Just barely escaped the ice pellets and the snow yesterday and somehow ended up in a very fancy hotel in downtown Portland for about $30. We visited two of Mitchel's friends whom I met the last few times I was here, Donny and Matana. Matana is Thai, probably less than five feet tall, and recently pregnant. She invited me to Thailand again, this time for a few weeks in April, after she has her kid. The plane ticket will be about $900, she says. I don't know, but wouldn't that be something.
Matana. What a cool name.
Later in the night, we crashed some kind of country club and had fancy drinks and cigars among old people. It wasn't really as thrilling or daring as it probably sounds. I still don't really understand what happened or where we were, but we had ourselves a time.
From there we went back downtown to our hotel and wandered around the city. Not much was open by that time except some gentlemen's clubs and taco trucks, so we ended up at one of the former. At some point I realized that it was probably the same club where Emma, the friend by whom I became interested in Portland when I was 16, danced years ago.
See how classy I am? I called it a "gentlemen's club."
Everyone else went to bed around three, so I wandered alone until about six with a vague feeling of safety, excitement, and connection in a mysteriously empty downtown. Not much happened, but it was nice. A bundled fellow with an old man's gait was intensely and outwardly angry at me for a minute or two. "Why am I getting screamed at?" I thought, but made a point not to appear shaken. He was not visibly affected by my brave display, so I walked away, and somehow that was that.
The next morning we checked out and had Belgian waffles at a Swedish restaurant. A Swedish restaurant! I'd planned a joke about belchin' waffles, but just when the perfect moment came, my voice was drowned out by some uncomfortably forward words from a man in a Santa Claus outfit. I've got to learn to be louder if I'm gonna make it in the big city.
Everything else is going well. I bought a nice "extra-firm" pillow, and since have felt proud of my responsible choice to deny the ones stuffed with down. I also have some new bedsheets with cowboys and horses and sheriff badges and such. Also, I live with a friend whose parents named him "Sheriff."
Surprisingly, I haven't been lonely. There are more new friends than I can keep up with coming and going from the house all the time, and no one seems to have a problem with walking right on in and just having a swell time with or without the official housemates. My neighbors up the hill are pretty, petite young ladies with fancy haircuts that hug without much reservation or warning. "You're amazing!" one of them said to me right after such a hug the other night. I told her she hadn't earned that hug. I hardly even knew her, I said. You can't just take my hugs.
What else? I walk to the grocery store. The buses come about every 20 minutes. I'm still waiting on my phone - it should be here sometime next week, I guess. I finally saw the sun for a minute or so this afternoon. I was surprised to realize that I don't really need personal transportation, but I'm considering taking motorcycle classes anyway. I've got some feelers out for jobs. Still able to read a lot, still drinking tea in the morning at leisure, still finding myself able to laugh at my roommate's jokes. The first week has gone well.
In general, I'm uncharacteristically optimistic.
I'm smiling, see? :)
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