Minneapolis by Couch

“Living is strife and torment, disappointment and love and sacrifice, golden sunsets and black storms. I said that some time ago, and today I do not think I would add one word.”
-Laurence Olivier

Once in the neighborhood, I call the number my couchsurfing host Zoe gave me.  We have never spoken.  It turns out to be a landline, and a machine picks up and chirps in a severe British accent, “ ‘Ello!  You’ve reached the residence of Anna, Noah, Zoe, Chris, Spider, Dudley, Oscar, Nicole, and Ben!  Please leave ‘er message at the beep!”  Beep.  Slightly thrown, I leave a message of arrival and wonder what in the hell I’ve gotten myself into.  It’s been a while since I’ve couch-surfed and I’ve psyched myself out a bit.  I see on my phone Zoe has left me a message online to try calling another number, one of her friend, Ben.  I do that and Ben picks up (duh).  Awkward, I ask for Zoe who tells me, (in a not British accent) that they’ll be home soon, just go on in.  Ummm, ok maybe.  I’ll see you there.

When I arrive, 2 people are leaving the house and they recognize me as someone in need of a couch.  “We’re going for bbq, Zoe will be home soon, go on in, set your stuff down, get comfortable”, they invite cheerfully.  It is a grand old historic house, at least a hundred years old.  Pulling open the front porch door I notice stuff, knick knacks everywhere.  Things obviously collected by cool people over the course of many years and many roommates:  bicycles, guitar cases, dusty stacked boardgames, an organ (musical), paintings, a rocking chair, more, there is space to walk through to the house.  I feel strange about going in when no one’s home, so I set my bag down (nice doggy…) and hurry back outside to sit on a bench in their garden.  I should mention that their garden is also home to a giant, rusty, but operable-looking 10 person bicycle with a cow skull on the front.

Eventually Zoe and Ben arrive and join me on the porch.  They tell me there is actually a bedroom in the house I can use-with a bed-the best kind of couch surfing.  Ben spends the better part of the getting to know you speaking with a drawn out lisp, but eventually drops it, telling me, “I’m not really gay, I just like to see how people react.”  I tell him I never thought he was.  We move on.  We talk well past the sunset, I’m offered a “whisky cider”, which I take and am so happy I did.  Just whisky and cider!  Who knew?  They are both freelancers of sorts, they work together during the day as landscapers, but beyond that Zoe is an actress and puppeteer.  Yes!  I have never met a puppeteer who was not awesome.  Her parents own a theatre in the neighborhood.  Ben works at a new agey church in the suburbs of Minneapolis as a maintenance guy.  “It is a church without god,” he explains, “ ‘god’ is too specific of a term, they would rather not define it”.  Well ok.

I wish I’d written more down, but I remember discussing aliens, crop circles, Zoe’s sister’s conception on a steamboat river cruise, and an upcoming production of a children’s show called the “Learning Fairy”.  Throughout the conversation, people came and left from the house, without clear identification as residents.  One guy just sort of waved on his way in, “Hey, I need to use the phone”.  I guess he does that time to time.  The most interesting of passerbyers by a landslide was a kid named Forrest.  He came jogging down the sidewalk kind of nonchalantly towards the house, wearing street clothes and clutching a small black plastic bag. “Uh, oh.  Here comes Forrest” someone says under their breath.  He is probably 18 or so, a handsome, peppy young man, but something’s off.  He seems over-caffeinated and keeps getting up and sitting back down.

“I tried to race a car earlier, a red one, did you see it?  I lost.  I’ve been trying to exercise more”.

“Where are you going, Forrest?”

“Home.  Can I get a ride?”

“You live 6 blocks from here.”

“I came from up by the river.  I ran the whole way.  So no ride?  Please?”  He is smiling, panting a little.

“No.”

“Okay.  I’m gonna call my brother and see if he’ll come pick me up.  Can I use your phone?”

“Sure.  You know where it is.”

When he comes back out he continues, “He said no.  You guys have coffee?”

He sits back down next to an opened bag of chips on the bench that has been there since before I arrived.  He picks it up and begins to eat from it.

“Hey, do you guys have any salsa?”  Back into the house.  He returns with a jar of salsa.  He empties the bag of chips into the black plastic bag he was carrying and then pours a good deal of the salsa in as well.  “For later.”  Eventually he gets up and jogs home.

We go inside to eat with Zoe’s brother Noah and his girlfriend Nicole.  It is revealed that Zoe was wearing a wig the whole time.  We all take turns trying it on and laughing at each other.  Zoe whips up an amazing noodle dish and we start talking about what I should do the next day.  She draws a map, but incorporates too many perspectives to be helpful.  It is the saddest map I have ever seen, however she continues to make revisions in hopes of saving it until someone recalls the advent of the smartphone–all she really need do is list the interesting places, and I can find them myself.  Someone makes a joke about the horror of losing the map. Noooooo!  My host goes to the fridge to add ice to her glass, but when she pushes the ice button in the door, beer starts gushing everywhere instead.  She quickly removes the glass, but beer continues to spew.  There is screaming, beer everywhere, Zoe trying to stop it with her hands.  Noah, who is wearing a shirt emblazoned with a logo for “The Weinery”, jumps into action with a bucket and waits for beer to stop coming out of the ice dispenser.  What else can you do?  Upon opening the freezer, it is discovered that the culprit was someone having put a beer can into the ice maker to get it colder faster.  Instead of allowing ice to escape, the mechanism had completely mangled the can.  The remains were nearly unintelligible.  Lesson.

The rest of my time in Minneapolis was less eventful, but still lovely.  After all, I went to get work done and spend some time alone.  There is a city-wide bicycle rental program which I utilized to visit a lake, a market, then over to the river, and into town.  It was a lovely couple of days in and out of cafes and parks, but ultimately I decided I’d like to take the remainder of my vacation with friends bearing hugs in Austin.  So I did just that.  And it was really nice.