This story is about male/male relationships and contains graphic descriptions of sex. You should not read this story if it is in any way illegal due to your age or residence.
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TRAGEDY ON THE POTOMAC by Steven H. Davis
Chapter 6
Jason and I parted ways amicably at the end of the summer, and I was soon ensconced in that tiny efficiency apartment on 21st & F streets in Northwest Washington DC, ready to begin college. The arrangements were fairly okay, considering that Vedzma would only be there three nights a week, sleeping on one of the three couches which took up most of the small main room.
I soon acquired a used mattress and pushed the other two couches together, facing each other, to act as a bed frame. Aside from the main room, there was a walk-through closet leading to the bathroom, a space for a small formica dining table and a kitchenette which was... well, authentically retro. The gas stove and round-edged refrigerator were straight out of the 1950s, and were the same odd Pepto-Bismol pink as the worn-down sink.
The positives were a large bank of windows in the main room and a parquet floor, which suited my penchant for sliding around in my socks as opposed to actually walking and disturbing the downstairs neighbor, who -- like most of the residents of that building -- was elderly and cranky about college kids making noise.
After the first three-day stretch, during which I went through orientation, picked my class schedule, bought textbooks, and tried to grow accustomed to Vedzma snoring ten feet from my makeshift bed, I found myself alone for the first time in my new apartment on a Thursday morning in September. I was ready to explore DC on my own, and was already feeling like a grown-up, even though my "pocket money" had been generously provided by my grandmother before she left for Maryland for the weekend.
Jason had told me that there was a gay and lesbian bookstore, Lambda Rising, on Connecticut Avenue just north of Dupont Circle, which was about twelve blocks north of me. I decided to walk rather than taking the Metro subway line, just so I could get the lay of the land before classes started on Monday. I headed up 21st street, admiring some of the other arriving students, but also taking note of the fraternities, dormitories and university buildings along the way.
When I reached Pennsylvania Avenue, which was the university's northern boundary, I stopped into the small shopping mall across from the Marvin Center, home to all the student activities offices and cafeterias. The mall had a few restaurants, a bakery and some gift shops, but was dominated by Tower Records & Video, where I knew I'd be spending a great deal of time and money over my college career.
After messing around in the record store for a while, I crossed Pennsylvania Avenue and saw a small deli next to a Roy Rogers burger joint. In the window was a sign reading "Egg Creams 1.25". I had heard of egg creams through old movies about New York, but had never had one, so I went inside. There was an elderly woman there behind an old-school 1950s lunch counter, the kind which I imagined had seen some sit-ins a few decades before.
Putting on my best enthusiastic smile, I said, "Good morning!" No response. She just looked at me expectantly, wiping the counter with a scowl which told me that she wasn't too happy to see a customer at 11:00 in the morning. Undeterred, I said, "May I have an egg cream please?"
She frowned again.
"No," she replied, and then turned on her heel and disappeared into the back of the restaurant.
I thought I had made a mistake, and that this woman was probably just the hired help, and that she had gone to alert the person who usually manned the counter. I peered through the glass doors leading to the kitchen and saw no one but the woman, grumpily doing something in a large refrigerator.
Now I was starting to feel pretty stupid, but I stood there for a few long minutes anyway until I realized that the surly old hag wasn't going to come back and make me an egg cream. I arched an eyebrow in surprise and annoyance. If this was D.C. hospitality, it left a lot to be desired. Dejected, I went next door to Roy Rogers and got a Double-R-Bar Burger and an iced tea instead.
After I ate, I made my way down Pennsylvania Avenue to stare at the White House for a few minutes, making a mental note to sign up for the tour one day soon. When I left the D.C. area twenty years later, I still hadn't done so, but at least I got to see the outside. I was standing in a small park which smelled funny and was filled with homeless people in various states of dissolution and despair. I would later learn that it was called Lafayette Square Park, and would eventually cross it every night and every morning, but this was the first time I had seen it, and I was horrified.
It struck me as almost incomprehensible... here were about two dozen miserable people with urine and feces-stained clothing, unwashed and with eyes that spoke volumes of anguish, sleeping just across the street from the President's mansion, which gleamed a brilliant white in the morning sun. The seat of power of the most powerful nation in the world, which would stare down the Soviets in a few short years and bring down the Berlin Wall.
And yet, here they were. I saw a woman bundled in old blankets lying on a bench, her exposed ankle suppurating and bloody with some infected wound which would probably kill her before too long. Just across the street from the White House. I shook my head in disbelief and walked on.
I finally made my way up Connecticut Avenue to Dupont Circle, and had to cross the large park in the middle, which was full of lunching businessmen, college kids in shorts, and various tourists and street performers.
It was a colorful, happy scene, so different from the last park I had visited, and I began to realize that I had been truly sheltered in my San Antonio suburb since that day in 1980 when I had made my first and last trip downtown. Everything was here in D.C. -- the good, the bad and the tragic -- and I knew I was going to get a hell of an education.
My education began as I got back on Connecticut Avenue and stopped window-shopping in all the upscale stores and restaurants long enough to realize that I was surrounded by people like me.
Two men walked past me holding hands and chattering amiably.
A tall, thin guy around my age skated by me wearing a shirt with a pink triangle on it.
At a sidewalk cafe, two women gazed into each other's eyes, their hands clasped above the table.
I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, ignoring the bustling stream of tourists, businessmen and shopping locals. I couldn't stop staring at all the gay men and lesbians around me, walking around proudly, without shame, without having to hide who they were in public. It was a revelation to me, and I had a very clear, very powerful thought: I'm home.
Just then, a disheveled homeless man approached me with wild, jaundiced eyes and shouted, "Mutha fugga don' SHIT till he got a PLACE to shit!"
The man disappeared into the crowd, as I reflected on how true his sentiment really was. I continued up the street, sure that I had finally found that place.
I walked into Lambda Rising, my Texas background still so strong in me that I looked over both shoulders before slipping inside, not wanting to be seen even on a street full of gays and lesbians. I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't what I saw: a clean, bright, friendly-looking store full of smiling shoppers. There were racks of postcards, t-shirts and buttons, fliers for various events, and more gay-themed books than I had ever seen in my life (which, up to that point, had been approximately zero).
I perused the titles: Dancer from the Dance, Tales of the City, Marvin, The Persian Boy, Maurice, Giovanni's Room. I moved up and down the aisles in a trance, looking at book covers with both joyous and prurient illustrations: The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies, The Joy of Gay Sex, and the one that made me hurry past it in a sort of panic, How to Tell Your Parents You're Gay.
In the back of the store was a rack of magazines, and they had beautiful, sexy men on the covers and names like Torso, Stars, and Mandate. I knew what those were, and -- with another embarrassed glance over both shoulders -- began scoping out the nude centerfolds.
I was too repressed and self-conscious to actually buy a magazine like that, so I soon made my way back to thecounter with a couple of paperbacks which had caught my interest. One was what appeared to be a melodramatic gay romance called The Great Urge Downward. It looked like the romances my mother used to read, except that in place of the torrid oil-painting of a bare-chested man embracing a passion-maddened woman with a heaving bodice, there were two bare-chested men.
The other book was Larry Kramer's novel Faggots, which had no cover illustration. Just that word. The word which I had heard so often growing up, and which I felt defined what and who I was. Looking at that word, in large white print against a black background, I knew that this was a book which knew the way I felt about myself, and would explain it for me.
I was rather surprised when I reached the counter and the jovial, mustached clerk -- who had been giving me what I thought was a series of appraising and definitely interested looks -- lost his smile as soon as he saw what I was buying.
He pursed his lips, shook his head, and gave me a disappointed frown.
"Oh, honey, why do you want to ruin your mind with that trash?"
I looked at him blankly, not sure of what to say. The clerk rolled his eyes, clucked his tongue, and rang up the books on the cash register.
"You kids today," he said. "You just don't know what things were like."
Had I not been so embarrassed and unsure of myself, I might have told him where I had been, and how I felt. How the term "the great urge downward" called to my need for self-annihilation. How the other book's title resonated in my skull like a Chinese gong. How I may have been a kid to him, but I definitely knew what things were like, because for me they had been that way until the moment I had walked into that very store.
But I didn't say any of those things, or anything at all. I just smiled shyly and paid him, then took the brown paper bag with the big lambda logo on one side and began my walk home, making sure that the side with the logo was turned toward my body and invisible to passersby the entire way back.
Thank you for reading Chapter 6. To be continued...
I'm always happy to hear from readers at DJAkeeba@aol.com. You have all been so supportive and encouraging, and I thank you all for your e-mails.
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