06 March 2002 ~ A wild pack of family dogs, Seattle, and Aberdeen...

"What's so funny?"

"Me and Louise got lost and accidentally went to Aberdeen! Ha ha ha ha ha!"

"Um... okay.....?"

[At least Dracor -- who was asleep in the lounge when Louise and I FINALLY made it safely home -- knows when not to ask because the answer might be stupid. Of all people, he's not the first one I'd have guessed to have the diplomacy not to ask. Particularly not since the rest of the evening involved dear Dracor spazzing out and uttering such profundities as: "I've never had a pizza with creamy white stuff on it before!"]

So! What IS so funny about accidentally going to Aberdeen?

Okay, we'll start at the beginning. So a couple of days ago, I screeched, "Louise, I wanna go to Seattle and see Modest Mouse on Friday!!!" She replied: "There's an all-ages show, and a 21+ show, and I'm going to the all-ages one on Thursday. Wanna come?"

So, I had her boyfriend buy me a ticket, and we're going to go see Modest Mouse on Thursday. Hell yeah. And to get ready for our expedition, we decided to play a couple of Modest Mouse CD's.

"Where's Modest Mouse from again? Isn't it--"

"Issaquah?"

"Heh! Issaquah!"

Now... what's so funny about Issaquah? *I* don't freaking know! NOTHING, really. I've been through it, or past it, but I've never stopped, had lunch, and taken a dump there, so I really have no room to judge Issaquah in any way, shape, or form. It's a little town someplace east-ish of Seattle, I think. But at that moment, Sir Isaac Brock, lead singer of Modest Mouse, began morosely singing about "a wild pack of family dogs" that "came runnin' through the yard one day," and it struck me as completely hilarious. I just had this awful mental image of Sir Isaac (whom I have never seen a picture of) as a dirty white trash kid in a ratty striped t'shirt, sitting in a dirty reclining lawn chair in front of a dirty trailer, watching as a pack of beagles and cocker spaniels carried his little sister off into the oblivion of mutts. I don't know; maybe you would've had to've been there. But for me, it was one of those moments of perfect clarity: the vision was so vivid and intimate that I could feel the mud squishing below the legs of the lawn chair. I could smell earthworms, and there was a lone eight-year-old across the street selling Girl Scout Cookies. And through this imagined land, well... along came this pack of wild family dogs... And Sir Isaac crooned about it sadly. Gahd love rock and roll.

Louise must have imagined the very same vision, because she giggled too and muttered: "Issaquah! Ha!"

Now, if I remember correctly, there followed a session of making wild fun of all the silly Washington town names we know. I mean, there's really no justification for THAT, either; I grew up on the freakin' Susquehanna River, and I'm making fun of ISSAQUAH? It just feels funny on our tongues still. So Louise said: "Heh! Snohomish!" And Helena replied: "Heh! Puyallup!"

"Tukwila!"
"Yakima!"
"Snoqualmie!"
"Aberdeen!"

A pause. A deafening pause.

"What's so funny about Aberdeen?"

"I dunno."

We giggled again.

"Kurt Cobain is from there. Well, I mean, he WAS from there. You know, before Courtney killed him."

"Courtney went to Evergreen, did you know that? I mean, she went here. She didn't GRADUATE, of course."

"Yeah."

We giggled.

"Heh! Aberdeen!"

And suddenly, the Issaquah mental image -- complete with family dogs -- mixed with my as-of-yet inconclusive mental image of Aberdeen. Instead of a dirty little kid in a dirty lawn chair, I imagined a muddy older guy in a flannel shirt. With a chainsaw, suspenders, a three-thousand year-old Chevy Impala in his yard, and muddy boots imprinted with the Goodyear logo on the soles.

I'm telling you, I've got a vivid imagination. It may have caused me to flunk a few classes back in high school, but my imagination never ceases to amuse me. I imagined my lumberjack as having an angst-ridden, heroin-addicted son. I imagined a wild pack of family dogs running through the lumberjack's yard and eating his son. The dogs looked like Courtney Love. I started laughing so hard I was practically weeping, and commanded Louise to play the dog-song again, which she did, murmuring: "this song is so SAD!"

...which, of course, cracked ME right the hell up...

Cap'n Isaac, look what you freakin' started...

So! Then Louise and I decided to go to Seattle, which we did... Louise checked out the record shops in the U-District, and I checked out the cute people in the U-District. As a matter of fact, it wouldn't have mattered at all whether there were record shops OR cute people in the U-District; I was just ecstatic that I actually got us TO the U-District in a car, at night, without a map, having only been there twice in my entire life. (OH, I rock SO hardcore!) Louise bought a Kate Bush record and a Cure CD, and I winked at a cute boy eating dinner with his girlfriend at an All-Vegetarian buffet. A good time was had by all.

Well, stuff closes "early" in Seattle, at least according to the Gospel of the Cali-Kid, which dictates that ten o'clock in the evening is "early." (Cali-kids, you know not what you say! Closing at four in the afternoon is early... Binghamton kids were freakin' ecstatic when Music City started staying open until eight! Ohhhh, poor sweet Cali-kids who know now what you have!) So Louise and I decided to get some coffee.

...Now, I have a HUGE problem with getting coffee at Starbucks, Tully's, or Seattle's Best. I have a real problem with the idea that perhaps MY latté provided the final four-dollars of profit necessary to finally put a Starbucks in Binghamton, thereby taking business away from Lost Dog, which has neat jazz and cool bathrooms, which sad Binghamtonian artist kids and stoner kids enjoy. Can't, in good conscience, support such an effort. Nope.

So, we went back to Capital Hill, because from my second day in Seattle, the B&O coffeehouse was my favorite... There's something just so damned cool about it. Maybe it's the americanos. They make them with speed, I think.

Louise and I got lost on Capital Hill. No! I take that back. We did not get LOST. We were NOT, at ANY point, LOST. I knew EXACTLY where WE were. I just didn't know where the coffeeshop was. Or rather, I knew where the coffeeshop was, AND I knew where we were, but I wasn't sure what stood in between us and the coffeeshop. There's an Olive Way, an Olive Street, an East Olive Way, and, presumably, an East Olive Street. Belmont breaks into two roads at some point, and apparently intersects with ALL the Olives. Then there's Denny Way, which is maybe very long and which doesn't really appear to travel in any particular direction for very long... All these freaky roads all RIGHT next to each other, and pretty close to where they ALL converge -- sort of -- is the B&O.

I thought Louise was going to kill me if I led her around anymore. But what the hell; I TOLD her to dress warm! I TOLD her it would be advantageous to just park someplace and we'd walk or take busses! Cali-kids, sweet Cali-kids, you know not what you bitch about! She cheered up though when I taught her the downtown street names in order. She cheered up even more when we finally got to the B&O and she tasted her americano.

Excerpts from our stupid conversation at the B&O:

Helena, eating the best Bailey's cheesecake in the world: "Have you ever seen that movie 'American Pie'? Because I was just thinking, if I'd had to lose my virginity to a dessert, it would be this cheesecake!"

Louise, poking at her dessert: "I ordered the Greek pastry because I didn't think it would be very sweet!" (She orders a GREEK PASTRY because she doesn't think it'll be SWEET? Cripes! I often think Louise is too intelligent to be such an air-head, but intelligence is evidently no indicator of any such thing... I guess we could have figured THAT out from talking to ME, but still...)

Helena, admiring the black-and-white checkered countertops in the bathroom, and staring dreamily into space: "You know when you were going on a car-trip, and you didn't have to go to the bathroom, but your parents were all like, 'Try anyway'? Heh! That's funny!"

Uh... anyway...

So we left the B&O. And decided to drive around downtown -- the area near the water, the Pike Place Market and all that... But there's not a whole lot of stuff to SEE when you're driving, and not a whole lot of downtown to drive through. Plus, I didn't really know how to get onto the freeway again [But by NO means was I lost! I knew EXACTLY where we were, and exactly where the freeway was...], so, on a whim, I yelped, "left here!"

Louise, who is even more of a space cadet than I am at times, did at she was told without questioning, and went on talking about whatever she'd been talking about. Good gahd, it was a weird power dynamic we had going on! She had the pedals under her feet and the power to over-ride my musical selections, but from the passenger's side, I was steering her. A scary thought. How many times have I been to Seattle? I've spent a total of like, fourteen days there? IF that? I may know Pike Street by heart, but in general, I could get lost in a bathroom. I happen to have done my fair share of wandering, and I happen to have read a few Tom Robbins books set in Seattle, but I'm NO authority. I don't know why the hell Louise was trusting me...

So, we ended up on Yesler Ave. I wracked my brain for things I remember as being on Yesler... Hm... It came to me: Yesler turns into something else, which turns into something else, which turns into something else, which goes into Leschi, which is ALL the way over on the other side of the hill, down by Lake Washington. And from there, you can spit and hit my friend Brian's house. Well, almost. So, what the hell... "Wanna go see my friend Brian?"

"Sure!"

The trouble came when we came to a red light. A particularly irritating red light. I told Louise to take a right. I don't know WHY I told her that, because I really had NO freakin' idea where we'd end up if we took a right... For SOME reason, she kept listening to me... And somehow -- there must be a Deity... -- we found Brian's house. On the first try. I rang the bell, then realized it was like, midnight, decided he was probably asleep, and chose to make a run for it. Duh. Who cares. I'll probably see Brian at the Modest Mouse show anyway.

And so Louise and I headed back toward downtown -- via the route I actually KNOW -- miraculously found the freeway, stuffed Modest Mouse back into the CD-player, and were off to Olympia, thus ending our adventure!

...or so we thought...

Blah, blah, blah... Driving, driving, driving... Singing along with the CD... Talking, talking, talking... Highway hypnosis...

Louise and I got into a rather impassioned discussion about... what? I can't even freaking remember. Something. Probably Modest Mouse. Maybe dogs. Who knows. I remember being very intense about the subject, whatever it was. I remember passing the sign that says "Sleater-Kinney" on it, and mumbling to myself -- and Louise, who wasn't listening -- "Hm. That's a band!" Now, Sleater-Kinney, in addition to being a band, is also a road in a town called Lacey (which isn't very fun to make fun of, really, because it doesn't have a neat name...). And the exit for that road is pretty close to the exit we were supposed to take. But I wasn't really thinking about that. I was thinking about bands and coffee and gahd knows what else. Oh yeah, we were talking about how we were going to call Olympia "OlyWa" from now on, so that it's got a freaky name to match all its freaky neighbors.

About twenty minutes, maybe half an hour AFTER we passed that sign, it began to rain. Then it began to snow. Then it began to snow HARD.

And Louise and I looked out the windows, realized we hadn't seen our exit, the CD had stopped ages earlier (the CD we were listening to, aptly titled, "This is a Long Drive For Someone With Nothing to Think About," is EXACTLY the right length to listen to, going between Seattle and Olympia...), and it was very, very dark...

"Did we miss our exit?"

"We passed the Sleater-Kinney exit about twenty minutes, half an hour ago, I think?"

"You're shitting me..."

"No. Um... So... our exit should either be coming up very soon, or we passed it a long time ago."

"We must have passed it a LONG-ASS time ago!"

"Oh."

"Helena, I'm scared."

"Don't be scared. What's the worst that could happen?"

"Um... we could run out of gas?"

"Out of gas, out of road, out of car, don't know how I'm going to go..." I sang, then added, more optimistically: "Um, yeah, but we've got half a tank of gas, and it can't be THAT far back to OlyWa... What's the second worst that could happen?"

"We could end up in Aberdeen and get a heroin addiction?"

I giggled. Louise almost giggled. She wailed instead at the last minute.

At that point, the hand of the Lord Almighty (who probably looks a lot like Sergeant Isaac, though I've never seen a picture of either of them...) came down from Heaven (Heaven-quashish, WA?) to intervene. Forty feet ahead of us loomed a sign: "Aberdeen, next exit."

I can't remember if Louise and I screamed. At this point, both of us were pretty fucked up from those americanos. They make them with speed; have I mentioned that yet? So screaming seemed like a good idea, but I can't remember if we actually did it.

"Take the next exit," I said. "We'll pull into a gas station or something and I'll ask directions."

Louise looked genuinely afraid. Her voice was riddled with strife. It would be funny if I was making up her terror at the idea of actually entering into the town of Aberdeen, but it's even funnier because she was genuinely freaked out. REALLY freaked out. Why? Who knows! Maybe she'd had the same vision of the same lumberjack with the chainsaw and the suspenders? Maybe she's not aware that Courtney Puppy-Love and her pack of fiendish hellhounds no longer live in the area waiting to prey on heroin addicts and trailer-dwellers's little sisters? Who knows. But Louise was truly frightened by Aberdeen.

"I don't WANT to go to Aberdeen!"

Well, we CAN'T make a U-turn on the FREEWAY! We've got to pull over sometime, and I don't know when there will be another place to exit! Plus, I'll just run into a gas station -- look, there's a Texaco! -- and ask for directions! You don't even have to get out! What's the WORST that could happen!?"

"We could get car-jacked and raped and robbed in Aberdeen by all the heroin addicts?"

"But we WON'T!"

We pulled into a gas station. We pulled up directly behind a big, burly man in a flannel shirt who was pumping gas into a shitty, beat-up old truck. The man was wearing muddy black boots. And suspenders. My eyes widened. It was too dark for me to see Louise's expression, but I bet hers did too.

"Um... Louise, that guy is WEARING SUSPENDERS!"

"Whoa. Yeah." A long pause. "Are you sure you're going to be okay going in there by yourself?"

"Yeah, of course! What could happen? Are you sure you're going to be okay staying out here in the car by yourself?"

"Yeah. I can lock myself in."

Louise locked herself into the car. I giggled madly, then looked around for any sign of rabid Saint Bernards. The lumberjack gave me a peculiar glance. Who KNOWS what was going through his mind. I was dressed like some freaky tree-huggin' hippie from Evergreen, and he was dressed like some freaky trashy lumberjack. We sized each other up. I gave him a little wave and ran into the gas station.

The woman working there appeared to be missing a few teeth and reminded me of Ronette Pulaski's mother from "Twin Peaks." Or, for a more well-known reference point, ANYBODY on Unsolved Mysteries.

She gave me directions though, and I was just confirming them when Louise, pale and slumped, walked in. The gas-station lady said: "And don't worry about it; I've missed that exit a lotta times and ended up here instead."

I asked, QUITE seriously: "...you missed the Oly exit and ended up here and just STAYED?" The gas-station lady giggled at me. She probably thought I was nuts. I giggled with her. Louise's eyes grew wide looking at the missing-teeth lady, and we left.

"What did you TELL her?" Louise almost hissed as we walked back to the car.

"I asked for directions, that's all. We just go right out this road right here and take the first left."

"You didn't say I was out here hiding in the car because I was scared that if I stepped out of the car in this town I'd get a heroin addiction, did you?"

"Heh! No!"

We drove back to OlyWa in the snow. It wasn't sticking to the road, which was good, because Louise doesn't know how to drive in snow. It was freaking her out enough just coming out of the sky; it didn't need to be on the ground TOO. I hummed the "Star Wars" theme at her, as my mom used to do when the flakes get really big and come rushing at your windshield. Louise did not appreciate the humor. Or maybe she did. Sometimes it's hard to tell.

So we made it back to the school in one piece. Or rather, in two pieces, three if you count the car.

...At which point we accidentally woke up Dracor, who began spouting his usual strange crap:

"What time is it?" I asked.
"Four-thirty."
"Ugh. Don't tell me THAT..."
"Okay, it's four-twenty-seven."
"You lied the first time, huh?"
"I didn't LIE! I ROUNDED!"
"Next time somebody catches me lying to them, I'm going to tell them that: I didn't LIE! I ROUNDED!"

With that, both of us burst into helpless laughter, after which Dracor serenaded Louise and I with Irish drinking songs, during which I believe I passed out.

Would you like to hear the moral of the story?

We don't have one.

But if we did, it would involve not getting too hyper whilst listening to Modest Mouse.

...Ohhhh, I fear Thursday's concert!!!

~Helena*

"...And I’m sittin’ outside my mudlake, waiting for the pack to take me away, and right after I die the dogs start floating up towards the glowing sky. Now they’ll receive their rewards, now they will receive their rewards..." --Modest Mouse, "Wild Pack of Family Dogs."