dispatch from the Devil Girl Pad

A couple of weeks ago or so, I agreed to be interviewed by a Ph.D. student in the social sciences who's studying Lambert House and places like it. I wish I'd had more sleep, but I wasn't completely inarticulate. She asked me about demographic trends among the population that the house serves, a question that, as database monkey, I'm uniquely well placed to answer. She asked what was hard about volunteering. Youth with mental illness. The possibility that you'll have to deal with self-harm. And she asked what really made the house valuable. Speaking more to her audience than to her, I tried to illustrate with anecdotes how precious it is even as adults to have a space where queers can relax, where - and this might sound sinister - we're in control. A place where you don't have to watch quite so much what you say, how you look, your mannerism, everything about yourself, to shield yourself from getting beaten up emotionally or physically.

Damn, I'm doing a better job of answering her questions now than I did in the actual interview.

One piece of good news that I gleaned from the interview is that there are twenty-seven drop-in centers for queer youth in... the US? North America? I don't remember, but the last number that I heard was "a handful". Given what a godsend Lambert House was to so many queer adults in the area that I know, and how valuable it could have been to me, that's enormously good news.

The social scientist had something else in common with me: we're both from north Florida. She grew up in one of the smaller towns east of Gainesville. She's a person of color who'd moved there halfway through her childhood from south Florida. Even knowing what a pit Dixie can be, I was shocked to hear that she'd had crosses burned in her front yard.

In more frivolous news, I've been shopping online more since quarantine started. Not ruinously so, but when I have someplace to wear things to, I'll have a few more nice things to wear. (Details available upon request.) I keep seeing emails and tweets with pretty things in them.

And one thing that's making the shopping more affordable is event cancellation. I was supposed to see of Montreal at my favorite venue in Seattle at the end of July, but the show is cancelled and my ticket's been refunded. Le sigh.

Speaking of stir craziness, today was an absolutely perfect day here in Seattle - sunny and 25C - so I got dolled up in a '50s-inspired rose & spider web print dress this morning and swanned around the neighborhood earlier this evening. I walked to Green Lake hoping to catch the fragrance of the cottonwoods before it goes away. That turns out to have been a mistake because

1. It was more crowded than I was comfortable with.
2. I was one of the small minority wearing masks.
3. The nearest stand of cottonwoods was far enough away that I ended up blistering my feet because I haven't worn any summery shoes since - wait for it - last summer.
4. The scent was all but gone.

Ah well, the weather is supposed to be good tomorrow as well. I can catch the sunset from the top of the hill; oddly enough, that's never crowded.