Tonight I sat in the Taxi in the rain with the engine running and the hood up, my battery connected with jumper cables to the battery of a van with no door handles at the end of a dirt road. I read Harper's while one guy clicked the handle-less van's ignition and another guy kicked it, rocked it, talked to it.
I looked up from my magazine and watched them for awhile, and thought about this girl I met at community college ten years ago named Ashley. We sat near each other in an English class, and I found out one day that she went to a private Christian junior high school named Brethren, which is where one of my friends from high school went. "Did you know Kelly Pepperidge?" I asked.
Her eyes got big. Ashley was one of the prettiest people I had ever met in real life, and she was friendly, and she had good fashion sense. If I was a jealous god I would have disliked her. "Yes," she said, slowly. "I was really mean to her. I kind of started a club against her."
"Oh my gosh," I said, remembering. "You were the one who came up with PAK?"
She cringed, visibly, and said, "Yeah. You heard about that?"
PAK stood for People Against Kelly. Kelly was, and is, really, really nice. When I met her freshman year of high school she was bubbly, studious, and as confident in herself as any of us were freshman year, which is to say not really at all. She told me one time that people were really mean to her in junior high, that in fact there was a club of people who hated her.
I was teased in school at various points, but the bullies never organized. They never formed a union. I'm not sure of the details of PAK - did they have meetings, a clubhouse, collect dues? I don't know. Ashley put her head in her hands and said, "I feel horrible about that. Ugh. I hated that school - a lot of the other kids weren't allowed to play with me, because one day on a beach field trip we were next to some people playing a Violent Femmes song on a boom box, and I started dancing, and the moms were like, [whisper] 'That girl is evil.'"
A couple weeks after I found out about PAK I walked into English class visibly upset - it was raining and I'd left the headlights of my 88 Honda on all day. The battery was dead. Ashley asked me what was wrong and I told her, and after class she asked me where I was parked, and met me there in her car, and she had jumper cables in her trunk, and she knew how to connect them, and she jumped my car battery in the pouring rain.
Friday, June 29
From the drafts folder
The village is shacky. There is a tanning bed at the Tee Pee. I hear it is from the 70s. I hear customers have to clean it themselves. The Tee Pee is so named because it is an A-frame structure. It is long and narrow, and its only window is the door on one of the narrow walls - the long walls are windowless. It is dark inside for that reason. There are blacklights all around the bar. A dollar bill that has been through a wash cycle will glow. Other bills do not. A person who does their laundry incorrectly - throws the clothes in, then dumps the liquid detergent in, then fills the machine with water and turns it on - will have glowing streaks on their clothes where the detergent has stained it. A white bra beneath a dark cotton shirt will glow, in the holes between the weave of the cotton.
The bartender Simon does not like Bulgarians or drunk people. He claims to understand Bulgarian. He says Bulgarian women speak to each other incessantly about all of us, in a cruel manner. He says the women connive to catch a foolish man who will give them money to send home. He says the women brag about how proud their mothers are of them, when they have found such a man.
I believe some of them speak of us cruelly.
He's quick with a joke or a light of your smoke and there's noplace that he'd rather be. He empties ashtrays with regularity. He left Talkeetna for awhile but then came back. He controts his face sometimes in a mock-exaggerated-thoughtful expression. "Well now, let's see..." He looks upward, twists his mouth, widens his eyes comically. His facial expressions are a parody but I don't know why. He is nice and self-effacing.
The pool table means there is something to watch. There are two televisions as well, with closed captioning, but mostly people ignore them. Locals go to the Fairview in the afternoons; to the West Rib or the Latitude in the evenings. Perennials go to the Tee Pee. People passing through go to the Fairview in the evening.
I don't get hit on at the Tee Pee. (Getting hit on at the Fairview: "You look good." "Thanks." "You look real good.") I am there to watch people play pool and to have conversations with people I already know. To nod to people I recognize but have never really talked to. Around the pool table, against the walls, there are small cafe tables, elevated to the height of bar stools. It is nice to sit there and stare in the direction of the pool table, nursing a drink, holding a cigarette, and not feel like a social failure because you've got nothing to say.
There's a winding staircase I haven't had the balls to ascend. It's right near the door. There's a hallway where the pool cues are kept and beyond the hallway a room where I hear people used to play poker tournaments. I don't know where the tanning bed is kept. Officially the Tee Pee is a motel as well. The Fairview is too, and the Latitude. The West Rib is not a motel but it is the same structure as Nagleys, the general store. You can buy a ziplock bag of tampons at Nagleys. A postcard, a dusty box of cereal, some vegetables pre-cut in tupperware containers. Nagleys has a separate room full of alcohol. Barefoot wine costs more than ten dollars a bottle. There are local brews in glass bottles and an array of cheap beer in aluminum cans. The usual suspects: Natural Light, Miller High Life. And some ones I hadn't seen before Alaska - Keystone.
It is against the rules to say curse words in the Tee Pee, although the bartender will pretend not to hear you say them until you get on his nerves. Really the rule is a barometer, allows Simon to throw people out when they become too loudly drunk, too belligerent. If the rule is "once you are drunk enough to get on my nerves you will be kicked out," that is easy to argue with. But saying a curse word - that is an objective thing. Either you have said it or you haven't.
There is a white board where people write their names if they want to play winner. There is a Winter Pool Tournament list that has the names of men who were here last winter, who won games.
There is a half-assed Hawaiin theme at the Tee Pee.
The bartender Simon does not like Bulgarians or drunk people. He claims to understand Bulgarian. He says Bulgarian women speak to each other incessantly about all of us, in a cruel manner. He says the women connive to catch a foolish man who will give them money to send home. He says the women brag about how proud their mothers are of them, when they have found such a man.
I believe some of them speak of us cruelly.
He's quick with a joke or a light of your smoke and there's noplace that he'd rather be. He empties ashtrays with regularity. He left Talkeetna for awhile but then came back. He controts his face sometimes in a mock-exaggerated-thoughtful expression. "Well now, let's see..." He looks upward, twists his mouth, widens his eyes comically. His facial expressions are a parody but I don't know why. He is nice and self-effacing.
The pool table means there is something to watch. There are two televisions as well, with closed captioning, but mostly people ignore them. Locals go to the Fairview in the afternoons; to the West Rib or the Latitude in the evenings. Perennials go to the Tee Pee. People passing through go to the Fairview in the evening.
I don't get hit on at the Tee Pee. (Getting hit on at the Fairview: "You look good." "Thanks." "You look real good.") I am there to watch people play pool and to have conversations with people I already know. To nod to people I recognize but have never really talked to. Around the pool table, against the walls, there are small cafe tables, elevated to the height of bar stools. It is nice to sit there and stare in the direction of the pool table, nursing a drink, holding a cigarette, and not feel like a social failure because you've got nothing to say.
There's a winding staircase I haven't had the balls to ascend. It's right near the door. There's a hallway where the pool cues are kept and beyond the hallway a room where I hear people used to play poker tournaments. I don't know where the tanning bed is kept. Officially the Tee Pee is a motel as well. The Fairview is too, and the Latitude. The West Rib is not a motel but it is the same structure as Nagleys, the general store. You can buy a ziplock bag of tampons at Nagleys. A postcard, a dusty box of cereal, some vegetables pre-cut in tupperware containers. Nagleys has a separate room full of alcohol. Barefoot wine costs more than ten dollars a bottle. There are local brews in glass bottles and an array of cheap beer in aluminum cans. The usual suspects: Natural Light, Miller High Life. And some ones I hadn't seen before Alaska - Keystone.
It is against the rules to say curse words in the Tee Pee, although the bartender will pretend not to hear you say them until you get on his nerves. Really the rule is a barometer, allows Simon to throw people out when they become too loudly drunk, too belligerent. If the rule is "once you are drunk enough to get on my nerves you will be kicked out," that is easy to argue with. But saying a curse word - that is an objective thing. Either you have said it or you haven't.
There is a white board where people write their names if they want to play winner. There is a Winter Pool Tournament list that has the names of men who were here last winter, who won games.
There is a half-assed Hawaiin theme at the Tee Pee.
Things that happened at the airport (From the drafts folder)
1. I kept running my tongue along the roof of my mouth, which I burned on a slice of pizza yesterday.
2. I overheard the Cinnabon girl who was filling my water bottle tell her guy co-worker she had a crush on the magazine kiosk guy across the way. Both she and the kiosk guy looked like teenagers, Asian. I wrote a note that said, "I've noticed you across the way and I think we could have a spark. Come by and say hi sometime. xo, Cinnabon Girl."
I folded it and wrote on the outside READ ME. Then Iris dropped it on his counter when he wasn't looking. We watched him unfold it, read it, smile and shake his head, re-fold the note and put it back in his pocket.
We watched him re-read it and look toward Cinnabon a lot. I bought a gross sandwich from him and heard the tail end of his conversation with another airport employee, a black man in his 50s or 60s: "That's something you don't want to mix up!" Both laughed.
I turned around and noticed there were TWO cute young Cinnabon girls! Ach!
But maybe they both like him.
We saw him write a note and fold it up and put it in his shirt pocket. I'm going to assume he marries one of them.
3. I got mustard in my hair from said gross sandwich.
4. I unintentionally brought a full-size half-empty tube of toothpaste with me in my backpack, and a sleeve of matches which escaped detection.
5. I saw two people I worked with in Talkeetna
2. I overheard the Cinnabon girl who was filling my water bottle tell her guy co-worker she had a crush on the magazine kiosk guy across the way. Both she and the kiosk guy looked like teenagers, Asian. I wrote a note that said, "I've noticed you across the way and I think we could have a spark. Come by and say hi sometime. xo, Cinnabon Girl."
I folded it and wrote on the outside READ ME. Then Iris dropped it on his counter when he wasn't looking. We watched him unfold it, read it, smile and shake his head, re-fold the note and put it back in his pocket.
We watched him re-read it and look toward Cinnabon a lot. I bought a gross sandwich from him and heard the tail end of his conversation with another airport employee, a black man in his 50s or 60s: "That's something you don't want to mix up!" Both laughed.
I turned around and noticed there were TWO cute young Cinnabon girls! Ach!
But maybe they both like him.
We saw him write a note and fold it up and put it in his shirt pocket. I'm going to assume he marries one of them.
3. I got mustard in my hair from said gross sandwich.
4. I unintentionally brought a full-size half-empty tube of toothpaste with me in my backpack, and a sleeve of matches which escaped detection.
5. I saw two people I worked with in Talkeetna
Thursday, September 20
Her Words
Monday, September 17
Ordinance
In Seward there's a law that there must be an equal or greater ratio of churches to bars.
There's a lot of churches there.
There's a lot of churches there.
To be known
At the Fairview bar I see a waiter from the Roadhouse. He points at me and yells, "Mushroom swiss quiche with bacon bits on top!"
We arrive at Mountain High Pizza Pie right as it opens, so the cook takes our order for two waters to start. He's getting the waters when the waitress walks by and says, "She doesn't like ice in her water." He dumps out the ice.
We arrive at Mountain High Pizza Pie right as it opens, so the cook takes our order for two waters to start. He's getting the waters when the waitress walks by and says, "She doesn't like ice in her water." He dumps out the ice.
Thursday, September 13
Too Bad Montana Gave That Kid Wine
The rooms in the employee housing up the hill have TVs in them. The channels are limited. It's not a normal cable package, it's a few chosen ones. A&E, HGTV, Fox News, HBO Family. The Alaska Channel, which is actually long advertisements for Alaska properties also owned by the corporation that owns the lodge.
There's an employee photo contest every summer, and this year someone put the photos entered on one of the static channels, along with a radio station that plays 70s songs. My friend and I watched it tonight and came up with ways each photo illustrated whatever lyrics were playing when it was shown. Like they were intentional music videos. ("I don't care what you say anymore this is my life;" a picture of a moose staring at the camera and not giving a shit.)
When he mentioned that the channel used to be just static, I was like "We could have had a public access show all summer." Wouldn't that have been fun? A side project for the restless employees, so they'd do something other than stack up three heavy wooden picnic tables and climb onto the roof, for instance. (I might have thought that idea up and encouraged others to do it, but let the record show I myself did not climb up onto the roof.) (Troublemaker.)
We imagined commandeering the channel somehow, wearing masks and holding up poster boards with a conversation written on them. It would have been like that season of the Real World where they had a public access show. Too bad neither of us plans to come back next year.
There's an employee photo contest every summer, and this year someone put the photos entered on one of the static channels, along with a radio station that plays 70s songs. My friend and I watched it tonight and came up with ways each photo illustrated whatever lyrics were playing when it was shown. Like they were intentional music videos. ("I don't care what you say anymore this is my life;" a picture of a moose staring at the camera and not giving a shit.)
When he mentioned that the channel used to be just static, I was like "We could have had a public access show all summer." Wouldn't that have been fun? A side project for the restless employees, so they'd do something other than stack up three heavy wooden picnic tables and climb onto the roof, for instance. (I might have thought that idea up and encouraged others to do it, but let the record show I myself did not climb up onto the roof.) (Troublemaker.)
We imagined commandeering the channel somehow, wearing masks and holding up poster boards with a conversation written on them. It would have been like that season of the Real World where they had a public access show. Too bad neither of us plans to come back next year.
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