"What are you doing in Portland?"

When I was a young kid, I hated road trips. During my entire childhood I took three trips by airplane—to Florida twice to visit my grandmother and one trip to Arizona to visit my stepdad’s mother. Usually, our family vacations involved piling into the car with a cooler full of Kool-Aid juice boxes and a bag of Doritos and watching trees fly by the car windows until we got to some location where my Mom could go antiquing and my brother and I could count down the hours until we’d be allowed to go swimming in the hotel pool. By the second day, my brother and I would whine that we were bored.
“Just enjoy the drive,” my mother replied from the comfort and ample leg room of the front seat. I’d always roll my eyes, completely unaware of the cathartic power that the flicker of the white lines holds over adults.
Since I’ve been able to drive, I love road trips. I like looking at a map to make sense of the red and blue lines, to figure out the best path from place to place. There’s a certain exoticism in crossing state lines, in seeing coolers full of beer and wine in the gas stations of less puritanical states. It’s America, it’s homogenous, but since I’m used to it the shades of nuance are exciting.
Kristen and I left her parents house around noon on Saturday. We had a leisurely breakfast and packed our belongings into Kristen’s car, which thanks to the folks at the garage was no longer squealing with every turn it made. The air was colder than it was on Friday, and I was beginning to regret the idea of strolling around Portland on a twenty-degree day. I’d let winter control my social life for too long, however, and I decided I wouldn’t be deterred by some cold breezes. After a pit stop at Dunkin Donuts we were underway for Maine.
Portland is a lovely city. It’s sort of a mini-Boston: there’s the old cobblestone part of town (Old Port) and a more professional area with lots of banks and loan offices. Since it was about twenty degrees and windy, much of downtown Portland was deserted. Kristen and I had no solid plans (the best way to do a road trip) so we strolled around the many stores in the Old Port. There were two used bookstores in a three-block radius, which was very exciting to bibliophiles such as Kristen and I. I got a used copy of Lady Chatterly’s Lover and Slaughter House-Five for a little under ten dollars. Kristen got some used sports writing books. I returned to a pottery warehouse store to buy some more of the milk and juice glasses that I bought there two years ago. I handed my credit card to the man at the pottery store, and he asked if I went to school around Portland.
“No,” I said, “we’re visiting from Boston.”
He smiled and nodded at me. “Everyone who’s been in today has been from out of town. The locals all hibernate for four months.”
I couldn’t say I blamed them. I wasn’t entirely prepared for the cold in Portland. Kristen and I had parked on Commercial Street, which runs right along the docks. The wind blew right through my jeans like I was wearing nothing but a gauzy skirt. My fingers began to tingle even in my gloves. I had my red knit hat on under the hood of my ugly red coat and still my ears were cold. It got better the further away from the water we got, but when a breeze came up my eyes watered.
After a couple of hours of shopping it was time to check into the hotel. We paid for our parking (two dollars for a little over two hours—an unreal bargain when compared with Boston’s parking rate) and headed for South Portland, which isn’t nearly as ghetto as it sounds. We were about ten minutes from downtown Portland, and it was $55 for the night. We hauled our stuff into the room and turned the heat on high to warm up after traipsing around. Kristen tried to plug her laptop into the hotel phone to get any news of baseball or Tedy Bruschi’s health while I made sure that the Gideons had placed a Bible in our hotel room. They had.
“Kristen, the Gideons have come and given us a Bible. It was really weird—when the Whatever and I were in Florida, there was no Bible in the room.”
“It was probably for the best,” she replied, plugging the phone back in. “You were cohabitating in sin, so it was a little late for a Bible.”
“I suppose so. He also yelled at me for jumping on the bed in the hotel.”
Kristen rolled her eyes. “Well, that’s just nonsense. You’re supposed to jump on hotel beds.”
“That was my view on the situation as well. I am glad that you understand.” I then proceeded to jump on my double bed. Kristen then decided to see how many rolls she could complete from the head of her bed to the foot. She got one. I got one and a half.
“Are you ready for dinner?”
I looked at the alarm clock. “It’s only four. Why don’t we hang here for a while and leave around 5:30? Maybe we can get some snackies?”
Kristen grabbed her wallet. “I saw a vending machine in the lobby.”
We retuned to the room and feasted on chips, candy and diet Pepsi and watched Made on MTV. “Kristen,” I said, “while this appears lame, you are aware that we are watching MTV in a hotel room, right? So it’s cool.”
“Yep,” she said, munching on a pretzel.

Our coworker Karen recommended a place in downtown Maine called Kathadin. “It’s pretty cheap, and they have a good blue-plate special.”
Once we were seated and our menus were given to us, we flinched. The least expensive entrée on the menu was $20. Local art hanged from the funky-colored walls, and smooth jazz wafted from the speakers. I was wearing a grease-stained sweater, jeans that were two sizes too big and worn-out Merrill slide-on sneakers. Kristen and I were the youngest people in the restaurant by at least five years. But it had gotten colder since the sun set, so the idea of leaving and looking for a cheaper place didn’t hold much appeal. We ordered a beer, some soup and our entrees.
People in Maine look different than people in Massachusetts or Rhode Island. There’s something solid in the way they look, like they’ve all been out hauling lobsters in from boats. Our waitress at Katadin was the epitome of what I believe a Maine woman should look like. She had broad shoulders and her arms looked strong in her sweater. She wasn’t fat, but was sturdy, like you’d need a lot of force to move her. She had a large face, but her features were spread out nicely. She had a wide smile and laughed and joked with her customers. The best example of how people from Maine look are the illustrations in Robert McClosky’s children’s books.
Kristen and I were so full after our dinner that we decided to walk to the bars in the Old Port that we’d passed earlier in the day. The streets were deserted. There was no traffic passing by, and very few pedestrians walked with us. It was eerie. The man at the pottery shop was right—the locals were all in hibernation. As we walked, we passed the Cumberland County Civic Center (“the CCCC,” Kristen explained). A sign sat out on the quiet sidewalk advertising that tickets were available for that night’s game. We went in to see how much the tickets were. They were six dollars for standing room to see the Providence Bruins play the home team. We were tempted, but standing up for an entire hockey game wasn’t appealing. We left the civic center to find a bar.
“I am so full,” I whined as we walked, gripping my stomach.
“Me too,” Kristen moaned. “Is that a Cold Stone creamery?”
I let out a loud groan. “Let’s get ice cream after the bar. Will it be open then?”
We walked up to the door, and the ice cream store would be open until 11pm. “But we could be out later than that. And we want to go to LL Bean too.”
“We really should get it now, to be sure it’s not closed later. Let me just stop at the ATM next door.”
We jumped into the heated ATM. I put in my card and prepared to answer the host of questions about the fees I’d be charged. I answered them, and when I got to enter the amount of money I’d like to take out, the ATM asked me to withdraw in multiples of five.
“Five dollars!” I shouted into the security camera. “Multiples of five? Holy shit, that’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. Sometimes, all you want is five dollars. That’s it. Two dollar parking? Five dollar ATMs? This is the promised land.”

After our ice cream, Kristen and I ended up at the Bull Feeny Pub. Kristen and I are not trendy people, so the Irish bar is where we usually end up. People aren’t dressed up and there’s no need to put on a pretentious act. We found a spot at the bar on the second floor and made ourselves comfortable. It was only eight-thirty, so the bar was still pretty empty. The NBA All-Star Skills Competition was on the television, so we kicked back to watch.
Lately I’ve been checking out every living thing with a pulse and all visible evidence of being male, so I was people-watching as much as basketball watching. When we first arrived, a group of young guys was sitting at a table eating salads and drinking beer. They were cute in that twenty-one year-old Abercrombie way. I listened to them directing girls to the bar, and the various groups of friends started showing up in couples. A cute guy walked by Kristen and I with his adorable girlfriend. Endless pairs of people walked into the bar as we sat drinking.
“Christ,” I muttered to Kristen, “do they let people out in this town without a significant other in tow? What do the single people do?”
Evidently, they come out after nine. A group of college-aged kids walked in and ordered their drinks over my shoulder. One good looking guy kept looking my way, so I smiled at him. I watched some of the slam-dunk contest and yelled at the players on the screen along with Kristen.
Eventually the good-looking guy introduced himself to me. His name was Ted, and he lived in Portland. When he asked where I lived, I said Boston.
“Really?” He asked in disbelief, his dark eyebrows raised so high they were under the knit cap that covered his dreadlocks, “what are you doing in Portland?”
“We had the weekend off, so we figured why not have a road trip? Tomorrow we’re going to North Conway, then down to Connecticut and Rhode Island on Monday, then back to Boston.”
“That’s really cool,” he said, flabbergasted that anyone would willingly be in Portland.
Something happened in the NBA game, so I stopped talking to Ted for a minute. He got up and left. I tried to talk to his friend Chris that he’d introduced me to, but Chris had no interest in my witty comments about the dude who jumped over another guy to slam dunk the basketball.
Really hot men came and went from the bar as the crowd picked up. Kristen and I swooned as each of them paraded in front of us like ducks in a shooting gallery, completely unaware of their peril.
“I die of the hot,” Kristen said, holding her second Sam Adams as I nursed my Shipyard winter brew. “Seriously. It’s like Tom Brady called these guys in and said, ‘Okay, I’ll look impeccable during the Super Bowl parade and nearly kill her with the hot, and then you guys show up wearing World Series champion hats and Carhart coats and complete the job.’ I think I’ve lost all feeling from the waist down.”
“I think we now know where all the men are,” I said. “We need to move here immediately.”
Kristen got up to break the seal as I ordered my second beer. It was about eleven by then, and we’d decided that we could leave for Freeport to go to LL Bean late at night any time after eleven. Kristen came back, and reported that she’d been hit on while in line for the loo.
“Which one?”
“The guy in black over your right shoulder.”
I’d seen him hovering over there, and he had the kindness to not be mad when Chris had stolen some of his French fries that had been sitting on the bar smelling good for hours. I thought he was one of those guys who hover around different cliques of women, desperately trying to hit it off with any woman who’d give him some attention. It turned out he was there with a friend, and was hitting on Kristen as reconnaissance work. Their names were Eric and Scott, and they managed to get up the nerve to talk to Kristen when I got up to use the bathroom.
“Hey,” I said, a little leery of them at first, since I thought Scott was That Hover Guy.
Kristen introduced me to the men, but I was still a little nervous. Also, Scott had obstructed my view of the television.
“You look so scared right now,” Scott said, smiling. “You’re looking over your glasses, you’re not really talking, and I don’t blame you because you get up and these two guys are talking to your friend.”
I smiled, and pushed my glasses up to the bridge of my nose. “No, my glasses need to be fixed and they slide down. It’s a little weird to have two guys camped around my stool, but it’s fine. Where are you from?”
“Oh, I live in South Portland, and Eric lives around here too. Where are you from?”
“We’re down from Boston for the weekend.” Kristen was talking sports with Eric.
“Really? Why are you in Portland?”
“You’re the second person to ask me that tonight. We just figured we had three days off, we have a car, so why the hell not get out of the city for a few days.”
“Wow,” Scott said, smiling and paying very close attention to me. “That’s so cool. That’s so cool.”
We talked for a while longer while Kristen had to apologize profusely to Eric for asking him if he was a Yankees fan. Scott and I talked about the cars we had in college (from the conversation I could tell that he was about ten years older than me, but I didn’t let on my relative youthfulness) and the fact that his ex-girlfriend loved Jason Varitek’s thighs like Kristen does (though it’s doubtful that she could have the same burning passion that Kristen does). They were nice guys, and were into us, but when I gave Kristen a piece of gum around midnight they got the hint.
“Uh-oh,” Scott said to Eric, “they’ve got the gum out. It’s time for them to get going.” Ladies, let this be a lesson to you. No young guy would get that hint as well as these gentlemen did. Exhibit 5,642 why older guys are better.
“Well, we have to go test-drive some canoes,” I said. Scott and Eric looked at me with faces of complete befuddlement at the apparent line I’d just given them. After a beat I broke the silence.
“That’s not a euphemism or anything.”

Kristen and I got to Freeport around 1am. The LL Bean flagship store is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. “I don’t know why anybody would decide that they needed a kayak at four in the morning and could not wait until a store opened to get one,” Kristen said as we took our picture on a giant boot by the front door.
“It’s the American system at work. I am just glad to know that the option is there should the need arise for thermal underwear at any hour of the day.”
We’d decided to go just for the novelty, but it was actually a pleasant experience. There was one older guy walking around the home goods section and a group of high school kids wandering through the shoe section, but other than them and the employees the store was deserted. Kristen and I both made purchases—I bought a calf-length red wool coat for $100 and Kristen got a new polar fleece. Despite the pangs of guilt I felt for charging the coat, it was a beautiful color of red and my coats are all too loose now anyway.
I drove the Subaru back to the South Portland HoJo and we went to sleep content. We’d had good food, good drinks, had some men hit on us and got to browse through sheets and polar fleece at 1:30am. I’d wake up at 8:30am in cold sweats over what my credit card statement would say after the coat went through, and was especially nervous about the next day’s journey to North Conway, New Hampshire, the outlet capital of New England.