Bart Schaneman

When I was 25 I decided to quit my job and move back in with my parents. Before I moved, I was living on the coast of San Diego County, working for a newspaper in Del Mar, where I was the only reporter and photographer. I worked less than 35 hours a week and could surf before and after work—sometimes surfing during work hours if the waves were good enough and I had my three stories for the week in.

With five alcohol-related tickets before I was 20, I probably got in more party trouble than your average Nebraskan youth. The fines and rehab and jail time were a waste of money, but not a waste of time. Having the world collapse on you imparts a lot of valuable lessons.

That year I wore a yellow t-shirt and white Asic Tigers with red and blue stripes every chance I had. America hadn’t gone to war yet, Conor Oberst was still in Omaha, and at times my phone would ring telling me there was a show that night at the Sokol Underground.

Use the Internet and watch it become even more amazing than it already is. Used together with a little improvisation, you can get almost anything you would be consuming back home—music, movies, books, food, clothes. Almost everything. Where I live the foreigners talk a lot about missing good avocados. You get over it.

It was us against everything. Against the adults. The older kids. The younger kids. Against age. Against time. Against not having enough money and not being able to really work for it, but not really wanting to work. Always music and always loud. If we couldn’t change the landscape where we lived, we could change the way it sounded.

I was excited until I got in the truck and sat down next to a man I didn’t know. He was in my uncle’s truck, in my uncle’s clothes, spoke like him, held the steering wheel like him, even had the same lumps in his arm. But he had shaved, and without his mustache he wasn’t him. I wasn’t comfortable around him until it grew back.

Now it’s nighttime and the tall-boot girls pop out of the dark doorways like it’s a shooting range—except they aren’t cardboard cutouts and I don’t have a gun—as I go up Hooker Hill. They go “woo, woo! Hey!” Just last week a U.S. soldier was arrested for trying to burn down one of the brothels when the deal went bad.

Sometimes the air smells of jasmine; sometimes it smells of rotting octopus. Boxy, red and white Toyota taxi cabs lurch and speed past. White paint stencils on the streets say LOOK TO THE RIGHT so you don’t get run over by a laughing Hong Konger coming down the wrong side.

For the artist working a day job there is the constant battle between life and work and there is not enough time for both. You’re never going to conquer that city, but there is a very real chance of it conquering you.

There comes a time when you have to stop believing in the men you read in your 20s. Miller, Hemingway, Fante, Bukowski—strong writers, bad with women. Not role models. You have to confront the cowardice within you that says hold out for the person that can save you from yourself. That person isn’t out there. There isn’t anyone who can do that. It’s better to make the decision to stay and love someone.

The longer I lived there the harder it became to work. When I first came to the city I wrote about all the failed artists I had met, and then it started to happen to me. I made friends quickly and they were fun, interesting. Nearly every night I wasn’t working I was asked to meet for drinks or dinner or some other amusement. I talked a lot about saying no, but ended up saying yes far more.

In the comments section of one of my previous essays, “Barb Lee Stanwick” wrote “Bart is a really promising writer. Even though he doesn’t have any books out (what’s with young writers today? I’m kidding)” and this is my response to her, and for any readers of mine who want to know why I haven’t published anything yet.

In my first four weeks here I have met five writers who say they don’t write. I’m starting to get it—it’s hard to tell people you’re an artist when you live in a place where there are a lot of people making art and getting paid to do it. Living among writers who have books and publishing contracts can be intimidating. It can make you think there is a good reason why it hasn’t happened to you.

We crossed the Nam Song river to find our bungalow—a bamboo hut with a corrugated steel roof, a king-sized bed under a mosquito net and a shower. Beyond the green rice fields limestone karst formations rose up, layer after layer, tree-covered in places and gray and pink slabs of exposed, naked rock in others.

She had me pinned by the wrists in the grass of the Kipahulu Campground. She was saying “You were such a punk. Always fucking up people’s shit. I used to really like you.” I wanted to tell her that I was different now, better, less violent, but people have a stubbornness in them—they are often more loyal to their ideas of people than to the actual people themselves.

One caveat: the life here is addictive… After a year of watching your savings dwindle living a frugal lifestyle, you stick it out until the last $1,000 you have is the money you use for a flight back to Seoul, where upon arrival they hand your flight money back to you. In cash.

Don Draper. Donald. Draper. It’s a strong name. Masculine. The “DD” initials look good on cufflinks. If it wasn’t a made-up name it would be the kind of name a guy would want to have. But then again in the world of the show it’s not a made-up name, is it?

I had been told that I could live in Portland without a car. That was largely false. Yes, I survived biking to work and back, a total of five miles ever yday. But I didn’t thrive. To live in America and not drive is to diminish your participation in the common culture. And this is no small sacrifice. You miss it. You miss the freedom a car provides. You feel as though the rest of the population has capabilities you lack.