Now I have four!

Somehow showing you a picture of my kitchen feels embarrassingly intimate. Like you just walked in on me in the shower or something…

 

I’m all super amped up cause I just cooked the first cook with the brand new GIANT cast iron. I mean, we already had the normal size cast iron. It’s 10 inches in diameter. It’s like, the first thing we bought when we moved out of the car and into the apartment. We pretty much had sleeping bags on the floor and a wireless router and a cast iron for a minute there. And a nice squishy bath mat for some reason. 

Anyway, I had that one for a while and it got all nice and seasoned and loved and broken in. Then after we moved into this new place and quit drinking so fucking much (serious drain on your finances, at least if you drink the way we were), we got the egg-size cast iron which is super cute and blue on the outside and just right for cooking two eggs in the morning. And then I found another normal size (10 inches) cast iron at a thrift store with a cool wooden handle so you don’t burn your hand. And now we can cook two different things at once which is super amazing. 

But I almost always want to make a bunch of food. The way I’ve been eating recently is I’m trying to mostly just eat meat and veggies. Which means you eat a lot of meat and a metric fuck ton of veggies. Which is awesome. But it also overflows your normal-sized cast iron all the time! And then things spill everywhere and just don’t get cooked evenly and you get kinda stressed out. Fortunately, they make 12-inch cast iron pans. And that’s pretty much the reason I decided to get a job. 

I felt like I hadn’t had enough veggies in my diet recently, so tonight I made beet fries in the oven and summer squash and onions and kale with cauliflower rice (like, you throw cauliflower in a food processor and eat it instead of rice. Fucking awesome!) in my brand-new giant cast iron. And I learned that my cooking is like a goldfish. In that it will grow to fit the size of the container you put it in. So it was a little overflowing. But not stressful at all. Only delicious. It’s like, so heavy that I totally can’t pick it up with one hand – I could barely even carry it through the store to buy it – but it feels sooo good to cook with! I seriously think I have like a cooking fetish or something. I’m not gonna be able to sleep tonight cause I can’t stop thinking about my new giant cast iron…

I Found it on the Ground

It just occurred to me that how much I like a city has a lot to do with what I can find on the ground there. On the ground or in the trash. 

I think that’s maybe ultimately why I appear to have formed a pretty negative opinion of New York City. I’ve been here like a week and the only noteworthy things I’ve found on the ground are a red feather-y thing which I’m going to try to make into jewelry and a magnet with a kid eating drumsticks and wearing a bib that says, “I heart grandpa’s chicken.” 

Shit, I was in Venice Beach for a week and I found two almost-full packs of cigarettes, a couple of grams of pot, a Tom Robbins book, a pair of Converse and a ton of other stuff that I’ve already forgotten about. And I found a bunch of delicious food, a nalgene and a french press in perfect condition in the trash. 

The only thing I’ve found in the trash in New York is a beer that I had put there five minutes earlier when a cop made me throw it out. Oh yeah, and a stack of pornos.

To be fair, I’ve mostly only been in Manhattan and a little bit of Brooklyn, but still. With however many millions of people walking all over this city at all hours of the day every day, you’d think there would be more interesting shit dropped all over the place. Maybe New Yorkers hold on to their stuff better than Californians. Or maybe it’s just that other New Yorkers are finding all the good stuff before I get to it.

Whatever the reason, I’m pretty over this city now. I would like to get back to San Francisco where people regularly put stuff they don’t need anymore out on the sidewalk and you’re always walking by stereos and nice furniture and piles of clothes and books and anything else you can think of. 

This is all I want

Some day, not necessarily soon but some day, I dream of owning a really good cast-iron pan. Like, one that I’ve owned and cooked everything in for years. So it’s got layers and delicious layers of butter and olive oil and coconut oil and grease from all kinds of meat and a little bit of every spice and flavor I can imagine all cooked into it, going into every new thing I make, giving it that flavor that only my pan can give. And everything I make in it will come out beautifully and taste delicious and it will be super easy to clean and I will never want to cook with any other pan ever again. 

I can imagine this pan exactly: what it will feel like in my hands, the aroma it will give off just from being heated, how the egg I fry in it for breakfast every morning will taste. But I can’t imagine how I’m ever gonna acquire this pan. 

This desire is completely at odds with my other main desire in life, which is to constantly be traveling around with no more than what fits on my back. So I don’t really know when or if it will ever happen. And this makes me sadder than you might imagine it would.

I absolutely cannot think of anything else to add to this little story. It seems to have no point at all, but to really want to be expressed nonetheless. So there you have it: I really really want a fucking well-seasoned cast-iron pan. 

Oregon

I’m in love with Oregon. Which is perfect, cause it’s where I was born. So it’s already like a magical fairyland where the story of Stephanie begins. And it would be totally unfortunate if I found out that it actually sucked. Which it doesn’t. So that’s ok.

People are super fucking nice here. Like, most places, if you’re sitting outside a gas station with a pack, they tell you (with varying degrees of politeness) to leave. Here they offer to buy you smokes and tell you that they wish they had the balls to do what you’re doing.

And it’s beautiful. Duh. It’s like Washington but brighter green. And covered in blackberries. I mean, fucking covered. I had a friend out here who had a little farm and had a bunch of goats for the sole purpose of eating blackberry plants so that other things had a chance to grow. I can’t even imagine being out here when all the plants have berries on them; there would be more blackberries than you could ever eat. There are blackberry  plants by every hitch-out spot, by every squat, on every sidewalk. I would be making myself sick with them every day if they were ripe.

Oh and hitchhiking is totally legal. No signs anywhere saying “No pedestrians or whatever else past this point.” You can be on the on-ramp or walk down the interstate or whatever the fuck you want and cops will leave you alone. I actually haven’t even spoken to a cop since I’ve been in Oregon. I’m pretty happy about that.

And they make great beer. Like, lots of it. My very first favorite beer when I first started to appreciate beer was Deschutes Black Butte Porter, brewed in Oregon. And they make Rogue here. Have you ever had any Rogue beer? Go try some. They sell it in those fancy 22 oz. bottles in places that sell fancy beer. Everything they make is delicious. We went on a date to a Rogue brewpub in Eugene and drank a bunch of different ridiculously delicious beer.

Ok, and also Portland is awesome. It’s my new favorite. I can’t even explain why. I just really fucking like the vibe there and there seems to always be interesting shit going on. It just feels comfortable, you know? Like a place I could totally belong.

Also, can we just talk about Voodoo Donuts? Just for like a second? Cause I’m really excited about this place. If nothing else, I’m gonna totally come back to Oregon just to eat more delicious donuts. I didn’t even make it into the one in Portland. There was always a line like out the door and around the corner. But their entire outside wall is glitter. Not like it’s a wall with some glitter on it, but the whole fucking wall is goddamn glitter. Their donuts could taste like asshole and I would still love the place. And the donuts come in awesome pink boxes. And don’t taste like asshole at all.

We got a free donut outside the Portland store, just for standing there with packs on not wanting to wait in line. Some guy just gave us one from his pink box. It was a donut with oreos on it. Ok, I don’t even like donuts. Like, I pretty  much think they suck. But this thing was fucking amazing. I mean, c’mon. It had oreos on top of it.

So when we got to Eugene we went to the one there which is the same idea but minus the glitter and the line. We got a donut with Cap’n Crunch on it and one with chocolate, oreos and peanut butter. Like, what? Who does that? Or actually, why don’t all people who make donuts do that? I never knew donuts could actually be delicious.

I even liberated some pink converse from a thrift store in Eugene and started calling them my voodoo donut shoes.

Whatever. That was probably way too many words about donuts. My point is: I love Oregon. This is where I’m from. In this weird, I’ve hardly been here, I don’t know much about it kind of way. But still, I began here. And it’s beautiful and even feels kinda homey. So everything is good.

Why Don’t We Do it in the Road?

Hi. I have nothing interesting to say right now. I just want to brag about how I just had sex on the side of the interstate. Like, basically on the shoulder, behind the little two foot tall guardrail wall thingy. I don’t really think anybody could see us. But it’s totally possible that they could cause I wasn’t really thinking about them at the moment. We were walking down the interstate somewhere around Salem cause you’re allowed to do that in Oregon, and I kept seeing bushes and stuff that looked like places you could fuck. Oh, and we had both been super horny all day. And finally we got to the little wall and I was like, “No, seriously. Come here.” And he did. And we fucked. Right next to a whole bunch of people driving by in cars. And it was super hot. That is all. I just wanted to tell you that I am awesome.

A Story

Ok, so Washington is really cold and rainy. I mean, duh. You probably already knew that. I definitely already knew that. Shit, I used to live there. Sometimes you just have to be experiencing something firsthand to really understand that it sucks though.

I’ve sure been doing that a lot lately: purposely choosing to direct myself into situations which I know beforehand are going to be unpleasant. And then getting there, being like, “Man, this is really unpleasant. I wonder why I decided to do this.” It kinda feels like past Stephanie and future Stephanie are fighting with each other.

Maybe it’s more a response to this new kind of freedom I have. I have basically no responsibilities to anyone or anything. I finally feel like I can go anywhere and do anything I want. So why restrict myself to only doing things which are going to be comfortable?

– I’m free; I can do fuckin’ anything!

– Well, you can’t go into the Rocky Mountains in the middle of winter without a place to sleep inside. You’ll freeze.

– Oh yeah? Watch me! Ha!

– You’re an idiot. You’re going to get us both killed.

– Wheeee! I love doing stuff!

(This is an approximation of my internal dialogue (monologue? dialogue?) with myself).

 

My ridiculously over-inflated response to all the authority and control which I have (which we all have) experienced in life is that I won’t even let myself tell me what to do anymore. Even when she’s just trying to do what’s best for me.

I think I’m also kind of enjoying testing the limits of what I can handle. I think lots of people look at things like sleeping outside when it’s 12 degrees out and just say, “That’s crazy. I could never do that.” And so they don’t. Which is maybe the smart thing to do. But on the other hand, they will never know that actually they probably could do it. I like to believe that humans are better at survival than we give ourselves credit for.

So yeah, I spent like a month and a half in Utah, Wyoming and Colorado in the dead of winter, hitchhiking with no money and only a backpack full of possessions. And yeah, I slept outside in the cold a lot. And I was hungry a lot. And man, it was fucking cold. And fucking dark way too many hours of the day. And I drank whiskey a lot because it made me feel warmer and it made the dark part of the day go by faster.

But you know what? I’m still alive. I never even felt like I was in any danger of not being alive, really. (Well, ok. There was that one time. When we were stuck in the middle of absolutely nowhere in the mountains in Utah and it was about 10 degrees at 4pm and getting dark and getting colder fast and there were no cars at all on the road. I was slightly worried about freezing to death that night. But we ended up getting a ride from the only car that drove by and drinking whiskey  in a hotel room in a town in Wyoming with my super awesome friend who happened to also be in that town in Wyoming for the night. So that was alright.) And more importantly, it was all actually pretty fucking fun. It sure beat having an office job.

And now I get to have the knowledge that I can survive being really cold. Knowing that I can take care of myself is probably my favorite feeling. Even in situations that lots of people whould never dream of putting themselves in. Especially in those kinds of situations.

 

But anyway. Maybe I’m sick of testing myself for the moment. Cause I was headed up to Seattle. To see how well I deal with squatting in weather that is always cold and rainy. I mean, it’s June, to be fair. So not the worst idea ever. But still, 50’s, maybe 60’s and rainy isn’t exactly the funnest weather to hang out outside all the time in (yes, I know that funnest isn’t a real word. shut up).

So I got up to Vancouver (Washington, like 10 miles north of Portland) from Portland with this boy and I swear it was at least 10 degrees colder and it was pouring fucking rain. And cigarettes were like twice as expensive and people were kinda shitty to us and standing on on-ramps is illegal. And after like 3 hours, we couldn’t remember why we wanted to go to Seattle. So fuck it. Now we are hitching back south. It’s not like I have to do uncomfortable shit. That’s just as bad as thinking I’m not allowed to do it.

But anyway. Seriously, anyway. I was totally trying to tell you a story. I’ve been trying to tell you a story this whole time. I think I might suck at telling stories. I get all sidetracked with like, describing how I see the world and analyzing myself. Ok, see? I’m doing it again already.

Ok. So. Washington is cold and rainy and has really expensive cigarettes (seriously, Camels were like $9 a pack. That’s just stupid). So we came back to Portland. Where it was immediately warmer and not raining and hitchhiking is totally legal and Camels cost like $4.30. And, within minutes of getting there, we had been offered a brand new tent to sleep in on the sidewalk in the middle of downtown and a free meal.

I think the official story of what was going on was that people were camping out to save spots to watch this parade which was happening the next day. But it had somehow gotten co-opted by homeless rights/camping rights-type people and turned into a bunch of homeless people drinking in tents on the sidewalk on Friday night. So we ended up drinking PBR’s and having a lot of sex on the sidewalk in downtown Portland, separated from rich bar-goers by one thin layer of fabric. I think I love Portland. I got to sleep naked on the sidewalk. How many cities can you do that in?

And then when I woke up in the morning and crawled out of the tent to spit, there was a family with a bunch of kids about 3 feet from my bed, all decked out with flags and lawn chairs and parade-watching gear. Awesome.

 

So there. That’s my story. Now I’m headed back south, with landing in the middle of Texas in July on my agenda. Let’s see how you do with 100+ degree weather, future Stephanie…

 

Happiness

Do you ever feel like, when you’re really happy, that it’s just an illusion, that you’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop? Like, you can’t possibly be happy like this for long; surely there’s got to be some really bad shit coming, right around the corner, to balance it all out? Well, I do. I keep feeling like that recently. Everything seems to be going my way and I keep going, “Ok, but what’s the catch?” It’s crazy how hard it is to accept happiness sometimes.

I mean, I fuckin’ deserve this right now. I’ve been in a really shitty place for a while. I mean suicidal thoughts kind of shitty place. That’s a pretty intense thing to admit out loud (or on the internet), but it’s true. I’ve just been feeling like this world as it stands doesn’t have a place for me. It’s not like I would ever actually kill myself. I enjoy things like orgasms and delicata squash and turquoise lakes in the Rocky Mountains and baking cookies and boobs and running and mushroom trips way too much for anything like that. But it’s so hard sometimes when you look at the big picture of life and don’t see anywhere that you fit in.

But. I just spent a few weeks around San Francisco, talking to friends and lovers, old and new, talking about anything and everything. Then hitched up the coast, through breathtakingly beautiful redwood forests, hung out on rocky windy beaches in northern California that felt like my childhood memories of Washington, met this adorable couple who basically adopted me for a few days, and ended up working on a family farm full of fresh, delicious food and wonderful people who seem to accept and welcome who I am. And have been getting a random influx of emails from people I love telling me in different ways that they respect me and think I’m awesome. And it all feels really really good.

Right now I feel like I can see how there is space in this world for people like me. Maybe even a need for us. When I forget to worry about how I’m going to fit in and just run with who I am, everything starts to work out.

But I definitely catch myself looking around, wondering when it’s all going to start feeling like shit again. Surely, at any moment, the feelings of being loved and accepted and useful and interesting are going to melt away and I’ll be left alone somewhere with malt liquor and cigarettes and depression.

I really want to turn that way of thinking around though. I could see it all (it being my life, the whole experience of being human) as a depressing struggle punctuated by brief periods of happiness. But I’d rather see it as a happy, beautiful experience with temporary periods of despair.

Cause really, those both describe the exact same picture. The math nerd in me wants to say they are isomorphic. And in that case, it seems just plain stupid to ever choose the first one.

Tom Robbins is pretty smart.

So I was sitting on the side of the road with my thumb out wishing I could be like Sissy Hankshaw when it suddenly hit me from a totally different direction that I felt like Sissy Hankshaw. (If you don’t know who she is, fuck off. Or actually, go read Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Or, you know. Do whatever you want. I’m gonna write some stuff about it regardless.)

You know how she meets that guy and settles down to a quiet, domesticated life and you’re sitting there going, “Dude, seriously?”

I think I keep doing that.

I keep meeting guys who are like, “Wow, you’re this magical, free-spirited fairy creature. Can I keep you?”

And I keep thinking. “Wow, he loves me. And he needs me to love him.” And it feels really good, in a way, to be loved and needed like that and to settle down into somebody’s life and just bask in that love and ignore the fact that there’s a whole world out there waiting to be explored. But to fit into that kind of life, I have to hurt the part of myself that’s the most magical. And eventually it just ends up feeling wrong.

And I really hate to be gender-biased or whatever, but it’s always the guys I meet who are trying to tie me down (or, to be fair, who somehow bring up the feeling in me that I should tie myself to them) and the girls I meet who are like, “Hey, I love you. You’re beautiful. Come back any time you want.”

Tom Robbins got that. So it’s not just me.

I always have some dude in my life who feels like Julian and I’ve recently been meeting all these awesome women who feel like the cowgirls at the Rubber Rose and I think Bonanza Jellybean might be someone in particular and you gotta pay attention when she says:

Love is dope, not chicken soup. I mean, love is something to be passed around freely, not spooned down someone’s throat for their own good by a Jewish mother who cooked it all by herself.

And I’m pretty sure that there’s a damn good reason that I found a copy of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues on a park bench in the middle of the night in Venice Beach.

I think that somewhere in here there’s some really great lesson I could learn about my life and how to live it and be happy and stuff.

But in the end, I’m not really sure that Sissy figured anything out about how to be happy, either. She learned a lot about life and time and love and sex and, you know, hitchhiking. And I’m doing pretty good learning about all of those things too. So that’s pretty alright.

 

But, don’t you see, those birds had been in a cage their whole lives with somebody to provide for them. Now they’re having to fend for themselves in a huge alien city where they don’t know the rules and where they’re probably frightened and confused. They won’t be happy being free.

— Dr. Robbins

There’s just one thing in this life that’s better than happiness and that’s freedom. It’s more important to be free than to be happy.

— Sissy

This one’s for all of my lovers – you know who you are

Listen. I’m sitting at this beach. It’s sunny, but there’s this amazing mist over the water. It’s a perfect beach. There’s rocks everywhere and a harbor full of boats. I just smoked a cigarette and sang a cheesy Beatles song, dreaming about the boy I’m newly in love with. It’s a perfect moment. A car full of teenage boys just pulled up behind me and started yelling at me about blow jobs. Seriously, perfect. I wouldn’t trade this moment for anything in the world.

Close your eyes and I’ll kiss you

Tomorrow I’ll miss you

Remember I’ll always be true…

Thinking about all of you now. What is being true anyway? I feel like it’s supposed to mean I won’t fuck other people. Ok, we all know that’s a lie. I just fucked somebody last night who wasn’t you. Maybe it’s supposed to mean I won’t love other people. Well, I love lots of other people. But I’m still true. There’s still a thing inside me that feels a special magical thing for who you are and no one can take that away from us. You know?

Being free from the HNMM (heteronormative monogamous myth. throwback to boulder poly group. sorry about that) is so beautiful that way. I can love you and you and you and obviously you and probably even some more of you but not be near any of y’all and be fucking someone totally different and you can still know that I’m true to you and I don’t have to worry that you’re busy meeting somebody to replace me with.

I love the way I love every one of you and I love the fact that you all love me and I love that you have other lovers to love in different ways.

I love that at this moment in my life, right here and now, I feel simultaneously loved and free.

I never really believed I could feel that.

❤ ❤ ❤

When I grow up…

The first thing I ever remember wanting to be when I grew up was a scientist. (I’ll resist the temptation to complain about society always trying to get kids to want to be something when the grow up because I think I’m trying to talk about something different right now). For a while in there I wanted to be an astronaut – until I found out that a large percentage of the ones who actually make it into space die – but I definitely spent most of my childhood wanting to grow up and do science. Whatever that meant. I guess I thought it meant I’d get to spend all my time learning the secrets of the universe and thinking about really crazy shit. Or, you know, exploring outer space.

But at some point I started to realize that anything you could pick to want to be when you grew up was really just picking some sort of job. One of those things which required you to stick to a specific schedule every day, sit around inside behind a desk most of the time and do a bunch of boring crap that someone else told you to do. Well, it doesn’t take more than about a year of high school to figure out how unfulfilling that gig is.

So I started lying to people – teachers, counselors, my parents –  when they asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, what I wanted to do with my life. I’d say a teacher, usually, cause that’s actually what you do with a science degree. But the real answer was, well, nothing.

There’s no job I could picture myself having, ever. They all sound boring, like the end of a story. “And then she grew up and became a teacher and lived happily ever after the end.” No more life worth talking about once you get pigeonholed neatly into your little spot in society.

Fuck that. I wasn’t done living yet. At that point in my life, I had barely even started living. I didn’t want to grow up and be something. I just wanted to get the fuck out of high school and do whatever I wanted.

One of the greatest mysteries about my life to me right now is why I didn’t do exactly that. One of the almost triumphs of our fucked-up, brainwashing society is that I didn’t do exactly that.

I knew I was destined to be a bum. I’ve been hanging out in parks and under bridges “pretending to be a bum” for as long as I can remember. I’ve always had a fascination with the dirty old men on street corners holding signs and staring at me with lecherous eyes. Always felt some sort of weird camaraderie with them.

My friends in high school knew I was going to be a bum. Always made fun of me, told me I could crash on their couches when they were successful whatevers and I needed somewhere to sleep. My parents saw it coming too. They didn’t want to pay too much for college cause they figured I was just going to drop out.

Somehow I just didn’t get the memo. I thought that I “had” to go to college, get a job, pay money for food and rent, whatever. I mean, nobody just decides to be a bum, right? Nobody sends out Christmas cards saying

“Just wanted to let you all know I’m moving. I do love the apartment I’m in, but I’m sick of paying rent there. So I’ll just be crashing behind the dumpster at the mall for a while. Feel free to drop by and visit whenever; just try to bring some beer and smokes.”

Nobody does that. I wish I’d done it that way. Grown some balls and just done what nobody does. Instead I did it slowly and slyly. Little bits at a time. So that each little bit, taken by itself, didn’t sound so crazy. So I could convince myself that nobody noticed.

Dropped out of grad school (yeah, it took that many years of school to figure it out). Didn’t exactly get a job. Told everyone I was just doing a lot of tutoring. Stopped paying rent. Slept on friends’ couches, backpacked around Europe for a summer. Moved into a tent in the backyard of a community house, still not paying rent. Started feeding myself from dumpsters and trash cans. Got rid of more and more of my possessions. Spent weeks at a time living in the mountains off of just what I could carry on my back. Started to hitchhike. That really set it off. Within months of my first solo hitchhiking experience, I was officially house-less. And wasn’t even trying to figure out how to change that. And was already becoming versed in the art of asking strangers for money.

Well, now I’m a bum, I guess. I don’t have a job and I sleep outside a lot and just bum around doing whatever I want most of the time. I didn’t even really mean to end up here. Just followed what I thought made sense and became what I always knew I would inside. Sounds inspirational as fuck. If I were talking about becoming a teacher or an astronaut, you’d be congratulating me on my success.

But somehow this is a little different, a little less commendable. Right?