2002-09-17 - 1:50 a.m.

So my little rendez-vouz with the Art Gurl was decent. It was a good idea, at least.

I realized, when we got there, that Salem is such a small place, that it's probably best to see it for the first time on your own, or with a friend who hasn't yet been there.

Showing someone around Salem is like demonstrating how to connect a TV to a VCR--it's almost impossible for them to do any damage figuring it out on their own, and they'd learn more that way anyway.

Everything started off pretty well. I showed up at the Commuter Rail station a half-hour before our set meeting time, got a coffee, smoked some butts, and got a double cheeseburger from McDonalds (so useful when facing the unknown--if she already ate, so did I. If she's hungry, I can eat).

She was right on time, and we went outside to smoke a butt.

Her tickets were inside the jewel case of the birthday CD I made for her. Suave?

The way the day went, I'm kinda surprised that those tickets didn't blow away in the wind.

Playlist? Glad you asked.

Place to be--Nick Drake

No I don't remember Guildford--Robyn Hitchcock

Lawrence, KS--Josh Ritter

Salem '76--Mary Lou Lord

Under the Milky Way--the Church

Dog Gone--Frank Black

Arkansas--John Linnell

Texas Man Abducted by Aliens for Outer Space Joy Ride--Jad Fair

Stockholm Syndrome--Yo La Tengo

Newark Wilder--Pavement

California--Quasi

Spanish Bombs--theClash

In Liverpool--Suzanne Vega

Twin Falls--Built to Spill

Gone to the Moon--Fastbacks

Kingsport Town--Cat Power

Holiday In Rhode Island--The Softies

Amsterdam--John Cale

Night Falls on Hoboken--Yo La Tengo

How can you go wrong with a playlist like that?

Got on the train, afternoon just beginning, and started talking about stuff. Only after the train started moving did I realized that, out of some long-repressed habit, I had gotten us on the wrong train (to Lowell).

You left your mark, Erinn. It's still there.

We got off in, of all places, West Medford, and the sky just opened up. We hid in an especially urine-smelling hut until the train came. Me llamo Senor Emasculado.

Back at North Station, we got on the right train, and a half-hour later, we were in Salem.

Damn straight.

She was hungry, and I decided to take her to the Pig's Eye restaurant. First stop, the post office. Yeah--she wanted to send a package to a friend, and didn't have time to mail it from home.

That was kinda weird, but you know what? Salem has a really cool looking post office. I was honestly expecting a white moustache'd postman, pocketwatch in vest, to pop out of nowhere and comment on the weather.

Which would have been appropriate. As she was sending her package, the thunder outside sounded like garbage trucks falling from the sky.

I got soaked soaked soaked soaked walking to the restaurant. I mean soaked. The Art Gurl had an umbrella, but I didn't partake. I'm anti-umbrella, for a number of reasons, but anyway, what's the point of both of us being just less than really wet, when one of us can just be really wet and one can stay reasonably dry? And anyway, trying to maneuver while sharing an umbrella is like doing the lame-ass legs tied together race on Olympic Day at grade school.

After changing in the bathroom into a T-shirt that I had (thank God) brought with me, just in case, I settled down to a pastrami sandwich on rye and a Bud. My Lord above, one of the best sammies ever. I mean it, too. I don�t know what they did to make the sandwich that great, but the fact that a sandwich warrants its own paragraph should put things into perspective.

(Side note--I hate when I start these things off slow. I feel like I have to include every detail, and by the time I get to the good part, I�ve forgotten what I started out trying to do. Oh well).

It stopped raining about 20 seconds after we sat down, and started hardcore, like the clouds had been saving up, about 20 seconds after we left.

I took her to the mini-mall down the main drag, revealing points of interest along the way, so that I could buy a cheap Salem sweatshirt to guard against the rain. We both thought that idea was a good one--I admitted that I actually had to wring out my sweater in the bathroom sink back at the restaurant.

My choices? Now I�m not talking about something I�m ever going to wear outside, and we�re talking ridiculous tourist fare, but I did want to get something at least OK to maybe wear around the apartment when it�s cold, or perhaps lend to a guest.

Narrowed down to two--a moonlight silhouette of a witch, made to look like the witch from Bewitched, reading (obviously) Bewitched in Salem. A little too much, so I settled for the standard-sweatshirt-grey, reading SALEM, and then a wicked good time.

The Peabody-Essex museum was actually really great. She turned out to be more than a good museum buddy. Not only did she have the same pace as me (I�m a 7 out of 10 on the attention span scale, she was an 8), and not only did she have a good alone-time to looking-at-things-together ratio, but, as a bona-fide artist, she was actually able to point out things that I would had never noticed.

There was a diving-suit prototype from the 19th century, and it reminded me of the Danger, Will Robinson! robot from Lost in Space, and I bought a postcard of it for the Roommate (right up her alley, and she loved it), and got a magnet for myself. I really wished that there were better magnets there, though. I got a French masthead.

It started pouring out the moment we left, and we headed to the Wax Museum after that. I wanted to take her picture by a particularly disturbing portion of the (basically) one-room exhibit. The subject, one of the witch trial girls, eerily resembled her, and it also had the best possible photograph lighting for a real person standing right in front of it.

I asked her if I could take her picture, and she thought that it was a good suggestion. It was kind of a misunderstanding, though, when I tried to steer her towards the background I had selected. She picked out her own and then handed me her camera.

That�s the Art Gurl for ya, though. I got one for myself, though, with my own camera.

There was a play area for kids at the bottom of the stairs, but, towards closing time on a Monday, there was nobody there. Of course we didn�t play, but there was a little stand for gravestone etchings. The idea is to take a piece of paper and put it over a gravestone, and then rub a crayon (or whatever) over the paper, so that only the raised part of the gravestone would show on the paper.

I tried one while she was looking around. Towards the end, I realized that if you used the tip of the triangular crayon-like thing that they left out for you, rather than the broad surface, the image came out better. She tried her own, and got busily to work. After walking around for a few minutes, and realizing that she had no intention of finishing up any time soon, I decided to have another go.

I kinda stylized mine, with the lines all pointing diagonally and a kinda rainbow curve.

Furious with frustration, she looked up and saw that a mere mortal had done a better job at a stupid kid�s art thing than she had.

She didn�t say anything about it, but I could tell that she was kinda pissed.

After that, straight to Salem Beer Works, and then the (right) train.

I know that she had a good time, but I�m kinda sad. Maybe it�s the whole getting-rained-on thing talking, but Salem just didn�t have that whole magic thing going on--not the Wiccan thing, mind you, but that feeling. The kind you can�t describe, �cause it means something different to everyone. I felt that before, there.

It�s sad, getting older, gaining experience. The field narrows. Stuff that was thrilling becomes bland, which is good �cause you�re more mature and what not, but there�s a limited supply of things that are thrilling in this world, and I�d rather not go sky diving.

When we got to North Station, she asked me if I wanted to go out with her and her friends. I told her that she should go out and do her girlie thing, and that she should enjoy the remainder of her birthday. She was relieved that I knew when to call it quits, and I was relieved that I got to go home. We had a good day, rain and wrong trains included. A moment more, or less, and it would have been less than what it was.

I�m looking forward to seeing her again.