Perfect Blue Buildings (part 2 of a larger work)

“You’ve got the attitude of everything I ever wanted; I’ve got an attitude of need”

~Counting Crows

Portland to San Francisco should not be a long road trip, but it was when we took it. It's a long trip when you take Highway 101. The road twists and winds along the Oregon Coast, sometimes going through the center of towns and slowing down to 25MPH. We stopped all in all sorts of little towns along the Oregon Coast. We went to the Salvation Army to look for wool sweaters and glass candle holders. In one town we stood on a bridge overlooking a fishery and watched a man gut fish.

I was shocked by how well the two of us got along. I had met Susana right before I graduated from college. I moved to Chicago and she remained in our Central Illinois college town, with one more year to go. After she graduated she moved to Portland. We had really not spent a lot of time together. I am a loner by nature. I was not used to spending a lot of time with one person, especially another woman. Susana was not like other girls either. She also had a strong loner streak and we knew when to sing and laugh and tell stories, and when to have silence. The amazing thing is that our silence was always a comfortable silence. As our journey progressed, we learned that we knew when to split up and spend a few hours by ourselves. Then we would always meet for dinner and share our adventures with each other.

Somewhere in Oregon one of us made a joke about picking up hitchhikers. The joke continued by listing the qualities a hitchhiker would need to have to earn a ride in our rental car.             She was a white Malibu that we had christened Odessa. Lady hitchhikers were an automatic yes. Attractive males in their twenties who did not look like they had just gotten out of prison were a maybe. If the attractive twenty something had the sort of physique that would allow a woman to kick his ass he was closer to the yes side. No older men, no men that looked dirty or like rednecks, no tall or muscular men. In the midst of this conversation we saw one that fit our qualifications. He was young, small. We made the decision in what seem like a fraction of a second. “Should we?” “I don’t know.” “Just do it.” ‘Okay, I’m going to.” I was the one driving at the time. I pulled over about 50 feet down the road from where he was. As he walked up to the car we were impressed with ourselves and felt giddy about what we had done. We really had acted as one person. Neither of us would have picked up a hitchhiker alone, and neither of us had another friend who would have been an accomplice in this act. I felt really close to her then, as if she were the sister I had never had. Susana opened the door and he climbed into the back, shocked that two women had picked him up. His name was Heath and he was from Montana. We tried to make conversation with him and offered him fruit, chocolate bars, and trail mix. I think he knew we were amused by him. Twenty minutes later he asked us to let him out; We obviously made him uncomfortable. We shared a special power when we were together.

I enjoyed Susana’s ability to bring out this positive quality in myself – this sense of adventure. Most people in my life have tried to suffocate this part of my personality. After college Susana had moved to a new city alone; I just moved back to the city I grew up in. Most people in my life seem to exacerbate my negative qualities and she had done the opposite.

As we headed toward the California border, hitchhiker free, we drove faster. The sky was gray and there were lush redwood forests on both sides. At the border we were asked by a guard if we had any exotic fruit in the car, like mangos or papaya. We secretly wished we had brought more exotic fruit, instead of strawberries and grapes. We spent the night in a little inn just past the border that I had read about it while researching our road trip over many cups of coffee back in Chicago. From the tacky sign on the road one would expect it to be like any divey motel you might find along the interstate, but it was actually a little inn owned by a German family that was surrounded by forest. Some elk, not restrained by any sort of fence, stood in a clearing near the entrance. There was a road that went past the inn, through the forest, and to the beachfront. We closed the windows and followed it. We were listening to a CD I had impulsively bought at a show I’d gone to the last week. Our forest was filled with the sounds of pedal steel and a women’s low, eerie voice. We kept silent and listened to the music as we looked at the towering trees, the light and the shadows, and the overwhelming green. The air smelled fresh. We decided we would come back here by foot in the morning.

Our room had creepy old lace curtains, and patchwork bed spreads. Animal sounds we were not familiar with echoed through the forest and in to our room. The next morning I got up to go hiking, but Susana did not. I knew she wouldn’t. She was never much of a nature girl.  I am not either, but I thought I’d take advantage of the opportunity while I had it. I walked past the elk and found a trail. The elk were so close to me that I was frightened. Like I said, I have never been one for communing with nature. Aside from my college years I had always lived in large city, or a suburb where one could never get deep enough into the forest preserve to escape the sounds mini vans and SUVs. I made an effort to appreciate the fresh air and look at the trees and the moss, but my mind kept wondering. I thought about my job, the shallow acquaintances I had back in Chicago, my family, all the things I wanted to change about myself.

I put together all these little details….all these scraps of light and sound like some self righteous beat writer who thinks his audience will be impressed by his accounts of adventure and personal tragedy. I feel guilty for thinking this way – for acting like a preadolescent who leaves her diary out for everyone to read – for acting like I am on a reality TV show. But this is the way I have learned to sort out facts – piece by piece….eliminating some details and exacerbating others to form some sort of cohesive story. I want this to be a cohesive story. Right now it is a mess. It is bad poetry.

Some of my favorite things about San Francisco: the chandelier in our dingy room at the hostel, chocolate coved macaroons at the bakeries in North Beach, the bars in China Town, and the pink gingerbread houses. One day we went to the other side of the bay and went to Berkley where we looked at all the sidewalk jewelry stands and went to the library at the university. We talked about our own second rate university. She went there because they paid her for being Hispanic. I had not gotten into the more prestigious school I had applied to and ended up going there because it was my back up. I always thought I would transfer, but I knew I would just be unhappy somewhere else. I had had plenty of good times there, but I had been in this fog of depression that I had still not completely gotten out of. Without a map we found the intersection of Virginia and LaLoma mentioned in a Counting Crows song. We both had a poor sense of direction, but we were confident that Berkley would somehow guide us there. I had read that Adam Duritz had to move out of that house because people would come and camp out on the lawn. He had no idea he would become famous when he put his address in a song. Sometimes the crazy consequences of ones actions seem unfathomable at the time we commit the act. My crazy consequences seem more like a strange karma created by wishful thinking. I think Adam's were too.Susana took a photo of me standing under the street signs.

The ride back to Portland was rough. We planned on taking the interstate but could not find it, so we got stuck on 101. Forest fires had closed off the road that connected the two in California, so we had to take 101 past the Oregon border. It was a slow drive, but we had to do it. Susana had work and I had a plane to catch. When we got back we were exhausted and went straight to bed. Susana went to work on 3 hours and of sleep and I flew back to Chicago that afternoon. This trip had really been the start of our relationship. One of my intentions had been to check out Portland and San Francisco because I wanted to leave Chicago for good, but when I returned home my life improved drastically over the next few months. I somehow ended up hosting an open mic at bar where I would not pay for a single drink for the next two years. I started to gain a lot more confidence in myself as a songwriter and started performing regularly. Suddenly making new friends was not as horribly difficult as it had been when I was younger. I even found myself with a boyfriend again. It was like some curse had been lifted off of me while I was away.

Humboldt Park

I vividly remember getting off the 50 bus in Humboldt Park this one December day. I usually took that bus dowtown and then transferred to the train, but that day I decided to take it all the way to California Ave. and then catch another bus. The bus ran through the Ukrainian Village, where the man I was in love with at the time lived. The neighborhood had beautiful old architecture and lots of little Ma and Pa stores with Ukrainian signs. There were even a few ornate churches with bulbous towers that made me feel like I really was in some Eastern European city. After the bus crosses Western Avenue it is like we are in a different part of the world. The buildings are run down and there is trash in the streets. The signs are in Spanish and English instead of Ukrainian and English. There are Taquerias and Puerto Rican Grocery stores. This is my neighborhood and these are the shadiest corridors of my neighborhood. I usually take the train to avoid having to transfer buses here. I could just walk the seven blocks home, but that would mean having to pass the park. The worse that will probably happen is a few cat calls or being hit up for change by a crack head, but I’m not in the mood. I wait a long time for my bus. It is only 6:30, but it is mid December, so it is already as dark as it will be. I am overcome with sadness as I wait. I will miss this city when I leave. I will be leaving soon. I will miss him. If only he would say he will miss me too. Then I might stay. I am secretly glad he can not deal with his emotions though, because I need to leave. It is freezing. I will be going somewhere less cold in the winter and less hot in the summer. This is what I need. Less freezing and boiling. My bus comes. There are so many women with children and dirty old men on this route. Coming home from work, coming home from day care, coming home. Later that night I will go over to his apartment, down the street from the church where the plaster angles wear coats of gold leaf and the kids wear blue plaid uniforms. We will pretend that we are not in love. I will pretend that I am not leaving him, and he will pretend that he does not care that he is being left. Somehow we will both regard this sorrow as being better than being alone.