Life in a dormant volcano, p1: gay hardcore and Linkin Park (what's the difference?)

Editor's Note: The following is a diary from my life in the isolated, dormant volcano at Crater Lake National Park from July - October 2004. The following are my raw journal entries with rough editing for space and protection of those involved in this harrowing summer. Some are boring, confusing to read, or uncomfortably personal. Hope you enjoy. It's all true, but the names have been changed.

July 7, 2004

I’ve been at Crater Lake, OR since about 1 p.m today. It’s good, but weird so far. I’m in a dorm a short drive away from the main lodge. Not far from here is the campground I’ll be working at, checking people in and out from a kiosk. I’m in "my room," which seems not quite right because my roommate didn’t know he was getting a roommate and has been out all day. The two beds are pushed together to make one. His stuff is in both closets. I’m in the corner of the room on the only chair that doesn’t have stuff on it, his or mine.

It’s more remote than I imagined in some ways. My cell phone only works at the lodge, a few miles from my room. The dorm is very nice, surprisingly, but there’s no computer, no tv, no phone. In other words about what I wanted. No noise. No email. No phone. No blog. No DVDs. No TV. No fridge. No microwave. No trash can? I wasn’t going to keep any sort of journal, but I reallly needed to do something to feel a little connected to the world.

My roommate is not here, and he won’t often be since he works nights and I’ll work days. We’ll just miss each other most days. I don’t know how that will work out. I still feel very removed from the rest of the staff.

At first, I couldn’t get my key to work, and when I tried a couple other doors, one opened right up. I wandered in but soon noticed that it looked too used, too recently. Still, it was a nice room, and would work well if it happened to be mine. Nice computer area set up, one big bed (wait a second), a leather biker hat and outfit, (um), DVDs titled "something something Hardcore," and "Gay porn 1," "Gay porn 2." Something was horribly wrong here. I got out fast and realized that the key had not actually unlocked the door; the door was unlocked already and I had wandered into a gay man’s abandoned, recently occupied bedroom. And apparently he had a leather fetish.

My actual room was far tamer. I still get the feeling that I’m in someone else’s place. I hope they get a hold of him and tell him he has a roommate before he wanders in to find a stranger in his bed. He has a spider man poster hung halfway on a bulletin board. A University of Oregon Lacrosse hat. Some kind of muscle mass supplement. He’s probably all beefy and shit. He’s the security guard around here. Oh and what I thought was a Linkin Park LP turned out to be a Linkin Park calendar. Almost as scary as the gay porn.