(Bozeman, Montana, week of 7-21-05)

Forget the microscopic calendar listing in the weekly alternative newspaper, or the non-presence of my show on the Leaf and Bean’s events window, or the countless rejections I received from Bozeman’s countless venues. It was my housemates, drifters who I’d expected my project to particularly resonate with, who seemed the most dismissive.

They weren’t tourists for whom the hostel served as an economic alternative to the Yellowstone resorts, nor did they consider it a pastoral setting to reconnect with their inner-hippie.  Rather, it was a makeshift home from which most of them commuted to temporary jobs while rebuilding their lives.  It was a halfway house.

Mike was a thirty-something chain-smoker with a bad sunburn who’d recently hitchhiked to Bozeman from Alaska because Canada wouldn’t let him drive through due to a DUI on his record.  Ben was his closest friend here, perhaps because they both worked on the same construction site, and Ben had just moved to Bozeman from Arizona — a state, he explained, from which he “had to get away.”

Another construction worker, Thomas, was young and spoke with a thick Czech accent.  His friend Paulo, from Bulgaria, was in his late thirties, also smoked relentlessly, and always wore cowboy boots and dusty jeans.  His legs never stopped twitching.  My first night there, Paulo returned late from a bar and ranted to Thomas in hyperdrive from the front porch about Americans.  I listened in silence with my laptop on my knees, looking for future venues.  He fumed, “Everyone wants to be in your business.  Look!”  And he pointed to a passing car.  “They drive by us so slowly and stare at the porch like they want to know what we’re doing.  It’s like, ‘Fuck, what do you want?’  In Europe, I can do whatever, and no one, no police, no one ever come up and ask, ‘Hey, what are you doing?’”  He took a final drag from his cigarette and flicked it off the porch.  “I will go back soon.”

Just then, a slightly overweight man with a few divorces behind him and several children living out of his custody in another state — yes, I did a lot of listening — shuffled out onto the deck and addressed Paulo.  “Can you take it easy on the stairs?”

Paulo cut him off hotly.  “Listen, man…”

“No, no, it’s just the boots,” he continued, still half-asleep.  “I work.  I wake up early.  I’m just trying to get some sleep.  I’m simply asking you not to stomp when you’re running up and down the stairs.”  There was silence for a few seconds.  “Thank you.”  He turned around and walked back inside.  Paulo shot to his feet and stormed off the porch and down the street.  I never saw him again. 

And these were the people I hoped to attend my piano recital at the Leaf and Bean coffeeshop?