One time around a green lake I saw a grey goose.  Green Lake is a good-sized puddle somewhere in all that stuff north of Lake Union, not super far from Woodland Park Zoo.  It’s kinda touristy, which is funny because there’s not much going on there.  Just park.  Trails.  Goose shit.

I was there to visit a veterinarian near by.  I do not remember why I ended up at the lake a couple of times back then.  I had a ride; you’d think I’d just get in the car and go.  But there I was.  On the lake itself, there were the usual coots and mallards and canada geese.  Cackling geese?  I didn’t know back then.  No small amount of waterfowl also patrolled the grass around the lake, keeping it fertilized.  And in that grass, I found a small flock of grey geese that I did not recognize.

Small flock. Was it only two birds?  A few more?  Memory is fuzzy, but they were at least as big as canada geese, and resting – maybe even sleeping.  I got real close.  As I recall, they looked like canada geese that forgot to have any black on them.  The grey ran up onto the neck and head, the beak was orange.  There was some kind of white near the tail?

Based on the birds found with any regularity here, 98% chance they were greater white-fronted geese.  Which is normally high enough odds I’d just title the post accordingly, but I wanted the chance to call the post “grey goose,” after the vodka.

I don’t drink vodka, but I have intentionally put it in my mouth before, for dental reasons.  Also hydrogen peroxide, for the same reason – kill bacteria, kill pain, until the dentist can sort something out.  If you have dental pain and no opiates, it’s pretty good for that.  Doesn’t last long, but keep swiggin’, and if you’re a teetotaler like me, spittin’.  While this vodka wasn’t “the good stuff,” how different can it be?  And to me, it really was a similar experience to swigging with hydrogen peroxide – foamy astringence, taste barely different from water, but with bizarre chemical aspects.

If you’re an alcoholic-ass drunky like James Bondage, you come to like the sensory experience of consuming booze, right?  My drunkest friend was a box wine boy instead of a liquor man, so maybe not.  But grey goose always makes me think of this article I once read, on cool reckless youths in Seattle’s International District.  Asian street racers, living 3 fast 3 furiously.

There’s an image in the story (if i’m remembering this right) of a heavy-set young dude with a shaved head, wiping sweat with a hand towel and saying something like, “The goose straight had me.”  This was a reference to my titular vodka drink.  Careful how hard you party, goose man.  Especially since your other hobby is driving.

Street racers.  I calls ’em racey boys.  They became much more of a thing in recent years.  Since covid mostly, but even before that, there was a huge uptick in children stealing cars for joyriding around here.  In my last apartment complex, I heard some young child had hotwired a car and just drove it around the parking lot demolition derby style, fucking up people’s cars.

I attribute this in part to the Franchise & Furious, who so convinced people of the carefree fun of driving too fast that one of the stars bought the glamer and bought the big one.  Goodbye Paul Walker, but honestly, it’s what you deserve for doing a hundred in a forty zone, fuck’s sake.

They obviously don’t care about other people’s lives, but primarily they do not care about their own.  It may seem silly to call this a consequence of environmental and political despair, but it absofuckinlutely is.  I hear kids say that kind of shit sometimes, online.  They have no hope.  Good job, crapitalism.

So.  While I hope the street racers take themselves out in a ball of twisted metal before they take any innocent bystanders down with them, I can’t hate them too much.  Tiny modicum or respect and sympathy even.  I pour one out for you, racey boys.  Or at least spit one out, next time I have a toothache.

Back to Green Lake, on one of these goosey occasions.  I had to use the bathroom, and walked in to see a naked dude standing there, talking russki to somebody on his cellphone.  Now this bathroom also had a public shower I think, for anyone disease-loving enough to swim in the lake, so nudity had an excuse.  He wasn’t erect and wasn’t jackin’ it.  But he wasn’t wet from a shower, and he seemed like he was just waiting in full frontal view of the door for somebody to walk in and see him.

I smirked or cocked an eyebrow, like, alright man.  Might have even been slightly aroused.  For some reason this didn’t hit me as bad as the dude that sexually harassed me on the bus that one time.  But it occurred to me later, absentminded and distracted as I’d been, that he may have been hoping for kids to walk in on him – which is decidedly worse.

The world is a vampire.  Makes you wanna drank a goose and hop in a muscle car.  But no, we abide.  Eye on the big peaceful bird, dozing the day away.  That’s where you’ll find me.

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