"I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me."
--Fred Allen
This morning, for the first time in my life, I woke up in the bed of a gay man. About 10 minutes later, Jeff puts in his requisite wake-up call. After the West Coast sleepyheads stir to life, I learn that we have a Jolly Green Giant in our midst. And it's not Murph dressed in green (he'd be the beanstalk anyway). It seems that Trish iced her knee with frozen peas last night because it was hurting when we got back from Eugene. Serves her right for having the brilliant idea to take our canine friends along. Ahhhhhhh... poetic justice!
My friend Rich is coming up today to go camping with his brother in Eugene (his brother is in architecture school at U of O). If you live in LA, you learn to read a map like nobody's business, so Rich finds Murph's apartment with no problem at all and upon taking a sip of the tap water says, "Damn, that's good water." We all head out for brunch, sans Trish, who realized her wallet was missing this morning. This is absolutely not cool (although Dan has lost his wallet about 5 times now and had it mailed back to him completely intact, cash and all, each time). After some brain-storming, she figures out that she left it in Eugene yesterday. So she's gotta drive all the way down to Euge and back AGAIN, to get her wallet from Track Town (sound of Nelson on the Simpsons going HA-ha!). So the rest of us head back to Kev's place in the meantime. I'm telling you, it was those satanic mutts.
Brunch morphs into lunch at Red Robin, a TGI Friday's-type place. This is the first time Rich has met either Jeff or Murph, after hearing many stories about them. He seems to enjoy meeting them, and later admits that he had a hard time telling whether or not Jeff was being serious. Horse has a pretty good poker face and a good line of B.S. to match. Conversation centers around Murph's, ahem, "medical condition." That is, he's got the bladder of a 78-year old dialysis patient. He goes to the bathroom about 752 times a day. Murph claims that this little character flaw can be traced back to when he started dating Trish. He says he got it from her through "relationship osmosis."
After eating, we head back to Sliver's place. Rich heads off to Euge and the rest of us veg out for a while. Finally, we get up to walk around Murph's neighborhood and check out the little shops. It's a great location with tons of restaurants, cafés, and small businesses nearby. We end up in a book store and we all go our separate ways. I'm looking through Oregon travel books, trying to get some tips on good, one-day road trips from Portland. Murph reads college football preview mags while Jeff and Katie disappear to pursue their own interests. Mysteriously, Jeff, Murph and I all find ourselves drawn to the same aisle, reading books about sex and giggling like men looking at books about sex. As we walk out two hours later, Kate's the only person who actually buys something. She bought a book on massage after Jeff complained about the weak back rubs she gave. A woman after my own heart.
Next there's some scheduling confusion, probably brought on by Murph's A.D.D. Yeah, that's definitely what it was. Jeff and Kate go back to Murph's to get ready while Kevin and I head over to see Trish at the housesitting house (where our stuff is). As we arrive, she's sitting on the back porch icing her knees with frozen fish sticks. She still has to go home and change before we celebrate the birth of our nation, so Murph and I volunteer to walk the demon dogs while she goes home. This saves us about ˝ hour. As we're walking the dogs, they each take a shit in a different neighbor's lawn. ("Dog shit? What dog shit? I don't know what you're talking abote. I'm from Canada, lady.") We dip through a few yards and shamdagle our way back home before anybody knows what's going on, looking conspicuously inconspicuous the whole way.
Trish's friend Gina and her husband Todd have a boat downtown in the Portland Harbor. Yeah boy, we're gonna be about 200 yards from the spot where Portland's fireworks celebration is set off, watching the festivities from the upper deck of a yacht. Now we're livin' large! So we all get ready and head downtown. We have to wait at the top of a ramp until somebody comes to get us because only people who dock their boats in this marina can get in. None of us have eaten dinner, so I walk along the waterfront to see if I can score at least a hot dog or something to hold me over. My stomach's grumbling, Kate's starving, Trish is famished, Jeff's about to pass out from malnourishment, and Murph isn't even hungry. No wonder that kid's so skinny. No dice on the hot dog. After we wait patiently for about ˝ hour, Murph decides to take matters into his own hands. He follows some people down the ramp, acting like a member of their party. Too bad dipshit didn't time it right, because the gate closed right in his face as he was about to walk in, like some kind of Three Stooges skit. Jeff yells down, "That's alright dog, you can just slide through the bars!" HaHa, the Sliver jokes just never end. Murph looks conspicuously inconspicuous again, acting like he's just enjoying the night, contemplatively staring off toward the horizon, standing at the end of a ramp that only leads to one place-- the marina entrance. He asks the gatekeeper guy if he can go in to find our friends and the guy says no. So Murph goes reverse psychology on him. "Oh, you're one of those guys, huh?" implying that he only does what he's told and has no free will. The guy's obviously not very secure in his manhood because after he thinks about this for a minute, he finally says, "Nah man, I'm not like that, I just don't want my boss to see because I could get fired." And with that, he opened the gate and said, "Here, hurry up and come in." If I was reading this message and I owned a boat in the Portland harbor, I wouldn't feel very safe right now.
(Time jump: 1995) In the summer of 1995, I was in The Flats (Cleveland's Bar District) with my roommate Marty and our friend Kevin Reidl. Understand that The Flats is full of people who are simply trying to impress each other. The silly people. Pure cheese. Parma (Parma, a Cleveland suburb, is actually the 10th largest city in the state of Ohio). Your typical Flats Rat is a construction worker from Parma who steps out of a T-top Camaro, decked out in cutoff jean shorts, a wife-beater tee, do-rag, and Timberland boots. They're invariably accessorized with an earring or two, maybe a Tasmanian devil tattoo on the calf, and either a beeper or cellular phone (or both) clipped to their hip. They're more commonly known by their scientific name: chach (as in, "That guy thinks he's Chachi from Happy Days"). The women are much the same. They're usually older party girls who still think they're 20, or they actually are 20 and are headed straight down the path to becoming one of the aforementioned party girls. As with most superficial crowds, money rules. Image runs a close second. There are 3 types of people in the Flats: (1) rich people, (2) people who want everyone to think they're rich, and (3) people watchers, like me. Fifty year-old, recently divorced chooches (a chooch is a superchach) pull their half-million dollar yachts up to the docks at various bars in hopes of impressing one of the little vixens enough to lure her home for the night. So we're standing out on the deck at a place called Shooters, and we happen to be standing in front of a giant new yacht. Kevin spots two painted Barbies, nudges me in the side and says, "Hey Boals, watch this." The girls circled the deck, trying to draw attention to themselves. As they got closer to us, in our t-shirts and khaki shorts, they didn't even glance in our direction. We didn't exist in their world. That is, until they got about 3 steps past us and Kevin said, "Hey, you girls wanna ride on our boat?" They stopped on their heels, whirled in place, and stepped over to us. "Oh, is that your boat?" Barbie #1 inquired in a whiny, nasal tone. "Ahhh, my bad," Riddler said, "we don't have a boat... BEAT IT!" I've been laughing ever since.
(Back to present time) So we make it past the marina's crack security team, and find Todd and Gina's boat. Barry would kill for this boat. I don't know anything about boats, but I know this one was NIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICE! It had all the comforts of home, including cable television. And the best part was, the fireworks barge was about 300 feet away. We had the best seats in the house.
On the boat, we met Todd and Gina and their friends Bob and Beth, who were in town from LA for the weekend. We all get along like Boris Yeltsin and a fifth of Stoli, which is to say quite well. I've never been in a social situation with people I'd never met before and felt more comfortable than I did on this night. It was great fun to meet nice people and get along with everybody.
The hors d'ouvres didn't stand a chance with this hungry crowd of guests. Jeff and Kate smuggled 2 bottles of champagne on board, and we surprised Murph and Trish with a toast to their recent engagement. Trish is gushing to Bob about my email travelogs. I never even met this guy before tonight, and now he thinks I'm Kurt Vonnegut. Aside from the obvious differences, one of the most glaring is that Vonnegut meets his deadlines. Sorry to disappoint you Bob, I'm just an overblown windbag from Ohio with too much time on his hands.
Then the fireworks start. We have the best seats in Portland. As we look out at the lawn and around the harbor, we realize that there are about 150,000 people here. Feeling a little happy after the champagne, Murph and I start pretending to be rock stars. "THANK YOU PORTLAND! WE LOVE YOU! GOOD NIGHT!" Murph says that if you're a rock band big enough to draw a crowd like this, you can get away with saying anything to them and they'll still cheer. "GOOD NIGHT PORTLAND! YOU ALL SUCK! EVERYBODY CAN GIT DEEEZ NUTS!" And they'd still go wild. It turns out that today is Beth's birthday. The City of Roses put on a nice little shindig for her. We all sing Happy Birthday to her, and get several drunkards on neighboring boats to join in. Some ridiculous bimbo stumbles over from the boat next door and introduces herself as Tonya. The first thought that pops into my head is, "You girls wanna ride in our boat?" Then Jeff blurts out, "HEY TONYA, THIS IS MY BROTHER JON AND HE'S SINGLE." Tonya mumbles something and scurries away, prompting Murph to stand up and say, "How many people on this boat think Boals just scared that girl away?" Everybody raises their hand. Thank God he did. She was ludicrous.
On the way back from the boat, the call comes to make a run for the border. The veggie tray and finger foods just didn't cut it for Jeff. True to form, that kid eats like a horse. Murph suggests we find a bag of oats to strap on his head. The Explorer's passengers are treated to the debut performance of the cacophonous sounds of Jon and Barry (+6 beers) singing an acoustic version of an obscure Barenaked Ladies song. Barry on guitar, bass, and background vocals, and Jon on lead noise pollution. Fortunately, nobody's really paying attention. As we get closer to Murph's place, we're besieged by about 50 people, all dressed in suits and carrying brief cases, crossing the road. It was straight outta the X-Files.