Pioneer Square, I Think I Love You

Rounding the corner to my job near Seattle’s Pioneer Square, I slip on:

A) A pile of poop.
B) A puddle of bum puke.
C) A used condom.

The answer could easily be “A”. In most places you might assume a pile of poop on the sidewalk was created by a dog. Not so, around here. With the high number of homeless in the area, every pile is questionable.

“B” is also a good possibility. One time, while walking to the bank, a wobbly man ahead of me leans over and begins to violently empty the contents of his stomach all over the sidewalk. “Oh nice,” I say out loud, half-disgusted, half-amused. I think he’s done but he staggers a few steps and begins again, this time bracing himself against the building wall next to him. I can’t believe a human being’s stomach can hold so much. The vomit just keeps on coming like some gastrointestinal clown car. As I pass him I notice that the vomit looks just the way I’d imagine a wino’s puke should look: a 90/10 ratio of liquid to solid matter.

If you answered “C” you would be correct. I slipped on a used condom. I was mortified. Partly by the condom and partly by the accompanying image that formed in my mind. That of two pasty-bodied, Seattlites in the throws of passion; their creased, tattooed rolls of fat rippling as they really lay into each another. I tried to shut the picture out of my mind but, by some psychological law, whatever you focus on expands. The idea was only magnified and permanently etched in my memory banks. Typically, in my imagination, it’s only good looking people that have sex. But thanks to this event, my horizons were expanded. I basked in the glow of cultural enrichment.

That’s the beauty of Pioneer Square. In this, Seattle’s oldest and most storied part of town, there’s no telling what surprising delights a day might hold for you. Here, I never tire of seeing things that either astonish or confuse. Such as a few weeks ago, when I saw an otherwise normal looking man punching a tree.

Take a typical lunchtime outing. On the first summer-ish day Seattle had in 6 months, the kind of day that makes you remember you actually choose to live here versus feeling sentenced to it, I wander two blocks over to Occidental Park (also known as Crackhead Park) where, to my joy, a man and a woman are performing live music. I buy a sandwich at a nearby café and grab a table to listen.

The guy on the guitar is ‘singing’ Jimmy Buffet completely out of key. He’s easily fifty and chunky. Hair in a ponytail, the bald on top kind, wearing high, cut-off jeans shorts and an unfortunately snug tie-dye t-shirt. A sort of dispossessed IT guy.

The woman on the mic next to him wears thick glasses and has deep lines in her skin. Her gray hair in pig-tails dangling from under a worn sailor’s cap. She’s singing back-up to ‘Margaritaville’ and rattling a shaker out of time, the wrinkly excess skin under her arms flapping wildly.

The two sound horrible. Really. They’re completely awful. But I’m loving every moment. What the duo lack in talent, they more than make up for with that elusive quality that not everyone appreciates: character. Were it two virtuosos performing, I’d likely soon forget them. I’ve seen enough technically proficient, mechanically precise performances over the years. But these two, singing their hearts out, missed notes and all, I’ll remember these guys.

Perfectionism and cleanliness have their place, don’t get me wrong; viruses aren’t as likely to grow in hospitals because of them, and that’s good thing. But an absence of dirt isn’t always appealing. I’ve worked with 3-D animators over the years who’ve told me about the great pains they take to purposefully create visual imperfections in the characters and scenery they design. The eye, they tell me, sees the smooth, pristine shapes drawn by computers as unpleasing. Cold, anitseptic and off-putting. It takes untold hours and detailed craftsmanship for someone to go over the images, ‘messing things up’, enough to where they feel natural.

In the same way, new cities that don’t have the occasional dumpy bar or hole in the wall café, suffer from a lack of personality. Drive cross-country and you’ll see hundreds of small towns that look like carbon copies of each other. Oh, look, there’s a Chili’s and an Olive Garden. A Home Depot and a Walmart, just where you’d expect them to be. It’s the same when you walk into a middle-tier hotel room and you know exactly where the light switches will be, and all the pictures look familiar. A formula exists that’s been tried, tested, refined and established. In newer towns, unique environments are rejected in favor of mass produced chains because a mediocre but predictable consistency has proven to be profitable. It’s only the rare businessman who wants to gamble on something with individuality.

Nothing grows in a sterile environment and I think that goes for my children as well. While I surely desire a safe neighborhood for my children, I worry that the lifestyle of my three boys on Mercer Island, where they’re among children of Ferrari driving Microsoft elites, comes with a great cost. The small concern is that my children won’t develop an appreciation for character, the larger concern is that they’ll learn to fear it. Like when I overheard my oldest son’s friend say, “David, you’re going to Ballard? I don’t know, man, that place is pretty sketchy.” I’ve heard Ballard described as ‘artsy’, sometimes ‘hip’, but ‘sketchy’? It was just the sort of comment you might expect from a kid who’s grown up cloistered in an affluent, white ghetto.

I don’t want my boys lobotomized by the scalpels of comfort, convenience, and contentment. I worry that if they aren’t exposed to a broader range of life experiences, they’ll grow up aspiring to live in cookie-cutter homes and lead cookie-cutter lives. That they’ll love wearing khakis, listening to classic rock and hanging out with guys named Chad. I fear that they’ll develop a particular brand of white, suburban angst that I find ridiculous – the kind that, while in the car, hastily fumbles for door-locks at the approach of a black man in a business suit.

I take my boys downtown as much as possible in an attempt to counteract the anaesthetizing effects of suburban life. We’ll stroll through Pioneer Square and they’ll nervously hold my hands; pulling closer to me they'll whisper, “Daddy, who is that man yelling at? There’s nobody there.” Maybe we’ll hit Elliot Bay Books, or grab an obscenely large caramel coated apple from The Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. Once in a while, we’ll make our way up to the Seattle Art Museum, but the cultural experience my boys get inside SAM never compares to the one they got walking there.

So much of our lives has been pasteurized, made to go down smooth and easy. I’m glad to have a place like Pioneer Square nearby. For me, it’s a welcome protest against all that’s non-offensive and uniformly dull. Sure, walking around might give you the occasional uneasy feeling, and rightly so. It’s gritty and not entirely safe. But it’s also alive and real. Available for the asking. A little touch of Venice Beach, minus the tan.

The Scoutmaster's Apprentice

I was hoping to avoid the whole Boy Scouts thing with my youngest son, Jonah. I had already logged enough time in it with my first two boys. David, the oldest, almost stayed with them up through Eagle, but my middle son, Gabriel, mercifully lost interest early on. Now Jonah, my youngest, is literally begging to be part of it.

The kid is all about being part of The Team. An example of this bizarre behavior is his passion for football. I don’t even like the sport. I never watch it. But he’s somehow gotten this overwhelming excitement for it through the ether. He knows all the players names. He knows their stats and personal histories. “LaDainian Tomlinson was born in Fort Worth Texas and started his career in 2006,” he’ll say, “He had the most rushing yards in 2007. Even more than Adrian Peterson.” I honestly have know idea who Adrian Peterson is, but I can’t help smile as I listen to my boy expound on the virtues of a Gap Fire defense, his enthusiasm far outreaching his ability to formulate coherent sentences.

“I need to be early for practice,” he’ll admonish his mother. “Jonah,” she’ll say, “for the last time, it’s only four o’clock. Practice isn’t until five.” Five minutes later he’ll ask again. And then in ten. Fifteen minutes later he’ll be in the passenger seat with his pads on, in route to the football field, silent and content at having successfully worn down his mother’s defenses. She’ll drop him off, wave bye-bye and shake her head as he skips off on the empty lawn, throwing a football to himself.

And now his zeal is being directed at WEBELOS. They’re the group in between Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts. WEBELOS, Jonah informs me, is an acronym for,”WE’ll BE LOyal Scouts.” More importantly, it means two den meetings a month and one pack gathering. It’s field trips on weekends for Merit badges. Camping on other weekends. It’s a whole juggernaut of schedules, requirements, ceremonies, goals and get-togethers that I really don’t want any part of. I know from experience how consuming this stuff can be and it’s not even the end of football season.

“Tonight, you need to pick Jonah and Malcom up from football practice and take them to Scouts,” said my wife. I knew what the words meant and I didn’t protest. An hour later, I’m driving to the field to get Jonah and his best friend. “Did you get the bag out of mommy’s car?” he asks. “Yes, Jonah,” I say. He runs to the car, pulls his uniform out of a paper bag and starts to put on his Scout shirt. Malcom doesn’t have his uniform. He’s all sweaty from practice and his contrasting appearance makes Jonah all the more satisfied. We get in the car and I hand the boys some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Along the way to the Den meeting, the boys’ mouths are stuffed as they quiz each other on the Boy Scout basics, correcting each other on the finer points of the motto, or ‘Moat-O’, as Jonah pronounces it.

I’ve somehow managed to elude attending any of the first few meetings, so I accept that it’s right for me to be sentenced to this one. All the same, I’m dreading it. Not dark dread, more like having your teeth cleaned, dread. I’d rather be just about anywhere except in someone’s house I don’t know, having to make small talk with people I don’t like and act interested in things I don't care about.

We’re 15 minutes late to the meeting and it pleases me. It’s 15 minutes less to suffer through. Approaching the front door we hear the loud, unruly shouts of prepubescent boys at play. We’re greeted by a pudgy, middle aged guy with reading glasses and gray thinning hair. There’s just something about a grown man in a Boy Scout uniform that I find inherently disturbing, but he’s friendly and welcomes us in.

I notice the furniture is traditional, but not in the refined manner. Not taking any chances, I should say. The interior design equivalent to a Toyota Camry. Hanging on the walls are aged landscape oils and antique photos from generations past. I zero-in on a curio cabinet boasting a collection elephants made out of porcelain and other materials. Scattered around the room are other nick-nacks and chotskies of the crafty variety. Items knitted. Snow globes and whatnot.

The Scoutmaster does his best to get the boys situated. He begins to lead us through his presentation on the concepts of air pressure and lift so the boys can get their Science merit badges. I watch the scene with detached curiosity. My wife had said that she didn’t like most of the boys and now I can see why. The Scoutmaster is repeatedly interrupted by one spastic kid after another. The parents of these kids, a couple of fathers, downcast and drowning their sorrows in their Blackberry’s, and a couple of exhausted looking moms, do nothing to reel their children in.

I don’t have a ton of specific goals for my boys, but in general, I just don’t want to raise them to become douche bags. I start to worry that leaving my son in the company of this group is not a good idea. One kid blurts out random noises every 30 seconds or so, in an attempt to make the other boys laugh. I catch Jonah staring at me, widening his eyes for effect, as if to say, “You’re seeing this freak too, right, Dad?” I notice the restrained tension in the Scoutmaster’s voice as he attempts settle the offending child down. “Alistair,” he says, “Are you paying attention? It’s difficult to talk and pay attention at the same time isn’t it, Alistair?” The kid just laughs and makes another goofy noise. By the man’s clenched, pedantic tone, I assume The Spazz is his own son.

Moving closer to the mantle, I’m drawn into an unintentionally amusing assortment of family portraits, the subjects all over-lit, awkwardly posed and forced to smile in front of blue, dappled backgrounds. I notice one studio portrait of the Scoutmaster and his three big-eared boys in Christmas sweaters, one of which is Alistair. There’s another photo in which Alistair, maybe aged five at the time, is seated on a Shetland pony. He’s wearing a cowboy hat and so is his mother. She’s in a sweater with Poodles on it and she looms over her son, engulfing him protectively in her arms. She’s a smothering figure and the expression on his snot-nosed little face reads despair. His furrowed brow telegraphing, “Please help me. Dear God, please help me.” That explains it, I think to myself, this poor kid doesn’t stand a chance. I can only imagine what it’s been like for this child, growing up, under her tyrannical control. No doubt rectal thermometers were involved.

As the Scoutmaster continues, I start to feel guilty for laughing at him. The guy’s really trying, and that’s so much more than can be said for most dads. He’s just so disproportionately excited about it all - that’s what I find comedic. The majority of the boys continue to be unengaged and disruptive. The parents all texting on their cell phones. Behind the Scoutmaster is a large spreadsheet identifying checkpoints and criteria, a 5-year plan so the entire group can make Eagle Scout by the time they graduate high-school. I feel like grabbing the boys I came with and running for the doors. But, watching my son sit calmly, surrounded by ten fidgety, obnoxious little devils, his tousled hair poking out from underneath his Scout hat, his dark eyes alert and following the leader’s every move, I can see he’s really into it. When the leader asks a question, Jonah raises his hand eagerly and, when called upon, answers that the Cub Scout motto is, Do Your Best. “That’s right,” the Scoutmaster says, “Great job, Jonah.” My little boy just beams and oh, how beautiful he is to me at this moment. This is when I accept, yet again, that parenthood is a sacrificial endeavor and that’s what we all sign up for whether we like it or not. How can I deprive him of something that brings him so much joy even though it’s misery to me?

I understand as well as anyone, begrudging your family, and responsibilities. It’s not something a lot of people talk about, but I get it. I confess I’ve harbored a great deal of resentment towards my family over the years. I married young, under less than ideal circumstances, and the financial costs, the lack of freedom, and fact that I don’t’ drive a Porshe have all become an emotional legal case I frequently hold against my wife and kids. Sure, my choices brought me here, but that’s no consolation. When the weight and pressures of life begin to bear down on me, of which there’s been much lately, it’s easy to view my wife and kids as a burden. I don’t hide this well, either. But the act of sacrifice can be transformative and I think it’s only through such a crucible that there’s hope of me one day becoming something more than just a big, overgrown boy.

If you buy into Ayn Rand’s depiction of selflessness painted in ‘Atlas Shrugged’ or if you’re just a pragmatist or materialist, talk of sacrifice appears silly. Again, I get it and frequently find myself in that line of thinking. There is no question that family is impractical and spending my time doing something I don’t want to do sounds stupid. It’s irrational to desire a situation where you’re stressed. But, by the same reasoning, going to the gym in order to needlessly stress my body is also irrational. I happen to love the gym and I love getting stronger. So, as hokey as it sounds, is my family a 'gym' capable of making me emotionally and spiritually stronger? I think it is. I just can’t see the muscles I’m developing when I look in the mirror.

Before we leave, the Scoutmaster asks excitedly, “Alright, who would be interested in taking the 3 hour tour at the Washington State Court House this Friday, so the kids can achieve their Civil Service badges?” There’s an awkward silence. No takers. Disappointment flashes on the leader’s face but he quickly rebounds. “Well, that’s O.K.” he says, “maybe we’ll try again next time.”

On the way out, Malcom, Jonah and I thank the Scoutmaster and shake his hand. “See you in two weeks,” he says to me, more in the form of a question. “Sure,” I say, doing my best not to sigh melodramatically, “I’ll see you in two weeks.”