Quick story for y’all this fine evening.  It’s a snapshot into a wonderful friendship that is my relationship with The Silver Fox as well as a little insight into the dream of the 90s Portland, specifically the Pearl District.

The Fox came over to my place tonight to celebrate the end of my Sunday-Thursday work week, or possibly just to remind me that he’s successfully retired and that everyday is his Friday.  He says that’s not the case, but I’m not entirely sure I believe that…

I informed him as I was leaving work that I’d been in a firing mood most of the day and that I planned to “talk it out into a glass of wine”.  He countered with “bottle of wine” which I readily agreed to, only to freak out momentarily when I realized he was suggesting we share a bottle.

Eek.

That sounds too much like group therapy, which I’ve never particularly cared for.

I rallied and suggested pizza, which I ordered as soon as I got off the Max.  I may have frustrating days at work occasionally, but I will never abandon my ideals of appropriate public behaviors!  Talking on a phone while riding public transit in rush hour?  No.  Not acceptable.  Not even in non-rush hour.  Not even for pizza.

Luckily, he brought a bottle to compliment the one I’d opened when I walked into Chez Galby.  

Crisis averted.

Flash forward a few slices of ‘za, several glasses of vino and six episodes of Alpha House on Amazon.  It was 9:30 on my Friday night and I was ready to pack it in. I turned off the TV as a hint.  Fortunately, the Fox was right on the same page as me.  

“Be a dear and take out these empties on your way?” I never said, if you’ll allow me to paraphrase in the extreme what I really said, which was more along the lines of, “Don’t forget to pack out your fucking trash!”

“Why, you want me to get rid of the evidence so you don’t have to face it in the morning?” he essentially replied.

I shared with him that my pre-hosting activities included not only cleaning up the kitty-bomb Myrtle had laid inside my entry door and changing out of my work clothes, but also taking three empty wine bottles to the recycling room on my floor.

What I didn’t share with him was that I wasn’t entirely sure when I’d had time to drink three bottles of wine, when I’d last recycled or that one of the only other two empties in the recycling room was also mine; all of these realizations I had chalked up to last weekend being my birthday weekend.

Fortunately, my best friend knows me well enough to feel comfortable walking back into my condo a minute after leaving – unannounced – to tell me that all five bottles in the recycling bin were AniChe and, therefore, mine.

Also fortunately, I was still wearing pants that same full minute after my company left.  Otherwise me telling him that the only reason I know the other three units on my floor are occupied was the one empty 1L bottle of Yellow Tail wine in the recycle bin would have been weird.

My best friend and I are also bonded by moments of fleeting – at least in his case – hyperbole.

So, yeah…the original concept for the Pearl was to create a diverse socio-economic neighborhood.  Twenty years in, that empty Costco sized bottle of Yellow Tail tells me that experiment was at least a partial success.

Luckily, the Fox and I were able to find each other in the process:  two rare vintages in a sea of boxed wines and screw tops.

It’s my Friday, folks…hopefully you weren’t expecting anything deeper than 750 fabulous mL.

Tonight was, literally, love and pizza.  

The best.

PS: who just googled Hooverville?