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.
However, now in the narrow airline chair
thousands o f feet above the earth, the gift of
2011 PortlanP Latino/a Gay
Public Health
Pr?de
w w w .co.w ishm gton.or.us/hhs
F O U N D A T IO N -
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Thursday, July 14
Brunch, 11am - 2pm, Q Center
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'Cycle Ride, 2:30pm - 4:30pm
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7pm Reception, 8pm Performance
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