Fire and Drunk Veterans

Before I knew it I was far beyond stoned and someone was talking my ear off about Bruce Lee and Gracie. Brandon Lee was assasinated. Gracie was the best...but he lost. Bruce Lee was a god. He's buried in Seattle. His daughter was in a movie with Chow yun Fat.

I was growing weary of all this.
By god, I needed drink, not trivia!

End up in a slow bar advertising 80's metal on tuesdays at 8, and it's 9 with still no metal...but baseball!
I can't explain it,
the sensation was completely new to me.
Sipping on a pabst,
the only patron in the place,
watching baseball,
and...enjoying it?!

Not just enjoying it,
I was captivated!
Suddenly it all made sense;
T-E-A-M
this faction of men wrought with the intention of keeping you from passing first base...or even hitting the ball, if you proved to be so poorly endowed. All working on the same mind, the same goal.

'Johnson strikes two, Roberts is stealing second, but mamma lamma Hughes throws him out from home plate. Badda bing badda boom!'

So that was all very new and strange.

Down the street at Joggers,
an all-day happy hour pabst
and some fries.
Just as I breezed up this old man tells me
sit down
take a load off.

Ok.

Take a look at my art work.
He had a few oyster shells etched with
lighthouse
boat
seagull
and polished to a shine.

My old man would like the lighthouse,
I say
though I had no intention of paying him for it.

Some character walks up and starts talking real strange about the artwork, like, the way someone might try to cover up a public herion deal with a bunch of jargon that they don't really know. I was about to jet but I saw him hand off some greens and realized it was just a cordial little ganja exchange. Old dude borrowed my pipe while I went in for said french fries and pabst.

Get a call from Sui who is down to spin, so we meet up in the warehouse part of town and light up. He had a compelling method with the poi that used a lot of isolations and chain wrap thingies that I don't know the agreed upon names for; it was pretty sweet and I wished I had a video camera or something so all the Arcata crumb-bums could check it out, too.
I was a slight drunk or sloppy and burned off the better part of an eye brow.

We go back to Joggers for a drink. Old dude is there still and his name is Mike. He's a little drunk and looks like a salty old tug boat captain. He's there with his old pal Les. Les is a little old man with the cantanquerous face of an eight-year-old in a thin white chin-beard and overalls. He's mute from chewing tobacco and you can see where his throat caved in so now he breathes through a hole in his chest beneath his collar.
We wanted to play some pool.
Les conveyed to us on a pad of paper that he kept in his chest pocket that we would have to beat him if we wanted to claim the table. This was Les' table. Ok, why not.
Sui went first. He was stomped, badly.

Single handed shots,
behind-the-backs,
upside-down and eyes closed.

Les had every trick in the book and then some.

He sunk the 8 and then looked at me with tauting blue eyes and smiled.
Next?

Oh hell, why not. I don't carry too much pride in my game of billiards anyways.
I didn't sink a single fucking ball that game, and I think for a second I had Les thinking that I was bluffing.
Hah, no sir. Just not my night, you know.
After I accidentally hit two of his in, he laid it down hard and reduced the table to 7 stripes sitting there like stupid little snowballs. It must have been a Freudian slip of some sort in a final attempt to maintain just an ounce of dignity; I sunk one stripe, one eight, and one cue...all with one stroke and into different pockets.

It could have been a glorious shot,
but instead
I lost.

Sui goes up for another beating and I shoot the shit with Mike.
"Boy, if I was twenty years younger I'd be fucking every girl in this bar."
"What do you mean, these girls are schmoes. Look at all that makeup."
He looked at me like I must be gay or at least asexual, but then had a different thought.
"When I was your age I thought I'd never be old. I thought I'd die young, and if I didn't, I'd kill myself."
"Ah man, you're not so..."
"I'm old."

It was kinda sad, you know, because one day I'd say those exact same words and get kinda quiet like Ole Tugboat Mike did and then I'd have to decide.

But Good Ole Mike chose Life that night,
so I bought him a drink to remind him that it's not all bad and told him I'd take him up on a roof to squat for the night, to roust the embers of his neglected sense of Adventure.

I lost a few more games to Les, who was getting drunk quickly. His game was not affected, but his hand-writing was another story. The complications of drunken communication are compounded greatly by the written word. He wanted badly to insult me, for sport. Like, maybe, "you son of a pigs cunt!" or "you play pool like a cup of pudding!"
Yes, the impulse was truly noble, but when sounded out phonetically from the scrawls on his notepad, all Les managed to say was "meeergish-ummmmphlamup-berrrgnona-boop" and things like that. Which was cool, too.

I left, soon enough. Mike was too drunk to do any roof climbing, but he was in better spirits already and I could see that he should save the Hobo Resort Get-away card for another, more demanding day. We all shook hands and parted ways. It was oh so heart-warming to connect to the Elder Generation on the premise of beer and cheap insults and terrible karaoke.

I went back to the insurance office I'd scoped out earlier on 15th and Pearl. As with any other hobby, a new pair of eyes is born when traveling. Just as the avid skateboarder sees a gap-to-rail when the commoner sees only stairs, I had aquired a new instinct for...getting on people's roofs!
Dumpster-to-ledge transfer,
tight-wire across the powerlines to spider-man wall-cling revert,
triple rodeo flip to sunset rooftop super-vagrant sillouette pose.
Why, yes, I suppose I could sleep on top of the Space Needle!

Slept like a baby and woke up feeling good, and then hungover.
Nap in the graveyard,
read in the park.

The Old Man and the Sea.

Eugene, again

Back in Eugene after an eventful week in Bend and elsewhere.

Thursday spun with Bend's fire crew, Fyreflyte;
An appreciative audience, some sweet fire breathing by Michael and Ian, and a great musical line-up (Janes Addiction, Greek wedding-ish song, Squarepusher, etc.)

Then Friday, Kirsten and I go out for a night on the town.
An illustrious dine-n-ditch at Red Robin followed by clever drunken sneakery at Les Schwab ampitheather. On stage with Ben Harper, woo hoo, ok!
We could/would have stage dived in a brilliant display of our unmuzzle youth-addled freedom, but there were boxes of steak and fish left over in the backstage hospitality center, and we were still hungry.

So Jilli Vanilli came up saturday and we camped in the woods outside of Sisters. Next day we rolled on out the Terwilliger/Cougar hot springs, a place that I'd heard mention of at least three times a day since arriving in Bend. It turned out to be a pretty sweet spot, with $5 cover fee and a series of pools fed by a cave and about 15 naked hippies and their babies chillin out. We left a few hours later, elated. Rennan reccomended the place months ago, talking of the natural lithium in the water which makes everything Ok. Ok!

That night we drank deeply and snuck once more into the ampitheatre and onstage with The Flaming Lips. Holy shit! What a show. Mike was thrilled on a head-full and found his way to the costume room, where he suited up and joined the dancing aliens on stage across from the dancing santa's. They ended the set with a cover of War Pigs and everyone was apeshit. Jilli and I slept in an abandoned house across the street from Mike's place and scrammed Bend in the morning.
I was considering taking 97 north to Portland, but J wanted company to Eugene. So we went to Eugene and had a bite at the Pita Pit, found some good advice next door for camping. Out 58 past Oakridge to mile-marker 45. A quiet river-side hot spring with no fee and no naked hippies. We drank a bottle there until the sun set, with rain above and hot water below; a triple rainbow arched over the valley and it was good. Ahhh vacation.
We almost got away from the campsite this morning without paying, but the Hoodoo man rolled up as we were packing the tent and demanded full payment of $12 for the night. Hodie ho.

Back in Eugene, more Pita Pit (try the baba ganoush) and then we said our toodle-oo's.
Great to see ya J!

In the library now at the University of Oregon;
all the avid little students bustling about for a few more weeks of school.

Big campus, so-cal attire,
so-on.

Eugene is the friendliest town I've ever been in.
There is a statue of Ken Kesey reading a book on the plaza downtown.
Yesterday there was a kid there with his laptop and amps blasting out homemade Reason beats and no one seemed to mind. I mean, you could hear it blocks away and the security dude is just like "oohh, that one was cool." He also told me and Jilli that you know Kesey was dead when they made the sculpture because he is sitting down. It's a little thing among sculptors. And a statue of someone on a horse with the front legs bucking means he died in war. Ok, cool.
I'm going to live here someday...maybe even now! Find a cozy rooftop and chill back for the summer.

Downtown Bend on Wall street there is a statue of a broke hobo sitting on a bench looking into his empty wallet with a bird sitting on his head.

It's kinda sad,
ya know?

Almost Famous

A long days hoochin,
Ben and I hit the mexi-bar with a cat we ran into on the street.
Dude just got back from Cougar hot springs trippin ballz for two days, and he sells Ben some 2-ci.
He's flying in no time.

All of a sudden -
Mike's friend takes us to the Tech Nine show and gets us in the back with his press pass.

Apeshit!

A bunch of scandalous hip-hop hussies in lingerie file past us as "Imma-playa" gets going. A few dudes in the mix too, so, what the hell - I blended in with the Fluffers and Homies and hit the stage.

Yow!
It was glorious - there I was on stage with my boy Tech Nine, groovin down with his small legion of floozies in front of a rabid crowd of hundreds.
I knew, then, that it would be a defining moment in my saga, raising the bar on what's cool-as-fuck a few notches.
Imma-playa imma-playa...imma-playa

Yeah, the song blows,
and someone on security sensed my true feelings -
when the song ended
big-guy pulls me and some other stinking white poser
back to our rightful place -

standing around like schmucks in the press cage.

It was all very insulting and,
after a few attempts to infiltrate the fabled "Backstage",
we got out of there and kept on a-hoochin.

The rest is a blur -
maybe we ate burgers that night,
pizza...perhaps.

This morning we went outside of town a bit to Steelhead falls.
Pretty, nice, etc.

Chic punk bluegrass and the Beverly Hills of Oregon

A long ride with Roger the Animator into Eugene Saturday evening. The Campbell Club gave a couch for the night and, yip! - Chic punk rock bluegrass in the co-op next door -
washtub bass
tangled hair

singin -
whiskey&satan&sin

ok!

Out 126 with Liberal John in a newly converted SVO Mercedes, smells like RC airplane exhaust. He was an excellent local historian/geologist tourguide and I fell in love with the woods past Cougar dam.

Met up with Mike at the Irish pub he chefs at in Bend; dropped off my bags at his place.
Skate into town to scope things out...John called Bend the "Beverly Hills of Oregon".

A few shots at an expensive mexican bar&grill, talking to a traveling loan salesman.
He wants to go to burning man, but the wifey didn't allow it.
He used to be a party monster - racing boats and getting drunk in Ensenada ...
the booze
the girls
ah...the life!
And now the Work -
no time for vacation;
four kids and a mortgage
the job sucks - but the money!
twelve-thousand a month,
sometimes.

Oh, but the good old days
sigh -
yep.

It was all a bit depressing.

Then, smoking a cigarette out front with Ben, new in town from Chico, a car full of what must have been the Beverly Hills-type of Oregon stopped at the light and tossed fifty cents at us from the window.
Aha! A concrete indicator of a deepening aura of Poor and Homeless -
Thanks chaps!
My companion was a tad distraught by the whole thing, but managed to laugh it off over a drink at D&D bar.

Back to Mikes, then.
A monster blunt and some pabst and shoot the shit.
Reminiscing of Sol Duc; a great place in hindsight.

Monday - sun and rain.

Rain, beer, and In-N-Out

~Saturday 5/20~ Morning

The bar turned out ok.
I played a few rounds of pool with Monica, a bartender @ the Shanty in Eka. She bought me a drink and we hob-knobbed a bit. Spent the latter of the evening talking with Andy, a firefighter from Eugene. A former smoke jumper!
I left before drinking too much; I had a roof to climb!
Another step deeper into the mystical realms of the hobo.
It was all very exciting!

I grabbed a tall boy and some chex mix from a gas station and made my way up.
A noisy push of the dumpster and a precarious balancing act across a decaying awning and Eureka! A big open roof with a nice incline to sleep on in the far corner.

It was a perfectly charming night.
The summer triangle winked at me from a cloudless universe, shooting stars suggested this way or that.
So I got stoned and drank my Pabst, smug as a bug.
But then, Sweet Jesus, the thought fell on me all at once:
rooftop
cheap beer
the simple thrill of travel on the EZ...

Had I become a HOBO?!
What would my parents think?

Well, they'd have to understand someday...
when I announced at my fifth grade graduation that I would be a hobo for a living, it was supposed to be funny. It still is!

A magnificent shooting star crossed the entire sky and did a little J-hook at the end.
Huh? My lucky stars were bats lit by the gas station. Ho ho!
I laughed out loud at that one, and woke up laughing hours later when the rain came.
I rolled up in my tarp and went back to sleep.

About 6am I woke up soaking in the only puddle that managed to form on the rooftop.
That incline perfect for sleeping on...was the rain gutter. Doh!
Har har, good one, slippery Fate!
I went down to people-level and gave the thumb a try.

Two minutes later I was tearing down 299 with Daniel and Alyssa in their new 70-something pick-up. Two beautiful people, two happy pups in the back. We smoked bowls with heaps of keif and talked burning man.

In Redding the obvious stop was In-N-out burger. Unga-chunga.
And all those funny suburban people with their shiny cars and bright clothes;
I almost forgot your breed existed!

They dropped me at a rest stop up 5 a bit and we gave our farewells.

Moments later I was bumbling up the interstate in a small RV with trailer, on-the-lamb John at the helm.
His demeanor was nervous and subdued, but his circumstance was nothing short of inspiring.
John had just stolen his best friends wife of 27 years, quit his job in Colorado fixing the machines that make the chips that run your computer, packed up, and is now going north to Newport to start a new life. His lady trailed us in a little grey beamer. Her husband had "lost it."
Ok, go John!

We landed in Ashland around 4pm.
First thing, I spent the better part of an hour at a bathroom hand-dryer getting all the water out of my sleeping bag. Ahhh...and then I checked into the hostel, which didn't have a card reader, so I could give them the $25 cash later.

I dropped my bag and hit the street.
The suspicion quickly arose that at some time not to long ago, Ashland was a very hip town. But then, with the stealth of a virus, businesses began popping up that fostered the misconception of a vacation being something that involves a lot of money, and a lot of luxury. Tourism! Egads man, maybe Main street is always Main street. Curiously expensive drinks and meals, a carefully calculated interior decor. It was all very stange and I fled downtown in quest of the Real Ashland.

The dirtiest bar in town.
This is where you find the heart and soul.
Omar's had PBR on tap for a buck seventy-five.
I bummed a smoke from Coyner. He is about to graduate with a chemistry degree at Southern Oregon University to become a noble pioneer of the pharmaceutical industry. He is going to invent all those pills that nobody knows they need...yet.
Why? you ask.
I did. "Money and Security" and "my own house".
Hmmm...well it was all over my head, so I beat it to the plaza to rondevouz with the friday night fire cats. No luck, the rain must have kept them indoors this night.

I went to the Irish pub and got drunk.
Some conversations, a flirt with a girl at the jukebox.
All good people in a good town.

I woke up after check-out at the hostel and crept out the back door.
Sure I didn't pay, but was it wrong of me to suspect that you wanted me to stay for free?

In Zoeys cafe now, morning in Ashland.
A cuppa joe.

Go!

~Thursday 5/18 6:50pm~

Sweet Jane dropped me in Willow Creek early afternoon with skateboard, firestick, sleeping bag, and backpack. The first couple of hours were an inspired attempt at catching a ride to Ashland at the end of town. This proved difficult.
The demographics were all wrong. Middle-aged mothers with kiddie in the back seat nervously buzzing by in a shiny SUV. Smug rednecks in pick-up with iron-grated back window. Old folks...lots of old folks.
Where do they come from?
What are they all doing at 3:50pm due east from this quiet hillbilly haven?
The answers were far beyond me as I grumbled and spit in the dirt on a lonely shoulder of 299.

Everyone knows the signal. To the untrained eye it looks like a crude insinuation of sexual impotence, or a drive-by game of pinch-the-moon with hitchhiker playing moon. Thumb and forefinger a few centimeters apart, an "oh-so-sorry" shrug.
I'm only going this far!
Ok. But I'll be god-damned if every single person is only going this far when the next town is five miles down the road and there's nothing to stop for anyways.
Some attempted to diffuse the situation by laughing and smiling, like maybe I was out there just for fun (was I?), or my sign said "I just farted." And maybe I did, but I wasn't laughing. Lord no! I intended to make Ashland by friday evening, and with this momentum...
Had I stumbled into some sort of hitchhikers purgatory, a roadside phantom until my karma was properly aligned for travel?
Had I forgotten how to do it?
Did I have a booger?!
Again, all questions better addressed to a higher power.

So I sucked it up and rolled into town for a beer.
Forks Lounge. Under ordinary circumstances the place would have plunged me into a slippery pit of depression, but today it was my sanctuary.
Nevermind the dim lighting, hopeless drunks, and auto-erotic TV shows.
The tall-boy of Busch put me back in my element!

I hit the streets for another go.
Posture, gait, grin; they all said "pick me up and I'll roll us a spliff!"
An hour later it said "WTF?!"
This was worse than the long day in Shelton with Mikey, the definitive day of roadside absolution. And then the unthinkable happened; a truck towing some construction equipment pulled over for me. Aha! I snatched up my shit and ran for that trucker like he was Jesus Christo himself.
The he hopped out and ran into the gas station for a bite, oblivious to my shattered hopes and dreams. Oh cruel fate!
So I scouted out the rooftop of an abandoned resturant and found it fitting for the night, need be. A few more hours hopeless on the roadside and I retired to the Forks Lounge.

Another Busch, more drunks, a lousy soundtrack. Beautiful.
The Head Drunk announces his latest philisophical epiphany every few mintues.
"Fuck the world!" Well, yes, sure. Why not?
But a few beers later, our friend was singing a different tune.
"God told me to be here tonight, man! I'm blessed, yes sir, I am blessed!"

Why does God only talk to the crazy fucks?

Stuck

"Don't get stuck."

Lance says this when I ask him for a word of advice.
or maybe it was Larry, or Louis, or something like that.
Anyways, it doesn't matter.

"Don't get stuck."
He says, late night in a Seattle hostel fresh back from Singapore or Thailand or somewhere stuck in prison for nine months, caught kissing a Muslim. He lifts a sleeve to reveal pits in his skin the size of cigar burns. Where the electrodes connected, he said, and shocked the fuck outta him daily stuck in a wet box nowhere in particular for kissing the wrong girl on the street. Emails telling him stay out of LA, old warrants still hot and no jobs that ain't under the table 'lest you wanna be stuck, stuck, stuck.

So I believed him, then. Look of Todd in his eyes...sad, feline eyes. Todd, in prison, in Tijuana, withdrawing from years of heroin and in there for almost two months now for carrying a knife in his pocket on the streets. He's american, must have money. Take him in and roust a few dolores. But he's just finished off his inheritance on cheap hotel rooms and TJ black. Stuck.

Woke up in a dream the other night yelling it.
"Todd is dead! Todd is dead!"
I don't know why I knew.
Then wake up again, and again, and still the same dream, no getting out.
Stifled under the weight of two gigantic breasts that are smothering me like the Christian nightmares of a lustful born-again who can't kick.
Stuck in this dream, terrifying, forever.
If I hadn't of ran I would be dead,
there still,
stuck,

no question.

Don't get stuck.