Beginnings, Again.

Here is an old quote from David Lynch's Twin Peaks - it still makes me chuckle:

Deputy Andy Brennan to his girlfriend: "Listen, the Tacoma Sperm Bank was looking for donors. Naturally, I applied because it was my civic duty... and I like whales. A routine physical revealed that I was sterile. Sure I thought that meant that I didn't have to take a bath. But then they told me the truth. Cheryl, I can't have babies. So how are you pregnant?"

It was the early 1990s and I found myself single again in my mid-30s. There was a lot of strangeness in my life during that period of time. Art was imitating life: the TV show Twin Peaks was very popular. The show was set in the Northwest so we thought we had a special bond with the log lady and Agent Cooper. Having lost all my local friends in the divorce settlement, I made new friends. Sunday evenings we would have "damn good pie and coffee" parties and watch the show. It felt good to have friends who didn't know what kind of horrible manipulative monster I was according to documents filed with the court.

Of course I still had my best friend and his wife - they were mine pursuant to the prenuptial agreement. It was always good to be with them but they were not local so we saw each other only infrequently. And don't forget, common use of email, text messaging and blogs was still a decade away. As a faculty member of two universities I had two email accounts but no one to whom I could send email.

My new friends permitted me a measure of catharsis that would not have been available with my family or even Andrew, my favorite bartender at Duke's where I ate dinner at the bar 3 or 4 nights a week. These were people my age who were on the verge of growing up, but not quite ready to strap on the spouse, kids and/or mortgage. And there I was, their new friend. I had done all those things and I had been spewn back into their world, like Jonah from the fish.

While I do not endorse over-indulgence in tobacco or liquor, things really did seem okay on the front porch of my fellow WC alum's home, enjoying that fine buzz that only Scotch can give when combined with the oxygen deprivation of a good cigar. (Our friend the Yak prompted this memory when suggesting we smoke one in my garage next time he is in town to show our SC solidarity.) We solved many of the world's problems, and all of our own, as the sky turned from pink to purple to black.

Through these friends, I made other friends, some of whom had grown up in the same small town as the Yak and his family. As Steven Wright says, "it's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it."

Starbucks was moments from erupting. Every street corner sported a latte cart and the owner/operator knew you and your drink order. It was generally thought that, if you could scrape together enough cash buy a cart, you could work short days and make great money. Like I said, the Starbucks eruption had yet to wipe out these hopeful entrepreneurs.

My office was on the third floor of a five-story historic building in Pioneer Square where Darrin McGavin (r.i.p.) as Carl Kolchak hunted underground for The Night Strangler, and paved the way for Mulder and Scully. Each morning the entryway smelled of the bleach used to clean the fetid aroma of urine that clung to the person who had slept and relieved himself there. The interior walls were oak paneled and exposed brick; an open-cage elevator ornamented with brass traveled slowly between floors. It was a small office; all together there were five of us.

It was December 5th, 1991, the week after Thanksgiving. The phone rang, and Joyce said, "the Pierce County Coroner is on line one." I picked up the phone and said my name. The voice on the other end of the line said, "What do you want us to do with the body?"

to be continued . . .