At the grand opening of The Showbox in Seattle I met a beautiful red-haired person called Pony. She told me that I looked like Patti Smith, her favorite rockstar – and I thought she looked so nice that I wanted to kiss. She gave me her address in Bellingham, a few towns north of me. So naturally I wrote her a letter and she invited me to come visit. I hitch-hiked up I-5 as was my method then, but decided I didn’t like my shoes. Because of that I abandoned them on the side of the on-ramp at North 45th Street, arriving in Bellingham barefoot with a huge smile on my face. Pony Maurice Jean James Jr. greeted me warmly, then informed me that she lived in a militant lesbian household in which no “men” were allowed.
She then took me in the backyard under a big tree where we started kissing harmoniously. I thought she was very very pretty and quite angelic and so I was extremely pleased when she snuck me into her bedroom, showed me her Bob Dylan collection and proceeded to take me to the stars. The next morning she artfully snuck me out of her house (had she done this before??) and we went to a cute cafe in Bellingham for breakfast. I invited her to hitch-hike home with me to my mom’s house where I was living, and she came with me. My mom loved Pony and so did my sisters, so we stayed in my basement room for about a year before moving to Apartment F on Seattle’s Capital Hill. I introduced her to my circle of friends who also loved her, and soon we had an artistic, vibrant social life. A small group of us regularly posed together for photos at Sea-Tac airport (try doing that now, boy!) called ourselves ISOLATION, and we eventually started our band Mental Mannequin with Ben and Barbie Ireland, Tor Midtskog, Upchuck and Mike Davidson. Here’s some images from those time area coordinate system clock calendar life events:
