Displaced in Portland

Glenda took this picture of me soon after we arrived in Oregon. We’d spent two years working in canneries and bars in Alaska, making a whole lot of money that we then went through in about three months.

At the end of it all we came to rest in Portland, where we rented a tiny apartment downtown.

We didn’t stay together long after that. I think we’d tended to be more tolerant of each other’s shortcomings up until then -- first in Seward when we were working long hours and living in a sort of communal arrangement with a small group of people …

… and then traveling around the country seeing friends and having a great time.

The breakup was amiable enough compared to what I’ve experienced in the past, although in the end she did get the dog.

And then less than two years later there I was a guest at her wedding, laughing with her mother and flirting with her sister.

I was fully prepared to dislike her new husband, but we’ve actually become pretty good friends. He even lent me $100 the other day.

And I like Oregon more than any place I’ve ever lived -- not only the mountains and forests but the people I run into in bookstores and bars and on the bus. “Isn’t this interesting?” a complete stranger said to me at the park the other day. “Look at how this ant is holding onto this bit of leaf.”

Anyway, now that Glenda and Robert have a baby we’ll probably drift apart more and more -- there being even less room for an ex-boyfriend around.

Just before she had the child, though, I slept on their couch one evening (after my then-girlfriend locked me out for the night), and Glenda’s face was the first thing I saw when I came to in the morning, hovering over me. She’d come to tell me she was driving Robert to work. And for a moment I felt completely displaced, neither in Alaska nor in Oregon, neither a boyfriend nor an ex-boyfriend, with the dog -- our dog -- curled up right there on the floor.

Perhaps I should go stay with my relatives in Texas for a while.