Napkin Scrawls

Every last Thursday in Portland, NE Alberta shuts down and the streets overflow with hopeful musicians, starving artists, and vendors peddling everything from feather and bone earrings to psychedelic mushroom chocolates. The bars are filled to capacity and the Portlanders spilling out onto the pavements can wait their turn for a table while enjoying firedancers or hulu hoop competitions in front of packed stores and coffee shops.

This previous last Thursday, PDX was blessed with an unusally perfect Spring night, and for all my good intentions of spending the evening editing and writing more, I felt something larger than myself beckoning me out. My friend Dave agreed to accompany me across the river after he got off work, and although we were pretty sure we had missed most of the action due to our late departure, we decided to chance it and check it out regardless.

We arrived to Alberta and were relieved to find the party was still in full swing. We walked the streets, not quite grounded, stopping here and there to listen to a lonely guitar or folk band, enjoying the warm breeze and variety of lifestyles on display just for us. Parched, we began the exasperating task of finding a bar with an empty chair or two. We were just about to head back to the car, thirsty and disappointed, when we heard what Dave swore was an accordion coming from the Alberta Street Public House. I was down, so we went in to investigate.

Dave, a composer and lyrical enthusiast, just about had a musical orgasm when he saw that yes, in fact there WAS an accordion - and even better- a Russian folk/ska band rocking out on stage. All I knew is that I wanted to groove and join the mass of sweaty hippie dancers already gyrating around the beer slick floor.

The room got hotter with every patron and before long we were sweating and dancing under the red lights along with the rest of the crowd, ordering round after round of Fat Tire just to stay sane in the heat. I was pretty convinced that meeting this band was what had called me out that night, until I saw the fiddle player for the main act take the stage.

"Oh god," I said to Dave, "THAT'S why we're here."

The Tequila Mockingbird Orchestra (G.T.S.) raged for close to 2 hours and ended by announcing their upcoming concert at the Someday Lounge that Saturday. Having eyed the fiddle player mercilessly from the beginning, I summoned my liquid courage, boiling by this point, and introduced myself...more accurately, accosted the poor guy and rambled about life, screaming with delight upon each new thing we had in common. His smile kept lighting up with what I believed, at the time, was attraction, while in hindsight I'm inclined to think was pure amusement. However, my sincere enthusiasm (read - unadulterated mindblowing drunken adoration) for his previous position as a "Manny" won his interest for a few more minutes, and lead him to ask what I did when I wasn't nanny-ing.

"I'm a WRITER" I yelled, laughing at myself, partly for professing to be a legitimate writer, partly because I realized, even in that moment, how crazy what I was about to do was.

"Oh really?" His smile literally made me weak in the knees.

"Want to read some?!!" Not pausing for an answer, I fished through my abyss of a shoulder suitcase for the napkin I'd been scrawling on some 30 minutes before.

The first one I shoved into his hand was some ridiculous lesbian sounding atrocity about this stunning girl dancing in front of me most of the night - which I could tell within seconds was NOT the napkin I had intended for him.

"Oh god, not THAT one, Sorry!" And I snatched it out of his hand, thrusting a second, more crumpled piece of paper into his hand.


Red lights, sexual only for the music that's about to bring us ecstasy.
Racing thoughts of sweat slick encounters with the man playing the strings like
I want him to play me.
Energy tangible
Desire audible
Heat unbearable
The beat flows through us easier than this poison
And we Smile.


"Wow. I like that one. I really like that one..."

And I went home smiling like an idiot, half a torn napkin, crumbled in a ball to be found at the bottom of my bag in the morning - the other half tucked neatly into his pocket with my cell number that he had requested.

Well, the weekend came and went and he didn't call - perhaps he lost the napkin, perhaps his half also ended up in a crumpled ball, unceremoniously discarded after witnessing me skip, yes, skip out of the bar. Either way, once the sheer humiliation over my actions wore off the next day, I was able to find joy that one by one my inhibitions as a writer are falling away...which I realize now was the real thing beckoning me out that evening, and most evenings now.

Cheers Friends.

Brother Dave and I

Alberta Street Public House