The day before I left the states I was standing on the foredeck of the Mukilteo ferry staring at the receding landscape and idly chatting about topics like Whatever happened to the Mukilteo Fairies?
Though honestly, I have no recollection of seeing them perform – my Olympia years were a blur of studying, working, testifying in assorted court cases, conducting semi-clandestine love affairs. By the time I finished grad school I was already working in government; it seems unlikely that I attended many queercore shows.
Reminiscing about those years, I asked Byron if he remembered the point where my youthful idealism had been stretched so thin by bad managers and cynical stakeholders that I developed a misguided plan to throw away the career implementing civil rights laws and join the ferry service.
He blinked in astonishment; apparently I failed to mention it to him (we weren’t especially close at the time).
Half of my family worked on the ferries, and I thought it sounded quite tempting to spend my days on the water. I only changed my mind when I realized my college degrees would make me a manager by default, and I had no intention of letting that happen ever again – let alone with the possibility of being senior to my uncles…. at age twenty-four.
Just then I turned and spied, ten feet away, the very same person I handed my resignation letter to twelve years ago!
He was not the bad manager – I had the director fired before I left, obviously.
I pointed out the coincidence to Byron and he laughed, then reminded me that nobody from Olympia would recognize me now. Why don’t you go say hello?
Baffled, I asked Why would I? What would we talk about? The fiscal mismanagement and ruinous controversies endemic to the agency?
Byron said You could catch up!
Um, no.