I love me a good couple's fight, Part 2

Other than the loose tie back to a previous post (Love Me a Good Couple Fight), this next story does an awful job of staying true to any form devised by this blog. But it weighs on me, so I air it. If you’re one of those purist types who feels I’ve diverged, lost my way, “jumped the shark” perhaps, just skip this post.

4.21.08 Approx. 7:32 am

I ride my bike to work. Just not in the rain, which probably doesn’t sound like very often in Portland, but you’d be surprised. And the only relevance my bike has to this story is that I find by passing things slower than I would in a car or on a bus, and by not having steel doors around me, I become almost an active participant to the events around me.

Anyway, there are a couple different routes I’ll take, depending on the coffee shop I want to stop at on the way – today I chose Grendels on East Burnside and 7th. It’s fine. Nothing special but one of the few tolerable places (decent music, not too sterile,) on my way into the office – please, if nothing else is gained from this blog, someone just open a cool coffee shop between Burnside and SW Harrison, or at least notify me of one I’m missing.

I specifically chose Grendels on this particular morning because I had a free coffee coming to me and I was running a little light. The route between my house and Grendels takes me through some fairly industrial areas right before I hit my destination. This morning, I came across a parking lot full of big rigs. It’s one of those things that you never pay attention to, and you would have no idea if the trucks are for sale or just parked there for the night, or anything else about them – I normally just ride by.

But on this particular morning, I happened to ride up to this parking lot, just as a man in his 20s, and woman who was most certainly in her teens, and the low ones at that, emerged from behind a truck. The man did the ol’ look both ways and go for it. And the girl, dressed in way too short a dress for this early in the wedding season, wandered aimlessly and confused as if she just had her very innocence violently ripped away from her.

The whole thing was horrible. And since there was absolutely nothing I could say or do, I tried to justify what I just saw.

Maybe she was a whore getting in her last licks of the night (definitely in the right part of town for that).

Maybe she was his coworker and they just had a disagreement about how to run the business.

Maybe that was the most loved she’ll ever be.

I will never know. But since I now have to live with the image of those two walking away from each other in utter disgrace, I figure someone else should at least share it with me.