Almost a Hipster

The brick buildings on Battery Street

are covered with climbing vines,

and movies beam from the window of a corner bar,

then flicker outside on an external wall.

The images are monochrome,

somber foreign films with no volume,

just outlines that I can barely see.

I like to guess what the mouths are saying

as I wander through Belltown

in my plain black Chinese shoes and Dobbs hat,

carrying a six-pack of imported beer

and a new Tom Waits cassette.

I climb the fire escape to my apartment

because I owe rent money,

and I don’t want the manager to see me.

He waits for me in his office

like a sinister gargoyle.

No man ever worked so hard

for three hundred dollars, plus late fees.

A neighbor gave me her ancient hi-fi

and it still plays records, but I

have to shake it occasionally,

and I like to fall asleep

with the hi-fi playing softly

after shutting down the Two Bells Tavern

and wandering unsteadily home

to my apartment beside the Monorail tracks.

I work as a nanny

for a kosher Jewish family in Ravenna

and the pay is terrible,

so I decide to moonlight as a dancer

at Sugar’s, an establishment devoted

to men’s pleasure, located at the bottom

of Aurora Avenue, the colon of the city.

It is better than the Lusty Lady

where the women dance behind

one-way, bulletproof glass,

as if they were on television.

The other dancers say that I am too fat

and appear nervous, and that men

don’t like fat, nervous women.

They’re probably right,

and I quit four days later.

The men at the Two Bells are less concerned

about extra pounds and social dysfunction,

and this is fine with me, but the rent is due.

Meanwhile, the Frontier Room offers

its dusty pint glasses in the afternoons,

followed by healthier fare at the Free Mars Cafe

with its array of bones and hubcaps

nailed haphazardly to the fence outside.

There is a lurking certainty everywhere that

Something Big Will Soon Happen in Seattle,

but I fall so far behind on the rent

that I am forced to give up my apartment

and move to an abandoned school bus.

Eventually the developers rush into Belltown

and everything closes-the Dog House bar

with its Dick Dickerson organ singalongs,

a favorite of elderly men and women

who croon along to Andy Bennett tunes,

and Byblos restaurant, where the comical owner

rages like a thunderstorm

and then, just as abruptly, grows placid.

He smiles sweetly as he places the meal

of hummus and stuffed grape leaves

upon my table, then returns

to the back room and starts screaming again.

This is not my city any more.

Only the Two Bells remains, and it is full

of computer professionals who wear khakis

and boat shoes, and brag about stock portfolios

while they sample the soup of the day.

The pay phone on the nearby corner

where I once groped the young writer

from the defunct alternative paper

is long gone, and the intersection looks bare

even though cars are everywhere,

all of the drivers in search of their spoils

as they race in circles around each other

and grab for nuggets in the new Seattle gold rush.