"There's one long, blond hair right inside." Early morning. Pale sun streaks through the blinds. The grating chirping of birds, and for reasons unknown, Carlos is inspecting the inside of my ear. I am quietly disturbed that, at my age, the longest hair on my body is sprouting from there.
We are in Milwaukie, OR, the suburb of Portland where Carlos lives, famous for being the birthplce of the Bing cherry, it's beavers, and the home of Darkhorse Comics (which is more thrilling to me than to him). He leans in for a smooch and asks, "Hungry?"
Only a few weeks of having uprooted ourselves from Seattle and relocating to our strange, respective cities and we've already started to settle into our comfortable routines. We already have a "place" where we go have breakfast on our days off. A small cafe where we are always the youngest patrons by at least 30 or 40 years. Carlos orders the Eggs Florentine for the third time running. I get a spinach, bacon, and mushroom scramble. They serve the eggs with toast and homemade apple butter. The waitress calls us "her lovelies."
"What should we do for New Year's Eve?" Carlos asks me. It blows my mind that he's already making plans for the end of the year. Plans that include me. We are people who make plans. Watching him slathering apple butter on his toast, a golden dollup of it on his stubbly cheek, I'm reminded of why I moved. I love this man. Being in love is annoying, inconvenient, and completely illogical, and totally explains why I'd be willing to give up the beauty of Seattle and my friends there to live in the oversized strip mall that is Vancouver, Washington.
In Vancouver I encounter people with mullets. Not ironic, hipster mullets, but full on achy breaky mullets. They have Slipknot decals on their car windows, and order Double Downs at the KFC. You might run into these same people in Seattle, but there they'd be the exception rather than the norm.
Having moved from a proper city, "The Couve" is quite an adjustment. Instead of Thai and Teriyaki places on every corner, there are just fast food places with no dearth of Dairy Queens (I've counted at least 4). To compensate for the lack of cultural diversity in the local eating establishments, I attempt to make my own Indian food. (Dot, not feather, because who wants to eat maize and white babies?) My saag paneer is fairly successful, but now my entire apartment smells like craft services for a Bollywood extravaganza.
There is only one coffeehouse in my neighborhood, and it's a Starbucks drive through. This is probably just as well. I think my coffeehouse days are over. I no longer sit across from people, pretending to read, too afraid to speak to them. Instead I stay in, making experimental dinners and nesting. When I get visits from Jehovah's Witnesses, like I have for two days running, I don't turn off the TV and pretend to not be home. I invite them in and ask if they'd like some homemade cookies.
But in many ways, my routine remains virtually unchanged. I work in my apartment. But now my apartment is bright, and much nicer than the dank, dark cave I left behind in Seattle (and over $200 less a month). I go to the 7-11 for my daily diet coke addiction, and am still surprised every time I enter the store to be greeted by a pair of grinning, white yokels rather than the familiar Pakistanis that I'm accustomed to. After work I walk across the street to the gym for my workout. The gym is also much nicer than the one I left behind in Seattle, but instead of being full of cruising gays, scoping one another out, it is comprised entirely of straight people, which totally messes with my mind. I didn't even think they went to gyms.
Vancouver is the compromise I made to be closer to Carlos, while still keeping my job (which required that I stay in the state of Washington.) And while I'm technically closer to him than I'd be were I to have remained in Seattle, the place on the outskirts of Vancouver that I moved to is still an hour and a half or even a two hour bus ride away from his place on the outskirts of Portland. So we still only really see each other on our days off, until such time as I get a new job and we shack up somewhere in Portland. And while I didn't always take advantage of the proximity of my friends and utilize all of the things that Seattle has to offer, I liked the fact that I had options. Options which are now replaced by isolation here in hicksville.
But even the isolation is okay. The move has been a real chance to renew. To let go of the past, and prepare for a future that, for the first time in many years, I'm actually largely optimistic about. Knowing that Vancouver is, at best, a temporary stop on the way to a better place helps a lot. Though I may have done much to nurture my would be sophistication over the years, I can't change the fact that I was born and raised in Iola, TX. In short, sometimes a Dairy Queen hunger buster really hits the spot.
Hi loyal followers. As you can see not much has been posted on this blog for some time. I've been focusing on other projects, and now I'd like to unveil a brand New Blog!
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