marymoor leather crumble
I had a pretty eventful weekend, although Friday wasn't so much. Or I suppose it was, depending on how you look at it. I did take myself to see Colette that night, which I quite liked. Shobhit might have liked it a little had he seen it with me, and also made it past the first half hour or so, which I am certain would have bored him, so he probably wouldn't have. He had his own interests that night, a leather event at The Cuff and then some kind of play party afterward somewhere else. Those things must typically happen on Fridays. Anyway we both did our own thing on Friday and my thing was going to the movie -- the movie, in fact, that I had intended to see the previous Sunday and then just totally spaced when Shobhit and I went out to lunch (for free using coupons I had gotten at work) instead.
The screening was at 7:15 at Pacific Place downtown; I got home afterward and promptly wrote my review. Shobhit got home right around the time I was finishing that up, and we watched a couple short TV things before I was in bed shortly before midnight.
Saturday was the most eventful day of the weekend: first a bike ride with Mimi in Redmond; then I actually went with Shobhit to the Cuff for the "Seattle Leather Daddy & Daddy’s Boy” contest. I'll get to the latter momentarily; first I have to tell you about the bike ride with Mimi.
Shobhit had no need for the car, so, thankfully, instead of having to take my bike all the way out there on the bus, I was able to take off the front wheel of my bike and stow it in the trunk and drive.
I had never been to Marymoor Park before, and in fact, as I told Mimi, I was pretty sure I had never actually laid eyes on Sammamish Lake before, in spite of knowing how close it is. And guess what? Even though the park is actually on the north tip of that lake, I still haven't! I should have thought to tell Mimi I'd like to find the lake just so I can say I've actually seen it, but we spent a couple of hours leisurely riding around the park and never did think to find the lake itself.
The park is 640 acres, which means if it were in Seattle proper, it would be the city's biggest -- I didn't even realize that until looking it up until now. Seattle's largest park is 534 acres, and therefore Marymoor Park is 20% bigger. No wonder we never found the lake without specifically searching for it. I did see the Sammamish River, at least. And according to Wikipedia, Marymoor Park is the biggest in King County! The way they put it is it's "King County's largest, oldest, and most popular park".
Anyway, the first thing we did was go to the velodrome, a bike racing track that was a big part of our going there, as it's what made me choose Marymoor out of the options Mimi had given me over email when we were coordinating our plans. I had no idea any area park even had one of these, and even though Mimi said she was too scared to ride on it, I loved the idea of trying it.
There was something very odd about it, though. Mimi said that years and years ago, the track used to just exist with easy access whenever there were no official events going on; now there's a short railing surrounding it, the one entrance gate locked shut when we got there. But! There was a sandwich board sign someone had clearly set out there, with the message Please ask to use the velodrome. The other side said "VELODROME CLOSED" but that side was not facing anyone approaching. The thing is, the little building where people obviously work (or maybe volunteer) there during events was all closed up, and there was nobody around at all, aside from the odd park visitor walking by several yards away.
Here's how Mimi rationalized it: "It said to ask, and you asked me!" Indeed. She even offered to take pictures and even a brief video (see bottom of this very post) "of you breaking the rules." Fun!
I did about four laps. It was hard -- and, actually, a little scarier than I expected. This track is clearly designed for you to ride fast, and fast enough to lean into the curves at either end of the oval. I stayed pretty directly upright even rounding these curves, because I was not going quite fast enough not to topple over if I leaned too much. I did manage to get up higher on the curves with each lap, at least; those later laps did not get captured in the video as Mimi only took video of my first lap. I'm glad she did, though, as if you look closely you can see me from the other end waving back at her for a second. I was assuming she was taking still photos when I did that and had no idea she was recording video.
So, I wound up with a full photo set of 13 shots on Flickr for this bike ride outing, 5 of them of me at the velodrome. There's another shot of her taking her own picture of a small building that used to be her daughter's preschool. Paige, her daughter, is 50 now. I knew Mimi was over 70 but I was still shocked to think of her having a daughter who was 50. Mimi and I have gotten to be pretty good friends but I'm still not quite used to having a friend who is 30 years older than me. 20-25 years, sure. I guess it's not that huge a difference. Only a few of the friends I spend the most time with are actually my age or close to it. Even Ivan has a pretty significant age difference, just in the other direction -- he's 9 years younger, to the day in fact.
I had met up with Mimi at the park at noon, and we finished riding around the park at just before 3:00. I decided I'd like a hot beverage, though (the weather was very cooperative, for October: mostly sunny -- but still a bit chilly), and so she agreed to go with me to the Pete's Coffee and Tea right there in the shopping area anchored by the Redmond Whole Foods where we parked. We wound up sitting and chatting there for another full hour, much of it Mimi giving me a lot of her family's complicated yet very fascinating history. (Both her siblings have passed away; one was biological and the other was adopted but both much younger and genetically actually her nephew, thus having been adopted by his grandparents -- and that's the tip of the iceberg. Due to the similarities I shared some of the family structure of my uncle who also adopted two of his grandchildren.)
So that was about four hours spent with Mimi on Saturday. It was a lot of fun, and you can get a few more details in captions on the photos on Flickr.
The drive back to Seattle was about half an hour, and it was not long before Shobhit wanted to make it over to the 29th Annual "Seattle Leather Daddy & Daddy’s Boy” contest, at The Cuff, only two blocks away. Mind you, the leather scene is not my scene at all, and this was the first time I ever accompanied Shobhit to any such event. I was really only willing because a) Shobhit was willing to pay my cover charge ($15 as a non-member; $10 for Shobhit as a Seattle Men In Leather member); and b) I literally had nothing else to do that evening. So here's a list of interesting things I gleaned from that experience:
* 29 years in, I'm guessing participation has waned. Although the crowd was big enough generally to fill the venue, there was only one "contestant" for "Seattle Leather Daddy 2018" and only one "contestant" for "Daddy's Boy," which struck me as making it all kind of pointless, honestly. I guess there's something to be said for tradition alone.
* I did wonder if in years past the contestants were younger, and if the Leather Community is aging a bit more than the queer community overall. The "Leather Daddy" contestant was about as old as expected, easily in his fifties or maybe even early sixties -- although I must admit, even with a gray beard, I found him surprisingly sexy. More surprising was the "Daddy's Boy," a title which tends to connote someone skewing younger, who looked right around the same age.
* I also wonder if these events were much more overtly sexual, say, twenty years ago. I know it's odd to think of a "Seattle Men In Leather" event getting more conservative as it ages, but honestly, compared to the things I've seen over the years, this event was pretty tame. Sure, there was passing references to kink in conversation, and one of the hosts -- a woman -- talked about how she likes to get "the shit beat out of" her during play (flogs, she said, are not painful enough). But the contestants were asked to come onstage at one point in an outfit that "made them feel sexy," and the "Daddy" contestant came out in a leather jockstrap and harness; the other guy simply wore a flannel shirt over leather shorts. I suppose that could be a little much to someone not used to the sex positivity of the queer community, but to me? I found it all rather surprisingly vanilla.
* Okay, except maybe for the several "pups" in "pup gear" hanging out at this event. Those dog hoods they wear (often with a fake tail coming out the back of their belts -- better, I suppose, than the tails attached to dildos that I once saw "pups" jutting right out of their behinds from the bed of a pickup truck in the Pride Parade) tend to be made of leather, so a significant crossover with the broader leather community is hardly a surprise. It's clearly still an adjustment process for some, as one of the contestants was asked to say how he would respond to someone telling him people into "pup play" don't belong. The guy gave a pretty good response centered around the broader idea of inclusion. (For the record, I find this whole "pup play" phenomenon, which is very much a 2010s thing and did not exist at all in, say, the nineties -- at least not in any broadly known way in the LGBT community -- to be very weird. But that's just me; of course and as always, anything between consenting adults is fine by me and, unless I'm directly involved, none of my business anyway.)
* As is the case with The Cuff clientele overall, the crowd was pretty varied in age. I saw a few black people but it was otherwise very white in racial makeup, but that was hardly a surprise. Perhaps most notable is how about 95% of the people there had varying levels of average body types. There weren't really any gym bunny, hardbody types, and even only a few people who were even slim. This is clearly a community much more interested in shared interests in leather and kink, and body type is secondary, if relevant to most of these people at all. I like that about it.
I'm just no particular fan of leather, period. Honestly it surprises me Shobhit is at all, given how religious he is about never ingesting any kind of animal meat or meat byproduct -- but, for some reason, he's perfectly happy to wrap himself up in literal cow skin. Whatever, vegetarian Ed Gein!
We weren't there particularly long, about an hour. Shobhit really had to use the bathroom, and refused to use the one there. I've used the bathroom there and it's not terrible -- not exactly bright and shiny, but I've seen worse. Still, home was only two blocks away, and honestly, it's not like we were on pins and needles wondering who would win this thing.
We tried watching my Netflix discs but neither worked out. My Blu-Ray player has developed this ironic inability to play many actual blu-ray discs, and that was why, after many tries, we gave up on watching When Harry Met Sally. So then we tried the DVD disc I had of a Russian film called Stalker, and I can't remember why I even added it to my queue. We got 20 minutes and stopped it because we were both bored to death. We watched a couple episodes of streaming shows instead; I put the second episode of the latest season of HBO's Animals on, a show I love and which usually cracks me up, but this wasn't their strongest episode and was an unfortunate one for Shobhit to be introduced to it. He'd never been super into it regardless, I don't think. To his credit, he didn't complain about it.
. . . And that brings us to yesterday, when Shobhit and I went to Claudia and Dylan's for a Plum Crumble brunch, at 11:15. It was scheduled for 11:00 but I got a text maybe half an hour before that from Claudia asking to make it 11:15, because they were having "a couples conversation," whatever that meant. Shobhit thought maybe they were fighting, but that's not necessarily what it meant. We stopped at QFC on the way and picked up some sparkling wine and orange juice so we could have mimosas. This took us slightly longer than expected so we didn't actually get there until 11:20, but that was fine all around.
Claudia had extended this invitation to make up for bailing on me for a planned bike ride a few weeks ago. She and Dylan have a huge plum tree in their front yard, and that's what she made the crumble out of. I don't think plums are the best fruit, but I don't hate them; I had never had them in a crumble, so I was open to trying it. I must say I was very impressed -- it was delicious. Claudia had eve lowered the sugar called for by the recipe and increased the amount of oats, and these were both good calls on her part, especially considering we put whipped cream on top of it.
When Claudia found out we hadn't eaten anything beforehand, and she clearly assumed we would have, she seemed to feel bad and offered to make up something else. No need! The plum crumble alone worked perfectly as a brunch all on its own.
We spent a couple of hours in pretty deep conversation, probably a little more than half of it very political in nature, mostly between Shobhit and Claudia. As Claudia noted at one point, "It feels like we're arguing about things we agree on," which was largely true. I don't think Shobhit felt like it was an argument, and to be fair, it never got quite as heated as it could have. When we later got in the car, Shobhit said, "I don't think I went over the line?" -- he often asks me things like this after we've spent time in mixed company, because he's often not entirely sure, but actually does want to avoid crossing any lines. (Unless, perhaps, if it involves Gabriel, the same easily being said of Gabriel, which is why I think we're all three of us happiest without the two of them together.) I told him no, I didn't think he did either.
The rest of the conversation focused on movies (my turn!), and also a lot about Claudia's recent trip to England, and specifically her visit to the Harry Potter tour of the Warner Brothers studio in London. Shobhit was all about this, and, Claudia also being intricately well versed in the "Potterverse," the two of them were able to get into discussions about the story to an unusual level of minutiae. I was glad to have the conversation go there after discussion of recent political events which have been rather dispiriting, even by the typical standards of the President Fuckwit administration.
Claudia made the choice, during our conversation, to have a "Nicolas Cage-athon" to celebrate her birthday next month, as we discussed how much they love Nicholas Cage -- they even recently got a rather striking Nocholas Cage shower curtain. (The photo of it was the only thing I posted yesterday.) So now I know what I'll be doing on Saturday, November 17.
Once we left there, we did our biweekly grocery shopping, opting to skip PCC this time around since there was virtually nothing currently needed there. We went to Costco and then to MacPherson's Produce on Beacon Hill, and then back home. We killed time the rest of the afternoon and early evening by finally getting started on the Ken Burns documentary The Vietnam War, and we watched the first two rather lengthy episodes (they seem to average between 80 and 85 minutes, and there are 10 of them). Shobhit wanted to watch a third but I'd had enough for one day.
I will say this, though: in just two episodes the series has radically re-contextualized a lot of what I thought I knew about the Vietnam War, which I already knew wasn't a whole lot. I did not realize the French rule that had predated it lasted roughly a full century, or how oppressive the government of South Vietnam itself was -- and that was the side we were fighting for! Well, we fought on behalf of that government, really. I can't say we fought on behalf of their civilians at all. And from moment one, the show makes it clear how soldiers themselves had no knowledge of this context at all, and thought in very black and white terms: stop the spread of communism. That's all it meant, to way too many people, when it was so, so much more complicated than that. Those complications, of course, being the reason we did not win that war.
[posted 12:53 pm]