Looking back a few weeks, it’s interesting how some of our assumptions about the mini-tour were dis-proved by the reality…

Living in the City can be so wonderful. People hardly ever question your gender orientation/presentation – whether by interaction or look – or where they do so it is usually so low-key that I’ve got practiced at not feeling it. But… we all know SF is not the US – and that we live in a bubble…

So a sub-text before the mini-tour was wondering (worrying?) about the vast swathes of country between SF and Seattle or Portland. We were assuming (hoping?) the towns would be OK, but even there we weren’t sure. And stopping for gas on I-5? We even had friends on IM advising us which towns along the way were safe / should be avoided.

This pre-tour speculation got as far as our discussing security measures – for example, cell phones on at all times, always staying in groups of at least two, always making it clear where we were going (even if only to the rest room) –and even wondering whether we needed to take along some big butch security types?

By the time we left, Tori was running Deliverance II in her head…

But in the event, it was a non-event. Sarafina thought she detected a few extra looks (stares?), but there were no direct negative interactions – and a whole slew of people went out of their to engage and be nice. For example, shopping in a Safeway in Tacoma , where the people we were staying with had counseled caution (“this is Tacoma you know”), an employee spotted our long shopping list (Sarafina and Marilyn were cooking) and just attached herself to our little group – directing us to the horseradish sauce, advising on wine, walking us through the checkout – just being so sweet. And when Marilyn and Tori were doing some clothes shopping (also in Tacoma), the store staff were really curious, wanting to know why we were in town (they assumed we weren’t local?!), taking band cards, even talking about coming to the Seattle gig.

So.. what does that say? Maybe we were just lucky? Maybe the transition from the bubble is not quite as extreme as we’d imagined – more a gradual transition than an on/off switch? Or maybe just that the bulk of people are generally civil and/or dis-interested, and, while there are extreme people around, there’s not that many of them, and you can probably bump into them in SF just as easily as Grants Pass, OR?

Discuss.