Levi Rogers's Blog, page 2

On Dating: Yourself, Your Partner, and The Place You Live In

It’s my day off, Friday, and my twenty-one-month-old daughter Evangeline and I are sitting at Lardo off Hawthorne in Portland, Oregon. Lardo is a sandwich shop serving delicious, but not exactly toddler-friendly-health-food. I order my daughter some mac salad but as we sit down to eat she decides to dump out half the bowl instead and starts going for my parmesan and rosemary dusted fries. Now she is dipping them in ketchup to lick them off. I let her dip a few small fries but soon she takes her ketchup-covered hand and wipes it across her face, a face that is already smeared with boogers and snot. Good god, she is a mess! My wife is going to be so pissed.

Yet, are you even a toddler if youdon’t have a snotty nose? It makes me a terrible father, I know, giving Frenchfries to a toddler and not fruits or veggies, but it’s not like I ONLY feed herFrench fries. Earlier this morning I fed her milk and eggs and one of thosefruit pouches. I also tried to feed her some of my Bronx bomber sandwich withsteak and onions and cheese and aioli but she wasn’t having any of it.

Taking a toddler out to eat isoften more hassle than it’s worth, but I’m doing it for a reason. On my day offI like to visit a new restaurant or coffeeshop in Portland (of which there aremany, too many possibly, to even go to all of them in one lifetime) and remindmyself why I have chosen to live here.

You have to have things to give you hope here in the Pacific Northwest, things that will outweigh the rain and the traffic and the daily winter darkness that descends from October-February. Otherwise you forget why you have chosen to leave the sunny Rocky Mountains for such a gloomy place. So, you go out to eat and let your daughter dunk French fries.

* * *

Sometimes you get tired of theplace you live in after all. Sometimes you get tired of your partner. Sometimesyou get tired of yourself.

This is my dumb solution: Makedates. With yourself, your partner, even the place you live in. Remind yourselfwhy you love them. It’s not very difficult of an idea, it’s maybe even anobvious or cliché one. It’s the execution and the follow through that makesthis task of dating so challenging.

On the one hand, through apps likeTindr, Bumble, and Grindr, we are dating now more than ever before. It’s awhole new world out there (one I sadly, or perhaps luckily, missed). And yet Idon’t think anyone would argue that while the quantity of our dates hasgone up, the quality of said dates has gone down.

An article on Digital Trends called“More Americans Are Using Online Dating Than Ever Before, But it Still Sucks,”seems to back this up. As the article says:

“A new poll published Thursday byPew Research Center found that three in ten Americans have used a dating app,more than ever before, even though many found the processdisappointing. Pewsurveyed nearly 5,000 U.S. adults, 45% of which who’ve used a dating app saidtheir recent experience “left them feeling more frustrated than hopeful.” 

I think we need to get better atdating. Our partners, the place we live in, and ourselves.

After the French fries and theketchup and snot-smeared face, my daughter and I drive up to Hood River wheremy sister and her kids and my parents live (my wife was working). Hood River isan hour drive east of Portland through the breathtaking Columbia River Gorge.It’s my happy place. The prettiest place on earth. As close to Rivendell andElven immortality that us mortals will ever get to experience. And yet, evenso, I get tired of the drive.

 I mean, I know that I’m a restless and slightly depressive person, but how in the world is it possible that one could get tired of this drive? There are literally dozens of waterfalls, bridges, majestic clouds, moss-covered rock faces, and Douglas Firs the size of skyscrapers as you drive alongside the Columbia. There are even bald eagles! Motherfreaking bald eagles! And yet, I still take it for granted, or forget that’s it there, and choose instead to make up stupid arguments in my head with my boss and wife while I drive.

Today I need a reminder of howbeautiful this drive is and my daughter and I get one. It’s cloudy as we drive,but warm outside (miraculously warm and not even raining), and as we pass theworld-famous Multnomah Falls I see a thin ray of sun light up the green treesof Washington across the Columbia. I’m listening to Wye Oak through thespeakers and suddenly feel a huge surge of hope and am nearly crying.

For the past month I’d been depressedas hell for a whole slew of reasons—Seasonal affective disorder of course, butI was also recovering from a shoulder surgery (a torn labrum) and it was a longass recovery process in the dark of winter and I hadn’t been doing much butgoing to work and drinking and smoking whole plates of cigarettes.

This brief glimpse of sun throughthe Gorge lit me up. I was full from the sandwich we ate earlier, properlycaffeinated, and I’d even slept well the night before. Sometimes that’s whatyou need I guess—a little sun, a little sleep perhaps, a good ass sandwich, andcoffee of course.

So those were my dates with theplaces I live in—a drive through a Columbia Gorge and a bomb sandwich—both ofwhich technically count as double dates because as I did them with mydaughter.

Yet, I also try to take my partnerout. Last week my wife and I went on a date to Bamboo Sushi in downtownPortland and then out to a reading at Powell’s Books for Lidia Yuknavitch’s newrelease. This weekend we’re going to a house show. And yes, technically these alsocount as double dates—one for me, one for my partner—since these are things Iwould go to on my own anyways, and so, yes, I’m not exactly being totallyselfless, but still, it’s something, right?! Right wife? *In my defense my wifeonly likes to go on dumb, stupid dates like go to Broadway shows or the balletor symphony (gross) or have picnics in the park (unsanitary) so that’s why Iplan most of our dates.

 When my daughter was born, my wife didn’t goon a date for over a year. It was just too much with the kid—everything, all ofit—and for the first three months we didn’t live around family. Now we’regetting better. But it took some work and planning and time and that doesn’tcome easy when you’re always have to clean up the Tupperware your toddler hastossed all about over the kitchen floor.

I don’t really date myself all thatoften—my dates are mostly with bottles of whiskey and packs of American Spiritsand maybe a movie. When I actually do have time not dominated by raising achild or going to work, I’ll take myself to a coffee shop and try to get somewriting done, (though I haven’t read it, I know the book, “The Artist’s Way,”says to take yourself on an artistic date every week). But mostly? Mostly I’lljust feel tired and will go home and put myself to bed.

Can a nap count as a date? Yes, Ithink a nap can count as a date, or at the very least, “Self-care” which iswhat we’re really talking about when we’re talking about dating yourself.

God, it’s so hard to go out and getanything done for yourself isn’t it? You practically have to summon yourspirits as Captain Ahab does in pursuit of the while wale: “Awake! Rise! To theBoats! Move! Thar she blows! Pour another coffee down the hatch and get to art!”

Except the battle to care foryourself is working on an essay no one will ever read or care about and CaptainAhab is about to get his head snapped clean fucking off by the jaws ofdepression and lack of sleep.

I’m glad that I never had a chanceto date online. I think I would like it a bit too much. I would just keepswiping, keep meeting, keep dating, thinking that with each next swipe I wouldfind the perfect solution to all my problems. Perhaps that’s why people aredating and swiping more than ever, and yet still remain single. But that’s notnecessarily a bad thing as an article in the Observer reports:

“Whether they’re waitinglonger to settle down, choosing to enjoy monogamy outside the legal constraintsof a marriage, or choosing to forgo the institution altogether, the numbers arestartling, record-breaking, and for many, empowering. In a 2017 census report, 55 percent of Americansexpressed the belief that getting married is not an important milestone inleading a happy adulthood. As the new year unfolds, single Americans will findthemselves navigating a dating world transformed by technology, fraught withuncertainty, but luckily, still paved by genuine emotion.[i]”

Not for me, for better or worse, Iam stuck with a stupid baby and a wife (and there was a time when I really didbegin to resent this). Yet I don’t want to live a bitter life and so I knowthat you either have to give up on a certain situation or try to make it right.

Hence, you got to date. Yourself,your partner, the place you live in.

As I finish editing this article atPrince Coffee on NE Fremont on this President’s day, February 17, 2020, I feelenormously grateful that I have a day off work and was able to sleep in whilemy beautiful wife took our beautiful daughter to daycare hence giving me myfirst full toddler-wife-work-free day in what feels like months, if not two years.I’m thinking of the many ways in which to take advantage of said off day, butin the end, I’ll probably finish editing and then go back to sleep. Sometimesyour bed is the best date you can take yourself on.

[i] https://observer.com/2018/01/more-americans-are-single-than-ever-before-and-theyre-healthier-too/

You Can’t Afford to Be This Quiet

You Can’t Afford to be This Quiet

Honey and lemon
flow across my tongue
a hot toddy with a thick body
thicker, at least, than the rain
that swept into my mouth

earlier this evening
under the metal
doorway of an apartment building
whose walls you could eat off of.

This, when the sky was lighter
(And the violence too, at least I like to think)

Everything lighter with tea
and whiskey,
silence and space.

You can’t afford to be this quiet.

No really, you can’t afford it.
The rent is ridiculous.

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