Pot correlates with increased light activities, not sloth
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Dave Upthegrove Wants to Save the Trees
Upthegrove faces stiff competition in the upcoming August primary, including a timber industry willing to pay to put a chainsaw in office.
by Rich Smith
After speaking on behalf of south King County residents for the better part of 22 years as a State Representative and as a King County Council Member, Dave Upthegrove now wants to speak on behalf of the trees as Washington’s next Public Lands Commissioner.
The position would put him in charge of the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), which oversees the state’s seven million acres of “forest, range, commercial, agricultural, conservation, and aquatic lands,” according to its website. Despite high concentrations of lumberjacks and firefighters around the agency, if elected he’d somehow become the first gay person to run it. In doing so, he’d also become our first openly gay statewide officeholder. That’s progress, baby!
That ceiling, however, will be a tough one for him to crack. Though at this point in the culture wars he fears his King County roots will hurt him at the ballot box more than his status as an LGBTQ leader, Upthegrove faces stiff competition in the upcoming August primary, including a timber industry willing to pay to put a chainsaw in office. But as a career environmental and queer activist, Upthegrove is no stranger to long, hard roads.
You Can’t Run for Office
Upthegrove came out publicly in 2001, the year he first ran for office. With a gesture and a plural pronoun, he slipped the admission into a speech he delivered as part of an appointment process to represent the 33rd Legislative District in Olympia. “Those of us who are gay and lesbian,” he said, pointing to himself, pretending as if everyone knew. And that was that.
When his mentor learned the news, he said, “I love you, Dave, but it’s too bad because now you can’t run for office.”
At that time, the thought of an out, gay legislator deep in the heart of south King County was unheard of, Upthegrove said in a phone interview with The Stranger. Nevertheless, he won the appointment and became the state’s first out LGBTQ legislator to hold office outside of Seattle.
Though he helped pass marriage equality and anti-discrimination laws, when reflecting on his proudest accomplishments for the community, he feels his visibility as a gay person in the world represents some of his “most impactful work.”
He said he always outs himself in front of church crowds and groups of young people, even if he’s not in the room to speak on LGBTQ issues, because he knows there will be one or two closeted kids sitting in the audience. As a closeted kid who grew up in a morass of anti-LGBTQ hate, he knows firsthand how empowering such role models can be.
As the state’s first openly gay executive, he’d hope to emulate Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s style as a policy wonk who uses his bully pulpit to fight bigotry. “My focus is going to be on trees and geoducks and agriculture, but I’ll be out and visible to try to break down stereotypes, and I’ll speak up when there’s injustice,” he said.
That passion for justice drove his early career, he said, and it still drives him today. And it’s that same sense of justice that drives his thinking on the environment.
Portrait of the Politician as a Young Environmentalist
Though he became an LGBTQ leader when he entered office, the environmental movement is what led him into politics in the first place. His love affair with the outdoors started at a young age. He said he spent his summers teaching environmental science to kids out on the Hood Canal, and he spent a couple summers leading week-long tracks through the North Cascades.
The political bug bit him at the University of Colorado, where he became an environmental activist and earned a degree in environmental science before later picking up a graduate certificate in energy policy at the University of Idaho.
He couldn’t find a job right out of college, so he worked for the forest service before landing a gig as a committee clerk in Olympia. In that role, he fell in love with the Legislature, and he ended up bopping around as an aide with enviro-focused politicians for years until deciding to run for office himself.
In Olympia, he worked with Governor Christine Gregoire to create the Puget Sound Partnership, a state agency designed to protect and restore the Sound. He later chaired the House Environment Committee for years, helping to guide through the House legislation that shut down the state’s last polluting coal plant.
In his off hours, over beers he helped organize a blue-green alliance, building a coalition that ended up wielding some factional power in Olympia on behalf of labor and environmental activists. He also helped pass and fund legislation requiring the state to test soils around schools, day cares, and playgrounds for high levels of contaminated dirt.
Saving Our Older Forests
If the voters will it, he vows to take the passion for environmental justice that he fostered in the Legislature with him into the Department of Natural Resources, where he’ll essentially serve as the state’s landlord.
On “day one” of his tenure he’d sign an order to save “mature legacy forests” from the buzzsaw. Those forests aren’t technically old growth but they’re close. Unlike a tree farm, Upthegrove said, they “naturally regenerate, they’re diverse, and they support a lot of biodiversity.” The trees aren’t just pleasant to be around, either. Though they only make up 3% of our state-owned timberlands, they have “an outsized impact on carbon storage,” he said.
To make up for any loss in state revenues and jobs, Upthegrove plans to use existing state funding streams to acquire replacement timberlands from private owners, on whose land 70% of the state’s forestry takes place.
Detractors worry such a move would cut into school funding, since the state directs to K-12 construction the proceeds of timber sales on some public land, but Upthegrove argues that all of the money generated from those sorts of sales accounts for about “1.5% of the state’s share of new school construction.”
“So obviously we need to fully fund our schools, but the pathway is not through DNR, and [Superintendent of Public Education] Chris Reykdal has gone on the record saying he doesn’t even need it,” he added.
He also wants the agency to take into account carbon storage and sequestration goals “in a meaningful way” as part of the new sustainable harvest calculation the agency will soon need to adopt. “When we engage in a timber sale right now, there’s no carbon accounting,” he said.
When it comes to addressing the wildfires that choke summer skies on a regular basis, Upthegrove endeavors to more or less carry on and attempt to improve upon the legacy of outgoing Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz.
Whereas Franz focused on upgrading the state’s response to fires and spearheading the creation of the Wildfire Response, Forest Restoration, and Community Resilience account, he wants to focus on prevention and on finding a stable source of funding for that account.
Upthegrove isn’t the only candidate in this race with ideas about trees, but he is the only one with endorsements from Washington Conservation Action and the Sierra Club, two heavyweights in the enviro fundraising and organizing worlds. So far, he’s also raised the most money, with north of $370,000.
Former Republican Congresswoman Jamie Herrera Beutler trails closely behind him. Other Democrats in the race include state Sen. Kevin Van De Wege and Makah Indian Tribal Council Member / member of the DNR executive team Patrick DePoe, who Lands Commissioner Franz endorsed. Big and smaller timber have thrown money at both Herrera Beutler and Van De Wege. Lots of DePoe’s money comes from the tribes.
With a couple other Democratic politicians in the race, the primary election results in this contest are far from certain. He’ll need all the help that he can get from the gays and the greens. ν
The Stranger
Movie Madness
Please continue going to movies and having a good time, but be aware that literally no one else in the theater cares what you have to say.
by Anonymous
What is with Seattle movie-goers not knowing how to behave at a movie?! I go to The Beacon a lot–support local indie movie theaters!—and I don’t know if it’s something the staff puts in the popcorn, but it’s like people forget how to behave in public.
I get that a movie is about entertainment and enjoying yourself, but can you please do so quieter so that it doesn’t take away the enjoyment of EVERYONE ELSE at the damn movie?! I am not here to listen to you talk loudly at your friend about how funny a movie from a time you weren’t born was, or to watch you feel up a woman and giggle along while James Baldwin describes being at the Selma march (a real experience).
Please continue going to movies and having a good time, but be aware that literally no one else in the theater cares what you have to say–probably including your friend!—and they are trying to watch the movie. It’s only getting more noticeable, and it would mean a lot to the other people if you just shut up for one to two hours.
Do you need to get something off your chest? Submit an I, Anonymous and we’ll illustrate it! Send your unsigned rant, love letter, confession, or accusation to ianonymous@thestranger.com. Please remember to change the names of the innocent and the guilty.
The Stranger
What’s Next for Denny Blaine?
The trouble started in November when the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation announced its plan to build a privately funded, nature-themed children’s “play area” at the historically queer nude beach.
by Vivian McCall
Basil Mayhan stands at Denny Blaine Park before a tangle of Himalayan blackberries. The blackberries like to grow along the shore of Lake Washington and intermingle with native wild roses, but they’ve got to go. So does the English holly and the English ivy scaling a nearby fence bordering the park. Mayhan calls this trio the “Axis powers” as he rips a handful of leaves from the fence, executing a plan approved by the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department to replace the park’s invasive species with native plants. Besides, “It’s stupid to have a spiny plant around naked people,” he said.
Mayhan instructs the ten or so volunteers carrying dirt-covered shovels and loppers not to harm the native roses, which may be replanted elsewhere.
It’s a bright, breezy day–cold enough for the pants and long sleeves needed for crawling into the spiny brush, but warm enough that people are lounging near the water.
The summer that seemed like it may never come for Denny Blaine Park was nearly here.
The trouble started in November when the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation announced its plan to build a privately funded, nature-themed children’s “play area” at the historically queer nude beach. The department said the neighborhood didn’t have a playground within walking distance of the park, and their plan would fix that.
People went ballistic. The day news broke, thousands signed petitions demanding the City kill this plan. Activists formed Save Denny Blaine, a loose coalition of queers and naturists. Emails flooded the inboxes of public officials, and the City would decide to call the whole thing off in December after activists packed the MLK Fame Community Center with signs, slogans, and nearly 400 bodies telling the City to keep its hands–and its playgrounds–off the beach.
Absolutely nothing about the reaction was surprising.
Denny Blaine has been a gay, nude hangout for at least 40 years. It was once commonly referred to as a Dykekiki for the topless lesbians. The beach is packed during summer, and people say it’s one of the last authentically queer places left in Seattle where you can go without spending money. Like most gay beaches in the country, it’s not the crown jewel of the waterfront. That’s how queer people claimed it in the first place.
Aspen Coyle, who was hacking at a blackberry plant during our interview, remembers the first time she came to Denny Blaine, newly out as trans and six months on estrogen. She was freaked out until she heard a group of trans girls chatting about chess. They invited her to a group chat where she met her closest friends. She sees Denny Blaine as the genuine trans spot in a city that’s becoming more trans as people stream in from states where they’re no longer welcome or legally safe. (The person next to us chimes in and says, “Don’t forget about Kremwerk.”)
During public discussions about the proposed playground, queers felt the City’s plan amounted to an eviction notice with a sick twist. We’re living through a far-right crusade against transgender rights and an escalating moral panic about queer people “grooming” kids by merely existing. Building a children’s play area at Denny Blaine at this moment seemed like a trap and an attempt to subvert Seattle’s permissive nudity laws, which have allowed us to trounce around naked since 1990.
After the loud December meeting, Parks decided to sit down for several stakeholder meetings with both sides of the struggle. The Seattle Parks Foundation-affiliated Friends of Denny Blaine took one side, and neighbors who lived next to the park took the other.
They hashed out a solution to divide the park into two zones: a naked one down by the beach and a clothed one past the small parking lot. Both sides hated the plan for different reasons.
The park users thought it gave neighbors undue power when the law says nudity is okay.
The neighbors, who started a group called Denny Blaine Park for All and hired Lee Keller of The Keller Group to handle public relations, said in a statement that, in this “wait and see” period, they support guidelines that address the Park’s “serious problems” and enforce existing laws and policies so it can be a respectful place for “everyone” to enjoy.
Keller said neighbors are concerned about drug use, public indecency, garbage, traffic, and more, and they are urging the City to address those concerns. She added that their concerns do not lie with the LGBTQ community.
“Our concerns, however, ARE about lewd harassing behavior and open sex — behavior that overflows into the park and onto neighborhood streets,” she said. “… Sadly, as it stands now, the park is a public nuisance.”
At a May meeting, Parks employee Justin Hellier said neither neighbors or activists supported public sex (which is not legal anyway), but they disagreed on how often it happened. Coyle said the occasional leering creep is there to harass queer park-goers. Friends of Denny Blaine is currently seeking a City grant to fund an anti-masturbation campaign.
Parks had initially planned to present the proposed guidelines to its board on May 23, but they rescheduled the meeting for June 13. (Public comment closes tomorrow if you’re cracking open this newsprint on June 5).
At press time, it is unclear which version of the policy the board will get, but I saw evidence that at least one part of the department’s plan is advisable: an idea to install a sign informing visitors that Denny Blaine is clothing-optional.
Such a sign could be useful. In May, I witnessed one man ask his dog if he saw the puppy by the stairs. Then he looked up to see a bunch of naked bathers. He froze, turned around, and said aloud, “That was not the beach we thought it was.”
The dust is still settling on the debate, but a couple things are clear: Parks lost major trust with the community over this fiasco, and the City gave credence to the belief that poor Seattleites have less say than rich ones like Stuart Sloan, the 80-year-old businessman and philanthropist who KUOW identified as the mystery donor last month. Keller also represented Sloan and told the public radio station that he was not the only person willing to pay for the playground, and that the playground had been the City’s idea, not his.
KUOW also reported that before any plan had gone public, Sloan had texted Mayor Bruce Harrell’s private cell phone to complain about Denny Blaine. A few months later, Parks employees and Harrell’s staff met with Sloan.
Harrell maintained he didn’t know the donor’s identity, even after The Stranger asked about the two in-person meetings we discovered. The two men first met to discuss the issue in November of 2022, and later on December 9, 2023, the day after the City nixed the playground plan. In the first meeting, they apparently discussed trash and safety. In the second meeting, the Mayor wanted to personally update Sloan on “progress being made on these issues” after all the media attention. You can’t buy a public park, but you can try.
As I left the beach that day in May, a volunteer yelled with excitement. They held a tuberous nexus of roots that Mayhan called “the heart” of the blackberry bramble. Removing it is the only way to stop the plant from spreading; it’d grow back otherwise. The volunteer threw it on a growing pile, nicknaming it “Mr. Potato Head.” They cheered.
The Stranger
Out of This World
SassyBlack will host a reading of her new musical, Emerald Jett, on August 9 at Northwest Film Forum.
by Catherine “SassyBlack” Harris-White
When I moved to Seattle from the Big Island, Hawaii, in 1997, was 10 years old and expecting to go to school and live a life not unlike Lisa Turtle’s in Saved by the Bell. I thought I would be a cool kid. I didn’t even realize Seattle was a real place until I moved here, I thought it was just a made-up city used as a backdrop for Sleepless in Seattle. The unknown made me feel limitless.
But whoa, I was way off.
On the first day of school, I was clowned by everyone after they assumed I was a substitute teacher. Didn’t help that I was dressed like a 40-year-old and already fully developed. I stood out in all the wrong ways and wanted to flee back to homeschool.
Weird to say, but the bullying was a godsend—I worried less about being the next Lisa Turtle and instead focused my energy elsewhere, on music, theater, and writing. I would write songs and poems and make up characters with all these different personality traits. And it got me on stage at a young age. I won my first prize for a poem about Martin Luther King Jr. at age 12 and was in the ensemble every summer for a performance piece called The MAAFA Suite (later Sankofa Theatre) at the Moore.
Kids stayed cruel—I felt like I was an oddity with my afro, low alto/tenor voice, and unique style of clothes—but their cruelty fueled my creativity. I would write in my journal about my future as a famous singer and actor and practice my signature regularly. It wasn’t long ’til I found my first little crew of weirdos who were into a lot of the same things I was. They staged annual Shakespeare in the Park performances and hung on Broadway on Capitol Hill. I was around 12 years old and I remember how exciting it was to see adults (though mostly white) out and proud. In these small circles, I discovered my attraction to not only boys but girls, too. It’s where I learned the term bisexual and I was too excited to proclaim it. Although it felt freeing, I still longed to make these realizations alongside Black kids.
By high school, I had drifted from my little friend group. I was their only Black friend and they didn’t understand when I called them out on the racist things they would say in passing about me or other Black kids. Around the age of 15, I got into activism with the Quaker organization American Service Friends Committee. Not only was it ethnically diverse, but it was also LGBTQIA+ friendly. From 15 to 19 years old, I organized, marched, and protested as part of Youth Undoing Institutionalized Racism and Queer Youth Rights.
It was wonderful to have found another safe space, but it came with its own issues. Seattle felt progressive, but I saw how much it took as a young person to make positive change in a city that was more interested in commercial growth. The form of activism I was pursuing took a lot of my energy, and at the end of my senior year of high school, I was at a crossroads: Activism or artistry? I decided to do both, but my way.
While attending Cornish College of the Arts, I still dealt with people’s ignorance about my sexuality and my Blackness, but I was keeping myself occupied with my creative pursuits. I was still acting, was in a couple of bands, and, in my senior year, formed my psychedelic, space rap jazz group THEESatisfaction with my partner at the time. We made our debut at my senior recital, and it was then that I found some of my closest friends who understood me and all my complexities.
My music career took off—THEESatisfaction played countless shows at venues like Neumo’s, the Crocodile, and Nectar, and toured North America, Europe, and China. We opened up for Erykah Badu, Big Freedia, Little Dragon, and Black Star and we signed to Sub Pop in 2011. I was in a whole new world. I knew Seattle wasn’t ready for something as experimental as two women in a relationship, rapping and singing together about being Black, being queer, and dealing with oppressive systems at large, but hell, we did it anyway. And we felt some pushback. Some people loved us but often assumed we were sisters, and some of the people who knew we were a couple hated that and tried to keep us from opportunities or mispronounce our names when we hit the stage. And after a while, there was also internal conflict.
It was quite painful when the group officially ended in 2016. I knew it was time to do what I had journaled about as a child and launch a solo career. It was time to introduce the world to SassyBlack, the High Priestess of Psychedelic Soul & Hologram Funk.
<a href=”https://sassyblack.bandcamp.com/album/ancient-mahogany-gold”>Ancient Mahogany Gold by SassyBlack</a>
SassyBlack was born in 2013. I deemed myself SassyBlack because the name was relatable, catchy, and raw. I could be my fullest self with this name, which became a double-edged sword, but one I wasn’t afraid to parry with. At first, it was new and rough, but I loved it because it was all me. It wasn’t until my second EP, Personal Sunlight, came out in 2015 that it really hit me. I felt a wave of energy like nothing I’d ever felt. Each project that followed spoke to my Blackness, queerness, womaness, and otherness. And with this new stage name came a flood of new ideas. I felt renewed. I returned to writing short stories and creating characters like I did as a kid, but this time it was based on my life and my travels. Especially the lessons I learned—some the hard way. SassyBlack became the first character I would bring to life, making way for Emerald Jett.
Emerald Jett’s story started as a theme song and was inspired by shows like Living Single, Broad City, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Flight of the Conchords. She was a weirdo Black girl like me but with powers. I wanted to flesh out her musical world but never had the time. In 2019, everything changed. I was in a car accident and suffered from intense neck, shoulder, and back pain, making it impossible to go on my tour for my third album, Ancient Mahogany Gold. I was devastated. I didn’t know then, but that would be my last chance at touring for years to come.
During lockdown, I got an email from the 5th Avenue Theater about an opportunity to compose for a one-woman show. There it was again, storytelling calling me in a new format. I took the gig and asked to be on the list for more opportunities like that.
A few months later, I heard they were accepting submissions for First Draft, a musical development program that supports new plays from marginalized communities. Emerald Jett’s time had come. I knew for sure her story would be a quirky musical about someone who needed a change as desperately as I did with a sci-fi funk twist. I was accepted into the program and received guidance, funding, and script readings with a cast. It was life-changing.
I’m hosting my first public Seattle reading of Emerald Jett on August 9 at the Northwest Film Forum as part of my 10 Years of SassyBlack celebration. Producing a musical is expensive, so I’m creating new ways to bring it to life while I continue to revise the script and fundraise.
These past 10 years have been a huge shift in the way that I work, create, love, and live. Growing out of my overly excited, fast-paced self into a more aware, focused, and well-positioned artist has been exhausting. I’m still feeling the growing pains, and I don’t think those feelings will ever go away if I do it right. Through writing and composing projects like Emerald Jett, I can get to the core of my feelings and be more present. I learned to cherish my uniqueness and use it as a superpower. The things that made me an outsider also shaped my artistry and gave me the courage to be SassyBlack and, more importantly, myself.
The Emerald Jett Reading with SassyBlack is Friday, Aug 9 at Northwest Film Forum, 7 pm, $12-$15. Learn more about her upcoming projects at sassyblack.com.
The Stranger
More Is NOT Better When Dealing With Anxiety
More Is NOT Better When Dealing With Anxiety
More is not better when dealing with anxiety. Science provides a clearer path for marijuana to provide the right support.
The post More Is NOT Better When Dealing With Anxiety appeared first on The Fresh Toast.
The Fresh Toast
Stranger Suggests: Travis Thompson, Seattle Pride Classic 2024, Seattle Bakes Back!, Georgetown Carnival, The Stranger’s Burger Week 2024
One really great thing to do every day of the week.
by Audrey Vann
(MUSIC) There is little difference between Travis Thompson’s character on Season 2 of Reservation Dogs and the reality Thompson describes in his Pacific Northwest hip-hop masterpiece, “Need You.” The world we enter in this beautifully booming track is very down-to-earth. These are not the First World problems of a tech and gentrified city. The rapper comes from a place, the suburbs, settled by a large number of POCs displaced by obscenely overpriced houses in Seattle. He has “children to feed,” and faces multiple daily challenges to make ends meet. But despite all of this, there is still in him a zone of serenity, a serenity that’s reflected by the beat’s airy melodies. Without this inner zone, it is hard to imagine how the rapper could make room for some laughter and an appreciation for the simpler but still invaluable things of life. (The Crocodile, 2505 First Ave, 8 pm, $28, all ages) CHARLES MUDEDE
Seattle Pride at Pioneer Square Art Walk
(PRIDE/VISUAL ART) Head to this month’s Pioneer Square Art Walk to scope Pride in Seattle: 50th Anniversary Art Exhibit, curated by Pride youth interns in collaboration with Seattle Pride and Seattle’s LGBTQ+ Center. Here’s the scoop: Works in the special exhibition were created in a “youth public art activation” organized by Coyote Central. The show spotlights queer experiences of local LGBTQIA2S+ youth and draws from the artistic legacies of Black trans women, Black gender-diverse individuals, and queer Indigenous or two-spirit people. Expect creative responses to Seattle’s ballroom scene, Pioneer Square’s history, and the AIDS epidemic, too. (RailSpur, 419 Occidental Ave S, 5 pm, free, all ages) LINDSAY COSTELLO
(PRIDE/SPORTS) The Seattle Pride Hockey Association returns with the fourth installment of the country’s most inclusive hockey tournament during Pride Month, offering free entrance to spectators who want to cheer on 20 teams in a draft-style competition across three days. Luke Prokop, the first openly gay player in the NHL, returns to the tournament to meet fans and wrap hockey sticks in pride tape donated by the NHL (which is pretty ironic, given the league’s momentary and very controversial ban on the rainbow-colored adhesive). DJs will be keeping the vibes high during games, the Reign City Riot pep band will make an appearance, and Kraken fans of all ages can register to skate with Buoy on Sunday afternoon. (Kraken Community Iceplex, 10601 Fifth Ave NE, June 7-9, free, all ages) SHANNON LUBETICH
(MUSIC/COMMUNITY) The wonderfully gritty and industrial backdrop of Seattle’s oldest neighborhood will become awash with color as carnival games, acrobats, sideshows, clowns, live music, beer gardens, arts and crafts, and vendors take over Airport Way South for the Georgetown Carnival. Live acts this year include local hip-hop artist Sol, garage rockers Monsterwatch, Portland-based pop duo Foam Boy, Boots! DJs, and more. (Georgetown, Airport Way S, noon-10 pm, free, all ages) AUDREY VANN
Seattle Bakes Back!: A Bake Sale for Reproductive Rights
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(FOOD) The teams behind the cult favorite bakeries Ben’s Bread and Saint Bread have joined forces to host this bake sale to raise funds for Northwest Abortion Access Fund. Featuring some of the city’s most sought-after names, including Doce Donuts, Raised Doughnuts, Paper Cake Shop, Zylberschtein’s, and Rachel’s Bagels and Burritos, the lineup is sure to beguile even the most discerning carb connoisseurs. Plus, a steady flow of coffee from the Portland-based roaster Proud Mary will keep everyone in attendance sufficiently caffeinated. Go enjoy some community and throw some cash at baked goods and reproductive justice. (Saint Bread, 1421 NE Boat St, 11 am, $25-$75) JULIANNE BELL
The Stranger‘s Burger Week 2024
The Kraken Bar & Lounge’s Jacked Up Kraken Burger. COURTESY OF THE KRAKEN
(FOOD) Hamburglars, it’s your time to shine. For one week only, participating restaurants all over the city will be creating original, specialty burgers for only $12. Plot your own personalized burger adventure and try as many as you like. You won’t get a trophy or anything, but you will have bragging rights among your fellow burger lovers and one very satisfied stomach. For maximum success, we recommend wearing something with an elastic waistband. Plus, don’t forget to tip the kitchen staff and servers, take lots of photos, and post on social media using #strangerburgerweek. (Various locations, June 10-16, $12, see the full list of participants here) THE STRANGER’S PROMO DEPT.
(FILM) It’s time for Mount Rose, Minnesota’s annual teen beauty pageant, and Amber Atkins (played by the incomparable Kirsten Dunst) is poised to steal the show. But a series of weird incidents and tragic “accidents” turn the event into a darkly hilarious bloodbath. The mockumentary boasts a killer cast including Brittany Murphy (RIP), Denise Richards, Allison Janney, and Amy Adams. (Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave, multiple screenings June 7-12, $12) LINDSAY COSTELLO
Prizefight!
Win tickets to rad upcoming events!*
Andrew Schulz
Friday, June 7 at the Paramount
Contest ends June 6 at 10 am
*Entering PRIZE FIGHT contests by submitting your email address signs you up to receive the Stranger Suggests newsletter. You can unsubscribe at any time.
The Stranger
Can Seattle Drag Afford to Stay Weird?
Artistic experimentation feels riskier when rent’s rising.
by Adam Willems
In the fall of 2022, Seattle drag queen and then-newcomer This Girl encountered a dancing dialectic in the Kremwerk basement. Rowan Ruthless was doing a comedic Fergie cosplay number as part of a Black Eyed Peas-themed drag night, using a water bottle to simulate wetting her pants.
Reading Ruthless’s faux pee against the grain, This Girl interpreted her seasoned colleague’s urine-forward number as a lesson in artistry and economics.
“That shit’s so funny,” This Girl said. “But also Rowan is simultaneously the most beautiful, glorious supermodel of Seattle… [and] someone who deeply understands the balance between that classic, messy, grimy Seattle drag and also glamor.”
Ruthless’s piss bit offered This Girl more than just an intermission from Seattle drag’s recent “showgirl, showgirl, showgirl everywhere” homogenization: It also showed her that artistic versatility and professional success go hand in hand.
“That’s maybe where some of the wires get crossed,” This Girl said. “I think for all of the glamor that you see now, a good majority of those girls started off doing weird, dirty, messy stuff in the bottom of the Kremwerk basement.”
That is, prominent Seattle drag queens whose glamorous standard This Girl and other up-and-coming artists strove to attain—often at great economic cost—were successful because they had local practice weaving grime and glamor together, not because they pulled off Drag Race-esque allure alone.
It’s easy to judge up-and-comers for crossing their wires and pursuing the markers of seasoned drag queens’ success, skimming over their iconoclastic paths to more regular gigs and incomes; but entry- and mid-level queens are confronting a different financial and artistic landscape than their predecessors did. The same macroeconomic forces causing housing and other costs to skyrocket are driving drag artists to make tough choices about the balance between business and art and between making steadier money through tried-and-true looks or hustling to stand out. The dwindling number of beginner-friendly venues, in addition to disadvantageous financial agreements with many venue owners and Drag Race-informed viewer tastes, has imposed a higher barrier to entry for drag performers as well as a longer path to (often paltry) profitability. Artistic experimentation feels riskier when rent’s rising.
***
Lavish The’Jewel Stephen Ansun
Tacoma-based drag and burlesque performer Lavish The’Jewel first began doing drag in the Seattle area seven years ago, getting her start at beginner-friendly venues like WERKshop Wednesdays, the precursor to Kremwerk’s Studio Saturdays. While The’Jewel has established her presence in Seattle and refined her craft over time, she’s also seen many alternative and entry-level spaces lose their edge or fold altogether. Some establishments, like R Place, are gone, period; others have changed their drag programming to match general consumer tastes instead of nurturing an ecosystem of drag performers.
In The’Jewel’s eyes, the growing popularity of drag through Ru Paul’s Drag Race carries artistic and economic consequences. Audiences now expect drag artists to sport more upscale looks like the ones they see on TV, she said; performers often choose between “buying a wig or paying rent” in pursuit of embodying that perceived standard, which flattens the kind of drag Seattleites encounter across the city.
“It sucks because as inspiring as drag can be, those kind of off-kilter shows… inspire me to not be afraid to do something stupid or weird or silly,” The’Jewel said. “It kind of gives you a different view of what drag is, because it really is everything.”
This Girl asserts that Seattle-based drag star Bosco’s 2022 appearance on—and podium finish in—Ru Paul’s Drag Race had an especial effect on the local scene and unintentionally homogenized much of it.
“I say this entirely with love for Bosco, but I love to say that we’re living in a post-Bosco-on-Drag-Race world,” This Girl said. “When I first started [doing drag in 2021], it felt acceptable to be buying Leg Avenue lingerie and Amazon bodysuits and call it a day, and… almost instantly [after Bosco’s Drag Race appearance]… the city had a completely new standard.”
That new standard encouraged This Girl to spend “a heinous” amount of money in that first “post-Bosco year” trying to match that new standard. Thanks to her faux-Fergie lesson at Kremwek, in addition to the input of drag-mentor friends and a more disciplined approach to her money and time, she’s since learned to be more economical with how she constructs her looks, including by sewing many of her own clothes.
Beau Degas, a drag artist who performs at Clock-Out Lounge’s Tush and Queer/Bar’s Bang the Gong and who’s known for her campy and comedic numbers, first performed in public in January 2018 at a now-defunct show called Fresh (alongside Bosco, whose team didn’t respond to The Stranger’s request for comment). She thinks that, without spaces for new performers to break in and “make a name for [themselves],” it will be very hard for up-and-coming performers to get booked more often the way she has, or to make any viable income from this work.
Degas also criticized the homogenization of Seattle drag, typified by “a different person with the same look doing the same schtick.” But she acknowledged that she accepts some gigs for monetary gain, not because they’re spaces that will “push me artistically,” though she makes a point to take gigs that make her feel like an “artist first,” rather than “just a performer.”
Complementing drag work with a career as a cook lets Degas balance money, identity, and art. Lavish The’Jewel (aesthetician) and This Girl (social worker) do too. Degas said “drag isn’t for everybody” as a profession— whether full- or part-time—and it requires passion and hard work, especially since performers often confront a two-year financial deficit while they hustle to land regular gigs. “I feel like the main thing is that you just need to be the right person,” she said.
Through her role on the permanent cast of Clock-Out Lounge’s Tush in Beacon Hill, Beau Degas has taken advantage of the program as a monthly, two-night destination for artistic experimentation and as a reliable income stream. “We’ve created this space where people expect a certain level of creativity, innovation, or artistic sense, and the venue pays us really well,” she said.
Tush was founded in 2018 by Betty Wetter in collaboration with Clock-Out Lounge owner Jodi Ecklund. Unlike many other owners, who stipulate a minimum number of show attendees or else force performers to pay for lost revenue, Ecklund and the Clock-Out Lounge offer performers fair pay and collaborate with Wetter to monetize the event sustainably. Ecklund encouraged Wetter and the cast to increase ticket prices by $5 this past year, for example, to ensure that the show’s performers could meet Seattle’s rising cost of living.
To Wetter, although performers shouldn’t put all their eggs in one basket or rely solely on a venue’s owner, “a show really is as good as the love that the owner puts into it.” Tush’s function as a sandbox has let the cast develop a local reputation and land other gigs. Wetter, who emcees Tush shows, now works full-time as a drag artist, doing everything from hosting drag bingo and fundraisers to officiating weddings.
Ecklund, meanwhile, said she is “grateful that Tush is able to remain a viable show for both parties,” especially as venues operate on “razor-thin margins” due to rising costs. She said she believes that artists should be able to make a living making their art and, as a queer-identifying person, sees developing community as “the heartbeat of everything I do.”
This Girl. ERIC RICHARD MAGNUSSEN
This Girl likened finding a supportive commercial space like Clock-Out Lounge to striking gold. Some interviewees also recognized Queer/Bar for its artist-friendly efforts. When performers can focus on their acts rather than pushing tickets, their performances tend to be of higher quality and can attract a more sustained following organically. “Can we ever readily count on businesses or capital to make sure we have a space to create art?” This Girl hedged. “Of course not.” The’Jewel similarly asserted that more owners should pay more since they often make money “hand over fist” without paying performers what they’re worth; she also noted that Seattle’s drag scene will remain on its homogenizing path as long as discrimination and gatekeeping prevent racial and gender diversity in its greenrooms.
Yet Betty Wetter contended that it’s “past time for performers to be asking for what they’re worth,” and to be more disciplined about refusing exploitative rates and conditions. “You’re kind of appeasing [owners and managers by] saying, ‘I’ll take this amount of money,’ when in all honesty, they can pay you more [and] they do have the money,” she said.
Wetter knows spaces like Tush are rare sources of artistic and economic vibrancy, even if they shouldn’t be. “It’s so valuable to me and I am eternally grateful and I’m also always so scared it’s just gonna disappear one day,” she said.
Leaning into the weird has helped Tush stay viable despite the lingering threat of its impermanence, she concluded.
“We’re all swimming in this pool, and you pull your head above the water, and you look around and see there’s like so many people out sunbathing and living a different life than you are in the pool,” Wetter waxed. “It comes back to leaning into what you’re good at, because there are people who want to follow that. There are people who want to see that.”
Inspired to see a show? We’ve got tons of drag shows, brunches, and performances listed in our calendar, EverOut!
The Stranger
The Future of HIV Treatment Is Injectable
Promising drugs being developed at the UW could expand HIV treatment—if we get out of our own way.
by Vivian McCall
As Sidney Adjetey laid on an exam table at Harborview Medical Center with his T-shirt hiked up, research clinician Phoebe Bryson-Cahn examined injection sites on either side of his belly button. In April, University of Washington researchers at the UW Positive Research clinic injected Adjetey with about a teaspoon of a new and experimental long-acting HIV treatment as part of a study funded by the National Institutes of Health. They’re monitoring him to learn how long this medication lasts in his body and whether it could effectively suppress the HIV if the virus had been present.
Adjetey doesn’t have HIV, nor do any of the 12 participants in Phase I of this proof-of-concept clinical drug trial. At this early stage, researchers are evaluating dosing and safety because the drug has never been used on humans before. They’ll determine efficacy in Phase II, but that could be years away.
Injectables are a thrilling trend in the field of HIV, with drugs such as Lenacapavir and Cabenuva already available on the market. Unfortunately, the rollout has been slower than physicians hoped, and barriers like the expense of these drugs keep them out of reach for many.
This new shot combines three commonly used oral medications into one lipid-bonded nanoparticle the researchers call a “nanolozenge.” A shot of the nanolozenges could theoretically keep HIV in check for a month or longer, replacing 30 to 90 daily pills.
Dr. Rodney Ho, the principal UW researcher who developed the drug and co-founded UW’s Targeted, Long-acting and Combination Antiretroviral Therapy Program, called it an “impossible marriage” of fat- and water-soluble drugs that took years to figure out.
Named for its oblong shape and diminutive size (roughly a million times smaller than a chicken egg), the lozenges are injected beneath the skin into a fatty area like the belly. Then they travel to the lymph nodes via the bloodstream. The lozenge analogy ends with their shape, though, because they don’t just dissolve. Instead, they journey through the lymphatic system like a city bus, stopping at nodes to drop off a specific concentration of antiretroviral drugs.
This approach targets the virus far more efficiently than daily pills, which bathe our GI tract in medication and contribute to wear and tear. Scientists have successfully developed nanoparticle drugs to treat illnesses such as leukemia, but this experiment represents a new strategy for treating HIV.
The study’s leader, Dr. Rachel Bender Ignacio, said the researchers aim to formulate and bring to market a similar drug with three other compounds–tenofovir disoproxil, lamivudine, and dolutegravir, aka TLD, the most common frontline treatment of HIV in the world. She said that an injectable version of this drug cocktail could change the lives of the 19 million people already on TLD worldwide, which works out to almost half the number of people with HIV on Earth.
Though we may see cheaper drugs in the near future there are a number of good reasons to create alternatives to pills. Some people with HIV struggle to get pills and to take the ones they’ve got. Unstable housing situations or addiction can stymie access, and some people may be too sick to swallow. Some agricultural and migrant workers can’t access a continuous stream of medication, and pharmacies may have trouble stocking them. A daily pill can be a painful reminder that you have HIV, and traveling with pills is a hassle, comes with stigma, and can be dangerous. Also, pill fatigue is real, and some people just forget.
Over time, skipping daily meds can be fatal. In February, study participant Adjetey’s half-sister in Ghana died from a bout of typhoid fever related to her HIV infection. Not taking viral suppressant medication weakened her immune system, and the fever killed her in two days. They weren’t close, but participating in the study gives him the opportunity to honor her memory, he said.
Even if UW’s new approach works, Dr. Bender Ignacio said the fight against HIV/AIDS will never end. Viruses mutate, and HIV is particularly “leaky,” many times craftier and mutable than the flu or COVID-19. That said, from a biomedical standpoint doctors can easily treat HIV with current tools. Patients take two or three pills to prevent “breakthroughs.” Think of a medieval city with multiple defensive walls. If one falls, more remain. The walls are sturdy and in many ways sufficient.
What we can’t seem to figure out is the human element: poverty, homelessness, individual behavior, geographical barriers, our convoluted medical system, etc. A miracle in the lab won’t undo systemic problems. Nine million of the 39 million people with HIV are not virologically suppressed. In the US, a third of people with HIV don’t have the medications they need, and they are often our society’s most vulnerable people.
Dr. Monica Gandhi, who teaches medicine at University of California – San Francisco and who directs San Francisco’s “Ward 86” HIV clinic, said HIV treatment reached a point of stagnation six years ago after the advent of Biktarvy, a complete, once daily HIV regimen that included an integrase-inhibitor, which targets an enzyme HIV uses to replicate. It should be easy to take one pill, but it isn’t for everyone, and that’s why long-acting treatments are all clinicians like Dr. Gandhi can talk about now.
She works with HIV-positive people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco. When Cabenuva first entered the market, clinicians hesitated to prescribe it to patients who took pills inconsistently. Doctors worried these patients would miss injection appointments and expose the HIV virus in their bodies to trailing levels of the medication, pushing the virus toward drug-resistant mutations.
But Dr. Gandhi’s patients showed up, and experiencing viral suppression for the first time motivated them to return. The clinic did not have to chase people down like they thought they might. Dr. Gandhi explained that because people with the highest viral loads are more likely to transmit HIV, treating them with the best drugs we have available should be a priority if we hope to end the epidemic. Now 290 people, or 10% of her clinic, are on long-acting medications.
The director of King County’s sexual health clinic Dr. Matthew Golden, said their unpublished randomized control trial also showed that injectables worked better than pills for patients facing homelessness, poverty, and drug-addiction. Golden said that incentives for study participants likely helped, and if we were smart, our public health system would offer benefits for regular treatment, too.
If UW’s drug ever hits the market, that goal could be even easier to achieve. UW’s shot has the potential to be cheaper and more widely available than any injectable we have now. If or when that happens depends on what researchers find in the lab and whether funders come along, cash in hand. Science is expensive.
The Stranger
Letters to Our Younger Trans Selves
The five trans people sent us five moving letters concerning the body, the spirit, and what joy awaited them in their futures.
by Vivian McCall
A lot of weirdos want cis people to believe that trans people hate our bodies, which would be laughable if their narrative were not so damn dangerous. Saying we hate our bodies is a lot like claiming your uncle hates the muscle car he endlessly tinkers with. He loves that thing, even when it gives him trouble, or when it’s up on cinder blocks in the yard. Trans people, like everyone else, have a complicated relationship with their bodies. There’s just more to navigate.
Given all this negativity, The Stranger wanted to focus on what trans people love about their bodies. We wondered what wisdom they’d share with their younger selves if given the chance.
The five trans people we posed this question to—an electrical engineer, a writer, a powerlifter, a comedian, and a multidisciplinary artist—sent us five moving letters concerning the body, the spirit, and what joy awaited them in their futures.
Xavier Schipani
I know you. You pass your loneliest, quietest days in silence. You walk the same sidewalks and pass through the same doors as others, but you feel invisible behind a façade built for their comfort. You are the mute ghost begging to be seen, who is unable to reach out for fear of being vaporized.
You spent the nights of your childhood meditating and praying for a different body only to wake in the same one the next morning. You’ve yearned for an explanation, a mere word to describe this alienation from the body. Yet none appeared, and the mirror continued to torment you and violate you. On some days, you wanted to shed the burden of playing pretend and to instead live your destiny. You wanted to be free. To simply be. It was never about obtaining the approval of the attractive crowd. You only sought peace in the indescribable wrongness.
Then one day you’ll show your face to the sun. You’ll find your name, your voice, a home. You’ll forge beauty, hope, bravery, and kindness in fiery self-hatred, and you’ll extinguish the flames in the roaring, wild river that is you. The universe will welcome you. It will call you by your name. The sky itself will embrace your glow. In time, you’ll learn this journey never ends.
With each step toward embodiment, you will chart the course of your wending voyage with direction and purpose. Living your truth will bring clarity, and you will be guided by the simple directive of authenticity and kindness in this random, fearful, and angry world. I know you tolerate your body, and you hold the heartless roll of the dice responsible for this in contempt. But you will accept the complexity of your paradoxical vessel. Your body–our body–gives you breath and the opportunity to experience the world.
You’ll also accept that you did the best you could with what you knew and with what your moment in time made possible. When you worry that you decided on transition too late, a gentle elder will say that you’re just in time. Fear will become a companion, its secret, clever voice telling you exactly where to discover newness.
You’ll be surprised to learn that people respect your tenacity. Few will remark upon it, but a stranger that watched you from afar will tell you how you’ve inspired them to reach for their stars.
I can tell you what I’ve learned. Abiding by the rules of others is folly. You won’t find perfection in the standards of others. You are perfect, perfectly human, beautifully and uniquely imperfect. The world hid your true purpose: To seek joy.
Find peace. Accept yourself and unravel the magic you’ll use to make this world more compassionate. Your rare perspective on the human condition is not a curse. It is a gift.
Ginger Chien is an electrical engineer, inventor, open-mic storyteller, and a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging speaker who lives in Redmond. She currently works as a device architect at AT&T and plays keys in an ’80s cover band called the Nasty Habits.
Xavier Schipani
You came home today doubled over with the kind of side stitch you solve by heading straight for your couch and cracking a beer. “I just need a few minutes,” you told your girlfriend, “and then I’ll get dinner started.” You picked up a PlayStation controller and left your body and your apartment and your boring job. Hours passed.
Last time you asked a doctor for help, he’d told you to Google prebiotic foods, took a seat in front of the door to the tiny exam room, and asked why you were wearing nail polish. When you got back on the subject of your health, he said that your latest blood work indicated issues with your liver. “How much,” he asked, “have you been drinking?”
You quit the company softball team when you could no longer tolerate your teammates’ exasperation when another fly ball bounced from your mitt. You gave yoga a try before writing off your body as miserably inflexible. Your girlfriend keeps coming up with reasons to eat takeout at the office. Drinking, that’s how you pass the valley between work and sleep.
You live in your head and your computer and, once a year, on your balcony as you sweat over the alley above a Whole Foods dumpster while the Pride parade beats down the street on the other side of the LaTrobe apartment building. You will live here, in your body, in a house in the trees between the mountain and the Sound.
Someday you’ll wake up in silk, blonde strays and mascara stains on your pillow, raindrops and cedar needles out your window, gold and diamond sparkle on your finger. Your partner is there. “Good morning, pretty lady,” are her first words to you. You’ll bring her coffee with a little oat milk, and then roll out your yoga mat.
The reason you cannot touch your toes with your back and legs straight is that your hamstrings are too tight; to do it right, you’ll need to bend your knees and practice every day. You won’t mind, you’ll get there eventually. Everything is connected and the pain will get so much worse before it gets better. You’ll know that the reason you could never catch a fly ball is that you were somewhere else. You’ll know that you were here.
Ari Drennen is a trans writer, poet, and content creator who works as the LGBTQ Program Director at Media Matters.
Xavier Schipani
Hey, baby. I didn’t want to write your full name. You’ve always hated your middle name. So feminine. You’re afraid of being associated with anything so womanly, I know. You still hope nothing will break that masculine shell, the one you’re probably hardening at the gym as I write this in an attempt to reach the “perfect ‘male’ physique.”
You won’t–at least, not in the way you think. I remember how you felt waking up so incomplete in the morning. You stood in front of the mirror in our bedroom, searching every inch of our body, cataloging every out-of-place piece, scrutinizing our outline. At night, with the lights off you’d catch only a shadowy reflection, and the eternal question echoed through your mind. Why does nothing feel right?
Baby, as hard as you try, masculinity is not and will never be the answer to your query. Deep down, you know that. Be honest with me. You love the sensation of long hair brushing your shoulders, the hem of a shirt dangling at your midriff, and the shortness of shorts just short enough. You wonder why you feel so queer and why you never act on the feeling. Those poor boys–as much as they loved your presence, they never had a chance. And as much guilt as you’ve swallowed about the disconnection from your girlfriends, they never had a chance, either. You’ll all laugh about it later, trust me.
Everything will change when you meet that trans girl at the thrift shop, the tall one with the pretty dress and the cute voice. You’ll panic, and confusion will surge through your body. She’s gorgeous, you’ll think. You will be jealous. That’s okay. Turns out, you’ll be gorgeous, too. You’ll love when clothes hug your curves like that, when pants sit just right on your hips and someone cute can’t help but grab them.
When you learn to smile that huge, crazy, disarming smile again, the one that makes people feel safe, it’ll be bigger than ever because you’ll be happier than ever. You’ll be happier because you feel whole for the first time. You’ll find yourself. Not because of your career, your relationship, or the gym. The endless hours you’re spending torturing yourself there are a waste. You’re working for a body you don’t want. And the reason you hated your middle name? It hinted at who you were the entire time: Angel Joy Flores, the woman you never believed you could be and the person you never knew needed to exist. I love you. Be kind to yourself.
Angel Joy Flores is a Seattle powerlifter, content creator, and streamer who you may recognize from Season 6 of Netflix’s Queer Eye.
Xavier Schipani
Gratitude for another sunset. For a beating heart. For an aching soul. For a tender wound. For a peaceful sleep. For a tearful smile. For another sunset. For another sunset.
The reassuring sound of the two black and brown (respectively) trannies (homophobically) so lovely you cannot possibly imagine it, who let you sleep in their drag room after the best show you have ever seen in your life.
Gratitude for years ahead of new and exciting tranny behavior, dirtier and more divine than before, to a fat ass and a mayonnaise (respectfully) diet.
Gratitude for new nieces, sisters, lovers, best friends, heartbreaks, lost loves, life partners, joy partners, grief partners, alive and in love together.
Gratitude for love, for you, for me, for grief, for the painful joyful gift of remembering, remembering we are who we are.
Gratitude for something that no one can take from us, for some truth–bigger, deeper, more expansive, true.
Gratitude for what has always been and always will be, for hot stupid tranny bitches.
Keep growing, keep becoming, keep finding, keep transitioning.
Mind, body, soul, become yourself.
I love you, bright and shining evening star.
Howie Echo-Hawk is the evening star, founder of Indigenize Productions and the Indigiqueer party, evil stepmother, aunt, best friend, sister, lover, and world’s best kisser.
Xavier Schipani
One day you’ll go to the cineplex at the mall and purchase two tickets to Love Lies Bleeding from a teenager who smells like weed and is half-heartedly counting cups at concessions. While buying tickets, you’ll feel the sting of something old and recognizable, but it will pass quickly, replaced by excitement. You’ll sit in the dark theater full of queers, gripping the hand of your lover, rapt, collectively holding a breath during sex scenes and spontaneously uttering an undiscovered-until-now sound when Kristen Stewart whispers to Katy O’Brian, “I want to stretch you.”
When the film ends you will be high on the power of queer sex and the notion that killing a man who has harmed the one you love is perfectly acceptable, because at some point in this life you learned that love and violence and sex all live in the same body, and that I would kill for you is just Queer for I love you with a passion deeper than any words can ever possibly express.
But as you leave the theater, you will feel that sting again. And you will think back to every moment in your entire life when you felt queer shame and the fear of your own queer body. And your palms will get sweaty and the sky will go dark. And suddenly, it’s 1995 in your teenage bedroom. Bong hits and too much incense to cover up the smell of weed. Peavey Stratocaster in your hands, mindlessly running scales. On the TV, hurled chairs, insults, “security!” The Jerry Springer Show. Between Brawlin’ Broads or Who’s the Daddy?—but not that kind of daddy—you see transgender people, but they won’t be called that. The word they will be called will try to be reclaimed but eventually abandoned, too heavy with violence and hate.
You’ll scan the TV for words to name your feelings. The Why do I feel so alone? The Nothing, growing inside you. You’ll find words that get close but never feel quite right. They will sound like lies in your mouth and you’ll fall silent, undefined. Unspeakable.
But soon, soon you’ll be 16, and you’ll get your gay eyebrow pierced on Broadway. You’ll skip class, rip bong hits and practice the guitar solos to “Black Hole Sun” and “Comfortably Numb,” and you’ll start to know yourself a little better. You’ll find the queer weirdos at the all-ages shows and you’ll become possessed by rock and roll. Your clothes will smell like smoke and sweat after a Sleater-Kinney concert at RKCNDY, and you will silently swear to yourself that you are never washing this hoodie and you will remember this night forever.
And that excitement, that is the feeling to cling to. Because over and over, the thing you’ll find is that trans is less of a word to be placed on a body and more of a feeling to dwell within. To be other. To have potential. To recreate yourself daily, despite this world’s protestation.
Clyde Petersen is a Seattle-based artist, filmmaker, former Stranger Genius Award winner and a musician who fronts the band Your Heart Breaks. This piece is part of a larger exhibition at J. Rinehart Gallery on display from June 29 to July 24.
The Stranger