Scott walks the line
he walks alone in the world
he walks alone
he walks alone in the world
he walks alone ..
.. Scott Seekins does. Joking. I don’t know what he does. I was writing last night about some ethereal guy. It was a flight. A song kicked off and evaporated in me, as sometimes happens in the constant bludgeoning of my energy.
Then a few hours ago, during a hangout with an old friend, I saw this guy in the alley at Loring Park .. an adorable guy, and the real deal, as artists come. He paints and makes stuff. The Virgin Mary was one of his subjects of fascination, but what now? He’s still here in the world of which I’m a guest. He is outside time. Brothers Steve, Johnny, and I knew him in 1984, gauging our summer into black winter wear and back to white summer by his equinox transformations between monochrome white and black. I wish I’d said a better “hi!” and asked to photo his shoes, blue velvet loafers that yelled back at the sky. The sky was clear today, smeared out by Canada forest fires. I want Scott to stay in my head at the New French Bar when I waited tables there before being fired. I was glad to be sat next to him recently at Christo’s Greek restaurant. I liked his friends and how they talked. What were they saying? What was it about? It was lunchtime. They were laughing. The joint was packed. Scott’s expressions are hard to spot, under his locks, above his pencil-thin mustache, but they are impish. He’s too gentle to exist, doesn’t know me, and I don’t know him, past waiting on him a bit, overhearing him, or reading his art write-ups in the magazines.
You know we’ve all been here before, scene makers, in this diagon-alley. (h/t, J.K. Rowling) of Loring Park, Minneapolis.
When I say we’ve been here, right here, I mean the men of that eighties generation, dressed-to-kill and dying, looking for girls. Girls scampered down this alley in their heels and drooping teddy bear stoles to the Loring Cafe. They were never dressed warmly enough. Some of us, like Scott in 1984, wore hard-soled shoes that clicked on the pavers, and monochrome suits, tweeds and sharkskin, we changed with the seasons, fronted nuevo-pompadours, hoped to be noticed by chicks, or respectfully eyebrow-nodded by guys who blew inside the big doors laughing, all reckless. We shunned overcoats as well. Coats are stupid. We pulled up to our drinks, filmed scenes in our heads, asked who’s at our table by the pillar? what hippie is playing acoustic in the next room around the curved staircase? did we need to stand there in our smoke, or fly out the door ‘cause it was dead?
I could only pose in my white suit from that time. I didn’t wear it well.
But none of us bestrode the world like Scott, timeless. Scott walks the line, the earth’s limb .. the high chaparral, along the gash of the city’s old quarter.
So many died in the park during AIDS, or after dangerous hook-ups, while we straights looked, prudently and acceptably, for lovers in bars, thinking we were dangerous.
But sneering and savagery fueled us inside the bar on good nights. Look at those idiots looking for love, Richard, David and I would say about the uncool schleps, as I licked my Gauloises rolling papers, sober David the entrepreneur tapped his Camel straights against his silver lighter, and Richard smiled reticently, Richard who had walked down from his loft, his white sleeves rolled to the elbow, looking like Channing Tatum, really good hair swept back.
“I don’t know if it’s happening, man,” Richard said.
David and I both said, “Head to the French?”
“Head to the French.” We dipped out.
The New French Bar, from which I’d been fired recently for not handling cocktail orders fast enough, was often crowded and spilling onto the raised, Second Avenue loading dock. Scott, like us, could be seen either place. The French was more for artists, moochers, arts lawyers, smoking sultry babes with more black hair than anyplace in the blonde city, and the homeless, in off its shipping dock. The Loring saw suburban jerks in Jaguars, trying to slum. I was still live-music clubbing three to four nights a week, had a girl and lost her, formed a band and lost it, formed a ‘zine and lost it. It was called “This is This.” Of all them, I’m only sorry about the magazine.
That would have been ace. As my brother rose at copywriting, I finished my first novel, a couple short stories, free-lanced at PR, switched to music, then stopped writing two minute songs. I fizzled at 25. So when Richard, David, and I finally hung out, I was filled with sulking power. Sulking is the only cordless power known to replenish itself without charging. One gains battery simply by staring down and hiding behind hair with fantastic smelling product in it.
But our man, Scott Seekins, he doesn’t sulk. He seeks, I think. He has a limp now, so I worry about him, this man for all seasons. While he’s harder to spot in 2025, he is still here, unlike my brothers and friends. Scott may exist in all times, striding a blue velvet loafer on either side of the veil.
Love this too! And I know who he is!
Love this!