Lesbian Dancing After The Show: An Improviser's Non Improvised Life

Chapter Three: The Seattle Lesbian Samba - Heroin Love With Shared Bathrooms

We arrived in Seattle at my sister's home in Auburn and she found me a job. Hans was squirrelling away money and driving long distances to his job. Trying to find us a place to live in the city.

He came home and informed me he had found a place for us to live. He (like the Geese Company Apartment) really did not wish to live with my sister anymore.

He takes me to look at our new digs on Capitol Hill in Seattle. It used to be a whore house for loggers and it was up the street from The Capitol Hill Seattle Police department.

We get there and I'm greeted by the couple who ran this place. Both of these people are missing a person's set of teeth combined. I walk through the corridor off the place and it's a touch run down. Not out of control run down, but just enough to realize that the actual owners really didn't care much about structural upkeep.

They regale me of talks of former heroin addiction. This seemed to be a huge thing in Seattle in the 90's: There was a lot of heroin being used and Starbucks Coffee to heighten the effects. The woman said to me: We got this gig via our program.

Well. What do you know? Do enough smack in Seattle and you too can run an apartment complex? How do I sign up to be former heroin addict?

They take us to the apartment Hans had rented. It is a studio with nice windows and a decent kitchen. It's a nice little place, I think to myself as I look for the bathroom. Oh...it's in this door in the kitchen...no...that's that pantry. AH. It's this door in the main...no...that's a closet...

I stand in the middle of this place, dumbfounded. I said to our missing teeth managers: So, where is the bathroom? They informed me that there are shared bathroom and shower facilities on each floor.

...I moved from Chicago for this. This is my new adventure.

I got in the car with Hans and said: What the hell were you thinking?! He said he would rather live there than in Auburn, Washington by the Piggly Wiggly up the street from the guy with the American Flag, who it turned out was the man who killed a bunch of black people by bombing the Washington NAACP Office. He would rather live on Capitol Hill in Seattle. Without a bathroom, in a place run by former smack heads.

We would save up money until we got settled, then move into a better place.

About a year later we had moved three times in that complex, finally getting the lone apartment that had its own bathroom. We had become friends with our toothless managers as they were actually very kind, sweet people regaling us of their adventures of Heroin and Love. They let us shoot comedy sketches in that apartment and basement. Our newly found bedroom with a bathroom had a basement sound studio directly below it, created by another tenant we befriended. He played his drums from Noon to about two-ish. In exchange for the bouncing during that time, he let us record comedy sketches.

By then we were settled into Seattle. We had started The Underground Theatre Conspiracy in Seattle and were doing shows on Capitol Hill by the REI. We got amazing reviews, mostly due to the fact that Hans and I billed our company as "From Chicago." It seemed then, Seattle was not very supportive of its local theatre scene unless it was very large, subscription-based and had actors from other places touring.

Then, in order to make it in Seattle Theatre, you had to live in Chicago.

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