The view from another city

It's a dead calm on the black, wet streets of Seattle's Central District when I walk through the alley and enter the Twilight Exit on the evening of Christmas. I love this about Seattle--how everything is so sinister and cold and raw and smelling of ocean and pine on the outside, but then you go inside old haunts, to warm places where everyone knows you. This is the third reincarnation of the Twilight Exit, but it still feels good. I sit at a table with Nikoel and ask her if she remembers those old parties at the first Twilight, those endless summers. She does.

It's Christmas karaoke and it always feels like this warm, fuzzy, big family. There are many greetings, much hugging. This is my home, where I am from. I love New York, but Seattle is who I am. My parents may be from Iran, but this is where I was born. Seattle is that little part of me that people can't put their finger on when first meeting me in the City, it's that inexplicable question and raised eyebrow when people say, "You like camping?!" They look down at my insensible shoes, assuming these heels say I'm from the East Coast, and they realize something is off, not right. It is always drizzling outside.

I run into Andy & Ingo, old friends from "the scene." Oh, the scene... Ingo asks me how I'm doing and I tell her I'm great, the usual stuff. I look around the bar, our friends singing, the passed drinks, and I say, "But we don't have anything like this in New York." She asks me about guys and dating. I tell her there is someone new, someone I actually like.

"It's weird," I tell her. "I know I usually write about the guys I'm dating. There's always a story. But ever since I started seeing this one, I haven't been able to blog." I'm enveloped by this foreign sense of... privacy. "And it's terrifying too," I reveal.

It is in these moments where wisdom implicates itself. She says, "Maybe it's scary because you're not writing a story about this one, you're not removing yourself from the experience--you're actually present, which is scary."

After a few years of using men like kleenex, I feel like I've met someone who might be part of my story, not someone I can write about, not a situation where I am in control. It's a new feeling. Or maybe a very old one. I don't know, and that is the problem and the gift: I don't know. I am not the author.

It takes coming to this gray, dank, mossy place by the water to realize things like that.

(Please note: To those who have been reading me since the early aughts, during this time, I may return to posting in the old place that you are all familiar with. You know where to find me.)