Greg Bachar lives in Seattle. He teaches English at Seattle Central
Community College and has published work in Conduit, Indiana Review,
Southeast Review, Quick Fiction, 3rd Bed, and Pontoon: An Anthology of Washington State Poets. He is the author of two collections of poetry and prose, Three-Sided Coin and Sensual Eye.

THE TROUBLES

GREG BACHAR

P.O. BOX 23134
SEATTLE, WA
98102-0434
gregbachar@earthlink.net

"Like most of us, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times
a stupid hell-raiser. I was never idle long enough to do much thinking,
but I felt somehow that my instincts were right. I shared a vagrant
optimism that some of us were making real progress, that we had
taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make
it over the top."

"At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading
was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a
senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles--a restless
idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other--that
kept me going."

--Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary

NOVEMBER 27, 1999: PUTTING GREEN, PALM SPRINGS AIRPORT
Saturday afternoon found me on the putting range at the Palm Springs Airport, waiting to board my delayed flight to San Francisco, where I would get my connecting flight to Seattle. I told my parents to watch the news the following week, as it was possible there would be some interesting things going when the World Trade Organization conference came to town. I made several long sweet putts of twenty and thirty feet. A well-tanned older gentleman walked by, gave me the thumbs up sign and said: "Nice putt." I nodded in appreciation and picked my ball up out of the cup.
Finally the boarding call for my flight was announced and I walked out onto the tarmac towards the plane. There was something exhilarating about walking out onto the tarmac. I'm not sure exactly what it was that made doing so such a pleasing sensation. Perhaps it was the sudden vista of space that opened up around me as I walked. Perhaps it was the inspired sense of adventure at seeing my plane waiting for me, making me feel like an aviator and not merely a passenger. I was somewhat shocked to see that I was about to board a thirty seat turbo-prop. I had never flown on such a small plane. We took off and rose up over the desert, where I had humbling feelings about mortality and insignificance. The sky and desert seemed infinite and unfeeling. I was a small bundle of nerves, energy, and flesh in comparison, a microdot of confused feelings and contradictions. The size of the plane contributed significantly to these thoughts. I tried to distract myself by reading Hunter S. Thompson's The Rum Diary, but every so often The Fear crept in. Finally I told myself that if the plane was going to crash then I was, in effect, already dead, so there was nothing I could do about it. This calmed me down a bit. Three days away from Seattle had me wondering if I should move, if it was time to make a change. My whole life there seemed distant to me now, as if I had been gone for a long, long time.
The scenery below became quite epic. We passed over desert and mountains, within sight of the ocean, and above thick green forests blanketed with white fog and rain clouds moving in over Northern California. I was beginning to enjoy the flight and managed to put thoughts about mortality out of my head. As we made our final approach into San Francisco, the pilot leveled the plane out briefly, for ten or twenty seconds, just above the clouds. It was like flying above a ground made of clouds. Just as I was wishing that he would keep flying like this he nosed the plane down and there was nothing outside the window but pure white nothingness with no up and no down. The sun was setting in San Francisco. I had forty-five minutes to wait for my connecting flight. I walked around, looked at people, ate a piece of pumpkin pie left over from Thanksgiving dinner, and found a seat near my gate. I was tired of travelling now and couldn't care less about dying in a crash once I was in my seat on the plane. As we lifted into the sky I dove back into my book, which I was thoroughly enjoying. We were running late and I began to wonder how much of the Stereolab show I was going to see at The Showbox once I get to Seattle. As we began our final approach I looked down and saw my city spread out below. We flew first over Puget Sound towards Queen Anne. The sight of The Space Needle made me happy. We disappeared back into the clouds for a few minutes as we looped around and headed back towards the airport. I looked down and saw that we were above Capitol Hill where, from my apartment, I looked up to watch the planes coming in as they made their final approaches. Now I was in one of them.
"Broadway…" I thought, looking down on my main street. I pictured myself down there, walking around, living my life. It was so small. I was so far above it. I finished my novel on the bus into town from the airport, and checked my bag in the coat check at The Showbox. Stereolab was already playing. The club was packed. I felt like I was a new person and wanted to be anonymous in a new city, free of my Seattle identity created in part by me, in part by the perceptions of me by others. The show was boring to me almost immediately in comparison to my travels. I started to run into people I knew. Everyone was trapped in their Seattle identities. No one seemed to want to hear about my journey, that I had flown over the desert, that I had flown over the forest, that I had flown above the city just an hour earlier. I wanted to be making the music, not listening to it. I wanted action, pure action. I was watching, again, I was in the audience watching. The friends I ran into said that it was a wild show, but I didn't feel it, there was still travel adrenaline rushing through my veins. I ran into Ian. "People seem kind of out of it." I said, "I thought there would be more of a feeling of chaos in the air when I got back." "Tonight is just the calm before the storm." he said. "Wait until Tuesday." "It should be interesting." I said. I disappeared into the crowd, wanting to be alone or meet someone new who might immediately know where I was coming from without my having to say too much about it. Reading so much about rum in the novel made me crave it when I was on the plane. Now that I was at the club I drank it liberally and soon found myself feeling drunk and rambunctious. After the show I ran into ten or fifteen people I knew. It was too much to bear. I wanted to be anonymous. I did not know what direction I wanted to go, which group I was supposed to hang out with, what bar I was supposed to go to next. Seattle seemed dead to me then. Perhaps I was dead to it, but it felt like a sloppy evening, a good night to cut my losses and go home early.
I had my usual craving for wildness, though. It had been an early show so everyone was trying to figure out what to do. No one seemed to recognize that I was not my Seattle self then, that I was feeling like a new me, a new reality. They were forcing me to be "myself," whoever I was in their eyes. The perception of identity is so boring. It is like a prison that we create and have created for us. I am as much jailed as I am other people's jailer. I took a cab home, the best cab ride I ever had in Seattle, with a real party driver playing loud Cuban music, zig-zagging in and out of traffic, driving fast and making me feel like he cared about getting me where I wanted to go as fast as possible. I dropped my bag on the floor, fell on the bed, and went to sleep.