Baked In Seattle

by Shaw Sander

  He patted his forehead dry once more and stood to stare out at the eerie cloud surrounding us.

  “’But it’s so lush here in the summer! It’s liquid sunshine!’” Drake quavered, imitating the cheerful Seattle weather optimists we both hated. The dreary, near constant rainfall spawned the city’s most popular tourist t-shirt: Seattle Rain Festival, Jan.1st-Dec.31st.

  “I know you want sunshine. Why not Florida or California?”

  “Because this country…I can’t bear to watch the Republicans destroy it. We are doomed, we are all doomed.”

  “I go to Swedish Hospital parking lot when I feel like I’m gonna cry on the job,” Shelly said, sniffling. “No one bothers you if you’re crying in a hospital parking lot. They assume personal tragedy and steer clear.”

  “I know just the thing to cheer you up,” I told Shelly over the phone, after she and Blake broke up.

  I didn’t want her getting nostalgic, returning to the hurtful familiar just because it was a known. In their break-up, Blake had deserted her in the Tahuya State Forest on a camping trip, throwing a shoe at her head and pushing her out of their motorhome on a moonlit night, committing crimes I called “aggravated stupidity.”

  But Shelly still remained sure a little domestic violence couldn’t be overcome. Their dysfunction seamlessly meshed. I wanted to help her break the cycle.

  Garland Academy Homecoming was a fall phenomenon in Seattle, the Adventurer’s Club on Elliot rented out for a huge Saturday night. The gay event, referred to as Homo Homecoming, was always a smash, the huge ballroom and multi-storied hall agleam with crepe paper streamers, glittering disco balls, color gel lights, class election posters, wooden desks with attached chairs, orange plastic scoop chairs with swing-away writing arms, grey graffiti-ed walls of lockers, a glittering trophy case, and piped in announcements from the principal’s office. Every room was themed for a different school function---Cafeteria, AV Room, Nurse’s Office, Teacher’s Lounge---with the apex the decorated school gymnasium and dance floor in full tissue-paper-chrysanthemum-ed glory.

  Hundreds of people would turn out, dressed as every imaginable character from high school. There were two rival football teams and cheerleading squads, wearing Marlene Dietrich High’s lavender and Judy Garland Academy’s green. The rest of the student body was rounded out by smokers, stoners, jocks, nerds, hoods, popular kids and beauty queens.

  An entire faculty was also present, featuring lots of teacher beehive hairdos, enormous pastel cat-eye glasses on chains with delicate clasps, huge fake boobs, cardigans with clasps and stern brown-suited ultra-butch authority figures walking salaciously around with paddles.

  A Homecoming King and Queen were chosen at the festivity’s apex, after secret ballots and much jostling for position. As the sobbing (male) Homecoming Queen was presented with a dozen roses during her victory walk with the (female) Homecoming King, the sarcastic fake claws-out congratulations from the losers would have the entire place in stitches.

  There would be too many tuxedoed dykes there already and I didn’t want to be another penguin. For my costume I went to Value Village and bought a suit, going for a button-down bookish nerdy kind of look. Under my Oxford shirt I wore a dickie and added a bit of duct tape to my glasses, topping the ensemble off with a nice porkpie hat.

  Sticking a piece of Scotch tape onto the ends of my hair, I cut a quarter inch off in a short row then carefully smooshed it into a sticky moustache held by spirit gum. With my hair pulled up into the hat, looking back at me in the mirror was my male twin.

  Shelly met me wearing a bright red taffeta number, pinched at the waist and brimming with her beautiful brown décolletage, cut down to there.

  “Too bad we’re friends,” I sighed, looking at all that wasted opportunity right in front of me.

  “You make one handsome hombre, chica. Look at that moustache! It looks real!”

  “It is real. It’s my own hair. I figure I’m on the school paper. I’ll carry a little notebook.”

  “Kiss me.”

  “What? C’mon, Shell.”

  “No, kiss me, for real. I want to see how your moustache feels.”

  I kissed her, gingerly.

  “It is real! Hey, can you run into the 7-11 for me? I need cigarettes and these heels are killer.”

  “Sure, babe.”

  I pulled up to the convenience store as she checked her makeup for the thousandth time. She looked stunning. I sighed again. Too bad.

  “Newport 100’s,” I growled at the counter, lowering my voice and putting a macho-stern look on my face to cover my timidity.

  “Box or softpack, sir?” the clerk asked me without batting an eye.

  “I passed!” I crowed, as I got back in the car.

  “Far out, chica. I’m proud of you, my handsome little stud-muffin.”

  The inside of our wrists stamped with the school’s day-glo dolphin mascot, we chose the country-themed dance room first, sitting on hay bales to watch the line-dancing lesbians and gay men. There were lots of queens with tiaras, a sea of lesbian tuxedos and even one incongruous Minnie Mouse in huge shoes, all doing the Tush-Push.

  I got us two tonic waters since we were out in public. The AA grapevine was very swift with eyes everywhere and I didn’t want to answer to anyone.

  Blake appeared in the City Scapes room, her mullet freshly dyed blonde at the tips. I’d smelled the strong whiskey smell on her breath as she’d leaned proprietarily toward Shelly so I grabbed Shelly’s arm and moved her along with purpose, as if we had other places to be

  Once lovers, always a chance, I supposed but not if I could help it.

  “She looks good,” Shelly yelled in my ear as we entered Disco Inferno, complete with a lip-synching Donna Summer drag queen and glittering mirror ball. Shelly looked a little guilty.

  “Fuck her,” I yelled back. “Other fish in the sea. Look around you.”

  “I see a hot butch across the way, the one with the shop teacher coveralls on. Look at those biceps.”

  “You just like her because she has a wrench in her hand.”

  “I think it’s the streak of grease on her cheek. I love a woman who works with her hands.”

  “Go dance with her.”

  “Ya think?”

  “Holy shit, Shell. Yes.”

  Shelly sashayed across the floor to the grease monkey and soon they were frugging to the repetitive techno beat heard in every gay bar since 1980, a mix of old disco songs pumped up with a hard edge. The butch steered Shelly back to me and wrote down her phone number, slipping it into Shelly’s cleavage with a sly smile before she walked away.

  “See. Other fish.”

  “I think I see your point,” Shelly flushed, throwing back her hair. “Let’s go rest a bit.”

  We moved on to see the rest of the school setting. The decorations were incredibly well done, as always, streamers over our heads and school election posters on the wall in the hallways.

  The Cafeteria was quieter.

  “Peak season starts tomorrow,” Shelly said, her rustling dress crinkling as she sat down at a long table. ‘Cafeteria ladies’ in heavy pancake-makeup, beaded hairnets, white dresses and nurse’s shoes had lattes and pastries for sale, the proceeds benefiting the AIDS hospice.

  “Geez, I hate the thought of it. How many more of these can I do? My knees hurt and the early morning wake-up…I have to get another job. Or find a rich husband.”

  “You’ll do that, chica,” Shelly said. “You’ll see. Maybe this will be your last peak. That’s how I get through. I convince myself that this year is the last time I have to hump Harry&David boxes. I escaped the fruit picking fields to end up delivering the goddamn stuff by DHL. I am wearing myself out with sixty-hour weeks.”

  “Don’t forget the genuine Maine wreaths from L.L. Bean. Sending a fucking wreath from the east coast to the west. It’s the height of American depravity.”

  “I daydream I no longer have to do this for a living, like this is temporary,”
Shelly sighed, explaining her coping mechanism. Her eyes looked far away, scaring me a little. “I convince myself that this peak is it, I’m done, and I never have to do this again. The job sure pays the bills but it about kills me in the process. C’mon, I’ve had enough high school. Let’s go home.”

  Daydreaming of never having to work again got me through as well but I knew it wasn’t temporary unless I made things different. As AA had taught me, if nothing changes, nothing changes.

  But how could I change things while at the same time working physically, brutally hard, pushing, running, sweating through my clothes, loading a ton of freight in my truck at o-dark-thirty from a moving conveyor belt that sped faster, it seemed, every morning, then delivering the same freight, unloading it piece by piece, computer after computer. I would work until the truck was empty, meeting stricter, more demanding time commitments then spend my lunch hour napping in the back of the Grumman, my stashed sleeping bag rolled out onto the floor. Waking to my digital watch alarm, I’d leap up and repeat the process in reverse until 1730 hours, rushing to pick up packages and refill the truck to bursting, taking it back to the reversed conveyor belt. Repeat five to six days a week, 12 hours a day.

  After more than a decade at FedEx, I knew the stress of peak season was so high that three things nearly always happened along the conveyor belt by the time Christmas Day itself rolled around: there would be a physical fight, someone would cry and someone would quit.

  That Christmas was also a difficult emotional time since the kids were at college and no one was decorating a Chanukah-bush at my house. The holiday itself was simply a day to sleep through after the yearly work marathon.

  There wasn’t time to date, either.

  Desperate for pleasure and comfort, I realized I was not “dating” anyone anymore, simply fucking them, usually at my house. I had my coterie of fun fellows who knew how to throw a woman around a bedroom and there was no small pleasure in that. But no one was taking me out, there were no restaurants, no conversation, just booty calls.

  It left my outer shell intact but there was no substance, like a hollow chocolate Santa.

  “How the fuck can I get off this hamster wheel?” I griped to Malcolm.

  The beef stew was excellent, the perfect warmth against my soaking wet uniform. December in Seattle simply meant colder rain.

  “First of all, eat that hot meal and shut the fuck up. You look a little peaked,” Malcolm said and smiled his million-dollar smile. The toothpick slid to a corner of his mouth. His hair was freshly cut, neat and perfect and his nails looked suspiciously buffed. “Can’t say that to a black person,” he grinned. “How you gonna tell?”

  “I’m sure black people feel peaked, though. You just have to speak up.”

  “Like being ashy. If a white person look all ashy, how would you know?”

  “Hey, I get ashy and I can tell.”

  “Listen and keep eating. I worry about you, that this internet thing has taken a turn I never meant it to. I had something else in mind, a steady one-on-one relationship rather than this bed-hopping. We talked about that. Captain of industry, remember? Sure, you’re getting laid, and that’s good, nothing wrong with that. And I have to say, I sure enjoy hearing about all your escapades. I can get hard just imagining them.”

  His fingers rubbed his thumb in his little gesture of excitement.

  “I’m sure you do. I’d like to see that sometime.”

  Malcolm just stared at me.

  “We’ve talked about that, and I’m unavailable. That’s what makes me so exciting to you, my being unavailable.”

  I set down my fork and wiped my lips on the aqua cloth napkin, stiff with commercial laundry starch. The new hostess was folding them at the bar into half-fans.

  “I’ll tell you what makes you so exciting, Malcolm. You are fucking gorgeous, for one, you’re smart as hell, for another, and you have a sensuality about you that drives any woman from 10 to 80 wild. I’d still want you even if you were available.”

  “My point is…” he sighed, leaning into the table and speaking softer. “…you are going in the wrong direction here. I see potential for ugly things. You aren’t valuing yourself highly enough. And I feel responsible, I suppose, for wanting my own gratification in your erotic tales. For that I apologize.”

  I was too tired to argue with him. My legs felt like lead, and my feet were throbbing. I needed new work shoes but who the fuck had time to even take a decent shit, much less go shoe shopping. And finding women’s all-black running shoes with good support was a real chore. Men’s shoes were mostly black and women’s were almost always white. And did other peoples’ feet hurt as badly as mine? Were they as tired as I was? Maybe I should see a doctor.

  “Now let’s head into the right path, shall we? Take a step back, as it were.”

  He sat back in the booth and watched me eat, sip coffee, and try to rest.

  “What you need isn’t to have a date every night, or get laid all the time by a different man. You need a husband.”

  I opened my mouth but he protested.

  “We talked about this. I don’t mean that in some sexist, fifties perversion of your lesbianism or because you were raised by wolves. I am not saying you are ‘unfulfilled’ or some Feminine Mystique Madison Avenue bullshit where you wear a frilly apron and wait for Ward to come home. I mean, you need someone who loves you, truly loves you, and happens to be a solid breadwinner, some go-getter type with a good job who wants to be a patron of the arts and support your writing career. Lets you blossom as a writer without you having to sweat the bills. Take you out of this goddamn job that runs you ragged in the best years of your life and terrorizes you with numbers, numbers, faster, run, and then tells you afterward you didn’t meet goal. I wanna find that Fred Smith and wring his fat Skull and Bones neck.”

  Sometimes I did, too. It felt like Uncle Fred had unrealistic goals, his multiple ex-wives’ alimony taken out of the workers’ hides. I put my fork down and listened. Patron of the arts sounded not half bad. Neither did the word “husband,” for that matter. I needed a butch around the house.

  “He has to be able to build things, fix things,” I blurted out.

  “Who? Fred Smith?”

  “My husband.”

  Malcolm smiled.

  “It would get you off this treadmill that keeps going faster and faster to nowhere. You are running too hard. Time to stop.”

  “My job pays my bills. I don’t know any other way to survive. I’m listening but I have ten minutes before I have to start pickups, so hurry up with your plan. Then I’ll think about it.”

  “Girl, we’re gonna get you out of FedEx and writing that Great American Novel.”

  After the third email from Movement Guy, I was deeply intrigued. He had been a member of SNCC, knew great stories and he lived a few suburbs over. His deep gravelly voice made him Barry-White sexy over the phone, and his credentials seemed completely solid. The invitation to his home caught me on the Saturday before my lonely Christmas holiday, dateless and hungry after working a sixth day in a row.

  Everything went well until he shut the deadbolt with a key lock then pocketed the key.

  “I know it’s late, Malcolm, and I’m sorry to bother you,” I sobbed, pounding on the restaurant door just after closing.

  “No, no,” he insisted, unlocking the door. “What the hell are you doing out at two a.m.? You look…not right somehow.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know where else to go. I nearly got raped,” I choked out as he steered me to a booth and took my coat.

  “I didn’t follow the safeguards and I had to climb out a window with a madman screaming at me in the street. He was strong and he…he held me down. I got away after a while. The door was locked so I had to break a window and climb out. I think I cut my leg.”

  “Lemme see it. Come on. Don’t cry, babe. Jesus, I’m sorry. You gonna call the cops?”

  “And get my name in the papers as the idiot who got attacked on a bo
oty call? No way.”

  Malcolm knelt down and motioned me toward him. He’d looked worried, which scared me even more.

  I was too old for drama like this. I’d been really stupid and desperate and now I was ashamed to show that, to be that vulnerable in front of Malcolm. He’d told me I was heading for a danger zone. I hadn’t listened.

  I slid to the edge of the booth and pulled my dress up to my thigh. The dress was torn and there was blood on my leg.

  “Oooo, ouch. Yeah, Al, right there on your…inner thigh, you have a good gash.”

  His fingers brushed my skin and I stopped crying. My leg opened slightly as I looked down at the cut.

  Malcolm pressed into my thigh.

  “Does that hurt? It’s bruised right there and the cut goes up to….I’ll get the first aid kit,” he said, standing abruptly.

  His shoes clicked across the polished oak floor. For the first time I registered that we were alone in the dimly-lit restaurant after hours.

  He returned with the white metal box and opened it with studied concentration.

  “You want something to drink? Lemme make you a Lemon Drop. That’ll help. I’ma have a Jack.”

  He left the first aid kit and went to the bar and came back moments later with our drinks.

  “Here’s to…us. And your health. Don’t let this night throw you, AnnaLee. He was just a little turn-out in the road, is all. Don’t get all wrapped around the axle over this. Remember how we imprint the bad shit stronger than the good? Let this one go, babe. Consider it a lesson learned. A turning point. Cheers.”

  We both downed our drinks and he went back to the Band-Aids.