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.

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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.

Portland In April: Saturday

Saturday, April 12

Mark arose, like he usually does, before I did, and after a particularly lazy sleep-in, I joined him at the Benson Cafe and Bar for breakfast. In the morning light, the place had an open and light quality that had seemed heavier the previous evening. The sun peeped out from behind clouds and shone through beveled and frosted panes of glass. Massively intricate plaster ceilings reflected the sunlight in a diffuse glow. A huge gilded and silvered mirror at the stair landing stood like a gateway to a reflected lobby—or would that be ybbol ? The darkly stained bannister held panels of carved wreaths between the sturdy rail posts. Breakfast was good, but we decided that better fair was to be had from one of the patisseries a few blocks away.

We skipped a brief reunion tour with Mariah and opted instead to explore the stairwell. This had been set up as a kind of museum, with different landings focusing on things like the history of The Benson, which of the recent U.S. Presidents had stayed at The Benson (many, except the 45th) , the Portland Rose Parade, and famous performers who had stayed at The Benson.

“Whoa,” said Mark. “Mariah requested seven limousines? And a specially lit mirror? And $50 candles? Telling folks that seems like a breach of confidentiality. They’re being so mean to Mariah; they don’t single out Elvis or Shaquille O'Neal like that! And then they make her show her boobies in the elevators!”

Mark then went on to play some Mariah Carey songs, and I recalled why I only liked “Fame!” and “Out Here On My Own.”

Then it was time for our first outing. Saturday was partially cloudy with sprinkles of rain. We entered the Chinese Garden right as it opened at 10 AM. I have never been, although I have walked outside its enclosure and caught glimpses of bushes and interior stuccoed walls through some of the ornate windows. The garden takes up an entire city block, but the layout of the tea shop and trees and galleries and shrubbery and moon gates breaks up site lines and makes the space seem much larger.

Our tour guide was a very enthusiastic Chinese woman who would lock eyes with everyone as she would explain the history and design of the garden and structures around us. Sometimes the sun would peek out from behind clouds; other times a cool wind would herald spattering rain. This was a Chinese scholar’s garden, brought together to enable a scholar easy access to both nature and culture. I would say the central design theme was bringing together contrasts: yin and yang, sharp and smooth, dark and light, moist and dry. I enjoyed the various dark and light pebble floor tiles and took pictures to see if there might be a pattern to bring back to our back yard; I’d say “cherry blossoms on ice” was the most interesting design because the other designs (which I also liked) were regular tessellations. Of all the flowers opening for Spring, I think the blooming bonsai wisteria was my favorite plant.

There were many koi in the irregular pond stretching from the center of the lot, ranging in color from red, to orange, to porcelain blue, to black, to bone, and multiple patterns between. I thought the most striking one was a large black and white koi with silver triangles running down its spine. Mark liked a large grey and white koi with pale blue, almond-shaped plate scale armor.

Later, I was able to capture a photo of the grey and white koi centered in ripples from its spine; in the water outside of the circle of advancing ripples, a cloud-veiled sun was reflected, distorted into a cat’s white slitted pupil in a small blue circle rimmed with yellow and red clouds.

“Whoa,” said Mark when I showed him the photo on my mobile. “That’s a powerful picture. It almost looks like The Moon tarot card.”

We took a meal in the tea house; I declined the chrysanthemum tea—which prompted a mini performance of Stephen Sondheim’s “Pacific Overtures” and a quick explanation to the somewhat amused tea house docent/clerk—and had a red hibiscus tea that was much more subtle than the old Celestial Seasonings Red Zinger tea I sometimes used to have a long time ago. Mark got white pine needles. The second floor of the tea house, where we ate, was open and airy, with Chinese lanterns hanging from the thick crossbeams. We had an interesting and hot soup. The moon cakes were fine, but not to my taste.

Mark had said that the Garden staff used to encourage patrons to use soft, quiet voices in order to preserve the serenity of the place. Apparently, this custom has been relaxed, and I had to compose a haiku about two particularly brash young women and their incessant chatter:

Screeching mergansers
Churning the koi pond waters

Miss the rain’s ripples.

After a final stroll along the peonies, maples and limestone formations, guardian dog and dragon sculptures, and sloped rooflines, moon gates, and ornamental picture windows, we said goodbye to the koi and ducks and exited the Chinese Garden—purchasing some chocolate from the gift shop before hand.

There was an occult bookstore that sold rare books—things like first edition copies of “The Equinox”—across the Willamette on Burnside that I wanted to visit, and Mark was amiable. As we set out, the rain was very intermittent, and the gusts had become more constant, prompting me to tie back my hair so that it wouldn’t blow across my face.

The bookstore was a few blocks east of the river. When I walked in, a wave of something like frankincense and myrrh and cedar hit me. The heavy scent had a deep note, and almost no flowery bouquet or fruity top note; it wasn’t unpleasant, but I knew Mark wouldn’t appreciate spending too long in the store (and in fact, he delayed coming in for a bit). The store was smaller than I expected; the decor was more occult than Neopagan, more Goetia than Wiccan. Folk-pagan music played over the sound system. The store had a collection of tarot decks by the front door, which looked interesting, but I already have several decks and I really only use one. Mark and I both liked a stain glass piece that used beveled cabochons to show the moon’s phases. Short stairs, decorated with occult paintings, led to a small landing with a closed door—I would suppose that a ritual space was located behind the door. The books were arranged by subject and author; the rare books were behind glass doors. While it might be fun to have a rare, first edition book—thinking of my lightly read but visually dynamic (and ponderous) copy of Jung’s “Red Book,” and my facsimile copy of William Morris’s stunning (and long-winded) “The Story of the Glittering Plain”—I felt that the florid style of early nineteenth century mystics, mediums, and ceremonial magicians probably wouldn’t warrant the expense.

I’d say the layout was not conducive to casual browsing, and my initial sense was that folks were not encouraged to loiter before the shelves. I wonder if I was giving off “I’ve come to see the freaks” tourist vibes or something when I first walked in, because I got a strong sense of wandering into someone’s enclosure. The proprietor warmed up after a bit, especially once I started asking serious questions like, “do you have this in soft bound copy?” I snagged “Queering Your Craft: Witchcraft from the Margins,” by Cassandra Snow; “Gay Witchcraft: Empowering the Tribe,” by Christopher P; and (on impulse) “The Awakening Ground: A Guide to Contemplative Mysticism,” by David Chaim Smith. Skimming them a little later prompted the Question of the Day: Can one both be critical of hyper-capitalism and still espouse the use of “money magic”?

Back on the west side of Portland, we took a quick nap, and then grabbed some food from an outdoor Food Cart World local to the Benson. I had sushi, Mark ate Columbian. We sat at a very long picnic table and listened while a busker tap danced on a stage. Then it was off to the New Mark Theatre for a world premiere Oregon Ballet Theatre performance of “Marilyn.” (We almost were seated at the stage where “Tootsie” was playing.)

Mark wore a nice, dark blue shirt; I wore a purple shirt with a detailed flower-of-life geometric pattern and a darker paisley-patterned purple scarf. I always like to see what other folks wear to the theatre. We saw a woman dressed like Carmine with a red flower in her hair; there was another woman in a dress that looked a notch above gold lame; there were two guys who were obviously together, but their outfits were not coordinated, as one wore a cowboy hat and the other was higher-end urban. There was less Hippy Chic than we usually see in Eugene.

“Marilyn” was a modern dance ballet following Marilyn Monroe’s life from childhood to her death. The mostly piano music was recorded, with occasional historical voice-overs. The set made use of a scrim, a mostly featureless art-deco wall with a split gate, and a circular stepped dais in castered sections. Effective lighting sectioned off the stage. The main antagonist was a chorus of faceless men in trench coats. At times the chorus was the paparazzi, other times it was men/the patriarchy, sometime it was just a bad situation. The most effective lighting trebled the cast by shining red lights on the trench coated dancers so that their hellish shadows danced on the walls. The most striking music was when Marilyn “sang” happy birthday to JFK without actually singing happy birthday. The dance explored Marilyn’s odd relationship with her father, her husbands, and how this translated to her relationship with men and men’s society, and how Norma Jeane Mortenson constructed the persona of Marilyn.

Afterward, Mark was emotionally exhausted. We made a new best friend (who had a fabulous green and black velvet dress) and the three of us had a mini-salon in the seats and discussed how Marilyn navigated the patriarchy while we waited for the auditorium to empty. I think the dancer we felt for the most was the very young dancer who performed as a child Norma Jeane at the beginning and who represented a regressed Marilyn near the end as she dance with Monroe’s psychiatrist (how would you direct a child to dance in such a convoluted adult head- and emotional-space? we asked ourselves).

We walked the streets of downtown Portland. Mark was open to the idea of cocktails, and I was hoping to find a place to dance (with the understanding that Mark was probably not in the mood for a dance). As we were circling in on where I thought the Silverado was, I pulled out my mobile to look at a map. Almost instantly, a young waif—I thought it was a boy, Mark said it was a girl—appeared and asked if they could borrow my phone to call their uncle. I was simultaneously processing 1) our location in relationship to the bar, 2) the mechanics of dialing a stranger’s phone number, 3) the likelihood of this being an attempt at “Apple Picking”, and 4) a Corvallis Nice Response, when Mark nailed them with a New York City buzz-off stare and a very firm, “No.”

The complex of gay bars that used to be around the corner from Powell’s Books had dispersed to other Portland sites. It was was now a Disneyfied pedestrian street mall.

We wound up back at the Benson Hotel bar for cocktails. Our waiter was putting off enough signals that even my feeble gaydar was pinging. After he suggested that my second drink might help us get lucky, we told him we’d been looking for the Silverado and Mark asked him where people went to dance. It depended on what we wanted to do. He suggested The Badlands bar, which was only a few blocks away, and mentioned Sunday night BBQ at the Portland Eagle (which was far away in North Portland).

Mark and I closed down the bar at 11 pm, more by accident than anything else, and went back to our room. Reader, I enjoyed that second drink very much.

Portland in April: Friday

Friday, April 11

Mark and I took a Lyft to the Eugene Amtrak station, where we boarded the 4 PM train to Portland. Mark has warmed up to the train, I think; for weekend getaways it makes sense: the drive to and from Portland is usually no fun, and parking the car downtown for a few days is expensive. I always think the train ride through the Willamette Valley is interesting because one gets to see the hidden sides of various towns and cities, and the views of farmland and the country are more bucolic than they are from Interstate Five.

The train filled up as we travelled north; Mark was glad that he’d purchased our tickets a few days prior. Just after Salem, we decided to get a light dinner snack. The attendant in the dining car was the most disgruntled Amtrak employee I’ve ever encountered. Maybe disgruntled is the wrong word, because he had friendly advice about the food selection, even if it was “I don’t eat any of this stuff; they don’t pay me enough to.” The conductors were hanging out in the dining car, trading horror stories about getting shunted to a side line for hours to wait for freight trains. One conductor in particular kept sharing mile stones and times and practically did a victory dance when we passed a particular landmark before a certain time. We made good time, with only one moment of being shunted to a sideline to allow a freight train to disembark from the Portland station. We detrained around 7:30.

We exited the train station and set out for the Benson Hotel. This required skirting the west edge of the Chinatown District, crossing Burnside, and skirting the east edge of the downtown bus mall. Even when I was attending Reed, this part of Portland has never been the happiest part of town, and we had to navigate around dog (at least I hope it was dog) poop, “gentlemen’s clubs,” one-person tents, and folks in varying states of mental crisis. No one was threatening, but it was a sad commentary on how social support networks have some pretty large holes in them.

We arrived at the Benson’s chandeliered and Russian pine colonnaded lobby and strode past the bar and upholstered couches to the main desk. We had to reassure the receptionist that we were fine after our ten minute walk from the train station.

We managed to summon an elevator with our room cards. The elevators were mirrored on all sides, which sometimes made locating the floor buttons tricky. A display board on the right side showed playbills and posters of famous visitors to the hotel. Mariah Carey, in a low-cut, spangly dress, appeared to lean out over her frame, prompting Mark to make a comment about “boobies.”

Our room was compact and perfect as a base for a weekend of urban hikes and adventures. The doors in our part of the floor looked like they were the originals, dark wood with lighter inlays of a shield displaying an entwined OH monogram (possibly for “Hotel Oregon”). Farther down, the south side of the hall, the doors and hardware changed to something post 1940; we surmised that the Benson had expanded at some time and combined with another building.

Since we were starving, we set off (saying “Hi,” to Mariah again, followed by a short rendition of “Fame! / I’m going to live forever…” ) for dinner. Mark said I was in charge of getting us to food, and I wanted to show him Huber’s, a bistro I had eaten at last May while attending DrupalCon. I’d enjoyed the wood paneling, the brass details, and the Art Deco / Arts-and-Crafts architecture. We walked east on Harvey Milk Boulevard; after a slight moment of confusion, we arrived at Hueber’s—which was closed for a week of spring cleaning!

After casting about downtown Portland we ran into an Iraqi restaurant called “Dara Salon.” A huge mural of the Ishtar Gate dominated the western wall of the restaurant, and Iraqi artifacts decorated the entire space. The charming decor was somewhere between Eugene Bellydance and (more) Metropolitan Museum of Art Middle Eastern Gift Shop. The food was great, and I ate a lot of felafel.

Cooking with Glass

Last night I was putting together quiches: one for our house and one to take to my elderly parents. I layered almond slivers, salad shrimp, mushrooms, broccoli, and gruyere cheese into gluten-free pie pans—lightly dancing to the music of various pop music queens—when there was a terrible crash behind me and to my left.

When I turned around I saw the slivered remains of the kitchen’s seventy-five year old glass light cover on the ground in front of the stove. It had been a flattened cylinder of thick glass that you could easily mistake for a flat-bottomed flower bowl or electric pole insulator. Frosted and clear glass shards and radiated out from the middle of the kitchen floor; slivers were about my slippered feet.

I don’t remember if I said “holy guacamole!” or just “whoa!”

Mark called from the bedroom where he was reading with the dog. “Are you okay?”

“There’s glass everywhere,” I said. Luckily, my slippers have sturdy rubber soles.

I closed the bedroom door and Mark sat with the dog while I began clean-up.

The light cover looked a bit like a jagged meteor strike underneath the light fixture, where two naked bulbs still glowed. I looked up at the metal ring and the screws that had held the cover in place: the screws looked like they were still in place and I couldn’t figure out how the cover had slipped their hold.

After a few minutes, the last of the shards tinkled into the kitchen’s garbage bin and the floor was mostly clear. Undoubtedly, there were vorpal bits of glass in unexpected corners.

I looked at the two quiches on the counter. If I had been five minutes faster, they would have been in the oven, which was still at 375F. If I had been four minutes faster, I would have been crowned with broken glass and likely fallen partially into the oven.

The question was had any broken glass made it to the kitchen counter? I looked, and looked, and found a sliver the size of a fingernail between the two quiche pans. Sighing and swearing, I dumped the quiche.

This has been the third odd accident in the kitchen over the last two weeks. An enameled pot of oil tumbled off of the stovetop and dumped olive oil all over the kitchen floor, and a few days later a glass saucepan lid jumped off of the stove and broke in more or less the same place as the light cover. Mark had had to go through a lengthy process cleaning the kitching. It’s enough to make one think of poltergeists or wicked hexes.

I wasn’t sure which was more annoying: wasting food, the wasted time, not being able to bring a meal to my folks, or having to be a one-man hazmat team.

I found another piece of glass on the kitchen nook table, next to the bowl of proto-custard that was to be the last ingredient poured into the quiche pans. As I poured the mixture down the sink, I contemplated the likelihood of a sliver or three of glass hiding somewhere in my clothing or in my hair.

While the pop queens’ music played, I moved chairs outside, swept, and vacuumed, swept again, and went over the floor with a wet cloth. I shone a bright flashlight along the floor and found glass bits hiding behind the kitchen cart.

Kitchen towels, a dog toy, placemats, and tablecloths were shook outside and tossed into the washing machine. Pet dishes, coasters, plates, trivets, mugs, and other utensils went into the sink or the dishwasher. I ran a wet cloth over the chairs and the bare table.

It took forever, but I wanted to be thorough because I didn’t want a dog or a cat or a human to encounter a stray bit of glass.

The last thing I did was step into the shower for a ritual cleansing and to rinse any glass out of my hair.