Floyd’s Place, now closed, was located at 521 First Avenue North in Seattle, Washington.
Recently a friend of mine, who had been going through old files on her computer, said she found a short story I wrote and she wanted to know if I wanted her to send it to me. She said it was about beer and I only vaguely recalled what she was talking about. I said yes.
Sent three months before I turned 21, it’s an email which I would probably call my first piece of writing as an adult. Anything written prior to this was most likely a school assignment, or was something I’d done when I was very young. I don’t remember writing anything “for fun” when I was in high school or in my late teens.
Revisiting these 2,000 words of observational non-fiction, I am reminded of many things but four in particular about 20-year-old Zachary Whittenburg:
• He read a lot of David Foster Wallace and David Sedaris
• He fancied himself something of a badass
• He went to the public library to use the internet
• He knew he would move away from Seattle within a year
This tale, How I Made the Second-Easiest Twenty Dollars of My Life, is slightly embarrassing in the way things you said and did at age 20 generally are. I’m at peace, more or less, with those things and it’s been four years since I’ve published anything new here at trailerpilot.com, and so this will live at the top of the page for a while.
If you enjoy it and this is your first visit to my blog: Welcome! There are more than 400 posts here, going back nearly a decade, most of which have something to do with dance in Chicago, contemporary art, or design. I’m easy to find elsewhere online and generally keep up with trailerpilot on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The latter is where you will find links to stories I’ve published more recently.
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