This building was once a telephone exchange, a place where people patched your calls through to other people—and vise-versa—by plugging and unplugging jacks or throwing switches or something. That's why they called it the Telephone Exchange. Tack "Lofts" onto the name, raise the rent, and here come the white folks, right?
Well, not right away. Not all at once.
I'm glad my loft has the vestigial fire escape, not one of the others. It's the reason I agreed to move in. My girl found and fell in love with the place—there's that. But even so, if it hadn't been for that piece of iron to smoke on, I would've said, "Let's look for something else, love."
I was always out there smoking and she was always inside, wondering when I was going to come back in, or was I going to stay out there forever, or what? Because I was a smoker and she wasn't, and that's the way it was: me out there, her inside.
And my girl finally shouting: WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?
I'd come in and laugh and say, "Got space for one more?"
And she would laugh and say, "Glad you're back."
And I'd say, "Me, too. It's crazy out there. I love you, Face."
That was my nickname for her. I was always saying it, calling out to her like that:
"Face..."
"Hey, Face..."
"I love you, Face..."
Face this. Face that.
Drawing out the A and putting a little whistle on the C:
Fayyyyssss...like so.
And you know what she called me? Pants. That's what she called me.
"Hi, Pants."
"Hi, Face."
"Come to bed, Pants."
"Okay, Face. I'm coming."
"Hurry up."
"I love you."
"I love you too, Pants."
Sometimes she put the word "Fancy" in front of "Pants," and that always made me laugh and laugh and laugh.
"What are you doing out there, Fancy Pants?"
Ahahahaha...
"Fayyyyssss! I miss you!"
"I'm right here, Fancy Pants!
She was young and sang in a band and liked to make her hair big for shows. Some nights the cops would roll alongside her in their cars, asking questions as she walked home from the train—tiny cowboy hat in her hair, toy pistols in a holster on her hips.
It wasn't all funny, though. Not everything.
One night I got off work and went to see a show and stayed out late and came home to find the street cordoned off by cop cars, yellow tape all over the place, red and blue and white lights flashing, and right in front of our building, right there at the gate, was a dead kid.
I could see his body from the bus stop. As I got closer, I saw blood pouring from his head. Right above the kid's head was the mailbox, and the names of all the people who lived in the building. My name. Her name.
And I thought: "This isn't a very safe place, is it?"
But really, compared to most cities, Portland is peaceful, and this neighborhood...it costs a lot more to live here now, but it was pretty safe, even then.
But that kid got shot—POW—in the head, 20 yards from our bed. That made me think. The newspaper said he was 14 and it was a gang thing, and that made me think, too.
And then I forgot about it, mostly. We would sometimes hear gunshots, but we never saw any more bodies. Those sounds just sort of blended in with the freeway noise, and with the sirens, ice cream trucks, garbage, people leaving bars, busses coming and going, whack jobs screaming from the overpass...
You never knew if it was a car backfiring or a firecracker or what, because sometimes it was and sometimes it wasn't.
If the glass door that led out onto the fire escape was closed and all the windows were shut—and if you had the TV on or music playing—those sounds barely registered. It was just white noise, like something you'd hear in a seashell. A few POPS and BANGS every so often, almost always at night:
POP!
POP! POP! POP!
Silence...
BANG!
POP! POP!
POP!
"Why so jumpy? It's just a car muffler, jeez."
"Oh, it sounded like...okay."
Three months later:
POP! POP! POP! POP!
BANG!
POP!
Snore...
The absence of a ladder allowed us no escape in the event of a fire.
We couldn't get down, but nobody could get up either. We were untouchable. Unless there was a fire, in which case we were fucked if it was the stairwell that was in flames. I'm still fucked, if that's the case.
I've been here so long there's actually a tree I've watched grow, year after year, without really knowing, and now it's almost big enough to get a grip on and get to the ground without killing myself on the razor-wire surrounding the parking lot.
That's progress.
But I still don't have a car.
