blind visions.

i got the scoop on randy!!

it all started last week. i arrived home from work around 9:45pm. Kathy, the forty-something (not a senior, right?!) who lives across the street was smoking a cigarette. by the way, i think it's a requirement upon moving into central park trailer park that you be a smoker. my friend chris, upon hearing about my new living situation, took one look at me and said, "oh. i get why they let you move in. you just have to be slowly losing your mind." so maybe it's that, AND and you have to be a smoker. fuck, losing my mind makes me want to smoke so i suppose it makes sense.

anyway, kathy walks over and procedes to chit-chat with me. that's what people call it, right? chit-chat? shooting the breeze? yeah. so we start talking, and i decide i ought to light a cigarette too because this might be my big chance to get the goods on randy and the other 28 households in this 'hood. tom, kathy's next-door neighbor, joined us by lighting a cigar and stepping out of his tiny porch into the street. i started by casually asking, "so. how do you guys like living here?"

guess what?
it worked.

first off, i found out you don't want to fuck with the lady that lives in the far corner of the court. apparently, she has tried to have kathy evicted 3 times in the last 3 years for various benign reasons, one of them being a suspicious black stray cat who appeared to have formed a fondness for kathy's front yard. also, this corner lady (they couldn't remember her name) once asked Dot, the gal who lives right behind me, to trim her bushes because she couldn't see whether or not randy's car was home. whoa. looks like randy's got an admirer.

so there's that.

and then...there's tom. the cigar guy. he's in his early 60's, drives a cadillac, prefers cigars to cigarettes, and is an avid opera enthusiast. according to kathy, when she has her morning cigarette, she can hear tom singing opera in the shower. she says, "he's really good. like a professional. haven't done it much lately, have ya tom? how come?" he had no real reply to this question. the guy didn't have much to say about anything except for his new neighbors - a family with 2 CHILDREN!!! that's right. the verdict is in. at age 28, i am not the youngest in the court. who knew?! anyway, i guess tom's pretty irritated. i got this impression when he looked me dead in the eye and said, "it's a SENIOR-living trailer court". he didn't have an antagonistic tone, and the statement seemed to exclude any irritation he may feel about having me, a haggard, but young-ish person across the street. i guess the guys just isn't into children. at least he's got his opera. and smoking.

finally, after holding it in for at least twenty minutes, i asked, "so what's randy's story?".

apparently, i was wrong about randy being a wizard. bummer, since i thought it would've been pretty cool to learn how to cast spells on some of my co-workers, but oh well. more appropriately, randy is an old partying, harley-riding, black-eye giving biker. the dude even has metal posts in his legs from some hurrendous motorcycle accident that happened in his more virile years. this explains for the slow, deliberate pace he takes when he walks from his porch to curse the giant van i look at every day. this also explains his understanding nature when 2:00am rolls around and i decide it's time to relieve my high school years at the top of my lungs. i went to the sturgis bike rally once, back in 2000. some of those dudes are nuts, but i'm sure we can all agree on one thing: you just don't call the cops on your neighbor.

so that's the update.

oh. and i discovered an amazing vietnamese sandwich shop about 10 blocks south of me. for $2.95 you can indulge in what is, quite possibly, the most amazing bahn mi sandwich i've ever eaten. they have about 20 sandwiches on the menu and i intend on making my way down the menu as the months pass.

ah, 82nd. the line between crisp and stale. win and fail.

it's just a little too symbolic for the way my life is these days...

called you unusable...see how well you fair.

i've decided that all of my blog titles will be whatever song lyric is playing in the background when i begin writing. if chance or serendipity play in my favor, then so be it.

i'm beginning to feel more conviction about my decision to move here, even if i am on the stale and fail side of portland proper. goddammit it, i have privacy. i have a weird little porch. i have a parking spot. i have an amazing korean bakery that is a stone's throw away. they sell those eggy, chewy, bbq'd pork-filled buns you see on dim sum menus for $.80 a pop. not so bad, really.

this week revealed a few interesting and promising morsels.

for one, i've found it's entirely feasible and trouble-free to blare hole's "live through this" album, from beginning to end, at top volume- with my porch window open. you can sing it at the top of your lungs and nobody seems to care.

this. this one thing. it is gold.

so, perhaps that management guy was right about my neighbors being hard of hearing and it working in my favor. my penchant for loud music late at night just might be acceptable in my new home. like i said: GOLD.

secondly, i have learned randy's strong inclination for self prose. that's the nice way of saying the dude talks to himself constantly. it's actually quite charming. reminds me of my mother, who is also getting old and senile as the days pass. yesterday morning, he cursed loudly at his van while, of course, puffing away on a cigarette. i want to know this guy! what is your story, randy? are you an old hippy? are you a republican? do you yearn for company, or are you completely satisfied spending your days alone in that trailer next to me? did you know, randy, that my first stepfather had your name? i've always hated that name. i'm working on embracing it.

i am still adjusting to the fact that my home feels like a train car. as mentioned in my first post, i grew up in a trailer. it was a double-wide, which, truth be told, feels a lot more spacious than a single-wide. my new home is like a train car. you must walk down a skinny hallway and pass by the weird little cat room i've made, and then by my bathroom, to get to slumber land. somehow this feels cozier than any bedroom i've had in a long time. the fact that 75% of my bedroom is BED helps.

i resign myself to this new life.

you were a child. crawling on your knees.

ahhh... first entry.
how do blogs work?
i don't even journal. i mean, i did once. but it was because kurt cobain killed himself. and i got my period. and my best friend and i were fighting like a married couple (probably because i wanted to marry her), and i thought that was what seventh graders did. if they really "felt" things. i mean, i hadn't found drugs yet, so this was my idea of REALNESS.

the latest dead person this year- who really mattered - is michael jackson. i'm 28. i've been bleeding for 16 years, and i don't want to marry anyone. i have, however, taken a leap of faith in myself, my past, and my ability to say "fuck you" to anyone that wants to tell me i've made the wrong decisions.

here's the deal: i've moved to a trailer court. on 82nd ave. in portland, or. we're talking about a city that is so crisp, so moist, and so fucking sexy that every bus, in any part of town you hop on, has someone that looks like they are just soooooo over it, it hurts. it's not every part of the city though. there's a clear line where crisp becomes stale, and win becomes fail. that line, if you ask almost anyone under the age of 45, is 82nd ave. it is on this line that i have chosen to live, to stand between both worlds, and IN A TRAILER no less.

there was a time, about 8 or 9 years ago, when people were walking around wearing trucker hats and stained jeans. they listened to the rolling stones. they grew bad moustaches. they wore blue eye-liner. and, goddamit, they wanted to look poor. they wanted to look like grit and grime, and government commodity cheese and peanut butter, and drink pbr, and read charles bukowski (although, truth be told, poor people would never touch his shit). poor equaled hot. my best friend, who lived in LA at the time, even told me: "lacy. you grew up in a trailer. these people, though they would never admit it, want to BE YOU." i told her to go fuck herself, i think. i still kinda feel that way, actually. sorry, erika.

anyway, it went out of style, as it should have. being poor is just depressing. it's not hot.

so why am i doing this? i mean, fuck. i grew up in a trailer court. i spent my formative and teenage years snuggled in wood-panelled walls, pane-glass windows, and bad carpet. i was always embarrassed about it, because, for whatever reason, i made friends with people that had rich parents. it didn't matter though. they always loved coming over. we could smoke pot, smoke cigarettes, and eat cheap microwave burritoes until my mom kicked everybody out- which rarely happened. either way, i never thought i'd live in another trailer.

so what spawned this?

well... a lot of things.

one, i was over housemates. roommates, flatmates, co-habitants. whatever. over it. done. i don't want to consider my activities, or another person's, for a loooooong time.

two, i hate apartment complexes.

three, i wanted privacy.

four, i wanted to be far away from the so-hip-it-hurts mentality, but not so far that i forgot i was living in a pretty cool city. with beautiful people, and beautiful opportunities.

the thing is, i didn't know i was moving into a senior-living trailer court until the week before my move started.

OOPS.

i mean, i love old people. i really do. they make me tear up, and feel the depths of life at my fingertips, and everything else that the movie "on golden pond" does to people. however... i drink. and i like music. and i like it LOUD.

the management guy told me something. he said, "well, lacy. a senior community might benefit a young person like you. look at it this way: most of these people are probably hard of hearing. they won't even notice it. " and to that i replied, "you know. you're probably right. i hadn't thought of that."

my first moving in was a whirlwind. my friend kim showed up at my house at 8:00am (which is about 3 hours earlier than i usually wake up), with a huge volvo and a smile bigger than my future, new, single-wide trailer. the first load was easy. we drove the stuff across town, started moving it in to the trailer, took a break, and chilled... until we smelled a waft of cigarette smoke coming from ten feet away.

it was randy, my new next door neighbor.

at first glance, i thought i had seen a wizard. or a flannel-clad ghost. or some incarnate of the two.

he stood on his porch, with a very large gray bun in his hair, and smoked that damn cigarette like it was his last. i said, "hi. i'm lacy. i'm your new neighbor."
he looked at me, took a long drag from his cigarette, and, while exhaling, said, "Ya-ar?"

i said "yeah. nice to meet you?"

he said nothing. took another drag of his cigarette, threw it out, and went back inside.

"cool.", i thought. he smokes. i smoke too. this might work.