A Woman Writing by Mary Lou Sanelli

Author:Mary Lou Sanelli
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pleasure Boat Studio
Published: 2015-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

Have you heard of the cyclists on the Burke Gilman Bicycle Trail who yell like staff sergeants, “ON YOUR LEFT!” as if I don’t know that’s the side they are going to take me on, seeing as how I’m already riding on the grass in fear, pedaling away from those who ride like the wind instead of like a woman (me) peddling along on a beach cruiser at a genteel pace that allows her to peer into the windows of all the lovely homes and imagine herself eating canapés in a living room nice as theirs?

Well, I don’t care for those cyclists much.

The likely explanation is that they are Microsoft worker bees, while I’m the freelance butterfly! I have flexibility. I have color. I move from flower to flower. While they, poor babies, have to beeline from A to B or get fired.

The next idea put an end to all that bicycle nonsense, shoved its way in and yelled, “DRUG RING BUSTED!” It was the headline in the Seattle Times a few weeks back, a story about a Honduran drug ring busted in Belltown. I knew the story was important to me but for the first time I understood why. It made me remember my last editor at said newspaper, now retired, Lee Moriwaki, who used to like my stories, compliment my stories, once in awhile even publish my stories, a gesture that always made my day. “Why not write more about the street violence downtown?” Mr. Moriwaki asked me once.

Like I know about it?

I was too embarrassed to say I knew more about the boutiques on First Avenue, the Happy Hours on Second. But the brawls and gunfights? Not my world, really.

Though on any given Saturday when the bars empty out, I can hear the sidewalk free-for-alls like everyone else in my neighborhood, during which time I usually pick up my book and read a few chapters. No part of me, not a single cell, was willing to go down there to chat up the drunks, bullies, and dealers just to get a better story for Mr. Moriwaki who’d pay me, what, a hundred bucks? Two hundred if I embarrass him into it.

Second, the headline made me remember meeting one of the Honduran crack dealers arrested in the sweep. I talked to him once, shook his hand. And as soon as I saw him in handcuffs in the newspaper, I recognized him as the man, a boy really, who stood outside the Belltown Dance Studio, peering in as if his life depended on it.

I think it did. It was a look no dancer could miss.

Let me establish why I shook his hand before you run off thinking I contribute to one of our nation’s few growing industries. The dance studio amplifies Latin music onto the sidewalk to attract students. And because these dealers, these dirt-poor boys who are rounded up in their villages, persuaded to deal as if it will make them money, who won’t inform on their bosses

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