My first flight from Traverse City to Chicago is canceled. I am not informed of this by American Airlines, but rather by my mother, who takes it upon herself to check, then calls me—frantic—a couple hours before the flight.
I’m on hold with the airline for an hour, during which time the dog is quiet. The dog has had a small tumor removed and has to wear a cone this week, which he is not happy about. He waits until I get a human being on the phone to start yowling. Vocal dogs, huskies.
I switch my flight to Grand Rapids, and talk my friend (bless her) into driving me there. The new flight is delayed three and half hours. My connecting flight is also delayed three and a half hours, but I fall asleep at the gate at Chicago O’Hare and miss it anyway. At 1:30am, thirteen hours after I was supposed to arrive, I land at PDX. By the time I get my bag (which was on the flight I was supposed to take, and is being held at the office of Alaskan—not American), the bars are closed.
In the morning, I explore Portland. On my way to the coffee shop, I pass a dispensary, a locally owned and operated grocery store, and a girl without shoes. Everything in this city is something extra. The taqueria is “sustainable.” The thrift shop is “authentic.” The window of the yoga studio has a sign that says “refugees welcome.”
The man in front of me at the coffee shop has a man bun. All the men in the coffee shop have a man bun. The man in front of me tells his friend, “Those are the most vibrant-ass looking bananas I’ve ever seen.”
Is vibrancy a good quality in a banana? I don’t know. I feel short one man bun.
The friend is talking to the barista about hiking: “We’re going up to Matheson Lake this weekend to car camp.”
“I try to backpack there two or three times a year,” the barista says, “but we usually trek in.”
I order a large shot in the dark and pay twice as much for a paper cup, which will eventually end up in a landfill, or lodged in the throat of an unsuspecting marine mammal. I like to walk with my coffee.
On the corner outside the Hawthorne Theater, a man is doing curls with a 12-oz. bottle of organic fruit smoothie. He fumbles and drops his smoothie, and when he bends to pick it up, I see that he, too, has a man bun.
Could I live here? I wonder this about every city I visit. It’s a practical question: would my chosen labor prove fruitful here? But it’s also about culture: would I smoke myself stupid if I lived in a state where weed were legal? Would I feel insecure being the only man without a man bun? Would I look good with a man bun? I’ll probably never know.
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