PORTLAND, OR (1994) "Elliott Smith"

So now there was some super-genius folk singer in Portland? I was skeptical.

It was 1992, the summer of Nirvana and the grunge explosion.  Portland was probably the most awake and alive as it had ever been. It was coming of age as a city. The dark spirits that possessed it were finding their way into the larger world.  Signals were being sent out.

I lived in a group house by the University.  I was doing drafts of my first novel GIRL and then at night I’d smoke weed and ride my bike around town, a beer in one hand, a handle bar in the other.

Other young people would be riding around too, or there’d be house parties, or people would be sitting on the curb outside their local dive bars.

I’d see this one girl fairly often.  She rode around on her cruiser bike, with a basket on the front.  She was an “earnest scene person”, as opposed to a “cooler-than-you scene person”.  She was friendly and interested in everything.  She was a little older than the core scene kids who were in their early and mid-20s.  She was maybe 28 or 29?  And I was a little older than that, 31. 

I’d see this girl on her bike outside the clubs, doing the same thing I was doing.  Cruising around.  Seeing what was up.  

She’d be with friends sometimes, sometimes by herself.  It seemed inevitable that we would talk and get to know each other, but somehow that never happened. I found this frustrating.  We obviously had things in common.  We were roughly the same age.  We should be friends!  

But she stayed close to the other scene girls who were standoffish in those days. They were starting their own gender revolution of Bikini Kill and the Riot Grrrl bands.  

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times I guess.