The rain poured down hard when we woke up in Portland. I was feeling somewhat funky. It was the first time, but not the last, that we would deal with rain, and I was glad that I brought my Gor-Tex rain slicker that my parents bought me when I was 14 and still fit cause it was huge. I was starting to feel kind of funky, so I took some wellness formula. I swallowed the three huge horse pills on an empty stomach. Bad idea. I immediately felt weird. As everybody was packing and loading the car I paced around the room and then ran to Kyle and Jesse’s porch and barfed three nice big chunk-loads. I felt my head and it was getting warm. I was officially sick.
The weather was shitty but there were still a lot of things we wanted to do in Portland. We wanted to go eat, go to a record store and I wanted to check out Laughing Horse Books, a collectively run radical bookstore. Kyle and Jesse, who we were staying with and Portland, were to be our tour guides for the day. The first stop was Vita Café, where we ate lunch and I got what was probably the best (and only) vegan fried steak in my entire life. I was starting to feel sicker but still had enough energy to keep going, mainly because I wanted to keep morale high by staying energetic. Portland had dampened the spirits of the van and I felt responsible to keep everybody in good spirits.
The next stop in our tour of Portland was the Laughing Horse, a collectively owned radical bookstore. We followed Kyle and Jesse through the streets of Portland. The weather was gloomy but the city looked really nice. The Laughing Horse was a really cool store with a good selection of books from Anarchy, Politics, Gender studies, fiction, philosophy and what have you. Lots of zines too. I talked to the clerk, who had been volunteering there for fourteen years. She was real nice. The next stop was Green Noise, a pretty badass record store, which was owned and operated by the guy who runs Dirtnap Records. After that everybody kind of wanted to hit the road, I was feeling double crappy and really just wanted to crawl up in the van and pass out. We said goodbye to Kyle and Jesse and thanked them for being such great tour guides, and to Monet, Lauren and Madison until we met them again in Denton.
I was asleep during most of the ride to Eugene, passed out in the very back seat of the van under a pile of clothes. By this time I felt really, really bad. I was looking forward to Eugene and spending time there, but it wasn’t looking like I was going to be able to.
A little background on our show in Eugene: before we left for tour I emailed Karam, a former Denton resident that had recently moved to Eugene. All I asked for was a place to stay, since we were having poor luck finding a show in Eugene. Karam offers us a show in Eugene at this place called the Lorax Manor. I do a little research to discover it’s a Co-Op house. So I thought, “Cool, house show in Eugene. Awesome.”
Back to Eugene: We arrive at the Lorax Manor. I stay in the van because I feel like doo doo and just want to sleep. Meanwhile the rest of the van was getting a tour of the house. I later walked inside. It was a huge place, the building used to be a fraternity or sorority house. The inside had all your staples of a coop house: bikes, huge kitchen with bulk foods and huge fridge, the aroma of weed, arbitrary paintings of random crap (yin yangs for example).
I found a random room and crashed for what felt like a couple of hours. When I woke up I called Bradley and asked him when the show was. I had a fever and was sicker than I had ever remembered being but I swear I would have played. “Um.. Yeah I don’t know if the show is going to happen…” said Bradley. Apparently Karam had “booked” the show by telling somebody who lived at the house that we were playing, I’m not sure who, but the rest of the house seemed really out of the loop. But instead of being overly apologetic, Karam was ridiculously nonchalant and couldn’t give two shits if we played or not. To add insult to injury the tenants of Lorax Manor were complete dicks. Most anarchist or “alternative housing” places like say… Boing! House for example, are so inviting and nice but these kids were definitely giving us all the cold shoulder. One resident, Cohen, who was a flautist, shared with us his amazing life. He was a registered Republican and former millionaire and currently employed on Wallstreet. He made $75 an hour in front of Wal-Mart playing the flute. He once was fought over by two strippers whom he seduced by playing flute over a Sublime song.
I ended up falling asleep in a freshly painted room, unbeknownst to me. Jesse and Daniel awaked me about four hours later. “Wake up man, this room is gonna fuck you up,” said Jesse. I was really ready to go to sleep, and I appreciated being taken out of the paint room, but I wanted to get right back to sleep. I moved into the room where everybody else was sleeping, but felt like a burden because they wanted to watch a movie. I felt like crap and was really tired but I didn’t want to ask the other dudes to be quiet so I just tried to go to sleep.
3 comments:
i hope you're feeling all kinds of better.
Hope you're feeling better
that chicken fried steak was the total shit.
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