STARLIGHT Parts 1–7
1: GOODBYE PORTLAND
I had a couple of hours before my train was due to leave. I also had a few joints in my bag which I wanted to smoke before we hit the California border. I sat on a bank overlooking the Willamette River a few blocks from Union Station. I wasn’t sure if I was hungover, high or possibly still drunk, perhaps I was a bitter combination, regardless Portland seemed lost in a haze. I took the first joint out of my bag and lit it up while sitting mesmerized by the Broadway Bridge. I couldn’t help hoping a ship would come along to force the bascule bridge to open up in all her glory. The waters were calm and there were no ships in sight. I quickly grew tired of waiting for ships to come along, so I backtracked to a bar I’d walked past on my way to the river.
I sipped tentatively at a piss colored beer, as I let words wander through my mind aware of my deadline. I had a thirty-something hour train ride ahead of me to write the poem. I was too distracted to think clearly, certainly too distracted to feel present, I was too busy letting the tape of the previous night play out in my head to think about much else.
My friend was asleep when I stopped by to pick up my bag the following morning, so I left him a note, thanking him for the couch I’d been crashing on for the last few nights. I didn’t realize I’d be out so late. The night kind of got away from me.
I ended up in a place called Bar of the Gods, surrounded by noise and looking to find some escape, the smoking area was louder than the bar, as it was occupied by the friend I’d been visiting and a whole bunch of new friends I’d made over the last three days I’d been there. I took a minute to sit at the bar when I noticed a girl come and sit a few barstools from me. She had a tender beauty about her but she also had an air of toughness surrounding her, a quiet confidence that could pause a room. She too had been outside, but she wasn’t with my group. She was at the center of another group. I’d noticed everybody in her group seemed to want to talk to her but she had a plastered smile that painted a picture of politeness and interest but her eyes seemed to want to be anywhere else.
The bartender asked what I wanted but I let her order first. She ordered a double Makers neat. I ordered a beer. She seemed too relieved to sit at the bar to head straight back outside but I still sort of expected her to. She didn’t, not immediately anyway. She sipped from the whiskey and placed the glass gently on the bar.
“You seem popular,” I said with a sense of curiosity but I didn’t want to impede upon her moment of peace.
She wasn’t cold when she spoke, furthermore I was taken by the warmth in her voice when she answered back. “I’m not in town very much.”
In our quest for silence we became lost in each other’s words and before too long, I too, was drinking Makers neat and we each let the liquor unscrew our lips as we spoke.
A bartender wearing a perfectly ironed white shirt, with a sickly pristine white smile, snapped me from my thoughts and asked if I wanted another beer, but his clean complexion and sterile bar was a stark contrast to the dark and grungy Bar of the Gods which I’d inhabited the previous night, and the featureless environment I now found myself in had worn on me. Besides I didn’t have much time to smoke another joint and make my way to the station. The Coast Starlight doesn’t run every ten minutes, it’s a once a day kind of deal and I really wanted to get back to Los Angeles in the hopes of seeing her again.
2: UNION STATION
I approached the toy set looking clock tower, which had the words ‘Union Station’ hanging above the clock face like a conical hat shielding the time from the few rays of sun peeping beyond the smothering cloud of the overcast day in Portland. I walked past the yellow taxi cabs with nothing but a Joni Mitchell song in my head, which was a timely distraction from the million other thoughts jostling for priority. I couldn’t allow my thoughts to tangle for too long as I had to manoeuver my way to wherever my crumpled ticket needed me to be, to board whatever locomotive was set to take me back south.
The trip had been far from successful financially speaking, I wasn’t too surprised, in fact I wasn’t surprised at all. If you are inclined to believe poetry readings are a big money market you are sadly highly mistaken. I was under no such illusion. I just needed to get out of Los Angeles for a few days. To justify my excursion north, I had a few meetings set up, all but one was canceled and the one that wasn’t, cost me $35. For that handsome sum of money, I received the pleasure of a bitter taxi driver who bordered on racist and clinically insane and managed to drive me to a location that was not the location I needed to be in, which led me to the following taxi driver who couldn’t speak a lick of English but he knew his way through the city, like a seamstress weaving the stitches of a dress fit for Marie Antoinette. When I finally made it to the deli, I had five minutes and a soggy pastrami sandwich to console the rejection from a man in a suit lacking sufficient syllable construction to form an original thought. He never took his Bluetooth headset from his ear the whole time we spoke. He acted like a carbon copy city business type that had transported himself into Portland with little regard for the city’s wishes but at least I was out of Los Angeles, away from the ghosts of my memories locked behind every step of the L.A. sidewalks, which I was due to return to once I made my way to the correct platform.
A few people sat scattered on the church-like benches located in the middle of the station, a family appeared to be collecting tickets at a window off to the side, I tried to pay the people little attention as I hid my stoned eyes behind the lenses of my aviator sunglasses. I walked outside onto the platform to see the silver and blue steel beast sitting patiently waiting to charge forward on the tracks like a roaring bull. The train began its journey north in Seattle so a few passengers stretched their legs and smoked cigarettes as the new additions to the journey tentatively made their way aboard. I had ten minutes before it was set to depart so I joined the few smokers huddled at the other end of the platform, to suck down a cigarette like I’d never taste the nicotine kiss ever again. I didn’t know when my next smoke would be, so I smoked it to the bone. I hoped we stopped before Dunsmuir because I had one joint left sitting in an otherwise empty pack of Camel Blues, which I supposed ought to be smoked before crossing the California border. Once the burning cigarette paper met the filter I flicked the butt onto the track and stepped aboard the Coast Starlight in all her glory.
3. PORTLAND, OR. TO SALEM, OR.
I prowled through the belly of the beast to locate a perfect seat. The train seemed unusually empty, I’d been on this train before but never this far north, but I heard many times the luxury was reserved for the cabins, whilst us minions were forced to sit like sardines, but there was only me and a handful of people occupying the carriage. A seemingly strung-out woman sat alone towards the door, she was rake thin and the years looked as though they had been unkind but she had motherly eyes that caught mine as I walked by. A man had already found comfort enough to sleep behind his flat top baseball cap, sunglasses and a hoodie with ‘Oakland’ written across it had been transformed into a makeshift blanket. A couple of others lay dotted about but I slid into two seats by themselves toward the far end of the carriage. I put my bag on the seat next to me, I pulled the small flask from the back compartment containing whiskey and put it in the pocket of jeans. I had a larger flask in the bag too but I didn’t want to be drunk before sundown. I had a poem to write.
Before too long the train was in motion and Portland was left in the rear view. I watched the truss bridges disappear from sight and we were truly Salem bound.
I’d been to Portland before but hadn’t had much chance to see the city, I didn’t get too much chance this time either, but I did have a few days. Brendon used to play with his band in a bar off Hollywood Boulevard. They were pretty good, but Los Angeles had taken her toll as she does, the wicked mistress that she is. He moved his music up north and seemed pretty content with his new life. I got to see him play a show on my second night at a bar downtown, he played by himself, with only his acoustic guitar, the music was softer and more delicate than I used to hear him play back in Los Angeles, but he appeared at home.
I’d met Brendon a couple of years prior, I was friendly with the bass player in his band, so we occasionally crossed paths. Then I found out he lived a few blocks east of me, off Franklin Avenue near Vermont. Before too long we were meeting up in bars and running into each other at coffee shops. When I told him I’d be in Portland a few days he immediately told me his couch was my couch, we always had a mi casa, su casa kind of attitude. My first night on his couch he came along to my reading and we closed down a nearby bar, before banging on the door of his local bar an hour after close, to be let in by his friend who’d just closed the bar. We drank in there till sunrise. The second night we ended up in some downtown bars after his gig and my last night started in the Belmont neighborhood which led to Brendon and I meeting up with a cluster of his friends at the Bar of the Gods. We’d been there about an hour before she came in and about two hours from when she sat a couple of barstools from me and we began our conversation. I noticed a tattoo of a small white rose on her shoulder hidden beneath the waves of her silk auburn hair. She’d later tell me it represented a fresh start, a notion I was growing too familiar with.
I pulled the flask from my jeans pocket, opened it up and took a sip, I watched the trees rolling by vacantly and wondered to myself why I opened my mouth and why my mouth sometimes acts quicker than my brain seems to acknowledge. Now I had a poem to write and nothing but static in my head. I figured I’d get my notebook out after Salem.
4. SALEM, OR. TO ALBANY, OR.
I didn’t even consider a cigarette at Salem. A few passengers were quickly ushered onto the train. A man and a woman boarded my carriage dragging their bags behind them like useless bulging anchors weighing them down as they clambered their way to their seats. The man short and rotund, with an authoritarian voice stood next to his seat and fumbled with his bags in the overhead compartment as he loudly asked his heavy-set wife who appeared dizzy from cheap white wine. “Do you have the sandwiches?”
“Yes, the food’s all in here.” She responded as she fiddled with a cooler bag she’d placed on the floor between her legs and continued to ask her husband if he would sit down.
To which he snapped. “I’m getting my book.”
She went back to fiddling with the bag and tray table in front of her. He eventually sat down as she laid out a picnic in front of them. The train had barely left the station and they were already prepared to dine.
I considered pulling the notebook from my bag, but how could I write poetry whilst being fixated on the couple who had just joined the journey? I stared at their sandwiches that looked to have been constructed by a professional but the aluminum foil wrapping, the coach seats and cheap bottle of wine peeping from above the cooler bag suggested they had been made at home. I must admit sandwiches seldom inspire me, but it was beginning to frustrate me not knowing what kind of sandwiches they were. I sat distracted pontificating over sandwich fillings until I couldn’t take it any longer. I sipped from my flask and decided to make the walk a couple of carriages down to the lounge car to buy a beer.
I walked past the man still sleeping beneath his baseball cap, the couple knee deep in sandwich meat and the strung out looking lady who was calmly watching the scenery pass by. I continued the walk through the next carriage, the muffled chatter of sporadic conversations buzzed through the air, surrendering any clarity to the roar of the train’s engine. Eventually, I came to the steps leading down to the lounge car. Frozen pizzas, chocolate bars, juice boxes, small bottles of wine and a few cold beers stood on display. $6.50 for a domestic beer and $16.00 for a half bottle of wine. I wasn’t sure how the attendant had mastered the art of holding a straight face whilst stealing each hard-earned dollar from us trapped passengers being held to ransom. I handed him the $6.50. The spotty faced scrawny wretch of a human told me to have a good trip as he sent me on my way with my six-dollar beer, while I reconsidered the entire notion, fuck Bruce Reynolds and Ronnie Biggs, this was indeed the Great Train Robbery.
Once I was back in my seat, I noted the sandwich eaters were now clearing their trays away temporarily. I slumped back in my seat, every sip of beer made me feel like a stagecoach victim of the James and Younger gang, but I cleansed it with sips of my contraband flask whiskey which made me feel like Jesse James himself.
The announcer informed us that we were approaching Albany, the second planned stop in Oregon and not a single fucking poetic word was within my grasp. The page wasn’t only empty but incarcerated in my shoulder bag wanting to breathe but scared to be free.
5. ALBANY, OR. TO EUGENE, OR.
I meant to buy a map on the way to the station but somewhere between the weed and the beer it slipped my mind. I wasn’t expecting to navigate the journey. I figured between the driver and the tracks they had it covered. I was only hoping I could know what I was potentially looking at, from beyond the dirt sprinkled windows. Klamath Falls introduced Crater Lake National Park and Mount Shasta would appear somewhere beyond in Northern California, apart from that I didn’t have any real idea of what I was looking at.
Trains always had some sort of mystique to me. In movies and books there’s always a murder or an affair or some nefarious behavior which seems to set off a chain of events and like dominos, characters would fall. In reality, everyone was keeping themselves to themselves.
The couple with the buffet were now tucked behind their individual iPad screens. Her screen was almost entirely hidden from my view but I could see the gunfight taking place on his. They certainly weren’t going to ignite this carriage into an all-night party on stadium priced beers. The sleeping guy was an unknown quantity, he’d been sleeping since I boarded and it was still light out. The scraggly woman who was looking out of the window had now taken to reading from a book, she occasionally stopped to take notes, on one particular occasion her note taking was so in depth, she placed the book she was reading on the seat next to her. I took the final swig from my six-dollar beer and placed the empty bottle in front of me, as I noticed the lettering on the book the woman was working through read, Alcoholics Anonymous. Perhaps if we met a few years ago on this train, we may be getting drunk on eight dollar spirits or more likely passing this old flask back and forth.
I wanted to talk. I wanted to tell people of the girl I’d met at Bar of the Gods, drinking Makers Mark, her friends, my friends, the Irish goodbye we gave and the night we had talking under the stars, I wanted to tell anyone that would listen. I thought about harassing the spot faced miscreant in the lounge car but I feared his knowledge of women was limited and my situation seemed unique.
I put the whiskey to my lips as I noticed the man in the Oakland hoodie had taken the cap from his head. His short coarse hair disrupted by the cap, but as he held the hat in his hand, he pulled a brush from his pocket and ran it over his head a few times, put his cap back on and went back to sleep. I fastened the lid on my flask, slid down in my chair and gazed beyond the windows.
6. EUGENE, OR. TO CHEMULT, OR.
We were running exactly on schedule apparently, according to some mysterious voice mumbling through a muffled speaker, this meant there wasn’t going to be a smoke break till the crew change at Klamath Falls, which meant my joint was still good for smoking and I remembered a couple of edibles I had in my jacket pocket. I figured I’d save them for California the following day. If I sensed any inquisitive police or if a dog with a job appeared and started sniffing around I figured I could swallow them whole and handle the consequences.
Eugene, Oregon is named after Eugene Franklin Skinner an American settler who made his way to the Willamette Valley from New York followed by his lawman days in Pittsburgh. Apparently, he built on the higher ground to avoid flooding. The train was making its way through those lands and once it left Eugene and past Springfield it was nothing but forests to Chemult. If I’d had my map I would have known I had been staring out at Willamette, Deschutes or possibly Umpqua National Forests. In my ignorance, I settled on buying another beer and focusing my mind to the task at hand — the poem.
My beer sat freshly toward the window side of my tray and my notebook rested on the edge as I sat gently tapping a pen against my head. I couldn’t make the poem seem like I’d just written it so I didn’t want to mention trains, Oregon, California or anything we specifically talked about apart from the topic.
I ran through our conversation in my mind, the one that followed directly after she sat down and I told her that she seemed popular. She told me she’d also been in town for three days. She lived in East Nashville but was touring with a band. The band were a pretty big deal. Not Rolling Stones big deal, but they’d just played three nights in a row at the Aladdin. The band consisted of a singer with a guitar and a banjo, another man who also had a guitar, a woman with a drum kit and a man with a fiddle. She did not play with them, she was the opening act, she only had a guitar. Her shows were limited to the Portland shows and she was joining them in Sacramento while I was travelling on the train and she was due to play the El Rey with them in Los Angeles on Wednesday night before flying back to Nashville with her guitar. The band were heading to Europe but she wasn’t able to travel with them. I told her about my trip and I asked if I could buy her a drink but she bought me one, then I bought her one. After we’d both completely ignored our friends for a while we reunited with them and she told me her name was Lola. I asked her if she was staying at the bar for a while and she said they’d likely be there till close, I told her we would be too.
I followed her out to the smoking area, her friends were huddled around some seats to the left, my friends almost mirroring them to the right. Clowns and jokers everywhere like a Stealers Wheel song. I occasionally caught her looking over at me and she caught me looking at her. I longed to be stuck in the middle with her. The bar was due to close and a crowd began to build to bustle for last orders, I didn’t too much feel like fighting through it when I noticed Lola walk up and stand beside me, so I decided to wait with the crowd. But little did I know she was as impatient as me, and asked me a question I never needed time to ponder. “I have some drinks and some weed in the van, do you wanna ditch?”
My face loosened and my eyes widened as I responded firmly and seriously. “Yes, yes I do.”
We ran into the night like school children. She’d parked her van a few blocks away so she could leave it overnight. She warned me it was a little distance so I offered her a joint I had rolled, for the walk. We passed the joint back and forth as we strolled into the night under a spell of childish wonder.
After we’d stopped by the van, we found ourselves walking through Mt. Tabor Park. I may be a bum, a degenerate, a drunk, a pothead, hell, I’m no saint but I’m also no liar. However, in a split second of shrieking madness, my mouth reacted before my brain engaged, which is not unusual, but this time my mouth was a bold-faced liar. Scum of the earth, if I could have torn my lips from my face in protest of their dishonesty I would have but that seemed dramatic. Lola told me she had a new album, I asked her what it was called, she told me and my mouth responded. “No way, I wrote a poem called that.” I had written no such poem.
No more words had made their way into my notebook, the train was approaching Chemult, my second beer was empty, I was due to meet Lola at her show at the El Rey on Wednesday and show her the poem I wrote and I still couldn’t remember the name of her fucking album.
7. CHEMULT, OR. TO KLAMATH FALLS, OR.
I wasn’t always such a fuck up. I certainly didn’t used to be the mess I saw staring back at me from my reflection in the train window as we waved goodbye to the platform of Chemult. I’ve never been the sort to put ducks in a row, but I’d never felt so out of control, yet steady. The insane lifestyle, the moving pieces, the removal of reality had become normal. A tornado had come along and I stood in the eye for as long as I could until I was wrapped in her arms doing somersaults trying to hold onto anything I could.
The man with the baseball cap had woken, he straightened himself out and stared out the window resigned to his new temporary life on a train. My body was growing weary from lack of sleep, the weed had long worn off and my first flask of whiskey was running dangerously low but my mind was still awake.
My notebook was back in my bag so I was ready when the train drew to a halt, even though I had some time ahead before our stop. A newbie joined our carriage with a tentative grace, she must have been in her early twenties and she moved like a small deer, a fawn finding her legs with an elegance beneath her painted eyes. I imagined an entire backstory for her in which she was escaping a marriage to an older academic man played by Bill Murray, The Wilson brothers were there and Wes Anderson was directing. Anyway, she sat with headphones looped over her silken hair listening to music, I presumed.
There was nothing raucous on the train so far, nor was there a Christie mystery or a Hitchcockian thriller, just expensive beer and admittedly astonishing views. I noticed the lady with the AA book start to shuffle her belongings around. She put an old, worn, faded pink sweater over the gossamer thin skin of her pale white shoulders. A pack of Marlboro Reds peeped out of a pocket in her sweater. I too had my cigarettes ready and more importantly the joint. My hope was for the platform to be long enough for the smell to be lost or enough pot smokers would have the same idea and my scent would be lost amongst them.
We were over seven hours into the journey, the sun was long gone and the night was approaching. The married couple had put their iPads down, only to pick them up again, after a very loud conversation about what time they should sleep. I personally learned too much about their body clock goals to possibly have any desire to sober up in the nearing future. It was decided they would plan on sleeping around eleven, which would give them a good couple of hours of iPad time before the eye masks and neck pillows were brought into play.
Lola would be close to Sacramento by now if all were going well with her drive with Brian, her tour manager, who she went to pick up after dropping me near the station, so they could make the drive for the show the following night. I hadn’t thought about anybody like I’d thought about Lola in a while. She was etched into my mind, standing in front of every thought. I’d been numb since Rachel, but a series of relationships followed her which were nothing more than a blur. I tried to feel something but feeling was becoming a memory. The whiskey was starting to take hold, so I was relieved to hear the muffled son of a bitch announce that we were approaching Klamath Falls, our last stop in Oregon. After a cigarette, a joint and an introduction to Darlene the woman with the AA book, we would be California bound.
Follow the link below to give me all of your money. No amount too small and no amount too large although I’d like you to remember I’m not a charity, I’m a cause.
