Historic preservation in Seattle begins with community. The Seattle Histories storytelling project highlights the places, people, and events that have shaped the history of Seattle’s communities. These stories, told by community members, emphasize experiences and narratives that may have been overlooked or misrepresented in our city.
1. There’s a lot I don’t know
I was born in Seattle just as the first signs of HIV were surfacing here. I could say I never knew a world without AIDS, but at the same time, I also don’t know exactly when or how I first learned about it. I don’t remember ever hearing of it as GRID. I don’t know if my parents were thinking about it as early as that or not. As a child, the fatal threat of it felt personal but I didn’t know why. I don’t know why I thought it was coming for me, for my people specifically, my family looked blandly safe enough, more or less. We were the first generation to never know a before time, and maybe every kid thought it was coming for them for a while. I don’t know what I mean by my people, just a creeping vulnerability. I don’t know if my straight younger sisters feel this way. Some kind of lonely childish fatalism in my chest, or warily looking over my shoulder, grown-up expressions in my little kid scowl. I’m not sure how early I learned about the connection with the gay community. I am sure I knew the word AIDS long before I knew what gay or queer meant, or had any evidence that those words applied to me.
2. Historically
My parents always said our neighborhood was historically where gay people lived, but little kid me doesn’t really see it. I’m mildly suspicious, wonder how my parents think they know this. We have gay family friends but most of them live out of town. Our block seems like lots of Catholic families maybe, there’s something different about us but maybe it’s just we stay away from any church, or haven’t been here as long. It’s not till later that I see it, the yearly Pride Parade shouting happily along Broadway and bringing every summer into the park, Red & Black Books Collective on the corner by City People’s and the hardware store, Rainbow Grocery across the street, Toys in Babeland down the hill. It’s possible I noticed some more as they were disappearing.
3. Volunteer Park
Early on I feel different than the neighborhood girls I sometimes play with, I notice it most when my baby sister is born, they express a delight in her baby-ness that I don’t feel, never occurred to me to feel. Other than playing by myself or drawing, the absolute best thing in the world is time with my best friend Evan. We make up elaborate games, climb the metal dome structure at the Volunteer Park playground or splash around in the wading pool, proudly swimming with our hands pressed to the rocky concrete bottom. The park is full of memories and surprises and bigger worlds and things to climb on, the camel statues and the cedar trees like secret tents where you watch out for used needles though and also what might be a giant bus tire perched above the reservoir, we’re also pretty sure it’s a real dinosaur bone in the playground. At some point when I’m old enough to read, a spray-painted message appears on the sidewalk near the densely giant rhododendrons. A tidy small square filled with A QUEER WAS BASHED HERE / QUEERS BASH BACK, stenciled at intervals all over the park. My mom explains hesitantly that queer is a mean word for gay people, and it’s complicated, something about reclaiming language. Privately I wonder if they were bashed every single place the message shows up. I wonder if they’re ok, if they’re alive. I wonder if queers have to be fighting all the time, if the word holds violence inside itself. I wonder why I feel like something I know nothing about is part of me, I’m just a kid. To be honest, even now in middle age I have this pinched-up feeling it didn’t say bashed, that it was saying murder, but I can’t find anything about it when I search.