The Rug Guy
Pioneer Square, a historic part of downtown Seattle makes it’s home to computer geeks, artists, lawyers, clubbers, the homeless, and of course—many, many rug shops. The geeks walk about the streets talking about HTML and the latest SQL server fiasco. The artists, well, you don’t see much of them, they are busy in coffee shops and whatnot. The lawyers are also busy on the phone or can be seen driving around in their huge SUV’s. The homeless are easily spotted either begging for change, or kicking the crap out of some random garbage can (another story in itself). But it is the last of these colorful groups that I choose to talk about today, the so called “rug guys” that inhabit the south end of Downtown Seattle.
The rug guys are a strange bunch. In Pioneer Square there are around 7 different, seemingly unique “Rug Galleries”. On our block, there are 4 different galleries. You would think that eventually they would all merge and form some king of rug mega-store, but alas, they have been around as long as I have been working downtown.
Every time you look inside of one of the rug stores, it’s usually a bunch of authentic Middle Eastern sales guys. All have nothing to do most of the day, for 7 galleries; they don’t seem to get much business. They can usually be seen outside of their gallery smoking few packs of cigarettes.
I made contact with my first rug guy around two years ago when I worked full time. He was in the gallery right next to my building. People have routines, and his routine was to be outside every time I walked by. Every morning, I would go get a bagel and coffee and see him outside chain smoking. I would come back from lunch, and there he would be, smoking outside. Leave work, and look—it’s the rug guy!
As you can imagine, after a short while, we started nodding to each other (it’s only polite). There were several “nodding guys” on that block. There was the clog guy, and a few other various smokers on the block. Quite unlike the rug guy, none had a track record of being there exactly when I walked buy, and all nodded only intermittently.
But this guy, his performance was spectacular. Not only was he there to nod each time I walked buy, he would turn around and actually say hello! Of course, I thought nothing of it, he was, after all only being friendly.
After a while, the hello’s turned into “how are you”s, and eventually broke into some kind of full-blown conversation. None of this disturbed me. His only quirk was that he had the annoying habit of patting me on the back when I walked away.
Lets fast forward a bit. It’s winter quarter, and is now time to start school. I had bleached my hair, and was completely blond. Whatever, I looked great as far as I thought. The rug guy spotted it immediately.
My routine was essentially the same. Walk buy his gallery, and there he was, waiting to say hi and pat me on my back. Whatever…
That’s when it happened. One sunny day, I walked by and the rug guy had some photocopied paper of three dear all mounting each other. The caption was something like “GAY DEER SPOTTED”. It was funny as hell. I hung it up on my wall.
The next day, a Friday, I walked by the rug guy and he gets all nervous and mumbles something to me. What I write is what I believe that he said.
"What is your favorite drink?" he said.
"I don’t really have one."
"Do you want to come to my apartment in Kirkland? I’ll make some nice drinks and make some good Pakistani food."
At this point, I had no idea what he was asking. I could barely understand him, and had to get him to repeat himself many times. Once he had asked the question, I was so busy nodding and being polite and all, I just heard myself say "yes."
So the next thing I know, the guy is giving me his business card with his phone number on the back of it. He said “call me if you get bored.” I take the card and thank him and walk away.
I open the door to my building, start walking up the stairs. I get up the stairs about one flight, and that’s when it hits me. WHAT THE HELL DID I JUST SIGN UP FOR!?!?! This guy ASKED ME to go to HIS PLACE (HIS!!!, not HER!!!) in KIRKLAND!!! Jesus Christ! I could barely breathe. I just got asked to some guy’s house in Kirkland for a night of DRINKS and PAKASTANI FOOD!!! What was the guy thinking? Was he going to booze me up and then do who knows what? I had NO idea. This guy was like seemed like forty or fifty years old and I was only twenty! And I said YES!!!
I spent that weekend mostly at home. I kept looking in the mirror wondering why that guy though I was gay. God, I could not believe it, this old man going after some twenty-year-old guy with blond hair. I though that he must have given that picture to me as some kind of test--One that I apparently passed.
Needless to say, I did not go to Kirkland that weekend. When I saw him on Monday, I lied and said I “partied” with my girlfriend (which at the time was also a lie, I did not have one then). After that incident, I started to walk to work a different way. Eventually he moved to a rug gallery across the street, and now I hardly see any of him any more.
And that is my story of the infamous rug guy.