A Taste of the Rock Star Life

The Panties tour goes to Portland, Oregon.

There wasn’t a large amphitheatre, blinding lights, or thousands of fans screaming my name, but the Portland crowd at 23rd Avenue Books came to have a good time and stayed late for the backstage tour. Most of them were friends of Sean Keener, President of BootsnAll.com. But there were also a handful that came from different sources.

23rd Avenue Books is located on a trendy shop-lined street downtown on the NW side. Cafes, antique shops, gift stores, pubs, and coffee shops give shoppers plenty of reason to spend all day mosy-ing around and getting a feel for Portland’s energy. It is a perfect hybrid of “Ahhh, I can chill here” and “the air has a promise that dreams can come true.” I feel that when I’m here because it is such a liveable city. So affordable compared to California, When I return every few months I’m always seeing changes…new stores, renovated houses, recently opened restaurants. I can just tell that people have come here to make something new of their lives.

For this event I had the pleasure of meeting Deanna Sukkar. Her story, “Underwear and Tear” opens the book. She came all the way down from Portland with her mom, and this was her first ever published piece. A chef by trade, she’s now back at university getting a PhD in Library Science. It was also a treat to see my friend Barbara Shaw from Eugene. Barb and I became friends when I was living in Eugene and editing Sand in My Bra. We were in the same writing It was fun to see the audience squirm and groan and laugh at her story, “When You Gotta Go.” And as you already know, I love that toilet humor!

I had fun reading my risqué experience , but sheesh where did all these men come from?! I swear there are so many more men in the audience this year than attended last year’s events for Sand in My Bra. Sean was practically falling out of his chair at times, while his dad sat still next to him. I really need to get a little spy cam that is placed in the back of my book so I can take pictures of the audience cracking up. It is really something to see. One of the guys in the back had his mouth open a few times, as you do when you’re hanging on waiting to hear what’s going to happen next. Even the international crowd could tell what was going on because they were laughing, too.

Back to being a rock star, Sean bought me flowers and a bunch of us went out for fish tacos and drinks. Two men, somewhat new BootsnAll members, came with. Dillion and Erik. They weren’t together, but both of them had found BnA and Written Road via Rolf Potts’ Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel.

And thus came the backstage tour back at BootsHQ in the BootBus. Sean, Eric, Dillion and I sat in the bus and let the Pinot flow late into the night. Eric astounded me with his insight into Rolf, (and BootsnAll) and asked if this whole community was real or made up. I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about at first, but he clarified by saying, do you really know Rolf and Don George? Why yes, Eric. That’s real. Dillion was getting ready for a big trip to Central America, and Erik was planning for a lengthy trip as well. But he’s offered to take me to his favorite places to play craps next week and I’m going to hold him to it.

Thanks for coming out, everyone!