Thisbe Nissen: Tour Diary
Preliminaries - Day 1 - Day 2 - Day 3 - Day 4 - Day 5 - Day 6 - Day 7 - Day 8 - Day 9 - Day 10 - Day 11 -Day 12 - Day 13 - Day 14 - Day 15 - Day 16 - Day 17 - Day 18 - Day 19 - Day 20 - Day 21 - Day 22 - Day 23 - Day 24 - Day 25 - Day 26 - Day 27 - Day 28 - Day 29 - Home Diary -
July 25 -
July 26
Day 20: Seattle, Portland
Up before the seagulls in Bellingham. Katie and Kimberly meet us at the hotel
for breakfast, which I decide should be on Alfred A. Knopf (I spend an
inordinate amount of time having angst about what Alfred should legitimately
pay for and what I should shell out on my own in the course of this trip,
i.e. which receipts do I save and submit and which do I suck up) since some
authors have people being paid to drive them around and Katie and Kimberly
are driving us around without being paid (and I've even missed picking up the
tab for one tank of gas, for which I feel miserably guilty). Anyway, so the
four or us go into the hotel breakfast room and get leered at by the woman
working it who doesn't seem able to comprehend that the whole bill for four
breakfasts should go on the room bill of the girl wearing army shorts and
Birkenstocks, and I wish I didn't have such a complex about this, but it just
seems like you can't make assumptions anymore at all about who someone's
going to be by what they look like, and you'd think especially up here in the
land of Microsoft zillionaires who might look like some shlub off the street,
you can't make those assumptions at all. Nonetheless they get made, and I
find myself annoyed every time at the shallowness of people's vision.
Katie and Kimberly drop us at the Sea-Tac airport a few hours later where we
pick up a car (a Jeep Cherokee actually, woo-wie!) and drive down to
Portland. It's another beautiful day and the drive is green-treed and
blue-sky-ed and lovely. Chris has made a ton of recordings of CDs for the
drive but has neglected to mark any of the tapes so we spend the whole ride
trying to figure out who we're listening to.
The view from the hotel, Portland, OR
The doorman at the Heathman Hotel is dressed like the Beefeater guy in red
tights and a kilt-like get-up and red beret. Chris, who has been carrying
our bags for days now, adopting a slump shouldered hobbled gait and answering
to the name of Igor, is suddenly relieved of his position by a man in red
tights. Poor Igor feels he has no purpose left in the world. He takes a nap
while I go to the hotel library for an interview with Linda Swanson-Davies
from Glimmer Train magazine. She is so nice to me it makes me want to cry,
and so smart and so thoughtful, and I leave that library after an hour and a
half feeling more fortified than I have in a long time. It is amazing what a
few kind words from a good, thinking person can do for my state of mind and
well-being. I feel very grateful to her and very honored to be interviewed in
Glimmer Train, a publication I have long admired.
When I get back to the room, Chris tells me that the hotel has sent up a copy
of "Good People" for me to sign for the Library downstairs. I am touched to
be included.
The reading is at Powell's on Hawthorne, and we meet Erin for dinner at a
crepe bistro a few blocks down Hawthorne called Chez Machin just opened by my
old Iowa downstairs neighbors, Kim and Bruno. They're not around but my
crepe is excellent (#7 on the menu). Erin has pretty much filled Powell's
with friends and co-workers (Thank you E!) and there are some other folks
there too, just on their own, not conned into it by Erin nor paid by my
mother who I'm convinced must be compensating people across the country to
show up at my readings and look alive. I read chapter 13, "Any Strange Beast
There Makes a Man," which it turns out is really not a good chapter to read
on its own, doesn't give a sense of the book and winds up sounding way too
girly and teeny-bopper-ish. I read a little of chapter one to try and
compensate, and people seems ok with it all, but still I berate myself for a
few hours for reading a dumb chapter. I look out at some point and see Jenny
Tilson in the audience, nine months pregnant and glowingly gorgeous and wish
I were reading the Roz-gives-birth chapter. Why can I never seem to make a
right decision? Three adorable girls come up and talk to me afterwards and I
think again of the people who seem to scorn me at hotels and think I'd like
to introduce those people to these three multiply-pierced and
black-leather-clad girls who are A) sweet as anything, and B) incredibly
well-read and articulate, and I want to say to the narrow-minded hotel
people: "You try and keep up in a conversation about literature with these
women here, I'd just like to see you try!" and blow their little worlds and
little minds and make them think a little harder about how deceiving looks
can be and why you should never presume anything about anybody.
We go back to Erin's house afterwards and hang out far too late on her
beautiful porch with her wonderful friends and her black cats, Lucy and
Sinclair, darting in and out, giving me small heart attacks when they dash
into the street. When Jill finally drives us home I am afraid I am going to
fall over on Naomi or Jake in the backseat and fall asleep drooling on their
shoulders. We make plans to see everyone again tomorrow -- Jeff (like the
hero he is) is going to try to come again when I read with Myla, and Colin is
looking into music for us to go out to tomorrow night afterwards. Chris is
loving talking with Colin about the music scene here in Portland. I am
afraid I see that glint in his eye that says someday he's going to need to
move on from Iowa City. Someday, maybe, he says. But not yet, he assures me,
not yet.
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