VANTUCKY pt.2

  I'm glad I didn’t wet the couch. Whenever you pass out slightly pickled on someones nice comfy expensive looking couch there is always that really slim outside chance that you might have a dream about swimming carefree in the big wet salty ocean. Or the one where your on an ocean liner in your swimming trunks and you just got out of a nice warm hot tub to go look for a urinal.  Spot check, no moisture. Bone dry. Hooray


      Not sure how many scoops to put in the coffee mate. Weak coffee sucks. Better to go overboard. 

Eggs, bacon, hash browns, wheat toast, ice water. Gimme. Now.

  The girls wake up. Everyone is moving kind of slow, except Ruby. Ruby kind of reminds me of my Grandma Bonnie, bless her heart. I half remember and half imagine my grandma, bright and early in the morning, shuffling around in her antique looking house robe and matching slippers. Dyed, chocolate brown perm grown out into a kinky, cotton looking yarn. If Grandma’s ears had been more floppy and if Ruby could chain-smoke I’d almost consider spending more time researching reincarnation. I used to hate Grandma’s obnoxious poodle ‘Brandi’ but I like Ruby. And I miss Grandma. I had forgotten all about Ruby. Not Grandma though. The girls cant believe I once ate dog on purpose. Ruby doesn’t seem to mind. 

      We drive through Vancouver on the way to a good breakfast place. I'm never quite sure where I am in Vancouver cause it all looks the same to me. Lots of fields. Lots of apartment complexes. Lots of vacant lots. No building over two stories tall. Everything painted the colors of ‘smarties’ candy. The streets have no names, just numbers. Directions always sound something like this, “Oh, yeah, ya just take the 500 up to 78^th and turn right at the Easter-colored two-story apartments and head down 25^th place til ya hit the vacant lot.” Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen actual sunshine in Vancouver. I really like ‘The Couve’ too, don’t get me wrong. It such a peculiar place to me for some reason.  Must be the whole Washington thing or something. 

For the record, Alicia Keys’ new song is torturous. Why is she just belting out 'No one' over and over as loud as she can? We arrive at the restaurant/house not a moment to soon. Its called ‘Kathy’s’ or ‘Cindy’s’ or something like that. Have you ever heard of the ‘Red Hats’? I think they’re kind of like the Masons only for older women. They all wear red hats and purple shoes and seem pretty content with themselves. I wonder if they perform any sacred rites out in the vacant lots behind their two-story houses late at night. The food was good. An over-abundance of starch and wheat. The waitress had rusty looking artificial eyebrow streaks that almost blended in with the orange-ish colored foundation that started at her cheekbones and evaporated half way up her forehead. Odd looking bird.

Breakfast was cozy and fun. I can’t remember the ride back to Foghorn’s in detail. Bee had to go to work in a hurry. Time to get ready for the Rose Fest. Hope it doesn’t rain. Some guy pulls a gun out on that TV show called ‘Cheaters.’ Should be called ‘More Rons.’ I can’t take my eyes of this pop-locker dude from ‘So You Think You Can Dance.’ Something- Muraine. He’s not human. He can tie the shoelaces of his Shelltoes with his elbows. Part crab part bullfrog part freak of nature. 

I was assigned to Bee's bathroom to wash-up. Its got a huge open window with no blinds right next to the shower. Liberating. The window’s open, allowing the fresh air in. With the open window and the breeze, I felt like I was standing outside in the vacant lot behind Cece's two-story condo, in the buff. Nice and filthy. The toilet seat looked like a coal miner had sneezed on it. My barefoot kind of shifted in a thin layer of filth in the tub,  reminded me of those outdoor showers at your neighborhood pool. I hate bar soap. Makes my skin feel all dry and filmy. Like I just put under-arm stick deodorant all over my body.

Fresh and clean. Grandma and I hung out, waiting for Cece to do whatever it is pretty girls do when they say they're getting ready. I took the long-route driving to a downtown Portland parking garage. We walk through the Rose Fest end to end. Wadn’t too impressed. Ominous looking rides with steel cage doors, stuffed animals and elephant ears. Hoochie mama’s and cookie-cutter gangster wanna-be’s. Pop culture is a bitch. Used to be ‘Hippies’ now its ‘Crippies’. 

About fifteen minutes later. We ended up at the ‘Thirsty Lion Pub’ or was it ‘Hungry Lion Pub’? on 2^nd Ave. across from Platinum Records. The waitress is from New Hampshire where all the pretty girls wear short black skirts and knee high black stockings. Come to think of it, all the waitresses must have been from New Hampshire. 

 Conversation turned stale. Right now she’s down. A Hefeweizen and some chips ‘n salsa later and she’s back up. I like Corona.  I thought it was time for the ‘What the fuck happened five years ago anyway?’ conversation. I think she could see it coming too. I had all these seemingly important things I wanted to make sure she understood about who I am. Seemingly important things I wanted to understand about her. I suck at those serious emotional conversations about feelings and what not. Skip it. I’ll just leave her an awkward voicemail message or something later. No wait, bad idea.  “Laissez Les Bon Temps Rouler.” 

We hooked up with one of Bee’s not-quite relatives and her slim boyfriend. His aqua-teal Nike dunks matched his polo. Must’ve been about 6’5”.  Hula-hoop a fruit loop skinny too. They wanted to ride some deathtraps. Sure, what the hell. First one wasn’t so bad. Kind of like bein’ on the tip of the big hand while someone winds up the clock. Fun. 

I wish I had camera batteries. Oh well. The honey bucket open-air urinal is a good idea. Fits up to eight at a time, no line and ya don’t have to touch anything but yourself to go. Earlier, Cece had told me this funny story about her last visit to Portland, she said she was even wearin’ the same jeans she had on right now. Apparently she somehow rolled her ankle, scraping it on the concrete and then managed to step right into a small pool of vagrant urine. Salty bum urine soaked into the cuff of her jeans and then dabbed at her bloody scraped ankle with every step. She had to drive back to Vancouver in her underwear as a result. Great story, huh.

So, a little while later, we walked for what seemed like an hour through the diverse Rose Fest crowds, in search of a Honey Bucket. We finally found the pottie. Then during the walk back towards her ‘cousin’ and slim, she gives me the play by play. While she was in the clench carefully hovering, attempting to defy gravity above the seat and only touch the handle of the door, her thigh was rubbing against the lip of the kind of redundant unnecessary li'l urinal thingy that's always dripping with piss. Amazing. She has all kinds of stories involving urine. 

I pointed to a wet-spot on her jeans and asked if that was a piss driblet, she touched her fingers to the suspicious looking wet spot and then brought said outstretched-fingers up to her nose for a whiff, then said “No, that must be somethin’ else.” We laughed about the what-if. It would have been funny though, if she really had actually done that. Never smell your fingers. 

I didn’t think this would be such a long story. 

So Cece and I rode the scariest ride we could find. She said last time she rode the ‘Fantastic Orbiter’ the G-Forces made her accidentally spit in Bee's mouth. Kinky. Mental note to keep mouth closed. After riding the ‘Orbiter’ and actually really enjoying it. I felt like I had officially conquered the Rose Fest and was ready to go. 

So in order to avoid traffic downtown due to some parade, I drove south almost to Beaverton then looped around back onto I-5 north to Washington. The radio was playing that disco song, “ Up, Up to the Sky…” that Redman and Meth sampled back in the day. Good driving music. 97.1 FM then followed it with “Supersonic” by JJ Fad. Right after that, a hilarious Daffy Duck Disco song I've never heard came on. It was Surreal. That three song combo just re-affirmed God’s sense of humour and love for me.  Stay tuned. 


written May 31, 2008