Paul and I don’t celebrate holidays like Valentine ’s Day. Even when we dated when we were younger we thought it was just silly. We don’t celebrate Valentine’s but we do celebrate the whole month of March and every full moon, more on those at another time.
Every time I write or talk about Paul to someone new or somewhere new I feel like the back story is in order. The short of it:
We met over 15 years ago in Utah, started dating 10 years ago and dated for 2 years. Paul broke my heart and I moved to Portland. We spent 5 years not talking to each other. After 5 years we found each other again and through many complications he moved to Portland and we have been living together for almost 3 years to the day.
We make each other very happy. We give each other enough space for our own projects and make time to share crucial awesmoeness with each other. I am very thankful that we each had time to grow up so that we could be together again. I love that we came from the same geographic and musical location and timeline. I am grateful for a partner that supports me, trusts me, respects me, appreciates me and my work and that we can celebrate each other’s accomplishments.
So, even though we don’t celebrate Valentine ’s Day there are two cool things going on tomorrow. The first is that the Murder City Devils are doing a reunion tour and their Portland show is Saturday. My sister and I were stoked so I got four tickets for some sort of weird default Valentine’s double date with her and Mr. Bolsh. I think we first saw the Murder City Devils in Utah in the basement of DV8 in 1998 with The Queers. I remember drinking in the bar upstairs with Paul. That seems like a long time ago. I also saw them at the second to last show here in Portland in 2001. This show should be fun.
And that is also the same day as Zwickelmania, the Oregon Breweries open house. Mmmm craft beer!
I started drinking when I was dating Paul in the 90’s when I was 20 years old. He is 6 months older than me and was the one who bought me beer. He was a beer snob and by the transitive property I became a beer snob. I never drank in high school so I was spared the stupid youthful binge drinking, and with paul’s help, I skipped right to appreciating porters and stouts.
Beer is one of the reasons I moved to Portland. Hell, Paul and I came to Portland for my 21st birthday… for the beer! Craft beer is some think we thoroughly enjoy brewing and drinking, more so the drinking.So having a valentine’s beer open house date and a show is just right up our alley.
Tonight though, Paul, Androo and I are going to see this weeks episode of Battlestar Galactica at The Bagdad, one of Portland’s fine brewery theatre pubs!
Alex Wrekk 