Spring, 2009

This is a picture of my dad, skiing.

I’m getting some new hair. I gotta change my identity; protect myself from the evil that crawls the water-fountain lined streets of downtown Portland. I’m like the queen of stupid, the go-to-girl-to-heckle, the chick with the big brown hair. Round’n’round Chinatown, they know me, aint never goin back- without a new do.

It was a good day when it happened. The sky was pale with clouds, all ribbed like scrunched pieces of binder paper trying to unfold. We were all on our third slice of tender pizza and just chucking runts at people in front of the Roseland. It seemed like a cool idea to suck off all the sugary aspirin coating and then fake-punch each other- you know, to make it look like we just got 6 molars fucking blown out of our mouth, all from just one of Haley’s monstrous punches. We were living like pigs, like dogs, living in the world, eating pizza and runts, and shoulder tapping people who looked cool enough. Crumpled down into a gutter, we leaned back and tried to digest the sticky ball of shit that had grown into a horrible mess in our stomachs. Things started to get weird. Haley and I closed our eyes, humming Ave Maria, breathing slowly and harnessing our voices. We laughed like mad men after, all warm and cozy at six pm on a Saturday. We turn around and there’s this guy, what’s his name? “Joshie, his name’s Joshie. Oh dat? Dats Joshie!” All right.

“Hay, you girls look like you be needin something”

“What, you need a hotel room of something, I can get that”

“Oh, you girls need some booze, eh, shit I can get you that right o’er here.”

“Ya, I saw that Asian’ lookin chick eyen’ me, she’s all like, scopin people out an stuff, looking at me.”

“You from Madison, Shit I’m from Milwaukee,”

“Ya, I like it over there, Wisconsin’s where shits at”

“Yeah grew up there, “

“Well, I’m here now, ya, Now I write screen plays”

“You know, movies and stuff, screen plays, like that”

“So four forties then, an what I get in return man, I aint doin this for free”

“Naw I get something”

“Three dollars isn’t good, girl, weak”

“What’s your deal now huh”

“Alright she’s got some type of funk n shit”

“This girl means business, she knows what she wants”

“That shit wack, ya’ll be talking too much”

“Theres like a puddle over there, and she’s all like noooo, don’t talk to me, and the Asian lookin chick is the one who was checking me out. We gonna do this o what”

“Hey y aim AbulaDouchey, want summa this”

“Naw I don’t do that stuff, wife wouldn’t like it, got some kids, to think bout”

“Oh, him? He Joshie!”

“Dats Lil Prince Billy, he’s got the money”

“Here take this, ya know”

“Why not, what you think this be a good idea, Ill do it better, free”

“Hay, Lil Prince Billy!”

“Faith in humanity, you say you got faith in humanity?”

“She says she got faith in humanity”

“Joshie gun come back, faith in humanity!”

“Didn’t have it, all out, c’mon lets go oer here”

“Lets go oer here, now”

“Luts go now here”

“Jus right there, now”

“No, I ain’t givin nothing back”

“no”

“No.”

“No!”

“NO!”

“Hay! And she’d got all this faith in humanity! Faith in humanity! NO! Faith in humanity! Faith in humanity! NO! Faith in Humanity!

“No, not getting anything back, gave it to me, see.”

“Wahtchu do is you go now and chu call 9-1-1, see that’s what chu do.”

“FAITH IN HUMANITY!”

And then we ran. We just ran. For about seven blocks, until the pizza and runts almost escaped. I trusted Joshie, some fucking creep in a Rastafarian yamika and scuffed Airwalks with my fifteen bucks.  And Abuladouchey, the one with the small outline of a tear drop tattoo nestled in the right cornea. Like Lil Wayne, Birdman, that one guy in Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, he’s been in the clinker. And Little Prince Billy, the bald one in a faded Rip Curl long sleeve t-shirt, with wrinkled palms cupping six one dollar bills and a baby afro hairbrush; disregarding his apparent lack of hair. And then everyone else, the homeless day walkers of Portland proper. Half dead, half blind, half fried, crusty people, trundling along in whirring motorized scooters, shitting in their pants, scraping their one ambulatory leg along the cement, dragging the ghost of another leg a couple feet behind. I hate these people. I hate my hair too, Harajuku; I need new hair.

I got heckled, left without my dignity, and money, and now scared and slapped with a streak of sour vulnerability. But I still had my good’ ol, goddamn, god forsaken FAITH IN HUMANITY. I should have flashed my t-shirt; it said “Leave Me Alone” in confrontational Helvetica font. I want to repeatedly spit out millions of sweet tiny runt teeth into Joshie’s poisonous yellow eyes; I also kind of want to kill him. I felt like a puddle of fear and shame, a puddle of curdled milk and chilled clam chowder. No more will I fork over a quarter for an independent homeless publication, “Street Sheet” or “Street Spirit.” I hate the Portland day walkers: Joshie, Abuladouchey, and Little Prince Billy. “Leave Me Alone.”

We did rediscover the spirit of resiliency within us and hobble over to Dekum manor, only to sit and sulk in the linoleum tiled kitchen while watching two pudgy, Mervyns-wearing, Reebok-lacing, squishy girls eat each others faces whilst gyrating to this shitty New Orleans gumbo band with a fucking saxophone. Life sucks. But then this guy with a big red beard who we met earlier in the day came to the party and bought us an eighteen-pack of PBR for free and that’s all folks. Happy Saturday in FartLand Oregon! The End!

 By Lauren Fischer