Nesting

For a while now, I’ve been meaning to go to Ikea and buy curtains. I guess it’s a nesting instinct. Winter’s coming; time to make my home a cosier place.

 Portland Ikea: Visible from space

So on a sunny day last week, wanting to get out of the house, I hopped on a bus and then a rush hour train out to the Cascades station, which exists only to serve a brand new, big box retail ghetto. There’s a Ross and Marshall’s and Staples and Sports Authority and, of course, an Ikea, which sits alone in its own sea of parking spaces. The doors of the train used to stay closed at this stop, and you’d look out the glass at vast, empty fields and wonder why we were even sitting here. Now, just two years later, there are streets and lights and banks and restaurants and an all-you-can-eat buffet of American binge consumerism.

And there I was, ready.

 Välkommen

 Träsh

Browsing through the example living rooms at Ikea, it at first seems like an affordable version of that most cruelly named modern furniture store, Design Within Reach. How exciting! Good, modern design actually within reach! But as everyone knows, a closer look reveals that virtually everything in the place is made of industrial glue held together with bits of sawdust. The stuff is cheap in every sense. And what I always forget to remember before I visit is that everything, but everything, is made in China. Basically, Ikea is just Walmart for city people.

Still, there I was, ready.

But first things first. I had actually planned, as part of this little four dollar vacation, to eat at the Ikea cafe. On previous visits with other people, I would look over at the wall of glass with the airport view and sigh longingly. I figured that this time, if nothing else, I could get, I dunno, tea or something. Actually, though, I didn’t have to pinch pennies. I ended up with a fresh veggie wrap in a whole-wheat tortilla with poppyseed dressing, and for desert, an almond cake. Both were relatively wholesome, filling, and enjoyable. Not bad for under five bucks. If I were a sales girl over at Dress Barn Woman, I would definitely walk here for lunch.

 Dinner

 The million dollar view from the Ikea Cafe

At the next table was a young rock hipster, all self-consciously cool, with furry mutton chops and a vintage suede bolero jacket. He was sitting with a much older couple who seemed quite conventional and very clearly Midwestern. I assumed they were his parents and that they would soon be footing the bill to decorate his apartment in a style to which he would like people to think he is accustomed. Later, I saw them all shopping. The son had a big bag bulging with goodies, and the parents walked passively behind him, side by side, saying nothing. I wondered what they thought. Did they get a vicarious thrill helping their son look cool? Or did they just philosophically accept more money down the drain?

Ultimately, I didn’t get any curtains; nothing was right. I just got a blanket (or is it a table cloth?) from the “As Is” section for three bucks. (Made in India.) And I got a box of imported Swedish cookies for one dollar. Clearly food is the best deal in the place; the lingonberry preserves ($3-ish, Sweden) are less than half the grocery store price. I made a mental note.

The trip wasn’t a total wash, though. I got a 2G XD memory card at Staples ($24, Japan). And at Ross, I walked away with a two pack of black Levi’s boxer briefs ($5, Dominican Republic) and a eight-piece placemat and napkin set, much needed, I assure you, and a steal at $7 (India).

(After writing about it just now, I feel the way I felt when I was actually shopping — kind of gross, like I’d just eaten fast food.)

 Ikea bike parking, 100% availability

It was dark when I left. The station was eerily quiet; the train, which was packed full of cell phone chatterboxes on the way there, was almost empty. All the way home, I stared at my sad reflection in the windows.

 Cascades Station

 Empty MAX

 Self-portrait

Back at the house, I knocked on my roommate Will’s door and asked him to give me a hand. With considerable effort, we slid open the dining room table and put in one of the leaves, transforming it from round to oblong. I placed the new placemats, neatened the centerpiece, and put the high back chair at the head of the table. Will and I both stood back and admired it for a while.

Growing up, all of our family meals were taken together at a dining table (and beginning, yes, with bowed heads and a prayer) — no eating alone in your room or over the sink or in front of the TV at our house. That place to sit and eat together has always been for me the hallmark of a healthy and stable home life. I had been wanting a real dining room table for a long time. Now, finally, here it was.

700 Channels

Been busy for a while now. Been sick too. I caught something that was going around, and it’s taken me a whole month to get over it. Cough cough cough for weeks.

In mid-March, I visited my parents in the less-sylvan-by-the-minute Chestnut Mountain, Georgia, which luckily coincided with the worst of my illness, affording me the perfect opportunity to sleep sixteen hours a day and flip incessantly through 700 or so channels of Dish Network. For ten days I did essentially nothing, which is the only way to enjoy suburban Atlanta, really.

I took my laptop, but didn’t have the strenght to work. I took trail running shoes, but couldn’t run. I keep an old Centurion Accordo touring bike in Georgia, but I couldn’t ride. Luckily, I also couldn’t eat; so despite my sloth, I still lost a few pounds.

 People in their cars: Light traffic on I-85 near Midtown Atlanta.

It was a very isolating trip. Atlanta is very isolating anyway. Always is. Everyone stays in their office buldings, in their cars, in their houses watching 700 channels. My parents too. A visit consists mainly of us sitting in the same room without speaking, but watching the same freakishly oversized flat screen TV. If I get bored, I go to the guest room and watch another big TV all by myself. Really, I just floated between televisions the whole time.

  Human-free Zone: Tarmac at the world’s busiest airport in Atlanta

Leaving town, I hadn’t had a conversation with anyone for the entire trip — not my parents, no one in a store, no one in a restaurant, no one in a coffee shop, no one on the train, no one anywhere. No one spoke to each other. People didn’t speak to each other. They looked out of windows at the parking lot, at the highway, or at the airport tarmac.

 Thank you for visiting Atlanta! Now go away.

On the plane, a goodlooking guy sat next to me. His elbows brushed mine for hours; his hip bumped against me repeatedly, but we never even looked at each other. Never said a word. Pretended the other didn’t exist.

… which is pretty much how I spent the first 33 years of my life.

Pride Weekend

It was Pride Weekend here in Portland, and I stayed home. I’ve been running around like a chicken with its head cut off for a while now, or typing my poor little fingers down to nubs. I kinda wanted a break. Besides, it’s chilly out, and nobody will be showing any skin. So why bother?

Instead, I uploaded a bunch of old family photos to Flickr. I scanned them years ago for the sake of preserving them, and now my fellow descendants of Susan Desdemona Marietta Payne can finally see what she looked like.

It’s also Father’s Day, and I called, like a good son. Here’s a wholesome looking snapshot of my father from the 1950s, that decade when everything looked wholesome.

I also realized upon uploading them that I have good pictures of my male ancestors (with their wives) as far back as the dawn of photography, except for the earliest John Wilmot, who died at about 27 in the Civil War. An excellent portrait with his wife was taken about 1860, but I don’t have a copy.

Mary Strange, wife of the first John Wilmot

John & Etta Wilmot

Lam & Amanda Wilmot

John & Kate Wilmot

My parents with yours truly at ten days old

Like a lot of gay guys, I’m interested in genealogy. Yes, true, it’s a popular hobby with a variety of sexualities, but for some reason it’s really big with homos. I’ve often wondered why. Is it because they won’t have families of their own and try to replace children with ancestors? Or maybe it’s that they’re trying to connect to some “glorious” past that will give them something to be proud of. That’s probably why a lot of people do it, but it seems like gay men need that even more.

As for myself, my own family’s history is already so complete that it’s hard to add to it. By this point, working on my genealogy is an abstract exercise, like finishing up a crossword puzzle. I’m just trying to figure out the hardest clues and fill in the last few blanks. I don’t feel much of a connection to those incredibly distant forebears, but I have nonetheless developed a certain pride in them, if only because I haven’t run in to anything to be ashamed of… yet.

Apparently Not Drunk, Just Stupid

The driver of this truck is from my mother’s little hometown in south Texas, and I suspect that we are actually related.

The photo was taken in New York, where the man drove his truck through the entire length of the Lincoln Tunnel (1.5 miles), even though the trailer was six inches too tall. He scraped tiles off the tunnel roof the whole way, and peeled back the top of his truck, but never stopped.

He wasn’t drunk, had a perfect driving record, and was familiar with New York. He was also fully aware of the truck’s height. Nobody quite knows why it happened.

Here’s the story. And here’s the original at the New York Times.

The safety director for the trucking company, a Rhodes Scholar by the sound of it, described the accident as “very, very, very rare.” Three verys — now that’s rare. And he assured reporters that “there are going to be consequences,” though what those might be, he didn’t really know.

And there we have two examples of the type of person who decides not to move away from Texas.

Putting the chic in Xicano

For my whole life, people have been asking me, “Where are you from?” Usually I’ll respond with “Georgia.” And then they’ll look irritated and say, “Yes, but where are you from?”

What they really mean is “Why are you brown?” Their irritation comes from the fact that we both know that perfectly well, and I didn’t play my part and make it easy for them to inquire about my ethnicity. My reluctance to answer comes from a lifetime of having to tell people (often complete strangers) something about myself that, while evident, is none of their business and is ultimately an attempt to classify me as something inferior to themselves.

The other part of my reluctance is that I don’t know what to say. I actually am a white guy from Georgia. I grew up in an all-white neighborhood, and went to all-white schools, and was raised with my all-white Southern family to think and feel like an entitled white male Southerner. Yes, some of my mother’s ancestors came from Mexico over a hundred years ago, but what exactly does that make me? And how do I answer the question as asked without an elaborate explaination?

Shades of brown
All my life, I’ve been on the lookout for a short, simple description to use when I get that question. The standard labels have not been much help. They’re not quite accurate, and anyway, I’ve never been sure what the difference between “latino” or “hispanic” or “chicano” or “tejano” or anything else actually is. So a couple of years ago, I finally made the effort to find out.

What did I discover? That it all depends on whom you ask and when you ask them. Latino could mean almost anything, but some people don’t like it for that very reason. Wouldn’t want to get confused for a Dominican when you’re Guatemalan, would you? Plus it doesn’t account for indiginous peoples. Hispanic means from a Spanish speaking country. But Brazilians speak Portugese, and I’m American who speaks English. Chicano? It means Mexican specifically, but with overtones of politicized working-class immigrants or their children.

The most accurate word, tejano, literally means Texan, with the implied distinction being that the Spanish-descended early settlers were tejano but the ethnically indiginous latecomers were not. Tejanos are generally culturally American and reluctant to identify as Mexican or even Mexican-American. That pretty much hits the nail on the head where my own family is concerned, but the term and what it sugests seem a little racist if you ask me.

That’s why I’ve decided to describe myself as Xicano. Say it shee KAH no. It’s the same way “chicano” is supposed to be pronounced, but now everyone starts it with the “ch” sound. CHicano, to my ear, sounds CHeesy. Xicano sounds chic.

History of the X
Mexico is named after the Aztecs, who called themselves the “Mexica,” pronounced “may SHEE kuh.” The “x” had the sound we write as “sh.” Most likely created in California as an insult, “chicano” was was probably “Mexicano” before getting the first sylable lopped off in common usage. The final word reflected American spelling conventions and therefore did not begin with an “x.” Thus we got chicano, first written with a “ch” and later pronounced with a “ch.”

“X” is a confusing letter for us English speakers. You have to learn how to say words with an “x” on a case-by-case basis. That’s why it’s perfect. No way will anyone see “xicano” then say “chuh KAH no.”

Instead, people will have to learn to say a word that begins with chic, a word that’s not already loaded with subconscious negative associations, one that connects to a more distant pre-Columbian heritage, rather than the recent immigrant laborer culture in L.A.. Plus, anything that starts with an “x” just looks cool.

So I’ve decided that Xicano is the description for me.

Postscript
Just in case I imagined that I was so clever for coming up with Xicano, Google has handily demonstrated that I’m not in fact. Here are a couple of links to “Xicano” websites, the first two themselves WordPress blogs:

Xicano: Despite the name, really about chicano activism & thought.

Xicano Power at xicanopwr.com. Another ranting Texan.

Hits for Xicano at Technorati

Aztlán Life Extension Foundation at Xicano.com. It’s an artist’s website which , “… seeks to explore the intersection between progressive biological practices and age-old spiritual healing.” So obviously that’s as far as I read.