Act 9: The Grim Reaper
In honor of Women’s History Month (which technically is now over, but this project is a product of the month of March), I am sharing my own little herstory via an extended prose-and-photo essay I’ve entitled, “My Solitary Seattle Sojourn.” For context, please (re)visit my Celebrating International Women’s Day article that I published on International Women’s History Day, March 8: Celebrating International Women’s Day | LinkedIn. That piece is the Introduction to this essay collage.
A brief summary of that: I spent 3 months in Seattle in 1999 and fell head over heels in love with this city. Throughout the 24 years since that magical experience, I had a recurring dream of coming back for an extended stay. I took advantage of the AWP 2023 Writer’s Conference in Seattle earlier this month as a starting point for a 3-week solo adventure here, the purpose of which was to relive some of my previous adventure while declaring new experiences in a new adventure, and documenting the insights gained through the comparison of then-and-now (to the place, and to me, the person). Oh, and doing all this while also working on a memoir draft about a primary friendship that recently ended.
I flew home Wednesday, March 29, a newly inspired woman, and now I aim to keep the fires burning into the coming alive of Spring.
Now, on to my Love Letter to Seattle, in 10 Acts. I will post each act separately, with a link to the previous act.
Photo/Essay Table of Contents:
Pre-Act: Introduction: Celebrating International Women’s Day | LinkedIn
Act 1: Literature: My Solitary Seattle Sojourn: A Prose-and-Photo Essay in 10 Acts | LinkedIn
Act 2: Food/Service Industry My Solitary Seattle Sojourn, Act 2: Food / Service | LinkedIn
Act 3: Coffee! My Solitary Seattle Sojourn, Act 3: Coffee! | LinkedIn
Act 4: The City (Landscape of My Heart) My Solitary Seattle Sojourn, Act 4: The City (Landscape of My Heart) | LinkedIn
Act 5: Birds (7) My Solitary Seattle Sojourn: Act 5: Sea(ttle) Birds | LinkedIn
Act 6: Nature / Parks (3) My Solo Seattle Sojourn: Act 6: Nature | LinkedIn
Act 7: Visitors (OR Culture?) My Solo Seattle Sojourn: Act 7: Culture (Via an Adventuring Heart) | LinkedIn
Act 8: Bus Route 10 (7) My Solo Seattle Sojourn: Act 8: Bus Route 10 | LinkedIn
Act 9: The Grim Reaper You Are Here!
Act 10: Solitary Sundays
Post-Act: Acknowledgments
Note: This Act is written with some Halloween-themed flourish. However, as presented, it is around 95% true, so please blame any offensive elements within on REALITY. The 5% untruths are simply the order of events, some details switched in time, others left out. This approach is not to make light of the horrors of one of Seattle’s current struggles. Rather, it is my way of mixing genres/modes for the sake of storytelling. Enjoy, but with caution!
Yes, I’d flown halfway across the country to hear some writers talk about craft. But I did so also because of the location of this event: Seattle, the city I’d fallen in love with 25 years ago. I’d arrived the day before in time to register for the event and get settled into my Airbnb rental. The conference was an easy 10-minute bus ride from my rental unit in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.
My first day back, my remembered fondness of this bustling city was aroused with the smell of espresso and rain and familiar scenes along Broadway, Pike, and Pine streets. With so much familiarity, there were the surprising differences: condos tall enough to block out some of the best views of the city, houses being torn down to make way for additional condos, and even more young people scattered vulnerably across the streets than I remembered encountering when I was here in 1999. It wasn’t unique from what’s happening in cities across the country, but the feeling in the air was heavier, almost brooding, and the pulse of the streets I’d been so drawn to in my youth now beat with an uneasiness I could not quite put my finger on but sensed in a primal way.
On the bus-ride to the conference registration, my heart swelled with an uncomfortable mix of sorrow and intrigue at the sights of kids, seemingly in their late teens or 20s, hunched into dirty blanket hovels in the corners of bus stops. They had an ancient quality to them; their eyes were either closed or lolling, their skin pallid. Their bodies were rigid as dead possums, held in strange contortions like broken mannequins piled on the ground. How had they become this?
On Day 1 of the conference, there was a 3-hour break before the keynote address at 7pm. The sun was out and I’d walked the 45 minutes up the long hill back to my rented neighborhood. I had time to change into warmer evening clothes and enjoy a pizza in an Italian café where I watched the sun set and the space needle come to light in the distance.
When I stepped onto the bus to head to the evening event, it was sparse, only 3 lone riders. The hustle of the daytime was gone, replaced with invisible borders—everyone inside a bubble, avoiding interaction. We passed several empty stops before the bus pulled over to let on a rider. A man in a tattered brown cowboy hat staggered up the stairs and midway down the aisle, then stopped. Immediately the two riders near me got up and hurried to the back of the bus. They must have known something I didn’t. As the bus took off again, the man’s body jerked forward, then began a swaying dance of effort to remain upright. Why not grab hold of the pole, it was right next to him? I wondered if I, too, should try to get away, but my philosophy has always been to compassionately confront humanity however it presents itself, as long as it’s not violent. I looked into the man’s face and he smiled. See, nothing to fear here.
But after a long moment, the smile did not fade, as smiles normally do. It was fixed, plastered on the man’s face like a jack-o-lantern’s grin. And his gaze, while clearly pointed in my direction, now seemed to go through me. It wasn’t me he was looking at. I turned and looked behind me and back at the man, but there was nothing discernable that would keep his attention this long. Then he spoke: “Is this the way there?”
Before I could respond, he nodded and moved his arm in front of his face as if sweeping away a cobweb, then stumbled and finally grabbed the pole as the bus came to a stop. We had arrived at my destination, and everyone wanted off the bus. As I exited, I looked back and saw the man in the cowboy hat talking and motioning to someone—or something—that I could not see. If he was just smiley and senile, why was everyone so eager to escape his presence?
Trepidation followed me inside the building; the bus experience had rubbed off on me and I felt quite alone, even among the crowd of writers. As the seats filled up around me, my anxiety climbed. Though I felt it rude, I put my backpack in the seat next to me to prevent anyone from sitting too close. The first of two speakers came onstage and began to read an excerpt from her novel, but all I could hear was a ringing in my ears. She was telling a story about this very city, and though I couldn’t quite follow what she saying, every word seemed to echo from the walls of that bus. Was she explaining the situation? I couldn’t make sense of it, yet she seemed to speak from a truth inside my brain, something felt but not identified.
When the keynote speaker came onstage, all ability to focus had left my body. My breathing shallowed as the old familiar sensation of panic began to rise up my core, reaching for my head. I couldn’t let it rise past my eyeballs or this would become a full-blown panic attack. I’d overcome that temporary but powerful fugue of agoraphobia two decades ago and surely had nothing in my purse that resembled Xanax, so I focused on my breathing. Inhale 1, 2, 3, exhale 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. After several long rounds of steady breathing, the wave of panic receded in time for the lights to come on. The program was over and everyone rushed to the hallway for the book signing.
Back outside, I waited for the bus that would take me back up the long, dark hill. But 15 minutes became 20, then 25, and no bus came despite the digital sign claiming it should have arrived 17 minutes before. Finally I saw a bus coming toward the stop but from the wrong direction. I hustled to the other side of the street and asked the driver if there was a bus back to Capitol Hill.
“This one. I’ll circle back at 12th street. Come on.” He was brusque but his eyes were friendly. I stepped on board the empty bus. Why was it deserted? I wanted to ask the driver but what exactly would I say? Hey, Mister, something feels very off in your city. Can you explain? As an advocate for my own urban neighborhood, I have been the uncomfortable recipient of questions I’d considered ignorant and judgmental: Do you feel safe here? Has your house been broken into? I wouldn’t want to live in this area, you’re so close to the bad part of town . . . Here in Seattle, was I now one of them? Afraid of the unknown, assuming the worst? I didn’t want to be that person, so I kept quiet and waited for the bus to turn around.
Out the window I saw in the distance a very large group of people, buzzing like a swarm of agitated yellow jackets. It must have been a demonstration, something Seattle is known for. But who would gather downtown at this time of night, when all the businesses and courthouses were closed? We arrived at 12th street and I saw that it was no protest. The entire city block was choked with bodies, barely distinguishable male and female forms crammed together, vibrating in unison . . . arms flailing, collective moaning . . . one menacing entity with a million suffering tendrils reaching out into the darkness. My mouth fell open but I could not speak.
In my stunned silence, the bus driver just kept driving like nothing was strange, the horde becoming smaller as we left it behind and headed up to Capitol Hill. Suddenly the bus came to a stop and threw open its doors. “Miss, this is my last stop of the night.”
“But, the schedule said the busses run until . . .”
“I’m sorry, Miss, this is as far as I’m going tonight. Be careful.”
I stumbled off the bus and turned to ask the driver if there were more herds around here like what I’d witnessed on 12th street, but he was already speeding away. An old laundry mat to my right was boarded and covered in graffiti. To my left, large brick buildings offered no signs of life. All I could do now was move forward with conviction. I longed for my large, imposing walking stick that accompanied me on night walks in my own neighborhood. Would a walking stick be enough if I were to come across a swarming mass of walking dead that wanted to eat my liver? I needed a stun gun! Then I remembered my personal canister of pepper spray in my purse. Score! I put it into my jacket pocket, my fingers hovering in case the need arose, and raced up the hill.
I saw the light of Broadway a few blocks ahead. Here were only shadows, but on Broadway was a crowd at the busy bus stop in front of the train station: civilization! I marched past another abandoned bus stop and somehow managed to recognize it as one I’d photographed the day before, in the daytime, intrigued by the spray-painted words on the broken glass of the vestibule: “Scary Hours.” Now its message made sense. It was a warning for people like me, visitors without the prior knowledge that something sinister lurked on Seattle’s streets after sundown.
When I finally reached the bright lights of Broadway, I was met by the typical city scenes of a Friday night out: people hollering and laughing, young couples clicking down the sidewalks; no one looked afraid. Several common folk hovered around the bus stop. Was this a danger-free zone? I folded myself amongst them and scanned for a friendly face who might fill me in on the situation. Instead, everyone here was snug in their bubbles, staring at phones or off into space, waiting for the bus to arrive. Still, if danger approached, I could rely on this group of fellow bus riders to help one another out, right?
Then it happened again. Like the man in the brown cowboy hat, this younger guy appeared semi-lucid, dancing his way toward the bus stop. His gyrations were asymmetrical, jerks and stops. His eyes rotated towards the sky and he began the now-recognizable hand-sweeping, pulling at the cobwebs of his psyche. He did not look dead, nor was he quite alive; he was trapped between two worlds. The sounds emanating from his mouth could best be described as Martian. Had aliens landed in Seattle and were now coexisting with the locals?
My fear dropped a notch at seeing that no one was particularly alarmed or repelled by this one. None ran away like those on the bus. And I didn’t sense that he wanted to eat my liver. He was far more interested in whatever visions he beheld. Still, when he sidled up and sat next to a young gal seated on the bench listening to head phones, I bristled. His legs vibrated like that jiggling mass on 12th street, aimless, joyless, shaking with uncontrolled energy. The girl in the headphones was either oblivious to his presence or made a point to appear that way. He continued his alien babble and I wondered again whether a bus would ever come. Then his face contorted and he reached his hand inside his pants. The gal in the headphones kept her eyes glued to her phone as she refused to acknowledge what he was doing. I wanted to grab her and yank her away from him, yet there was a power in her reticence, and I was just a visitor here. Was it my place to intervene in her own private protest? Or maybe she was gone, too, between two worlds.
To my left another male body stumbled erratically toward me, but no one at the bus stop came to my aid. He began to fight with the trash on the ground, kicking small wads of paper and thrashing an empty cigarette pack. There was violence in his movements. I began to back away, my eyes darting between him and the one on the bench that was yanking ferociously inside his underwear, his pants dropped below his knees. Why was no one reacting? The angry kicker fought his way closer to me and I backed further away just as I noticed two guys crossing the street toward me, observing the scene. Finally someone was paying attention!
I looked at the two guys pleadingly, hoping they might offer some resolution to the madness. The one in a camo trench coat looked right back at me and yelled, “He’s probably gonna die tonight, you stupid white bitch!” When they finished crossing, the guy in camo balled up his fists, literally roared, and ran toward me. I understood then that he was not one of them. Clearly a scum of this world, he was obviously a foot soldier on behalf of the sidewalk thrasher and the public masturbater, and I, I was the one who apparently didn’t belong here. For my wide eyes and exasperation had seemingly conveyed judgement, fear, yet I had not run away, not once that whole night had I run away from what I was seeing, nor would I run from these assholes who were trying to exert control over me, trying to scare me into running away from there. I stood my ground and stared back, my hand on the trigger of the pepper spray in my pocket. Let him come at me, please come at me, and I’ll pull it out and spray it in his face, with aim, with joy.
Predictably, the foot solder began to lose his steam when I remained standing and refused to run away. He stopped, laughed, and turned his back on me. The grim reaper had a hold of these streets but I would not be cut down without a fight of my own.
As if to punctuate my brief moment of triumph, the last bus of the night finally arrived. It nearly passed us up but a couple ran after it until the driver hesitantly opened its door for us. I sat near the front and rode those last five blocks in a daze, trying to piece it all together: the young kids like broken statues on street corners, the lone walkers wrestling with their impulses, the pulsating herd, the palpable fear of the bus drivers, the misguided misogynistic street justice of the bystanders on foot.
The next morning, in the light of day, I sat at the bar and ordered a sandwich. The server, a friendly gal in a checkered dress, put me at ease. I decided to broach the subject.
“So what’s going on out there?” I asked.
“Out where?” she responded, quizzically.
“Well . . .” I wasn’t sure where to start. “The large group of people downtown. On 12th street.” Her eyes registered nothing. “I saw them last night while I was on the bus. They were, like, shaking and freaking out. And several people wandering the streets just . . .”
“Oh, the fentanyl.”
“Fentanyl?” The drug? Of course I’d heard of it. I knew it was becoming an epidemic in certain parts of the country. But I had no idea.
“Yeah. You know. It’s a problem here. People are OD’ing all the time. Have you not been to the city before?” Again, her eyes had that look, similar to the guy in camo who’d shouted profanities at me. I knew she wasn’t going to do that, but I felt again like I was the offender. “What are ya gonna do,” she went on. “All big cities have issues, right? We try to be compassionate and practice harm reduction.”
I nodded. Pretended to understand. I finished my sandwich in silence, contemplating my own city’s gun problems and all the ways we’ve failed to address it, all the times I’d felt affronted when people asked me how I could possibly keep living in my neighborhood after we’d found a loaded gun under the bush in our backyard. I looked out the window and watched a woman with blood all over her face throwing up in the cross walk as a car waited patiently for her to finish.
