he was writing about a trip he'd made to oceanside, washington (a place that doesn't exist, as far as i know) on a quest for manitoba social clubs and former haunts of kurt cobain.
oceanside is a sleepy little town one might even say lackadaisical or dead inside but we met a charming japanese couple at an exxon on the outskirts. they filled our tank and fed us complimentary sushi: little bite sized salmons and tunas that they fished out of the aquarium on the counter beside the slurpee machine, decapitated and gently laid on a pillow of rice. they didn't know anything about kurt cobain but they told us that isaac asimov was giving lectures at the planetarium about the existential meaning of the space between the stars. admission was only five dollars.all the while i read i was drinking oj from the jug and it was spilling down my shirt, and the kiddo was telling me about cooking in the restaurant he works at, and his girlfriend, and asking about what we were having for dinner the next night. i woke up this morning and had to look around to see if any of it was true - did the wineglass really fall apart in my hand was there really a 3/4 empty jug of orange juice on the table did ryan ray really get into a fistfight at social club named after regina but dedicated to expatriate manitobans. the wineglass and the juice aren't there, but there are some questions to which i don't have the answers.
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