The New Joys of Jello Chronicles Part 7

Now let me conclude these Jello chronicles with a brief Jello story from my wayward youth told in the opaque mysterious style of the great Chilean novelist, Roberto Bolaño. If you’ve never read his books, you should.

I was 22 or 28. I was living in Portland in either a ramshackle house with five roommates in the Sellwood neighborhood or living alone in a dingy downtown studio apartment. I was either on a stern wheeler booze cruise rippling the Willamette River or at some singles bar on NW 21^st or 23^rd Ave. Both venues were utterly without irony. There was no irony in Portland then.

She wore a green dress and had long brown hair. I met her on the boat or at the bar. She was engaged to be married and in fact, it was the night of her bachelorette party! We ended up together at her apartment and there was either green or orange Jello involved in foreplay.

And that’s the whole story. And the last time Jello entered my life, but I think it will again soon as I begin to write about a period in my life when I was a missionary kid in Brazil 50 years ago and I recall a dish of shrimp suspended in Jello that my mother made for the Christians.