When the trash piles up, it’s like it piles up in my mind as well. The familiar smell of cigarette ash and sweat doesn’t help either. Ah, summer. No spring, it’s fifty to one hundred. You know, I don’t think I could live under a metric temperature. There’s a difference between 90 and 95, more than a half a point. And ninety five and one hundred…forget it. Fifty degrees is not hot. You can science it up all you want, poindexter. That’s sweater weather.

It may just be an accident that I get more cabin fever when it is warm outside. The rain you can ignore. The windows are closed, who know what time it is. I’m constantly leaving the house in summer. I know, I don’t look it, right? By tomorrow I will have the now familiar reverse raccoon look. Yeah, but by accident. I’m fearful of skin cancer while drawing in another tar soaked drag. If the majority of my friends can stop drinking like like god damned fish I should be able to set these, my reason de mort. 

I take the trash down. It’s mostly cigarette butts and sunflower shells – great for the old B.P. That and I had these shrimp tacos form that place on Glisan. Don’t try to tell me that have better Mexican in North Portland – I don’t even know where that is.

Plus I had to get out of the house to avoid going down and hitting my downstairs neighbor with he broadside of a hot iron. I like to imagine what my downstairs neighbor looks like. And then picture that in a casket. He’s a prick, what can I say.

I don’t get a block into the wretched Pear when I run into J.B. and Scotty in a big, big truck. 

“What?” This is my usual Simons greeting. It works for on all occasions.

“I don’t know, you going to see Barack on Sunday?” Scotty says.

“Yeah, I told YOU about it,” I say.

“Oh yeah.” Scotty says, wiping his forehead.

“What’s up, J.B.?”

“Not a lot, Gothman.”

“What are you guys, looking for HIghway?” I ask.

“Have you seen him?” Scotty laughs.

“No, I never leave my house.” I joke. Not in a Johnny Carson way, but a Dave Letterman way.

“Well, that’s good.” Scotty says.

“Yeah.” I look around and shrug my shoulders. “So, what…your dumb brother? Mike Bruce? Plucky? Fathead? Martha? Stephanie? Ted Turner? Burt Reynolds?”

“No, I’m going to my place to take a bath.” Scotty says.

“Huh.” Boredom. “Well, let me know if something stupid is happening later,”

“Yeah, I’ll text you.”

Scotty and J.B. turn and barrel off down Lovejoy.

Half a block away I saw the guy who owns Quiznos. Remember when that place was closed for two years? I have had reservations about that Safeway they have been building on that corner for the past 98 years. I like Freddy’s, but I know myself all too well. A Safeway a block away spells trouble. I hate their Club Card system. They do have cheap bagels, though. 

But dig this. They are painting the building a horrible salmon color. You know salmon, pink’s less fun sister with glasses and a cat alergy. Like the rest of the architecture in the PEarl, it doesn’t go with Portlans at fucking all.

But all that matters, I guess, is if it goes with the Pearl. Fuckers.

Some creepy looking chick that looked like Victoria Beckham, who was at one time considered to be the classiest of the Spice Girls, came out of Silo and sat down on the bus bench. She looked in pain. Not like someone smacked her around or she had “lady trouble”, but that my very presence passing on the sidewalk was the final nail in her coffin.

Oh, the Pearl is full of ‘em.

I get that a lot. After thirty years of being stared at like a cross between Janet Jackson’s nipple and George Bush’s, well, George Bush, you would think that I would get used to it. No, it still bothers me that I feel their eyes and their scorn. Maybe it’s pity. 

No, that’s worse.

At PNCA, there is some sort of street fair. Or something. Are they graduating… into the workforce? How much cheaper will they work than me? Already. Is going to art school just something people do to say they did it? I hope just one of them did it to hone their skills and learn discipline, to be a better, clearer artist, to change the world other than using art to make people buy things. Will they move to inspire, or move to buy another pitcher. Will they draw a valentine freehand with that cramping claw? Can they pass on not what works in the mind of an executive, but what does the trick in the heart of that sixteen year old kid who wants to be proved wrong, who wants to feel that there is still beauty to be created.

I hope so.

It was my second visit to the Pearl Market, my regular corner store now that the 19th and Hoyt Market we all loved so dearly has been violently murdered, bulldozed to make way for more people intent on killing my deal city. But they want to live by a park! And Californians with money always get what they want.

Americans with money always get what they want.

So, I was going into the Pearl Market for the second time today. It would have been three times, but I bought smokes earlier some place else. I am very conscious about how many times I go into any store. Being a regular freaks me out sometimes. They know I like Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola Zero, Sunflower seeds, Red Bull, American Spirit Blues. That’s only information that should be in the hands of, oh, I don’t know, no one.

The Pearl is awash with douchebags on the first Friday of summer. All the central casting clichés are there. And they’re all buying beer at Pearl Market. Swear to Christ Chistopherson, three of them. It took three of them to buy beer. In case someone asks you that famous joke, “How many douchebags does it take…”

You would’t believe me if I said there debate over what brands of beer to buy was liberally peppered with “dudes” and “bros”, would you? Well, they were. I was an extra in my very own SNL sketch. 

And then more came in. And more. And more. I don’t know if the market had enough beer for all of these fellows to date rape their own Vicky Becks clones tonight, but like a tooth, those refrigerated cases go back a loooong way. And hold a lot of sorrow and regret.

Because it’s easier to smoke with a l’il bit of sugar, I opted for the regular Coca-Cola. To top it off, I added sunflower seeds. I didn’t want to confuse the gal at the counter with all-of-a-sudden purchase variety. 

On the way back, I lumbered past the PNCA party on 13th. The Art Kids. They used to be misfits, I thought to myself. All the art kids I knew in high school were weirdos. Like me. I was the weirdo, and I still feel like I am. Do they? Do they feel that society will only appreciate them, truly, only after their bodies are in a box? Do the emotional scars they flaunt earn less credibility because they don’t let them effect their lives in any sort of way?

Isn’t that where art comes from? 

I always thought that way with myself. I feel that if I wasn’t so fucked up, I wouldn’t have any use for whatever talent I have. I feel like I have to constantly prove myself to my greatest enemy, myself. If I was as outwardly well adjusted as fake Victoria Beckham, the trio of pop-collared “bros”, the kids who create only to sell out, what would I be?

I would still be some dude sitting here on the first Friday of Summer, sweat mixed with ash. But you wouldn’t be reading this. 

So you can score that for me.