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1. Underneath the Aurora Bridge.
In that low, earth-smelling tunnel where pedestrians walk under the highway. It looks dangerous and desolate at night with the small lightbulbs and just a sort of damp dirty slope up from the walkway to the concrete walls of the bridge and that's where they write all the grafitti. It's mostly about fucking little girls, maybe also some boys. They leave phone numbers or these weird, paranoid directions of where you can find them. Like some little girl wants to go to a lot of trouble to get fucked by some asshole who hangs out under a bridge. The main "advertiser" is a guy called The Bear From Delaware, who says he likes his pussy extremely young and tender and you can get hold of him about it. He's one yucky guy. I stand there and look at the painted grafitti and wonder what he expects. I saw some girls reading the notes one time, really little grade school girls on bicycles. They were leaning forward reading all the old messages about guys who'd like to fuck them or do gross stuff to them. When they saw me, they started giggling and gave me the eye all the way I was walking past them. What do they want, anyway? They're little, little girls. I went back later to see if they'd written anything on the wall or left anything behind them, but they'd gone without a trace. Other girls come by sometimes too. The whole thing is pretty strange. This is the South end of the bridge, not the end where the Troll is.
2. In the Arboretum.
Just south of the path that leads to the swimming holes where there's sometimes a rope swing and people get naked in the summer and jump off those ramps they built to go nowhere. Back in the blackberries where nobody ever goes, where the ramps get too low to walk under, there's like a special message place where people write on the white cement with magic marker. It's a shit-eaters reader board. I mean real shit-eaters. It says stuff like, "I need a filth-filling". And somebody drew a picture of a butt crapping into a guy's mouth. And the phone numbers. You never see anybody at this place, ever. It must be the only place that the shit-head community really exists. It gives me the creeps every time.
3. Washroom in the Columbia Center.
The one with the view, if you know what I mean. It's for young boys and older men but there's nothing in writing. You just go there and piss and men walk up up and look you over, maybe some guy touches you. The way the mirrors and urinals and stalls are set, it's like the room was made just for that purpose. There's even a power blower on the wall that just showers you with warm air, like it washes you with a hot wind. The urinals flush by themselves, automatically. About every fifteen minutes, but more frequently during the lunch hour and for an hour and a half after five PM.
4. The Vacant Lot.
Two blocks from my house. It runs down into the the Ravenna Park ravine. Near the bridge where people swung on the rope until the cops cut it down after that girl swung upside down and hit the ground and scalped herself. I don't even want to tell you what the place is for, actually. What goes on there. It's the worst place of them all, really. It's mostly young Hispanic men because they carve their last names on that old cedar fence afterwards. It just freaks me out to think things like that happen. Those guys are like primitive and brutal and uncivilized is why. I'm not talking about sex, really. I don't want to talk about it at all. I heard it's really a religion.
5. The Houseboat.
On the east shore of Lake Union down by the NOAA boats. It's a junior high school teacher with this beautiful boat built by a crazy hippie artist. You get aboard on this little plank bridge that swings on a rope. It's all kids, just boys and girls, younger than I ever was with this stuff. A lot of drugs. Stuff like angel dust. All the sex stuff. Blood is a big feature. Not death or sex kind of blood, the teacher is a Satanist. All the kids know where the place is, but not everyone goes there. The ones that do, there's polaroids of them on the cork wall by the kitchen. Hundred of kids staring out of that wall. No adults know anything about it. Or maybe they do. Doesn't everybody who idolizes that old seafood fuck know about him being a chicken hawk? And did anybody ever mention it? They all just slavered over him and bought his sweet old fart commercials when everybody knew he was a mean, cold-blooded son of a bitch who abused very young boys. I can't figure out whether people don't know where things are at or just want to pretend they don't. None of this stuff's a secret. It's written right on the wall.
