My sister owned a copy of Hanson’s first album, “Middle of Nowhere,” that I loved to steal, along with her cream-colored boom box, and play on repeat while I circled the garage in rollerblades and sang along to words I didn’t really understand.
I don’t do anything for the man who bangs on the church door and tells me about his probation and court date in Bremerton an hour and a half away and the company that let him go after thirty years to save themselves a retirement plan and the chronic pain in his shoulder and the botched knee surgery and how he just needs eight dollars and ten cents for the ferry or else they’ll throw him back in jail over a lousy eight dollars and ten cents and could I please, please, I know you’re good guy, please just give me eight dollars and ten cents for the ferry?
In the tops of the leafless bushes that stood shoulder height along the path, a sea of spider webs swayed in the soft wind—hundreds and hundreds of webs, perfectly spun and glistening with dew in the morning light.
Ten-foot-tall green letters shout 21+ MARIJUANA to every northbound vehicle on Martin Luther King Jr Way. The arrow that runs beneath the letters points across the street to a stubby building marked by a green cross. 21+ Recreational Marijuana! hangs in the front window.
This year I’ll sleep in a guest room, maybe on an air mattress. It will be a normal night of sleep. I won’t be waiting for the rumble of the Polar Express, watching for its headlight to flood the walls of my room in a gold glow.
D.A.R.E. to explore the unexplored. Here be monsters and suddenly we’re the first ones, wading through myth and legend and finding freedom, happiness, and warmth. We don’t see dragons or lose our grades. We don’t get pregnant. We aren’t shoving suppositories up our asses à la Trainspotting or whoring à la Requiem for a Dream. It’s just nice. Warm and cozy and soft. One of us uses the word “underwhelming.”
It’s not a pretty place. The hazy opium dens and the tobacco-smoke saloons disappeared from dusty California mining towns long ago, and they’ve since set up shop here. You want opium? You got it. How about Craigslist prostitutes? pirated textbooks? fake I.D.s or stolen credit cards?
That’s why I began playing again in Korea; I was looking for friends and I knew that Ultimate people, by and large, are people with whom I like to spend time.
“Now,” he says. “I don’t wanna be out there with a root canal. So if we don’t see any whales, and you’re gonna pout about it, I prefer you get off now.”
Strange how things happen. You can put all your effort into living well only to find that you were living just fine the whole time.
