Unraveled Fringe

"Here's the thing – Coyote Ugly was a terrible movie,” Clyde raised his voice a decibel. Muffled loops and synths sworled. Tuggs waited. “but, but, as trash as that movie was, Coyote was a near-perfect snapshot of the early Oughts.” The pulse reverberated along the pavement and jumped their shoes and jolted up two pairs of ankles. “Still, though, dumpster-fire of a movie.” The pair reached a corner. Tuggs Morningwood raised his eyes. Neon buzzed above their heads. Between hot pink and icy blue, their faces rouged and paled. The monologue, Clyde’s monologue, somehow both winded and clipped, picked up when the pair passed a joint serving up tequila a block-and-a-half back, fizzled. Tuggs made his voice flat, flatter than the Zodiac’s. Tuggs panned. “Just so we’re clear, your favorite movie, what is it?” Clyde dummied up.

--“My Night At Maud’s? No, no, Stranger Than Paradise.”

Chalk it up to jet lag. Schlepping thru Portland after hours. “Unraveling the fringe” Chuck Palahniuk wrote. That’s how he described it, I mean. Hoofing Portland, prodding and poking, crevice and cloaca.  

Chalk it up to jet lag. That’s what Tuggs did. But honestly, hopping back three time zones had little to do with Clyde. Full-blown insomnia. Yup. That bad. The brand of insomnia that, at its best and lowest births Tyler Durden. Since “last December” Clyde explains. Twenty-eleven, I mean. And, really, that’s the kicker, the whole of many kickers about Clyde Sleeping. His dumb, fucken name. But Chalk it up to jet lag. That’s what Tuggs did, that first week he met him. All this, this whole episode, Tuggs told me later, later when Clyde was still alive, but later nonetheless. 

Really, the long and short of it is, this pasty, raven-matted mop flew in from the slice of country east of the Mississippi not one week before, and already struck up his best sidekick. But you, no doubt, already figured that. “West Virginia, right?” Tuggs teased, and, later, girls to whom he tells the same thing teased too. “Montauk”, Clyde is quick to correct. “I moved to Appalachia the summer before sixth grade.” Tuggs was close. He knew that much. Any rate, same time zone? 

Palahniuk also wrote, “It rains, and things rot fast.” A few fine drops missed the soles of their shoes.  

The playlist, the playlist is better stacked than a twenty-something pornstar after a rush of silicone. Looper, Basshunter, Squarepusher and Aphex Twin. Robert Miles. Neuroticfish. “Mondo 77”, Looper, dies down almost as soon as they’re through the door. The rainbow gels give way to cool blues. “Pjanoo”, the Club Mix, grooves through the speakers. Throw on Eric Prydz, and watch. Knock back a tumbler, who’s carding? and Tuggs leaches the edge of the floor crowd. Clyde hugs the bar. No bouncer, nothin’. The joint was small, as far as these joints go. Helped keep the overhead down. Not one of those Club Kidz, tongue-tab hotspots James St. James was patron saint of.

The first week out, Clyde wanted to hit up every spot “described in that Palahniuk book.” Some travelogue he’d read. Of course, the damn thing was published almost a decade before, so some of those joints weren’t –

Clyde had already crossed out the places that went tits up. This spot, this was new. A hole-in-the-wall Tuggs was privy to. That went belly up, too.

Buried in the kangaroo-pocket of his grey sweats, Clyde has this well-thumbed, second-hand print of that travelogue, that travel guide I mentioned. Less than an hour and Clyde ditched the club scene. Tuggs caught on and caught him outside. They moved under a lampost and poured over Palahniuk’s prose. “How’s that?” Clyde jambed his pointer to the page. Tuggs, up for this, up for that. They take a cab back to Tuggs’ first floor flat and from there, hop on Morningwood’s WW2 era motorbike. Because Portland. Reliable machine, hardly ever craps out. And a gas-guzzler, Tuggs’ smug little ‘fuck you’ to all those friendly, freaked-out hippies.  

The Vista bridge as seen from Jefferson, where all those DIY Jack Kevorkians and would-be Tony Scotts color the five-lanes of pavement below.

Tuggs let out a whistle. “It’s a long way down.” Tuggs geared up this spiel he had prepped on the way there, as though he were a low-rent tour-guide. “Since the bridge opened in 1926, at least 175 people have flung themselves from it’s majestic scenery.” With no input from Clyde, Tuggs continued. “The view from the top is gorgeous when it’s wet, really, we’ll have to stroll across some rainy afternoon.” Clyde doesn’t, didn’t take his eyes off the bridge. “Why not now?” he asked, feeling the wind bring a few more spatters with it. Tuggs reckoned “the weather will break soon.”

Clyde eyed all that darkened, heavy-timbered greenery rolling, cresting over Portland.

“The Gardens? The Gardens are… closed?” Tuggs wavered. Right off, “I’m sure there’s ways to get in,” one, the other, or both of them said, devil-may-care mischief sneaking, no, already firmly lodged in his voice.

The greenery drooped, cold, wet and dissapointed. So it goes.   

To round off the unraveling, they, the two of them, the pair, doubled back and made their way across Vista. The whorling cloud bank squeezed out a final, desperate flurry, the way you’d squeeze out all those drops after a wicked leak, praying, dear Jesus, no piss stains this time. Far off, but not far enough, the clouds started to dissipate. From the center arch, the steep drop to Jefferson below them, Clyde, Tuggs, Tuggs and Clyde, Smith and Jones, Forever, hovering half way between Goose Hollow and Portland heights, a car, a painted-black pickup dashes past, like a warthog, like a warthog with lions on its ass, lightly fuckulates a puddle, a small puddle and a few drops barely reach out, barely speckle the cuffs of Clyde’s jeans. When this truck, this midnight dark pickup reaches the stretch of pavement closer to the Heights, cranks up the sound. Sounds like Slowdive. Sounds like “When the Sun Hits.” Maybe it is. Maybe it’s exactly that.