Baby Talk

Whenever I am forced to interact with the public at large, I am disappointed. I woke up early on Sunday to get a head start on my drive back to Seattle, gave hugs and goodbyes, climbed into my ill-equipped Taurus and eased into the dim morning light and onto Hwy 450. I played good music and even though I was so tired my eyes felt on fire, I was optimistic and savored my last moments in Oregon and finally Washington.

I arrived at the airport 3 hours before my flight was scheduled for take off. I caught up on some work and eyed my surroundings. An airport can feel like an over-priced shopping mall. Having just paid a staggering $3.50 for a medium coffee, I felt the weight and entrapment that occurs once you pass through that final security check. These guys aren’t checking for chivs or whittled down nail files, they’re checking your food stash to make sure you aren’t sneaking in any affordable perishables to sell to your besieged and haggard co-travelers.

When I found my seat on the plane, which turned out to be in the center of hell, not a platoon, I also found a very tan woman on her cell phone sitting beside me. She paused her conversation briefly to announce that she wouldn’t be moving her bag which was on my seat, because she wanted to wait until the person sitting on the aisle got there, so she could switch with him. So I waited.

The guy assigned to the aisle eventually arrived and she coaxed him into switching seats with her by pointing at an orange, peek-a-boo stomach that crested her Juicy couture, miming the words, “I’m pregnant” followed by sad face and some sort of baby talk common among ten year olds. She didn’t want to have to climb over us for the next 4 hours to go to the bathroom. You understand don’t you?

I figured once we settled into our newly assigned seats we could all relax but I was wrong. The Tan got off the phone and pulled from under her seat a large plastic bag full of the basic ingredients of a sandwich, mayo, cold cuts, bread, cheese, and proceeded to construct a large sub sandwich on her tray table. Her movements were quick and flustered. Looking a lot like a foraging titmouse, she rooted in the bag face first pulling out dangling slabs of ham and turkey, dropping them into her mouth. I imagined what it would be like to live inside this woman and if I were the fetus would I have the strength to scratch my way out? I realized that would be unlikely, the fetus would have to wait out his 9 month sentence much like I would have to wait out the next 4 hours. I could open an emergency door and jump and so could her unborn child but neither one of us would survive.

Five States

Today we took the train to a cool little coffee shop in Portland called The Hoff. Some people might find the rain unsettling but I like it. Yesterday as I finished my pictures, the clouds broke for just a moment and I got the perfect picture of the Montgomery Park building which at one time was the Montgomery Ward mothership. Gene in the office told me all about it and we decided that the guy could have been a real jerk and ripped the sign off the top of the building. But instead he just changed two letters: WARD to PARK. Clever guy.

I've been hanging out with Brendan and so far we are most captivated by a little puzzle of the U.S. We counted five states between Portland and Chicago.

Excuse Me

The drive from Seattle to Portland takes roughly 3 hours. During those three hours you can get a lot done. I made mental lists - behaviors I will reform, to-do's, to-don'ts, wishes, dreams, prefferable wall colors, plans, ten year goals. This took me about 6 minutes. And then I was bored.

I got to Portland at around 4:30. I ate a burrito, drank a cup of coffee - the combination making my mouth smell pretty much like a toilet and just in time to see my friend Todd and his wife Wendy for the first time in 8 years. I haven't seen them since their wedding. We had dinner and I got to know their 4 year old Brendan who is incredibly polite and always says excuse me when he thinks he might be interupting. You just can't beat that.

Orphans

I'm new to travel and still grasping certain truths about it. Like, everywhere you go, there you are. Maybe the reason I'm so comfortable going to a place where nobody knows me is because I am so comfortable not being spoken to, not answering the phone, not feeling obligated. Make no mistake, my habitual tendencies have followed me to the west and nag me constantly to see a movie not the Space Needle, read a book instead of hitting Pike Place Market. And yesterday, I listened to that voice. And that voice and I saw King Kong and spent a large amount of time in an incredible book store called Elliot Bay Books where I picked up a very good, small book called Orphans by Charles D'Ambrosio.

I usually don't like to pick up books without recommendation but this one received glowing reviews from the staff and I liked the way it looked. Orphans is published by Clear Cut Press - a publishing and distribution company from North Pacific America, who's principal business is the production of well-published, original softbound books that just happen to be superbly designed and can fit in your pocket.

I had an hour to kill before King Kong and did end up making it to the Space Needle, a 570 foot intrusion on the Seattle skyline. I don't know how long it has been there, when it was built or why, and I didn't care. It's impossible to escape the thrill of being that high up. I fought it, yup, sure did. I scowled at the overweight children clammoring to the windows, pressing their sticky faces on the glass leaving behind bits of hamburger and french fry. I tried to figure out what type of person works at the space needle. I judged, I mumbled, but when the elevator started up and I headed to the Sky Cafe, I was elated and forgot all about the company I was keeping.

On the way back down, a descent that lasts 2 minutes tops, our elevator operator, Amber, said that if we had any questions, we should feel free to shout them out. I surveyed my fellow riders, 3 bratty kids, their mom making out in the corner, a middle-aged couple and their middle-aged couple of friends and a gaggle of girls. It was no shock when middle-aged guy number one nudged his girlfriend and blurted out, "Do you think the Seahawks are going to win the Superbowl?" Chuckles from everyone, followed by silence while they waited for the answer. Now, Amber, who looks as though she might have been turned over a couple of times and shaken, is no magic eight ball, but you wouldn't have known that from looking around the elevator car. Even the mom in the corner sucking face with her boyfriend/husband/escort came up long enough to see what Amber would predict - her kids thrilled to see that she could still remove her face from her male friend.

I wanted to help Amber out, but didn't. She made the offer and now she would have to own up. I felt no sympathy for the girl, because even I know that that Steeler defense may be good, but they won't be able to stop Shaun Alexander.

To Market, To Market

"Outraged citizens, fed up with paying price-gouging middlemen too much for their produce, found a hero in Seattle City Councilman Thomas Revelle. Revelle proposed a public street market that would connect farmers directly with consumers. Customers would "Meet the Producer" directly, a philosophy that is still the foundation of all Pike Place Market businesses."

It was lunch-time when I got to Pike Place Market. I suppose it is the most obvious tourist destination, but for good reason. An old lady in a red coat pushed a cart across the cobbled road and rested under the shade of a fruit vendor smelling oranges. Lunching men and women enjoyed the unseasonably warm weather on curbs, munching large cookies or fresh fruit. Everyone seemed thankful for the much needed break from 32 consecutive days of rain.

Chamaine, my hairdresser from Capital Hill told me there are two types in Seattle - the natives and the transplants. The transplants are usually over-dressed and once they figure out that their Ugg boots are never going to fit in in Seattle they either reassess their footwear or head back to California. I was told at the airport by a robust woman living in the east as an ex-patriot of the northwest, that the natives are a little bitter. Microsoft came in and jacked the price of everything through the roof. This was confirmed by Anne, the bartender at The Warwick. Whatever the story or division, in Seattle, there is an overwhelming sense of environmental respect and an unspoken appreciation for daily courtesies. Bill Gates, in his glass castle, kept those traditions intact.

After the market, I walked the hills of downtown. Scruffy, soliciting-teenagers hunkering down for a long afternoon of begging, peppered every street corner, holding signs or just asking for change. They fit the mold, I guess, of what I pictured the homeless in Seattle to look like - disaffected, angst riddled, outdoorsy teens from the Midwest that thought that it was the city, not talent that made Nirvana the band that it was.

Ring-A-Ding-Ding

Yesterday I photographed the same boring building, twice. This took me 8 hours because I had already left the location before realizing I made a mistake. The building was in a southern “suburb” if you can call it that. Every inch of this state seems to be populated by boot wearing, touchy-feely eco-guys that hit the NO button on the ATM when it asks if they want a receipt – that would be a waste of paper. Even the suburbs, usually a consumer wasteland, are lush and friendly.

In an attempt to salvage some part of the day as being my own on the way back to the city, I drove Hwy 450 North to Hwy 90 around and across Lake Washington. Hwy 90 crosses half of Lake Washington then cruises through Mercer Island, packed with beautiful homes, then, when you least expect it, cuts through a hill of evergreens and launches out over the other half of the lake. 90 turns into a lichen, tree-covered tunnel once it reaches Seattle and just before you dip under, the words, “Seattle, Portal to the Pacific” can be seen just above, carved in cement that looks like granite.

Needing a haircut and a tan, but not knowing where to go, I headed to Capital Hill because where there are gays there will certainly be hairdressers, tanning beds and a gym. The employees at Ultimate Tan are the usual tanning attendants - brown to the point of orange and if they aren’t smoking and on the phone when you walk in, they will be when you walk out.

Just like Chicago, not much is going on in downtown Seattle. When I drove away from Capital Hill, the party was just getting started and the spiky kids with their messenger bags were hopping onto curves and leaning on poles, making plans for later. Back downtown, I wished that I had stayed on Capital Hill, but too tired to go back, I decided to eat in the hotel again.

An old coot at the bar was lagging on about “movement. And then there’s Darrel Jackson. And they have home-field advantage. You know, I don’t know much about football but I’ve been saying for a year that Seattle was going to the Superbowl.”

And as odds would have it, I ended my day in the Warwick Hotel bar next to Seattle’s very own football clairvoyant.

Ring-a-ding-ding.

Seven Southern Gents

It was decided unanimously over breakfast by Michael and his mother and myself that it was a great day to fly. A storm had passed, the sun monopolized the sky, and one table away from us a man of about 21 was finishing off his first beer at 12:30pm on a Sunday. The kid nudged closer to his wife, who wasn't drinking yet, but surely would be soon.

Michael and I had covered the obligatory sacrifice to the God of Please Don't Let Me Die in an Airplane by discussing the various ways one can be ripped apart midflight, say by being sucked through a whole in the window the size of a needle. Or, scattered fruitlessly over a field in southern Idaho. These discussions start a few days before one or both of us is about to board a plane and usually include alternative, preferred ways of dying like - electrocution, fire, drowning, strangulation... the list is endless and always brings us back to a numbing silence that says, "This could be it." As we exited the highway and pulled into Ohare, Michael said one more time that "Yup, you really do have a great day to travel." Or stall mid-flight and plummet 50,000 feet to my death.
We didn't laugh.

It's possible at times to forget just what's out there. And what's out there can sometimes be very different from what's in here - mainly, me. No other public space demands that so many different people operate within the same space under so much stress and fatigue, than an Airport and it's obvious extension, the Airplane. A single mother can find herself next to a large bickering family and think, thank god I signed the papers. And oppositely the large family might be thinking, poor her. Poor single mom. A large person can find themselves next to a very tiny, Lilipution person. Black, white. College educated, not collge educated. Or say gay, reading US weekly next to and in front of a row of prison guards from South Carolina. The man next to me, the nicest of the seven I decided, was reading American Rifleman magazine (see attached image) and from which I learned over his shoulder, that in March I too could attend a "meeting of America's second army of freedom - the NRA " in Milwaukee.

I tried not to breath, talk too loud or gesticulate excitedly when after turning the page of US weekly I saw Mary Kate back on track and showing ribs again. I watched Star Wars on my laptop instead of Working Girl, and turned up the volume whenever our male flight attendant came to offer something to my new friends, knowing what was to follow. I was caught off guard during one such interaction and managed to get the tale end of their southern insight... "Queers eat Sushi."

The plane touched down and I drove beside the Puget Sound at 7:30 Seattle time and to my hotel. It was beautiful.

Forest for the Trees

"After a while, I stop keeping track, but I counted well over 20 seperate and distinct expressions of gratitude."