“Everyfuckinbody moves to Portland just because in this place you got nothing to lose”, that’s the line that my dad repeated every single month in different occasions.
For example when somebody moved to the next house, when somebody hit his car, when he saw the news about the rent going up… was always the same line.
My dad lives in Portland since day one, a bunch of Polish expatriates that found home in deep northwest. Nowadays the city got different kind of expatriates, nothing to do with war, I mean, still a war, but people come here because of freedom of choice and the absence of taxes.
Took some time for me to jump from one Portland to another. Maybe only when I was 19 and left my parents house. I did that to grown up, or at least was my main excuse… I wanted to see more but didn’t have enough brains to leave the state for a university. Move to fuckin Belinghan and start to live with all those assholes from Seattle, that got parents working on Microsoft and Boeing and enough cash to afford fancy lofts and expensive college. I was a working class boy… I could only dream with community university.
Trying to find a place to live, a flat to share I found out that the very same assholes from Belinghan now wanted to live in Portland, they found that with 400 bucks you can live quite easily and suddenly everybody was here. GLS wasn’t a forbidden word in the city also, people have a high tolerance without the whole flag thing that you can see in San Francisco.
In one of the cafes of the city, I found in a bulletin board a perfect location and a number. Her name was Meggie and we meet in the same evening that I saw the ad. Initially I was paying attention to the room itself… and the empty room was so huge, that I could have all the space in the world… I didn’t even bothered with the kitchen and the living room.
She was quite dry with me, she was interested in rent the place, not her friendship, I accepted that quite well. There was strict rules, no smoking, no parties and no hang out, that place wasn’t there for a happening. She said that was talking with more people and will come back soon. I got her call 6 days later, she asked if I was still interested and we closed the deal.
The first days where very strange, was my first time outside my family circle and even if I could reach my parents in 15 minutes, was like move to another country. Meggie wasn’t ready for long chats, maybe I reacted in a wrong way not being very communicative. After few weeks, maybe 3, things changed a bit… we started to talk and discover each other. The first time that we did something together was when a local cinema did a festival of Japanese film and I bought her a ticket to watch a movie that a friend described as a masterpiece. I felt Meggie very warm and from that day on we became friends.
I had zero sexual attraction with Meggie, she didn’t help either… she dressed like a 45 year old university teacher. And yeah, she was a big time dike, but never spoke about that, she didn’t need. I always wanted to meet her girlfriends or even friends… we were talking more but I didn’t receive the invitation to enter into her circle. In one of our conversations, watching Curb Your Entusiasm, I did the mistake of ask why the room was free to rent and she simply said: because of a big deception. Was too early to ask about deceptions… I shut my mouth.
In a matter of months my life started to have good chances in one side, bad in others. My dad died of a heart attack, and that was the worst time of my life. He was quite young, only 49, and was doing well, was happy… all the 3 kids where living and earning well, he did his part on the education. And my mom… only 41 was left alone in a house without any of her kids. She went thru a tuff time, but quite soon recovered, found a job in a charity institution and realized what I knew very well, she was made to make good things. On my side, a song that I wrote was picked by Bright Eyes on his latest record and was the first single. I meet Connor when he was a kid with the Commandos, we did several gigs with him in Portland, his spiritual home, specially because of Elliott Smith. Suddenly a publishing company signed me for that song, entitled “A Year Of Mondays”, a simple song that I wrote in a tuff time, but not tuff as my dad death.
Not being a musician or a songwriter and had a song being recorded in that way turned my life into a complicated phase, where I could easily get a record deal or shitload of money for a publishing agreement. I declined both, that song was like won the lottery. The funniest part is that I didn’t tell that to anybody… I mean, people eventually saw my name on the record, I asked Connor to keep low profile and he did, he understood my point, he wasn’t into the idea of hype somebody that don’t need/want that. I told Meggie about this whole thing, just because there was people knocking in our door quite constantly, I was afraid that she had an impression that I was involved with drugs
I was pretty feed up with my life and after a tuff day and a goodbye from my girlfriend, I started to cry. Meggie noticed and for the first time she entered in my room, and pass her hand in my back and said: let’s talk. I told her that I was too confused, had enough money to do whatever I wanted, but didn’t know what I wanted. On the top of it, my girlfriend simply left me, mainly because of my confusion and because she wanted a quite traditional boyfriend, better, she wanted a husband, and I was closer to death than a weeding. On that night everything melted in one big bad thing, my father’s death, my lack of hability for anything deeper, opportunities that I possibly left untouched… everything together. And after a couple of years with Meggie, she started to tell me the history of that room, that her sister used to live there and she died of leukemia. Meggie didn’t have mom and dad, both also died… she was alone in the world, that’s the reason to look so tuff. She wasn’t a dyke too… when her sister was dying, her boyfriend didn’t support her, he could not understand that was important for Meggie to help her sister and like any egoistic bastard left her in the most crucial time of her life.
As soon I heard that, I realized that my problems were absolutely nothing. I was a spoiled little fucker. So I decided to change my life, just to realize few weeks later, that I had nothing to contribute to the world. So I decided to see my mom and again I cried for good 2 hours… told her the whole story again. And she cried with me, we both missed Dad too much, he went too soon, wasn’t fair. He was my rock. Being a mom, she just looked into my eyes and said: son, you are a great person, you’re confused but confusion don’t last forever, take your time.
Things tend to settle. I bought a cafe, because looked like a good investment and I knew that people need warm drinks that keep you awake, specially in Portland. Did my little things, like poetry readings, acoustic sessions, once in a while I cooked something special… was a quite happy time. Around that, I realized a big thing, that we don’t need to put our feet on the moon to prove something, that “ordinary life” isn’t a bad thing, that you need to your part, and be fair… and it’s already quite hard to be fair and live simple. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s why Meggie was dry, the only small thing that she needed, she didn’t receive. That’s why we missed dad so much, because we needed his simplicity on our side, to look thru tricky things with a simple eye. That’s why my mom was happy, because she found a way to help people. And that’s why I was starting to feel ok, just like the Moldy Peaches song, because people need warm drinks that keep you awake.
