3 days in Seattle

 My dear friend Nate picked me up at 4 am to drive me to the Juneau airport. There was a man waiting on the sidewalk outside my apartment complex and he said his ride was running really late but he had to get to the ferry, so I asked Nate if he could drive this guy too. It was raining of course. It would have been nice to spend my last 20 minutes in Juneau alone with Nate. He and I had some good talks, real talks that you can't really feel comfortable doing in front of strangers.

Took a plane to the Seattle airport, then a train to Barry's gym. The ads on Instagram got me, it looked like a gay-friendly gym. And it was. They played Troye Sivan and Whitney Houston while we worked out, all the guys wore really short shorts. It was way too expensive though. I wanted to go to church, but it was general conference that day. And I was also supposed to hang out with Cecily, but she was hunting for mushrooms.

I had a photoshoot that afternoon. My body is probably the best it'll ever be right now. After 4 years of living in the desert and getting too skinny, I finally put on a little bit of weight. I found the guy following random accounts on Instagram. We met in Chinatown because there was a pinball arcade there that I wanted to see. The pinball arcade had a 20 dollar cover fee so I decided against that. I just walked around the bookstores and listened to a jazz band in the park. Chinatown was lovely. I rented a house on peerspace so we could do the photoshoot and it was super fun. The photographer, Drew, was so cool. 

In the early evening Drew drove me to Renton, and dropped me off at a Target nextdoor to this giant Boeing campus. I bought some mouthwash and shaving cream and then a guy named Chad picked me up. I met Chad like, 7 years ago in Phoenix and hadn't seen him since then. 

Chad and I drove all the way west to the Puget sound, which I learned should be called the Salish Sea at a Kimya Dawson concert last night. We walked along the water it was a gorgeous sunny day at this point and the sun reflecting off the water was blinding. Then we went to Chipotle. Chipotle was actually my first food in Seattle. And I know there's much better food in Seattle and I should have eaten earlier in the day but I forgot to eat or something idk. Then he and I went to a spa, you could rent a room with a hot tub and a sauna for an hour and that sounded nice, I've never heard of anything like that and it was right next to chipotle. But I was pretty naive, there was a bed in the room they gave us and this easy listening music was playing on the TV in there and it was like.... Just very obvious that this place was meant for sex haha. The sauna they gave us was broken though, we could only use the hot tub. 

It was way after dark by the time we got back to Chad's place. I showered and fell asleep so easily. He had work pretty early in the morning so he dropped me off at a train station, I rode it to Barry's, the classes were cheaper if you bought 3 at a time. Then I walked an hour to the Sugar Me Timbers studio and ripped out all the hair from my body.

I think I was there about 6 hours, afterwards I took a bus to Cecily's workplace and we walked and talked and laughed and got food. She and I worked together in wilderness therapy 3 and a half years ago and I adore her. It was amazing to catch up with her she's one the coolest women I know. It's so easy to have deeper conversations with her. We talked about our families and God and how much we love each other. Well, she talked about how much she loves her husband, it's adorable.

It would have been nice to see some of the Seattle sights but it was already time to take a bus down to Tacoma to meet up with Josh Weed. Quite a few of his blogs have gone viral on the internet. His blog meant a lot to me, and I've actually met him before when he spoke at a conference, and I can't believe it he remembered me. It really was like meeting a celebrity, we played violin together. Just the Bach double of course, what else is there to play. I love that piece so it was wonderful. I slept on his couch, his husband Carlos took me to breakfast the next morning. And of course I fell in love with Carlos. Carlos already loves Josh though, too bad for me.

By the time Carlos and I were done talking it was nearly noon and I still hadn't seen any of the sights of Seattle. So I took a bus up there and did the whole Space Needle and Pike's Place Market and gum wall touristy thing. The gum wall is so nasty. The rest of Seattle is so clean. Like, it was almost too clean, it didn't feel like a city. There was barely any homeless people and I was surprised about that, Fox News made it look like it was overrun by drug addicts but that was definitely a lie. On every street corner was some retail branch of Amazon. That was kinda scary, Jeff Bezos has a vice grip on that town. But I liked Seattle a lot. I should have spent more time there. I didn't get to see enough. Even worse I didn't spend enough time with my Seattle friends. 

I spent the night with Nick. We've been talking on Twitter for years. He's so cool. He lives in a yurt. It was October 3rd and he had never seen Mean Girls so I made him watch it. I was a tired boy and barely stayed awake for Mean Girls. Traveling around and not having a place to just sit and rest is exhausting. A yurt is the nicest thing to sleep in.