sw 2 nw by mw

The fireworks turned out a lot more fun than anticipated. My friend here, who I’m going to call “Fred” for now, and I spent the whole day moving more of his stuff from what is apparently now my apartment into his new apartment. I have some mixed feelings about all of this. He is leaving this nice highrise for a tiny joke of a place nearby that isn’t all that much cheaper. He said the landlord told him it was 400 square feet, and when he took me there the first time I took a look around and said ‘You mean 400 cubic feet?’ It’s the size of 2 parking spaces. I have questioned his reasoning at least a dozen times now and insisted he reconsider – enough times that I feel any more would be insulting, and still he refuses to change his mind. It makes no sense to me. He insists it is what he wants. Even though I have repeated that I may only be in his old place for one month. If that happens, he would then have two apartments, two rents to pay, and one very big headache.

It also happens that he shouldn’t be doing any moving at all because 2 weeks ago he had an accident playing soccer and *severed* his ACL (a knee ligament, the same as Tiger Woods famously had surgery on last month, but Tiger’s was only torn, not completely severed). So heavy lifting is totally unrecommended pending his surgery in a couple weeks. Well, we were moving a couch up some slick marble steps and suddenly he lets out a cry and crumples to the ground. I had been fearing such a moment all day. I watch helplessly as he crawls up the steps and curls up on the couch holding his breath in silent agony for about 2 minutes. I couldn’t say anything, I knew he was in a kind of pain I’ve never felt, and here I was accomplice to it even after objecting to the whole idea of moving. When he could speak again he said he could feel he had re-torn everything. And a few minutes later he regained his composure and we were working again like nothing happened. It may be stupid, but damn is he tough.

Anyway, we called it quits around 8, in time to get ready and meet his girlfriend across town to watch the fireworks at the Gas Light or whatever it’s called. A marina. There’s a lot of water around here, I haven’t gotten it all straight yet. We drove as close as we could find parking and then walked about 4 miles further until we ran into her and her cousin on the street. Four miles with a re-torn ACL. Petunia was with us, dragging me along the sidewalk on a mission of her own. We found a spot amongst a large crowd standing where they could between road and the waterfront. The display commenced with a slow motion flyby by a Chinook military helicopter dangling an American flag in its spotlight. That helicopter is huge, it carries tanks into battle. Twin propellers thumping as it crawls through the air. Then proceeded an hour-long fireworks display that literally filled the entire sky. It might be the most impressive I’ve ever seen, and this includes the many years as a child that I got to witness the Washington DC fireworks from the Potomac River with my cousins I used to spend summers with there. But they say pyrotechnics advance every year, and I believe it. There were cube-shaped explosions, star-shaped explosions, ones that looked like Saturn… except to me it looked like the Planet Hollywood logo.

Petunia I have to say handled herself well, but was definitely shaken. Dogs tend to get spooked by fireworks. She kept looking up at me for some kind of explanation, panting, wide-eyed, and I could only pet her head and tell her she was ok. She tried to hide behind my legs, then pushed her way into a rose bush oblivious to the thorns, and finally only calmed down while hiding amongst all our legs. Several years ago I had her and Tibbs at a beach for the 4th in the little town of Cayucos about an hour north of Santa Barbara. Kids were lighting sparklers and bottle rockets on the beach 10 feet from us. Both dogs were so scared they tried to burrow under me in the sand. It was one of only two times I knew them to show fear. The other was a parade with big Clydesdales that went by our old house downtown. Everyone was standing in the backyard watching but the dogs hid under a couch, afraid the giant animals were going to crash the fence and come for them.

Some mornings here I am awakened by the sun, sometimes by the traffic on the freeway below. The next morning I woke to the cries of seagulls. I planned to drive 20 miles south to a place called Redondo Beach and meet Brad from Portland and his girlfriend Pee Wee and their other Phoenix transplant friend Drew. The two men came to scuba dive and I had brought my fishing gear hoping to get a first chance at these productive northwest waters. Unfortunately I got hung up on not having a fishing license and not wanting to splurge for an out of state license just yet. They’re expensive and I couldn’t find a place that sold them nearby. So instead, Pee Wee and I wound up drinking beer in the parking lot across the street from the water all afternoon. Yes: we tailgated a scuba dive. It was great, we leaned on the truck through rain and sun, drinking beer after beer until the boys emerged from the water black and shivering. This picture is posed, but they really were cold.

Pee Wee coined a new phrase which I’m going to use from now on. See, she only drinks Bud Light, which was coincidental because I had inherited a case from Fred, who had it left over from his Super Bowl party. Yes, he had a case of beer that was untouched since February. I don’t understand it either. I had brought some of them in a cooler on the off chance they would come in handy fishing or perhaps I’d have to shove one up a chicken’s butt and grill it. You never know where the day will take you. None of that happened, but PeeWee was happy to take them off my hands. She doesn’t like the fancy beer that Brad and I like and that Drew homebrews. She explained that she had tried some one time, and it tasted like when she had accidentally gotten lipstick on her teeth and licked it. So anything fancier than Bud Light is now called Lipstick Beer.

I shared the lipstick beer I had brought in addition to the Bud Light with Brad after the dive, and another guy Scott who was in their party, then we all went to the nearest dive bar and had a couple pitchers and got to know the locals a little. This was in Federal Way, part of the southern Seattle/Tacoma metro area but you couldn’t tell by the people. In fact they denied being part of Seattle. Some of them had wicked bad teeth, and one female bartender, no older than 40, was actually missing two in the front. I’m no longer passing judgments, but I really don’t get it. It’s pretty normal to have crooked teeth, it’s another thing to have one or two rotting teeth, and then it’s another thing altogether to be missing front teeth. Isn’t it? But the people were down to earth and fun loving. Reminded me of Glendale. No offense anyone.

The next morning I woke up hung over back in the apartment, pulling the pillow over my eyes and ears until 11. Being Sunday and the last day before I start this new job, I wanted to do some touristy things while I still could, and the first order was to get some good seafood which I hadn’t really done yet. I walked 8 blocks down the hill to the Pike Street Fish Market and looked around. It was a mad house. Streets closed off, art displays everywhere. There was one stand with a placard that said ‘proDUCTive’, and I quickly realized it was the same stuff that January had read about and made a year ago – wallets, purses, keychains, etc made from different colored duct tape. I snapped a picture with my phone to send her and made the mistake of talking to the girl tending the display, and she insisted I delete the picture. I said ‘are you serious?’ She said yeah the artist is very particular that no one take pictures of it. I said ‘Artist?’ This is fucking duct tape. This is not art. It’s craft. I’m sorry but if an artist is afraid of people stealing their idea, that means they have no talent. Talent means only you can do it; even if someone else watches you, they cannot do it because they lack your skill, creativity and originality. I’ve sometimes been a musician and I don’t hide it or ask people not to record it. It’s a compliment if they want to. I’ll perform for anyone who cares to see and hear. I’m not afraid someone will see how I do it and go do it better and thereby take food off my table. If I’m any good, then you can’t. The day before, walking down Pike Street again I saw a crowd of 50 people standing around a black man on a corner with spray paint doing something with what I think was a surfboard and some tin cans. He was so in the moment that he didn’t even seem to see the crowd which was so close any of them could have touched him. That’s an artist. He wasn’t afraid of anyone stealing his idea because no one could have done what he did even after watching him do it. This duct tape artist hack doesn’t even show up to sell his or her own crap. Give me a fucking break.

A restaurant had crab benedict and bloody mary, which totally cured the hangover. I’ve been wanting crab since I got here. It was ok as benedict, there was no hollandaise sauce but that’s ok cuz it’s not in the diet. Then I went to a shop that sold fresh whole fish and got a big juicy chunk of smoked salmon for snacking on, and a whole boiled dungeness crab to go, for dinner. Two and a half pounds that sucker was. This is what she looked like before…

And this is after I got through with her, using only my bare hands. Not so fuckin tough now, huh crab?

Not many of you know this, but as alluded to before I spent every summer from age 9 to 19 with my cousins in northern Virginia, and went to the University of Virginia for 2 years before coming home to ASU. Virginia shares Chesapeake Bay with Maryland and Delaware, and that region is home to the famous Maryland Blue Crab. It’s smaller than a Dungeness crab, and perhaps more tasty. We used to go catch them by hand in little swampy places with names like Wachapreague and Chincoteague, and then buy a couple bushels from the docks, and take them home to put on a crab feast for the whole neighborhood. The family contest was to see how long you could sit at the picnic table and eat these suckers. It would go all day. Dismantling crabs is so time and labor intensive that you could actually sit there and work through two meals. We’d start at lunch and work until dark, cracking the shells and legs apart without aid of mallet nor fork, pulling the meat out with out teeth or dipping them in pure vinegar. It was great, and now that I see the potential up here, I’m going to resurrect the tradition. Forget ribs and jerk chicken for now, crab is the new frontier.

After the fish market I took Petunia to Greenlake Park about 5 miles uptown. It’s a small lake with a trail that runs about 3 miles around it, and on this sunny day I would guess at least a thousand people were there jogging, biking, walking dogs, playing frisbee, fishing, paddle-boating, swimming, diving, tanning, making out in the grass, all the things you do in public parks. The mission was to give Petunia a solid afternoon of fetching tennis balls in the water after the long car ride and being cooped up in the apartment. Let her know this is her new home and it’s full of grass and water. Swimming and fetching are her favorite things in the whole world. I would throw the ball as far as I could and she would swim out, further than she’s ever swam before, and come back all out of breath, then shake off and be ready to go again.

And then came Monday and the first day of work on the new job. The first vision today was a perfectly clear blue sky out the window from bed, just like in Phoenix but without the heat. It’s the clearest day here yet. On the way across the bridge to work I got my first glimpse of Mt. Rainier huge in the southeast and not even as far as the horizon. It’s covered in snow, from top to bottom, just like it’s winter. Un-fucking-real. This is still July right? There aren’t even trees on it, just snow.

Work was fine, and I may have found the answer to my dilemma. It turns out most of the people in this company work remotely from all over the state. In fact, if you live more than a reasonable commute from the nearest office, they let you telecommute 100% of the time. So if I play my cards right I can do this 6 month contract in Seattle (telecommuting Mondays & Fridays), get hired on permanent and then move down to Vancouver, WA, across the river from Portland, thereby living in the Portland area but making Seattle wages. Come to think of it, that would be the fucking dream come true. We’ll see how it goes. The main thing in my control is to do such a good job that they can’t say no. They’re desperate for people who do this work.

So you want to know how to tell if someone is gay? It’s not by their dress or their voice or how they act. No, you can tell someone is gay by the fact that they live in my neighborhood. Every man and woman here is gay. This is called First Hill, and two blocks uphill is Capitol Hill, and that’s the famous gay part of Seattle. I didn’t realize this until yesterday. Two blocks here is about the distance I can throw a baseball. With a good tailwind, you could spit a block if it’s downhill. And it’s all either uphill or downhill. I have my bike sitting in the living room ready to go but in no danger of being taken out just yet. I’m scared to. It’s like climbing Squaw Peak just going to get coffee in the morning. After work today I went to a pet store up the block – majorly butch lady owner. I went across the street to the urban furniture store – tan blond gay guy smiling extra big at me from the register. I went back toward home and stopped at what I was pleased to learn was one of just 3 McMenamin’s brewpubs in town. They’re based in Portland and provide the main supply of lipstick beer there. The bartenders: gay. The patrons: gay. Finally a good looking latin girl came in to pin up a poster for some performance art show this weekend. She sat down and had a beer and eventually we started talking. Turns out she’s from El Paso but has lived here for 7 years. I told her I’ve lived in Phoenix until 5 days ago. She tells me all about the winters and the social scene here and I’m scared. She said in winter it gets dark at 3:30pm – WHAT THE FUCK!?!? And the people get real passive aggressive and downtown it quickly becomes a small world. And then she says ‘Are you by any chance gay?’ Now, isn’t that just what you like to hear from a nice looking person of the opposite sex? I say ‘No, I’m not’ and she says ‘Well I’m queer and….’ yadda yadda that’s where I tuned out. Just kidding but damn damn damn, why did I move out of the gay part of Phoenix and smack dab into the gay part of Seattle?