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I'll tell you a story. I live in Portland, Oregon. Nice place. Much of the time I'm off touring the world as a musician, but when I'm home, this is home. I have a lovely little family here. My partner works a more normal type of job, and our son goes to school much of the year, so I usually find myself with weekdays free. The solitude I get like that is such a contrast to the touring life. I like both.
Part of my chill routine most weekdays involves taking a walk. I'm a news junky, so I'm often listening to a BBC podcast or something while I'm walking, which is a good chance to catch up on that stuff. Although the act of walking tends to make me zone out and think about other things, so I don't actually catch much of the broadcast after all.
My favorite place to walk is to the campus of Reed College, which has a lovely swamp with a circular trail wrapped around it, a sort of forested valley between the two main sections of the campus. If you don't want to walk in the swamp, there's a foot bridge that goes above it, for students who are actually trying to get from from their dorm to a class or something, efficiently. For those just out for a walk, or to smoke a joint or something, there's the swamp.
I see interesting-looking people, students and visitors, that I think about saying hi to. I like people. That's why I enjoy touring, among other things. You meet a lot of people, including lots of interesting ones. At a show it's easy to meet people. They're coming to up to me afterward, buying a CD or something. But in other situations I rarely meet people. I don't talk to people I don't know, generally.
Usually when I'm walking around there I try to be mindful of other peoples' space, especially women. Parts of the swamp are slightly isolated, and I don't want anyone to feel intimidated. I tend to just keep walking, not really say hi to people much, out of respect for their private swamp experience there.
One day last winter, that changed. I had walked around the swamp once, and was considering a second lap, when I saw someone sitting at the picnic table below the bridge.
Sometimes in the space of a few seconds, a hell of a lot can happen in one's head. As you approach the picnic table under the bridge, coming from the west, I suppose it is, the path goes directly toward the table, before veering uphill and around it. There's about a ten-foot stretch where you're walking toward it, which would naturally be a time when you might inadvertently get a good look at whoever might be at the table, even if you're trying not to stare.
When I saw the woman sitting at the table, I had to pay attention to my footing on the path, as I was suddenly in danger of losing it.
To put her in context... I do a lot of traveling and see a lot of different kinds of people. But when I'm home I get used to my surroundings. When walking around the campus of this hippie liberal arts college, I get used to those surroundings. Although hippies have a reputation for being very tactile and with a positive orientation toward bodily pleasures and other good things, I find that they're often actually somewhat traumatized-looking young people with a tendency toward wearing very baggy clothes, and they often look pretty uncomfortable in their bodies. One of the reasons I tend not to say hi to them as I'm walking down the trail is they look so fragile, like they're hiding.
She didn't. She did have the trappings of hippiedom, to some extent, in that she had dreads. Long, elegant, very light blonde ones, tied back with a thick black piece of string. But her clothing was black, and aside from the faux leather jacket, it fit tightly around her athletic little body, and she was leaning back with the picnic table behind her, fully in my view.
In the space of a millisecond I took in her beauty and self-confidence, felt the powerful desire to say hello, and the equally powerful desire to avoid doing so, since that's what all the guys want to do and she must be tired of it. But then she looked right in my face, and I looked back. And to complicate everything, she looked familiar.
Which is often very awkward, when a shockingly beautiful woman looks familiar. Because half the time it ends up that I don't actually know them, on the rare occasions I'm bold enough to actually say to her some pathetic line like "haven't we met before?" But she did look familiar, and I was thinking at high speed about whether I should say hello or keep walking. I made the compromise of smiling at her, acknowledging her presence, but continuing to walk down the trail, up the hill, around the picnic table.
Then I heard my name from behind me.
"Steve?"
I stopped, turned around, walked back to the picnic table. Now she was sitting on top of it, more upright than before, smiling.
"Where have we met...?"
I was wracking my brain but had no idea. Maybe it was in a past life, and she was one of those women riding the flying horses coming down to Earth to take me to Asgard. As it turned out, I wasn't so far off base.
"I'm not sure if we've really met, actually, but last time I saw you you were sitting outside at Cafe Escobar with a friend of my sister's."
Cafe Escobar? I was trying to think of a Cafe Escobar and was drawing a blank. And then a little partition inside my brain fell away and I remembered. Her American accent was a little too perfect. It occurred to me, therefore, that she could be from Scandinavia.
"You're from Copenhagen?"
My memory for people and places is divided geographically, that's how it works. I suddenly remembered the cafe in Blagardslads where I've eaten brunch on so many occasions.
And I remembered seeing her, though it was years ago, although Copenhagen is full of gorgeous, black-clad blonde women, the memory stuck like glue, of me sitting with Anna in front of the cafe, and this girl – she was only a teenager then – saying hi to her from about twenty feet away, her mane of blonde dreads washing down her back, upright on top of a bicycle in her tight black clothing. I remember thinking, wow, she's so beautiful, before trying to force my attention back to the conversation at hand.
"You're a friend of a good friend of my sister's," she reminded me, as I was recalling that scene in the Norrebro district of Denmark's capital city.
My head was reeling, much as I was attempting to get ahold of it and make sense of the situation. I'm on my private, anonymous walk around the swamp. Despite the performing for a living and all that, I'm usually anonymous. People don't recognize me on the street unless it's my neighbors or something, or I'm standing in front of the venue I'm about to do a show in. I've been recognized in airports by fans four times in my entire life. But here we were.
I tried to act casual, but my mind was rushing, and I was trying to think of something to say. I knew I needed to say something. All of my initial thoughts and impulses were not at all useful. Trying to shovel the thoughts away that were not related to sex was difficult, but I somehow managed to get to Denmark, which seemed like a safe spot.
"You're not in Copenhagen! Are you visiting here?"
The question immediately felt like I could have done better, but she was perfectly happy answering it.
"Actually I'm a student here now, at Reed."
Usually when I'm in Europe and I mention I live in Portland, most people have no idea where that is, and know nothing about the place. Sometimes they're fuzzy about where Seattle is, too, so I've taken to describing it as a city about a long day's drive north of San Francisco. But there are certain places in Europe where people are as clued-in about hipster culture in the US as they might be in the US itself, and one of those places is Denmark. So seeing a Dane at Reed shouldn't be too shocking. But it was, anyway.
I felt like I should either know her name, or ask her what it was. I tried to act as if I just needed a little reminder for some reason, but I really had no idea.
"What was your name again...?"
She looked as if she was about to say something, and then stopped herself before saying, "Merenda."
As if she felt like she needed to clarify something, she went on. "My sister used to go to your shows in Copenhagen, so I didn't, I was too cool for that. But actually, I like your music, and I was wondering if I might run into you here. It says on your Facebook page you live in Portland. You don't play much here, though, do you?"
Head reeling again. She doesn't just recognize me, she likes my music, and she's visited my Facebook page. Oh, and she's asked me a question. What was that again...?
"No, I don't get many gigs here somehow or other. I probably play about as often in Copenhagen."
OK now I should ask her a question... Damn I feel stupid.
"What are you studying at Reed?" Stupid question.
"IT," she responds readily, eyes glistening.
Oh shit, I thought. A subject I knew absolutely nothing about. I needed a follow-up question. She seemed to sense me struggling.
"Were you walking around the swamp?" she asked. "I'll join you, if you don't mind."
Somehow once we started moving, I was able to relax a bit. The conversation became less forced. We talked about Denmark, and the US, and Portland. How easily you could find a good breakfast joint here compared to there. Where they had the best vegan options. She was a vegan. She didn't ask me if I was one, and I probably pretended that I might be, just to impress her.
She told me about how dangerous it was to ride a bicycle in the US, by which she meant Portland. I said I thought people here might find that amusing, since Portland is known to be so bicycle-friendly. She quoted one of my songs, where I make reference to this fact.
We were about to walk another lap around the swamp when it occurred to me to see what time it was. Two o'clock.
"I'm afraid I have to go pick my kid up at school," I said.
She nodded. Danes aren't big on niceties like "hope to see you again" or shit like that. But the bright-eyed look on her face told me that if she weren't Danish she'd probably be saying something like that. I said it, anyway, and I hugged her.
