Crater Lakes

An over dose of sleeping pills wont kill a large man with insomnia. If five of the fuckers wont get you to sleep it’s idiotic to think thrity will will make you sleep forever. My suicide note was lame anyway. I believe now suicide attempts are for quiters. Walking death is for walkers and death is for those who can’t afford to live. I am happy to be alive, and my wife is a munument to my life. This book is a retelling of what I believe to be a great adventure. I don’t condone or mean to glamorize the stupid things we did. But we did them and I want to tel lyou about them.

I left late at night. The greyhound station in downtown Portland allways teems with with people who have far more interesting stories than me, I just have the idiotic cumpulsion to write. These people read stories and are affected by them, The other half read stories and talk politely about them in college. I had taken a job at the Crater Lake lodge in Southern Oregon. They hired me sight un-seen so I thought I’d show up. I don’t remember the buss ride but I do know the trip took me down the length of Oregon on the Interstate. When I had taken this bus ride before I had shared bottles of whiskey with thin angry girls or small bags of meth with large content men. This time I was trying it al lsober.
That mornign we arived in Medford. I milled about the bus station waiting room with some other new hires of the lodge. There was a young hippie named Pete looking forward to being a bus boy. There was an older man named Martin who was to be a dishwasher and a tal lblond girl who reaked of Jose Quervo.
She stood defensively as she knew she stunk. I had dried up a few days before so her good looks mixed with the aroma of a not so bad booze made her seem like a particularly bad brand of evil. I talked to her.
“Fuck, last night I broke a half gallon in my bag. I stink,” she said, bashfuly smoking.
“There are worse odors,” I said.
Soon a van came and collected us. We stopped at a Wal-Mart to get things we might need in our new homes a top a mountain. We were warned we would have very little and if we didn’t have cars the isolation might make us crazy. In this PC world, a boss warning you against madness is either a red flag or a damn good sign of future comiseration.
We were driven up the mountain. The higher we got the more snow surrounded us. Soon we were taken to a hall where we went through some kind of orientation. In th eback of my mind I feared a drug test as I had bought and stolen several vicodin and oxycontin to get me through my most recent detox. When I yawned or dozed off I could still feel the sleepy warm effects of th epills. I’m sure the smell of my urine alone would sedate any nurse checking it for contraband. All in al lI felt like hell and worrying about my urine as the boss of th eplace talked about an up-beat work atmosphere was making me have to poop.
I drew the faces of my future co-workers.

We were assigned dorm rooms in a long housing complex. THe halls were dark and th ebathrooms were comunal. Imeadiatly people grouped up and spoke rapidly. I had brought with me a bottle of dramine to get me to sleep. My grand plan was to quit drinking. I set it on the table next to my bed. The sound of people exploring each other came into my room from under the door as I fell asleep.

The next moring we had a wine tasting. The grand plan failed again. After the tasting I got my first real look at the lake. A womean named Kat smoked a cigarette and stared at it with me. “Here we are,” she declared. Aparenty a girl was raped that night. I tried to not ask questions. Of our origional twenty some, we were now down two. Kat ended her exposition with the promise to find the best heroin I’d ever had come payday.

The next day we had another orientation were we went around a big circle and talked about ourselves. THe lodge wasn’t open and th ecompany had planed a week of training. What one can learn about working in food service in a week without actualy serving food is useless. It’s sort of like planning escape procedures for an automobile accident. If you’ve ever crashed a car while drunk, you either know how to cover it up or you don’t. A tiny blond woman with focused eyes proclaimed her desire to work up from busser to server. If you think that is a petty desire, you are a fool, as I was when I heard her say that. Kat bragged about her years of expirience in New Orleans. Oh yeah? What the fuck was she doing here? When it was my turn to say something about myself, I said, “I’m here to meet chicks,” which was bull shit as I hadn’t had a sexual thought or errection in months. People laughed, but my laugh was more private.
During a break a I asked the girl with focused eyes for a ride down the mountain the next day. She agreed to take me in her red truck. She nervusly smoked, smoking seemed a burdon to her as she had several pounds of jade and silver jewelry on. The lack of customers in the lodge seemed to frustrait her. An empty dining room made us all look bad. Her name was Lauren.
That afternoon I hiked up a near by ridge. I am no hiker and at an altitude of 7000 feet I quickly became a drooling stagering fool. Sobriety seemed more idiotic than ever..

It was a sunny drive down to Medford. Walmart was a buzz with angry familial combatative shopping. I wandered the isles for a time then went back to the entrance to meet my ride. Lauren met me and I noticed something wrong. I could smell her sweat. It wasnt from heat as Wal-mart is allways quite nice and cool. Apparently she had overdrawn her bank account and didn’t have enough money for more cigarettes. She blushed and stared off into the distance to hide her agravation and discomfort. I remembered I had a Walm-Mart gift card in my wallet with about six dollars credit left on it. I gave it to her and she bought a pack.
In the car she looked somewhat devistated. It was decided we would get drunk and try not to focus on her finacial problems. So we drove to near by Ashland where I knew there was a liqour store. With my last cash I bought us a fifth of Evan Williams and for me a small bottle of Wild Turkey.
Lithia Park in Ashland meanders along the banks of a gurgling stream. Walking in this park one forgets there is starvation, war andethnic diversity in the world. For all we knew this park of pranceing lab dogs and bouncing joggers went on for ever. We found a creek side bench and drank our whiskey.
“I know this dumb ass Chriss with a brother named Nathen,” she began a story.
“Really? I know this mad man with an asshole brother named Chriss,” I interupted. If global warming isn’t proof enough of it being a small world, this cioncidence ought be. She knew my best friend in the world.
Soon we were drunk. Stagering flatulent drunk. I’m sure we l;ooked like transients in that damn perfect park. We came to a place where the stream was damed forming a pool. Lauren stripped to her underware and waded in. The blur of white skin through a whiskey haze on a fine day is amazing. As ugly as I consider my own body to be, hers was beautiful. I pretended not to stare as she plodded around and smoked. She was unaware of the heavily foot travel on the near by road, but I didn’t warn her.
We drove the long way back up the mountain blarring the Beastie Boys on her stereo and sipping whiskey from a coffee cup.

My job on the mountain was as a pit bartender. The bar was in the kitchen in a locked cage. There was an opening big enough for me to hand the servers their drinks. Through the bars I could see the whole disfuncitonal kitchen, mixed with Jameson was quite entertaining. Directly in front of me was the prep station. The prep cook wiped the residue of cakes he cut from his knife by putting th eknife between his knees and squeezing. One one particular occasion I saw a fun drama play out as if it were a silent film. He had an order for a piece of cake, which he took from the fridge behind him. He accidently dropped the cake while trying to kick the fridge door closed. Distraught, he looked for another cake to cut, but found none. He called the chef over and they both looked at the cake on the ground. The chef picked up the cake and brushed it off and put it on a cake. The server came by to get her desser. For a time all three leaned over the cake picking little pieces off it. Soon all three were satisfied and the server left with it. The Chef patted the pastry cheff on th eback and walked off. With a deep sence of relief, the pastry cheff wipped off his knofe between his leggs.
There was a lovely server from the midwest named Emily whose accent was almost incomprehensible. The more Seagrams I gave her, the sillyier and more garbled her speach became. I followed her to a bable to present a bottle of wine just in time to hear her describe the special as a “Denver cunt,” instead of a “Denver cut.”
The senior bartender at the lodge was a Jersey native named Rod. He had the easy going nature of a recovering alcoholic; the big trageties of life he laughed off but it was obvious the next time he dropped a glass or stubbed his toe he’d say, “Fuck it, gimmie a drink.”
Kat would drink sparingly during her shift, but when it was over she became a flopping liability befriending any man in the dining room. After one shift in the cage I came out to find her posed and still in a big leather chair next to the fire place. Her eyes were unfocused and if one didn’t know beter one would think she were tired or lost in thought. The truth was she was barely concious. I tried to walk her back to her dorm room, but she collpased a few feet from the chair. I carried her out of the building in my arms. Out side in the snow I put her on my back. She pissed like a race horse. It was a long heavy walk to the dorm. She promised me the best herion I’d ever had come payday before falling asleep and nearling slipping off me.
Lauren watched me carry Kat rhough the dorm with those big brown focused eyes of hers.

A Dodge Probe arived on the mountain and Miles stepped out. He sighed deeply and took his mandolin from the back seat.
“Hey man, do you play the Mando?” one of the assholes of the mountain asked him. He was sitting with his leggs wide open while smoking. It was a question made lewder by it’s unintended undertone.
Miles looked down at the mandolin in his hands, “Oh, this. No.” He sighed deeply asumed an akward pose. “I have to get it fixed.”
Women imeadiatly hated Miles from Oklahoma City. Miles wasn’t gay but he often forgot he wasn’t a women. In a room full of women he would use words like ‘bitch’ and ‘cunt,’ freely unbekownst to the rising anti Miles sentiment growing. It was a strange power that’s hard to relate in the writen word. One great asset Miles had was the willingness to drive anywhere, anytime no matter how drunk he was. Thus the Probe became our Probe. We probed much of the mountain.
There was a particulalry idiotic server on the mountain named Dove. Kat had dicovered she was on a heavy dose of tranquilizers for reocuring seizures. It was Kats way of courting me by stealing this medication and giving my large handfuls. This behaviour reminded me too much of my mother, but I accpeted thepills anyhow.
One morning began with miles at my door looking distraught. “I need to go to Blockbuster, or Hollywood Video, Maybe a Wal-Mart.” I understood this deep carnal need.
“I’ll come with you, let me get ready.” As I sleep fully dressed and often with my shoes on, I rolled out of bed, took some seizure medication, drank a beer and shot my self with colone. “I’m ready.”
On the way to the car we picked up a few more passengers. An actual gay man named Ryan and a cynical cook covered in angry tatoos named Jeff. A weird floppy feeling came over me as we decended the mountain. Miles piloted the Probe admiraly, often staying between the lines.
Our destination was Klamath Falls. A once ecologicaly diverse marsh, it had been drained for irrigation. A strange suburban town poped up for no reason. Miles looked at the used DVDs at every rental place in town. It was a discouraging selection made up mostly of Keanu Reves and cuputer generated monsters. I stood behind Miles as he looked, swaying wildly. I fit in perfectly. A few pills and beers later we at Wal-mart. I staggered up to the gun counter and as I recal said, “Give me your cheapest most inacurate firearm.” They let me hold and point several of the heavy cold devils. It’s a fantastic feeling to hold a gun in an enclosed space surrounded by people. All the suicidal fantasys turn to homicidal fantasies. I think that’s why so many people don’t shoot themselves. The agony of self pitty turns to playful murder when they hold a gun. Someday I hope to shoot myself, but many many years from now when it’s my time.
I was disapointed to find out I’d have to wait a week to buy a real gun, so I bought a realistic looking B.B. Gun. The faces at the Klamath Fall Wal-Mart looked distorted and deformed. I fit right in.
A hunger fell on all of us and we drove the streets looking for food. Miles sadly shook his head as we passed Mexican restaraunts, BBQ stands, Dannys, Taco Bell, Burger King. Eventualy he pulled into a Korean Cafe. My admiration for Miles grew.
Inside the menue was glued to the wall and hits from the Fifties and Sixties were lovingly recreated on a cheap synthesizer played on the PA. We sat at a table and drank cheap Vietnemesse beer called ‘33.’ I ordered an aray of octopus and Salmon. Miles had a bowl of Pho Van. This seemed to depress him. He was probably remembereing some perfect night years ago eating Pho Van with a beautiful girl he had angered by accidently calling her a cunt. Either that or my garbled behavior was ruining his afternoon. Either way I recall this meal fondly. The cooks and servers eyed us with suspicion.
Driving back through the farmland that surounded the mountain, Miles depression was shoken by a pack of ponies running along the fence. He paced them with his car for a moment. Then suddenly he slammed the car in park and ran along the fence with them. I took the wheel and we followed for a while.

I can’t describe in a self indulgent autobiogtaphy the cirsumstances of how quickly and hard I fell for Lauren. Maybe it was years of putting myself down and destroying myself with drugs ending sudenly and meeting some one who actualy found some value in me. It’s a horrible, cruel and artless world where friends and lovers feed on eachother inorder to make it through the day, but Lauren was independant, strong and fond of me and this destroyed everything I felt about my future. I knew quickly the trick would be not showing her how insanly in love I was with her so I wouldn;t scare her off.
The actual act of falling in love is a quiet thing. Though humans surrounded me in a room, I knew she was special and nothing else was very important. She had a boyfriend coming to visit her soon on the mountain. Thus began a bender, a fantastic walking bender only achievable by using the last of my youthful stamina. It took a shot of whiskey every half hour, every hour of the day and a Dodge Probe to get me around.
The day before, of and after Laurens boyfriend visiting her on the mountain I had the outward appearance of a collected dude, but my big Irish meaty frame was seething pure murder. When I met the guy, he called me, ‘Bro.’
Miles took Kat, Jeff and me down the mountain in his Probe. We drank in a cemetary. Kat promised me pure heroin when she got paid and flopped about. Miles rambled about Oklahoma City. Jeff shat in the woods and returned with no socks. It was epic.
In the Great Hall of the lodge back on the mountain, Miles sipped his Scotch. “You know,” he began, “when a girl is drinking scotch it means she wants to fuck.”
“You’ll go far in life, young man,” I told him.
Kat gave me four vicodin and sent me home to sleep.

Working for Xanterra, the company that manages the Crater Lake lodge, is just what people like Kat, Jeff, Miles and me deserved. They put the same amount of effort in treating us as humans as we did. Our bosses were all probably recently fired from Olive Gardens who did nothing at all ever under any circumstances to aid in the serving of food, the managing of our schedules or mediating our many just complaints with our shorted pay checks.
Kevin wandered abou tthe restaurunt with a clip board. I stopped him and said, “So, Kevin, when I was hired they said there would be employee kitchens to use, Internet and planned employee outings. But there are no planned employee outings, we have no kitchen and we have employee meals deducted from our checks despite the fact we don’t eat them and we have no employee kitchen.” This complaint was to broad in scope, so Kevin walked off. I made myself another drink continued to throw crutons at the prep cook through the little opening in my cage. He picked them up off the filthy floor and put them on salads.
Kat came to pick up her drinks. “You know,” she said, “when I get paid I can get us the best china white you’ve ever had.” She winked and left with a full tray.
Miles came to my bar to fil land order for seven hot choclates. By the time he had put whipped cream on the last hot choclate, the cream he had put on the first and melted into the drink. “Fuck,” he said and stared at them. He decided to take the whipped cream whith him. It fall off the tray. “Fuck,” he said. Miles used the word, “fuck” like a Smurf used the word “Smurf.”
For a time I helped out the dishwasher. He was a giant stooped man in his sixties named Raul. His hands shook like mine as he retold a boxing match in Korea. “I didn’t know the guy. He was Korean. His gloved were home made and he bounced like he wanted to kick, but he knew the rules and wouldn’t. He took punch after punch but kept bouncing. Blood was pouring out of his eye brow. He couldn’t see. He kept bouncing and taking punches for fourteen rounds. I couldn’t believe it.”
“So did the reffere call the match?” I asked.
“There was no refferee, no score cards. Boxing in the service was decided by a knock out or by giving up,” he said. “Someone was going to die that night. You could tell. It had gone too far.”
“Did the other guy kill the Korean?” I asked.
“I don’t know if I killed him and I don’t remember the end of the match. I had a bad concusion. I never saw him again and the guys streated me like a bad mother fucker afterwards. I wonder if I killed him. Everyday.”

We had both survived the visit from the boyfriend. Lauren had told me she hadn’t slept with him, though she hadn’t broken up with him. I began to refer to her as, ‘The Maried Woman,’ when I spoke of her. The drama in the dorms was begining to become more unbareable. The hotel at the lodge had double booked a room and had to put up a young family in the dorms where we lived. Aparently they had to suffer through the sounds of a violent endless orgy. Management began to crack down. The manager of our dorms took more ritilin and slept less to heighten his paranoia and trolled the dark halls with what we all knew was an empty clipboard. Empty as it was, it still was an emblem of terrifying authority. Lauren and I began to spend every moment we could off the mountain.
The drive off the mountain was always exhilerating. As there is no oxygen at seven thousand feet, decending caused a kind of head rush. We found a bar in near by Prospect Oregon called The Trophy Room. Over a greasy breakfast of bloody marrys and heaps of food to stare at we both came to the realization we had to escape Crater Lake. It was an unspoken thought and mine brought with it the terror of us leaving seperately.
The Bloody Mary is a fetish. The worst are crafted in kitchens by cheffs who drink Busch Beer all day and think the drink is a culinary thing. Hear this, it is not. A Bloody Mary is Tomato Juice, Worchstershire and Vodka with celery salt, peper and a spicey garnish. Anything more is boutique breakfast drink for weekend drinkers. A good Bloody Mary comes in a rocks glass and is set before you by a server with steady hands and a ‘been there done that attitude.’ The Bloody Mary calms the bodily detox, eases the apetite and prolongs the prior nights buz. The Bloody Marrys we had gave me the vuage desire to cry.
Moving into the bar of the Trophy Room, we descovered it’s name sake. Fantastic ancient stuffed cougars and deer adorned the walls. As we walked in, a man threatened to not pay his tab and said, “What would you, what could you do about it if I jjust left?”
I said, “I’m standing between you and the door,” a simple statement of fact, only a threat when the man who says it is in love with a woman and a pure buz. The man payed his tab and the bartender offered me a job. My wife ordered us Wild Turkey shots and we felt at home in the silence that followed.
Any woman who can drink Wild Turkey shot for shot in a dive bar with a large dying Irishman is a monument. But you also have to consider that Lauren is a few inches taller than five feet. She is and was a monument to a life well lived.
Thurally wrecked we drove back up the mountain and worked our nine hour shifts in the dining room.

Maters got complicated by an E-mail from an old friend. A film I had happened to have writen was debuting in Philadelphia. I had to break it to Lauren I was half man, half fruity artist. I had to go back out East for the premier some time soon. I also had to trick her into some kind of comited relationship. One night in bed I asked her if she’d go to the showing with me.
“Take me anywhere I haven’t been,” she said. The tone was set.
The seasoned bartender from NewJersey had been taking bets on when I was going to freak out, kill some one and quit. The next day at work I was going to tell him of my desire to quit and take Lauren with me but he interupted me.
“I’ve got to get off this fucking mountain,” he said.
“Ok,” I said. I’ll get miles.
We loaded Ron into Mile’s Probe. Aparently Ron had been drinking vodka with his diet coke and relapsed into a horrible reality. Down the mountain we drove.
“Fuck this place,” Ron said with a timeless tone.
“Fuck,” Miles said.
Ron got a hotel room in Medford while waiting for a flight far away. I ordered a shot of Wild Turkey in the bar. The novice bartender poured me something like a tripple. Miles surveyed the size of the shot and said, “Fuck.” I drank it in one swallow, smiled and walked away. Out of site of anyone I vomited in the hall way leeding to the bathroom. I returned to the bar and ordered another, this time with a beer back.
In his hotel room, Ron divided his posetions. He gave to Miles a guitar. I uttered a sigh of disapointment as I envied this guitar. Ron then took the guitar from Miles and handed it to me.
“Fuck,” Miles said.

Part of my courtship with Lauren was balencing the unreality of drinking and driving around Southern Oregon and the the vuage absurd idea of, ‘the future.’ She was suposed to meet her family for a weekend in Sun River near Bend Oregon for a few nights in a vacation rental. It had been made clear to me I was definetly not invited. I was solemly resigned to this fact. The day of her departure I was walking to work in my uniform. She pulled up next to me in her red truck and told me to get in. I was going after all with only the clothes on my back.
We stopped for Wild Turckey on the way there.
Her family was all similalry sized, none taller than my sholder. They regarded me with suspicion and circled me like velociraptors. Wendy had brought one of her children, a five year old eigth year old who spoke in heavy baby talk. Laurens Father shared my first name and twisted politics. He wore leathers after getting off his bike, a trait I liked. It ment he was ready to bail if he had to. Laurens mother Aura was a strange gigling creature who offered me countless drinks. I think it was her way of seeing the dark part of my personality, which is luckily my sober side which is seldom seen.
Her sister who had recently returned from Iraq carried with her a masive Hoocka and a quiet husband. Her name was laurie. His name was Kyle. Kylse snickered at only the most horrible and layered jokes. These were good people, all of them.
I spent the three days there with them in my one uniform, bathing in the hot tub and being brought drinks by midgets. ‘The future,’ seemed obtainable if this is what ‘family,’ was these days. They too were aware of their Irish metabolisms and proclivity to tragety. I didn’t realize how horrible a tragety until later and in another part of Oregon.

I recall vuagely Miles in womens lingere sitting in the corner of my bosses room. He made some kind of obsesne gesture to Lauren and I picked him up and threw him. Or so I was told the next morning. I had a hollow feeling working in the dining room the next moring. A server in the dining room said Miles had better watch it being gay on the mountain. I thretened to kill the server as publicly as I could and went down to the employee dining room. The cook there was a giant of a woman, a prison styled lesbian named Hank. Usualy she swore at everyone and had a powerful tone. I noticed she was crying. Her hand was broken and ridiculously swolen. She had been smoking pot with one of the female managers she had been having an ongoing romance with and to show her rage at Xanterra, punched a box of frozen meat and broken her hand. The manager not wanting to be drug tested advised her to conceal her injury. Thus love, Xanterra, and bad food and caused an epicly strong woman to weep.
I had broken my hand several times and the last time had tried to conceal it leeding to it’s needing to be rebroken and reset, a procedure performed with out anesethia due to my obvious intoxication. It was hell. I advized Hank to to not fuck around and go to the hospital. She agreed. I decided to quit and go to the dining room to work out my last shift.
Meanwhile Kevin, the other manager had wrapped Hanks injured hand and advised her also to keep working and ignore her injury as well. I saw her weeping again in a cooridor.
Emily was clearing a table in the dining room.
“Think I quit, Emily,” I said.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Is Lauren going with you?” she asked.
“I hope to trick her into marrying me,” I said.
I went to Kevins dorm room. I tore the door off it’s hinges. Luckily he wan’t there. I found Lauren and we began to pack. We were concious of the possibility of living in the truck so we were careful to keep an open area in the back to sleep in. By the time we were ready to leave it was late. We drove just off the mountain and parked by the side of the road near Diamond Lake, just North of Crater Lake. The mosquitos slapped the windows all night and our little nest seemed just fine.

We had a vuage plan of going to Astoria Oregon. I had a friend there named Nathen. Nathen was the star of everything I had writen. During our adolecance together he taught me everything I knew about film making as he and his father worked at the now defunct Will Vinton Studios. Nathen and I often had burned out and moved to Astoria Oregon.
We drove a mountain road to Roseburg. Along the way I swear I saw a turkey. We must have drank a lot. I vuagely an irrational teary exchange at the entrance to the country fare. I had just lured her away with me and now she was going to a music festival for several days alone. My alcohol stained, ‘what ever,’ repose melted into blubering fear. We made love by the side of the highway then in she went and I was alone in Oregon again. Before going I wrote Lauren a note on the back of a post card we had bought together, when and where I can’t remember. I posted it on the comunity board at the store. It read, “I am lonely at the beach without you. Please don’t think I’m sappy or posecive, I’m just aware you are an honest and real mother fucker and you make me feel better than heroin when were together just being bored. Come back ready to make love fo ever.” It took me about a half hour of rough drafts to write that. There’s no lying to Lauren, the truth has to be there. She might believe the lies you tell, but she’d never lie to you. I posted the note with shakey hands.
There was one thing to do now, go find Nathen.

Nathen is a huge man with a larger heart and even more enormus health probblems. Ailing from everything from sleep apnia to manic bi-polar disorder he is a cross between a concouring viking and a weeping baby left on the side of the road. I met Nathen fifteen years before in Frankfurt Germany. He had been cut off from a bar, a truely epic acomplishment in that country. He was laying on his side in the street, his white tshirt stained with vomit. He gave me some Deutche Marks to buy him and myself a drink. This was an event we reenact as often as we can before one of us dies. We have a carefuly planed wakes in the event of one of us exceding the other in life span. Mine involves a Keg and a mime. Should he die first I am to spring load his coffin so he rises from the dead with a toy pistol that shoots a flag with the word, ‘bang,’ on it. It will have to be a mighty spring.
I pulled into the parking lot of the KOA with a great big cigar lit. This KOA was some 400 miles from Crater Lake, the oposite end of Oregon. Nathen was looking worried and smoking a generic cigarette. He was suprised to see me, and suprised to see me driving. The last he had heard of me I was a coke making movie head, or some such combination of those words. Nathen produced two putting irons and we went into the park to play minature golf.
The grounds of KAO included an arcade, a pool, several acres of paths and finaly a minature golf course. We made our way to the course via littleyellow golf cart, a kind of idiot motorcade. Nathen smoked a generic cigarete. Our combined weight must have really pushed the cart to it’s limits, at times while going up hill, it seemed mor elogical to walk as the the noises the little motor was making made us liable for animal abuse charges.
“What are you up to?” Nathen asked as he teed off. His ball bounced over the cracks and gravel on the course and slowed to a stop near the entrance of the tunnel through the ship wreak.
“Nice lay,” I said while ling my shot up. The smoke from my cigar burned my eyes. “I’m outdoors. Lauren is at the Fair, I have a week to kill and her truck.”
“Lauren Colgan?”
“Yes, Nathen.”
“You are the perfect ender for the strange string of Boyfriends she’s had,” Nathen said while banking his ball off a squirell carcass and onto the green near the whole.”
“Is’nt it psycotic after all the traveling across America and Oregon I meet a girl who knows you?”
“A little too psycotic. It’s like rain...” Nathen sunk his putt, then leaned on his putter and lit a generic cigarette.

Naturaly we got drunk. The nearest town was Astoria Oregon. A victorian town with a Californian problem. Awsome people had come to populate this once rain melted dreary jobless backwater. Paradise lost. When Nathen and I were about eighteen we lived at a pay by the week hotel above a vacuum store. We did painpills, ritilin and drank schnapps with the local juveniles from the Job Corp campus. These were teens who were spared prison by agreeing to enroll in a vocational school. Weekends they convinced their teachers they were going home when really they were vomiting in alleys with Nathen and I.
Nathen and I had often come to Live in Astoria. The most recent time I had respecatable employment with the Astoria Music Festival designing and building sets. I lived next door to Nathen in an apartment building. We would steal eachothers rum and food bank bounty. That time Nathen worked at a Pay Day Advance and Car Title Loan store. I was so perfectly weird I wrote a play about it which the good meth heads of Astoria produced. The meth head who directed it ran off with the box office cash and I was thus assosiated to multiple debts. Those were the days.
We got drunk at the Triangle tavern. The Triangle had my picture on the wall from when I was Eddie in the Rocky Horror Picture Show at the theater next door. Before, during intermission and after the show II’d drink heavily, then sneak out the back door and into the stage door of the theater. I was testing the limits of the axiom; Theater is dead. My investigations seemed to agree with that statement. Eventualy Sammy met us. Sammy looked like Tom Waits, which he was thankful for. He told stories with a agravely voice, only Sammys stories tended to not have apoint. They were a performance art where he smoked, laughed at his own observations and generaly killed the buz of everyone in the room. He did drive a 53 Hudson Hornet, which ridding around in gave one the feeling of importance.
There is no point to me telling all this exposition except that I woke up drunk in the back seat of Laurens truck early the next moring with rain falling on the windshield. I vuagely remembered that Nathen now lived several stories above the street level right on Comercial avenue. Shivering I found a hoodie went bellow his window. Honest to god, even though he was several stories up, I could hear him snore. Man this mother fucker could snore.
I called to him for a while, people passing on the street giving me weird looks. The rain fell harder and I became frustraited. “Damn it Nathen wake up,” I shouted.
A police man tapped me on the shoulder. “Sir, this is a Meth watch neighborhood,” he said.
I shrugged and slunk away. I’m not sure waht a meth watch neighborhood is to this day, all I know is I tend to live in them as the rent tends to be cheaper. Maybe folks just watch other crazy folks and suspect they’re on meth. In my expirience, meth heads have the most ingenious disguises of them all. More on that later. I decided to drink for a while and wait for Nathen to rise. The tavern I chose was called Tony’s in my glory Astoria Days. It had turned into a Jimmy Buffet bar. The bartender had held on to her job from the good days, and she remembered me.
“Do oyu have any money?” she asked.
“Perhaps,” I said.
“I supose you are expecting one for old times sake,” She said.
“I’m not expecting anything anymore, Jennifer.” Her name was Jennifer, I just now recall as I write.
“What are you celbraiting,” she said with a bottle of Wild Turkey poised over a glass. It’s acruel trick old bartenders use. How bad do you want it? I wanted it bad so I produced a tiny wad of money. She poured the drink and I put my wad away. It’s a chess game. Yes it is.
“I am engaged,” I said, shaking the shot violently like a Munchhousens child. It went down swell.
“To who?” she asked. I like to think the fact she asked ment she cared. Either that or I was better entertainment than Beverly Hills Cop III which was on the TV above my head.
“A lovely little woman with focused eyes,” I said as the whiskey calmed me.
Nathen stumbled in trying to tuck his shirt in.
“I am three hours late to work,” he said angrily.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He walked up to me and took a buisness card from my breast pocket. On it was writen a note, ‘Call me when you wake up, I need a ride to work.
In the truck I noticed he had sprinkled buisness cards on the seats and dashboard with a similar note. Aparently I was to call him the moment I woke up and give him a ride to work. Aparently the plan had failed.

To punish me, Nathen put me to work. I was to wear a yellow pollo shirt and do nothing for nine hours a day at minimum wage. The park was large and sprawling at thepowers that be from corperate insisted there be a ‘Camp Host,’ and I was to be this man. My authority was comprised of a walkie talkie, cheap sunglasses and a golf cart. People would ask me essoteric questions about RV maintenence. I relayed their concerns via radio to the office where Nathen would listen to these problems with a concerned air. He would promise to follow up on these problems. It was then my duty to avoid th epopel with problems until they gave up and fixed them themselves. It was hard work. I made changes i nthe protocall.
Within the first two hours I abandoned the golf cart for a Moutnain Bike. This gave me the air of mal lsecurity, far less aproachable. It also made it take much longer for me to complete my rounds. I was gainfuly employed again. When my wife to be emerged for the Oregon COuntry Fair, I would have income to wow her with.

Sammy was another giant of a man in the fashion of Nathen. He was prone to weeping tragety which combined with his imposing frame could unsettle women in differnt rooms, and perhaps diferent states without them ever knowing the source of their discomfort. Sammy lived on a seventies pleasure craft called the, ‘Sam I Am.’ This boat was powered by twin Nash Rambler engines. He had an extensive CD collection of obscure jazz that he truely loved. Nights on the boat were good. We processed the bounty of Kentucky through our livers and pumped it out into the bay. It’s a good way to live. Sammy is several life lessons rolled into one. If you showed me Sammy when I was twenty I would not hesitate to say there was no greater man. He drove a 53 Hudson Hornet, he lived on a boat, he was covered in equisate tattoos, he played amazing pool, he was a good looking man, any room he was in there was good music playing... but he was miserable. A good joke or story brought him out of it.
“We were shooting a scene for the film where the characters were doing lines of coke in a car outside the Philadelphia Art Museum. You know it takes weeks to shoot a few minutes of film so we had to come up with something the actors could snort during long days of shooting. We tried Pixie sticks, we tried baking powder, none of it worked. It made us feel like our heart was about to explode. There was just one thing you could snort on camera that looked like coke, day in and day out. Can guess what that was? Real coke. That made the days a lot more fun.”
“We met a fisherman on the dock here, his name was Don. He seemed fairly normal, but th eshit he’d pull. I remeber we took him to the Triangle pub and he wanted a blow job. So he’d go talk to women in their fourties who were alone. It’s start with him buying them a drink and he’d talk to them for a while. Soon he’d get slapped. It looked funy to watch from afar. Just him slinking next to a girl, a little time passing, then him getting slapped. Well, he kept at it. FInaly he sat next to this woman, she must have been fifty. HE talked to her for a while, bought her a drink. He didn’t get slapped. So Don turns and gives us a ‘thumbs up.’ Don shows the girl a fifty dollar bill. SHe nods and they both stand. Don has hold up the girl and they leave out the front door. After about fifteen minutes he comes back.”
“What happened,” we asked.
“She fell asleep with my dick in her mouth,” he said.
“I guess that’s too bad,” we said.
“We leave the bar to go find another bar and we see this woman in cuffs on the street. She fell asleep in her own car and gotten a DUI because her keys were in the ignition. Don just walked on faster. That son of a bitch.”
“So I was working at Crater Lake and this nice young family has a a few nights booked in the lodge. Crater lake being the masive fuck up it is had lost their reservation. So they put this nice young family in the employee dorms. During the ning in the next room their was a full on orgy. Whips, chains, screaming, everything...”
“Where you in it?”
“I’m sorry, but once you get to a certain age you realize the human body is a disgusting thing. The holes on peoples bodies that used to get us hot when we were teenagers... at some point you realize those hole are for expelling waste... and skiny hot women hate sex, they are just waiting for the next time they cans slip into the bathroom and vomit. Do you think it’s hot when cats fuck? No it’s nasty, loud, vile...”
“So what happned?”
“Nothing. Everybody gets away with murder at Crater Lake. I must have drank a fifth a day.”
“Where does it all end?”
“What?”
“This?”
“Which?”
“Any and all of it?”
“It ended a long time ago.”
“What does that mean?”
“Exactly.”


I slept on the deck that night, covered in Carhart Jackets. I woke to a cloudy Astoria day, the Bridge looming above. The dew had cooled my breakfast nicely and between dry heaves, I had a fantastic beer.

Nathen had clout in Astoria. He was a Moose. Not just any Moose, no. He was some sort of leader. This entitled him to take home with several bottle of cheap cerabellum rotting liquor at once. This also made him a bartender at the lodge on Wednesdays. He signed me into the lodge and I saw for the first time what must have been pure fifties marital bliss. A refuge from home with perfect but ancient pool tables, a painfuly cheap bar where you had to beg for mixers to make your drink palletable and a jute box with the Andrew sisters on it. Behind the bar was a window with a view of the bay. All conversations stopped when a mighty ship rolled in. Th edeepest part of the chanel was near the shore and it was truely surreal to see the ships bring what looked like the tallest new building to town.
Hlaf of Vincent’s face didn’t work. But the half that did work had one shining eye. He had been a music teacher in Astoria for fifty years. When he retired he took over the jazz show on the local radio station. Before his accident when I had lived in a run down hotel before, I’d listen to forgotten essoteric recordings being played back on 78 discs. I told him this and this seemd to make him very happy.
There are very few public vocations left that feature good music and these few vocations bring drunk idiots together from around the world. The silence between Vincent and I was a good one as we each remembered good music. Someone put Big and Rich on the jute box and mood melted.
That night I slept up in Nathen’s apartment. It was an old building and he lived on the third floor. His room looked as if four junkies had lived there for some time and perhaps there was a violent arguemnt between these junkies at one point. Then after this arguement there was some terrifying orgy between a few camels. The junkies then came back and got in competition to see who was the most messy. I am a messy person. When in crisis, Nathen is the messiest person ever. The man slept on a bed of porn.
Another of Nathen’s distinct traits was his snoring. He slept semi upright with a fan pointed at his face, his eyes open, making the the most gargantuan bovine sounds ever. Truely, he never reached REM sleep and the colective fatuige of his entire life was destroying him. The last time we had lived together he had a masive manic collapse, cut himself badly and went to the quite hall at the local hospital. I slept by taking the most vile drug, marrijunna.

Hangovers at the KOA were brutal. I rode my bike through countless campsite haunted by the sounds of beer cans openning. There were noumerus bathrooms to dry heave into, which I did. There was no real work to be done to take my mind off the pain. I los tthe will to go on as the sun reached it’s highest point. I thought about Lauren and her hippie festival. I missed her crazy warmth, impulsiveness and acceptance of my alcoholism. The horrible thought of her not returning to me occured to me. I f such a thing happened, I’d have to kill myself. That was no joke. It a manic, metaly ill thought, but it’s what I had in mind.
I stopped by Nathen’s office. Two maintence men had stopped by to tell him the gum ball dispencer that had been modified to dispence pingpong balls was nearly empty. That did not take this well. He took a deep breath and sunk back into his chair. An icy silence filled the room. No one knew what to do. We all waited and watched nathen.
“Pat,” he said. He’s the only one who calls me that.
“Yes boss,” I said.
“Do you have icecream for the icecream social this afternoon?”
I patted my sides and checked my pockets. “No,” I said. This caused Nathen more distress. He briefly fumbled with th emouse on his computer. Some more silence filled the room as all four of us, making minimum wage, considered these dual trageties. Nathen took the keys to the company truck, grabbed a radio and motioned for me to follow him.
The KOA truck was bright yellow and on the back was stenciled, “Follow me for fun.” We stopped at the gas station. I bought four cafinated alcoholic beverages and two taquila flavored cigars. We slammed one of the cans then drove to a near by thrift store. It was here Nathen told me about the Van while looking at consol stereos and 70’s beer signs.
“I bought a van that I want to live in. It has four captains chairs, an eight track and the entire thing is blue shag carpet,” he said.
“Where is it?” I wondered aloud after the four hours late to work fiasco of a few days earlier.
“It doesn’t run,” he said then went out to the work truck to fetch a tape measurer. He tooks some measurements of a consol stereo and was silent and thoughtfull for a while.
“How big is that stereo, will it fit?” I asked to break silence.
“I don’t know,” he said.
After a while we went to the store and bought four large gallon containers of ice cream. This took about an hour. It was becoming evident the gravity of what we were doing that afternoon at minimum wage. We were dicking around like adults do. It was rendered official by the fact we had a radfio with us. We put the ice cream in the back of the truck and drove to the beach.
Nathen knew a spot he had been to in a budies Jeep. It was down a sandy road and totaly secluded. As mad as Nathen was, he didn’t want to be seen openly drinking on the job. Our KOA truck barely made the journey. We drank our cafinated alcoholic beverages for a while.
“This is a good gravey train you have here, Nathen. IF yo uever have to fire me, I want you to do it ruthelessly to distance yourself as much as possible from what ever horrible thing I am bound to do on the job,” I said.
This thought pleased him. He did like his job. Intoxicated and realizing our icecream had mostly melted in the sun, we decided to go back to work. Before getting in the truck, Nathen actualy turned the radio on to tell people back at camp we were almost back. Starting the truck we realized the wheels were buried in sand. Nathen paniced. The cluch smelled almost medium well after a few moments of gunning the motor and sending sand all around in a mushroom cloud plume behind us. It covered the ice cream. The problem was the KOA truck was a recent model Ford and not for actual use.
Nathen summed up the situation, “Shit, were fucked.” He got out of the truck to have a smoke and a think. Not to brag, but I am the king of getting stuck cars un stuck. I hopped in the drivers seat and rolled the car gently from reverse to forward a few times gradualyfreeing the truck. Nathen cheered me on. Once underway I knew I couldn’t stop so I drove on to safety, some mile down the road. It was another twenty minutes of waiting at where the gravel road began before Nathen caught up.
Some hours had passed before we returned to the KOA, covered in sand, with melted ice cream and with no ping pong balls. It was good to be alive. Nathen yelled at an employee and I conducted a melted icream social on the gorunds of the park. It is a good feeling to be buzzed and surrounded by twenty five or so dirty face kids chanting your name, devouring icecream soup.
Later that night we drank whiskey from a coffee cup and conducted the evening camp fire and smore session. The same group of kids were there. Nathen watched it all from the seat of his golf cart. The truely twisted fact was we were doing a good job. People who had been going to that KOA for years said they never had been there when the staff wasn’t a paranoid bunch of meth heads accusing them of breaking park rules.

Though this memoir may sound like I think I have a glamorus lifestyle, the abject horror of what a waste of humanity I am is never far from my mind. As I drove to get Lauren, never far from my mind was the fear she would see me again and see it. Lauren had a life and family in Portland she could return to. Her focused eyes, warm body and love of Chicken Fried Steaks could have only been a pssing thing in my life. The fear was with me as I drove South on 101 a day early to pick her up. Honestly, at times I was in tears.
I stopped in Lincoln cityand bought a fantastic cigar and a fourty ouncer of Old English beer. My courage returned slightly. The sun set on the ocean as I made the left turn at Florence to Veneeta. I relived all of ‘Sometimes a Great Notion’ as I drove along the Siuslaw river. I amy be a worthless deadbeat drunk, but I’m not the first or last.
I slept in the truck somewhere in Eugene. Eugene is a town that has always made me uneasy. Young men and women are crazy there, but with a fantastic safety net beneith them. They also are getting all their crazy out in a four year stint. You punch any of these college kids, they’re likely to get you arested or rape you in the parking lot of a Burger King. Eugene could be the heart of the fourth Reich. You just wait and see. The liberals that come out of that assembly line college want to litigate al lthe freedom out of Oregon, freedoms I depend on like sleeping on the side of the side of the road and being able to buy perscription painkillers from the idigent and from those dependant on social security. Sufice it to say my hate of Eugene is utterly irational. I didn’t sleep well that night.
Bright and early th enext moring I waited by the store where I left Lauren. Hours and hours past. Then some more hours passed. The fair had been over for a while and bleary eyed white people of all ages were filing out in motor homes and Subarus. When finaly she appeared I felt alive again.
We drove back North along highway 101. She was barely concious. As a copilot to her own barely running truck and by managing her blood sugar levels and intoxication levels, we found a system that has kept us alive and happy to date.
That night in Astoria we slept in the back of the truck at the KOA next to the bathrooms. We made love in the shower in the morning. Over a feast of a breakfast we planned the near future together.

We moved back into the run down pay by the week hotel I had lived in before. Our last wages from Crater Lake gave us a nice cussion. Our room had cable and the bathroom was down the hall. Our window had a nice view into another room. The sheets were clean and al lthe fixtures were old. I laid my yellow KOA shirts next to our jugs of wine on the one chair in the room. Lauren got a job serving burgers at a horrible little place in Seaside. We were stone broke, drunk and doing just fine.
Miles returned. We saw his Probe befoer we saw him. It was parked a few feet from the curb at a slight angle. I don’t know why he had driven some four hundred miles out of the way to see us, but thankfuly he had, He brought with a hippie fro mthe mountain I never really liked. He would have been more to my liking, but he had a crush on Lauren and he thought people who wern’t stonners were missing out on something.
We met Pete and Miles at Tony’s. They seemed agitated and nervous, perhaps pursued by Soviet operatives. Or maybe they had caused some heinus drunk driving accident on the way to see us. Or maybe they had a largre baag of Cocaine.
Cocaine is like Christmass. If it were everyday, it’s be a collosal drag. Perhaps this is why Miles allways seemed semi depressed and elated. Or maybe it’s the fact that life is very hard for thinking feeling people. We did Mile’s coke.
At the time, coke nights feel nine times more epic that they really are. Our grand adventure that night was doing coke in every bathroom in Astoria while feeling exhuberant and slightly aloof.
“Where did you get this bounty of Peruvian marching powder, Miles.”
“Fuck. You remeber Kat?”
“I’ll never forget Kat. She warmed my heart with her thick hot urine.”
“Yeah. Kat and I...”
“I see. No heroin?”
“Fuck.”
Pete and Miles got a room in our hotel. Miles seemed at home, Pete was distainful. His pot and subsecuent sleepieness was superior. We snorted lines of coke with the regularity of breathing as we discussed opening a restaurant of our own where servers snorted coke. I had been sitting on a ceramic table, slowly grinding it into a powder which fell on the floor. To be thural, we snorted that too. By the end of the night I was a blithering idiot. After Miles and Pete left I spent the rest of the night telling Lauren, “you just wait till September.” I think my plan was to propose that September, though it was clear on some level I already had.
Miles and Pete spooned all night and couldn’t look eachother in the eye the next morning. Before leaving Miles left us a small quantity of the drug.
“Say Howdy to Kat for us,” I said to Miles before he pulled away.
“Fuck,” he said.
At work that morning I gave Nathen a line of Coke in the garage of the KOA. After which he designed several inspired posters about nothing which he put up around the park. He seemed to want to tell me something.

Seaside, Where Lauren worked, was about twenty miles away from Astoria. She worked much later than me so I started riding my work bike to her work to see her. It was an epic journey along the waters edge. I went through novels of thought during the trip. When I got to her job, we’d put th ebike in the back of her truck and we’d drive back to our place together. After such a day, we met nathen o nthe street outside our Hotel. I bushed. He invited us into his apartment, which I must say, depsite the mess, had the best view of Astoria. By now the sun had just set and out his window you could just make out the huge forms of masive tankers and their strange nautical lights. He had a chair set up by the window for watching the boats. Nathen offered us some Meth.
Meth is a drug I had til lthen avoided. I had done it in small quanties, and I had fenagled a few ritilin perscriptions in my time as well.
Meth more often than not, is piss yellow and in tiny crystal form. It’s a discrete drug, one line sniffed or dropped in acup of coffee will fuck you up for six hours. And being fucked up on meth has a quiet almost meloncholy look to it. Often people higher than hell are toiling away at their desk job or paying their bills at Starbucks while using the internet. It’s mor epervasise than you think. Really. If there were a drug to typify my generation it would be meth. All the unachieved brilliance, the hights of the hopes and pureness of passion thrown away perfectly symbolized in a piss yellow crystal.
After we snorted tiny lines, the room became quiet. The vast bay outside Nathen’s window seemed to echo with a thousand voices in harmony. The water seemed clean, the night a wash with a million colors and the suddenly what the four angry junkies were living for in Nathen’s apartment, seemed clear.
Lauren and I walked on the beach until sunrize talking about sports. Sports. We must have been fucked up.

So my film, ‘The Coatroom,’ was to premier at the Prince Theater in Philadelphia. Since making the film I had become quite homeless and happy. As an experiment, I decided to return to that awful city to see what I had left. I cashed one of my pathetic KOA checks and bought a ticket. It was to be a dark bender as anything Philadelphia has the ability to sober a man, hold him to a mirror, and show him what a pathetic mess he was. One needed an oak set of whiskey armour.
The dreary Philadelphia airport with it’s concrete architecture, and and thick himid moldy smell made it clear I had made a mistake. Do you have any idea how clean Oregon is? It clean because of it’s newness, clean air and rainshowers. Philadelphia is old because of it’s oldness, stale air and muck showers of rush hour rain falling back down on it. To make all maters worse, my picture was in the paper. I went to Mcglinchies downtown to drink. Of course MAndy met we there. I had drinken many a time at that bar with Mandy, before and after work at my many noumerus briefly held jobs. Mcglinchies was a bar bar. It had a good jute box, apathetic bartenders and cast of dying alcoholics before three p.m. whose colective knowledge would be suitable for shooting into outerspace for some alience race to discover and interperate us by. Mcglinchies was the scene of my most convincing suicidal thoughts. When the whiskey wasn’t working and the towering Philadelphia skyline wasn’t indifferent, rather quite angry with me, I peered into stained men’s bathroom mirror and plotted my own murder. Mcglinchies, Mcglinchies, Mcglinchies. The mural on the wall was of a fat man shooting a duck. Waren Zevon was on the jute box. Shots of Jameson were like two bucks!
Mandy had gotten a real job and was ashamed of it, as well she should have been. What kind of transcontinental, neo punk, alcoholic has she become? Damn right she was buying. And I drank those free drinks ad looked at her with distain.
Mcglinchies. There is a bar in downtown Portland called the Virginia Cafe. It’s horrible. I think they tore it down. Or maybe one morning the bar saw it’s self in the mirror and shot itself. Mcglinchies has fantastic hotdogs. I could see my crazy little Lauren getting too drunk and yelling at the TV there.
We planned our promotional junket. We’d go to radio stations and media outlets near cheap bars promoting our horrible little film. Our horrilbe little film had taken taken one horrible little East Coast Winter to make. We fought during the entire shoot and made an almost indie art house flick. I wrote it and co-stared in it and I also wrote the music. Mandy produced it (and did a good job) and Jason directed it (did a good job too and paid for it. The poor bastard). So I bought some cigars. And a Gallon of Jim Beam. And we got to work.
So I don’t remeber much of that trip to Philadelphia. I remember the actual premier. Everyone was so fucking sober. I made a bizzare speech which horrified a few folks. I pissed i nthe projection booth, vomited on the front door of Bob and Barbra’s Bar on South Street and avoided the coke parties. Mostly I hudled on the floor of a hotel room calling Laruen on the phone over and over again.
At one point I was crossing Broad street, running to not get hit by the comming cars. I looked down at my feet to asure a good footing and amungs the trash and loose newspapers was a picture of me from the film. Instead of stepping on my face, I froze. This cause me to topple like a shot deer. I landed face first in the Broad Street muck.
Somewhere over Millwuake I detoxed. The shakes tore my body apart and I made deals with jesus promising him I’d never drink again if he’d get me home to my little crazy Lauren. The fear and weakness shook my body for what seemed like days and days. By the time we landed in Oregon I was close to giving up. If my drinking ways had gotten me as far artisticly as I’d probably get, and my drinking ways had turned me into an oraly bleeding, shooting star seeing bad smelling side of rotten meat, what was the point? I mean truely, the logical conclusion to be made from looking at my life was everything would be better if I took the time and effort to sober up, find the lord and a real job.
Lauren met me at the gate with a pint of Wild Turkey and three fantastic cigars. We were back in buisness. Mcglinchies.

Lauren took me to a friends house in Portland. I drank my Wild Turkey in the shower. Her friends wer e Portland types, miserable, chatty, fighting. The girl was a witty broad with masive knockers named Evette. Her boyfriend called himself a chef, so Chef I’ll call him. Through the marrijunna smoke and Pabst farts they fought all night over everything from how they said, ‘I love you,’ to how they dressed. It was everything I hate about Portland, good people in the throws of some sixty year suicide who think it’s al lworth it because they live near Thai food. I counted the seconds until we got back to the Oregon coast.
Lauren’s job at the burger stand caused her to smell like burnt meat when she came home. It was fantastic. A pretty blonde lady with a sunburt who smelled like meat at night. I clung to her like a wounded climebr to a mountian. At night I planned proposing to her. I knew I was probably still in the ‘posesive boyfriend’ catagory. Perhaps if I planned some elaborate house fire where I saved her life and the lives of several kittens and puppies.

A child lay on her side with a growing pool of blood around her head like a rose pedal hallo. She had struck her head while having a seizure. I rolled her onter her side, put my coat under her neck and called Nathen on my radio. He quickly arived. The sight of blood visably shook him. He took my radio and drove off with the truck. I hoped to God he was calling 911.
“We went to call 911,” I told her parents.
Slowly the kid began to mumble. She didn’t know her age or where she was. The parents loomed over. When I stopped them from sitting her up, they began to weep. I occured to me I had so little to loose. Nothing, really, except a job and girlfriend. No home, not even a truck or guitar. The parents were casualy dressed for a vacation on the coast, the girl was on the cusp of puberty weraing silly vacation wear, her hoodie and pants both claiming she was a life guard. The mother brought over an SUV to take her to the hospital. Again I advised against moving her. All my training came marching back from my days as an Easter Seals camp counseler. It was best to wait for the paramedics. We did. It was a long wait.
When they finaly all left in the ambulence, I really cried for the first time for my lack of relationship with my parents, my poverty, my lack of marketable skills, and out of joy for my health. Maybe that was my rock bottom moment.
Lauren showed up for the nightly camp fire. She was so stonned she couldnt talk. I drank cheap whiskey from a KOA cup and children crouded around for their alotment of grahm crackers, choclate and marshmellows.
After work Lauren and I had a fire on the beach. It was one of thos enight where I couldn;t get drunk. She quickly fell asleep on the blanket next to the fire. I plotted life changes. If I went back to school, I could become an electrician or carpenter. That was feasable. There were plenty of carpenters with ful lbody shakes, violent tempers and no tools. Along the line of the dunes, I noticed movement. It stopped when I looked up.
Thinkign it was nothing, I watched the waves break. As I poked at the fire, I noted movement again in the dune. Some sick imbred costal fuck was watching us. I pretended to lay down. Out of the corner of my eye I watched them get closer. Deliberately, I took a log from the fire. I kicked at the guys head, intending to miss. He slunk back. He was wearing night vision goggles and camoflouge. He slunk back. I reaslized he wasn’t alone. I also remebered there was an army base near by.
“You are al l going to die in Iraq if you can’t sneak up some drunk people by a fire,” I said, heaving my burning log after them as they slunk away. Even though I didn;t have much, nobody better threaten what I did have.

A friend of Laurens became very ill. She lost her job and hid in her apartment in Portland. I happened to know this girl through Nathen, and infact had gotten drunk and hiot on her before. Laura. She had Fibromiaalgia, a horrible disorder making everymovement painful. As Lauren had grown up with her, she decided we’d go live with her for a while and plan our next move. Unfortunately this ment going back to Portland. I got fired from as part of our careful preperation to move. We said ourgood byes at the hotel and drove back to the that vile city.
No good deed goes unpunished. No sir. Most of it is self imposed punishment too Laura’s apartment was brightly lit and littered with cocaine and pills. I took all of her bottles back and bought matl liquor. The TV blared which made it neccesary for Lauren to speak louder and faster.
Nathen came to town and he took Lauren and I a drinkin to escape the infirmary. As we were all broke, we drank whiskey in a city park and watched the freeway ooze by.
“Who would have ever guessed ten years ago while drinking cheep whiskey and staring at the freeway, some ten years later we’d be drinking cheep whiskey and staring at the freeway,” he said.
“Has it all really been for naught?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Nathen said.
We decided to take Nathen home. As we got out of the car, Lauren detected an odor.
“It smells like old books,” she said.
Looking down the road we noticed an old boarded up house.
Nathen stood watch and Lauren and I boke in the back door. We were suronded by stacks of old porn. I am not lying. I set a two minute alarm by which we were to escape by. By the light of a cell phone we investigated. These magazines dated back thirty years. Wonderful women with meaty real breasts and plumes of healthy pubic hair were on the cover of most of the publications. We didn’t know what to do. For a while I gathered as much as I could into my arms. While reaching for a black woman drapped in cheetah fur, I slipped on a glossy magazine on the floor. To steady myself I leaned against a wall, only this wasn’t a wall. It was a boarded up window through which I fell. When I hit the ground outside, a mushroom cloud of porn erupted up from my arms. I skampered back into the house. As the alarm went off I found a hidden compartment behind a bathroom mirror. Pills.
We loaded out bounty into the back of the truck and drove away. Highlites included a Playboy from the sixties with a J.G. Balalrd short story, an interview with Jean Paul Sartre and a lucious blond who didn’t look starved. Lauren looked at her vagina and said, “I could have fun with one of those.” My god what a good woman.

We had a diner date at the Olive Garden. Wendy, Lauren’s siter, and George, Wendy’s older boyfriend invited us out. It was an ugly unremarkable meal. George had a gray mustache that looked like a cheap cold war disguise. Lauren ordered a steak tip pasta. We had mentioned earlier we were thinking of moving to Ashland oregon, back sound threehundred miles along the I-5 corridor, and George ofered to sublet his apartment there to us. We agreed. Anything but Portland and listening to Laura list her diseases while chewing on nothing and snorting up cocaine like it were itnended to replace the brain mater it was destroying.
On the drive South out of town, we read to eachother from the stolen porn and poped ancient pain killers. It was nice: nice to hear erotisicm, nice to not be drinking, nice to be escaping Portland, nice to to be in love. Ashland’s quaint downtown greeted us with only reminders of our first date. To us, it was a good town.
I had a hunch Lauren would fit into a diner at one end of the town known for it’s and open mic. The first day looking for jobs, she applied there. I applied at every other place in town to no freakin avail. She imeadiatlye got a call back. I organized my days around looking for work for the first half, and writing my first novel, ‘Omelets,’ during the second half.
The apartment we sublet had low pitched ceilings as it was a attic unit. The shower had a transem window in it so I could peer in on Lauren as she showed. That’s not creepy. Just half a block away was a market where I did shopping for pork chops, beer and avocados which i tried to have ready everyday when she got home.
Ashland was a cool town, filled with young people proving how cool they were. We did not fit in, which was fine. Lauren got stonned and ate what I cooked her and watched cable. I smoked cheap cigars and walked Ashlands many parks. Sometimes we went to the Beau Club, a dark bare dressed up to look like a dive, but no bar can be a dive when the beer is still expensive.
Fall was fantastic in Lithia Park. The trees turned color and fell into the creek. The owls looked on from the trees and remebered a time before Ashland was populated by loud arguing hippies and their screaming wild children.
I finaly got a job at a day care I had worked at years before. Things had changed there. Years ago the whole program was based around playing with the kids outdoors. Now it was telling them how noisy they were in the basement of a YMCA. It was work though and things generaly were good for a while.

Miles arived with Jeff from Oklahoma city. He parked the Probe on the street bellow. The season at Crater Lake had ended and he seemed lost. They stayed on our couches for a while.
Late one night we heard them come in after the bars had closed. Jeff had recieved a windfall from a recent accident settlement. He had a wad of cash he refused to spend. Miles apaprently was trying to convice him to invest in a hot dog stand in Oklahoma city. His arguement was this:
“Hot dogs,” fourty second pause.
“Man, hot dogs,” two minutes passed.
“Just think,” fifteen seconds passed.
“Fuck, man.” I counted to sixtey three this time.,
“Fuck. Hot dogs. Right now.”
Through their hangovers they saw me pound a pint of wine before work. This made them gag and need to go start drinking again. One morning began with Miles standing at our bedroom door.
“Fuck, I need someone to unhook my car. I hit someone. I think. Fuck.”
Indeed he had. I took his keys and backed his car out from under the bumper of the car in front of it. Luckily that car was a piece of shit too and the owners didn’t seem to notice. Lauren and I sighed and shook our heads at the trouble our little teenager had caused.
Before leaving, Miles bought us diner at a Thai food place. I drank my meal alotment in cheap wine. I managed two carafes. It’s good to eat out. Makes you feel like someone, you know?

Our blessed truck broke down the morning of the first frost. That ment long walks to and from work. Luckily there was a bike path along the railroad tracks. Ater work we’d buy twenty two once bottles of malt liqour and walk home.

A side affect of my job were the diseases I brought home. Lauren was prepetualy ill due to the childreen crawling on me at the YMCA. So starved of human contact these beasts clamored to me, despite the fact the I smoke cigars, have big stinky boots etc. THey would lovingly deposit sneezes on my clothes, and I’d take them home. Lauren sufered. On top of the fact the truck didn’t work, she had to walk to work in the increasingly colder weather. So as I go tcomfortable writing my book, smooking cigars and drinking, she became increasingly agitated at her health and our poverty. This is model we have replicated in cities since. Either I’m happy and she’s uncomfortable, or vica versa.
Lauren entered a real illness. One that made her weep at the prospect of going to work. I tried to fix her with toddies and thereflu but she kept getting more and more ill. It came down to the prototypical American expirience. Going to the ER room for a cold.
We took a taxi there because Lauren was light headed when she stood. We had to scrape together quarters fro mthe dressers to make it that far. As the taxi dropped us off, baby boomers strode in for their special appointments for their elective surgeries and podiatrist appointments.
I’m not saying after the life I’ve led I deserve somekind of health care, but people my age who led virtuous quiet lives have nearly died from simple things like strep throat and when the Baby Boomers are all finaly dying out in 2030, I hope their epitaf is an inditment of presiding of horrible decline i nthis country. We sat in the waiting room with young mothers and repeat offenders as we waitied for a simple anti-biotics perscription.
After about an hour, we got that perscription and amassed a thousand dollar ER bill that I’ll be damned if I ever pay.
We hobbled to the local pharmisist and filled the perscription and were happy to get a lovely bottle of codiene cough syrup to boot. Much of my anger at the Baby Boom generation melted.
CSI Las Vegas was particularly good that night.

And work was particulalry philosophical the next moring. I cluthced close to my heart all day a lovely cup of cherry flavored tea. I taught an art class that day. Rainy, Salem and Monica were three girls most prone to blab horrible secrets while holding crayons.
“Draw me a horse,” Rainy said.
I drew her a horse.
“That’s not a horse,” Rainy said.
“That’s the best horse I can draw,” It was a pretty damn good horse.
“No. Where’s it’s penis?” Rainy asked.
“It’s a girl,” I said.
“No it’s not,” Rainy said, taking the drawing which was obviously done by me and adding a fairly acurate horse penis.
I sipped my tea then looked suprised towards the door. When the kids looked, I stole my drawing back.
“Draw me a flower,” Salem said.
I drew a rose bush, embleshing the leaves and putting careful detail into every flower. I handed it to Salem. She drew in heavy black an angry cloud and red lightning bolt.s. It looked cathardic, esspecialy when the black crayon broke and she was snapped out of what looked like a heavy trance.
Monica handed me a drawing. It was of three fat women. Thats me and my moms. We’re fat,” She said. “Draw my house around it.”
I drew a castle. She smiled.
“You don’t live in a castle, you live in a trailer. You live in a trailer park. You live in a trailer park,” Rainy threw her head back and laughed heartily and pointed. “You live in a trailer park. I live with horses.”
I thoughtfuly sipped my tea. I drew the little kitchen and table where I spent my mornings and afternoons writing. I put gentle detail into my cigar box and ashes. When I looked up, the girls were laughing. Rainy had drawn penises on all three women in Salem’s picture. Large erect penises. Detailed with balls.
My options at that point were to ignore it, have them show it to the head counseler lady, or destroy them. I decided to ignore it as I’m sure they had been ignored before and since.
“Is that why you smell funy?” Salem asked, pointing to the cigars in my picture.
“Yes. Cigars are little girl and Californian repelant,” I said, sipping my fantastic tea.
“Let me draw you,” Salem said.
“Me too,” Rainy said.
“I’m going to draw you as well,” Monica said.
“i will draw you girls,” I said.
We sat in silence for a long time, each of us concentraiting on our crayon masterpieces. Rainy’s mother krpet behind her and took a digital photograph on her cell phone. She then slunk off and gathered Rainys expensive coat and hemp book bag. When rainy saw her, she jumped up and huged her. SHe seemed to be careful to leave her drawings behind. They left.
Monica showed me her picture of me. A huge oval depicted my head. Big red x’s were my eyes. “It’s awful, she said.”
“I’m awful. It’s quite perfect,” I said, holding it up.
“No. I’m horrible at everything,” Monica said, a montra she no doubt repeats to this day.
“No your not, doll. You really aren’t,” I said, remembering a hundred junkies, a thousand piss smelling apartments, and a million humiliating jobs. “You are lovely, you really are.”
Salem’s picture of me was a frog she had learned how to draw from memory. Monica saw that and turned red.
“See, she can draw things that look like things,” Monica said.
“Your drawing looks like me,” I said, wrapped up in her tragety feeling a little like crying myself.
“You can draw anything. Anytime. People want you to draw things, and you do,” Monica said, pushing the crayons to the center of the table.
“Look where it’s got me, Doll,” I said.
“You can draw anyhting,” she repeated.
“Yeah, you are really good at drawing,” Salem agreed.
The picture of them I drew showed them both leaniging into their drawings with their tounges sticking out in concentraition. “If drawing kids in crayon were a life skill, I’d be a milionaire,” I said.
“Yeah,” Salem said, missing the point, acentuating Monica’s tragety.
I paused to think and sip my tea. When iwas seven I ate several pencils hoping it would kill me. THat memory made me laugh and realize something. If it aint hard wired, it’s definately self prepetuating to a degree we can’t stop it.
“Monica, keep drawing. You draw new things other people can’t see to draw. Salme, you draw things right, the way you learn how to draw them and you can grow up to be a tatoo artist,” I said.
“One of my Momies friends is a painter,” Salmem said.
“Oh yeah?” I asked.
“She teaches at the college,” Salem said.
“So then she’s a teacher,” I said.
“I guess. She says she’s a painter. A lot. My mom calls her a painter,” Salem said.
“So I guess you are what people say you are,” I said aloud, rethinking from the ground up all my concepts of self definition. I leaned back and sipped my tea. Was I a deadbeat, a writer? What the hell was I going to die as?
“Your’e fat,” Salem said to Monica.
“I know,” Monica said before I could object.

I woke up in the morning with pink eye welding my eye shut. I tried to call into work and they said I’d need a dr.s note. Of course it was a gray haired administraitor with health insurance who told me that. I didn’t go back.

The Sadest Real Gohst Story You’ll Never Read

It was a brisk morning. I helped my wife get ready for work. She seemed distant. I finished my book and had a celbratory cigar and walked downtown. I missed the characters in my book. It was a poorly concieved book with a few good images. Lauren had given me the strength to follow through on finishing it. It just felt damn good to finish something. To put, ‘The End,’ at the bottom of sixty thousand words. I had a Manhattan at the Beau Club and waited for anyone to ask me how my day went so I could say, “I just finished my first novel.” Try that sometime. Go to Ashland and wait for someone to give a fuck about anyone but themselves. It’s fun. Four Manhattans later, I haden’t spoken a word. They were terrible Manhattans. All that writing for nothing.
At home I got an artichoke ready for my crazy ladies return. She called from the bar and said she was drinking with some friends. We didn’t have any friends. Nor did I want any. I walked briskly the mile or so to her work. There was a hint of snow on the hills near by.
When I got to the Bar at the Wild Goose, my wife was red cheeked and sitting alone in th eback of the bar. Some nice old man had been buying her shots of Don Jullio, but he was gone now. She was moving slowly, lighting a cigarette in slow motion. I had a few drinks and we stumbled out of the bar. We had a quiet bus ride home as she was too drunk to walk.
When we got to her apartment she ploped on the toilet and told me she was pregnant. I paced in the hallway.
What can I say, this made me happy. She seemed quite drunk about it.
“Are you sure?”
“No-oow,” she said in her drunk voice.
“Why do you think your pregnant?” I asked.
“I took a test this morning,” she said.
“And it said you’re pregnant?”
“No-oow,” she said.
“Why do you think you’re pregnant?”
She became exhaserbated and leaned forward on her naked knees, still not making at potty that I could hear, “because it was messed up.”
“What was messed up?” I asked.
“The test. The test was all... fucked up,” she said.
“How was it messed up?”
“Because, I pissed all over it,” she said. “I coulda fucked it up.”
“I can go to the store and get antother one,” I said.
“Yes,” she said.

Some soothing cool jaz was playing in the over lit expanse of Safeway. I found the pregnancy tests, got a few 32 ounce bottles of Miller High Life and headed for the check out. The woman ahead of me was buying daipers. Adult daipers. It made me think of the riddlew of the Syphinx. “What walks on four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon and three at night? Man. What shits in a daiper in the morning, cleans daipers in the afternoon and shits in daipers again at night? I do.
We had coordinate a half lift off the toilet so she could pee on the applicator. It was akward, luckily she was a smal lthing. Once accomplished, it was time to wait. I opened a beer and sat across from her in the hall as she sat on the toilet and sort of flopped about.
Somethings are sacred. We talked about fear and our youth. We talked about unfathomable guilt, regret, and presure. We talked about the lonieliest feelings we’ve ever felt. Sufice it to say women have the burdon of decision making at a very young age, and the choice they make there is with them for the rest of their daily lives. Many women are vessels of indescribable pain and grief. Far beyond any heroin withdrawl or even South Street suicide. She told me about a dream she had years ago that chilled me to the bone. It was of a little gohst at the foot of her bed in overalls staring at her.
The silence that had fallen over us was broken by a little fart. The oven timer went off and I checked the test. She wasn’t pregnant. I was several years older.



The damn film was back. We had a showing at Man’s Chinesse Theater in LA. The fake gravity of this wasn’t lost on me. I spawned the half assed plan to propose to Lauren on the beach in LA. This was a stupid idea, LA is for career bachelors and machette wielding bellydancers. TO found amarraige on a an LA proposal was to promise hours of marital bliss followed by hideous affairs and an early death, despite your age. But as I was unemploymed, I wanted the Hollywood hotshot vibe to carry me.
A few days before we were to leave, Lauren and I bought bottles of liquor and went into the hilsl and took photographs. It was a very nice time amungst the fallen leaves and frost burnt ground. Lauren got pretty sauced, I did too, but in a calm way. We went to Wendys for diner. Lauren was grinning and dipping her fries in Frosty.
“You and me, we should get married,” she said.
I paused as my plans were being undone.
“You and me should get married,” she said again, pointing her fires at me.
“I don’t want to... decide it here,” I said, flustered.
She seemed momentarily detered. Then she grinned and kept eating.
The plan was to ride with Leroy, a good friend of mine from before and colaborator on the soundtrack of the film. He was going to drive to LA in one shot and put us up with some friends of his in North Hollywood. My visits to LA before were disasterous. Infact my sole good memories were of leaving LA with stranger who were also fed up. Maybe part of conqouring LA is ‘Leaving On a Midnight Train to Georgia,” your middle finger displayed like a flag on September 12. But most people who write, sing, dance or act have to go through LA, that’s how LA wants it. She wants to mellow and distill whats unique about to you so you feel shame about who you were before you got there. I don’t aim this statement at the hard working people of LA, but at the music, film and art comming out of her. Fuck LA. Armed with whiskey, we waited to be picked up.
Leroy showed up around midnight drunk. This was a good omen. We squeexed into his economy truck and drove South, sipping Jim Beam. Leroy had prepared a soundtrack severl hours long of 70’s made for tv Musicals to erode our inhibitions. He generaly piloted the truck well, keeping several of the tires on the road at once. He warned us the house we were going to was populated by self hating Idahoians. The worst kind.
By about 4 am we were entirely too drunk. A song was playing about the right time to die. Lauren took over the wheel. Sometime that afternoon we came over the grape vine with the din of humanity. The sun was hot and everything was very very LA.
We all needed a drink. There were srtip malls as far as the eye could see and no Rockford toothey grin unravelling a murder. Oh Jim Rockford, La is a mystery that swallowed you whole. We must have found a liquor store because I remeber being drunk in a perfect hosue with some self hating Idahoian telling me about the vampire midget farra faucet film he was getting funded. He tried to relate to me by making essoteric film making talk.
“I said check the gauges and he thought I was threatening his wages!”
“Fuck, bro,” I said.
“So the rushes were bad...”
“Bad rushes, hate them.”
“Total scratch. Scratched shoot. Scratched takes. Takes, blown.”
It was like making small talk with a trucker who was buying drinks some where in Tennessee, “My lowboy couldn’t take the grade. Exhast brakes screaming. Screaming!”
I think I was drinking rum. My memory of this conversation is powerful and of a kinf of glorious sweetness.
I left the self Hating Idahoians to pick up Mandy from the Airport. I piloted Leroys truck well through the spilled fettachini which is LA’s freeway system and found Mandy in no time. I wasted no time in making her buy me several drinks and cigars. Soon the mighty drunk had taken over her as well. We got caught up. Mandy and I had spent several years together trying to kill eachother in Philadelphia like the road runner and cyote. Many a time my bombs backfired causing me to fall off the top of Philadelphia city hall.
“So,” she said. “Nice truck,” notiing the whiskey bottles on the floor and general mayhem.
“It’s a rental from H.S. Thompsons at the train depot. Garunteed to have so much trace DNA evidence, any crime you comit in this truck will be untrackable.”
Mandy had gotten a hotel on Hollywood. It was a dank tiny terrifying place were the soul could thrive. I shit you not, around the corner was a Liquor store called, ‘The Pink Elephant.’ Driving back to the home of the Self Hating Idahoians, we had to drive through some extremely rich highschool parking lot right when they were getting out. So many fucking cell phones. It was discouraging. But along Sepulveda, I saw some homeless kids with a gray dog, and that was encouraging. Still no Rockford or gold fleck Tbird. We stopped at a fine bar on Sepulveda called ‘The Casting Office.’ Good Jute Box, lots of palpable pessimism. People sat and argued over extra work like fisherman argued over the crab season in bars on the Oregon coast.
We lounged by the pool drinking for what seemed like a comfortable amount of time. Several days, I think. I think I was wearing a cowboy hat. There was a dolalr bill at the bottom of the pool that we often stared at in silence. One of the renters of the house asked about the film we were there to see and if we had anything to do with it. We denied any knowledge.

Once i found the star of W.C. Fields, I felt better. Lauren was wearing a cowboy hat as we strolled the street giving out promotional copies of the films sound track. We were an away party from a starship from the planet Trash, exploring LA. Man, no part of my soul fits in there. Noticing Lauren trying to descretely urinate in a dark corner of a well traveled street made me feel like I fit in with her.
I met an old friend in the foyer of the theater. LA had changed her like meth adiction had changed many of my Oregon friends. We exchanged a few artsy coments.
The film began in one of the theaters at Man’s Chineese. Calmly, I knew this was a crowning achievement of my life. Although the film was barely, ‘ok,’ we had done what many had just dreamed about doing, or just got stonned and talked about doing. People laughed at the prat falls. People were silent during th emelodramatic parts. A quiet high came over us; we were at the end of the First Muppets movie. We knew Orson Wells wouldn’t offer us a contract and we knew each one of us couldn’t live like the way were in LA. We got drunk like human beings seldom drink in celbraition. A once in a lifetime drunk. The thing F. Scott Fitzgerald chased to his early death.
We explored the peirs, Venice beach, Jazz clubs. We said the horrible things on our minds, we drove a ton of steel through the mornings and nights blaring country music. What I remeber was glorious and horrible. Lauren was beautiful and I couldn’t tell her how much I loved her. My body was decaying, evidence of which was left in bloody pools in LA alleys. Leroy and Mandy fell in love. At some point Mandy gave me a black eye. During one dark day I remember absolutely nothing of I was a tyrant drunk stealing shots when my captors were distracted. Shit, as I write this I am dry heaving. My god we were all happy to see it end.

Driving North out of town Leroy caught the shakes. We had depisited Mandy at the airport for her triumphant return to Cleveland. I floated the idea of getting somebloody marrys. It was vetoed. Through my hedious backseat detox on the twenty some hour drive I relived every sexual encounter I had ever had with Lauren my head. It kept the mild seizures at bay. The oil deriks pumped their indiferent toil on the side of the road as we drove on.
Finaly home I slept with my lover like a husband and a man who might possibly live a decade or two longer.

We finaly got engaged on a warm fall day. We were broke, all we could afford was a few bottles of liqour. We waded in an irrigation ditch, a real estate brochure in hand. We finaly lay by the side of the road and proposed to eachother. A new strength built on duty and and honor grew in me. For the first time in my adult life I had no ‘suicide plan B’ cycling through my head.