Make Me Love You:
Public, Part One
Public, Part Two
Private

I realized I never told any of you about Seattle. I figure that's okay, because now it's been so long since I was there that it doesn't really matter any more.

But just so that you can feel you were right there with me, some highlights:

* The shy, effeminate boy with the smoke-ruined voice sets my (fortieth that day) hot chocolate down in front of me and tells me to take a few sips before picking it up as it's awfully full and covered in a slime of caramel sauce. From behind me, I hear Bobbert urgently warning me to "watch out for my mustache."

As I turn to look at him, fully agape, he informs me sheepishly that he's not used to being around people without facial hair.

I decide two things: 1) to just forget I heard that comment directed at me and 2) that's a pretty weird commentary on Bobbert's life.

* A disoriented and balance-challenged old woman falls off of a hill and directly onto her face just as we happen to be driving by. George throws himself from the moving car amid a flurry of obscenity-laden cries from everyone inside. He is the nicest person currently in our family, as I'm not sure any of the rest of us would have reacted so violently nor so quickly.

The lady looked awful.It was horrid.

Horrid.

But the whole situation made me like George even more.

* I fall instantly in love with Bobbert and George's apartment, because I am an incurable voyeur (I've tried to stop and I CAN'T) and I could peep into no less than 14,000 other apartments from their living room window alone.

I see a whole lot of boys dancing across the way. They are instantly my favorite residents of Seattle, Washington.

* I meet and fall in love with a little goth girl who runs a clothing shop downtown somewhere. She has made a Saint Lucy doll with her own two hands, and it was featured in the Seattle Museum of Art. Saint Lucy is my patron saint, and this is a beautiful doll.

I consider asking this little goth girl to marry me, and think better of it. I buy a sweater from her instead.

* Inside The Coffee Messiah next door, the man behind the counter asks us if we've "done the bathroom." George tells him in a cofused manner that he just went.

The man insists we have to see his bathroom, and he presents us with a quarter. The five of us crowd into the tiny room and shut the door.

The man's excitement about the bathroom is far more interesting than the bathroom itself, which is decked out with a pulpit, flashing lights and speakers that play Disco Inferno when you put the quarter in the box.

* At Gay Karaoke, Bobbert and a random girl none of us know sing Goody Two Shoes. Their singing is drowned out at our end of the bar by all of us screaming at Bobbert to dance, dammit.

Afterwards, the random girl and one of Bobbert and George's friends go on to perform Closer to Fine. A frustrated lesbian in a hawaiian print shirt busts into their duet, snatches the microphone from the random girl, and proceeds to sing loudly, viciously, and unapologetically off-tune. She is apparently angry that Random Girl and Friend can't get the rhythm right.

Random Girl, evidently in the grip of some kind of karaoke-been-hijacked-frenzy, attempts to drag me onto the stage. I break several pieces of the bar, but I remain securely offstage.

* I select apples from a stand run by a strange man who asks me in an urgent tone what I ate for breakfast. He seems unsatisfied with my answer (oatmeal and toast), and plies for more info: "Did you have dried fruit and brown sugar and shit?"

Ever polite, and obviously not easily creeped out, George asks him what he had. A banana and, I quote, "a slushy, juice, you know, one of those drinks. Healthy shit."

Bobbert's helper-person is much more interesting. I defect, and pay him for my apples.

* Bobbert and George reserve the theater in their apartment building. This is what I want to do for my birthday. I select Hedwig and the Angry Inch as the feature this evening.

For those of you who know me, this is big:

I stay awake for the entire thing.

This movie is the coolest thing I have ever seen.

I am completely, fully entranced. I decide that what I really, really want to be when I grow up is a trans-gender rock star with amazing makeup and an East German accent.

Hedwig, ladies and gentlemen, is my personal hero.

And I found some really, really amazing paper dolls too. No, really. They're like art. I am deeply. Deeply. In love.

Just some highlights, there.

Not everything we did.

If I think of anything else, I'll tell you.

Right now, I have to try to figure out some HTML.

I'm obsessed.

Love,

-Mlle R