9:29 a.m. - January 08, 2005
One writes to fill up the silent spaces for company
In Seattle. Bathsheba's wedding is later today. Yesterday I drove down to Portland to hang out with Steve and went to Powell's. The rental car is a Pontiac Grand Am with a spoiler and lots of interior lights and buttons on the dash, the center console, and along the armrests. The license plate reads GoYahoo and I feel silly driving this vehicle but I accept free upgrades when offered. The wedding is at 6 p.m. tonight at University Christian. Just looked at the clothes I brought: Nothing is right. Weather is cold with sleet, snow on the hilltops and people - Steve, grandma, two strangers in Portland - ask where is your jacket? in accusatory tones. But it is the cold I enjoy most - people take off their shirts in hot weather, I don't wear a jacket in cold for the same pleasure of opening my body to the elements. Have had a headache for three days now, not continuous but long enough. Note to self: No more 6 a.m. flights out of San Francisco. While at Powell's formed the distinct impression that the only males who read literature nowadays must be gay. What I assume to be gay couples abounded in the Blue Room and I was jealous, wished I too had someone whispering-not-quietly-enough advice on this book or that, someone who would pick up a novel and say You've got to read this! I also wish/ed I had whatever I lack in the Social Skills Department: Subheading Confidence interpersonal arena so I could have struck up a conversation with the (beautiful) man lingering in the poetry section. Three times we both went for the same book only to apologize and laugh. I felt intrusive on his space (why did I assume it was his space?) and moved on after checking to see whether my little book was there. It wasn't. Meeting Steve was the easiest rendezvous-with-a-in-vivo-stranger-whom-I-know-via-the-telephone-and-internet: I walked up to the porch of his Victorian and knocked, simple as that. There was no debate or inner quaking. He gave me the tour of the house and while it lacks finishing details (moldings) on the second and third floors it's rather beautiful in a wood-floor, thick stucco-wall way long past its prime. In the kitchen saw his refrigerator is one of those cold-cases one sees in 7-11 or at the grocery store, with the double doors, and next to it a one-door freezer. Fit perfectly and it looks clean and I really like that idea. Went out for lunch and talked some about Christianity and grad school; he (too?) is a gay Christian in the capital-C sort of way I met initially on the discussion board. Nice enough guy. I want to stay in this bed all day and read, watch the rainish snow come down outside, but my teeth are furry and I must brush.
