Dennis Feldman: TV and plant in hotel lobby – Seattle, WA – 1974 (1974)

"Sleazeattle embodies the sin of self-importance."

Driving into Seattle from the east on I-90, I was reminded of the many times I'd hitched along that road fifty and then some years ago. I much preferred to hitchhike that route, and as I drive now, I reflect backward on that time and place that no longer exists. Sleazeattle seems all but indistinguishable from the place I knew then. The street names remain unchanged, but everything else has become some post-modern approximation of the authentic article. I explained to The Muse that back then, there was no tunnel on the western side of the Lake Washington Floating Bridge. The freeway emptied onto surface streets that were never not tangled with traffic. We somehow slip through the newer approach and slide the two exits north on I-5 without difficulty, even though it's after five on a Friday. As usual, we must circle a few blocks to get The Schooner properly oriented to the hotel's loading zone. We checked in quickly, and I slipped across the street to park the car in the lot next to the Korean restaurant. Welcome to Belltown again.

We're doing a Jazz Alley show and dress for the occasion. We arrive after a short walk and are seated at a remarkably tiny table for a pre-show supper. I check my jacket, a welcome service, and order my Dewars on the rocks with a twist of lemon. The Muse orders her Manhattan. My drink tastes like the Cafe Carlyle where, in the old days, I'd sit at another remarkably tiny table to listen to Bobby Short perform Cole Porter. I love New York, but I feel less than lukewarm about Sleazeattle. The Muse insisted on coming over to get away for a couple of days in lieu of taking an actual vacation. She attracts obligations and schedules her time seemingly 24/7. She's skilled at taking advantage of wrinkles in her schedule. Once inside the Jazz Club, though, my misgivings let go. I feel as though I am coming home.

I used to live here, though I confess to The Muse over dinner that I mostly spent my time here practicing being invisible. I had come, without remit, to live with my to-be first wife in the undergraduate room she rented in an apartment she shared with others. It was a communal arrangement with me as the only non-student. I worked casual labor and to pacify the Selective Service System, landing a few gigs on weekends in clubs and schools. I felt illicit here. I would only sometimes get chosen for casual labor jobs because my long hair convinced the contractors that I would be unreliable. When desperate, I resorted to wearing a short-hair wig borrowed from a more experienced roommate.

I walked in the evenings while everyone else in the shared apartment focused on homework. I wrote songs almost nobody ever heard. I carried a pen and a notebook and would crouch on corners beneath streetlamps to scribble another couplet before testing the cadence with my footsteps again. I was marching to who knows where. I often wonder if I ever eventually arrived there. Returning to the scene of those times elicits deep feelings for me. I realize I was wounded by the experience, just as I suspect everybody was by theirs. We were doing the best we could, given what we understood. Most of us survived to adulthood.

I made the mistake of walking to the jazz club in my driving shoes, a choice I regretted after returning to our remarkably tiny room. My right foot felt like I'd caught it in a grinder, and I was up all night working it. I figured it just needed some walking in my barefoot shoes to get right with the world. It might feel better in the morning. At my age, I'm in near constant danger of turning every adventure into Aches&Complaints. Aches seem constant. The complaints, though, seem more optional. I've not been specially picked out to suffer, and my aches seem standard in comparison. The Muse continued her post-cancer surveillance this week, meeting her second radiation oncologist since she started treatment, the first one having relocated to Grand Junction. The cancer shows no signs of resurgence, and she carries no lasting side effects, thanks to the minimalist clinical trial for which she was chosen. The new doctor was amazed!

Give me a minute, and I might dredge up no end to my complaints. My aches continue more or less unaffected by any treatments I ever applied—the complaints amount to a little. I might limp through the day today, but I see no real reason to alter what we'd planned to do here. We'll walk the streets, grateful we're only visitors, each step reinforcing the fateful decision we made to live in the hinterlands. This place, which has grown so inexplicably popular over the prior decades, has become essentially unlivable. We pay more per square foot for a hotel room here, across the street from a JunkieMart grocery, than we paid in New York or Paris. Sleazeattle embodies the sin of self-importance.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Grace, #PureSchmaltz