#25 / 2003 Tour 2: Surviving surgery on the streets of Seattle

SEATTLE

#25

Seattle has three coffeehouses on every corner it seems. Beatlick Joe and I set up on the street outside my friend Andrew Torrez’s apartment. Every morning we hit the public bathroom at QFC, recently purchased by the Kroger grocery store chain, or the accommodations at Tully’s Coffeehouse. They filled their news racks with the morning editions of all local papers, the “New York Times”, “Wall Street Journal”, and “Baron’s”. It was great free reading that kept us cozied up by the fireplace in big overstuffed leather chairs for hours.

Here on the streets of Seattle, I went about my recovery from gall bladder surgery. I was a bit limited on my pain pills as I sacrificed an entire prescription of Percosets to Andrew to pay for two haircuts. He gets almost $50 a haircut, so 20 pills, itemized at street value of $5 apiece got our locks shorn.

The haircut was really important to me. I entered Seattle in a disheveled state, having done nothing but lay in the back of the van while Joe drove. I was still pretty much under the weather and felt like I was riding in my own casket. I was down and I looked down.

Appearances are important, I know this but choose to ignore it and paid a price emotionally. When it came time to renew my prescription from my doctor in Oregon, I went to a Bartell pharmacy in Wallingford, the old German sector of Seattle. A preppy and attractive druggist took one look at me and at my prescription and refused to help, just handed it back and told me to go elsewhere.

OK. So I was in old sweats with a stocking cap on my head, OK I hadn’t had a bath in four days, but I wasn’t a street person and I did have a legitimate prescription. She informed me my prescription looked counterfeit and that she couldn’t find out any information on the hospital.

I could have tried another drugstore, but I was so under the weather and the walk would have been so far, so I went back to the van and called my sister. She certainly hadn’t had any trouble locating the hospital. Armed with the hospital’s website and telephone number I marched back to Bartell’s as best I could in my condition and gave Belinda the information.

Why she couldn’t find the hospital on a word search the first time, I don’t know. But when confronted with proof positive she called my doctor and cleared me. I know it was a problem because the prescription was for a controlled substance, but I still believe and told her as much that she judged me by my appearance and blew me off.

"I'm sorry you feel that way," she retorted. But I wasn’t going to take her “no” for an answer.

Finally, properly medicated from pain and with a fresh new haircut that helped my self esteem soar back to normal levels, we walked Seattle and took in the sites. I am enamored of Seattle because I know that is one of the few places where my parents lived together. It is a part of the family folklore of how my mother took a train from Nashville to Seattle to meet my father at the end of World War II. I thought of them all the time I was there, trying to imagine what they might have seen and where they might have walked.

Seattle has a great bus system. The waterfront sites are engaging as well as the Public Market. We kept jackets on most of the time, it was mid-September. Most days were cloudy but temperate. What I like most about the town are the trees, tall spires of evergreen that remind me of English countrysides. There are many hills, not unlike San Francisco, in the neighborhoods with well tended yards. Most are adorned in a naturalistic way with lots of large boulders worked into the hillsides. Many homes sit high above the sidewalks and allow spectacular views.

We took in a poetry reading at the Red Sky Poetry Theater held at the Globe Cafe in the Capital Hill district. The poetry was harder to find than I anticipated, just like at home, little is mentioned in the weeklies or daily newspaper. But now we know the definitive place to find information on poetry in Seattle is at www.poetswest.com. We read at the Globe Cafe to a sophisticated crowd of writers and poets. We were politely received, but I wouldn’t call it a warm audience. Being Southern, I can’t help but notice how different other regions of the country respond to visitors and strangers.

Seattle is a very social town, lots of hustle and bustle, scores of young people on the streets and camped on the sidewalks. It is a very politically active city as well. There is a large gay and lesbian presence in the city, on of the largest in the country, so there is a much going on in the gay bars and dance halls.

But I have the sense of great reservation amongst the residents, especially the more mature people. I had a distinct impression that Seattle is full of people who traveled to the extreme border of the country for some personal freedom and acceptance. I think a lot of people there have experienced a lot of prejudice and resentment in other places due to their lifestyles and sexual preferences, I think it tends to give them a sense of reservation and guardedness, lest they be judged unfairly.

My only appearance was at the Globe, but on another night Joe attended a reading at a Third Place Books on 20th Ave. NE, without me. There he encountered one of the poets from the People’s Poetry Gathering in New York City from last April. They had a lot of fun catching up with each other and wondering at their mutual encounter on the opposite end of the country. This female poet too mentioned the aloofness of her audience.

Regardless, I had a lot of fun scouring the thrift stores and bookstores. Joe got a new pair of red tennis shoes and I got some Levis, I’m down about 12 pounds and thrilled to be in jeans again. Our best outing was to the Freemont District. There we ate at the Blue C Sushi Bar. This is representative of a large chain of sushi bars in Japan we were told. Sumo wrestling was on the big screen TV as we sat on a stool at a counter not unlike an old drugstore counter. All the dishes traveled past us on a conveyor belt to be picked out as you please. The mechanism winded its way throughout the restaurant. Each food item was on a small color-coded plate. On a nearby board there were prices indicated for each dish, according to the color. When you finished eating, a waiter stacked up all the individual dishes and tallied up the tab, which was surprisingly reasonable for sushi eating.

We had many fun encounters as we took all our various walking tours. By day 14 of my recovery, the hard pains finally subsided. And after 10 days on the streets of Seattle, we finally said goodbye to Andrew and headed South to Oregon.