I was new on the scene. Fresh out of the cage of a twenty-year marriage where I played the part of the good corporate soldier, the Mormon provider, the man who followed the straight and narrow right off a goddamn cliff.
Now? I was the owner of a tequila bar in Bend. Which basically meant I owned a dating site with a liquor license. The buffet was open. I didn’t have to hunt; the gazelles were throwing themselves into the lion’s mouth. But for some reason—maybe boredom, maybe a subconscious desire to complicate my life—I went on OKCupid.
And I found Her. The Canadian.
She was a banker from Vancouver. Smart, sharp, and looked exactly like Kate Hudson if Kate Hudson had never sold out. Curly blonde hair, European lips, that natural beauty you can’t buy in a bottle. I asked her why a woman like her was online, and she gave me the “Last of the Mohicans” speech—her little Canadian town had been overrun, the culture shifted, and she felt like a stranger in her own zip code. She was looking for an escape hatch.
We made a plan. A beautiful, romantic, high-stakes plan. She’d drive down from Canada. I’d drive up from Bend. We’d meet at the Marriott Waterfront in downtown Portland. I had reservations at Edgefield. I was going to be Prince Charming.
But I was a man in the middle of a divorce, bleeding money, and using alcohol as a demolition tool.
I arrived in Portland early. I went to see my buddy Mike. His little brother was there, a kid who looked like he just walked off an Amish farm, turning 21. And because I am a genius of self-destruction, I said, “It’s the afternoon. Let’s go to the Acropolis.”
For the uninitiated, the Acropolis isn’t a museum. It’s a dive bar in Milwaukie, Oregon, that is famous for two things: fully nude dancers and a ranch that supplies their own beef. You can get a ribeye steak for $3 while watching a 40-year-old woman named “Porsche” try to pay for her kid’s braces.
We went for a “quickie.” A steak and a view.
It turned into a goddamn Roman orgy of bad choices.
I threw money around like I was Pablo Escobar. I bought lap dances for the Amish kid. I drank enough whiskey to float a battleship. I drank so much the bartender—a woman who works at a strip club that serves discount meat—actually cut me off. I was a liquid mess, drooling on myself, staring at the “A-Team” dancers (the 30-somethings who used to work Vegas) and ignoring the “D-Team” (the breakfast crew who looked like they’d been ridden hard and put away wet).
Then, the trouble. Some guys across the stage, a bachelor party in loud Hawaiian shirts, said something. Maybe they looked at me wrong. Maybe they didn’t. It didn’t matter. I snapped. I launched out of my chair like a missile, ready to engulf this guy, to tear his head off.
And then, the hand of God. The bouncer. A giant with arms that glistened under the strobe lights. He pushed me back with one finger and said, “Time to go, gentlemen. You’ve done enough menacing.”
We stumbled out. I put Mike and the Amish kid in a truck. They drove off.
And there I was. Drunk. Alone. In the parking lot of a steak-and-legs joint. And I couldn’t find my car.
I walked in circles. Nothing. Which was a miracle, really, because if I had found it, I would have driven it into the Columbia River. But my phone was dead. My charger was in the missing car. I was a ghost.
I stumbled up the street. Found a grocery store. Slurred at the clerk to call me a taxi. I could barely stand. The taxi came, I mumbled “Downtown Marriott,” and I blacked out in the back seat.
I woke up the next morning in a hotel room. My head felt like it had been split open with an axe. The phone next to the bed was screaming.
I picked it up.
“Hello?”
It was the Canadian. And she wasn’t just mad; she was nuclear.
“Where the fuck have you been?”
She had driven all the way from Canada. Couldn’t find me. Couldn’t call me. Found out every hotel in Portland was sold out. She had to drive back into Washington to find a motel. She had spent her first night in America alone, angry, and convinced she’d been catfished by a lunatic.
“I’m downstairs,” she hissed. “In the lobby.”
“I’m coming,” I said.
I tried to roll out of bed. And that’s when I felt it. The cold, damp, undeniable reality of my own rock bottom.
I had pissed the bed.
You know you’ve really outdone yourself when you wake up in a puddle of your own fluids. It wasn’t a little spot. It was a lake. I had passed out, and my body had just given up. I smelled like urine, stale whiskey, and profound failure.
And the Kate Hudson lookalike was in the lobby.
I hit the shower. I scrubbed myself raw. I threw on clothes, adrenaline masking the hangover. I raced downstairs.
There she was. Radiating. Beautiful. Even better than the pictures. She looked like an angel who was about to punch me in the throat.
I didn’t hesitate. I walked right up to her, in the middle of the crowded Marriott lobby, and I dropped to my knees.
I begged. I pleaded. I looked up at her with big, wet, puppy-dog eyes. “I am so sorry,” I said. “I messed up. You can slap me. Right here. Do it.”
I looked sincere because I was sincere. I felt like a piece of shit.
She looked down at me. She grabbed my cheek. And instead of slapping me, she kissed me. Right on the upper lip.
“There’s nothing to forget,” she said. “Let’s go.”
I stood up, confused, grateful, and terrified. I took her back up to the room. The room where the crime scene was waiting.
“James,” she said, “can I take a shower real quick?”
“Yes!” I said. “Please.”
She went into the bathroom. The water started running. And I went into full-blown Crisis Management mode.
I stripped the bed. I saw the stain. It was massive. I grabbed every towel in the room and built a layer of absorption over the wet spot. I threw the extra blankets on top. I remade the bed like a crime scene cleaner hiding a body. I fluffed the pillows. I prayed to a God I didn’t believe in that she wouldn’t sit there.
She came out. Pure. White. Naked. Her hair untouched and dewy. She stood there, quiet and gentle, with those eyes.
And something primitive triggered.
I forgot the hangover. I forgot the Acropolis. I forgot the urine soaking into the mattress under the towels.
I went to her.
We spent the entire day in that room. I played the Tantra master, and she was the willing student. The connection was intense, immediate, and overwhelming. We navigated the bed carefully. I steered her away from the danger zone. We danced around the wet spot like it was a landmine.
Her eye contact, the way her body reacted… I knew, right then and there, that this wasn’t just a hookup. This was trouble. I had just received my freedom, and here was a woman who was already making me want to stay in the cage.
We never found the car that weekend.
But we found something else. And considering I started the day covered in my own piss, I’d say it was a goddamn triumph.
