epiphany

Hide and Seek

Seattle is a city that has forgotten how to blush. It glorifies its shame and publicly claims praise for its illness. It is a city whose life reminds me of the ruins of Niederdodeleben (forgive any misspelling--it's been several years since I've seen that town name written down). I first visited Niederdodeleben, on the outskirts of Magdeburg, in the summer of 1998. I recall a drab place still very much evidencing the oppressions of its Communist past. I recall the ruins of one building in particular. Perhaps it hadn't been ruined by the War or Communism. Perhaps it had simply fallen into disrepair over the years like so many barns in Wisconsin. No one took care of it, and in ignoring it, they damned it to destruction.

The people and life of Seattle are much like those ruins: ignorant of the world outside and ignored by the world beyond. Only occasionally does it make the national spotlight. Less often is that for something truly good. It sits on its own edge of the world, the Amsterdam of America, playing by its own rules and reviling any attempt at self control.

This is a broken city, a city that has lost its sense and lost its way. Possibly the most homosexual city in America (I'm guessing that we would give San Francisco a run for its money, although Seattle is somewhat less notorious in that arena since our popularity comes from coffee, software and indie rock), it is also among the youngest and most childless demographically. Life here plays off like an episode of Friends, minus the sexual restraint and the "beautiful people." Unlike television, in Seattle, the corruption shows.

Case in point: Capitol Hill. From my understanding, Capitol Hill was once one of Seattle's exclusively rich neighborhoods, full of grand old houses and quiet streets. Now, Capitol Hill is one of the most disturbingly dirty areas in the northern half of the city. It is also a leader among the most overtly gay and overtly drug-associated areas. To ride a bus through Capital Hill at night is to ride through Hell, the Asian restaurants thrown in to remind us this is still earth and home to transient decency. It is a place void of restraint, void of abiding love and void of true hope. The neon facade hides an emotional black hole.

Those who live there would probably decry me as Fascist (an easy call where anarchy is normative) for describing their beloved quarter of the Inferno thus, but sometimes it takes an outsider to see and feel the truth.

But it is not a city or a neighborhood that is the problem. People are the source of the city's illness.

I come from a very small, very religious town in Wisconsin. It has its problems, probably more along the lines of hiding its sin, but it puts on a good face and remains a generally quiet town. Seattle, on the other hand, appears to be ignorant of the concept of hiding. What the people do here, they do for all to see. And heaven help those who would prevent them.

But truly, it is a sad town, eating itself from the inside while praising its efforts at equality. It is a fat suit causing a Holocaust victim to believe he is well-fed and happy. It is, in truth, where we all live, whether or not we hide it.

My thoughts today are built around several transvestites I've seen near my work. (The outfits and makeup were very skillful, but if those weren't men dressed as women, they were the ugliest and manliest women I have ever seen.) A transvestite is not only an image of this city but also of each of us.

One I remember quite plainly. He had long, shimmering blonde hair down to his waist, a form-fitting short dress over his stocky build, stiletto heels, and the droopy--though waxed--jowls of a fifty- or sixty-year-old man. I imagine that he believed himself quite happy, able to live somewhere where he could finally be his "true self" without external reprimands or judgment. Seattle would be proud of him and his individual expression. Yet I found him remarkably sad.

He may, in truth, believe that he was meant to be a woman. He may find great comfort in believing so. If so, he is finding comfort in believing a lie. No matter his internal image of himself and what would make him happy (he didn't look particularly happy), he is living a lie. No matter what he may believe about himself, nature and reality itself tell us that he is no woman. Despite the clothing and makeup, he still looks like a man. He walks and moves like a man. He is built like a man. Unless he has undergone the ultimate act in self-deception, he undoubtedly has male organs and lacks specifically female ones. Unfortunately, he is living in a society that promotes and encourages his lie. His society and culture, the greater culture of this Seattle (rapidly becoming the greater culture of our nation), so values expression of the internal that it will more readily deny visual and physical reality in favor of "beautiful" error. This man has become a symbol of the city, a symbol of our society, by openly displaying "who he really is inside" or "who he always knew he was meant to be." Sad is the society that denies plain truth in preference to gross fantasy. Sadder still those who abuse their fellow man (or woman) by encouraging him to live a false life rather than deal with his problems. The adults have gone off to play pretend and have left their own children to deal with the ruins of reality.

We would not encourage a drunk to continue in his life-destroying drunkenness. We have rehabilitation centers for drug addicts. Yet when someone obviously does not understand or accept who he--in a very physical way--is, we allow him to destroy himself through lying, and we lie to ourselves that he is happier.

Happiness is not found in fantasy. I am a great lover of imagination and fantastic stories, but fantasy is meant for entertainment and provides only temporary relief and pause from the struggles of daily life. It is meant to refresh and encourage, not to strengthen for life. As fantasy is temporary and is only meant to be temporary, to continue in it is to do great damage to oneself. To continue in fantasy is to construct such barriers around oneself that one loses understanding of the basics of reality, and to lose understanding of reality is to lose one's mind.

I live in a city run on fantasy, a city so confused it does not know good from bad or its right hand from its left. I wonder how often my own life reflects the city, how often each of us plays the transvestite rather than face our past and present, face the reality of who we actually are. How often do we let the transvestite pass without a word, preferring to actively ignore a lie, preferring to allow someone a facade of happiness rather than break our own fantasy that the world around us does not affect who we are and who we and our cities will become.

Posted by jonhanneman at February 13, 2005 10:34 AM