Sheltered.

I took a field trip to Seattle today. It was a special kind of field trip: it was like my first time on a big kid bike with training wheels. Although, it did feel like my training wheels were being put on a racing bike, or something, though, so that when I lose the training wheels I might have no clue how to keep the freaking thing upright. But at least it resembles a bike.

My interview today was with a couple and a friend of theirs. One of the couple and the friend are graduates of Bear Creek, and so I've been looking forward to it. Except, the couple is a gay couple, and the friend is a gay friend. I've been looking forward to this since I learned of their existence.

I drove the car into Seattle today, because I'm finally taking my freaking driving test tomorrow and we figured it'd be best for me to practice. Something in my life feels like the tremor before an earthquake. It sounds utterly pathetic, but I've spent so much time thinking about the concept of choice-making and I have put so much intentionality into creating a worldview for myself that I feel is good and right and fitting that finally beginning to make actual choices in the actual world feels daring and powerful and so free. Something as simple as changing lanes on the I5 coming into Seattle, for the first time, seems deeply symbolic in this super sappy way that makes me want to break out in a musical number about choosing my own path. And I mean. Changing lanes feels like power to me. What the hell will become of me when I'm able to drive my own car?

A couple days ago, a friend of a friend of mine came out to me. He lives in Seattle, and was talking to me about his life, and mentioned Capitol Hill. I'd heard of Capitol Hill before, but it didn't teach me much to do research about its history online, so I didn't know very much about it at all. But I started wondering to myself where it is in proportion to the other things I know about in Seattle. Today, driving around in Seattle, I very nearly asked aloud in the car where Capitol Hill was in relation to where we were, because it looked like the more extreme version of what I'd imagined. But I didn't, because I figured it would be an uncomfortable question.

We were on Capitol Hill. I pulled into a side street and got out so that my mom could get into the driver's seat, and my dad walked with me to ensure that I got to where I needed to be. I cannot begin to describe exactly how out of place I felt. It really was like I was taking a field trip. I don't think I have any idea exactly how sheltered I am. This will sound terrible, but as much as I love to spend hours listening to African American people speak on YouTube because I think it's interesting to study the linguistic patterns of that dialect, I have known a total of about ten black people in my life. And half are actual Africans that emigrated to America within the past two decades. But there were real people on that street that were actually black and actually urban exactly like I've always learned, like I've seen in videos and read on websites. And there were real gay couples holding hands. And there were real hipsters, and they looked exactly like the archetypes I've studied so earnestly. It was like the first time I decided I was going to go shopping for clothes in a store other than Fred Meyer. I couldn't take it all in. I felt like a baby staring into a stranger's face... or maybe a kaleidoscope.

I walked in and saw them sitting at a table there, and my dad left. It struck me in that moment, when I looked back at my dad to tell him they were here, that there was probably no place in the world my dad would fit less than Capitol Hill. It just seemed so out-of-place. It felt out-of-place for me to be there myself. But something about it was exhilarating. And I immediately felt a thirst to see more. To talk to people and hear their stories and to do something crazy like young people are supposed to. I've really never done anything crazy before.

One of them bought me a drink, and we sat and talked for a little bit, and then we decided it'd be better to film outside, and then that it'd be better to film on the top of one of their apartment buildings. My first instinct was to ask if we were allowed to go. Just like the other day, when I was at a non-Christian friend's house, we were making a music playlist and I actually asked her if it'd be safe to put Pink's Fucking Perfect on it. I shock myself sometimes.

Turns out, we were allowed to go. Also, turns out there are actually places in this world that you can go to rent your very own space, when you're over 18, and then you work, and buy stuff with the money you earn, and then live all on your own, and fill the space with anything in the world you can find, and you can eat what you want when you want and go where you want whenever you can ... I really never realized that in my gut until today. Once again, it shocks me exactly how naïve I am.

So we sat on the roof with a gigantic city all around us, and the sun setting, and we started the interview. There is a completely different culture about them. Two of them might have been Bear Creek graduates, but it is very evident that they - particularly the couple, who have been out for much longer - have all changed very much in the past decade. It's difficult to describe something that's so experiential: the culture is open, and that's the only good word I can find to describe it. It's that feeling you'd get if you cranked down all the windows while going 20 miles over the speed limit on a curvy road when the sun's shining and it's warm. There is an honesty about the atmosphere, and which I found confirmation of in all three of them, as well as in the gay pastor I interviewed last week, that is infectious. Itchy like your legs get when you run in the cold and the blood runs through them faster than normal. Like you just want to run some more. Do these metaphors even make sense?

I have found while interviewing these people that whenever I ask questions about how they know that being gay is right, or what it means to be gay, or what's uniquely good about gay culture, or why straight people should care, or why community between straight and gay people is a good idea, they can't find solid ground for a little while. You can tell they know the answers to all these questions, because they sit there looking like they're thinking really hard and are about to say it for like half a minute every time. It's the same expression you get when you ask someone to define the color blue or the taste of salt. No one ever gets asked those questions because they're assumed to be self-evident. And having put myself in this place, between people that regard those things as self-evident and people that can't possibly understand how they could be true, I realize that very few things are actually self-evident, in the objective sense. The nuance makes it impossible to understand revelation so simply.

It still feels strange that it's over, having half-consciously anticipated it for so long. I feel like there's some kind of mental veil has lifted, and I can see past the milestone into some kind of vaguely-possible future. It feels much more secure.

With every person I talk to, I come out with a word that describes the framework established during interview. It ranges from "education" to "self-awareness" to "relationships" to "curiosity" to "humility" to "solid Biblical interpretation." Those things are mostly ways to have good conversations once they're started. But tonight I came out with "willingness" highlighted. So much of what makes effective communication is the willingness to have the conversation and the awareness that it's important. This resonates so deeply with my experience. Conversation about these things can feel distant, sometimes. I would say that my willingness has bee through the roof for much too long; maybe that's what's causing the rumble that makes me feel like an earthquake's coming. Very soon, something is going to explode that shelteredness to pieces, and maybe I won't ever bother picking the shards back up again.