Potbellied

He frequented the prestigiously attended yoga churches of the hippified, Portland jet-set, including the Dandy Warhol’s, Courtney Tay-Tay’s gorgeous wife, Lockett Albrittons’ stretched classes, and other such west hill dwellers. He took me to the finest sushi joints and glorious parties. We attended many concerts in which we were ushered backstage including Jackson Brown and Father John Misty —ticket, his bellicosity and some random crew-tag he’d snagged. A true truffle hog, he took me to the finest fare, but in the six weeks I dated him, I found him piggish, and that quite changes an adventure.

Greedy with my time, I often declined his dating advances, but there was always one last amazing date and he assured me we’d go only as friends. We stayed in a sprawling Sunriver estate, high-beamed cedars with lake views and plenty of fresh-aired pine trails to race our bikes on, but he did try to share a bed with me and the stale air of his fat-lipped whispers are what I now remember most about that trip.

Gluttonous with his incessant thoughts of food, at times taking me out to eat three times in one day, oyster omelet’s for breakfast, sushi and miso with sake and green-tea ice cream for lunch and some German place with heaps of sausages and breads for dinner.

There were those mornings when all he’d eat were home blended green shakes that really were awful, he’d swig the mash down with a handful of twenty, horsey vitamins and expect I do that same. He, with nothing on but grey sweat-bottoms unable to pull elastic waist up over the potbellied round, always showed a bit of flat-back crack. His boisterous, pudgy daughter leaning in to let me know she thought he’d run off the last girlfriend with his smoothies when he’d started adding Libby’s canned pumpkin to the swills Halloween through ALL of November.

Photo: Mine/Dandy Warhols in Portland, Oregon