i dream of dawn in astoria

i've been thinking about astoria. i spent several strange but sexy months there two summers ago. it was when patrick and i had first met. our relationship was not two ships passing but two ships crashing and lighting up the sea at night with their fire. it amazes me we have not yet extinguished, but instead have stoked our ashes toward a shoreline.

whiskey and beer and paint dominated that summer.

astoria oregon is beautiful place. i should have known how real his real his love was just by the sheer fact he had brought me to such a strange dream of a destination, nevermind the rest. 15th and franklin. our strange home. no hot water. we boiled old pots full of water on the stove and dumped them in the tub everyday, sometimes more than twice if patrick wanted a second bath. on nights when the whiskey had penetrated our hearts and the bile our stomachs pumped had leaked into our words, i slept in that old claw foot tub- the window always open with a view of the disintegrating estate across the street.

one special night nathan, patricks best friend from high school back in portland who lived across the hall, had knocked on our door with a crate of champagne and a container of caviar. i was in the tub, full of bubbles, the door cracked the way it was all summer from the laundry line patrick had made from his guitar cord that stretched from the living room to the bathroom window. nathan always halfway saw me naked all summer- getting dressed in the kitchen since our clothes were stored in the cabinets, in the bathroom peeing, running downhill towards tony's while i pulled my shirt over my head in a vicodin driven joy...

the bubble bath was nothing. patrick brought me a jelly glass full of champagne and a cracker with caviar on it. it was the only thing we'd eaten all day, not counting beer. nathan had a way of saving us all summer long, in beautiful and meaningful ways. he cared about us. worried. he was in bad shape too. but he had steady work and a little credit and let us feed off of him like a mother dog with too many pups and not enough teets. we got what we could from him when it was available. mostly we stole it but he didn't care. every morning when i heard him leave for work, the little manual transmission jetta kicking into gear down the hill, i'd swing our door open and jump across the hall to test his door. it was unlocked half the time and i'd dig through his dirty underwear, beer cans, pull up packs of cigarettes, unopened beer, a bag of frozen chicken from cosco, ketchup, coffee, milk. anything. he didn't give a rats ass. he just came home, knocked on our door and said "i need my ketchup," or, "since you drank all my beer today, you wanna go to tony's with me?" which meant he'd be buying me beers all night while patrick was at play rehearsal. in the mornings he would just open the door wearing work pants and a wife beater, his belly unavoidable paired with the drink stains on the white shirt, and ask, "can i have some of my coffee?" and we'd roll over and nod at him while he rummaged through our kitchen, and finally and silently went to work still drunk.

our door only locked when we made weird drunk or drugged love on our sleeping bag pile which passed for a bed.

i've been thinking about astoria.
about being sober and painting. painting every thought that the columbia river has passed through.

such a strange small town that can hold such souls in it's grasp.

The Coat Room

This blog thing is really an excuse for me to start writing again, and to see what happens, if people read it. An experiment in the Marshall McLuhan concept of the universe.

but I also figure I may as well plug myself and my cronies while I'm at it.

I produced an independent feature film in Philadelphia over the winter months called "The Coat Room", which is currently in the editing stage. The screenplay was written by my boyfriend Patrick who also starred in the thing and is currently in Portland, Oregon recording the soundtrack, which he also wrote (save a few gems by a 19 yr old prodigy crazy girl named Desi). Please Check out all the links.

The film itself is about a 20-something guy on his first day of work at the Philadelphia Art Museum. His relationship with his girlfriend has gone sour, and he meets a borderline personality girl co-worker who he begins to fall in love with. Lots of drugs/alchohol/lesbian kissing and all around funny satirical bits on post-college life. basically.

I designed and built the sets, was the entire wardrobe department (when there was a wardrobe budget for about 10 minutes) and moonlighted as "assistant director of photography" on days when me and Jason (the director) made up the entire crew. I also had a bit role as the annoying girlfriend (typecast) since we couldn't find a real actress to do it. i have a sex scene which is slightly insane to me now that I think about it. Cleavage like you wouldn't believe. It's hard for me to watch.

I grew up in theatre, as my father was a theatre director for 25 years, and it left an indellible impression on my life. Enough so that post-art school it remains a work environment I am drawn to, and film is a natural leap for me.

Patrick and i have a new screenplay written set in Cape May, New Jersey, the town from which my bloodline hails and we are looking for funding/and or a director/production company. My real dream would be to direct the thing, but as i have no preivous directorial experience, it may be difficult finding a backer. Otherwise I may just try to save money and do it on my own.

A critics premier for The Coat Room is scheduled for late April/ early May in Philadelphia, PA, and from there the film gets submitted to the Toronto Film Festival and the rest of the Majors and mini-majors as the deadlines come up.

I went back to Ohio

cleveland is supposed to be rock and roll. mostly it's just flat and grey. for years i've been trying to get away from winter and i just keep stepping right back into it like dogshit in the grass. lake erie freezes over during the night hours and then the ice breaks and floats away from itself under the afternoon sun. the lake looks the surface of the moon, and that same otherworldly type of landscape that was the clouds i saw from a plane going to rome. it's disorienting, like when i was a kid and would hang upside down off the edge of the bed for half an hour at time, imagining the whole universe upside down- having to step over the ceiling fan and the arch of a doorway to get into the hallway and sliding down ( crawling up) the ceiling over the stairs to get downstairs.


i've been painting the landscape here. the bridge over the black river and the old riverboat that rumor has it a crazy rich guy is rehabbing. our first night here we went to a bar on the ghost town of a main drag in Lorain. i took a shining to the place rather quickly, which patrick likes to say is a bad sign. they had teal booths, a great jukebox and a wide stage in a larger anteroom. there were biker guys and older women regulars who smoked marlboro reds. we tried to play pool and a drunk hispanic man argued about the quarters on the table. we acquiesced instantly, patrick agreeing to play the man.

we are always the outsiders, the passive watchers in these small towns. we know not to pick a fight in a strange place.

i began to suspect that my first instinct was right- they weren't his quarters- as he stepped into our doctor friends face and the doctors face went sour. Doctor Pav stepped back, clearly sublimating his drunken streets of southampton, england urges to jump the guy. we stepped away from the game and i could see patrick was already in one of his drunkenly oblivious states- the kind where the conflicts of the world disappear under a thick wool- as he analyzed the balls on the table. the hispanic man flashed us his concealed weapon. the good doctor and i glanced at each other. pav is often incapable of not jibberjabbing in situations like this. he was telling me what the man had asked him. "are you puerto?" meaning was pav from from puerto rico we supposed. pav had said no obviously. he was british by birth but indian by race. that was when the man told him to back away from the table and shutup.

so we were backed away from the table but pav continued to jabber about the guy being crazy and the man continued to flash his weapon at us whenever patrick wasn't looking. patrick worried the pool balls into their homes while the man looked me up and down and winked at me. now it was my turn to get my dander up. he clearly was too drunk to realize patrick was my boyfriend, or just too fucking much of an asshole to care. we waited out the game at a table, changing the subject away from the threatening hispanic man in an effort to dull our instincts to start a bar fight. patrick won and i momentarily lost my stomach as the man leaned in close to patrick but then they're solid faces broke into laughter and the man patted patrick on the back.
strange. he wanted to hang out with us. we deferred to each other continously to make a decision about staying or leaving and moved around the bar, taking trips to the bathroom until the drunken bully seemed to have given up.

the doctor and i had taken a seat at the booth near the bar and patrick had gone to the boys room. we ordered 3 more beers. the man approached the table. he spoke to me and winked. none of us really understood anything he was saying, between the drink and the spanish accent. something about making it out of the projects alive. i had respect for him for that i guess, but nothing else.

and then he touched my hair. he took a strand of my dark hair that is perpetually falling in my face and tucked it behind my ear. i wanted to beat the crap out of him. it was a dirty move. a crossed boundary. he was staring at my tits pretty blatantly and licking his lips. the doctor was a bit too stunned at the man's balls to say or do anything but watch to see how i'd react. i turned to the drunk and said "if you have something you want to say to me you can look me straight in the eyes and say it, otherwise you need to back the fuck away from me." i'm not really sure who i am when i speak that way. the doctor says i'm more of a boy than both he and patrick, but i don't ever understand such statements.

the man returned to the bar and patrick returned from the bathroom.



patrick and the doctor are gone now. i am temporarily alone again, staring out windows at construction workers on plots being developed into new expensive homes. if the lake is the moon than the land is mars. i'm looking for work and pray i get a call from a respectable establishment before the denny's around the corner calls. the place had felt like jar of vaseline, and the workers like flies trapped in its impasto.

i saw a seagull the other day missing a foot and thought of the war.