To have loved and lost or never have loved at all

Remembering Walt Curtis, 1941-2023

I thought I would take a moment to share some of my memories of Walt Curtis, who passed away on August 25. To me, he was Uncle Walt. He was also the filthiest mouthed, dirtiest minded, funniest, most charismatic, cringiest, strangest uncle a young girl could ask for. We were not blood related, but that doesn’t matter, not one bit. He was an indelible part of my childhood.

Walt with his paintings, photo by James Rexroad, stolen from Willamette Week

Walt was known as Portland’s unofficial poet laureate, and he was just that—someone who wrote prolifically and performed his work at less than the drop of a hat, who memorialized the city and its people while also taking a shit on anyone within sight. He hosted a regular poetry radio show on KBOO called Talking Earth. He was funny, and he was cruel. He was smart, and he was petty. He was unseemly and unkempt and absolutely heartless towards other people about their appearance. The way he read was so dynamic. You held on to every word. He was, most of all, horny, but maybe more horny for words and their power than for boning, although I am not the one to confirm or deny that statement.

Throughout my childhood, Walt would appear at my house on any given night. He was very close friends with my dad—they essentially ran the Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission with several other friends. He wasn’t interested in eating—I almost never saw him take a bite. He wasn’t interested in free booze—he always had his own open bottle of red wine that he kept tucked under an arm like an umbrella or a newspaper, which he drank from steadily. The reason he came over so often—and usually unannounced—was for the company, the lively conversation, the warmth of people, and the chance to talk about books most of all. Walt was a tremendous reader, especially of books written by Oregon authors, and he knew the state and its literary history better than anyone else I’ve ever met, except maybe my father (which believe you me is saying something).

Through all the years I knew him, Walt was bald on the top of his head with white hair that poofed out the sides and he wore a surprisingly tidy white mustache. His clothes were too big and his worn denim jeans looked ready to give up. He had a car, but the passenger side seat was broken, and if you rode in it with him (which I did not!), you had to do so lying down. The tip of his middle finger was cut off, which added to his gritty appearance. He gave my parents lilacs to plant around our house from his mother’s place in Oregon City. He dropped books off on our back porch often.

The nineties were a time in Portland’s history when you could make enough money to pay rent (albeit for a dingy basement), put gas in your junker, and have an unending supply of cheap red wine by selling used books to Powells. Yes, that’s how Walt made ends meet! He would go to thrift stores, rural bookstores, garage sales, any random street sale, and find hidden treasures within their piles of books, which he’d then sell to Powells. (Can you even imagine!) He didn’t sell the most beautiful books he found. He gave them to friends. Throughout my childhood he gave me books he knew I would cherish—children’s books, photo books. His handwriting looked a little drunken in a languorous, friendly way, and he always inscribed the books or left long personal notes with them.

A book of photos with an inscription from Walt to me.

One of my earliest memories of Walt is at a party at my dad’s friends’ David and Gloria’s house. I would have been seven or eight years old, maybe. He was talking over someone else about how wrong they were to call whatever book they were talking about “the greatest.” And I interrupted, because the only way to get Walt’s attention when he was drunk was to interrupt, and announced that they were all wrong, the greatest book ever written was Little House on the Prairie. Walt loved this! He didn’t mock me—he made room for me to explain. In fact, he demanded an explanation and, because I had him as a model, I tried to become as big and loud and confident as I could to defend my pronouncement. He applauded, asked me questions, egged me on. In a certain sense, he taught me bravado.

Another vivid memory comes from a few years later, after an art opening of Walt’s paintings at the Mark Woolley gallery when it was in northwest. Walt painted large crude oils of women with three breasts, men with multiple dicks, wild chickens, the grotesque and the colorful and the silly. Walt, as he often did, had taken under his wing a handsome young man, someone a little lost and youthfully poetic. I slept through much of the opening underneath the benches in the anteroom, and when almost everyone had left, my dad woke me and asked if I wanted to join Walt and his sidekick to get some food at Hung Far Low.

Hung Far Low was a restaurant in Chinatown most people remember for its unforgettable name and a big sign that announced it. You had to climb these steep stairs to reach the restaurant, and I remember them smelling strongly of Clorox and faintly underneath other grosser smells that regularly splashed through the stairwell. Upstairs there were curtained booths. I was pretty young, definitely still in elementary school, and on this night I remember seeing some of my camp counselors from Camp Westwind who were absolutely smashed, carousing in one of the booths, wearing huge Doc Martens and clothes torn like rags. We took a table in the middle of the dining area.

Walt and my dad were delighting each other, and the young man seemed sullen. I think he felt ignored, and I suspect Walt had said something a little cruel to him, although how I know that I’m not sure. I was mostly minding my own business, observing the scene unfolding around me—this was near midnight and the place was buzzing as people ordered platters of Chowmein. At some point, the young man leaned towards me, definitely a little drunk, and asked me somewhat plaintively, “Is it better to have loved and lost or never have loved at all?” Walt and my dad stopped talking and leaned our way to hear my answer. And I remember thinking, “I know how I’m supposed to answer this.” And I remember thinking, “I don’t even understand this question.” And I remember saying, “never have loved at all,” absolutely pleased with myself and not sure why. And Walt laughed and laughed and then burst in to commandeer the conversation, steering it back to whatever he had been talking about.

I could tell you about the years when Walt’s drinking seemed to get much worse, about when he propositioned my boyfriend in front of me. Walt got on his knees and begged to see his dick. Sam and I protested, Sam much angrier than me, and Walt slurred, “she’s a lesbian. She doesn’t love you!” (Ha!)

The stories are too many. And every member of my family has as many or far more stories than I do. My brother, Zak, was on the film crew for a movie about Walt called Peckerneck Poet directed by Bill Plympton. Walt wrote me a letter of recommendation that I honestly believe helped me get into college! These memories are a wild jumble of gross and sad and moving to me. I don’t want to wrap a nice bow around them; I want to adorn them in a filthy red tie and five soiled scarves. I loved Walt. I felt loved by Walt. I found him difficult and magnanimous. If I try to summarize it for myself, I think what I feel most of all is a sense of gratitude towards him for being fearlessly himself. He’s most famous for writing a novella called Mala Noche that Gus Van Sant turned into his first feature film. He was openly gay and carved out space for others. Despite how these stories may read, I think his influence writ large was mostly a really profound and good one. His presence was always an invitation for more—more creativity, more productivity, more community, more bravery, more breaking with the rules, more passion, more love—because there is actually no other option than to have loved and lost. Loss always looms, so then the real question is: how do we love?

I asked my dad if he was grieving, and he confessed he’d already been processing the grief before Walt died, as his friend declined from years of alcoholism and poverty. In some ways I said goodbye to Walt when I left Portland for college, for a life he had helped me prepare for, for a life he had helped me build. These last years I’ve wondered if I was falling short as his niece. I’m not going to wrestle with that question today. Instead, I’m simply going to howl alongside all of us who loved him: Long live his memory! Long live his example of loving life even when it’s messy and brutal. May we rise to Walt’s Olympic flame.

For more on Walt’s life, here is a beautiful tribute from Oregon ArtsWatch.