weekend vacations, deadheads

and fact-check wins

Now that we have a beloved cat who hates to be alone, Kaden and I might never take a vacation again. Not that we ever really have. Years ago, an online friend mentioned never having been on a vacation, and it got me thinking about what constituted a “vacation.” It stuck with me, and I even based a short story on a couple arguing over it. When I was a kid, vacation either meant visiting relatives or a camping trip somewhere in Washington – often Sol Duc Hot Springs – or Oregon for a few days, maybe one night in a cheap motel. I have many fond memories of camping, and less fond memories of the four of us having drawn out fights about what kind of a place to get dinner, although that couldn’t have happened more than once, when my little sister and I were both old enough to have a say. The summer I graduated from high school, after I had moved out, my family stayed at the lodge at the Oregon Caves for a couple nights. I was getting into vintage furniture then, and I remember the Stickley chairs more than the caves. But what I remember most was getting dropped off back home at my apartment, before noon on a Monday, where one of my roommates, watching MTV with the blinds drawn, greeted me “Fuck, let’s smoke a bowl!”

At the end of the summer, my two roommates and I drove from Olympia to the Midwest to…visit relatives. We’d smoked out with some hippie kids in a rest area. They gave us the directions to a Rainbow Gathering in Colorado. On the way back, we decided to go. I cannot believe we got there – to the middle of nowhere in the mountains – with second-hand, handwritten directions, off the map – and this was 2001 – we only had paper maps, no phone, no GPS. The shirtless, bearded men who greeted us checked our bottle of whiskey at the entrance. One roommate was kind of dopesick and the other, my BFF, was caregiving, and we were all on mushrooms. I stayed up all frosty night in front of the fire at tea camp, serving tea, everyone calling me Brother…I mean Sister. It was September, and we left before it snowed, arriving back at our apartment in the middle of the night. Kicked out our Quiznos co-workers who had been staying there. They’d let some boy sleep in my room and he’d littered the floor with crumpled huffing rags. In the morning, September 11, my BFF tapped on my door. “Are you up? They’re bombing the Pentagon.” We called our parents, who didn’t know we were home. We wondered how long it would take for the news to reach the Gathering in the woods.

Kaden and I fell in love on a road trip two summers later. We’d been roommates in a different apartment, same complex, for three months. We slept in rest areas, without a care for safety, as I’d done with my previous roommates. In the first years of our relationship, Kaden and I took road trips as vacations. Or we’d do weekend trips to the coast, or Eastern Washington, or Oregon. Stay in a cheap motel, drink beer and watch TV. God, I miss that.

2012, cheap motel, with beer. Taken from my zine “It’s All Right.”

From late 2010 to early 2014, Kaden and I lived and worked together, and it was the most contentious time of our relationship. He had a severe running injury; I lost my ability to taste for ten weeks. The neighbor with whom we shared a wall left a note asking us to stop screaming. We went so far as to rent a tiny office space downtown to have a place where we could each be alone. Kaden got into the habit of spending Thanksgiving by himself at McMenamin’s White Eagle. My rowdy family overwhelmed him. He recommended a solo stay. In the summer of 2012, when I was 29, I took myself to McMenamin’s Edgefield. I was so excited to read the just-released, hyper-lauded “How Should a Person Be,” by Sheila Heti, which was being extolled as the best, if not only, book about female friendship to ever have existed. But it was really just about wanting to be sexually humiliated by a man! I have never been so disappointed in my life.

At the Edgefield, I enjoyed the soaking pool, ate a glorified grilled cheese for dinner, and brought a beer back to my room to relax in bed. The people with whom I shared a wall began having performative loud sex, the woman most definitely faking it, until she wasn’t. I got up and went to one of the many bars on the premises, Jerry’s Ice House. Its gimmick was that they played only Grateful Dead bootlegs. This is the content of the note I wrote while I was there:

People in ugly fancy clothes getting wasted! What a bad idea! Weddings fucking suck! A lady in a fancy pink dress tottering on wedges with a stupid shawl TOTALLY FARTED IN MY FACE. [next page] 47 age of grl who farted

When I charged my drink to my room number, this woman’s husband, who was loud and obnoxious, said, “I’ll remember that.” I told him, “Don’t bother.” I left a note for the bartender telling him I was fascinated by the Dead’s history of bootlegs but I’d never really listened to them. Maybe I was thanking him for playing an inspired selection. When I checked out in the morning, he’d left a printed note in my room’s mailbox with links to Grateful Dead bootleg archives! It was just about the sweetest thing a strange man has ever done for me. Certainly the sweetest thing a bartender has done for me! But we didn’t even have internet at our house in 2012, lol.

(Years later, when Kaden and I went back, they’d expanded to allow Pink Floyd bootlegs at Jerry’s Ice House, which I did not appreciate. The butch ex-tweeker bartender called me sweetheart, dismissively, and I was offended).

No one has tried harder than me to love the Grateful Dead. Remember in the last episode of Freaks and Geeks when the Deadhead says they wish they never heard American Beauty so they could experience it for the first time? Like, I wanted to feel that way about it! I have the capacity to love music that much. I listened to American Beauty every commute to and from work last February to August. I haven’t listened to it since. The first time I heard about Deadheads, I’m sure, was in a Babysitter’s Club book (you want a book about female friendship?). Dawn’s younger brother, from California, and his best friend were arguing over who was a bigger Deadhead. I am not sure if the term was explained in the text, or if I asked my mom, or if my mom would even have known the answer to that question, despite being born in 1949.

I remain enamored with Deadhead subculture, whereby one leaves their entire life behind to go on tour¹. My novel-in-progress is, in part, about that. In our MFA novel workshop, my professor backed me up: Yes, in the late 60s, someone might go to a Grateful Dead show and seemingly vanish. What if my roommates and I had stayed at the Rainbow Gathering and missed 9/11?

I wrote a scene at a Grateful Dead show in Portland while [high and] listening to the actual 1969 show I was referencing, available through their extensive bootleg archive. I derive pleasure from being as historically accurate as possible, and the Grateful Dead – well, their fanbase – have made it easy. My thesis advisor fact-checked another one of my stories referencing a 1982 show. I was like you doubted me?! I double-check moon phases, weather; I recently fact-checked myself on whether the term “near-death experience” would be used in 1965 and IT WAS NOT COINED UNTIL 1972! My BEST fact-check win was when I was writing a story that took place the week of Christmas 1985, and one of the characters was a substitute teacher. I was like dumbass, she wouldn’t be teaching. But then I discovered that the Seattle School District was on strike in September 1985, and had to hold classes for most of Winter Break!

This year, Kaden and I didn’t go anywhere during Winter Break, although we had vague plans to visit my parents in Texas, and also bought tickets to see Team Dresch and The Need in Portland but gave them away. Kaden was off for almost six weeks and I’m not wage-working, and we stayed home with the cat. We love that little guy. I hope someday we will find a cat sitter we are comfortable with. Because we have to go to the Edward Gorey House while we’re living in this region. But it’s only an hour and a half away. We could do a day trip.

1. This is a great feature-length documentary on YouTube: Tie Died Grateful Dead Parking Lot Scene Documentary (the parts about the modified vans are especially good).