As a kid I read a lot of stories about survival and kids building homes. My favorites were the Jack London books about wolves, Hatchet, My Side of the Mountain, The Boxcar Children Series, and the Berenstain Bears book about the clubhouse (before Berenstain Bears acquired their current conservative Christian bent.)
I have always had an odd relationship with domesticity, which is probably why until about a month ago I had never cohabited with a girlfriend.
Last Wednesday culminated in an Auburn Taco Bell parking lot with several friends wearing seven-layer burritos as bras. I alternately shotgunned Rainier and taco sauce packets, reeling from the delight of what for most of us had been our first Marilyn Manson concert.
The turn-of-the-century Victorian that houses Outlander Brewing is so pristine it looks like it was built last week. It could be a stylish good witch’s house, or some obscure European Earl’s summer home.
Well-written confessional essays facilitate a sense of belonging and connection for both the reader and writer. They involve the unveiling and exploration of a personal truth the author has previously concealed.
During a recent move, one of the first boxes I carefully padded and taped contained a collection of dirt-covered bottles. They’re literally garbage—I began collecting a decade ago when my friend Riley, a professional treasure hunter, found a map of Seattle’s dumps from the turn of the century.
Some people claim to see ghosts all the time. The closest I’ve seen to a ghost was probably purely the product of a rap-video quantity of bong hits.
Occasionally my mom calls me from Ikea wordlessly screaming. I always know where she is, because it’s very specific—the combination of a stage-whispered scream that implies respect for fellow shoppers, and the kind of awful scream in nightmares where your sleeping lungs refuse you full volume.
I first visited The Double Header shortly after moving to the International District in 2014. I explored the ID and Pioneer Square as often as school and work would allow, searching for the oldest existing bars with the cheapest existing whiskey—Joe’s, The Central Saloon, and Fort St. George were favorites.
While I was couch surfing through grad school four years ago, I had this incredibly vivid dream about living in a 1920s building in the International District called the Alps Hotel. In the dream nothing really happened, but the place was a taller, narrower, more streamlined version of itself, like a cathedral, and I woke up with an unplaceable sense of hope.
Oppressed people of every stripe (and, well, everybody) should strive to offer each other support, patience, and love—history has shown us over and over there is strength and safety in numbers.
Black tie and prom dresses, a DJ resembling a combination of Buddy Holly and Alfred Hitchcock, and a leather daddy building a motorcycle with a side car for his dog. It must be another SIFF Gay-la.