Oregon Humanities

Linguistically Intoxicating

I was halfway through my shift on a quiet night at the bar. To be fair, they were all quiet nights at that bar. I might as well have been tending in a dry county. You’d think a free hotel bar would be full 365, but this bar was silent. Perhaps it was the Merlot?
When I realized my tips were going to be under $10 I started putting the lemons back in the fridge. Then an Inuit man walked in.

I’d love to tell you there were cinematic strings played upon his entry accompanied by the distant howl of a timber wolf. But that was just the Discovery Channel I had broadcasting from within the bar.

He was my size, which, as you should know, is petite. He looked around and was clearly confused but made his way up to my bar. I stared at him and realized I was about to interact with the first Eskimo I’d ever seen in person. “This is the bar?” He inquired in a buttery voice. I responded by stating “We’ve got some snacks for you ‘round the corner if you’re hungry.” But what I really wanted to say was “You look amazing and please take me to your leader.”

And let me tell you why. This man had skin that looked literally like coffee-flavored elephant hide, with long stringy coarse hair stretching down his back in what seemed like a revolt. When he turned his head, hair would follow in an epic swish that reminded me of the final scenes in The Black Stallion. Clearly, I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

I asked the standard question you ask a patron at a hotel bar “Where are you visiting us from tonight?” He looked up at me and said “Up north” and pointed a long, outstretched arm. His voice. It sounded like a campfire in a gravel pit! I poured him a Budweiser. After his first sip we were both staring at each other, so I continued asking questions.

His English was broken, spoken in the most soulful voice I’ve ever heard. He revealed to me that he was a Yup’ik Inuit. The word Yup’ik came out of his mouth with a startling glottal stop I had only previously heard in Cockney accents. The ‘k’ at the end of the word was spoken so sharply from the middle of his throat that it made an echo. When I asked him to say some things in his native tongue he leaned back in the barstool and spoke to me in his language.

The only way to describe this tongue is to say it sounds both like a song and an interruption at the same time. It is filled with consonants strung together in meaty phrases and originates deep within the throat and chest. His soulful vocal lilt surrounded the language in a way that still has me spellbound. I had never been so perplexed by a human sound.

After spending about an hour together I learned his name was Ayuluk and that just hours before we met he’d been on a snow machine on the frozen Bering Sea. When in human history would it have been possible for an Inuit from a Yup’ik village to be able to have breakfast on the ice and dinner in a quiet bar 2,000 miles away? In an incredible age, that’s when. An incredible age that brings such elegant creatures like the Inuit into my everyday routine. Whoa.

About Aaron Rayburn

Aaron Rayburn is a designer working in Portland, Oregon. He is co-curator of the Portland-centric culture blog FortPort and is a senior at Portland State University.

01 April 2010 | Posted by Aaron Rayburn in Inside O. Hm. New Ideas
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