back in seattle again

I arrived at TPA by 5 AM Wednesday for my flight to Seattle. My last time through the airport was less than 6 months ago, but the security process has changed yet again. The new GE machines were randomly blowing people with breaths of air (kinda like a glaucoma test for the entire body). Also, paper slippers are provided for those with foot insecurities…it all seems so ridiculous; most of us are good people. Aren’t we?

Touching down on the west coast before noon, I’d normally be off to see the city & my friends but I opted to have my cousin pick me instead and we spent the day in the suburbs. I’m a little better to my family in my old age.

After a Project Runway marathon and sushi at a strip mall, we made our way to the city late in the evening for vodka and karaoke at the Wild Rose, Seattle’s only lesbian bar. My cousin is newly 21 and this was the first time we’ve gotten to bond as adults. Or intoxicated post adolescents. Whichever. The funniest part wasn’t the mild discomfort her boyfriend exhibited, but the fact that from the shadows of a back table emerged our unouted antisocial cousin. We in the younger generation knew her orientation but its still pretty unspoken in our family. She was happy to see us though. Some beans are meant to be spilt.

I stayed in the Capitol Hill district (aka the Hill) with my friend Jenny Ting, a filmmaker who just screened her second film, Straight Into Gay America, this week at the 2006 Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. She hasn’t yet submitted it to any other festivals, having finished it 15 months ago and somewhat over the piece. Which is sad since it deserves an hour of everyone’s life. It’s about an ex-Lutheran pastor (who’s in the ‘04 Guinness Book of World Records for unicycling across the 50 states) who unicycles from Vermont to Maryland visiting gay families to see what all the fuss is about.

The next day I volunteered with Seattle Works (similar to Hands on Tampa) at the Compass Center packing bag lunches for the homeless. I trekked 2 miles down hill to Pioneer Square in my hungover stupor, only to run right back to Jenny’s afterwards to continue sleeping off the jet lag and last night’s vodka tonics. I think I am willing to admit that I have a problem.

I am Dawn’s festering Catholic guilt. Which is odd since my family is all kinds of Protestant.

I spotted a bumper sticker in the fashion of a W support sticker, but it read Worst President. Ever. Seattlites do not forgive or forget.

A recent law bans smoking within 25 feet of buildings and there was official signage in almost every window I passed. There was a handwritten one scribbled on a napkin that read, “If you’re smoking here, you’d better be on fire.”
It’s gray outside but I’ve been away long enough for it to not be too bothersome. It’s now a novelty and perfect for a reflective day.

For the rest of the weekend, there are lots of parties and events wrapping up the film festival. Lots of other getting-to-reknow-Seattle-again rituals, such as listening to KEXP and KBCS live on the radio and going into any one of the 2,301 independently owned coffee shops to order rice milk lattes without the barista givng me a WTF look.

Other Seattle favorites: warm and mostly on time Metro buses, a weekly newspaper called Real Change that can only be bought from the homeless, and the free weekly The Stranger (Creative Loafing on crack).