A Cold Place to Be

Dec 16, 2008
Lille, France

Dear Blog,

Last Thursday I took the tram into Lille at 4 o'clock. Michelle's train was scheduled to come in at ten. I wanted to give myself plenty of time. Six hours seemed like enough. But what to do...I couldn't just hang out outside; Northern France is a cold place to be in December. Wondering, I took the second right from Lille Flandres to a sandwich shop I knew. I wanted to solicit the advice of the man who shaves the Kebab meat. He suggested that I buy a sandwich. Who's he working for? I wondered. But I didn't have time to figure it out before my sandwich was ready. I poked at it a few times with a tiny fork, and discovering no new ideas between the bread, I ate it. With mathematical precision, too: For every four parts kebab that went in my mouth, 6 parts smeared onto my hands or face. And that diabolical sandwich man only gave me one napkin. Not enough, Monsieur! Thinking unnaturally fast, I went to a book shop and handled the paperbacks until my hands were covered in only a thin layer of sauce. By this time I was in the Books in English section, so I picked up a couple and found a chair next to an olive skinned man with a closely shaved head. I noticed he was reading a Cartesian treatise. I gave him a fat stare and he pretended not to notice. He knew the game, this one. I sat down and began reading something about a professor sleeping in a pile of leaves. Surely You're Joking! I thought. And then I'm so clever, which was just patently untrue, so I laughed. The man next to me looked up, studied me and my book, and then asked what I was reading. It's about a physicist. And it's funny? I shrugged. He was a funny guy. Monsieur then decided my face was familiar. Hadn't he and I had met before? Yes. He was sure of it. You're from London, he explained, on holiday in Lille for three months. O. Right. Well. He was only a previous meeting, an ocean, and a month away from the truth, within a reasonable margin of error, so I let it slide. We talked a while longer, awkwardly, until the bookstore closed and I bade my new old friend au revoir.

Outside the clock on the Commerce Tower hung like an unripe fruit. Only 7:30? If anyone would have been there I would have complained. But lesson learned. You don't need to be six hours early to pick up a girl from a train station. I looked around. The moon shone down through the clouds like a phosphorescent pupil in a black iris, the universe a giant cyclops, me a pawn in a particularly long and drawn out game of chess. Your move, the cyclops universe seemed to whisper. Pawn to giant supermarket! I loitered in the isles, poked at the soft breads, pinched at the hard, and established an intellectual rapport with a 75 Euro crayfish. I left the store with a bag of peanuts and a bottle of water. I picked up a newspaper and walked to the train station. I found a corner, sat on the floor, pulled out the peanuts, the water, spread the newspaper over my lap to read, and shrunk into my coat. A train station in Northern France is a cold place to be on a December evening.

It wasn't long before I noticed a man in gray clothes and pink skin looking at me. I kept reading my paper. It wasn't much longer before I noticed he was walking towards me. I kept staring at the newspaper. In fact, it seemed quite sudden that he was standing over me. I looked up.

"Vous endormez ici? Are you sleeping here?" He asked.
What? No. I'm waiting for someone.
"D'accord. Alright." He didn't look convinced. He held out a package of hot dogs "Les voulez-vous? Do you want these?"
My brows furrowed. Non. Merci.

Then he walked away. What just happened? I wondered. But in my heart, I knew. I had just been mistaken for a bum. I wasn't sure how to feel, so I responded with bemused amusement; I laughed. But lesson learned. With a wrinkled wardrobe, a home-job haircut, and such an informal demeanor as mine, you shouldn't blanket yourself in newspaper, lest you suffer by the inferences of others.

I stood up in what I hoped would be a dignified manner, though it seems Dignity is too haughty a sophisticate to be seen fraternizing with a man of my posture and profile. I slouched over to a nearby McDonalds. It was my last resort. In France, as in America, McDonald's is a seething hub of degeneracy, idiocy, and high decibel garrulousness. I merely wanted to trade a Euro for a coffee and a warm place to sit, but the true price was much higher: a possibly fatal exposure to the most virulent collection of pockmarked humanity in the city. In my haste to leave, I dropped a pen under a table. A man succumbing to the toxic effluvia of the crowd gasped and pointed to where it fell, but in retreat you let the dead lie where they fall. It wasn't my pen, anyway.

Not long after, Michelle's train arrived. Finally! I walked down the platform, scanning faces. I saw the one love, but its lips were moving. She was talking! With a man! What's going on here? I wondered. I put my detective's face on and let them walk past. I tailed them for a few steps, but didn't learn anything interesting. Bored, I slipped up abreast with Michelle then slipped my arm around her shoulder. She was surprised. She said au revoir to the mysterious man, and suddenly we were alone, together. She excitedly explained that she had just held a conversation, all in French, for an entire hour, and it had come easily. She was as happy as a song bird on a spring morning, her gold plumage radiating brilliantly in the cold, dreary terminal. I took her back to my cage.

The night passed.
Dawn came.
Dawn went.
Morning took her
back to the train.

But I was there too, with my feet propped up on the seat in front of me. Brussels is just half an hour from Lille by train. And I'd been hearing good things about the waffles in Belgium. Michelle and I were deep in some horribly interesting conversation about French grammar when all of a sudden a conductor appeared out of nowhere. He told me to move my feet and demanded to see our tickets. Fine. There, jerk. He rubbed a wand over our tickets which nullified them at Brussels-Midi Station, so that's where we got off.

It was only a short walk to the hotel, so as a lengthener, we started off in the wrong direction. After a while a map was consulted, the landmarks pondered, and 180 degrees turned. In our new direction the wind was at our backs, good time was made, affording us a stop to admire a large, brass horn near a busy street. I sang Patsy Cline's greatest hit through it for the pleasure of the other pedestrians, indeed the Bruxellois at large, though it was largely ignored or considered annoying.

The hotel was fine. Unremarkable, really. Well, remarkable enough to say that it was unremarkable. A place to set our bags down. I wanted to fill the ashtray with peanuts to make it feel more like a party, but the bag ripped and the nuts spilled into the bed, all over the floor, and into Michelle's bag. More of mess than a party. So we left. To Grand Place, the town square. A nativity scene-cum-pigeon roost wasn't attracting much attention, hidden behind the giant Christmas tree. Even the tree was boring. I mean, it was a fine tree and well trimmed, but it had to compete with the large number of glowing, growling, hooting sticks planted around the square. They looked like giant, stiff grass stalks with rectangular tips of glowing wheat berries, and they were all belching the sounds of the Amazon: bird calls and monkey howls. I…What…Uh…huh… We thought, then walked away.

Michelle likes to experience a city through its Christmas Markets, so we wandered through several, or maybe it was just one that we kept stumbling on from different directions. In between the booths of one (the?) market, a man accepting donations for the Salvation Army tugged the heartstrings of my Michelle, so she forced me to make a donation, which put me on both sides of charity in less than twenty four hours. At some point we wandered into the Asian District. Michelle found brown sugar at a Chinese market. A store worker explained: "This is sugar. You can mix it in your tea or coffee. It's good." You learn something new every day!

Night had come, bringing with it an uncomfortable frigidity, so we pointed ourselves back toward Grand Place and an Oriental pastry shop I wanted to sit in. But ho! Things were a bit different in Grand Place the second time around. The growling light sticks weren't growling anymore, they were dancing! Pulsing and changing colors to the rhythm of Christmas Carols, we learned that these were the Electrabelle Nights. When the dance ended, a horde of bubbles was unleashed upon the crowd of dazzled spectators.

We could have watched it all night. And we certainly took enough pictures to make it seem as if we had. But I was adamant that we visit that pastry shop. It wasn't far away. We ordered two expensive pots of tea, a white, moon-shaped, sugared-covered something, and a hookah. We sat, drinking, eating, and smoking peach flavored charcoal, completely content with our lot in life as we watched the train of shivering people steam past the window. Who knows what we talked about or how we made the decision to go to Amsterdam the next day.

We stayed long enough the next morning to take advantage of the hotel’s complimentary breakfast, to pack our bags, and to stomp to bits the last of the remaining peanuts on the floor. Then we put ourselves on the 11:15 to Amsterdam! What a picture that place is. Surreal. It’s so beautiful you don't believe it. And the Dutch, well, they're a genial bunch. We found a sketchy hostel with the same price, Michelle observed, as a stereo. It was downtown, just to the west of the Red Light District. An interesting place. It’s got a vibe like something from the distant past, the distant future, and Saigon all mixed together. A place where women in bikinis shake their fleshy wares in windows, and if you like what you see, well, it’s yours for a fee. A place where men on the street offer you cocaine and ecstasy while the police patrol disinterestedly only a few yards away.

Fortunately the Red Light District is only a very tiny portion of Amsterdam. Unfortunately it attracts and excites idiots, who make problems and create a buzz. The rest of Amsterdam seemed a peaceful, sporty place. The Dutch ride their bikes everywhere, keep big beautiful parks, and enjoy peanut butter and coffee creamer. Michelle stocked up.

Amsterdam is home to many fine museums and attractions. The Van Gogh Museum, Anne Frank’s house, the Rijksmuseum (exhibiting a fantastic collection of diamond encrusted human skulls), the Heineken Brewery. All of which we wished we would have been willing to pay to go into. But we weren’t. So Amsterdam’s art and culture and beer tours were left for our less stingy cohorts and Amsterdam, for us, was all shop hopping to get in from the outside. Holland is a cold place to be in December.

On the train home I told Michelle stories about my friends. George once saved a beached whale. Jerry had been delivering mail for Newman but got caught because he did too good a job. Elaine became the president of a company and bought George an $8000 hat, which he hid behind the couch cushion of a girl he’d just had a particularly bad date with. Kramer befriended a wig master working on Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat. Michelle napped. I stared out the window and wondered what Jerry was up to now. We were back in no time.

It was a good weekend. And now this is my last week in Lille. I move on to Paris Friday evening until Christmas, and then Michelle and I'll be hopping around Europe for the following three weeks. If we survive the planes, trains, and vagaries of each other's moods, we'll be back in Paris by Jan 19. Then I leave Europe on Jan 27. I'm heading back to Asia for four months. Nepal this time. You see, as a child, I never had the opportunity to spend much time in an orphanage.

So I'm going to make up for that now.

Blog,

Josh

What a Day...

November 24, 2008
Lille, France

Dear Blog,

Today, o blog, if you had watched me through a window (note: you must NEVER watch me through a window) you would no doubt conclude, after considering the magnitude of my inactivity, the extent of my lassitude, and ferocity of my languor, that today was a wasted day. And upon confrontation and logical presentation of the evidence, I would admit and agree. Then I would pause for a moment in self reflection, and ask myself under troubled brow, Did I really travel thousands of miles and pay thousands of dollars to sit quietly in a dark room?

Apparently yes.

And now dusk arrives, bringing nothing but the day to an end, because nothing else was begun. How do you describe such a man as I on such a day as this? Barnaclesque. Yes, thats the word, the word that describes the salient features of a barnacle's life, which parallels my own more often than I'd like. Our behavior is only noticeably different at meal times. You see, I am, at present, unequipped to filter my meals from the atmosphere. Perhaps if I could grow a proper mustache... Then what a human ode to crustacean I would be!

But alacks! and laments aside, I'd like to bring blame and finger pointing to the forefront. Lazy didn't become the word of the day because I woke up singing it. Not at all. You should know that the housekeeper has quite maliciously trapped me in my room. You see, she doesn't know that I'm here, and that is the lock on my cell. She thinks the house to be empty, and is behaving according, which is to say insanely. Conversing with the cats, whispering ingredients to the soups as if they're curious about their own composition, humming along with the vacuum as they dance and dance and dance. If I were to barge out of my room and into her strange, fantastical universe of songs and whispers and dances, well, it would be a shattering invasion of privacy, something from which I doubt her ego could ever recover. I expect you can see the rudeness of her assumptions and the chivalry of my inaction.

You can, can't you?

Blog,

Josh

Inconclusions on the Durity of Life

September 15, 2008
Lille, France

Dear Blog,

The other night, during a particularly lucid and compelling dream, I spit into my bed. Be convinced, my friends, that I was not simply drooling. No, this was an active process: collecting and forming a bolus of saliva, then mightily discharging it from my mouth and into the bed sheets. You should know that all the labial and lingular activity did indeed attract the attention of my consciousness, who rushed to the scene just in time to yell "What do you think you're...!" But it was too late. I was awake and cleaning up my unconsciousness' mess. Again. I swear. Its like caring for a retarded baby and a choleric old man at the same time.

Life is hard.

And now a clarifying point. The bed in which my expectorate shall henceforth repose is not actually my bed. No, I would never own such a decadent thing. Charlotte used to sleep there when she lived with her mother, Laurence. She moved out and I moved in. Why? Presumably as a live in English tutor for Laurence, though thats not what she's telling her friends. No, she tells them I'm the "Mommy-Sitter." Someone she got to play games with and share meals with now that most of her kids are out of the house. Whatever. I'm still going to list this as "English Tutor" on my resume. I think that will keep more eyebrows in their proper, lowered positions and require less explanation.

But the mommy-sitting is going well. My chambers are adequate, the standard two-story bedroom with private bath and balcony. The house keeper fixes breakfast on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and turns the room once a week. As for the hours I keep "on the job," they are irregular, and the work varies. Last week we went jogging. Tomorrow she wants to go to a water polo match, and we have plans to read a comic book together.

Life ain't so hard.

Much of my time is free, spent in a manner of my choosing. Yesterday I attempted to find a nearby library. I gave up after five hours when the closest thing to a book lender I had found was a Turkish sandwich shop.

And on the topic of sandwiches, the scale in the bathroom tells me I've gained 6 pounds in the week I've been here. Egregious slander and malicious falsehood! I plan to work the thing over, to attain, by its own admission, that it is a liar and a thief and wants to see me ruined.

Life is hard.

Blog,

Josh

Happy Birthdays, Goodbyes, and Good Riddances

October 6 (Happy Birthday, Ma!), 2008
Port Orchard

Dear Blog,

Yesterday, my good blog, was too cool for me. It snubbed me during the daylight hours. I pretended not to care, an act that looked something like a sockless man on a couch watching hours upon hours of television. Placid on the surface I was, though I assure you currents of hurt and bitterness ran deeply, spinning vortexes in the uglier parts of my soul. When the day came to make up, I tried to tell it "O no, too little too late," but I crumpled. Sunday is too charming and my scorn hath no real wrath, so I rode out the evening kind of happy.

But I shouldn't let myself be treated that way. I mean, there are plenty of days in the week, and I'm not so ugly or too stupid. I could have any day I want, probably!

so:

Message to Sunday:

I've left you for Monday, thanks for the broken heart.

See you around,

Josh


Well happy birthday Mom! You're so beautiful! When I consider the rubbish heaps of other mas or mothers I could have been born to, it always seems that the real gift on your birthday goes to Zach, Kindra, and me. We love you. And I honestly hope somebody bakes you a cake in the shape of a cat.

So I leave in less than 48 hours now. I've got some bug spray and a dumb look on my face, and I can't for the life of me think of anything else I'll need.

Some people may be interested in my itinerary. If you don't count yourself among them, please click here (Baby, it'll blow your mind).


Tentative Itinerary:
Oct 8: Depart Seattle 1:40 pm
Oct 9: Arrive Seoul, South Korea 5:30 pm, Depart 8:10 pm, Arrive Ho Chi Minh City 11:40 pm.

Emily tells me she'll pick me up at the airport. A tale I'm counting on.

Oct 10 - 13: Bumming around HCMC, exposing my imunne system to interesting South East asian parasites, bacteria, and viruses.
Oct 14-16: Bus 12 Hours from HCMC to Siem Reap, Cambodia, to a Luxury Spa and Resort, and a once in a lifetime chance to belittle the ancient Khmer civilization by striking silly poses in their ruinous temples at Angkor Wat.
Oct 17: Bus 12 hours from Siem Reap back to HCMC.
Oct 18-21: More bumming around HCMC.
Oct 22: Flying up North! To Hanoi!
Oct 25: Flying back South! To HCMC!
Oct 26-31: Incredible to think I'll be doing so much bumming around HCMC.
Nov 1: Depart HCMC 8 pm
Nov 2: Arrive Doha, Qatar 12:10 am, Depart Doha 1:15 am, Arrive Paris 6:40 am
Nov 3 -8: Paris et Mont St. Michel avec Ma Belle Michelle.
Nov 9: Paris to Lille, to begin teaching English
Nov 10-Dec 21: Lille, teaching English, Possible Side trips to Brussels, Zurich, and Paris
Dec 22-25: Christmas Break with Michelle in Paris
Dec 26-28: Geneva, Switzerland
Dec 29-Dec 31: Venice Italy
Jan 1: London
Jan 2-4: Dublin
Jan 5: London
Jan 6-11: Helsinki, Finland
Jan 12: London
Jan 13-19: ????

Then I have to come home. Or something. I can't quite see that far into the future. Sorry if that was painfully overcomplete, but I'm just an excited little kid right now. And you had the option of the hilarious cats video.

So! Heres to airplane crashes, to Japanese Encephalitis, and to a world-wide disrespect of Americans. But also! To all the beautiful people I love and to all the beautiful people who love me back.

I'll be thinking about you.

Blog,

Josh

Not Proud, Nor Entirely Honest

September 23, 2008
Port Orchard

Dear Blog,

It all started yesterday when I left my house. I went down to the pharmacy at a nearby Albertsons and asked them for their priciest injection. "Very good, Sir," said a man named Tim, but a face named Fujitaka, "our Hepatitis vaccines are 90 dollars per dose. Will you have A or B?"
"The twain. I like it in the upper arm. Give me a taste of heaven, Tim."

And he did. Two syringe fulls of the good stuff. Now, partially immune to Hep A and B, I'm free to partially ingest tainted human leavings or life fluids, a practice I'm not quite partial to, but it’s nice to know I can.

Arms bleeding, I hoped into my mobile autovibrocoach, or car, and passed the old, familiar landmarks: The Tacoma Narrows, Wild Waves, and mile post 151.

I parked at some horrific shopping center and wandered about with a confused air akin to severe hypoglycemia. The place seemed familiar, but I do so often think I recognize a stranger's face. There was a QFC, and a Barnes and Noble, a little boutique run by Jews, and a sweet shop selling sugared candied everythings. I wandered and wondered. Fate would have me find two sexy fruits and a bag of golden fish crisps. I started in on an apple, just right there on the sidewalk. Mothers covered their childrens' eyes and gave me "You're in Public, Mr!" type stares, but I didn't care. And to prove it, I took my apple into the Pottery Barn Kids. We posed in front of the merchandise, rearranged things on the shelves, and disregarded the cockeyes glaring as I rubbed appley fingers all over the comforter of a model bed-set.

And then I noticed her. She was just walking up to complete strangers and asking them questions. Questions like "Do you need help?" and "Can I help you?" or "Do you need help finding anything?" This was a weird one. But I’d seen her before. And then, like a caffeinated finch, trilling just behind me..."JOSH! You have TWO apples, that's amazing!" O! Of course! It was Erin! Hi Erin!

I asked her what on earth she was doing, and she told me she worked there. O, I said, that explains a lot. A conversation followed, too esoteric to bother with here. Her goodbye sent me walking, across the street to the Starbucks to sit and contemplate under a bodhi or perhaps some other, less enlightening bit of landscape. I broke out the fish crisps, crushed them, and threw the crumbs to the ground. A poem, my friends, is two birds fighting over a cracker crumb in a gale of cracker crumbs. But a couple of guys with lattes, weekly haircuts, and simple minds unappreciative of abstract verse looked at me disapprovingly. I reciprocated, and they made quick saccades. Then I looked away. Five or six rounds later I was bored with their game, so I left.

Erin had told me to meet Jaryd at the Parking office at 7. I arrived early and nestled on the curb beneath the strawberry trees. It was just about sunset, and there was a stillness, a city stillness, the maximal quiet, just freeway, a couple of airplanes, and the whoops of a group of hollering idiots one block over. In this quiet and dim light, walking there, across the parking lot, I captured a disturbing image on film. It shows some kind of beast, about five foot four inches tall, 300 pounds. It had a gray, furry body, with green trousery legs, and pinned to its scalp were rat pelts, poorly preserved. Bipedal, its gait was a heavy plod, and each stride seemed painful and unnatural. This creature was of an un-over-estimable grotesqueness, and its hideousness haunts me still.

Stalking not far behind was an old trapper by the name of Charlie. We talked, he said things like "Good to see you alive" and "That's wild!" and then wandered off into the brush.

Soon Jaryd came and we drove to his apartment. We talked business over vodka and Gatorade, politics over Goldshlogger and Gatorade, and then love over whiskey and Gatorade. We put our glasses down to walk to Siam on Lake Union, feeling fine.

Seated behind an archaic cash register was a thin man wearing a large suit stuffed with newspapers. Or maybe he was a large man stuffed with Thai food in a small suit. In either reality, he pointed to a stack of menus, from which Jaryd chose the Imperial Noodles, and I the Grease Rice with Fried Tofu. Waiting now, we talked about women and Practical Magic until a woman called "Jerry! Your order!" A Jaryd by any other name…It was time to go. Back out into the fog of blackness, back to the alley, and back to the apartment with the glorious view of the blackness and the comforting fire bulbs that keep it out.

We ate, we drank, we made merry. But were soon restless. So I filled some tiny bottles with whiskey, for the road, and we poured ourselves back out onto the streets. I felt numb and thick and walked like maple syrup through the sleeping neighboorhood, stopping to pull from the bottles at stop lights.

We arrived in a bustling U-District well past drunk.

The narrative takes a break here. Most of what followed has only been remembered through the priming influence photographs. I do recall more vodka, a long island iced tea (nefariously recommended by Heather "Blorf" Barth), and me threatening to throw it "all over that douche bag's shoes."

Erin drove Jerry and I back to Eastlake, where I lost consciousness and practiced the dying art of sleep regurgitation. I woke up at 4 am with the entirety of my ventral surface thickly coated in bile and rice, dyed Gatorade red #40. Confused, and still very drunk, I observed aloud, "O...I'm covered." My brain, that old trickster, convinced me that everything was normal, and to shhhhh, go back to sleep. So I did. But woke a bit later and realized, with some difficulty, what was still left to realize. I stood, and stumbled, and cleaned myself off the best I could, then made the unhappy discovery of some happy new stains on the white sofa I’d fallen asleep on. I gave them a mean look. They didn’t budge. But 4 am is no time for scrubbing stains. So I crawled back on top of them and slept badly till 10.

Sometime thereabouts I confessed my body's treacheries to Jaryd and gave him a grand tour of ground zero. He laughed, despite a headache, which made me laugh, despite a persisting nausea. We drove to Rite-Aide in the U-district for upholstery cleaner, scrubbers, and odor neutralizer, all sold to me by a creaking, but friendly, android with a noticeably false hairpiece.

On the drive back to the sofa, I got sick. I jumped out of the car and ran behind the bushes in front of the Hotel Deca. It hides you from the street, but anybody exiting the hotel has prime vantage. Regardless, I productively wretched in quintuplicate, then kicked some dirt over the mess just in time for a woman to walk by and wonder what kind of criminal mischief I was up to in those bushes. I hope she investigated.

Jaryd and I soaped up and massaged the stains for a good while. They never came out, but they did feel more relaxed and emerged with sweeter dispositions.

I’m calling that a victory.

Blog,

Josh

Chez Shea

August 14, 2008
Seattle

Dear Blog,

Yesterday Michelle and I rode a shimmering green bus to "The City" where Michelle had been threatening to do some "serious shopping." Perched upon the green vinyl of the bus seat, Michelle, through subtle allegory, helped me understand that to her, today, I could only be a sick horse, possibly even a dead one. She gravely warned that she would not abide the burden. So when we spilled out of the bus into the station, she gave me a slug on the shoulder and a kiss on the face, then flew away, a pecuniary pollinator of Commerce's Westlake blooms, and a cute one.

I, lame stud, wandered slowly but directly to Barnes and Noble. I selected a book of Latin roots, sat in a corner and looked down at the pages expecting boredom. I looked back up with the expectation met.
Then I looked at a Russian couple looking at an English-Russian dictionary.
Then I looked over the shoulder of a guy studying rational expressions.
Then I looked at a book describing how to tie fantastically complicated knots.
Then I looked at the photo of the author on the back cover.
Then I wondered about the knot he was calling his face, and why he didn't pull it a little tighter.
Then I left Barnes and Nobel.

I walked to the Seattle Public Library, looked at a few books written in Finnish, decided it will always be a cognate language of Gibberish, then left.

Back at Barnes and Noble, a Michelle stitched together from smiles and spare princesses appeared on the most majestic of modernity's cascades, the escalator, seeming to have tamed a crashing waterfall of stairs. What can't she do? I wondered. She held three large plastic bags and a stack of fashion magazines. With a flip of her hand and a bounce in her step, she declared her shopping excursion a success, and claimed the coffee owed her by her manservant. Earlier that day he had argued with the passionate conviction of the utterly uniformed that it was the Ancient Greeks who had first included a senate in their government. Michelle claimed it was the Romans. The argument escalated into a foolish wager, and he found himself quite the fool. Young readers, pay attention, for I was that fool.

I languidly stirred aspartame or saccharine into our Americanos, quietly curious about the Persian man next to me furiously stirring sugar into his caramel machiato. "Sweet enough to kill a humingbird" I thought, and then never thought I would think of it again.

At seven o'clock we decided to dress for the evening. The bathroom floor was sticky and there were...things...on the surfaces. Only a thin partition separated me from a man malodorously trumpeting his egesta. It was the Macy's men's room, and it was nicer than I had expected. I pulled some crumpled garments from my backpack and goaled to make the switch without touching anything. Strange being on the defensive from the static inanimates of a bathroom. Mais c'est la guerre. I entered the bathroom a cool worm in shirtsleeves and short pants. I emerged cacooned in finery, overdressed for the weather and part of town. Two stories above me a lovely young lady was also changing for the evening, but in much more elegant surroundings. The Macy's Women's Lounge--not just a room, but a lounge--is clean and pink, comfortably furnished, couched, mirrored, stalls like toileted dressing rooms. Macy's, your gender preference is clear.

Michelle came out looking expensive. Black boots, black tights, shimmering green dress tied up in a sexy black trench. I escorted this lady of the evening to First and Pike, to Chez Shea, to a dinner unjustifiably expensive but indescribably amazing.

The restaurant is small, about 10 tables. Dimly lit, quiet, it overlooks Pikes Place Market and has a view of the Olympic Mountains. And 20 minutes before sunset splashed the clouds bloody red, you can take my word that there was more than one hopeful man ordering his date another drink.

I started with a glass of wine, which was served with a drowned fly. Michelle chose the limonada, ungarnished. A crusty bread was plated, buttered, devoured, delicious. The waitress came and stood beside me.

Accented:

W: Have you decided?
J: Yes. For the first course I will have the Amberjack Ceviche,

-Here classlessly throwing my thumb in Michelle's direction-

J: and she will have the Organic Spring Greens.
W: Ok.
J: For the second course I will have the Corn Soup and she will have the Pate. For the entrée we will both have the seasonal vegetable crepe.
W: Very good.

For the benefit of culinary dullards like myself, ceviche (unbeknownst to this vegetarian at the time) is a citrusy seafood salad. And pate was this particular menu's American bastardization of Pâté, a French amalgamation of minced meat, animal fat, and herbs. Discarding my meatless convictions with unexpected alacrity, I ate both. When in Rome, I said several times aloud, when in Rome. Flavor-wise, they were both exceedingly delicious. Everything was. Surely when time pulls the last threads of youth from my face and senility claims my most enduring memories, the last to be forgotten will be the taste of the lemon crème brûlée, and the retinal engraving of the beautiful blond girl in shades of green, smiling in the low light at Chez Shea.

We ate for two hours and have the bill to prove it.

Blog,

Josh

PS: Mike and Kindra--This was incredible. Thank you!

Not Sleeping

August 10, 2008
Seattle

Dear Blog,

Remember that four hour nap I took earlier? And those three cups of coffee after six pm? Yeah? I can't sleep. Whatever. Life would be better, though, if I wasn't wearing pajamas. I'm to scrupulous to wander the streets in bedclothes. And I would love to wander.

But actually I might hate it. The streets are loud, reverberating with the yells and cheap laughter from all the cool college kids at all the cool college parties. I've heard a few fireworks set of, which set off a few car alarms, the rhythm of which is about to set me off dancing. Every action is but a link on a chain.

Point of the blog in five words: I hate the University District. Impending graduation has found me suddenly too old a man and too stubborn a fool to tolerate all this intolerable youth. It was fine before, but now it seems valueless, dirty, abrasive, and its vibe is festering in my brain.

So sense my excitement to be leaving. My apartment lease is up at the end of the month. The landlord has been calling, trying to get into my place do some repairs, some spruce up work so he can trick some other poor unfortunates into at least a year of bad living. I'm not returning his calls. I may be personifying my frustration at the high cost of housing in this stink-town, but I hate his guts. He never gave us the rug he promised to cover the stains of dubious origin on the carpet, he never re-installed the hall-closet doors after removing them, he yelled at me for running down the stairs, and fined me $100 dollars just for being seven days late on rent. Jerk.

I'm planning on moving back to Port Orchard for September, and hopefully I'll be off to France in October. Michelle is flying off to Paris in 16 days. So soon! It's hard to think about. I wonder what I'll do with myself.

Maybe I'll sleep.

Blog,

Josh

Saturday Day

August 9, 2008
Seattle

Dear Blog,

I woke up alive this morning at 6:11, coffee pot time, related to actual time by making me exactly five minutes late for everything. I put on my adult clothes and ate uncooked oatmeal with milk over it. This is delicious for several reasons. First, it's easy. Second, heat and water turn an attractive collection of oats into something like a stoic puddle of starchy glue, so unbecoming of such a comely cereal grain. Third, an uncooked oat is much more of a challenge to digest, and with a stomach with a short attention span, I appreciate anything that keeps it occupied.

It wasn't raining when Michelle and I walked to work, though it had been. I commented that the earth smelt freshly bathed, which in the city is a heady, sort of concrete sweaty, kind of nearly pleasant stench. It was a cool, after-rain, August morning amble downhill to Parking Services. I don't remember appreciating it as it was happening. But it seems beautiful now. I was five minutes late.

Byron was fifteen minutes early. The man is a perverted, socially-inept, mild schizophrenic, and ours is a star crossed love that just shouldn't be. I should clarify: this is not in any way a romantic love, nor a love as between brothers, nor even one known between friends. Ours is something new, as of yet undescribed by poets, and totally one sided: His. I suppose it’s my fault, though, hanging those hearts in his eyes with that pity breakfast date, that pity Valentine’s Day card, the use of such strong words as “friend” in reference to him. He delights in crudity, and speaks to me without delicacy or decency. I alone know of his reprehensible online adventures and O! the things he’s seen! But I dare not burden the reader with any lewd description.

I hope that you can imagine my distress, then, upon discovering that I was to spend the entire shift today alone with Byron at the Central Plaza Garage. On the drive up he cryptically remarked that he had orchestrated our shift assignments. What? He must have hypnotized our boss then blackmailed him into putting us together, because I refuse to believe that Nick consciously and willfully allowed this to happen.

But it turned out fine. I ended up doing breaks, and in such a clever way that I was able spend most of the day at gate five with Michelle. And Byron was unusually preoccupied anyway with the important task of digitizing a pencil sketch of Bowser from Mario Brothers for some online collaboration of awful artists. The original wasn’t half bad. The final product was befitting of the web-site. He finished after my break, then turned his full attention to me:

B: Whacha writing?
J: Secrets. Important and interesting secrets.
B: You're writing about me, aren't you.
J: Of course not.
B: Oh. Then about Michelle?
J: Yes. And you mustn’t read it.
B: Alright.

Here he closes his eyes and points his enormous face at the screen, which I tilt downward. He giggles crazily, then sticks a few fingers into my sides.

J: No touching Byron! Never any touching!
B: *Crazy giggle* You know I used to be good at poetry.
J: Really? You should write some.
B: I’m kind of out of practice. I was mostly good at rapping.

He looks thoughtful for a moment, then:

B: Bitch, take this stupid pill
I want to fiddle with your deal
And you know I don’t want to spend no bill
You know me, just want to spill my seed.

proudly:

B: See, that was just off the fly!
J:
B: Am I annoying you?
J: No.
B: Am I entertaining you then?
J: In a way that no one else ever could.
B: *Crazy giggle*

But Byron isn’t the only hero of Parking Services. I can't forget the customers, those dears. Memorable faces today included Well-Dressed-Chemistry-Professor-with-Asian-Wife-in Front-Seat-Who-Kept-Repeating-YES-YES-YES-YES-YES, and the foreign couple looking for “The City.”

Byron and I closed up five minutes early.

It was a hot walk home, and I complained for the best part of it. Things in the apartment have taken a turn for the worst. A couple of apples went bad on the counter top, releasing a sour-smelling, brown liquid, which served as an open invitation for fruit flies and I am now cohabitating with about two dozen. I can’t describe to you how sticky the floors are, nor how they got that way. Michelle hardly wants to come over any more.

I laid down and fell asleep for four hours.

Now, Seattle is raining, Michelle is heating me up a cup of coffee, and she feels like she wants to bake me oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Or she could make a chocolate cake.

And I deliberate.

Blog,

Josh