Smeepless in Seattle
In lieu of working on my research paper, or finishing either my complex analysis and Algebraic Combinatorics (a generating function approach!) homeworks, I decided that it might be interesting to actually write down the adventure I embarked upon last winter. Please, note that this is going to be a very long entry.
Imagine, dear reader, that the year is 2006 and we are in the middle of January. Across the northern hemisphere, it is cold, rainy and hardly hospitable. No one suspected a failed presidential candidate would release a major motion film bringing global warming permanently into the public eye, that the Poincaré conjecture would actually be proven (and the award rejected!) or that Travis Grathwell would find a job.
However, very little of that is relevant. Once upon a time, when I was a sophmore in college, I went on a few dates with a lady. Unfortunately, this lady did not care for me, being a closet lesbian, but instead suggested that I meet her friend. This is made difficult by her friend living not in Davis as you would suspect, but in Seattle. As any respectable person would do, I quickly forgot this and began to move on, as there wasn't much I could do. Her friend, Caroline, did introduce herself over AIM and chatted me up as much as you can chat up a stranger and we would talk every few months.
[Fast Forward back to January 2006]
I do not doubt that you, dear livejournal reader, understand the feeling young people have after spending many nights locked in a house, alone, with no one to love. It should come as no surprise that at this time, I branched out and began look for the *ahem* ladies. The only such lead I had was this girl Caroline. I admired her for her musical ability, intellect, humour and energy. Unfortunately for me, she still worked and went to school in Seattle. Fortunately for me, she would like me to visit her, in her dorm room at the renowned Seattle Pacific University (a christian school, located on top of the Queen Anne Hill, with decent liberal arts programs, but not a claim to science fame). I made plans to take a train during spring break, leaving Davis at 11pm on thursday the 9th and arriving in Seattle at 8pm the next day. No one, including my friends or family, except Caroline, knew that I was going to undertake this trip.
Anyone who has ever been on Amtrack knows that this did not go as planned. The highlights here include Texas cattle ranchers talking loudly in the middle of the night while drinking smuggled beers, waking up at 8am to seeing snow for the first time in my life, seeing a town in Oregon that is faithfully recreated in Fallout 2, reading an entire book and watching at least two movies and most of the Mr. Show episodes (with commentary) on my laptop. Finally, after several delays I arrived in Seattle at 1:30am. Across from the train station, while I stood with two bags full of my belongings and attempted to not be mugged by shady characters, there stood a nightclub blasting the infamous techno song "Sandstorm" by Darude. Instantly, I was aware that Seattle was no longer culturally relevant.
Caroline did not have a car, so her friends, three loud christian female freshmen, drove me around Seattle so I could see the night life and the way the city is laid out. Upon arriving at SPU, her friends dispersed so they could get some sleep and we sat in a study room so we could watch an episode of Mr. Show. At this late hour, we tried to determine where I would sleep. Men are not allowed in the dormitories after 11pm and the initial plan was for me to stay with a male friend of hers. This plan was immediately discredited as dumb, or at the very least pointless. We quietly snuck into her dorm room, dressed for bed and climbed into her top bunk without awaking her roommate.
In the interest of time and space, I will note the following : her roommate was all together fat, ugly, dumb, christian, a recovering sexaholic (haha) and drug user, distrustful of men and prone to attacking people that do not share her beliefs. The majority of the time I spent around her roommate all I could do was hope she would leave. At no point did she approve of my staying with Caroline in the least, nor would she wait until she was alone with Caroline to start her diatribe against my presence. Reflecting back on this now, I can see how I might have been an interloper, at fault for being a male in her personal space, sleeping in her room while she needed privacy and such, but at the time I thought her repugnant.
The next morning the weather was cold but the sky was blue and the air clean. Caroline and I spent some time navigating the Seattle public transportation system, resulting in my seeing the Olympic Mountains, the famous Pike's Place wharf (where they do indeed throw fish at customers), the first starbucks cafe among various other things. We dined at Pasta Bella, a small Italian restaurant in the Queen Anne District, where I revealed that I am a vegetarian and we shared an entire bottle of wine. I cannot stress how nice this restaurant is; there is seating for no more than 20 people, everywhere you look there is beautiful art, and the roaring fireplace is a wonderful complement to the italian folk music they pipe in.
We stumbled back in the dark to the university and watched her friends preen before leaving the dormitory for a Ben Folds concert. My only regret on this entire trip is that I did not attend this concert, but it would have been impossible financially. I believe that I was on a $100 budget for the entire trip, excluding my train ticket. A good portion of this night was spent listening to her practice piano in her dormitory rec room.
The next day we explored the University district, admired the University of Washington campus, perused used book stores featuring such books as Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack, and dined upon pizza. This was quite the lazy Saturday and to be honest, at this point I can't remember anything beyond running into a man wearing a HappyCat t-shirt at a bus stop and having some awkward conversation between Caroline, the man, his girlfriend and myself.
I remember waking up on Sunday morning and being asked if I wanted to go to church in an hour. Dear reader, you may not be aware of this, but I have been an atheist for nearly 13 years. However, in my state of sleeplessness I decided that I might as well go and so I rushed off to the men's dormitory to take a shower (listening to someone else's christian rock wafting from the boombox conveniently placed in the bathroom) and dressed as well as an indie-rock kid could when not prepared for church. Here is a detail that I should have picked up on at the time, Caroline wore a red trench coat over her church dress. Perhaps this is standard for lutheran services, but when I was sitting in a pew at her church, listening to a rather beautiful choir (how sad they are wasting their talents in the service of illogical cretins), the only object reflecting the colour red was Caroline.
It wasn't difficult to sit through the service, but interacting with the congregation afterwards, whose mean age I would estimate at 50, was more painful than having my testicles hit with a spiked bat. The rest of the day is rather hazy to me; I remember her roommate having a fit and telling a Resident Adviser that I had been staying in the room, at which point Caroline was in trouble with her university and I had no place to sleep. The solution, rather than sending me on my merry way home, was to rent a hotel room at the posh Mar Queen in the Queen Anne district. The doorman was without a doubt the most dour individual I had ever seen. I wasn't aware that it was possible for someone to perform a service job with so much disdain.
At this point I was able to find a wireless connection on my laptop and, aside from Zac Morris sending me the Natalie Portman rap of SNL digital short fame, I sent money to my roommates in Davis to pay for my rent and also briefly confided that I was in Seattle. The rest of the night was spent watching movies (Novocaine and Beautiful Girls), listening to David Bowie albums, dancing in the hotel room, eating m&ms and discussing the difficulty in being manic depressive. Yes, Caroline is manic depressive and this adventure constitutes a rather interesting episode that in many ways was not healthy.
Monday morning I did some reading and cleaned the hotel room while Caroline went back to her dorm to prepare for her first day of classes after spring break. I went to a philosophy of ethics class taught by a man that looked suspiciously like David Bowie, but unfortunately the lecture was rather empty and I didn't get anything out of it. The university was rather bustling today and I briefly toured their campus radio station, ate terrible sodexho food and gathered my belongings. Somehow the two of us managed to get to the train station to have an incredibly sappy parting. The moment I went to step onto the train it began to rain. Hence an already depressing moment was made more intense not only by the image of Seattle crying, but also of my pseudo-girlfriend being rained on after I left.
Epilogue
More than anything I wanted to stay here, find an apartment, find a job and live happily ever after without realizing how irrational this was. I had already spent 4 days in Seattle, fleeing my friends, family, university and didn't have any employment. My bank account was empty and I didn't know what I was doing. I'd like to say this was a meaningful experience, that I learned things and became a better person. That isn't true though, in reality it was more like a coke binge. Several days of almost impossible highs and very few lows make for an exciting vacation but only when done responsibly. Rushing off to see a girl I had never met in person seemed like such a good idea that the various things that could go wrong never occurred to me.
We talked many times over the phone in the following months. She struggled with her manic depressive issues, fought with her family, went on lithium for a while until it was unbearable for her, came to visit me in Davis briefly, cheated on me with trashy boys in Seattle and generally made my life difficult. After too many nights of wondering if she even loved me at all, we came to the conclusion that we had to stop doing this and go about our own lives. From time to time she contacts me and tries to talk, but I won't have any of it. The last I heard of her, she was engaged to be married and that is more than I needed to know. Funny how things turn out, when you're able to consider all the alternatives and retrospectively see how you could have avoided so much heartache.
Alors, c'est la vie.
Imagine, dear reader, that the year is 2006 and we are in the middle of January. Across the northern hemisphere, it is cold, rainy and hardly hospitable. No one suspected a failed presidential candidate would release a major motion film bringing global warming permanently into the public eye, that the Poincaré conjecture would actually be proven (and the award rejected!) or that Travis Grathwell would find a job.
However, very little of that is relevant. Once upon a time, when I was a sophmore in college, I went on a few dates with a lady. Unfortunately, this lady did not care for me, being a closet lesbian, but instead suggested that I meet her friend. This is made difficult by her friend living not in Davis as you would suspect, but in Seattle. As any respectable person would do, I quickly forgot this and began to move on, as there wasn't much I could do. Her friend, Caroline, did introduce herself over AIM and chatted me up as much as you can chat up a stranger and we would talk every few months.
[Fast Forward back to January 2006]
I do not doubt that you, dear livejournal reader, understand the feeling young people have after spending many nights locked in a house, alone, with no one to love. It should come as no surprise that at this time, I branched out and began look for the *ahem* ladies. The only such lead I had was this girl Caroline. I admired her for her musical ability, intellect, humour and energy. Unfortunately for me, she still worked and went to school in Seattle. Fortunately for me, she would like me to visit her, in her dorm room at the renowned Seattle Pacific University (a christian school, located on top of the Queen Anne Hill, with decent liberal arts programs, but not a claim to science fame). I made plans to take a train during spring break, leaving Davis at 11pm on thursday the 9th and arriving in Seattle at 8pm the next day. No one, including my friends or family, except Caroline, knew that I was going to undertake this trip.
Anyone who has ever been on Amtrack knows that this did not go as planned. The highlights here include Texas cattle ranchers talking loudly in the middle of the night while drinking smuggled beers, waking up at 8am to seeing snow for the first time in my life, seeing a town in Oregon that is faithfully recreated in Fallout 2, reading an entire book and watching at least two movies and most of the Mr. Show episodes (with commentary) on my laptop. Finally, after several delays I arrived in Seattle at 1:30am. Across from the train station, while I stood with two bags full of my belongings and attempted to not be mugged by shady characters, there stood a nightclub blasting the infamous techno song "Sandstorm" by Darude. Instantly, I was aware that Seattle was no longer culturally relevant.
Caroline did not have a car, so her friends, three loud christian female freshmen, drove me around Seattle so I could see the night life and the way the city is laid out. Upon arriving at SPU, her friends dispersed so they could get some sleep and we sat in a study room so we could watch an episode of Mr. Show. At this late hour, we tried to determine where I would sleep. Men are not allowed in the dormitories after 11pm and the initial plan was for me to stay with a male friend of hers. This plan was immediately discredited as dumb, or at the very least pointless. We quietly snuck into her dorm room, dressed for bed and climbed into her top bunk without awaking her roommate.
In the interest of time and space, I will note the following : her roommate was all together fat, ugly, dumb, christian, a recovering sexaholic (haha) and drug user, distrustful of men and prone to attacking people that do not share her beliefs. The majority of the time I spent around her roommate all I could do was hope she would leave. At no point did she approve of my staying with Caroline in the least, nor would she wait until she was alone with Caroline to start her diatribe against my presence. Reflecting back on this now, I can see how I might have been an interloper, at fault for being a male in her personal space, sleeping in her room while she needed privacy and such, but at the time I thought her repugnant.
The next morning the weather was cold but the sky was blue and the air clean. Caroline and I spent some time navigating the Seattle public transportation system, resulting in my seeing the Olympic Mountains, the famous Pike's Place wharf (where they do indeed throw fish at customers), the first starbucks cafe among various other things. We dined at Pasta Bella, a small Italian restaurant in the Queen Anne District, where I revealed that I am a vegetarian and we shared an entire bottle of wine. I cannot stress how nice this restaurant is; there is seating for no more than 20 people, everywhere you look there is beautiful art, and the roaring fireplace is a wonderful complement to the italian folk music they pipe in.
We stumbled back in the dark to the university and watched her friends preen before leaving the dormitory for a Ben Folds concert. My only regret on this entire trip is that I did not attend this concert, but it would have been impossible financially. I believe that I was on a $100 budget for the entire trip, excluding my train ticket. A good portion of this night was spent listening to her practice piano in her dormitory rec room.
The next day we explored the University district, admired the University of Washington campus, perused used book stores featuring such books as Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack, and dined upon pizza. This was quite the lazy Saturday and to be honest, at this point I can't remember anything beyond running into a man wearing a HappyCat t-shirt at a bus stop and having some awkward conversation between Caroline, the man, his girlfriend and myself.
I remember waking up on Sunday morning and being asked if I wanted to go to church in an hour. Dear reader, you may not be aware of this, but I have been an atheist for nearly 13 years. However, in my state of sleeplessness I decided that I might as well go and so I rushed off to the men's dormitory to take a shower (listening to someone else's christian rock wafting from the boombox conveniently placed in the bathroom) and dressed as well as an indie-rock kid could when not prepared for church. Here is a detail that I should have picked up on at the time, Caroline wore a red trench coat over her church dress. Perhaps this is standard for lutheran services, but when I was sitting in a pew at her church, listening to a rather beautiful choir (how sad they are wasting their talents in the service of illogical cretins), the only object reflecting the colour red was Caroline.
It wasn't difficult to sit through the service, but interacting with the congregation afterwards, whose mean age I would estimate at 50, was more painful than having my testicles hit with a spiked bat. The rest of the day is rather hazy to me; I remember her roommate having a fit and telling a Resident Adviser that I had been staying in the room, at which point Caroline was in trouble with her university and I had no place to sleep. The solution, rather than sending me on my merry way home, was to rent a hotel room at the posh Mar Queen in the Queen Anne district. The doorman was without a doubt the most dour individual I had ever seen. I wasn't aware that it was possible for someone to perform a service job with so much disdain.
At this point I was able to find a wireless connection on my laptop and, aside from Zac Morris sending me the Natalie Portman rap of SNL digital short fame, I sent money to my roommates in Davis to pay for my rent and also briefly confided that I was in Seattle. The rest of the night was spent watching movies (Novocaine and Beautiful Girls), listening to David Bowie albums, dancing in the hotel room, eating m&ms and discussing the difficulty in being manic depressive. Yes, Caroline is manic depressive and this adventure constitutes a rather interesting episode that in many ways was not healthy.
Monday morning I did some reading and cleaned the hotel room while Caroline went back to her dorm to prepare for her first day of classes after spring break. I went to a philosophy of ethics class taught by a man that looked suspiciously like David Bowie, but unfortunately the lecture was rather empty and I didn't get anything out of it. The university was rather bustling today and I briefly toured their campus radio station, ate terrible sodexho food and gathered my belongings. Somehow the two of us managed to get to the train station to have an incredibly sappy parting. The moment I went to step onto the train it began to rain. Hence an already depressing moment was made more intense not only by the image of Seattle crying, but also of my pseudo-girlfriend being rained on after I left.
Epilogue
More than anything I wanted to stay here, find an apartment, find a job and live happily ever after without realizing how irrational this was. I had already spent 4 days in Seattle, fleeing my friends, family, university and didn't have any employment. My bank account was empty and I didn't know what I was doing. I'd like to say this was a meaningful experience, that I learned things and became a better person. That isn't true though, in reality it was more like a coke binge. Several days of almost impossible highs and very few lows make for an exciting vacation but only when done responsibly. Rushing off to see a girl I had never met in person seemed like such a good idea that the various things that could go wrong never occurred to me.
We talked many times over the phone in the following months. She struggled with her manic depressive issues, fought with her family, went on lithium for a while until it was unbearable for her, came to visit me in Davis briefly, cheated on me with trashy boys in Seattle and generally made my life difficult. After too many nights of wondering if she even loved me at all, we came to the conclusion that we had to stop doing this and go about our own lives. From time to time she contacts me and tries to talk, but I won't have any of it. The last I heard of her, she was engaged to be married and that is more than I needed to know. Funny how things turn out, when you're able to consider all the alternatives and retrospectively see how you could have avoided so much heartache.
Alors, c'est la vie.