Five-ish years as Shelly’s Leg
Oh god, I never quite know how to introduce myself.
As is chronic to infrastructure, my identity sits at a crossroads. Or, at least, crossroads are the default for our self-definition, the traditionalist’s approach: “I’m the red pin on the map;” “I’m the intersection of 114 and Broadway;” “I’m the first house off the exit.”
But when I want to speak of myself, I become so tangled in pipes and renovations and love-making and drums and bedtime stories and wheelchairs and earthquakes and divorce papers that I’m not quite sure how to boil all of that down into coordinates for small talk.
* * *
I have collected many names, been referenced many ways. I’ve been a rock club, a hotel. Most recently, a residential building. If I’m explaining to someone unfamiliar with the area, I might cave and say I’m close to the word “Seattle” on Google Maps. If I’m talking to a local, they might recall the Alaskan Way Viaduct: the double-decker highway that sat atop me like a garnish, or a pest, depending on whom you ask.
At parties, when someone asks me what I do for a living—and someone is bound to ask—sometimes I lie. Or sometimes I simply tell a truth from a different time. Or I answer a different question entirely. I think a lot of us do that, though not always on purpose: it’s hard to keep track. It’s hard to think it matters.
* * *
As a gay disco in the ‘70s, I was nearly called the Meat Grinder. That got vetoed by the planning board, so instead I was named after a woman’s lost leg, blown off by a confetti cannon.1
When I play Two Truths and a Lie, I always add in that little fact. To charm disbelieving strangers further, I then tell them about the Great White Swallow that almost became my mascot.2
The planning board shot that one down, too. There are many joy-less souls out there. An unfortunate number of them join planning boards.
Anyways: for those five-ish years as Shelly’s Leg, my soul was full of neon lights and palm trees. I was a fever dream; I was an uproar; I was queer bodies in rhythm and delight. I wasn’t perfect, but, god, was I full of life.
I’m in a support group of sorts. Except it’s not really that, it’s more just anyone who wants to get together. Anyone who doesn’t want to think through things all alone.
A graveyard was recently turned into a parking lot. This session she talked about mourning the forgotten beneath her, about feeling wrong mourning when she’s the one burying them even deeper.
A water tank goes next, shares how she’s still filled with poisons, how everyone knows, but those who could change it simply opt not to drink.
A skyscraper who has never missed a meeting then frets over how long his penthouse renovations are taking. We wrap up pretty quickly after that.
* * *
Sometimes, people will come up to me and ask, “Were you really Shelly’s Leg?” I never know how to answer. I want to say, “Am I not still?” I want to point them towards the parts of me dismembered in museums.3 I want to show them my legacy still dancing in the queer bars of Capitol Hill. But I don’t want to seem self-absorbed—with walls like mine, absorption leads too easily to warps and stains—so of course I don’t do any of this.
“Yes,” I say instead, “But the IRS shut me down. I wasn’t very good with taxes.”4
There are many joy-less souls out there. Those unsuited for life on planning boards join the IRS.5
A lot of times, people want to know what I’m up to now. I see them scan my residential exterior, surrounded by an overgrowth of car fumes and noise pollution, eyes hopeful that I’ll tell them they’re missing something.
“You know,” I say with a tight smile, “Just getting by.”
I do not care to console them, but when I try to console myself, I remind myself that linearity is only one way to think of time. I remind myself of the beautiful lives within me even now, some who draw on my walls with crayons and some who daydream of better futures and some who go out at night to kiss strangers and some who go out at night to burn vile things down.
* * *
I was getting dinner with some friends recently, a cedar tree and a river, and brought up my qualms with introductions and addresses, my confusion on how some get so comfortable with their current foundations. “They’re not actually comfortable,” says the river, “deep down they know even reinforced concrete has its limits, that underneath there are too many bones.” “But then,” I ask, “how can they be so confident that they’re houses?” “Because they’ve forgotten,” says the cedar tree, “they’ve forgotten all the ways you can be a home.” And that night my friends’ words run through me, as they always do, and I think of addresses and concrete and bones; of graveyards and water tanks and the fake problems of skyscrapers; of planning boards and their vetoed names and their lackluster souls; of how all that planning didn’t stop the crash or the spill or the flames; I think of fires and earthquakes and the flexibility of the ground beneath me; I think I should stop being so scared of erosion, and of things burning down; I think of Shelly’s twenty-two-ish years with her own leg; of how Shelly and I both know trials by fire.6 I think I should stop thinking so much about Shelly’s Leg; I think of Shelly’s Leg again anyway; I think of how proud my sign was for those five-ish years; of how that is another type of home to be proud of.
* * *
I’ll be honest: although I know things must burn, I still have some reservations about being set on fire.7
It’s something I’m working through. I have bad dreams, usually about the moment the oil tanker struck the guardrail. In my dreams, the river of gasoline descends towards me in slow motion; in my dreams, the sounds of crackling heat and screams and disco music beat within my chest until I crumble.
My support group listens no matter how many times I recite this dream. They tell me that it’s not easy, reconciling the desire to be preserved with the certainty that we all must change.
The river and the cedar tree say there are different types of fires. That the fuel of corporations and of controlled burns are not always the same; that the latter can bring new life.
I wonder what the beautiful lives within me now would say. Or the beautiful lives of Shelly’s Leg. Or of my future.
* * *
When I’m next asked to introduce myself and to share what I do for a living (or if I was really Shelly’s Leg; or what I think of the shootings of queer clubs; or the protests of drag shows; or the million other questions I only wish I had good answers to), I will not reply right away.
Instead, I will close my eyes, and breathe in deep, and imagine a future in which I am dead grass and fallen branches and thick undergrowth set ablaze. A future where I am a site of regrowth.
Footnotes
1 In the 1970 Bastille Day parade in Seattle, 22-year-old Shelly Bauman was caught in an explosion of a confetti cannon. Her leg had to be amputated, and she used a wheelchair for the remainder of her life. She successfully sued the city, earning the money she would later use to open Seattle’s first disco nightclub alongside two gay co-owners. After some dispute, the club was officially named “Shelly’s Leg.” (return to text)
2 You can’t make this shit up. (return to text)
3 The famous sign of Shelly’s Leg can be found in Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry. The sign reads, “Shelly’s Leg is a GAY BAR provided for Seattle’s gay community and their guests.” This was one of the first explicit advertisements of queer spaces in Seattle. (return to text)
4 Shelly’s Leg was shut down permanently sometime between 1977-1978 over issues of tax payment. The IRS came and padlocked the front door. (return to text)
5 See footnote 2 (return to text)
6 Shelly Bauman survived another fire-related catastrophe in 2007, when her oxygen machine caught on fire while she was smoking. She was rescued by a neighbor. (return to text)
7 In 1975, a fuel truck hit a guardrail on the Alaskan Way Viaduct and spilled flaming fuel onto Shelly’s Leg. The heat was so great that it shattered the windows. Everyone made it out safely, and the insurance money covered renovations. (return to text)
Gretta Trafficante’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Pinch, New Millenium Writings, Maudlin House, and Talk Vomit, among others. They are a recipient of the 56th New Millenium Flash Fiction Prize and Columbia University’s 2023 Brownstein Writing Award. Gretta would like to give a shout out to the historians of Queer as Fact for fostering their fascination with Shelly’s Leg and queer history.
