Heather is the love of my life!!
I met Heather when she was an office assistant at my first job in Seattle. She was 17, already in college, and a Norwegian Laplander who grew up in Alaska.
I was a little afraid of her because she was quiet and somewhat intimidating. Every day she looked like a completely different person too.
Creatively precise eye make up, a blue sequin star on her cheek, and shiny thick mahogany hair always up in imaginative twists, braids, buns (including Princess Leia), and more, all supported with chopsticks, pencils, you name it.
Her hair was waist length, and when she rearranged it she would let it down and twist and turn it into different creations in seconds. Just like Rastafarians can do with their dreads since they've had them since childhood.
One day she walked into work with eye make up expertly applied so she looked like a zombie, or a Dicken's character with malnutrition. I tried to sneak a glance a few times and each time she'd catch me, and for her own amusement she would turn her head to the side and look at me with a cold, lonely puppy face.
We gradually became friends. I was totally intrigued because not only was she 17 in college, with dyslexia, she was always writing plays, songs, poems, and short stories, and an actor in a popular Star Trek parody. It was called Star Drek and ultimately shut down after a law suit from the studio that owned the rights to the original.
Her family members were dying off one at a time of lung cancer. The final survivors were her mother and grandmother. She was living with her mother who eventually got lung cancer and died, and then moved in with her grandmother who died a year later of lung cancer. Then Heather got lung cancer, but miraculously it was benign and she's just fine. That's a destiny message.
Seven family members gone over the course of about 8 or so years. I always thought they must have lived in an asbestos igloo or something. Puzzling.
Heather was always upbeat, funny as hell, and smiled a lot with her joyous grin and deep brown Cleopatra-like eyes.
One day Heather and I realized we had adopted each other. For years we've loved each other deeply. We talk & email not all that frequently, and usually it's something like when she called at 3:20 a.m. while riding a cab home from work.
Sometime later Heather started a band and wrote non-egotistic autobiographical songs. Heather sang, and the band consisted of one sax, drums, and a keyboard player. Her vocals were haunting and technically on, and the odd assortment of instruments worked well.
Heather and her boyfriend, the drummer in the band, decided to bag it and move to New York City. They had about one or two months rent and knew one person.
That was over a year ago. Heather is currently freelance writing and paid under-the-table for bartending at a posh but real alky bar of primarily regulars. For a short while she started auditioning piano players to launch a lounge singer career, but too many applicants were cracker jacks so she abandoned the idea.
Heather's ultimate goal is to be a writer. Aside from her poems and plays, her real start was with Seattle's somewhat underground newspaper The Tablet. Her boyfriend Jeff is a barista, DJ, and solid fella.
I spoke to Heather last week and her current thing is designing costumes for a feature length indie horror film from a contact provided by one of her bars regulars
I met Heather when she was an office assistant at my first job in Seattle. She was 17, already in college, and a Norwegian Laplander who grew up in Alaska.
I was a little afraid of her because she was quiet and somewhat intimidating. Every day she looked like a completely different person too.
Creatively precise eye make up, a blue sequin star on her cheek, and shiny thick mahogany hair always up in imaginative twists, braids, buns (including Princess Leia), and more, all supported with chopsticks, pencils, you name it.
Her hair was waist length, and when she rearranged it she would let it down and twist and turn it into different creations in seconds. Just like Rastafarians can do with their dreads since they've had them since childhood.
One day she walked into work with eye make up expertly applied so she looked like a zombie, or a Dicken's character with malnutrition. I tried to sneak a glance a few times and each time she'd catch me, and for her own amusement she would turn her head to the side and look at me with a cold, lonely puppy face.
We gradually became friends. I was totally intrigued because not only was she 17 in college, with dyslexia, she was always writing plays, songs, poems, and short stories, and an actor in a popular Star Trek parody. It was called Star Drek and ultimately shut down after a law suit from the studio that owned the rights to the original.
Her family members were dying off one at a time of lung cancer. The final survivors were her mother and grandmother. She was living with her mother who eventually got lung cancer and died, and then moved in with her grandmother who died a year later of lung cancer. Then Heather got lung cancer, but miraculously it was benign and she's just fine. That's a destiny message.
Seven family members gone over the course of about 8 or so years. I always thought they must have lived in an asbestos igloo or something. Puzzling.
Heather was always upbeat, funny as hell, and smiled a lot with her joyous grin and deep brown Cleopatra-like eyes.
One day Heather and I realized we had adopted each other. For years we've loved each other deeply. We talk & email not all that frequently, and usually it's something like when she called at 3:20 a.m. while riding a cab home from work.
Sometime later Heather started a band and wrote non-egotistic autobiographical songs. Heather sang, and the band consisted of one sax, drums, and a keyboard player. Her vocals were haunting and technically on, and the odd assortment of instruments worked well.
Heather and her boyfriend, the drummer in the band, decided to bag it and move to New York City. They had about one or two months rent and knew one person.
That was over a year ago. Heather is currently freelance writing and paid under-the-table for bartending at a posh but real alky bar of primarily regulars. For a short while she started auditioning piano players to launch a lounge singer career, but too many applicants were cracker jacks so she abandoned the idea.
Heather's ultimate goal is to be a writer. Aside from her poems and plays, her real start was with Seattle's somewhat underground newspaper The Tablet. Her boyfriend Jeff is a barista, DJ, and solid fella.
I spoke to Heather last week and her current thing is designing costumes for a feature length indie horror film from a contact provided by one of her bars regulars