Only Crazy People

I was missing city life in general and Portland in particular the night I met the biker who loved me for three days. I'd been away from Portland for almost a year and here was a man who'd lived in Oregon and who not only knew the music of Lucinda Williams but was a big fan. I figured the universe had put me on that barstool next to that man to ease my homesickness.

Lucinda was my road sister on that trip from Oregon to Arizona. The six-CD changer held only Lucinda. I knew the words to every song. I wanted to go to Louisiana with her and her brothers and hit all the best bars, drop a quarter into a jukebox to see what it would do, hang out behind a dimly-lit bar just waiting to taste a certain someone's essence.

About six months after the biker's disappearance I ran into him at the bar. He asked if I'd heard of The Wreckers and I said no. "Wait here," he said. He rode home and returned with a copy of "Stand Still and Look Pretty."

If the same taste in music made for happily ever afters, me and that biker, we would've been together for more than three days.

If you haven't heard it, check out Michelle Branch and Jessica Harp doing Only Crazy People Fall In Love With Me. I can relate. Maybe the biker can too.

Those Three Days

This past week I've killed two scorpions in my bodega. One I beat to death with a broom. The other froze, tail up, in front of the fridge when I clicked on the light. I reached over for the boric acid and tossed a spoonful on its back. It scurried under a box of books. If boric acid works with cockroaches it may work with scorpions. Had the scorpion been outside, I would've left it alone but in the bodega, no. I didn't want to reach into that box of books and get stung, or find one as a stowaway should I ever leave.

Scorpions - and getting the trailer screens replaced - remind me of this Lucinda Williams song:

Scorpions crawl across my screen
Make their home beneath my skin
Underneath my dress stick their tongues
Bite through the flesh down to the bone
And I have been so fuckin' alone
Since those three days

Once I was loved forever for three days. He was a handsome biker with curly blonde hair bleached even blonder by all those Arizona bike-riding days without a helmet. He was tall with sexy crooked teeth and emerald green eyes. He said he could feel it down to his bones that we'd be together forever. He couldn't wait for me to meet his mom. He kissed me and said I was a breath of fresh air because I didn't smoke or do drugs.

Then he disappeared.

Rumor had it he was shacking up with a skinny tweaker biker chick who smoked.