Portland tale fitting toast to misfits

Jay Pawlowski, Special To The News

Published July 25, 2003 at midnight

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If you want to meet the weird people in Portland, Ore., get to know Chuck Palahniuk.

He knows them all - from Teresa Dulce, who publishes a trade magazine for prostitutes, to Reverend Chuck, who promises a 10-minute marriage ceremony or your money back - and he's not afraid to go into detail, regardless of such trivial matters as the law or moral conduct.

Palahniuk takes readers on an unorthodox journey through his hometown in Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon. If you've ever wondered where the author found inspiration for the outlandish characters in his best-sellers Fight Club, Choke and Lullaby, look no further. Sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, "art cars," a rampage of 450 drunk Santa Clauses - it's all here.

And Palahniuk has been at the heart of it since he moved to Portland in 1980 after high school.

Fugitives and Refugees opens with a brief interview with Katherine Dunn, fellow Portland resident and author of the novel Geek Love. This introduction sets the tone for the rest of the book.

"Katherine's theory is that everyone looking to make a new life migrates West, across America to the Pacific Ocean," Palahniuk writes. "Once there, the cheapest city where they can live is Portland. This gives us the most cracked of the crackpots. The misfits among misfits."

A quick vocabulary lesson follows because, as Palahniuk notes, "nothing - short of a California license plate - marks you as an outsider faster than how you mispronounce local words."

This irreverent tutorial ranges from the "Bore-egonian" (a nickname for The Oregonian newspaper) to "Trustafarians" - "would-be hippies and drug-, environmental-, anarchy-activists who wear hemp and patchouli and pretend to be poor, despite the sizable incomes they receive from trust funds endowed by their wealthy families."

Palahniuk covers many bases throughout this book, with chapters on shopping, dining, adventures, museums, gardens and haunted places highlighting things a standard travel guide might miss. For example, his shopping section features the best thrift stores in Portland and places to find rare oddities.

He points out the vacuum cleaner museum; the world's largest hairball, which is on display in a Benedictine abbey ("a 2.5-pound wad of calcium and hair, cut from the gut of a three-hundred-pound pig in the 1950s"); and a plethora of adult stores and theaters. Palahniuk's narrative of one night during "Exotic Wednesday" at the Jefferson Theater is jaw-dropping in its good-natured depravity.

One resident points out that the entire city has something of a small-man complex: "Portland makes up for its small size with its loud and obnoxious behavior."

Fugitives and Refugees is part of the Crown Journeys series of literary travel writing that also includes Kinky Friedman on Austin, Frank Conroy on Nantucket, and Christopher Buckley on Washington, D.C.

Crown's intentions are to find "the best writers on earth" and set them loose on a city - and the publisher made no mistake in commissioning Palahniuk. As one of the most original and compelling literary voices of our time, Palahniuk turns what could have been another average book about Portland into a no-holds-barred exposition of the most interesting, if eccentric, aspects of the town.

In between chapters, Palahniuk offers "postcards" from various points in his life. The author's razor-sharp wit and sleek style shine here, and readers who love Palahniuk but don't spend a lot of time thinking about Portland will find these sections the most entertaining.

The postcards from 1981 and 1985 chronicle Palahniuk's first acid trip at a Pink Floyd laser show and a sex scene in the meat cooler at a local supermarket filmed for a music video. Another postcard offers a heart-wrenching tale from Palahniuk's time as a volunteer for a charity hospice.

Of course, most readers won't find Fugitives and Refugees as poignant or profound as something like Fight Club, but this book is an interesting read regardless of one's relationship with Portland. Readers who've never been there may find some kind of quirky identification with the city's crackpots and misfits.

Or they may be scared off and swear never to set foot in Portland.

Either way, Palahniuk makes one thing clear: Portland is a town full of heart and soul. Like any city, Portland's most interesting characters may not be the most upstanding citizens, but they've certainly dedicated themselves to making everybody's lives a little richer, more carefree or more fun.

Maybe Portland isn't so far away after all.

Jay Pawlowski is a free-lance writer living in Denver.

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