meeting an ex-beau for an ill fated vacation, I tried to see his point of view but couldn't get my head that far up my ass.

I am not speaking metaphorically when I write that angels are everywhere.
At the Japanese Garden in Portland, Allen was yelling at me again for my outrageous misdeeds against his ego. Despite the December drizzle, I hoped out the passenger’s side of his dad’s red sports car. Allen jumped out after me, in order to continue the rant.
With or without him, I was determined to "do" Oregon, thinking, "I have my backpack: If he leaves me here he leaves me here". I wasn’t listening well enough, or perhaps it was that I was giving the wrong answers.... He turned back; I kept walking towards the garden gate.
A man on the path paused, looked at me, then him, asking "...are you all right? That guy is pretty intense." "
"I can handle him," I answered.
The guy was impressed, saying something like, "yes, you seem pretty grounded!
You know, I have an extra ticket... If you want, I can show you around while he cools down ." So he gives me an educational tour, telling me how the layout of the gardens represent the three elements. We are looking at this steep waterfall and these huge Karp fish in the pond.
I say, "I’m a Karp," by family name.
"They’ re protected," he replys, and I feel that means me at this moment.
We walk on a walkway maze and over a bridge, and my guide apologizes for the many sharp corners. At the end of the maze I'm pointed in the direction of the gate and I make joke about how I will now return to Allen pretending I had a terrible time. But stepping off that bridge, I see Allen, who paid six bucks to collect me, and he looks all humiliated and inconvenienced.
"What? What did I do, Allen?"
"You DON’T KNOW?!"
"No. I tried to give you some time to cool out." I lie (...was trying to get away).

Oh, I tried heroically to see Allan’s point of view I just couldn’t get my head that far up my ass [as the saying goes].

The first night I met up with him in Oregon for the vacation, I realized it wasn't going to work, so I got a room in a youth hostel, refusing to stay with Allen at his dad's.
***

At the youth hostel I helped impress the company there because I joined in a highly heady discussion about brain chemistry. See these two blokes were talking about natural endorphins and how psychotropics interfere and they were getting it all wrong. I know because I studied brain chemistry and drugs in grad school.
Well this listener was all impressed with us three geniuses, simply for being conversant about such things until one guy gives his stats: paranoid schizophrenic ten years hospitalized. And the other also similar credentials. Somehow after that when I spoke authoritatively, the formerly impressed audience seemed to have withdrawn and had a funny amused skeptical look. Can’t imagine why. Which is to say, hey, all this misery will make you wise if it doesn’t make you look stupid.
***
Driving late one night on a windy mountainous road, Allen and I just barely managed to stop within inches of hitting a giant Elk. It was ambling cross the road at about half a mile and hour when its lower legs had loomed suddenly above the top of our sports car. Allan had screamed and swerved right to slight margin of the steep road and the moose stopped.
Had we hit it, it surely would have buckled right on top of the car and immediately crushed us. I have never seen such a large being on this planet.
Thank God we weren't fighting, we agreed.

...after that near death experience, we temporarily got it together.



Allen and I have moved from abandonment finally, to puppy love, but will we find a mature seasoned lasting relationship?
The only answer is yes, but probably only with ourselves.
Such things do not come easy if they come at all: Allen had saved himself for me but I am suspicious: what is the difference between saving and being stuck with?
The following morning we are discussing my recent meditation retreat, in which I took a vow: no sex. Since we weren’t allowed to have eye contact or verbal exchanges with anyone, what need for the vow other than to not pleasure self? Allen disagreed: you don’t have to have eye contact or verbal exchange to have sex.
I find his interpretation interesting but improbable.
Today we will see the gorge and end up this eve at the seaside hostel, hopefully in a hospital mood, hospitable.
Not hostile.
We did have a delicious meal at a restaurant we can't recall in a part of Portland we aren't sure exists.
Oh and Allen’s parents are fine, although he was a bit apprehensive about my meeting his in-law, Susan, after my calling her "that woman," on the phone to him.
Allen’s dad is very cute and in fact, the sexiest old man I have ever seen. Allen concurs with me that he is sexually active at seventy one. The ole badger.
"Dad's" dog and cat are really adorable. Dad and Susan dote on them, says Allen.
Yesterday Megan, the doggie brought Allen his shoe as we were preparing our leave! Imagine that!
Megan is quite the character, which is a real improvement on what Allen thought I would judge of the remains of his family.
Megan and Pete the cat play playfully.
At the time of this diary entry we are in a post coital juvenile giggle this gray windy coastal morning.
What will happen next?!