The Friend Maker

I miss the insecurity and potential false intimacy of LA. I moved to LA in the pre-cell phone era, and collected a headshot-size mailing envelope of phone numbers. I know because I just recently threw it out. My box hell continues. Leif keeps mailing more. Our storage locker was clearer larger than I thought, about the size of Narnia.

They were phone numbers given me by random people, “Call me!” and I don't know if I ever did, but I kept the collection because I found it funny. I meant, as sort of an art piece, to label each number with where I'd met each person. For instance: coffee shop (easy to identify, they’re written on cardboard cup cozies), line for a free movie followed by a survey, acquaintances of acquaintances, alleged agents, aspiring photographers, dog walkers, people offering to hook me up (with drugs, housing, sex, a career, you pretty much name it).

The last number I took in LA was from the bearded lady, Jessa, at the Venice Beach Freak Show (I know, redundant). She held Isabel for me while I admired their fire swallower and collection of two-headed creatures, and later she did her best to advise me on how to survive divorce.



No one has given me a number in Portland and I've had pleasant conversations with silly numbers of people: in the dog park, at Crafternoon, you name it. But nobody tells me their dark secrets, I get very little TMI. I could get it if I asked, because I could extract personal information from a fossilized rock, it's a gift, but no one automatically launches into their life story here. They are too content and I am too weary and depressed to ask. People talk about how beautiful each neighborhood is, what a wonderful site to hike Mt. Tabor, the Gorge, Sauvie Island (apparently a nudie beach) and other places are. Sometimes, hearing I am new to town, they give me a little advice on how to survive the rainy season, "get out of town/take vitamin D". But they don't need me here; they are too blissful in their healthy regimes and beer.

It is primarily for that reason that I date. I remember this from before I was married and it’s true again (I made no male friends while I was married, "come by OUR place" doesn't have the same ring). I can make male friends easily because they have incentive to call me. That is: the remotest chance of getting laid.

This is how I've gone to movies with company since I've been in Portland, seen "Star Trek in the Park", met the mummies at OMSI (the science museum), explored the waterfront and the McMenamins (countless old buildings restored as pubs).  I owe all this tourist activity to the body part I refer to, in my head, as "The Friend Maker".