I don’t remember precisely when I met Phil. It was not love at first sight and there was no amazing meet cute for us. But, while the exact moment has been lost to history, I do know that it was 2011 during the Occupy protests and that it undoubtedly occurred at the back of a police wagon. In those weird Occupy days, he could most often be found filming the police. I, for my part, could most often be found running around like a chicken with its head cut off and sometimes helping those who had been arrested or suspected that they might be arrested during a protest.
But we were not an Occupy love story. We were an Occupy friendship. Which honestly, given the rapidity and depth of my other friendships formed in that particular pressure cooker feels like a bit of an overstatement. We were perhaps at best an Occupy productive-colleagues-and-acquaintance-ship? Both members of the Occupy Seattle Legal Working Group, we got to know each other through meetings and calls and what now seems like an absurd number of emails. Years later, he recounted to me a particular meeting held after hours in a conference room of what was then The Defender Association where I seemed competent and in charge as the moment he decided that I was a person he wanted to know. For my part, it was running into him on the evening of May Day 2012 after a day of smashy-smashy protests downtown, the two of us standing amidst the boarded up windows that I recall as a turning point. I don’t even remember what we talked about, to be honest, but I know it was one of those moments of tiny truth telling — like saying to someone earnestly, “I am scared” — a small intimacy. We had one of those exchanges, a naming of loneliness or isolation perhaps — why can’t I remember? — and in it, he became my friend. My friend, I should note, that I could not actually remember the last name of, resulting in an incorrect entry in my phone, which stands to this day.
Those years, fresh out of law school, deeply immersed in activism, surrounded by friends and acquaintances and activity, have an almost dreamy quality to them now, not even a full decade later. Was that really my life? Did I really do those things? I wore funny wigs and tutus and danced. I wheat pasted in the middle of the night on a whim. I spent hours sitting on the co-op coffee shop counter, bullshitting and flirting. I merged my heart in friendships with such tender openness that those relationships became family that persists to this day, that will persist, I am confident, into perpetuity, unendable and immutable. I lived on cigarettes and Diet Mountain Dew and avocados. I didn’t feel young and free at the time. But I was so young and free. It’s funny how we miss it when it is happening.
In those young and free years, those funny years of late nights and the kind of deep, immersive friendships that render romantic pairing nearly obsolete, those years of unencumbrance, I thought rarely of Phil. The truth is, he would have slid quietly from my life but not for his perseverance. He was tenacious, popping up every 6 months or so to set a coffee date with me and a fellow mutual friend, and then, when as seemed to always be the case, plans fell apart or were cancelled at the last minute, when life got in way as it so often does, he would continue to push forward, rescheduling, trudging on through delayed email responses and flakiness of the worst sort.
Eventually, my job moved downtown and our offices were a short walk away and our once infrequent get-togethers came to be a slightly more regular occurrence, with lunch now being an easy and convenient option. And so, because of those lunches, when he split from his longtime partner, I was aware. I was also aware when, not too long after, he seemed to develop an increased interest in schlepping all the way to Tacoma to do little more than lounge around on my porch. And then when my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew came to visit and he was keen to meet them and hang out, I stopped being aware and started praying to the gods of “please don’t let this be a thing.”
[Spoiler: It was a thing.]
The night I decided to give Phil a chance, he had volunteered to come with me to a memorial for a beloved community member who had been killed. Afterwards, when I realized that I could not actualize our plans to go sit in at the sun at Hempfest because I had committed to going to a Queer Rock Camp performance in Olympia — a cool hour+ drive away — he volunteered to come with. When I informed him that he could come, but that he would need to drive separately because afterwards I would be going to Tacoma and he would be going to Seattle, he assented without hesitation. And then, when we arrived at the show and he discovered that a Queer Rock Camp show is kids who learned to play instruments that week perform with the bands they *also* formed that week, he just said, “Great!”. After the show and after the goodbyes after the show, and after the goodbyes after the goodbyes after the show, we headed back to the cars. Cars, plural, because I MADE THE MAN TAKE HIS OWN CAR. We sat on the curb and talked, about nothing in particular that I can recall, but I didn’t want to leave right away and I was happy there, on the curb talking to this kind, curly-haired man who so easily defaulted to “Yes!”. He smiled easily and laughed easily and said yes easily and as I looked at him, so handsome in the evening light, I thought, “This is a very good human.” And in that moment, I opened my heart and my mind to the possibility that this was indeed a thing.
Five years later, he still smiles and laughs easily, still leads with “yes”, still is so kind, and still makes me want to sit on the curb with him and talk (even though I have since learned that he is MUCH fussier than me and actually hates sitting on curbs because dirt and spit and urine oh my).
The Belly Fish 