volume one hundred and fifteen

there she goes again

📍Written from Seattle with fingers that smell like maple glazed Top Pot Doughnuts and every time I raise my hands to my face the way I do when I am thinking, I get a whiff of my last snack.

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Saturday, approx 11:20am.

I exit the coffee shop attached to the apartment building, wearing my oversized Aerosmith jumper that was my Christmas gift from my Dad, my white Converses and my only pair of jeans. They don’t have complete knees so they feel fitting for the “It is Autumn but also it is very warm out” day, allowing for warmth but also a breeze to flow in the ripped holes, or so I tell myself. The sky is unusually blue for Seattle at this time of year and the iced tea in my hand is a relief to my already toasty body. I dare not go back and change my clothes because I already had to break it to the dogs once they were not joining me on my walk to Kerry Park. They stop to sniff everything and I don’t have time for that, we can do that later. I am close behind two women who cross the street steps ahead of me, managing to beat the traffic that I pause for. They’re both in Blundstones and shorts and brown, fuzzy zip-up vests. They’re going somewhere on two feet and it shows. I wish I wore shorts like them.

Saturday, approx 12:15pm

I needed a sweet treat so I stopped at another coffee shop close to my destination, that sold me a vegan oat bar. The woman who served me asked if I made my jumper and I told her it was a gift and she said nothing else. I munch on the oat bar as I arrive at my destination, pouring the crumbs into my palm as I take on the stairs, the final round of this upward walk. I take in the view of the Seattle skyline, and Tossed Salads and Scrambled Eggs plays in my head, then it becomes One Week by the Barenaked Ladies and I make a mental note to text this to my friends later when I have WIFI to find out if they are Frasier pals or 10 Things I Hate About You pals, or if like me, they are both. I focus on Mt Rainier behind the skyline and mutter under my breath how magnificently large it is. My eyes cannot comprehend the size of this thing so far away and gigantic against buildings in the foreground. I spy a bench seat free up and I take off my jumper, sip my tea, and open my book. I read for a while forgetting where I am when I overhear a conversation between four people and I look up to see the two women in brown fuzzy vests and the shorts I wish that I wore, exchanging photos with another group of two. “Thank you so much, let me take one for the two of you! I will get all the angles!” and maybe that is a way to say “I wish when you took ours you got all the angles”.

Saturday, approx 12:40pm

I smell cigarette — a scent that used to make me pull out my own and light it but has long become one of disgust and rarity — and look up to see two people smoking. One sports a bleached blond pixie mullet, an olive green satin skirt and a beige crocheted vest. Their friend has their hair in a messy high ponytail and is wearing a crop top and overalls with one of the clips intentionally undone. I think about how I see people smoking far less these days. I think about how you rarely see them do it in busy places. I think about how when I was young I would have done the exact same thing and stood where fifty or some other people stood, enjoying the view, and not thought once about how my stench would be a nuisance for the rest of them. I wouldn’t have seen any of the other people, the children, the elderly, the dogs… I would have just seen me. I go back to my book and decide to finish that chapter before getting out of the increasingly hot sun.

Saturday, approx 2:53pm

I am on a crowded bus and I shouldn’t be. By the time I took the dogs out again and made it to my stop, I was making good time. In the time I spent waiting at the stop, I could have caught two buses to Capitol Hill that never showed up. Instead, I am on this one and so is everyone else that the other buses didn’t show up for. I intended to get to my event early, to mingle and chat and do all that without feeling nervous (I would hope). I am going to be late, but I do not want to give up. I decide then and there, that when I get to the library I can scope out the meeting room and if it looks like I am too late to join the event, I will take a seat in the main part of the library. I intended to write at this event, and I will write even if I cannot make it to the event itself. I really hope I make it in time for the event. The bus stops partway up the hill in traffic and waits as I look out the window and see the olive green skirt and the lopsided overalls waiting at lights, chatting and smoking. Their shoulders look a little more rosey than they did when I saw them earlier.

Saturday, approx 5:45pm

We are wrapping up the workshop and the person running it has asked people to if they’d like to share what they wrote. A woman at the end of the table, wearing polka-dots and bright purple pigtails says she will share. She starts by describing her story which involves lesbians in love, sex work and the porn industry and a transgender main character. She describes the characters in such detail listing their quirks and their desires and their driving forces and their faults and their flaws. We laugh, our eyes widen, we adore these people we are hearing about. Then she reads us an excerpt and I want to hear more. I will have to wait for the day I buy the book.

Saturday, approx 7:18pm

I miscalculated and didn’t leave myself time to catch transit so I find myself in a last-minute over-priced Uber heading out of downtown and driving along roads that leave all that looks familiar far behind me as I glance back at it in the sunset skies. I am not sure what suburb it is that I am headed to, but I know that it has a comedy club and that one of my favourites is headlining there tonight so it will be very fun and very queer. The driver seems hasty, just a little faster than the other cars on the road but not enough to alarm me, just to be thinking about it a little. I wonder what this comedy club will be like. I wonder if the veggie burger is good? I wonder if they will make me sit up the front, and I hope not. I will say what I always say when it is true “I cannot sit at the front as I know the comedian and I don’t want to distract them”. This says “I respect the craft of comedy” and I do. As the driver takes a corner a little sharper than I think is necessary, we pass two pedestrians waiting to cross and I wonder where they might be coming from. Maybe there is a bus stop close by because we seem to be only surrounded by trees and freeways. One of them tucks her purple strand of hair behind her ear and hugs her handbag over her polka-dot-covered shoulder.

Lovely reader, have you ever encountered the same strangers again and again?

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here are three things I struggled with this week:

🍩 There was an earthquake here on Sunday and at the time it hit some people felt it. When asked the next day if I did, I looked at the time and realised I was in an AA meeting eating a Top Pot Doughnut and felt nothing (but joy, and fellowship, of course). Why is this a struggle? Because it was a harmless earthquake and I wanted to be cool and say I had felt it, I’ll admit that.

🦩 Putting my creativity and play first.

🦘 Both falling asleep and also waking up. It is crunch time and my head is spinning with to-do lists. The next time I write to you, it’ll be coming from another country that I will be calling home (again).

here are three blessings from this week:

✈️ Being honest and being heard about travel and that it is not just the flight I am out, but it truly takes me three days to get from Canada to Australia when you take it all into account.

🐾 Dogs are so intuitive. 

🔔 Living out my “I want to be Kat Stratford” fantasy.

here are three goals for the coming week:

✨ Take it easy.

✌️ One day at a time.

🚰 Drink water.

pics or it didn’t happen:

took these guys to the space needle and this was the best pic we got

I love you, and despite saying I will stay in every night this week because I need it (and otherwise I am and I have), tonight is an exception. On the day you get this in your inbox I am off to see The Sandman AKA Adam Sandler AKA the man who raised me (both as a human and comedically). Might laugh until I cry, might cry then laugh! Who knows!

🧡, LD (lauren deborah | she/they)