Hipster Noir

My first mistake was taking Elwood at his word. He always was a big, fat liar. My second mistake was believing, even for a minute, that something would turn out good for me. Hell, that wasn’t even a mistake...it was a joke. I sure hope somebody got a good laugh out of it: Jesus, Buddha, Xenu, whoever the hell is in charge of this shitshow. I hope they had a really good time at my expense. I hope they busted a gut. I really do. At least there’d be some meaning behind it all, even if my life turned out to be nothing more than lowbrow entertainment for some sadistic deity. Maybe ol’ Elwood knows the answer, huh? That stupid stoner is probably laughing harder than anybody.

That morning started out like any other morning. I woke up at about eleven and discovered I’d passed out in my clothes again. I was still in my Navy pea coat and I was missing a shoe. I tossed my apartment upside down and sideways but couldn’t find that goddamned Keen loafer to save my ass. I found it later, stuck in a muddy planter next to the carport. I probably never even realized it came off my foot. My hunter green Outback was parked perfectly, though. I have to give myself some props for that. Right between the lines. Dead center. The keys were still in the ignition and there was a parking ticket on the windshield from wherever the hell I illegally parked the night before or the night before that.

Sometimes, I wonder what I’m like when I’m blackout drunk. Am I mean? Witty? Maybe I speak with a charming British accent. That would be cool.

Have you ever been to Portland, Oregon? Easiest damned city for a drunk to live, in my opinion. It rains all the time in my shitty burg. Nothing else to do except drink. Happy hour starts at three o’clock and it seems like everybody I know has their boney ass parked on a barstool at some point during the day. Drinks aren’t cheap, but they’re usually strong. Two dollar pints of PBR are always available when the funds are low. Ten bucks can get you well on your way to a good time. Twenty can guarantee it. Forty can get you in trouble--get me in trouble, anyway.

Portland. Nothing but gray skies and black hearts. Somebody told me once that when the settlers came West on the Oregon Trail, only the biggest losers and Johnny Come Latelies ended up in Portland. All that loser DNA concentrated in one big clusterfuck of a gene pool between the Willamette and Columbia Rivers. I think that’s a pretty solid theory. Elwood’s family arrived in a Conestoga wagon in the 1800s. Most of their descendants went out in a blaze of stupidity, just as I’m certain Elwood will someday.

The landscape that is now the city of Portland was once covered with pristine, old-growth forest. When the population started to boom, the forest was clear-cut to make room for housing developments. That’s where the nickname “Stumptown” came from. Did you know that? Portland was literally covered with stumps. I think the whole town is haunted by ancient spirits who suddenly found themselves ejected from their primordial home. The place is cursed and the genetically defective miscreants who live there can feel the vindictive retribution of those pissed-off ghosts deep in their soggy, rain-drenched bones.

I was born in Portland, so nobody can cry foul on my opinion about the town and its people. I’m one of them, after all. Elwood is a Stumptown native, too, and my best friend since kindergarten. I really can’t remember a time when he wasn’t in my life. Elwood was always just there. Mucking everything up. Truthfully, I don’t really recall much about my childhood. High school is kind of a blur, too. Scattered memories come back to me from time to time, but none of them are particularly pleasant or interesting, so I try to concentrate on the here and now. Of course, my here and now is pretty crappy, too. Elwood made sure of that.

As I was saying, that morning was like any other morning, except it was my day off. I work, or I should say worked, as a barista at Axelrod Coffee Roasters in Northeast. The pay is minimum wage and tips. Yeah, I think you already figured out that I’m not what you would call an over-achiever. I earned just enough money to pay the rent for my low-income studio, and get my drink on. I like to tell people that I’m a poet slash songwriter, but that’s really just a tall tale for the ladies. Offbeat, historical trivia is what’s really my thing. I’ll admit it, I’m really more nerd than hipster. The flannel shirt, pencil-thin mustache and knit cap I sport are de rigueur for any single, twenty-four-year-old male hoping to get occasionally laid in Portland.

Elwood works as a busboy at Duchamp’s Steakhouse downtown. Elwood. Let me tell you about Elwood. He’s about five foot five with a mangy mop of bright orange hair. That’s his natural hair color, by the way, as unnatural as it looks. He keeps that hair tucked underneath a gray and white trucker hat, which is his sole, lame attempt to try to look hip. Elwood isn’t hip. He’s the epitome of non-hip. Smokes weed like a human bonfire. He has a medical marijuana card to treat his depression or CTE or something or other, which is a crock of bullshit. The dude is smarter than I ever gave him credit for, and he certainly pays attention to everything going on around him. Everything.

Duchamp’s is located on the ground floor of the old Excelsior Hotel. The Excelsior was built in 1872, by probably more than a few of Elwood’s redheaded ancestors. At the time, it was considered an architectural marvel. Its impressive brick and marble edifice welcomed heads of state and the best-heeled visitors to Portland before the turn of the last century. The suites on the highest floors had unobstructed views of the Willamette River, and the elegant restaurant on the ground level was staffed by European chefs with pedigrees that would impress even the most refined traveler of the day. I learned all of this on a walking history tour of the city. I can’t tell you exactly why I love this kind of crap, but I do.

In its heyday, every major reception, event and benefit were held at the Excelsior. It was the place to see and be seen among Portland’s elite. Gentleman Jim Corbett once put on a boxing exhibition in the hotel’s Grand Ballroom, and although no actual U.S. President is believed to have ever slept in the Presidential Suite, famed British actress Lillie Langtry reportedly spent several nights there in 1893.

That walking tour was sure worth the forty bucks, right? Am I right?

I always likened the old building to a mausoleum. Almost 140 years after the Excelsior’s grand opening, the place was dank, moldy and in significant disrepair. The fine silk wallpaper, the rich hardwood moldings, the expensive, Italian marble floors; all long gone or rotting away. The basement was the worst, or perhaps the best, depending on how you look at it. A damp, roughly hewn locker in the basement was where the wine and liquor bottles were stored. As the lead busboy and a frequent closer at Duchamp’s, Elwood was charged with restocking the bar. Of course, Elwood spent most of his time down in that basement smoking pot. Apparently, he did some other, more odious things down there, too.

Many restaurants had opened and closed in the space that was once occupied by the Excelsior’s five-star eatery. The basement was like a mass grave for the failed businesses, cluttered with piles of old fixtures and furniture dating back to god-knows-when. Duchamp’s was the latest attempt to revive the building and the neighborhood to some semblance of its former glory. Sadly, grandiose plans to restore and transform the upper floors into high-end condos never came to fruition and the restaurant was struggling to survive.

On his first day of duty at Duchamp’s, the manager gave Elwood the grand tour of the basement and treated him to the obligatory ghost stories. Of course, the place was haunted—-had to be—-it was a creepy basement in an old, run-down hotel. However, the creep factor at the Excelsior was seriously magnified by the fact that the basement was a bona fide, verified entrance to the notorious Shanghai Tunnels.

The Shanghai Tunnels were a legendary series of underground caverns that linked numerous restaurants, bars and hotels with various houses of debauchery and dens of iniquity during the lawless days of Portland’s early history. Brothels, opium dens, gambling parlors—-all could be easily and covertly accessed by captains of industry, politicians, preachers and other respectable members of society who did not wish to be seen indulging in the sins of the flesh.

Let me know if I start to bore you. I could go on forever about this stuff.

There was also a much more sinister aspect of the tunnels and the reason for the name “Shanghai”. It had nothing to do with the fact that they were buried beneath Portland’s Chinatown, and everything to do with tales of unfortunate young men who were slipped knockout drops and subsequently dropped through trapdoors into underground cells, where they waited to be shipped off as unwilling crew members on merchant ships to China. The tunnels were said to be haunted by the restless spirits of those men, forever seeking vengeance against the pirates who stole their very lives.

Duchamp’s owners opened the basement up for “ghost tours”, hoping to lure in some customers. I was one of the first to sign up for a tour, but like most of the tourists, I was extremely disappointed to discover that the tunnel entrances were long sealed and I would be exploring a dirty basement storage room instead of the actual tunnels. Still, I was always fascinated by the history surrounding it all. I often wondered what it was like for those young men. One minute they were belting down a few shots of rotgut, hand up the skirt of a skanky prostitute, no doubt, and the next minute they were dumped down a deadfall and sold into white slavery. That had to be one helluva hangover. How many fellows were dragged feet first through the Excelsior’s basement and into those tunnels? The arched entryways are still there.

Newer brick was used to wall up the ancient brick access points to the tunnels; a haphazard array that stood in stark contrast against the 19th Century craftsmanship of the original construction. Chunks of sloppy mortar appeared to ooze out of the ragged cracks. It appeared to be the work of a drunk or a madman--or more likely Elwood’s toothless great grandpappy.

Elwood came over to my apartment just after I finished cleaning the mud off of my shoe. His trucker cap was pulled way too far down on his forehead to look appropriately ironic, and his Edgar Allan Poe t-shirt was so last year. As usual, I wasn’t very excited to see him, but he was very excited and quite animated. That piqued my interest enough to listen to what he was babbling on and on about.

Elwood told me that he discovered an entrance to a long-forgotten section of the tunnels. It was filled with all kinds of historical artifacts that appeared to be untouched for decades. Shoes, hats, and even cases of liquor that had to date back at least as far as the Prohibition Era. He didn’t have to say much more. I was dying to see for myself.

We took the MAX downtown and disembarked at Pioneer Courthouse Square--the unofficial center of downtown Portland. A small group of anarchists in Guy Fawkes masks were preparing for an afternoon protest march. It would have been fun to join them, but I had some postmodern archeology to attend to. I made a mental note that Postmodern Archeology would make a great name for a neofolk band.

It was a short walk to Duchamp’s from the square. It was raining, of course. We just pulled up our hoodies and walked on with scrunched up faces. Only tourists use umbrellas in Portland. Locals know there’s no sense in trying to stay dry. Eternal dampness permeates every soul in Stumptown sooner or later.

Elwood took me through a service entrance in the back alley and straight down a rickety, wooden staircase to the basement of the Excelsior. He had two large Maglites waiting at the bottom of the stairs. Looking back, I realize how odd it was for Elwood to be that prepared. This was a twenty-four-year-old man who still relied on his mom to get him up in the morning. A grown-ass man who could so easily forget that he was supposed to meet his incredibly cute girlfriend for drinks on a rare Friday night off. As we proceeded into the farthest reaches of the basement, I started to feel a little uneasy. Seriously, the little hairs on the back of my neck started to tingle.

“The entrance is just a few feet ahead there,” Elwood exhorted as if he could sense my growing apprehension. “And I didn’t even tell you the best part. There’s a safe!”

“Seriously?” I replied. “What kind of safe?”

“It’s really, really old, and it says Wells Fargo on the door. It isn’t locked and there's all kinds of stuff inside!”

“Wells Fargo?” I exclaimed. “Wells Fargo?” I had to see this for myself.

We finally reached a small opening in the brick wall that looked to be recently created. The hole was barely large enough to crawl through.

“They were doing some plumbing work down here and the workmen busted open that hole. It leads right into the tunnel I was telling you about. Don’t worry, I made it through and back, no problem.”

I turned around and saw an odd, quirky smile on Elwood’s face. He rarely smiled. I took it to mean that he was really excited about what he’d found. Poor chump was way too stupid to understand the historical importance of this discovery. An old safe hidden in the recesses of the Shanghai Tunnels? It’s contents had to be in the very least curious, and in the very best scandalous!

“Wells Fargo? Are you sure the safe had the words Wells Fargo written on it?” I asked as I shimmied through the narrow opening. “That’s what it said, absolutely,” assured my diminutive, ginger companion.

Once through to the other side of the hole, I found myself in a narrow, dusty tunnel that was barely high enough to stand in. I’m six feet tall and the ceiling was only about an inch above my head. Elwood had plenty of headroom. He skipped ahead of me like an excited elf.

“Come on, man! The safe is right up here!”

“Wells Fargo, huh?”

“Yes! Wells Fargo!”

We reached what appeared to be another fresh opening in the wall. There was a pile of old bricks nearby. Elwood stopped at this larger hole and waved his Maglite toward the pitch-black interior. “It’s right over THERE!”

I shined my light inside, but I didn’t see anything but dust and cobwebs. That’s the last thing I remember before I woke up here. When I came to, I found a Kryptonite bike lock around my neck that was firmly attached to the brick wall. Elwood was on the other side of the opening, bricking it back up! “Elwood! What the hell are you doing?” I was in full panic mode. Pulling and tugging violently against the lock around my neck, I realized that I was about to suffer the same fate as that poor schlub of a cognoscente in Poe’s Cask of Amontillado!

“You don’t even remember what you did, do you?” Elwood muttered as he troweled wet, uneven mortar between the bricks he was stacking. “What kind of a piece of shit sleeps with his best friend’s girl and DOESN’T EVEN REMEMBER IT?”

That was the first time I had ever heard Elwood raise his voice in anger. Frankly, I didn’t know he had it in him. He didn’t say another word as he finished his grim project, no matter how much I cursed, implored and screamed.

That was two days ago, and I’m feeling myself grow weaker with every agonizing, slow-passing hour. I know I don’t have much longer to live, and I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m getting what I deserve. I won’t be joining the ghosts in these tunnels because I know there really aren’t any such things as ghosts and spirits. There’s no afterlife and there’s no salvation. All that exists is the here and now, and like I said, my here and now is pretty crappy.

I do remember meeting Elwood’s girlfriend, Dori, at the Little Pony Bar for a drink. I also remember thinking how cute she looked in that polka dot vintage dress and how upset she was when Elwood didn’t show up for their “date” again. After that? Who knows? I’m a blackout drunk, remember?

Even as the terror of my inevitable, pitiful demise begins to sink in, I still can’t help finding some amusement at the irony. I also can’t help wondering what an urban archeologist will think when he or she opens this impromptu crypt 100 years from now. What will be more interesting? The skeletal remains attached to the wall with a bike lock...or the Wells Fargo safe in the corner.