DINING AND WRITING
MAX DELSOHN JOINS US AT HOOD FAMOUS BAKESHOP TO DISCUSS HIS NEW BOOK, “CRAWL”
WRITTEN BY ADAM WILLEMS
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MERON MENGHISTAB
Two truths and a lie:
[ ] During one notably cursed sexual encounter, author Max Delsohn got down and dirty to the song “Electric Feel,” followed thereafter by “Rack City”
[ ] Author Max Delsohn has done unspeakable things at the Paramount Theatre
[ ] Author Max Delsohn’s college roommate used to knit on uppers
Answer key at bottom of page
Flip to almost any page in Max Delsohn’s debut short story collection CRAWL and you’ll know you’re in Seattle: Manny’s and Rainier flow from tallboys and beer taps; locals turn summertime-manic at Cal Anderson; run-ins get frisky at Steamworks on Summit Ave. And you’ll know it’s the 2010s: Queers sport “LOVE WINS” merch unironically; the No New Youth Jail movement holds some sway; and the nude beach at Denny-Blaine lacks court-mandated fencing. To the transmasculine characters residing in CRAWL’s short stories, however, 2010s Seattle is a remarkably two-faced place. That is, even as the city emits a progressive veneer, and expresses some optimism around its future, trans residents’ experiences burst that bubble — and spotlight the reactionary forces waiting in the wings to shape society in their image.
Max Delsohn moved here in 2011 to attend Seattle U, and stayed in the city until 2020. Like countless other writers and artists, he worked odd jobs across town — a front-desk gig in Eastlake, an industrial job on the waterfront, and so on — while pursuing a career as a writer and standup comic. He also transitioned here, learning first-hand how Seattleites treat a butch lesbian, versus an androgynous and non-binary person, versus a cis-passing trans man.
Much of that lesson-learning happened in spaces that could be trans-affirming, but aren’t. CRAWL kicks off in some of those venues. In the book’s first story — titled “Crawl” — Jack, a trans man, goes on a prowl-y bar crawl around Capitol Hill. Jack decided that this would be the year he loved men. Not just fucked men, as he often did after a drink or two at Diesel or Pony or the Eagle or The Cuff or Neighbours or even the Timbre Room, when it wasn’t infested with queerdo hipster types. Jack flitters in and out of bars catering to a cis gay clientele; he experiences a drunk, bumbling night as an outcast. At Diesel, men don’t laugh at him for eventually getting kicked out, but do something worse, not scowling or looking or thinking about Jack at all, too wrapped up in their attraction to each other to care. Fine, he sucks a dick and watches others get down and dirty at Steamworks, but it’s not the communion he longs for. Perhaps he could eventually find a man to love, but it would not be reciprocated.
“It seems like it got better over time, but there was not a competency around trans men in those spaces, or around queer women in gay bars,” Delsohn told CHUM News between sips of an ube cappuccino. We talked over coffee and savory puff pastries at Hood Famous near King Street Station; Max had hopped on the train from PDX that morning, part of his nationwide CRAWL release tour. “There’s an interesting conversation about bars that are started with gay men in mind,” he said. “What do they owe the rest of the queer community? It’s complicated, but that’s important to me in this book: all these negotiations between trans men and different people in the queer community.”
“There's a pressure to conform to the ‘It gets better’ narrative”
CRAWL’s stories are variations on a theme: trans men in different stages of life, transition, and acceptance, moving through quintessentially Seattle-esque relationships and environments. Gay bars, but also other spots. In “The Geeks,” there’s Ray, who, after tripping on shrooms at the Paramount Theatre, goes with his best friend and crush, Milo, to Ballard, of all fucking places for an orgy with two burlesque-loving poly sex nerds, ultimately running away from the poly couple’s oversexed, miserable vortex. In “Sex is a Leisure Activity,” Eli makes up for all the sex his poly girlfriend is having without him by hooking up with fellow comedian Gene, only to have a miserable time fucking awkwardly to “Electric Feel,” followed by “Rack City.” (Max Delsohn experienced this cursed playlist in real life: “This is a CHUM exclusive,” he said.)
Delsohn’s been the Foursquare mayor of his local Grindr grid, and it shows. As does his comfort with comedy as a way to process unfortunate events; CRAWL leans into humor to tell us parables of transmasc self-actualization, spinning them into quippy tales of pseudo-hijinks. Humor is, to Delsohn, a “tool” in pursuit of a beautiful sentence, an effort to make the book a pleasure to read.
Mission accomplished for most of the collection. But some stories are straightforwardly sinister, home to the “reactionary forces” hinted at above. In “The Machine,” Matthew treads delicately at his workplace in the hopes of securing gender-affirming healthcare from his boss, Harvest, who ultimately proposes a swap: a new health plan if Matthew talks Harvest’s teenage niece out of hormone therapy. In “Moon over Denny-Blaine,” queers struggle with the deadening presence of straight people at the nude beach over Pride weekend. (Prescient.) And in CRAWL’s last chapter, “Same Old,” Delsohn repurposes the word “crawl” as deployed at the start of the book — bar crawl, raunch, prowl — and uses it to describe the slogs of depression and suicidality. It’s slow, too slow, but you can crawl out of this.
Be warned that CRAWL’s ending will ruin your day. That’s the point. “There's a pressure to conform to the ‘It gets better’ narrative. I think any queer writer feels that,” Delsohn told us. His stories, in his eyes, are most urgently for other trans men; maybe some of CRAWL’s structure or theses or vernacular won’t make immediate sense to a reader who needs to google what “truscum” is, but staying true to audience makes for better art with greater staying power. (The three of us landed on Toni Morrison’s Beloved and D’Angelo’s Voodoo as two examples of such staying power.) There’s also the thorny truth that trans men, like other minoritized people, have been a canary in the coal mine for broader oppression coming down the pike. Bathroom bans, death threats, moratoria on trans childcare — as well as the “save the children”-inflected playbook helping disfigure Denny-Blaine. People called it paradise, but baby, it wasn’t.
Delsohn didn’t write CRAWL in paradise, either, drafting its short stories during his stint at Syracuse University’s MFA program, where he wound up in 2021 after a very brief enrollment at the Ohio State University. Syracuse boasts faculty like authors Mona Awad and George Saunders, yet CRAWL doesn’t smack of “writers workshop” frou-frou-ness. Delsohn is certainly “in conversation” with other writers, though, like Herculine’s Grace Byron, local author Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, former Seattle Civic Poet Anastacia-Renée, as well as writer Corinne Manning, whose work diagnoses whiteness and racism as the root of many toxic queer dynamics in Seattle. Channeling his deep knowledge of structure, trans literary canon, and self, Delsohn ushers us through his stories craftily, and leaves us wondering how much of CRAWL is stealthy autofiction.
Nowadays, Max Delsohn lives in Los Angeles. As we swept puff-pastry flakes into napkins and attempted to ignore Adele’s ballads belting out of the coffee shop’s speakers, he shared what’s left for him in Seattle. Cool full-circle moments — like his book launch at Elliott Bay, where he first read Graywolf imprints, the press now publishing CRAWL — and a sibling aside, it sounds like most of his community has been priced out of the city or has decamped for places with more promising career prospects for comedians. He moved away in June 2020, and didn’t get the chance to say goodbye to the city the way he wanted to: namely, through a meaningful farewell to Denny-Blaine. An unresolved departure eventually spawning CRAWL.
“Denny-Blaine is my most cherished place here… It was so formative for me in my transition too, and so important for me understanding myself as a trans man,” he said. “So I was just writing to get back there.”