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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (July 15, 2011)
r voices Where Home Is OREGON'S LGBTO NEWSMAGAZINE “Your seltzer, sir,” the flight attendant smiles with lipstick on her teeth. I am high in the air between Chicago and Portland, the friendly soreness o f completing a month of yoga school giving way to the far less pleasant soreness o f being confined to an airline seat for hours. I try to stretch my arms without invading the personal space o f the guy next to me but fail terribly; he pulls away as my arm passes in front of him. “Sorry about that!” I say, smiling sheepishly. “No problem,” he says, smiling back. “We re all in this together, right?” He introduces himself—M artin is a fortys omething gay man, coming to Portland for the first time on business dressed in the conserva tively pleated pants of a man 10 years his se nior, the blue polo shirt of someone who prac tices his golf swing on the weekends. W ith my untrimmed beard and prayer beads, I feel like the Radical Faerie to M artin’s Mattachine So ciety, but we get along smashingly anyway. “Are you worried at all about going home?” he asks me. “How do you mean?” I ask, sipping seltzer. “I mean, it must be unsettling, going from the yoga ashram environment back to the normal world. Are you worried at all that it’ll be jarring to come back?” I glance out the window at the earth far below. If I had an airplane view o f time as well as space at the moment, I would be able to see myself 48 hours in the future. I could ui JULY 15. 2011 35 forests, thin lines o f snow at the very top o f mountains. The landscape becomes dotted with buildings, they multiply into houses and churches and businesses, shopping centers and schools. Portland draws closer to me, rises up and expands to fill the plane windows, and my BY N ICK MATTOS heart beats hard with recognition. prophecy escapes me. “I’m sure that won’t I realize that the old cross-stich sampler happen,” I tell my traveling friend. “I’ll take it quote is only part right: Home is indeed easy when I get home.” where the heart is, in that the heart is your “Ah— home,” M artin says with a distinct home— its rhythmic beat that defines the wistfulness. “I travel so much for work these pace o f your life, the energetic place where days I’m losing track o f where home is.” you connect with the rest o f the world, the “That must be really tough for you,” I note, core o f you that races and soars and shatters handing garbage to the attendant, putting up with defiant vulnerability. The wheels o f the my tray table as the pilot announces the de plane touch down upon the tarmac and I ex scent. “How do you find a place to call home?” hale, sighing with the knowledge that regard “Home is a place, certainly,” M artin says, less o f what is to come next— whatever ex- his eyes focused out the window, “but it’s so citement or frustration or elation or many other things, too. It’s a time, and a depression is on its way, whatever surprises mood, a speed that you travel. Home has that the Rose City and its fabulously weird something to do with where you are— but it residents can throw my way, whether it’s a has everything to do with who you are in the Mary Oliver or a Brett Easton Ellis life I space you find yourself. Home is a place, but lead— that as long as I stay connected to the it’s a place inside you.” vital center o f myself, home will be inside me I look out the plane window, digesting and all around me as well. Martin’s surprisingly philosophical statement. I turn to M artin, see his broad smile. “Wel The shocking green landscape o f Oregon in come back,” he congratulates me. early summer spreads beneath me, the neatly “Yes,” I say, smiling as I unbuckle my seat arranged squares and circles of agriculture belt. “Welcome home.” J#] fields splitting up the ground like patchwork. Everything becomes familiar: the jagged bends N i c k M a t t o s is glad his home is hack in Port of the river, the spiny texture o f the evergreen land. Reach him at nickmattos@justout.com. re m e m b e r to b re a th e I glance out the window at the earth far below. If I had an airplane view of time as well as space at the moment, I would be able to see myself 48 hours in the future. watch myself lying beside a fire pit beneath an ancient tree and a starry sky, riding over the Hawthorne Bridge on the bench seat o f a tiny white pickup truck, gripping the micro phone at the Lovecraft’s Slaughterhouse Ka raoke, soberly holding a dear friend’s hand as he twitches his way through a cocaine freak- out in the soft light of the M onday morning sunrise. If I had the airplane view o f what was to come, I’d see that I would utterly neglect to pace my reentry to my life, that I would swiftly transition from the M ary Oliver poem of my time away to a reality closely resem bling a Brett Easton Ellis novel, depressuriz ing from my travels so quickly and harshly that I give myself the bends. 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