[Astoria, OR] I was in Astoria by myself as punishment for
silly goals, like GM in one year. July 1 was the expiration date and so I was
officially free of silly goals. I thought it’d be healthy for me to be
intentional – to believe – to try. In the course of 12 months, I went on dates
with 29 people, multiple dates with some. It wasn’t as terrible as I’d imagined
it might be – well, some were. I definitely had fodder for all my outings with
girl friends. It was interesting sometimes, ego-stroking sometimes,
not-ego-stroking sometimes. I mostly started to see it as a hamster wheel that people,
maybe especially people my age, just get stuck on. And I guess I didn’t believe
in GM enough to algorithm it, as much as I love algorithms. So now, less
swiping, more running.
And, Also, I’ve been jonesing to go to Astoria for a
long time. A mid-age rocker bartender told me, with a far-off gleam in her eye,
that she was thinking about moving to Astoria, because Portland’s not what is
used to be, and Astoria is what Portland used to be. According to the lore,
Portland used to be a hard-knock sailors’ town—it’s still proud to claim the
highest number of strip clubs per capita. This nostalgia doesn’t belong to me but
it all fascinated me. And then, this really entertaining article in the
Willamette Weekly painted Astoria as a great retreat for a “weekend bender” …
which would be really depressing for my purposes… but the article also spun
tales about sailors spinning tales in bars… late-night bars where goths and
strippers come together for karaoke… … So I didn’t encounter
sailors-with-tales, or goths sharing a mic with strippers… But it’s true that
Astoria is a blend of old-sea-romance and new-scene-counterculture, along with
a healthy dose of eccentricity and small-town charm (5000 people!, Music&Ducks
grew up in a lovely place). I also had it in my head that it was an ocean
town—not even. It’s a river town … but what a river the Columbia is.
Plus the
Columbia is so intermingled with the Pacific, you can smell the salt in the
air. The giant ships that camp out in the river are sort of astounding—I
thought they were there to satisfy me as a tourist but turns out we still use
ships to ship things. Oddly, while in Astoria, I ran across something about ‘wu
wei’: “Wu Wei (chinese, literally “non-doing”) is an important concept of
Taoism and means natural action, or in other words, action that does not
involve struggle or excessive effort. Wu wei is the cultivation of a mental
state in which our actions are quite effortlessly in alignment with the flow of
life.
This going with the flow, although it may be greatly productive, is characterized by great ease where we spontaneously act perfectly. This means that we do the right thing effortlessly and spontaneously, without trying.”
Reading about wu wei did not lead to me achieving wu wei. For people with
shelter, food, employment, health care, life is what you make of it… well, and
there’s biology, discrimination, what have you… but, I, with no real excuses,
was busy creating drama for myself, seeing ghosts of boyfriends-past walking around.
So I showed up at T. Paul’s, the second worst place I visited (Columbian Café &
Buoy were the best!), foggy and grumpy.
This was the only music in town happening
during my stay—stuff was closed either because early in the week or because
July 4th holiday. I wanted to work while I waited and immediately
upon arriving blew out a socket – like small explosion, lights in that corner OUT,
blew-out-a-socket. My stuff was in disarray, spilling across the walkway.
Everything on the menu looked weird. Me and the bartender/waitress took an
immediate dislike to each other, for obvious reasons on her part. My hotel was
too gross to consider as a retreat.
I was blue. Or I just wished I was running
instead. The ‘band,’ two guys in their 60s or 70s, charmed the
bartender/waitress in ways I was envying, and settled into a small spot in
front of a street-side window, right in the middle of all the diners. They were
very pleasant blues folk rock. Mellow and quiet but with a defined sound.
Chicago blues (I’m making this up), CSNY, Bill Wither’s “Ain’t No Sunshine,” something
Rodriquez sounding (he’s coming to Portland!!! … for $50…). But back to me and
my very serious problems, what next? Even if I knew my goal was silly, it was
nice, real nice. For one, how else would I be motivated to keep swiping? What else would convince me to leave the comfort of my couch only to be
bored, stiffed, groped? Not to mention, the time! the time! Time is everything
to me and The Goal made me set aside the time. I could have been running!!
It was also a hugely entertaining social experiment. Straight people almost uniformly took offense to it – an affront to a sacred institution. How dare I think I could find ‘true love,’ a real ‘marriage’ just
by setting my mind to it. Especially people close to me, although maybe their
concerns were more legitimate. The gay women I told were my biggest supporters,
taking their time to connect me to one straight person they knew, providing me
with the unique opportunity of being pigeonholed by the queer community ha. A
gay man I told was like eh, I’m married, doesn’t mean I didn’t bareback
somebody last week. I don’t mean to sound like I have a fair sample of these
different social groups’ impressions … but it surrre was a great conversation
starter. And, then, the sense of umph it added for all the people who have
brought me to where I was. Rockboy’s favorite pastime of pursuing me as I’m
walking out the door had a little bit more urgency. Flame found the plan
intriguing enough to be stirred from his personal fog and lobby some potential
pitfalls in the plan at me. Then he suggested I ought to just get a dog
instead. That’s when I wanted to slap Flame. Boyfriends so dated I don’t have a
music-blog-name for them came out of the woodworks and made a case—maybe it was
also my dad dying—either way, my grand social experiment is over. So I guess I’ll
go storm chasing J
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