As mentioned in a previous episode, when I was living in the Raleigh Hills rental house with Charlie, who was absent much of the time traveling on business, I had the occasion to meet his little sister. Her full name was Lucinda, but everyone knew her as Lucy, and when she came to my door one day to collect something of Charlie’s she left me with the distinct impression that destiny would bring us together at some point. As it turned out, that point was shortly after I started waiting dinner shifts at Jake’s when she showed up in the dining room one evening dressed to kill, but on a date with another guy.
Undeterred, I decided to deviate from my typical pattern of waiting for a female to make it blatantly obvious she was interested before I attempted to court her, so I called Lucy and to my pleasant surprise she readily agreed to a dinner date.
Later I learned that the guy she was in Jake’s with was a boy and a friend but not a boyfriend and the appearance was designed purely to pique my interest. Which it did.
Lucy lived in a funky little house in a funky little neighborhood ten miles north of Portland near the bridge to Sauvie Island, a sprawling agrarian tract along the Columbia River. I picked her up in my normal first-date state of mind which was a maelstrom of sexual excitement, false bravado, and abject terror, but on the drive downtown we conversed easily, which you’ll recall from previous episodes didn’t come easily to me. We proceeded to a relatively new and very hip Chinese restaurant called Uncle Chen where we spent long hours over a lovely dinner which was notable for three reasons.
My goal for the evening was to impress Lucy enough that there could be a second date. My stretch goal was to impress her enough that I wouldn’t need a second one to end up in her bed. Bear in mind that in order to accomplish such lofty goals, most young men will say things that are totally out of character and often simply not true.
Which is why during the course of dinner I told Lucy that I wasn’t a big fan of sports and rarely watched it on television. That false statement would come back to haunt me countless times. It’s also why when she told me she didn’t eat red meat I agreed it was bad for people’s health and the environment, not to mention the animals whence the meat came, and I said I only eat fish, but that equally false statement would plague me on a daily basis for the next year or so and later come back to haunt me in a way I couldn’t imagine.
The third reason dinner was notable was that afterward, I assumed due to my charm and devastating good looks but no doubt in part because I lied through my sticky rice-covered teeth, Lucy invited me back to her house where I spent the night and continued to do so until she and I moved into a downtown apartment about six months later.
I should add a notable note – due to this propitious turn of events, the night before our date would be the last night I ever slept in my parent’s basement. Finally.
I missed out on the official ‘Summer of Love’ back in 1967 because I was 10 years old and my love at the time did not extend beyond board games and baseball. But it’s fair to say that the summer of 1979 was my shot at redemption, and I took it. I had become an avid runner and because of frequent 12-mile circuits around Sauvie Island coupled with the new dietary restrictions I had foolishly agreed to in a moment of weakness, I became a lean, mean machine with a body fat index likely in the single digits. I got sick of eating fish, fruits, and vegetables, but relished a sunny spring in the best shape of my life, and in the company of a hot girlfriend.
After a couple months of quasi-wedded bliss, Lucy abruptly announced she had decided to attend college. In Colorado. This was my first clue that she was prone to mood swings, some of which were rather dramatic and long-lived, but at that point I chalked it up to youth and the social programming we receive about the value of higher education.
That’s not to say I wasn’t wounded by the decision and wondered what I’d done to drive her away. Which is why I told her I was wounded by the decision and asked what I’d done to drive her away. I don’t remember her exact words, but the answer was some form of the common ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ kiss-off-line and she explained she wasn’t ready to give up her career aspirations to play house.
The unintended consequence of Lucy’s decision was that I swapped a vivacious young woman for her swarthy brother as a roommate, and although I liked Charlie, I did not consider it a fair trade. That said, he also brought the loveable pig Frisco which was a welcome amusement and Charlie was a willing and able participant in a couple of epic summer parties at the house we dubbed ‘Deluxe Daiquiri Binges’, of which I will share no details because I can’t remember any.
As the summer wore itself out, apparently so too had Lucy’s thirst for knowledge and I was thrilled when she returned to Portland. And me. Recalling my time in the tiny doll house with Maura and her sister Noel a couple years back, I was soon reminded that when it comes to love nests, three is definitely a crowd, so it wasn’t long before tension on the home front built to such a point it became obvious something, or more accurately somebody, had to give. But not before the three of us took full advantage of the beautiful Indian summer weather for some outdoorsy activities including a couple of backpacking trips which I do remember the details of.
On the first one, we departed for a multi-night hike in the Three Sisters Wilderness area loaded for bear with what we deemed to be ample supplies of freeze-dried food and liquid alcohol. Taking an overweight and slightly crippled dog along would’ve been inhumane and likely limited our range of exploration to the trailhead parking lot, but we took him anyway. And to my astonishment, Charlie outfitted him with a pack and a fairly heavy load so he could be even more miserable.
We spent the first night on the shores of Green Lakes at the base of Broken Top with a spectacular view of the South Sister and were so enamored with our situation we drank every last drop of the booze we brought.
Which is why after a light breakfast Charlie and I donned our running shoes and jogged the five miles to the trailhead, drove into Bend to buy more, bandaged the bloody hands I’d mangled after tripping and falling on the way down, then ran back up the five miles to Green Lakes to collect Lucy and the dog and continue our Quixotic quest into the wilderness.
On the next overnight excursion we humanely left Frisco behind with a strictly portioned ration of food and easy access to water. On doctor’s orders, the Pig’s diet was limited to dry kibbles and the occasional table scrap, but garbage he rooted out in the neighborhood ensured that he remained true to his name and morbidly obese.
He was also resourceful and relentless in ferreting out hiding places, so to save him from himself we secured a wire rack to the kitchen ceiling with S-hooks and kept the 50-pound bag of dog food safely out of his reach. We returned home to discover that at some point during the weekend Frisco had received a manna from heaven because one of the S-hooks gave way and the sack had fallen to the floor and exploded. We found him lying on his side in the kitchen with a badly distended stomach, unable to move and, despite obvious embarrassment, gamely trying to reach the last of the kibbles with his tongue.
By the time the leaves turned and dropped, it was late October and obvious that the crowded house situation needed to be resolved so Lucy and I resolved to find another place to live. Within a matter of days we were moving all of our worldly possessions into one of those ubiquitous old brick apartment buildings in downtown Portland and wrestling said possessions up to the fourth floor in a creaky old elevator. The charmingly old and cramped apartment was within easy walking distance of Portland State and Jake’s Crawfish and where we would spend the next two years living, as it turns out, the happiest time of our lives together.
The fact that I’d started eating red meat again and had convinced Lucy to do it with me had something to do with how happy I was, but it certainly wasn’t the main reason. And before we close this chapter, I should point out there was one red meat she still refused to eat and wouldn’t even permit me to do so in her presence. Lamb. Which happens to be my favorite meat. And you should file that factoid away for future episodes.