sistawendy | a night out with Tacoma Girl and R

namoda's ex R had a low-key birthday shindig at the Mercury last night. A few hours prior to that was the Trans Pride rally, sans march this year, in Volunteer Park. Tacoma Girl asked to come along, and I was all, hell yes!

I have to say, I miss the march. Sure, it was good to see a gazillion orgs put their booths up for trans people, but people were slow to arrive because there was no march beforehand to deliver them. The truth? I got bored, so we bailed.

Fortunately, Tacoma Girl said she hadn't been around the Hill much since she was a teen. That neighborhood is my spiritual home, and I've been hanging out there regularly for over twenty years. We walked around and I pointed out all of the things that I remembered from years past. We got (good) drinks and fried pickles at Witness, where TG had never been. Dayumn, I can do stuff like that all night.

But on to the Merc, where I must confess I shared TG's nervousness about whether she'd pass muster with the door people. Tacoma Girl, who's a punk in her bones, simply cannot dress up. But she did her best, "Wednesday Adams in summer", and that was good enough.

We got what was the cool kids' table back in the aughts. R showed, but

namoda was unavoidably detained. Random people came by to chat, including artist Iikka Keränen, people from Burner circles, and a sweet thang who chatted up Tacoma Girl. Ahem. I think everyone had a good time. I bailed shortly after midnight to catch the last train, which was a little early, but I still feel that my mission was accomplished.

Oh: even though it's a long weekend and there's a fetish night at Kremwerk, I'm not going because a) I'm partied out, and b) some dude working the door at Cafe Racer told us that Kremwerk doesn't treat their staff right. Damn, I like that place.