We fed a candy cane to a Newport gull a few weeks before Christmas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She introduced me to Love Actually<\/em> and I cried at the corn pone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Christmas Eve we hit a dump strip club in Portland<\/p>\n\n\n\n before witnessing a family’s worst children’s Christmas show<\/p>\n\n\n\n in American holiday history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A few weeks later,<\/p>\n\n\n\n we sat across a table from one another in an Astoria cafe<\/p>\n\n\n\n famed for pepper jellies and voodoo d\u00e9cor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She said crying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI don’t think I’m going to make it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I asked why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was the first I’d heard of her being drugged and raped in San Francisco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Something had surfaced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Everything was now unraveling for her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She couldn’t be with me anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She couldn’t explain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the long drive home,<\/p>\n\n\n\n we barely talked. No music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We made one stop,<\/p>\n\n\n\n a beach walk for my invalid husky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She stayed in the car.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She never asked for my help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I never offered any.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I clenched her hips,<\/p>\n\n\n\n felt the furnace of her torso,<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was exploring a<\/p>\n\n\n\n territory without maps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have never been there again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We didn’t try.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Almost two decades later,<\/p>\n\n\n\n I still don’t know why.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We fed a candy cane to a Newport gull a few weeks before Christmas. She introduced me to Love Actually and I cried at the corn pone. On Christmas Eve we hit a dump strip club in Portland before witnessing a family’s worst children’s Christmas show in American holiday history. A few weeks later, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9861,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-poetry","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9860"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9863,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9860\/revisions\/9863"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}