Maura's Illuminated Manuscript

It's been said: we're all living in the eternal present. Plans for the future are impossible, and the past is another planet.

And one of the things on that other, beautiful planet was Re-bar. Note the tense. Re-bar is closing at its current location at Howell & Boren. The place has been an institution, from theater to burlesque to house music to goth nights to comedy to game shows to queer stuff. The owners say they just can't keep paying $10K/month in rent with no income. They're planning to reopen in the south end - less convenient for me, but much more sensible commercially than central Seattle anymore - in the fall of next year. Nowhere else in the city have I had so many benignly gonzo good times, and nowhere else have I shaken my ass so hard. I fervently hope it comes back.

I finally saw Parasite with my son on Monday night. It really is as good as advertised. It works on so. Many. Levels. One quibble: they were a little cavalier about cultural appropriation from Native Americans. It's not gratuitous and it's a Korean movie, for heaven's sake, but I still cringed.

One of the things I do to unwind at night while I'm dilating is wikisurfing. I finally got around to reading about the Eleusinian Mysteries. Their most central aspects remain - wait for it - a bit mysterious. An awful lot of the known aspects of it, though, and the reaction of Roman participants like Cicero led me to an analogy. Eleusis was a spiritual experience that was possibly enhanced with psychedelics. Burning Man is psychedelic for some, spiritual for some, and both for some. But if there are any secrets at Burning Man, they're made & kept by the participants, not the organizers.

Thirty years ago today, a beat-up Oldsmobile (Remember them?) station wagon rolled into Seattle from the south on I-5 and got off at Madison St. I was the sole occupant of that vehicle. It was the first time I'd ever been here.

I'd lived in big cities before as an intern, but this is the first place I've lived where I've encountered surprises cultural and natural, usually pleasant ones, on a regular basis. I hope that never stops. I didn't really learn to appreciate what was here until I got out of grad school - my reason for moving here - but I have absolutely no regrets about not leaving for, say, Silicon Valley.

For one thing, I lucked into the best place to transition on earth. The resources, the legal climate, and above all my support network here - the Small Army of Girlfriends in particular - provided me with what I believe to be a best-case scenario. Whenever I hear someone try to discourage anyone and everyone from moving here, I think of trans people in red states and how, if they can afford to live here, this is still a way better deal.

I just heard yesterday that the building occupied by Re-bar is for sale, which is likely to force it to either move or close. Re-bar, founded in 1990, has been in Seattle almost as long as I have. It's a venue beloved by queers, theater people, and anyone else who likes kinda gay, kinda goofy good times, which is anybody I would want to associate with. It's an institution.

And its threatened status is representative of what's happened to this city, repeatedly, for the last fifteen or twenty years. I could give you a list of places that are or have been in Re-bar's situation, but I don't want to go there; it would likely be incomplete anyway. Sure, all good things come to an end, but I don't see anything replacing them.

With Amazon powering the city's economy now, I guess the people running the city have decided that we don't need no culchah, at least not unless it's packaged and officially approved. But that too is a temporary state of affairs: I haven't been here long enough to remember the Boeing bust of the '70s, when the city nearly went the way of Detroit, but when I arrived Boeing still dominated the local economy and the bust was still fresh in everyone's memory. If Seattle becomes a bougie monoculture that's hostile to queers, POC, and anyone creative, as it's well on its way to doing, it will be poorly placed for the next inevitable downturn.

While I was driving m'boy back to Kirkland yesterday* he expressed the opinion that he could learn everything he needed to know about sex with women from the Internet.

I laughed. My poor, Aspie, 21st-century digital boy. How did your mother & I go so wrong, and more to the point, how do we fix it in a way that won't make you die of cringing? I wish I could take him to the Boning Babes workshop at Camp Beaverton.

*I wasn't sure his ADHD med had taken effect yet, and I really didn't want to stress out on a Sunday morning.

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Because StartupCo has taken today (Presidents' Day) off, I got in a rare trip to the Sunday night house night at Re-bar called Flammable. Yay: solid grooves, cute women. Bah: crowded, pretty sure the cute women are straight.

This weekend marks Re-bar's 25th anniversary. I missed the anniversary shindig on Saturday night, but I got to congratulate Michael Manahan, a current Re-bar owner whom I've mentioned many times here as a DJ & promoter. Re-bar continues succeed brilliantly at fulfilling its founders' vision of "a gay bar, only for everybody". It's been a venue for theater, comedy, and of course, music.

Because it was a long weekend, and because I didn't go out last weekend, I went out twice this weekend. Hot Flash was, well, full of lesbians about my age. My goodness, do those girls drink. Some of them are amusing afterwards, and one or two of them may even turn into lesbians who aren't "straight", i.e. lesbians with an interest in trans women.

Re-bar last night was much more salutary: the long weekend sardine scene, yours truly feeling motivated to dance until sweaty (easy to do with that many people in there), and chatting with Riz Rollins outside on Howell. More world shrinkage: Riz is a friend of L, girlfriend of the Siberian Siren.

I broke in my broom, mop, and vacuum cleaner properly today, and made all the anal parts of my brain tingle with pleasure. I rewarded myself with a walk around Green Lake in the sun. It's kind of sad that even there you can run into people trying to con you out of money.

I've only had a few twinges about not going to Burning Man, usually when I'm at the old old place watching the sunset while walking the dog with m'boy.

Re-bar on the Sunday night before Memorial Day: one of the best sardine scenes I've ever experienced, which is saying something. I got adopted by the fianceé of one of the resident DJs and she showed me a wonderful time. Awesome.

Monday, lunch with the seldom seen cow! I'm doing my best to seduce em back to Seattle. Afterwards I attempted to walk off the sweet potato fries from Coastal Kitchen, and was inevitably drawn into Everyday Music where I snarfed some Arcade Fire. I don't want record stores to die. Never, ever.

I worked a live site issue from 7:30 Monday night, in the middle of walking Bigpuppy, until after 1:00 Tuesday morning.

Lots of things have been happening lately that aren't really bloggable, even under lock. Ahem.

I finally made it to a tasting party at the CSPC. That's where n00bs like yours truly get to sample the variegated delights of BDSM.

It was crowded. The fellow who flogged me, who had a manner right out of a suburban sports bar, was delighted that it was the best-attended he'd ever seen, and he'd seen plenty. I got there fifteen minutes after the doors opened, and I was near the bottom of most lists. Moral: get there early.

Speaking of flogging, I'll give you the scoop on what I tried & liked. But first, I should say that I was a very poor predictor of my own tastes, even based on my (admitedly limited) past experience. You really do have to try it all. OK, I do.

( Nitty-gritty BDSM details )

I am, in the words of one friend, a cheap date. Surprising as sunrise.

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After the CSPC, I went down to Re-bar where I'd told GLBT people from MyCo to meet me if they wanted to talk about pride. Hah. It was so packed, nobody would have ever found me. I had a fabulous time, though; I've been so busy working on Project Girlfriend that I've been depriving myself of vital house & techno groove.

I finally made it to Cherry, the lesbian night at Re-bar. Let me get one thing out of the way: gay men, on the whole, have better musical taste than lesbians. Much better. At Cherry I kept hearing top-40ish music that I'm used to hearing on my zappy lady's table. And don't get me started about the train wrecks; techno has turned me into a DJ snob.

I'm a little embarrased to admit that I wimped out and took it easy on the makeup because, hey, lesbians. Hah. There were plenty of women with butch hair, flannel shirts, or both with nearly goth-worthy eye makeup. I love Seattle.

Crowd? Huge. Enthusiastic. Also much more interested in drinking, relatively, than the Sunday night gay boys. (Given the music, I don't blame them.) Also relatively more likely to put their hands on each other. Hippies bouncing unpredictably around a dance floor? Annoying. Lesbians bouncing up and down on a dance floor with their hands on each other? Adorable.

Did I get any bad vibes from anyone else? Nah. This is Re-bar. It's a tough night to go to alone, though. At least it was for me. imflying, who turned me on to it, had to beg off.

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Stay tuned for some nice pics of your humble nun!

Got seized by an urge to Get Out Of The House at 10:00 last night. Ended up at Re-bar for the second time this weekend. I wasn't there last night for much more than an hour, but I think it was good for my soul. I can't help but smile when I see a bear with a blonde beard b-boying like a freak on the dance floor.

I figure the Sunday night Re-bar crowd is 75% cisgendered gay men, 20% cis straights (evenly divided by gender, of course), 4% cis lesbians, and 1% trans people. Yes, I've observed the preponderance of gay boys here before, but I never gave a breakdown of the rest until now.

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I'm running out of people to squee in person to. Today's lunch victim companion describes me as "giddy". Yeah, that's just about right. I prefer to call it revoltingly cheerful, though. I may be at work after 10:30 PM, but I'm still smiling when I think about the last couple of months.

Luckily, there are a few MOOers and friends of MOOers who weren't at the nerdvana New Year's Eve party.

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I haven't engaged in serious circumflatulation in a month. That's just a lowdown shame; no wonder I'm in a funk lately. At the rate I'm going, I'll be lucky to have the alterations done on my warm-weather clothes before I leave for Florida in April.

But first: Shook my booty and sweated to Detroit house man Terrence Parker at Re-bar as I haven't in a long time. I'm not quite with it this morning, but it was totally worth it.

I got a call at 8:55 AM from the dude at the WA Dept. of Licensing. Dr. Shrink didn't fill in the name of his practice or his phone number. I've rectified this. (It took me three tries to get the email address right. I really should stop trying to use the Internet for anything serious when I'm decaffeinated.) I got mail back saying my application would be processed within five days. Maybe I'll have my license on Saturday; maybe I won't.

So, while my experience with the DoL on Friday wasn't that pleasant, today's was. Moral: Always check your shrink's work?

I was saved from not knowing what to do this weekend at the last minute (or what passes for last minute for me) twice: Riz's 20th anniversary in Seattle at Re-bar, and co-worker B's party.

Riz is a sweet, sweet man. I'd told him about my comings out and he congratulated me. "You look well," he said.
"I feel well," I said. I got to talk about my favorite subject, how and why to change sex, with his boyfriend husband John.

Riz introduced me to a couple, K & A, who'd met there twenty years ago. K pointed to the exact spot. He had blundered into a job at Re-bar shortly before they met. He told me that somewhere under the surface of the dance floor, in spray paint, is "K+A". Awwww!

Also from K, the Re-bar space has been a succession of bars continuously for almost 100 years. Several employees & owners of these establishments report seeing, well after hours when they're closing up, someone who doesn't quite exist. That's right: Re-bar is haunted. A young man from the 1970s - that space held gay or lesbian bars quite a while before it became Re-bar in the late 80s - and a woman from when the building was new.

Of the two founders of Re-bar, one still owns a different nightclub, and the other nearly drank himself to death, but got sober. K said the place has "grown up", but I think it's been owned since by people who also loved the idea of "a gay bar, only for everybody". Every city should have one.

My other deliverance from tedium was a text from B, who invited me to his place near the zoo. I finally saw things I'd only heard of on Texts From Last Night: beer pong and keg stands. A piñata full of candy, condoms, and lube. I finally made up for missing the ice luge at Das Haus. I didn't leave until 3:00. B and his girlfriend managed to put together a fantastic party, and they only decided to throw it yesterday afternoon. I envy them that ability.