was a pizza place at first, but turned out to be an Asian Dumpling Restaurant. We continued our urban hike along the waterfront plaza, and wound up back at the hotel, where we bid NH adieu.

Mark wanted to pick up some books of his own, so I ditched my Tilley hat, Mark ditched some unneeded layers, and we went to Powell’s City of Books. Powell’s has rearranged the speculative fiction section and a few other sections; so there was a repeat of the moment where I would lead Mark to the former location of something. Which was a little irksome. Eventually, a bookstore clerk directed us to the sections where we might find LGBTQ+ romance (paranormal or otherwise) similar to what Alexis Hall writes.

Since I had already used up my book budget the previous day, I felt like I shouldn’t be buying any more books (and besides, I wasn’t sure I would have been able to fit them into my train luggage). I did ask two clerks if they had any suggestions or tools for repairing books that had been savaged by Evil Scrapbookers—one clerk was sympathetic and I felt like he was going to tell me some Powell’s Book Bindery Secrets, but the other clerk sort of shushed him and I ended up getting directed to a shelf of books on book binding, but, alas, not exactly book repair.

As I was leading Mark back through the stacks and to the cash registers, I had a a stairwell moment with another patron. I would quip that it was a “stare well” moment except it was more like my gaze fell on this other guy as I was descending, who sort of jumped and stop-motioned out of a freezing in his tracks as he continued ascending. It occurred to me that between my unbound hair flowing behind me, and my nail-and-bicycle-deraillieur-parts pendant against a dark shirt, I probably looked like the love child of Gandalf the Grey and Jareth the Goblin King.

“I think my hair just got a date,” I said to Mark when we reached the first floor.
“You mean the guy on the stairs?” Mark asked. “Yeah, he swiped right. I think that was the third one.”
“Oh,” I said. “So I wasn’t just seeing things in the corner of my eye. I’d wondered.”

Since it was just a block away from Powell’s, we traipsed over to Spartacus Leather for some apparel. Something fun, in a Magic Mike kind of way, but not with any chunky buckles or pokey bits. I think my favorite lines from the experience were:

Me: “Hello. I have two questions. (Holds up something like a lace-up tank top) Can I try this on?”
Clerk: “Of course.”
Me (Holds up a second, triangular scrap of cloth): “Uh, *how* do I try this one on?”
Clerk (mentally rotating the apparel in several axes): “I… think… one strap goes over your shoulder…?”


and


Mark (outside a dressing room, asking through the door): “How’s it fit?”
Me (in the dressing room—trying to squeeze into a vest made out of poly-something-or-other—in a stuffed-up, nasal, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer voice): “It’s not very comfortable.”
Mark (in a 1960’s Donner Reindeer father voice): “You’ll wear it and like it. There are more important things than comfort!”


Ultimately, there wasn’t anything there that met the trifecta of making me feel attractive, comfortable, and wouldn’t poke Mark if I hugged him while wearing it.

We wandered around a bit, and slipped into the old Sentinel Hotel, now the home of “Jake’s Grill,” to look at its architecture and interior design. The outside looks French: many masonry “tassels” hang from the corners and cornices, or are carved into the stone window casings. The tassel motif was repeated in balustrades and in stain glass mosaics set behind Beaux-Arts light fixtures. Anticipating Transformers by about eighty years, the stone tassels along the top frieze of the building became knight-like sentinels.

We chatted up the concierge / host, who seemed more than happy to let us explore and photograph architectural details. I stepped into an empty dining area and discovered a series of sepia toned murals depicting Lewis and Clark trading along the Columbia with The Native Americans. The art was well done; we saw a little more of Sacagawea’s face and not quite so much of her back this time. I’m not sure if, confronted with eight-foot tall figures of fishing Native Americans and bartering Corps of Discovery members, a diner is supposed to start humming the School-House Rock ditty, “Elbow Room,” or the Village People’s “YMCA.” However, I’m going to hazard a guess that artists in Oregon at the turn of the century substituted Pacific Northwest Native American men for Hercules, Apollo, and other Classical Excuses to Portray the Male Nude in Art.

That evening, we upgraded our athleisure wear to restaurant casual and had dinner at The Melting Pot (a fine fondue restaurant). Mark had pointed it out the evening prior; much to my excitement I discovered that The Melting Pot’s entrance was through a baroque arched belvedere that first caught my eye when I was a student at Reed. Back then, it was the entrance to a club or restaurant called, I think, “Bacchus.” Wrought iron grape vines and Bacchus heads adorned its four sides, and a horned goat head stared out from the arch’s keystones. A stairway led to the actual restaurant, which was underground. I always imagined a sinuous, writhing interior with torches and vines and snakes and couches and satyrs and nymphs and shepherds and shepherdesses and sheep and goats and urns and craters and pyxes pomegranates and grottos. Oh, yeah; and some sort of feast.

I never did make it inside when I was at school. It was a landmark we’d pass by riding the bus on the way to the Saturday Market; or, later, drive by on the way to Powell’s; or still later, catch a fleeting glimpse of on other Portland adventures. Somewhere along the way it had stopped being a restaurant—I seem to recall it was an unused space for a while—and I had no idea it had become a fondue restaurant.

When we got to the belvedere—I practically skipped up to it—I discovered that what I had thought were granite foundation stones and the intersection of two masonry barrel vaults was, in fact, a stoney facade affixed to a metal frame. Mark and I descended the stairs, which were concrete, with a plain metal railing along one side. I had already braced myself for an an interior which would be completely different from what I imagined, but I hadn’t been prepared for the belvedere’s forgery.

The inside was a sort of Arts-And-Crafts meets Scandinavian Design in dark earth tones. Blue, green, and yellow bottles stood in inset boxes—these were, I think, supposed to be illuminated, but the lights’ elements had failed and so the bottles flickered and flashed in an erratic and disconnected fashion. The center of every table had a rectangular, metal, induction hot-plate in it. We were led to booth seating, which flexed when the person in the adjoining booth moved, and which the seats of were a might too low for the table. But it was clean, didn’t smell odd, and everyone there seemed to be having a joyful time.

We went in not realizing how hungry we were, and ended up ordering four courses: cheese fondue, salads, a chicken broth fondue, and a chocolate dessert fondue. The wait staff brought skewers and fondue pots in a combination clamp holder that they would screw down to secure the pot’s lid and prevent boiling oil splashes. Our waiter reminded us not to cross-contaminate the uncooked salmon with other kabobs of food. The safety measure impressed Mark, and he wondered aloud at the nature of the staff’s safety training. He was also amused at how focused I became on my phone’s stopwatch as I timed the shrimp, potato, broccoli, and aforementioned salmon.

Everything tasted great.

We had a sort of floor show two-thirds of the way in as a teenager in a booth across the aisle lost her cell phone between the seat and the wall. This necessitated a floor manager to remove the seat from the booth’s plywood base, get down on her hands and knees, and finesse the phone out (with a ruler, I think). I’m fairly certain the cell phone’s teen owner wanted to die of mortification.

I wanted to go dancing, but we were full of fondue and Mark was feeling tired, so we took a disco-nap until 10pm and then took a short walk to The Badlands. The drag queen who took our cover charge complemented my hair; I thanked her and then we were through the doors to ¡Kaliente! Night.

We were (surprise!) the oldest people in the club (probably). I’d say the genders were equally represented. The crowd was very diverse, which I wasn’t expecting for Portland, Oregon. I was pleasantly surprised that the music wasn’t random, arrhythmic beeps set to water being poured into a pitcher; it was mostly high energy, in a cha-cha or maybe salsa beat. We found a table in the corner and I bought us drinks.

I was surprised by the accompanying music videos—there must have been at least fifty video screens lining the walls—which seemed to require a chorus of women with Very Large Butts and Very Short Daisy Dukes to twerk and gyre and other variations of the pelvic thrust in unrelenting time with the music. Occasionally, the (usually) male vocalist would step in front of the female chorus, rap in Spanish, and either pump one fist in the air, or else open and close his vest in a game of peek-a-boo with his chest. Usually the set consisted of a swimming pool, a drag race garage, or a living room. I really enjoyed the music, but I have no Spanish, so I caught maybe one out of every thirty words, and I had no way to read the imagery in the videos beyond, “I like butts and I cannot lie.” There was a more arty video that featured a bemused looking man in country apparel, who kissed another man, and then rode a coin-operated mechanical child’s horse backward—I am pretty sure that one was a commentary on the intersection of masculinity, same-sex-desire, and country values. Then the female chorus returned to shake their thangs.

I dragged Mark onto the dance floor and we started to dance. Mark dances like a Muppet, which is adorable. My dance style is Dr. Strange Does a Box Step, which will transform into “White Guys Are So Cute When They Try To Mix Aerobics With Tribal Dance” if I really get into it. The difficulty combining our dance styles became apparent when I tried to ballroom dance with Mark and remembered that the last time we went dancing together was probably at his nephew’s wedding over a decade ago. After several songs, I just put my hands on his hips, closed my eyes, and listened to the music with my ears and listened to Mark through my body.

“Oh, you guys are so cute!” I heard a young woman say to Mark.

I opened my eyes and saw Mark ask the woman, who had very long hair, how far back she could lean, and she demonstrated how she could hold a pose that was almost a backflip. Mark applauded, they chatted some more, and then a moment later said he needed some water.

Back at our table, a young black man locked eyes with us and proclaimed that we were hot. Which was surprising. Gratifying, but surprising.

I dragged Mark out for some more dancing. I could dance for hours, although I felt like maybe I (and Mark) needed to dance more at home just to knock some rust off of my ballroom dance repertoire.

It did not occur to me what sort of impression I was making until several songs later Mark leaned in and started singing: “I’m singing to the song / though I don’t understand the words / but I’m dancing with my husband. / He wears a black turtleneck on the dance floor / and a necklace that looks like a charm / he has long silver hair / everyone thinks he looks like a brujo.”

Mark lasted about another forty-five minutes, accused me of keeping him up until midnight, and confessed that after about a half-hour, he finds dancing boring. We exited the bar. A vendor was grilling what looked like Mexican fare on a wheeled food cart and doing a brisk business.

We walked back to the hotel, said goodnight to Mariah, and returned to our room.