at the Sea Inn

Made friends last night with a Yupik man from up-river named Simmon. Drunk, friendly, and very impressed by my height, Simmon wore a grey tee-shirt and jeans and mumbled incoherently to me until the bartender came over and told him to stop bothering us. What I did pick up from his conversation was that he was half-Yupik, half-white, or "gussock", which explains his leaner face (most Yupiks have very round faces), and that he'd lost his father four days previous. I ran into him later outside the bar. Under the shadow of immense silver, cylindrical silos (I think part of the cannery) he made a really funny joke about me "standing tall". To this, the short man next to him waiting for a cab said, "well, we can be proud of our shortness. The most important thing is to love who you are." That guy got into a cab with a young Yupik woman in running pants and a parka who had earlier walked passed our table and smiled demurely at me, brushing by me and saying "hi". Later I channeled Freddie Mercury, singing Crazy Little Thing Called Love to an empty dancefloor.