Throwing Up in Portland

Touching down in Portland was the saddest thing ever, because only then did I realize how much I'd missed it. San Francisco had been cold and overcast when the plane took off, and it was sunny and blue-skied when it landed in Portland; an odd configuration for the weather to have assumed. If you have a window seat, you can tell when the plane gets to Northern Oregon, because Southern Oregon and Northern California both look like dry, dead crap whereas Northern Oregon is a checkered patchwork of green trees, plowed fields, and clean, modern subdivisions. It's nice.

My friend Cleve picked me up on the big crescent-shaped passenger loading area outside the airport. The whole outside area is covered with a big glass ceiling to keep the rain off on days when the weather is worse. We drove down the long road away from the airport, past the commercial hangars for airlines like United and Southwest, past the parcel delivery hangars for FedEx and UPS, past the no-name charter airline hangars, and finally past the "Oregon Welcomes You" sign and onto 82nd Avenue.

We dropped my bags off at his place, then took the light rail downtown and went to Kell's, an Irish Pub (it's always a pub with them) on 2nd Avenue and got some food and Shandies. I wound up having a Guinness after that. Actually, it was some extra stout variety of Guinness. I figured that if it was extra stout it must be extra manly as well. It tasted even worse than regular Guinness.

Cleve had a pretty bad cough and opted to stop drinking after his Shandy. I asked him what he was doing that night. No plans, he said, but depending on his cough, he may keep it that way.

"Well I'm supposed to check out Satyricon with a friend tonight," I told him. "There's some sort of Ramones tribute going on, in honor of Joey shoving off and all. Reload's supposed to be playing. You're welcome to come."

He wasn't familiar with Reload and I don't think he's much of a Ramones fan, but he said he'd let me know. We paid our bill, left and walked over to Saturday Market. In the three or so years that I've been going to Saturday Market, it has never changed. It's always the same booths. Same Indian food stand. Same booth selling fashionable glasses made out of spoons. Same hippies sitting in a circle and beating their drums out of time with each other. Walking by the drum circle, one shirtless red-eyed man approached me and asked "You lookin' for bud, man?"

"What?" I said.

"Bud, man."

"What?"

"Bud, man. Weed."

"What?" I asked again, curious as to how long we could keep this up.

"Weed, man!"

"What about it?" I said, realizing that we could probably actually keep this up all day.

"Do you want any?"

"Do I want any weed?"

"Yeah, man."

"Oh. No."

And we moved on.

That evening Cleve gave me a lift to the department store where Brad, the friend with whom I was staying, was just getting off work. Cleve opted out of the evening's planned events, but said to give him a call again before I left town. I said I would.

I hung around the store while Brad closed up shop. Shortly before he was finished, his girlfriend arrived and asked what the evening's plans were.

"Well," he said, "Sean and I were gonna go out drinking."

Brad's girlfriend is not yet 21.

I didn't stick around to hear the rest of the conversation. I wandered back over to the Game Boy Advanced display and spent the next few minutes playing hand-held Super Mario Brothers 2 until Brad's girlfriend left without saying goodbye to either of us. I felt bad, but learned long ago that getting involved in a fight between a couple is the kind of thing that results in you drawing back your hand with at least one of your digits chewed off. The smart thing to do is to stand around awkwardly.

So we hit the bars. He asked where I wanted to go, and I said Satyricon. The problem was that neither of us knew exactly where it was. I said I thought it was somewhere in the vicinity of Northwest 21st Avenue, a trendy bar-lined street in Northwest Portland, so that's where we headed.

I was never of legal drinking age when I lived in Portland, so I'd never gotten to experience Northwest 21st. It turned out to be somewhat of a disappointment. I came up with the idea that we'd start at the far end, and work our way down the street getting one drink at each place until we found the Satyricon. We stopped at the first bar. Brad ordered a Jack and Coke. I ordered a Wild Turkey and Coke. A double.

If I have a game, it's Pai Gow Poker, and if I have a drink, it's Wild Turkey and Coke. It's also my father's drink. It's not a family thing. I don't know what to say other than the man has taste.

Actually, if I have a game, it's probably Megaman. An exotic-sounding casino game sounds manlier though. My drink is actually probably Kool Aid, too.

We reached the end of 21st Avenue without having ever found the Satyricon. I dial 411 on my cell phone for Nextel directory service -- a service I was not about to use for the last time that night -- and got the address. It was on 6th Avenue. We were only ... uh ... twenty-one minus six avenues off.

The Satyricon is a very romantic place. It's where Kurt Cobain first met Courtney Love in the early days of Nirvana, when they were unpopular enough to be playing a place like that. It was exactly what I expected when we got there. Small bar area, smaller stage area, guys with leather jackets and girls wearing those belts with either two rows of holes all the way around, or shiny metal studs. Reload was already on stage.

We ordered some more drinks, possibly our fifth or sixth. I'm not quite sure because, trying to total up the amount of drinks comsumed the next morning, neither Brad nor I were able to remember what was consumed past the 10th or so. I got my drink, Brad got his (Jack and Coke), and then as a last-minute thought he instructed the bartender "And two shots of Jaeger."

He'd been insisting that I try a shot of Jaeger all evening. I'd never had it, but all the places we'd been to so far were unacceptable because they only had Jaeger in bottles. "You have to get it out of the little machine," Brad explained. "It's better that way."

So we downed the shots, picked up our other drinks and moved into the stage area to watch the show. "Is it OK to smoke in here?" Brad asked me.

"Yeah," I said. "Go for it."

"I don't see any ashtrays."

Having been to many places of this sort in California -- despite California's anti-smoking law -- I was aware of the proper location for disposing of cigarette butts in places like this.

"Use the floor," I said.

Reload put on a damn fine show. He was playing only Ramones songs, and putting his own personal style on them, playing guitar along with sequenced drums, using a vocoder in "53rd & 3rd," etc. After he was done, I complimented him on his performance, and he complimented me on my Devo shirt.

Next up were the Romanes, a local Portland Ramones tribute band. While I'm sure they were saddened by Joey's death, I'd wager that this was the kind of opportunity they'd been waiting for for a long time. How often does a Ramones cover band get to headline a performance? Probably not often.

They were good. As good as you need to be to play Ramones covers, anyway, and the crowd was energetic. I was too, and in retrospect that was probably bad for the amount of alcohol I'd had by that point.

After the show, I suggested we head over to the Roxy and get some food. I knew that neither of us were in any shape for driving, and some food might do us some good. "OK," he said. "But one more shot of Jaeger."

"I don't think I want another shot," I slurred. "I think that'd be a bad idea."

"Come on," he said, and ordered two more shots.

I'd like to think that that last shot was the straw that gagged the camel, but it probably wasn't. The events which were to follow had probably already been set in place at least three drinks prior. We clinked our glasses, Brad took down his shot and I took a tiny sip off the top of mine, then set it back on the bar. "Let's go," I said.

We left the Satyricon and walked down to the Roxy, a local all-night diner with good punk songs on the jukebox, leopard skin bar stools, and a giant plastic Jesus with neon halo hanging at one end of the room. There was a waiting list, so I got our names on it and went out to sit on the sidewalk with Brad. When they called my name a few minutes later, things were spinning.

We managed to get inside and seated at a booth, and I knew then that if I ordered and consumed food, bad bad things would happen. "Let's just go," I said. "I can't eat." Brad mumbled something unintelligible. "Let's go," I said again, and got up.

"You guys leaving?" the waiter said.

"Yeah," I said, to which he replied OK. Thinking back, I'm sure it was clear we were both three sheets to the wind, and he was probably glad to be rid of us. He certainly didn't mind.

We got back outside and sat down on the curb, where I dialed 411 on the cell phone and had them connect me to a cab service. After calling the cab, I closed my eyes and the next thing I knew Brad was tugging at my shirt, pulling me up and towards a waiting taxi.

I did not make it long in the moving vehicle.

"...gonna be sick..." I said out loud. The cab made no sign of stopping or even slowing down.

"I'm gonna be sick," I said louder. Still nothing. I remember thinking that maybe the cabbie didn't think I was serious, so I said it again, louder and with a warning tone in my voice.

"OK, OK," he said in an Indian accent. "Let me pull over."

He pulled the cab over. I'm not sure where, but I imagine we must have been somewhere around Southwest 9th and Ankeny, to it's a safe bet there was already vomit on the sidewalk before I opened the door, leaned out, and without getting out of the cab, threw up on the ground. One, two, three heaves and I felt much better.

"Thank you," I said, and closed the door. The cabbie took off.

It only took a few minutes before I felt better. Certainly not sober, but coherent. I guess it's true what they say about always feeling better after throwing up. I closed my eyes and relaxed as the cab got on the freeway and headed south.

We only made it a few minutes before Brad threw up, all over the floor of the cab and the front of his shirt.

"Hey!" I heard the cabbie saying. "Hey! You can't do that!"

My first thoughts were of The Bell Jar, and how easily the main character and her friend got out of it when they threw up in the taxi. We weren't so lucky.

"You guys need to get your shit together!" the cabbie yelled at us. "Hey! You guys need to get your shit together!"

He pulled off the freeway and stopped at the first convenient place, which was in front of a pancake house in Southeast Portland. I tried to give the cabbie five dollars, which was approximately what we'd racked up on the meter, but he wouldn't take it; he just wanted us to get the hell out of his cab.

"Get your shit together," he said one final time, then drove away.

It was three in the morning, and the pancake house was hoppin'. People were standing around just outside it, not far from us, waiting for tables. I dialed up 411 again and asked for a taxi service. Giving them directions to where we were, I gave them the name of the nearest cross-street.

"No," the dispatcher on the phone said. "We need the exact address. Are you in front of the pancake house?"

Yow. I was impressed. I said that we were, and she said there'd be a cab there in a few minutes. I hung up the phone, and then heard the sound of something unzipping.

I looked and saw, to my horror, Brad, standing there, on the curb, bare-chested (his vomit-soaked shirt on the ground beside him) and unzipping his pants. Oh man. Out it came, as he started pissing right into the street, facing traffic, facing the pancake house, facing the cars in the lot, facing the people outside.

I looked the other way, and I didn't look back again until I heard his voice talking to someone on his phone. "Hello?" he said. "Hello can you come pick us up?"

He was calling a co-worker, who agreed to come pick him up. Immediately after getting off the phone with that co-worker, he called up another and asked them the same thing. He repeated the process with, as far as I know, all of his co-workers, with me telling him the whole time "No, no, it's OK, a taxi is on its way."

"I just want to go home..." he mumbled over and over.

I considered suggesting that he throw up again. It sure seemed to help me. But even after throwing up, Brad seemed no better. I didn't suggest it, though, out of fear that he might throw up on his pants and they'd end up on the sidewalk next to his shirt. I reached up to scratch my face and my hand came back red. My first thought was that my nose was bleeding, a common occurrence for me, but it didn't feel like my nose was bleeding. Then it hit me: that ain't no blood you got in your nose. I went in the pancake house and washed my face.

The taxi finally came. We got in, and I told the cabbie that we were going to Sherwood, and Brad fell asleep. I knew I'd have to wake him up sooner or later, as I didn't know where in Sherwood his new place was. When we got close and the cabbie asked for more specific directions, I woke up Brad who, after failing to give coherent instructions, dialed up his home number to get his girlfriend on the line and handed the phone to me.

She was not happy.

She gave me directions which I relayed to the taxi driver, almost reluctantly. When we got to his place, she was up and waiting.

Her first question: "What happened to your shirt?"

"I threw it away," Brad mumbled. "It had puke on it..."

I told him the next morning that that was perhaps not the best answer for the situation. Sometimes honesty is not the best policy. Especially when you're already in so much trouble it doesn't matter anyway.

She grilled him all the way to the bedroom, where he promptly collapsed on the bed and fell into a deep dark sleep, leaving me alone in the living room. She came back out and took a seat in front of the coffee table. Intending to sit at the table across from her, I tried to sit down but found it difficult due to my legs sort of collapse-folding beneath me.

"You're drunk too!" she exclaimed.

I must have sounded sober on the phone, because this apparently hit her as a surprise. If my speech could cover for me, my inability to sit down like a normal human being couldn't. I decided to take all the blame.

"I hope I didn't get him into trouble," I said. "I really feel bad."

Possibly familiar with the sacred male rule of putting all the blame on him for whom it matters least, she wasn't having any of it.

"He got himself in trouble," she said. I continued apologizing, but it was no use.

"The guest room's over here," she said, apparently not intending to make good on the threat she'd made to Brad just before he passed out in which she said she'd take the guest room and make him sleep with me. I knew that I was in the clear for not throwing up again, but I wasn't sure about Brad, so I was glad I'd get the guest room to myself.

I fell asleep immediately, and very strangely awoke at 8 a.m. refreshed and feeling great. No headache, no chattering teeth, no paint-thinner taste in my mouth, nothing. I still don't understand it. I feel like crap when I get less than 9 hours of sleep perfectly sober, and here I was feeling great after three hours of sleep going to bed drunk. Perhaps it was the miracle-vomit.

Well, I did have stuff in my nose. Terrible, terrible, dried up stuff.

I rode to work with Brad in his girlfriend's car, and later that day got a ride into Portland to retrieve his. It was another beautiful day in Portland. Different than the previous day, but beautiful. It was cloudy and overcast, which is the kind of weather that only works if there's a sufficient amount of green trees on the horizon, giving everything a nice green-and-white look. It made me feel like I was on a giant stick of chewing gum.

The next night we went to a restaurant and drank ice water. And the night after that, actually. Wednesday I flew back to San Francisco, and looking out the window (I always get window seats for some reason) I had the strange thought that only from tens of thousands of feet in the air, watching the land below you change from green to brown, can you really believe that the world is a giant sphere, and that maybe there wasn't much difference between Portland and San Francisco after all. But really I was probably somehow still drunk, because now I think that sounds pretty stupid.