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