9-2-5

Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuck fuckity fuckerstein!!!

These were my thoughts on my very first day of work at a picture framing shop in the "big city." Let's call it "Frames Unlimited." And the fuck soliloquy was for good reason. I had just dropped a huge piece of broken glass straight down into the top of my leather 'Mary Jane' shoe. The glass sported a fantastical curve and a wicked point. It lodged nicely in betwixt the bones of the top of my foot and hummed gently as it settled into the meat.

Fuuuuuuuuuuck.

This shit hurt. Happy glass winked at me in the light. The self-mutilating Goth kid in my sick head celebrated the nice play of blood and lymph on the glass. The pimply woman in me wearing a wrinkled button-down shirt and "nice" jeans trying desperately to look like a grown up wanted to cry. But it wasn't the pain that brought on the Fuckery. I slowly pulled the piece of glass out of the fresh, new gash in my foot. The wound looked like a small, tender vagina. I may have said "awwww!" (It was awfully cute.) But then, in the treacherous manner of vaginas everywhere, it filled with blood. And more blood. And then more. It wouldn't fucking STOP.

Cut ahead to me, 10 minutes later, feigning wet fart sounds to justify my prolonged presence in the bathroom, trying to stuff enough brown paper towels into my shoe to sop up enough blood to minimize the O.J. Simpson tracks I was leaving in my wake. It was futile. It already looked like a crime scene and was slowly ripening to 'sloppy-joe day at the sanatorium' territory. I couldn't tell the new bosses that I had dropped glass on my foot... they'd figure out that I was a dumbass and fire me. I briefly considered trying to convince them that I had come to work that way, but dismissed the idea as impractical. They'd already seen me give a friend the "high kick high five," an incredible and powerful demonstration of convivial affection that would certainly have revealed the presence of what by now looked like a maxi-pad for the homeless.
Nope... best just be honest, and pretend that it never happened.
So I gather my shreds of calm and confidence about me like the torn prom dress of a monolingual foreign exchange student (no means si, Manuela...) and make my way back out to the work room, executing the classic "un-limp" to cleverly disguise my gimp paw. This naturally results in a sort of exotic, jerky perambulation, not unlike the "Buffet Shuffle" performed by millions of Pension Pimps every Tuesday afternoon at the K&W Cafeteria.
In the down time between impromptu performances of my new walk, I keep an eye out for shreds of maroon-spattered paper towel laying on the floor like the after-party from Mafia Autumn. I like to think I was subtle.
I managed to get in a few good hours of this shit before I noticed that my new 60 year old boss was limping too. He'd been limping all morning. In fact, he had been limping since 1945, when he was diagnosed as a small child with Polio. We had not yet reached the stage of our relationship where he got drunk and puked in my face as I gave him head one night; these were the tremulous, early days.
He looked at me with watery, bulbous blue eyes, not unlike an Aryan pug. With precise, hairless, strangely pink and shiny hands he reached to his right, pulling a little packet out of a drawer. His eyes never left mine for a moment as he tearfully, slowly ripped the packet open and swallowed the contents. Pills. He flung the empty paper packet back onto the work table. My eyes broke from his at last as I read the print on the envelope.

"Fem-First Women's Daily Supplement."

Fuck indeed.



Shit on the side:

Henry VIII scored his first wife when his older brother died shortly after the wedding, having apparently not secured the little woman's cherry. So Henry did the sporting thing and took care of it, causing no end of problems that lasted for decades. Not to be outdone 400 years later, Princess Victoria Mary Augusta Louise Olga Pauline Claudine Agnes (May) of Teck was due to wed that stalwart sprig of British Royal Hotness, Albert Victor of Wales. Despite NOT being named "John," he died, and just before the wedding at that. What's a mail-order bride to do? Why, marry his brother George (later King George V), of course! So far, so good. Maybe the trick is marrying your dead brother's girlfriend instead of his widow outright.

Dumbasses of the latter 16th century; Scottish Edition

Long ago, in a Western European country far, far away, lived a bunch of mother fuckers who couldn't get their shit together. These where hard times; there was all the shit we deal with now, (ugly babies, fat chicks, STD's and Metrosexuals) only smellier. That's right, it stank. Literally. Like ass. Everywhere, all the time. It stank so bad that people used their own fecal matter to treat their plague. Why? Because it was handy, as they were sleeping in piles of it, and it stuck to the boils nicely. Also, they couldn't tell that it stank, really, because everything stank.
But the odiferous qualities of Medieval Europe are for another day. Mainly, this post exists to celebrate the first of a few choice "WTF?!" moments in 16th century European history. Let's start with a little somethin' for the laddies...

Mary, Queen of Scots
or How to be a Royal Dumbass

When first she returned to Scotland, the land of her birth, Mary had a lot going for her. She was tall, sexy, and she'd just recently enjoyed a stint as Queen of France as part of an extended trip abroad. She'd been a Frenchie since infancy, and couldn't quite relate to the Scottish way o' life. France in the 1500's was pretty much like France now; cafe, cafe, fop, jewelled fop, cafe, freak in a beret. Scotland in the 1500's was pretty much like Afghanistan now. Only with more rubble and a generally lower opinion of the rights of women. (Especially if those women are Queen of Scotland.) So "culture shock" doesn't really describe it. Suffice to say, Mary was quite contrary.
Her untreatable Uppity Bitch Syndrome (UBS) prevented her from seeing that her efforts to tart-up Scotland weren't going so well, that her craggy, sheep-buggering subjects hated her, and that John Knox wasn't the only one who wanted to slap her, fuck her, and throw her in the Inverness. Pretty much the only thing the Scottish liked was the fact she married her cousin, Henry, and only then because the Scottish are rednecks at heart, and also because it pissed off the English Queen, Elizabeth. (The one thing the Scottish like more than pissing off each other is pissing off the English. They liked the berets too, but that's not important.) So she goes all "West Virginia" and marries Henry, who used to be "Lord Darnley" only now he's married to a Queen, so he figures that makes him King.
Not quite.
So there was a lot of fuss, and he killed her best friend in front of her while she was 7 months pregnant with their baby, and she said he was an fuck-tard, and he said she was a whore, and it all went along smashingly until she crapped out the baby and Darnley started on the whole "King me" thing again. This was before "911" was an option, so she had to figure out another way to handle their frequent front-yard domestic disputes.
So she talked to some people and had Darnley blown up.
Then she married the guy who blew him up.
Then pretty much the entire country of Scotland wanted to blow her up.
(Cue John Knox laughing hysterically.)
Mary did the only thing she could do... she ran away.
And where did she run? Back to France, where she was raised, and where she still had a huge, loving family?
No.
Okay, maybe to Rome! She was a devout Catholic, after all, and she had a few cousins who were Arch-Bishop of Whatnot...
Nope.
Okay, where then?
Why the only place in the known world where she was even more reviled than Scotland!
ENGLAND!!
That's right. After making her short career as Queen of the Scots all the more memorable by managing to piss off her cousin Queen Elizabeth I of England virtually every other month, Mary did the logical thing and turned to her for help. And Elizabeth did help, by imprisoning Mary for 20 years and politely over-looking her occasional half-assed efforts to seize the English throne.

Until Elizabeth had her be-headed.
If it was good enough for mama, it's good enough for you, Uppity Bitch.


More on Scotland another time.

Panty Crickets

What is a whore, really? I was raised to believe that the difference between good girls and sluts was something that only a slut would know. As a self-proclaimed "good girl," my mom could offer very little insight. Nor did she particularly try. "Whores," she once said, tasting the words carefully, "are girls who use tampons." This was shocking news, especially since I was three years into a very secret transition to womanhood and had been buying tampons on the black-market from my friend Bette at a ridiculous mark-up after paper towels proved unreliable.
She sensed the significance and sacred bonding opportunity of the occasion and continued by delivering the "sex" talk I had been waiting on for over five years, ever since the first appearance of a single, ominous black hair on my labia, bent like a suicidal ninja right over the edge of the "ravine" when I was 10.

"Now that you're becoming a woman, your puss is going to smell bad."

My mother pronounced "puss" like "pussy" without the 'y'. It's one of her favorite words, although most often heard in the full context of "Old nasty puss," which could mean either an older woman who was presumably nasty and had female genitalia of questionable cleanliness, or simply ANY vagina, with the "old" taking the form of a friendly nick-name. Like "Old Yeller" or "Old MacDonald."
I was 15 at the time, and pretty certain that my mother was bat-shit crazy. Not about that smell, though. Being a filthy kid for at least the first couple of years of The Bleed, I had quickly picked up on all the potential downsides to spending an unwashed week every month shooting pooter-phlegm and waste-product-grade blood out of my cootch. So my mother's pep talk did little to clarify either womanhood or whoredom, and only cemented further her detachment from what I liked to call "reality." I glared at her from between my bangs (cut by my own hand while listening to "Zombie" by the Cranberries on repeat one night because I thought short greasy hair hanging over my face made me look more "intense") and over the bent frames of my over-size oval wire-rimmed glasses and shrieked "I HATE YOU FOR SAYING 'PUSS!' YOU DON'T KNOW ME!"

My mother licked her lips, painted the color of newborn mice, and hissed "You just wait."

And I did wait. Mostly by necessity. But luckily, other of my acquaintances didn't. Bette, my cotton dildo dealer, was a small cog in a giant, Italian Catholic machine. She had more cousins than most rabbits do, and one of them, "Mario," deflowered her during the commercial break of an episode of "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air." They were 13 and there remains to this day a question of how much penetration is necessary for it to "count" but I call shenanigans on that shit. I saw his dick during a game of truth or dare 6 months later. It counts.
She eventually started perming her hair and stealing cigarettes, jumping from "mildly incestuous with a chance of loose" to "Pink Lady" in like, 5 seconds. But she was my only source of information, as she was my only friend who wasn't on the "Nick Nolte's DUI Photo" beauty regime.
Bette proved to be unreliable long-term. She was too Catholic to be wholly comfortable with what she was doing and too bad a liar to convince me otherwise. But her transformation could not be overlooked.
My first go at sex was at the local rock quarry, with my then-boyfriend Eugene, in the front seat of his incredibly small, shitty car. It was a "teal" blue Mercury Tracer, with a committed "Tasmanian Devil" theme. The boyfriend had further carried the motif as far as his own bicep, where he sported a poorly rendered image of "Taz" pulling down a banner that read "Camel." (His preferred brand of cigarettes.) I didn't need to see the tattoo to know that though, because I could clearly read the side of the cigarette he was smoking as we coupled.
"Trust me," he grunted around the filter of his cigarette, "You don't want to do this for the first time outside."
That was sound advice. The area outside the car was littered with the detritus of other romantic encounters; empty beer cans, discarded socks, ripped underwear, the occasional used condom, fishing lures. But Eugene meant the outdoors in general, and since he'd had sex exactly two times prior to this, both times in the woods around the Army base his Dad was stationed at, he was the acknowledged authority in the car.
So at the age of 17, dodging falling tobacco ash in a car parked on the crumbling perimeter of a massive crater filled with neon-blue ersatz "water," I pawned my hymen for a chance at a more exciting, fulfilling future as a slut.

But these things are never as easy as they seem at first. It eventually came to my attention, after Eugene's follow-up insemination sessions in a field, on a roof, in the bed of an abandoned pick-up truck, on a trampoline and in the bathroom of our high school auditorium, that REAL sluts diversified their portfolios. So I compelled his best friend to drive me to Virginia in the worst blizzard that that state had seen in 150 years, where I slipped him the pink taco. We then drove back home, oblivious to both the tractor-trailer trucks careening behind us without brakes on the icy interstates, and the A.P.B. that my mother had put out on his car after I failed to materialize at a family gathering OR answer my phone. We arrived back home, nearly a day later, after a somewhat tense car ride during which we were both trying to think of suitable lies to tell our parents to put as much blame as possible on each other.
He dropped me off in my driveway, and I staggered to the door, reflecting on the ignominy of showing up for an ass-beating without panties on. My mother was the first to greet me as I got to the door. She only hesitated a moment before slapping me, and only a moment more before screaming "WHO DOES THIS? TELL ME, WHO DOES SHIT LIKE THIS?! I'LL TELL YOU WHO DOES THIS! TRASH! TRASH AND WHORES!!!"

I didn't even try to stop smiling.


Hey hey!! It's the random shit show-down back for your viewing pleasure!
17th century Spanish court dress frowned upon the use of tits. Young girls were subjected to rigorous corseting, including having lead (yes, lead) panels sewn into the fronts of their gowns to help flatten the works. I truly believe this resulted in centuries of confusion about what the fuck is it, exactly, that women are after. Can you imagine some Don Juan or the other popping the seal on a Spanish chick, only to get her down to her skivvies and hear the tell-tale *clang* of pot-metal hit the floor?
Spanish Stud-ino: "What the ever-loving FUCK are you wearing?!"
Spanish Tart-ella: "Just some sheet metal... it's cool! We're all cool here. Now why don't you come over here and..."
Spanish Stud-ino: "Why the fuck do you have sheets of metal in your fucking dress? What, are you in witness protection or something?"
Spanish Tart-ella: "I have it, you know, to smash my tits flat. So they aren't you know, THERE."
Spanish Stud-ino: "... Screw this shit. I'm doing men from now on. Peace out."
Spanish Tart-ella: "*sob!*"

Scenes from Oregon, Part III

Scene #4: The Agony and the Ecstasy

The deliciousness of Portland Oregon is a never-ceasing mind fuck of good and bad, clean and dirty, salty and sweet. Much like sex with a midget on an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet. Here, in this final instalment of "Scenes from Oregon," I present the "Portland Round-up;" random shit that made a difference to me.

* Thank you, oh ye Gods of bike-riding girls, for giving Portland the gift of mild seasonal heat, that the girls of thy fair city should only be comfortable in short cotton dresses. And thus they did ride their bikes, with their panties on the seat, and the whole works visible as one travels about the city. Bless you. Bless ALL of you. (Except for the fucking Brunhilda who was my unfortunately chubby FIRST "pantie pirate." YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. PUT DOWN THE HAM AND BUY SOME FUCKING SHORTS.)


* The Rose Garden. Especially the first visit. The second round later that day which included swimmin' with immigrant children in what turned out to be an ornamental fountain was incredible, particularly since everyone present knew that this was their bath for the week. But the first time had me at "hello."


* ...Shit. I just forgot the name of this store... somebody help me out. It's OH! It's "Billy Galaxy!" Okay. Billy Galaxy is a sensationally amazing, super-nostalgic coma-inducing shop right across the way (at a diagonal) from Powell's. I have cruised by, on wheels and feet quite a few times on my various visits, and NEVER has the damn place been open. My hosts (and now Newlyweds) in Portland LIVE there, and they've never caught the doors open either. This has been the topic of many a conversation. Some of which were conducted from the sidewalk in front of Billy Galaxy, only a few feet away from the tantalising turn-table of "My Little Pony" and "Voltron" flotsam.("But..but... the sign says '6:00 p.m.' and it's only 4:00 p.m.! How can they be closed?) Heart-breaking. Anyway, so I find myself in front of the familiar, panty-soaking toxically shimmering awesomeness of 1980's childhood memorabilia, and...the door is open!
That's right... I've been Billied. And it was all I dreamed it would be. (And so much more! Oh, the Strawberry Shortcake! Ah, the She-Ra action figures!) My one gripe is the presumed proprietor, whom I may have overwhelmed with my enthusiastic gushing. "OHMYGOD!! YOU'RE REALLY OPEN!!" Maybe he doesn't like crazy chicks, because home-skillet looked down his 1980's retro-childhood nose at me and insisted that the store had NEVER been closed during normal business hours. He seemed pretty pissed that I even brought up my passion for seeing the place, so I turned my fancy to the stuff rather than the man, which is what the 1980's was all about anyway. And it was fantastic. Sigoth snagged some sweet Japanese robot pencil-topper guys (I totally scored one off of him later... SUCKER!!) but my take-away of a thousand remembered hours in front of the family wood-veneered Zenith on a Saturday morning was waaaay better (and FREE!).


* I'm tone-deaf, (and maybe just plain deaf depending on who's asking) so my turn at the Karaoke bar was life-changing for a lot of people. Somewhere between the dress, which fit like a bedazzled condom, and the song (9 to 5 by Dolley Parton) I like to think that I created a mood and a moment not likely to be replicated soon. Unless you have a diplomatic passport and a penchant for reenacting the "special dance" of your dominatrix Auntie.


* Powell's Books. Ahh, Powell's... how you have colored my dreams. The selection! The deep, dark, twisty aisles bursting with bound volumes of marvels and folioed editions of fantasies! It's an orgasm for the soul. My first trip to Powell's was most fondly remembered for the discovery of an astonishing selection of books on the works of Hans Holbein the younger. (6!) This most recent visit shall be forever linked to memories of a highly tattooed and ear-plugged individual of the "dude" variety who was carrying on loud discourse with his friend, the Homely Girl.

Dude: "This is EXACTLY what I'm talking about. I'd rather kiss a smoker than a Meat-Eater."
Homely Girl: "It tasted like death."

Who knew? To be frank, these two should just have run away together, because they would be lucky to be kissed by anything, including a man made entirely of leftover organ meat who smokes.


* Those strawberries from Saturday market. Sure, I lost a couple of hours of my life that I'll never have back chopping the mouldering bastards up at the kitchen sink, but the flavor was extraordinary, as was the company at the sink. (The Blushing Bride, no less! Gettin' her fruit on like she wasn't The Bride and above all that mess. This is why I like these people.) Also, being an asshole, I greatly enjoyed carrying the heaving, bulging, massive boxes of berries away from the market and out to the van... past a bunch of sun-bathing earth-biscuits, all of whom followed those berries with something akin to lust in their eyes. Heh heh. Stupid hippies. Steal your own fruit.


* To the conveyor-belt operator with the fake badge on who insisted that my traveling companion's SEALED jar of 'Marionberry Jam' from the airport gift shop was too dangerous to be taken on board the shittiest aircraft I have ever seen, FUCK YOU. As a matter of fact, that goes for the entirety of the San Francisco airport, which was designed by Hitler's lieutenants as part of an elaborate scheme to kill him before they decided to just try blowing him up at a board meeting with his own briefcase instead. (True story! Actually, just the bomb part.) Seriously, it was foul. For reasons beyond my wildest speculation, the gate we needed was referenced in the smallest legible font they could manage on the massive signs oriented throughout the building. The arrows indicating our needed path pointed to things that weren't paths, such as walls, "wrong way" security check-points, and in one case, the ceiling. After several extremely vague conversations with airport personnel, we were finally put on the correct course for our gate... which turned out to be a make-shift path that actually routed us OUTSIDE THE AIRPORT. This was a pathetic path. I would have been perfectly content to see buxom, brown women carrying fruit and water jars on their heads on such a path in oh, say, BRAZIL. But in 'Frisco? The Land of Brotherly Buggery? Daaaammmmn. We barely caught our flight, despite a layover of nearly an hour. If the rest of San Francisco is anything like the airport, FUCK YOU San Francisco.

And Leslie, since Marionberry Jam is apparently the secret weapon of Hezbollah, next time, just buy the shit online. The F.B.I. is bound to stop watching you eventually.

Anyone watching for actual day-of wedding posting, keep it in your pants. One day, I will. It will probably flesh out the "Camp Wedding" post, or maybe I'll do something after a bit more time has passed. Either way, for now, this closes out "Scenes from Portland."

Scenes from Oregon, Part II *UPDATED ENDING!

Scene #3: Hobo-sexuals

I was 17 the first time I saw a real, live "homeless" person.
Let's be clear on this; homeless means a person who lives outside, all the time because that's their sole option. It does NOT mean a person who has a home they choose not to return to, or a teenager with dreadlocks who wants to spend the summer smoking weed while walking 18 miles a day and fucking girls who can't shave it because they are hippies but are somehow mysteriously on birth control (Are you on birth control? Then you probably aren't actually homeless.) or a person without a valid i.d. who's "crashing" with someone. Even if they aren't paying rent. Even if the couch monkey's name is Ray-Ray. I'm from an area of the American South East where both unemployed younger sons who live in their mother's basements and people named "Ray-Ray" are proliferate. While both groups are to be avoided, neither is actually homeless. I am related to at least 30 people who are living in or on things with wheels. They aren't homeless.
And while it can be difficult for an outsider to differentiate between a homeless man with a fancy for a fu-manchu and the average red-neck, to those of us on the V.D. side of the Bible Belt, it's pretty obvious. Consequently, I managed to go nearly 18 years without seeing a homeless person. There are reasons for this, I'm sure. I wasn't particularly well travelled as a child, and the American South is a fucking hideous place to live at least 5 months of the year if you don't have access to a box fan and a slushee. So imagine my delight when, upon departing the airport in England in 1999, I beheld, with mine own eyes, on the steps leading down to... London and junk (look, I was just happy to be there, okay?)a HOMELESS MAN! He had a tin cup at the ready, and a disengaged, vacant stare. I had a pocket full of what I was pretty sure was monopoly money and a positive genius for creating awkward social situations. I ran up to this man, allowing my eyes to feast on his ragged beard, tangled and pocked with what looked like raisins, his rheumy eyes, and discordant combination of sweater, slacks and trash-bag shoes. He was smelly... dirty... poorly dressed... he was an UNFUCKABLE!
I immediately swelled with pride at my first glimpse of the UK branch of our elite squad.

Me: "Are you a Hobo?! Like, a REAL Hobo?"
Hobo: " Fuck off, cooze."
Me: "You ARE a Hobo! HEY!! MISS.BRIDGES!! (my long-suffering spinster teacher and the trip leader) I found a HOBO!"
Miss. Bridges: "Please tell me you aren't doing what I think you're doing."
Me: " Can I give you money?"
Hobo: ::shakes cup::

The glow wore off after the 90th homeless/hobo/tramp that I encountered before getting into my very first cab, about 5 minutes later. (It was a cherry popping sort of day.)

For connoisseurs of "homeless chic," Portland provides a rare opportunity to view a seemingly endless assemblage of urchins, hobos, rapscallions, hags, beggars, runaways and vagabonds. These are punctuated by the occasional actual homeless person. They are easy to spot, as they are the people with long hair who are wearing clothing that ISN'T ripped, stained or patched. Also, they usually don't beg. (Begging is for hags. Hagging is for runaways and hobos. Urchins just hold out their pitifully chapped hands and offer to sell you matches. DON'T BUY THESE MATCHES. The quality is shitty.) Anyway, they don't so much beg, as invite you to consider the social relevance of where they are (the ground) versus where you are (not the ground.) From there, you can make a small contribution in an effort to save your soul, or you can continue to walk away and enjoy little, non-fatal doses of guilt.
The 'downwardly mobile disenfranchised' of Portland refuse to subscribe to the limiting notions of the "homeless look" popularized by Oscar the Grouch, Dick Van Dyke, and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. They see limitless opportunities in self-improvement through clothing choice and accessorizing. Sure, you may have found the perfect shirt/skirt/swim-fins combo to establish your indigence, but what about the dog? That's right... you've gotta think ahead. Look among your motley menagerie. Which of the wretched mongrels is going to "sell" your vision? Something small and needy? It will remind the elitist bastards that we're the "little guys!" Something large, old and loyal? Add a splashy, nearly illegible "Homeless Gulf War Veteran" to your bit of cardboard and you've just reminded everyone that they owe SOMEBODY (maybe you?) a goddamn fiver for all this liberty and shit. There is of course, the old stand-by of multiple cats, but that can be tricky to manage unless you've been sleeping in the dumpster behind Captain D's for more than a month. Cats won't burrow in your multiple layers of clothing for long unless you smell like low-tide in Jersey. That's why this is a look best left for the ladies.
This wasn't my first visit to Portland, but I'm still a newbie at all the city has to offer. Especially it's offerings of wacky street folk. On the way back from the airport, I spied a 70-ish year old woman with huge curlers in her hair, bookin' it down the sidewalk with a panache one doesn't usually associate with the Septuagenarian crowd. Unless there was an early-bird special with her name on it somewhere, I can only assume her haste was in some way connected to the need to change her adult diaper. Or to put one on. There wasn't much room in the skin-tight black sequined spandex pants she wore for a pair of Depends. But the red and white striped "Where's Waldo?" shirt was voluminous in a way that only Theo Huxtable could have appreciated. A few days later, the Sig.Oth. and I were attempting to cross a street and somehow got embroiled in a hobo-throwdown. The Sig.Oth. took one guy and I took the other. By "took" I mean I stood several feet in front of my guy waving my arms while the Sig.Oth. grabbed his guy and helped him up out of the street (where he had been pushed). We then reassured our respective prize-fighters and said things like "Hey! It's cool, man!" and "Just calm down. It's cool!" Then, we wandered around aimlessly behind the one dude who was still screaming "QUEER!" for like, five minutes, because I didn't know that I was in charge of navigating. This turned out to be a lucky trick, because our circuitous route took us by yet another homeless guy, who had a collection of rubber newts arranged to advantage on the sidewalk in front of him at an intersection. I admired them, and he became excited and said "Finally! It's nice to meet someone who appreciates my work!" I assured him that I did and he adopted a posture of self-controlled modesty that wouldn't have been out of place on Mother Theresa, and said "I do what I can when the spirit moves me."
Chances are, the spirit is the color of anarchy, rhymes with "orange" and only appears after the concussion fairy comes in the night to help him fall asleep, but still. As a fan of "Mary Poppins," it was nice to be appreciated by a street artist.

* Updates! First, if you read this before Tuesday, July the 6th, I have re-written the ending so that it's slightly less shitty. In other business, I talked it over with some folks, and I think it would be better if I started using aliases for most of the proper nouns that are referenced in The Crotch Rot. Seems like the thing to do, and it gives me the chance to bash more people without them being able to actually get pissed and accuse me, then hit me in the mouth after I start lying about doing it. Also, the Sig.Oth. has determined that he likes that moniker so much, he just wants to be "Sigoth," which both of us assumed was an extremely esoteric Dungeons and Dragons monster. As it happens, it is popular coloquial slang for... "Significant Other." Shocking. So I have decided to press forward anyway, and in the spirit of the "Choose Your Own Adventure" novels of my youth, he's Sigoth, Destroyer of WORLDS!!!! His first official act as Sigoth is to patently declare that fake hobos should be called "Fauxbos," and he's totally right. Carry on.

Portland Organ, Part I

My vacation is officially over. This is evidenced by the Final Poop of Vacation. You know the one... you've been home a day or two, finally shaken the jet-lag, gotten back to work or school or selling drugs to kids, the normal routine. You're still pulling stuff out of your suitcase to use or wear, because you packed all the shit you look good in for the trip. You're going to wear it, dirty or not because that's a helluva lot easier than matching clothes from your closet or dresser, both of which may as well belong to someone else because you simply don't remember where anything is. And you wouldn't recognize it if you did. Why? Because you've been on VACATION.
So you wake up one morning, feelin' fine. You blink wearily at the photos hanging in their pleasant frames on the wall. You recognize one of them as your mother. Good! It's all coming back. You swing your feet to the floor, and make a bee-line for the toilet. It's the morning piss. Nothing to it. You realize, mid-tinkle, that the bathroom is blue. You even remember painting it that color! Good!! You're really re-connecting to life before vacation now! The opportunity to revel in your success is short-lived however, for even as you feel the dregs of clown tears dribbling from your urethra, you feel it. That persistent, growing pressure. That sweet, unyielding and yet ominous urge... that's right... The turtle's poking his head out.
You know immediately that this is no ordinary anchor-dropping. This is the final rally of the vacation. This carnal tube of impacted evil represents your last moments of bliss and freedom. Smell that? Unmistakeably airport peanuts and ersatz "cinnamon" cookies. And that burning? Surely it's the unrequited swan-song of the special salsa that you used on your salmon at the wedding reception. What's this? Ooohh! Yikes! Roughage. Now what... ahh. Yes, of course. The "Vegan sloppy-joe." Sweet memories.
It isn't long before you sigh in relief and maybe a little regret (why did I drink so many Mango Madness Mimosas at the wedding?), and give one last high-pressure zap of pee onto Mount Movement. You wipe, maybe even spitting on the tissue a little for good measure, and stand. It is done. It is with respect you flush this, the last vestige of vacation. You limp away, somehow better for it. And at least three fucking pounds lighter.

So my trip to Oregon is over, but that doesn't mean that the memories have faded! Burning ass-hole aside, I have some great reminders of all the fun that was to be had. And some of the shit that I will literally spend the rest of my natural life trying to forget.


I present at this time, an Oregon panoply.

Scene #1: Honey... I'm late.

Unfortunately, this does not refer to an unwanted pregnancy. This refers to the incident of my fine self, Significant Other in tow, arriving at the airport after the divine forces that give the ticket-jockeys at United Airlines their innate sense of superiority and power, decided to close boarding for our plane at some arbitrary time at least 20 minutes before the plane was scheduled to leave. This was especially innervating with memories of the momentous occasion of the Missed Flight of January 2010 still giving me nightmares. Naturally, within seconds of being informed our "gate was closed," I reacted in the most mature, responsible way I could. I balled my hands into fists and started screaming at the top of my lungs "I HATE THIS I REALLY REALLY HATE THIS WHY DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND HOW MUCH I HATE THIS??!!"
Sig.Oth.: "It's okay."
Me:"NO IT'S NOT OKAY!!! HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT?! DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND I'D RATHER BE DEAD THAN MISS A PLANE?!"
Sig.Oth.:"..."

In my defense, the last time we missed a plane, I ended up living some kind of David Lynch dream-sequence alternate reality, where I spent hours sitting numbly staring into space and my dad (who voluntarily avoids eye-contact with me.)showed up in an electric-blue compact car to drop me and the Sig.Oth. off at his parent's house.I didn't know what was going to happen, but I knew that I didn't want THAT.
Epilogue: We got on the next flight, and my dad didn't show up even once.

Scene #2: Whore-baths aren't just for hookers and camping trips!

The Atlanta airport could have been made entirely out of cat food, and I would have been happy to see it, so relieved was I to be on-track with the travel plans after the Missed Flight of June 2010 still pretty damn fresh in my mind. And it was a charming place, full of ominous warnings regarding our nation's security and jazzy, 1980's style signs that said stuff like "You're in GEORGIA!" and "It's Hot in Hot-lanta!" They all had the same psuedo-spray paint script in a rainbow of violent colors. The only place this shit would have looked natural is spread across the front of Richard Simmons' cut-off tank top.
Anyway, I am an opportunistic urinater, so the liberation from plane #1 meant a chance to go #1 before the final leg of our trip that day. The Sig.Oth., reading my mind and anticipating my needs offered to babysit my suitcase while I took a leak. The pissing went just fine, especially considering the amount of coffee I'd managed to drink on the first plane. The trouble began, as it so often does, when I left the stall. There, before the trough of sinks and mirrors, stood a black woman in full-church garb, with her skirt bunched under her armpits, a crumpled and sweaty handful of wet paper towels in her hand, washing her cooter. The sink was at the ready, somehow running continuously even though they are designed by NASA and Communist sympathizers to not dispense more than two single drops of water at a time, and only then if you know the correct pass-code. She had a face like a cartoon dog, and the kind of strong, gnarled hands that one easily imagines wrapped around the neck of an enemy or making sweet-grass baskets. Her hat and dress were dark navy blue. There she stood, legs akimbo, knees bent, black and blue all over like a giant, cooter-washing anthropomorphic bruise. It was incredible. She hummed as she wiped, which was both soothing and extremely disturbing. I didn't recognize the song, but I like to think that it was "Onward Christian Soldiers" or the theme to "The Black Hole."

Next: More "Scenes from Portland!" And these will actually be from Portland!