Year: 2002

My acceptance of Robert’s optimism is just naive wishful thinking. For the last week or so, he’s been saying that he was supposed to get a subsidized apartment on February 1. But I ran into him yesterday (he’s turning up most days now) and he immediately handed me his case worker’s card and a post-it note that had the name of the facility and “wait list 10 months to a year” written on it in pencil. He said that his caseworker had told him to give it to me.

Three posts today, following up on the three posts from the day before yesterday.

First a correction: I don’t know why I assumed that Jill Alice at Strange Brew was a Mac user. A quick look finds that, aside from today’s denial of my assumption, she has blogged no acknowledgement of any OS affiliation.

The Stranger reports:

Former Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic has formed a new band with Meat Puppet Curt Kirkwood and Bud Gaugh of Sublime and Long Beach Dub Allstars. Eyes Adrift is the name of this project, and you can catch the guys’ first local show this Friday, January 25, at I-Spy.

That’s terrific! Curt Kirkwood and Krist Novoselic are pretty much the most respectable people in rock music as far as I’m concerned. I just put in Kirkwood’s album with the four-piece version of the Meat Puppets (after the brother crashed, the drummer burned out I guess, and Kirkwood moved away from Phoenix) and it’s good. Worthy of more credit than I gave it at first.

I’m looking forward to that tomorrow.

Robert tracked me down at Vivace. He basically confirmed his continuing purgatory. The end is nearer than the beginning; he’s supposed to have his subsidized apartment on the first and he says that his church may start paying him for his work setting up the mission and some janitorial work.

He seems a little hurt since I’ve been less able to help him with the rent just as he’s needed the most attention and my supply of optimistic moral support has dried up. When I gave him a few dollars for coffee he said, “I’m going to find a smaller cafe. Everyone seems to be in their own little world here.”

I looked around and agreed, “Yeah, I guess so.”

After he left, I looked again and thought, “There’s nothing wrong with that!”

Maybe extroverts feel excluded in a room full of close conversations and lone people hovered over books and papers. Or maybe he was onto something, that hard to pinpoint shelled-in attitude that people sometimes associate with Seattlites.

Thank you to the bloggers who’ve recently added this site to their links lists. Validation is good!

Strange Brew
The Jer Zone
Jeff Schuler

Interestingly enough, all three appear to be Mac users. (I avoid eye contact and begin whistling tunelessly, trying not to betray my Windows dependency.)

Meet. Notice a rapport. Have a series of sharp conversations over two days.

Say Goodbye. You’re asked, Maybe you can email me sometime?

Weeks later you get the address from a friend. It’s time to say something, but you don’t know what – Hey, remember me? Decide that you’ll work out something clever later.

It has been months now and you haven’t sat down to think of something clever yet. You’ve been told that she’s asked about you. You wonder how your silence is interpretted.

Didn’t you get my smoke signals? Semaphore with binoculars that compensate for the earth’s curve. ESP. Alright, old fashioned email it is.

Sit down and type something. It’s not clever.

A week passes and I barely notice. Watched two movies indifferently, read maybe 100 pages, and wrote nothing. What does it mean that I measure my days by how many pages I’ve read?

Sunday evening, Mari’s birthday party.

I wait for the bus, eyeing the weekly flea market in the dry cleaner’s parking lot (still open after dark). I buy a stack of party hats.

“Do you know where you got these?” I ask.

“No. I don’t,” the seller admits. “I’m sure they’re clean though.”

My bus never comes. I point at a taxi and it stops. The driver takes me to Larry’s Market on Queen Anne. I pay him and walk out onto the sidewalk. I still have a dollar change from the taxi transaction in my hand as I pass a woman selling Real Change, the homeless newspaper. I give the dollar to her, fold the Real Change up, and stick it in my pocket.

Inside I look over the beer selection. I read one of the unfamiliar labels to myself, “Gordon Biersch Märzen. I’m surprised – I know the beer but I don’t know the logo. I didn’t know that it came in bottles. So I get a six-pack.

I walk to Mari and Jon’s place. Jon offers to make me a piña colada, and I hesitate. “I’ll have a beer.” I’m disappointed in myself for breaking my streak of going with whatever comes along.

The party is small. Mari’s sister is there for awhile with her baby, some trusted people take turns holding him.

This is a theme party – it was strongly recommended that guests should wear a wig, or at least a disguise. (I’m wearing my Linus shirt, but no one notices.) There are four wigs in play. All of them belong to Mari. Later, the number of wigs will increase by two. I’m afraid to say that they all look good on me. Another guest looks like Andy Warhol no matter which wig he wears.

There are three Englishmen present – that’s just how it happened. Later, a girl from Ireland too.

Rebecca is there. I’ve only talked to her once before, that was in Paris.

S jokes that, “I drove 4,000 miles to get here.” It’s a long story

Mark’s boyfriend looks a lot like Mark.

What Jon would do:
Build a wooden yacht and sail it around the world.
Get a commercial pilot’s license.
Get a degree in some esoteric subject.

Jon drove from Wisconsin to Washington on his honeymoon. On the strength of a steak dinner, he has decided that Nebraska is the best state.

These are good people! Ok.

On Friday I went out late to rent a movie. I walked into Broadway Market and saw Robert passed out on a bench over his belongings. He looked horrible, weary, and worn out. Worse than I’ve ever seen him. I was really scared. I sat down next to him and shook him awake.

His voice was low and rough. He mentioned the security guard who’d decided to let him be and we touched briefly on the morning wake-up call he given me a couple of days before. It was cold outside and if he needed a roof over his head on one day, this was it. So I roused him and we walked over to the cash machine for hotel rent. We walked up to Dick’s for a couple of burgers and I left him there half-awake, with a burger and some cash tucked away into the plastic garbage bag that he was carrying his blanket in. He was talking to a homeless youth acquaintance of his. I wasn’t sure how he was planning to get to the hotel in Belltown.

Yesterday he appeared beside me at Vivace, looking as fresh as ever. I bought him some cofee and we sat down. He rambled on for a long time. He vaguely remembered seeing me the other day, but wasn’t sure if it had really happened.

Anyway, things are okay. We’re on good terms. Also, if I understand correctly, in recognition for his efforts to get the new mission started up, one of the missions has reserved a bit of floor space for him to sleep on whenever he needs it.

I’m poking around in the road construction debris looking for a shot. An SUV pulls up, stops in the middle of the road and a guy, 30ish, rolls down the window. “Hey, if someone is told ‘You should check out Capitol Hill’, where would they go? Is that it?” he points back down the hill, “Just Broadway?” There’s a woman in the passenger seat beside him.

I pause and try to decide the context of the hypothetical person’s hypothetical “checking out”.

“Well, you could also try 15th, or perpendicular to both Broadway and 15th, you can head down Pike and Pine.”

“Okay,” he says skeptically, “We’ll try Fifteenth. Thanks.” He drives away.

I walk back across the street and take this photo.