I moved to Portland, Oregon to get away from the East Coast. No more rat race. No demoralizing commutes. No snowy winters. I wanted to spend time in a city where there were things to do outside, where a typical week didn’t exclusively involve working your ass off Monday to Friday, then meeting up with friends at some bar on Saturday night.
I was not the only American thirty-something who believed moving to Oregon would solve all his problems. About a hundred thousand others had the same idea. We showed up in Honda Civics and Subaru Foresters, crammed with all our worldly possessions, hoping for an interesting job, quirky new friends, and cheap, potent marijuana. What we -I- found was a city in transition, a slow economy and sky-rocketing rents. More flowers than back home, more tattoos, and more weed, but no big rock candy mountains.
I moved into an apartment on Couch Street, where two roommates, Jacob and Laia, were looking for an able-bodied and sound-minded third rent-payer. Couch Street, I learned, was not pronounced like the piece of furniture we all love to sit on. It was pronounced “cooch,” like a designer handbag, or slang for female genitalia. But to me it definitely became Couch Street, in the furniture sense. For my first six months in Portland, I spent a lot of time on the couch.
Fortunately, I arrived with a small financial cushion, savings from my job back East, doing data entry for a health insurance company. The job was as tedious and awful as it sounds. I had no idea what I would do for work in Oregon. I just knew that I did not want to work in a cubicle, or stare at a computer screen.
My new roommates provided early encouragement, if not instantaneous opportunities. Jacob worked three part-time jobs: software engineer, bartender, Uber driver. He was almost never home, and when he was, he sat quietly in his bedroom playing video games. Laia was a hurricane in a bottle. She taught yoga and was a painter. Her room was an explosion of possessions. I was scared to go in there. Unlike Jacob, Laia was around all the time, skipping and laughing from room to room, usually half-dressed, coming and going at strange hours. Was I attracted to her? A little bit, but it was an attraction of loneliness and convenience. I knew absolutely nobody in Portland. My best friend was definitely Laia’s cat, Sleeves, who sat on the back of the couch staring out the window while I smoked cheap, excellent weed.
I found ways to fill time, none of them especially noteworthy or productive. I went for long walks around the city. I sat on street corners, sketching people and buildings. When it was warm, I went “bird watching” in Laurelhurst Park, hoping for a glimpse of Oregon’s tantalizing pink-breasted booby, the uninhibited lesbians sprawled out in the grass sunning their tits. The East Coast this was not, and while I was restless, I was never exactly bored.
My apartment on Couch Street was located in the urban gray area between the affluent neighborhoods uptown, and the rougher “transitional” areas closer to the Willamette River. Downtown, droves of homeless roamed the streets. Often I would pass by a particular homeless man I called Blaze, because he always wore a Trail Blazers tee-shirt, and every time I walked by his tent he asked me for weed.
“You got a joint, bro?” was Blaze’s usual inquiry. I could not tell how old he was, but probably not far from my own age.
“Sorry, man,” I told him. “Not today.”
Sometimes it was true. With no income to speak of, I could not simply give away my weed.
I would return from my perambulations wondering if I should just admit defeat and head back East, reclaim my identity as a Reasonably Stable Guy with a Job. But if I went home, I would have to concede that my parents and friends had been right: moving across the country, for no particular reason, when I should have been developing a career, was a pointless mistake.
Jacob suggested I drive for Uber, but I could not abide telling my parents that I had driven three thousand miles across the country to ferry drunk Millennials around in my aging Toyota Camry. Laia’s advice was more nebulous.
“Just give yourself away, Sam,” she said, holding my arms, and sort of massaging them, as was her habit. “Open yourself to new experiences, and good things will come to you. Volunteer. Take a class. Meditate. Meditation really helped me when I moved here.”
Instead of volunteering, or joining a Meet-Up, I decided to start drinking smoothies. Blended fruit and vegetables with whey protein. It felt like a step toward assimilation. Something to cure the Couch Street blues. Watching Laia prance around in yoga pants, with her lithe muscles and perfect butt, inspired me to take a little better care of myself.
“Today’s the day,” I told Sleeves, extinguishing my joint in the Dia de Muertos ash tray Jacob had brought with him from California. “I will go buy a blender.”
I drove across town to Target. Somewhere in that hellish panic attack of cheap merchandise was the perfect blender, hopefully for under $25. The lack of sales tax in Oregon made cheap living fractionally more affordable. I wandered the aisles of the home furnishings section. Normally I was not a very enthusiastic shopper, but with nothing else on the agenda for the day, I decided to take my time scouting blenders.
Serious juicers will probably tell you that the Vitamix 5200 is the Bentley of blenders, but some of us were steadily running out of money, so I selected an $18 Oster Classic. As I plucked my new Serious Life Change off the shelf, a young man nearby smiled at me, and said: “What’s up?”
I nodded back.
“How’s your day going so far?” he asked.
Nobody on the East Coast ever asked you this. But on the West Coast people asked you how you were, and then actually waited for your answer.
“You know,” I said gamely. “Just looking to get in shape, so I thought I’d start drinking smoothies.”
I held up the Oster.
“Dude,” he said. “I feel you. That’ll get you started. You work out much?”
I told him I mainly went for walks. He continued to ask follow-up questions, and before I knew it, we had been talking for twenty minutes. My thinly-veiled loneliness spilled out like a box of children’s Tinker Toys, vague little constructions of what I was doing with my life, and who I wanted to be, presented for another person’s approval.
And this was how I met Neil, and his girlfriend, Megan, who appeared about halfway through the conversation with the cutting board she had been looking for. Neil and Megan lived in Gresham, just outside Portland, had moved to Oregon from Idaho, both worked in sales, wanted to get married and start a family. I learned all of this in the home furnishings section of Target. Eventually my shallow, East Coast paranoia kicked in, and I realized I had told two complete strangers everything about myself, including where I lived. If they wanted to break in in the middle of the night, strangle Jacob, rape Laia, and eviscerate Sleeves, they could. I told them I had to go.
“What are you doing for work, man?” Neil asked, in no hurry to part company.
“Nothing actually,” I said. “It’s been hard finding a job.”
He glanced at Megan. “We might be able to help you out. We have some friends who are always looking for good people. Maybe we could put you in touch.”
He didn’t elaborate, but his smile was infectious, and I could hardly refuse. Neil and I exchanged bro-numbers. I paid for my Oster, and drove back to Couch Street, wondering if the entire experience had actually happened.
A week later the Oster sat unopened on my desk, next to my bong, and I was scanning Craig’s List for jobs for the ten thousandth time, when my phone beeped with a text message. It was Neil.
“Getting together with some friends for networking Thursday night,” the message said. “You should definitely come.”
Casual sincerity between strangers was a facet of West Coast living I was still growing accustomed to. I didn’t exactly want to go socialize with a group of people I did not know at all, but I also had nothing else to do Thursday night. Unless you call playing Magic the Gathering with Jacob “nothing.” So I told Neil I’d be there. He texted me an address across the river in Washington.
“Dress business casual,” read the text.
Business casual for me meant khaki pants, a hastily-ironed shirt, and hiking shoes. I owned two ties, one of which was a Boston Bruins tie. The other was blue, and went with my one buttoned-down blue dress shirt. I felt like a thirteen-year-old on class picture day.
“You look good, man,” Laia said, appraising me on my way out the door. “Where are you going?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “If I don’t come back tonight, tell the FBI I went to Vancouver.”
I drove across the Columbia River into Vancouver, my first visit to Washington state. It felt like an adventure, and also like I was crossing state lines for some totally unknown purpose. If I got pulled over, in my shitty car, which still had East Coast plates, what would I tell the cops?
I followed my GPS up into the hills above Vancouver, into an affluent neighborhood of closely-packed cookie-cutter homes. I could see Portland back across the river, glowing in the late-hour dusk.
I arrived early, and since I had no idea whose house we were meeting at, and did not want to go in until I felt certain Neil and Megan were there, I sat in my car, listening to the Pixies. Eventually I saw people start to emerge from the other parked cars on the street.
“This is what you get for drinking smoothies,” I told myself, emerging from my car. I followed the swarm to a house that looked like every other house in the neighborhood.
At the door two young men stood like bouncers, dressed in Armani. One had a shaved head, and looked like he could punch a hole in a human skull. I approached the other one.
“Hello,” I said.
“Come on in,” he said, firmly shaking my hand. “Everybody’s just mingling. We’ll get started in about ten minutes.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “Get started with what?”
“Hold on there, partner.” He reached for my throat. I took a deep breath, and watched as he re-knotted my tie. “There you go,” he said.
“Thanks.”
Inside, about thirty people were crammed into the well-tidied home. Everyone seemed to be about my age, with a standard deviation of five years, and everyone except me was wearing a suit. I felt perilously underdressed. I hoped no one would look at my hiking shoes, which were caked with dirt from walking around Forest Park the previous weekend. I spotted Neil across the room, and he waved me over.
“Nice tie, man,” he said, and he seemed to mean it, although he then took hold of the knot and adjusted it. “Thanks for coming.”
“Whose house is this?” I asked.
“My buddy Mike’s,” Neil said. He glanced around the room, pointed to a tall man in a pin-striped blue suit. “That’s Mike.”
Megan walked up and handed me a cup of punch. We made small-talk for a couple of minutes, reminding me that I did not know anything about her at all. The room continued to swell with people, all of them shaking hands and laughing. I wondered if they all knew each other.
Neil clapped me on the shoulder. “We’re about to start,” he said. “I saved you a seat right up front.”
“Start what?” I asked. Instead of replying, he led me into the living room, where about forty folding chairs were arranged in tight rows. He patted a chair in the front row, and I sat down. Then he smiled, and retreated across the room to sit with Megan.
Everyone started to sit down. I was in no position to afford a time-share, and I definitely did not want to join a cult. I thought about excusing myself to go to the bathroom, then climbing out the window and sprinting for my car. Then an enormous man who smelled like my father’s aftershave sat down beside me, and furiously pumped my hand.
“I’m Devon,” he said. “Nice to meet you. This is gonna be awesome. Awesome!”
Well, I had to stick around for the awesome. I told myself that no matter what happened, whether we would all hold hands and recite Bible verse, or share teary confessions of our woes in the job market, eventually the evening would end. I would be back on the couch, smoking a huge blunt, regaling Sleeves with the story of how I’d almost been abducted.
The crowd settled, and Mike, whose home we had all invaded, walked up to the front of the room. He began talking about “a good friend of his” named Trent Steele. Trent was twenty-seven years old, married, a father of three, and owned his own business.
“I’ve only known this guy for a couple of years,” Mike said. “But I can tell you sincerely, he is a man going places. Last year he grossed over five hundred-thousand, and this year he’s looking at a million.”
The crowd erupted in applause.
“But I don’t want to brag for him,” Mike said, holding up his hands. “Let’s bring him up here. I think we’d all rather hear what he has to say. Trent?”
Everyone stood and cheered, and because they were all standing, I stood too, having no idea what I was cheering for. A short, handsome, crew-cutted white dude sauntered up to the front of the room, smiling, shaking hands with everyone he passed. The young professionals showered him with praise. One young woman virtually threw herself at him. He thanked them all, standing before the group, sort of half-bowing, his hands clenched together at his waist, until the applause subsided.
“I’m so happy to see everyone here tonight,” Trent said.
The crowd responded with a chorus of “Oh, yeahs” and “That’s rights.”
“Some of you I know, others I’m meeting for the first time. But no matter who you are, no matter how long you’ve been coming to these talks, no matter what your background, race, color, creed, gender- even if you don’t root for the Seahawks- I just want to tell you all, sincerely, I love you.”
Again, everybody stood up and clapped. I clapped, but could not quite bring myself to stand. This was weird, and I wasn’t even stoned. The woman who had thrown herself at Trent screamed: “I love you, too!” Then, amending herself, added: “We all love you!”
“I want each of you to take a moment to thank yourself,” Trent said. “Don’t thank me. Thank yourself. For coming out tonight. You don’t have to be here. Many of you are busy. Too busy. I appreciate that. You have other things to do. Better things. What’s on TV tonight?”
There was a chorus of “boo’s”, and someone shouted: “I don’t watch TV!” It was Neil.
“Thank yourselves for coming,” Trent said. “Because every one of you made a conscious decision to take a step toward achieving control of your lives, and you should be proud of that. First off, I want to tell you a little bit about myself. Mike already gave you the basics. I’m twenty-seven. I have an amazing wife. Three beautiful children. A fourth on the way.”
The crowd cheered with every accomplishment he listed.
“And this year I’m set to gross about a million-two. Net maybe eight-fifty.”
The response was deafening. That bathroom window started to look pretty tempting.
“But I am not special,” Trent said, his tone down-shifting. “I’m not a genius. I didn’t go to Harvard Biz. I never even went to college. Do I work hard? Definitely. But did I start at the top? Definitely not. Can you all achieve the same level as I have? Absolutely!”
Another wave of cheers. Devon leaned into me and squeezed me knee, grinning like we were two marooned shipwreck survivors, finding each other on a desert island.
“Ten years ago, I was nothing,” said Trent. “All I wanted to do was sit around, play video games, and smoke weed. My girlfriend didn’t respect me. My friends kept telling me to go to school. My parents were embarrassed to have me living at home.” He looked right at me. “I planted myself on the couch, and didn’t move for two years. Couch, weed, video games. But you know what?”
“What?” everyone shouted.
“I wasn’t happy.”
“Uh-uh,” said the crowd.
“I felt like crap.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“I couldn’t respect myself. Nobody else respected me; how could I respect myself?”
“You couldn’t.”
“I wasn’t happy.” He closed his eyes. “So I talked to God.”
(Bathroom window).
“I talked to God, and I said to him: ‘I’m not happy, dude. This isn’t me. I can do better than this. I want to marry my girl.’ And God listened. He listened to me, man. He said to me: “’You can do better, Trent. You can be anything you want to be, dude. You can be… a millionaire.’”
This was the one the crowd was really waiting for. The applause lasted several minutes. I saw the crazy girl wipe a tear from her eye. Neil and Megan looked at each other, clasped hands, and leaned their heads together.
“You can have everything you want in life,” Trent said. “A nice house. Mercedes-Benz. Jet skis. Flat-screen TV. Seahawks season tickets. And more than that. Good schools for your kids. No student loan debt. Equity. A second home. Maybe you want a beach house down in So-Cal, get away from all this rain. You can have everything.”
He scanned the crowd, his lupine eyes twinkling, his ferret nose sniffing out his followers’ percolating salivary glands. He turned to me, leaned right in close to my face.
“What about you, man?” he said. “Do you want everything?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I already have this tie.”
He put his hand on my shoulder, and for just a moment he broke character, laughing as he patted my arm. “It’s a little silly, isn’t it?” he whispered.
He stood up and faced the crowd. “It’s silly to dream of material possessions. That’s not really what I’m talking about, ladies and gentlemen. I’m not really talking about toys, or TVs, or six figures in your bank account. I’m talking about peace of mind.”
He paused, and I could actually feel the collective breath of the crowd’s exhale. Beside me Devon closed his eyes and whispered a prayer to an unseen entity. Across the room, Neil looked at me and nodded. At that moment I really wanted a cheeseburger.
Trent Steele pressed a little button on his laptop, and an image appeared on a projector screen hanging on the wall. It was a picture of Russell Wilson, the Seattle Seahawks quarterback, holding a football above his head in the endzone. Swarmed by his teammates. The crowd going wild. And above him, the words: Debt Consolidation.
So finally he arrives at the pitch, I thought. At least it wasn’t a cult.
Trent’s presentation went on for a long time. My attention wafted in and out, often distracted by thoughts of money, jobs, weed, Devon’s cologne. The crowd continued to cheer, responding to Trent’s prompts like evangelicals at a revival church. The pitch was this: sell high-interest debt solutions to debt-swamped young people.
“You make three-hundred, eighty-six dollars commission for every account you bring in,” Trent said. “Your team leader makes two-hundred, fourteen dollars for every one of your accounts. The regional supervisor makes one-hundred, eighty-four dollars for every account each one of their team leaders brings them. You get to my level: a cool one-hundred, twenty-six dollars for every account under your wings.” He spread his arms out wide. “Spread your wings, ladies and gentlemen. The sky’s the limit.”
Eventually, mercifully, it ended, but only when Trent noticed, seemingly by accident, that it was almost midnight. “Oh, shit, my wife’s going to kill me,” he muttered, the only curse he let slip the entire evening.
Mike, who probably wanted his house back, returned to the front of the room, and thanked Trent for his presentation. The crowd stood and gave a lengthy ovation. I stood too, because, why not? If I got out of there soon, I could still make it to Five Guys before they closed.
When it was over, Neil came up to me and shook my hand. “I’m putting together a team, bro,” he said. “You want a spot on it, it’s yours.”
Never in all my obscure, weed-swollen self-actualization fantasies had I ever seen myself pitching complicated debt refinancing structures to complete strangers. I couldn’t tell Neil outright that my search for a job, and above that, a purpose, seemed not to have been solved this evening, so I said I would certainly think about it, and get back to him.
“Don’t go back to that couch, man,” he said. “Remember: the sky’s the limit.”
I thanked him, and made a bee-line for the door.
Eight minutes later I snuck into Five Guys, just before closing time. The last remaining fry cook gave me a bag full of French fries for free.
The next morning, I was back on the couch, petting Sleeves, feeling like my soul had been man-handled somehow. I had wandered into a strange situation, with weird, if well-meaning, people. But for all their friendliness and enthusiasm, all the young professionals wanted was material wealth. Same as back East. Same as everywhere.
But something had changed. I had a fat bud of marijuana in my hand, and my bong on the coffee table, but I just could not bring myself to pack the bowl.
Kaia emerged from her bedroom. She was holding my unopened blender.
“I’m going to use this, if you aren’t,” she said.
“Go ahead,” I said.
“How was your meeting last night?”
“I don’t know. It hasn’t really sunk in yet.”
“I’m going to the park to do hand-stands in a little bit, if you want to come.”
“Thanks.”
I did not go to the park to do hand-stands, or search for the elusive pink-breasted booby. I ate a sandwich, put on my hiking shoes, and headed out the door. I walked downtown. On the corner of MLK Blvd I passed a small tent city, and a burnt umber man with a leonine pelt of hair leaned out of a tent.
“Hey, bro, you got any weed?” asked Blaze, who always seemed to know when I was coming.
I pulled a baggie out of my pocket and handed it to him, the last of my stash.
“Share that,” I told him.
Then I walked across the Burnside Bridge, and headed toward Old Town, where I thought there might be a soup kitchen, or somewhere I could volunteer.
