Life Is A Contact Sport.

I don’t really know what came over me. A phone call, Friday morning, asking me if I might be available to interview for like my dream job on Monday afternoon. In Seattle, so I was like 1200 miles away oh sure, let’s do this. So we do. Kayak, reservations, packing, and go.


Next morning, in the airport bar, downing a Bloody Mary so god damned fast it makes me think the world is supposed to be inside out. Eat the most enormous plate of lox you have ever, finish it off with a THC laced brownie, make my way to the plane, pass out for 3 hours and wake up in Seattle.

Curbside and I wait for Pony. She arrives and we skid on into Ballard and have lunch, walk around, take in the shops, I tell her I will not take a single breath in Blackbird and she is relieved. We both are actually, now that I have finally said it out loud.

Later that night we take a stroll through the locks, dinner at Carmalita, drinks at some pretentiously snide Scottish bar that nonetheless calls their whisky scotch and comps me my Bruichladdich when the douche finally realizes I’m the one pronouncing it correctly. We run into what used to be a self-impressed co-worker made monumentally less so by being stuck in the same shitty job with no future. We relish the conversation and dismiss him when he asks if we’ve moved to Spokane. I note the glaring omissions on their Scottish “wall of fame”, quiet judgment, then gin and tonic.

The next morning I stay in the guest room and bathe myself in no less than 5 hours of Coronation Street. This, I think as I snuggle more deeply into the down comforter, is what living is about. Later that day we go to the Ballard Farmers Market where it is, I shit you not, Portlandia live. There are costumes, accordion players, dudes on stilts, oceans of privileged white people deeply unsatisfied with their overfed lives. I ordered espresso from a café that could not have been more fancy if it tried. And it did. Twice.

Pagliacci. That was nice.

Day of the interview, it couldn’t have gone worse. Or better. I ‘d rather not get into it, but they gave me some homework, and based on my experience I think I could bomb it, or kill it, or fuck with them eternally. I’m here for your distraction, but you may have heard destruction? We heard about Ichiro and we thought of going down to the stadium, but Pony and I were firmly planted in a bar downing whatever was available planning our devastating future in the overcast hinterland.

I’m back at the office after telling them I was sick. Which I was. To the bone I have to say. Working on this “homework assignment”, trying to fight the urge to hustle while enduring the odour of other people’s breakfasts.

Ambition is so vulgar, and it really gets you nowhere fashionable.