I Came Out for This? Read online

  Cherry Hill was a short, voluptuous woman with a trumpeting laugh to match her stentorian voice. She began spiriting me around her beautiful house with its stone floors and skylights and stunning rugs and paintings, introducing me to women gabbing over paper plates full of food. In one of three living rooms, I found my drinking buddies from the last potluck, Bette, Jean, and Pia. Bette enfolded me in a busty hug. I was disappointed not to see Dee, but a tall, coltish-looking woman was sitting with them, and she had a nice, casual-butchy look, with her jeans and seersucker shirt and blond, surfer-boy hair.

  Cherry went to answer the door and Bette cattily said, “Leave it to a lesbian to entertain with paper plates even though she’s a millionaire. You know, this would never happen at a gay boys’ party.” And I replied, “Well, gay boys wouldn’t even have a potluck.” For some reason it didn’t bother me to be all snide and teenager-ish with Bette. Maybe it’s because she’s not shallow. During the last potluck at Dee’s, she shared fascinating chunks of information about everything from Georgetown etiquette to Scandinavian literature to the brain’s limbic system. Not only is she well-read and intellectually curious, but underneath the cattiness is a whole lot of kindness.

  I told the girls my whole jail adventure and they whooped and hollered. I was a little sheepish about revealing my lunacy to the new girl, Kimba Patterson, but she didn’t seem to mind at all. In fact, she seemed to take a particular interest in me and I really took to her. She was understated, with a soft voice, but I could tell that she wasn’t shy because her green eyes had a mischievous sparkle, the corners of her mouth kept flickering as though she wanted to laugh, and she had a casual way of speaking, not nervous at all. She told us she saw a rainbow the day before, and I teasingly scoffed at this, saying I’d never even seen a rainbow, and she said she saw them all the time. She mentioned that she had a twin sister who lived in Florida, and that she grew up in a small town outside of Kent, Ohio, and when I said I was from Cleveland her eyes lit up. She confided in me that she doesn’t like DC, with its stiffness and workaholism. She has two master’s degrees and a high-level job at NASA, but she’s still a down-home country girl at heart. I said I hoped she didn’t go back to Ohio anytime soon, and she said she didn’t plan on it, and she invited me to an Orioles–Indians game at Camden Yard.

  While I was talking to Kimba, Cherry Hill breezed up behind me and said, “Where did you get that sexy shirt?” I told her I got it at Chico’s, and she gave me a big smile and said, “You should always shop at Chico’s.” Then Kimba left to go country-western dancing, and I went to the food table, and before I had a chance to rejoin my friends Cherry got hold of me and started interviewing me. She asked me if Kane was a Jewish name, and I said in my case it was, and she got a gleam in her eye and I thought, “Uh, oh.” I said her name reminded me of one of my favorite songs, “Cherry Hill Park,” and she said she kept her ex-husband’s name rather than going back to being Cheryl Lipschutz. She asked me if I belong to the Jewish gay congregation that meets at the Jewish Community Center, and I said I did not because I was raised by socialist heathens and I’m a socialist heathen myself, and she said that was fantastic and that when she was growing up there were socialists living right next door. I asked her what she did for a living and she said she got “some money” from her divorce, so she doesn’t have to work; she just has potlucks and serves on committees, which means for a hyper-extrovert like her that she hobnobs around town schmoozing with everyone and probably not getting anything done. (I wanted to ask her how she knew Judge Holmes but didn’t want to bring up how I knew Judge Holmes, so I let it go for the time being.) Then, wasting no time, Cherry asked me if I wanted to meet her at Rosemary Thyme on 18th Street for lunch, say, on Wednesday. And I said yes.

  I don’t know exactly why I made a date with Cherry Hill. She has that foghorn voice and we don’t seem to have much in common. But I need any distraction I can find from the ache that I get up with and go to bed with and walk with all day because I miss that stupid whore Terri. I know I shouldn’t call her a stupid whore. It’s not nice. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t want me. Because I call her a stupid whore. Actually she likes when I call her “whore.” She laughs. But she wouldn’t want me to call her stupid. She would say it simply wasn’t true. “But I’m not stupid,” she would say. Like I meant it literally. She’s so literal about everything.

  All things considered, I’m glad I went to the potluck and that I’m going out with Cherry Hill. I had a more rip-roarin’ good time at Dee’s potluck. But I was young and innocent back then, and now I’m a tarnished, broken-hearted jailbird, and I need to take whatever scraps of pleasure are offered me.

  My date with Cherry Hill turned out to be very good. It was very, very good. If you catch my drift. Picture me standing here with a Mick Jagger leer (which should not be difficult because I still look a little bit like Mick). Not that I would presume to be as sexy as he is, but we all have our little moments, and yesterday was one of mine. So why do I feel so deflated about the whole thing today?

  It all started because I couldn’t wait to get out of the restaurant with her. As soon as we sat down, she started to embarrass me. She kept asking mundane questions, like, how old was I when I came out and what kind of woman is my type, and every time I answered she erupted with her trumpeting laugh. I was just answering honestly, but for some reason she found everything I said deliciously funny. Finally I told my jail story, which elicited a resounding screech that put all the others to shame. She did solve the mystery of Judge Holmes; she and “Louise,” as she calls her, had never been intimate, they just served on a committee together. Upon hearing that disappointing news, I suggested that we walk over to my place since I had a couple hours to kill before work. (The whole time we were eating, I had been concentrating on her plump breasts to avoid looking at the other diners.)

  We walked over to my house and went upstairs to my little room, which she thought was the most adorable thing she’d ever seen and said she wished she lived there instead of in her 18-room mansion because she is sick of all the upkeep. I decided to shut her up before the conversation got any more ludicrous, so I closed the door and we proceeded to have wild sex. I have a package of latex gloves that I bought to play sex games with Terri, and I haven’t had that opportunity, but I put those gloves to good use with Cherry Hill. I pretended to be the nursing supervisor on a psychiatric unit and I ordered her to undress completely and lie on the bed. She asked me what she did and I said, “You know exactly what you did, Miss. You have been running through the ward like a crazy girl, and are upsetting the other patients. We’re going to help you regain control over yourself.” She kept protesting, saying, “No, no, please, I’ll be good,” and I said, “You have had plenty of opportunities to be good. Now just do as I say,” so she took off her clothes and lay on my bed and I donned the gloves and said, “Spread your legs,” and she did, and I inserted a finger into her and said, “This will relax you,” and she started to laugh and I informed her that she would not be able to return to the unit until she cooperated. Of course, this made her laugh even harder— between gasps, because I was fucking her really good with practically my whole hand— and I told her the longer she kept that up, the longer she would have to submit to the treatment. Finally I withdrew my fingers and said, “It appears that you require more intensive treatment today.” I stripped off my clothes and ordered her under the covers and got under there with her. I said, “As soon as you stop fighting me this will all be over.” I put my leg between hers and re-inserted my fingers and fucked her harder than ever and she literally started screaming— it was a good thing everyone on my floor was out because they would have thought I was killing her. When she got that otherworldly look, I said, “All right, relax,” and she came like Mt. St. Helens and I came too, just from sheer excitement.

  It was the best sex I ever had, including with Terri. I was so relieved to finally bust loose that I told everyone I knew. Jerome was ecstatic and said Cherry should
be my woman. My friends in Cleveland were shouting “Hurrah!” because I hadn’t done the wild thing in such a long time. Even my mom voiced her quiet approval. She said, “That’s very nice.” (No, I did not give her the colorful details.)

  The only problem with my tryst with Cherry is that it was a fleeting pleasure, like doing a snootful of cocaine. The woman is so annoying that I don’t really want to see her again. She sounds like a high school orchestra tuning up every time she opens her mouth. She already called today to ask me what I was doing tomorrow evening, and thank god I could tell her I’m going to the ball game with Kimba. But she’ll probably call me again and I’ll have to tell her it was a one-shot deal. I did that a million times with men, having sex with them one time to prove something to myself and then running away from them. It’s just such a crappy thing to do. If I had sex with these people because of uncontrollable passion, that would be one thing. But it’s all about my ego, not my libido— I’m trying to prove my womanhood. And it ends up having the opposite effect. I end up feeling less of a woman than ever.

  Kimba and I went to see the Indians play the Orioles at Camden Yards. Kimba is so much fun. I hope she didn’t find me boring. I’m sure she did. She was so lively and charming and I was— I was trying. That’s about all I could say for myself.

  Kimba is a more suitable partner for me than Cherry Hill, but she’s in love with a heart-breaker of a girl who is more of a female Lothario than Terri. Kimba had been with a fine woman for eight years, but the relationship lacked passion, and then Kimba got breast cancer, went through the whole mastectomy-chemo-hair-falling-out ordeal, and decided she wanted to live her life to the fullest, so she left her partner and ran off with this seductress, who was as elusive as her partner was loyal. They broke up a couple months ago, but in typical lesbian fashion they are still “friends,” and Kimba still loves her and is furious with her at the same time.

  Kimba told me all of this between bites of hotdogs (she wanted to get nachos, but I upbraided her and explained that you MUST eat hotdogs at a ballpark and she indulged me) and between good plays, during which Kimba leapt up and screamed her head off. Kimba is a sports nut and her energy was infectious. It was a good game, with the Tribe winning on a two-run double by Jim Thome in the ninth. Kimba is also hilariously funny. When a guy a couple rows down got drunk and kept yelling stupid things at the players, she yelled, “Hey, shut up down there,” and then she crunched up her hotdog wrapper and threw it and it hit him on the head. He didn’t notice, but I just about died with laughter. Here’s this competent professional woman who has risen through the ranks of NASA, but inside she’s still this wild hillbilly girl. She’s got a flow about her; she’s not herky-jerky, like I am. She’s very funny, tossing off these piquant remarks that made me laugh until I almost fell off the chair. She has an adorable, flashing smile and almond-shaped green eyes and a body that’s nice to look at, coltish and leggy with a nice tight ass where the saddle would be. (She would say something real smart-ass in response to that.)

  I felt kind of like a dud with Kimba. I was missing Terri during the whole game, which was ridiculous because I was with a woman who is my kind of people— funny, irreverent, and smart. And she’s crazy about baseball, which means something to me because I’m one of those people who got taken to ball games by their dads as youngsters and who swell with bone-deep pleasure upon finding a ballgame while station-surfing; hearing “foul ball off the catcher’s glove” over the low roar of a crowd is as soothing as the smell of a baby brother’s sweat. Terri doesn’t even like baseball. To her, a slider is probably some sort of treated dildo. I tried to have fun with Kimba. She made me laugh and I liked her so much, but I couldn’t shake off that blunted feeling. Why can’t I stop missing Terri? It doesn’t go away. I still feel as though someone cut me open and scooped out all my insides.

  I have a funny feeling I’ve reached the end of the road. I feel like doing something bad like smoking marijuana in front of the police station so I can see Judge Holmes again. Maybe she’ll send me to some minimum security prison. I would like not having to make any decisions, not to mention being with all those bad girls. The problem is, there would be people in there trying to tell me what to do. I don’t like people telling me what to do, unless it’s someone of my choosing, like Judge Holmes. But if Judge Holmes ordered me into some prison to get told what to do by other people, that would be a Catch-22. It’s like the old sally of my dad’s: “You remind me of that man.” “What man?” “The man with the power.” “What power?” “The power of voodoo.” “Who do?” “You do.” “I do what.” “You remind me of that man …”

  I feel sorry for Dad. He so wanted to pull out all stops for my wedding. And here I am, gay. But I think he was relieved when I came out. Everything kind of fell into place at that moment. He said, “All that’s important to me is that you be happy.” And he meant it. He can be a monster sometimes, but I’ll always love him for that.

  May 2000

  I have come up with a strategy for not feeling like a little nobody surrounded by world-beating honchos. I decided to write an article for the City Rag, DC’s largest weekly (formerly known as “alternative”) newspaper. I e-mailed a few story ideas to the editor, along with my credentials, and he sent me back an assignment. I put my top choice at the bottom, knowing that editors never choose stories at the top of your list, and that’s the one he picked. I’m going to write about the gentrification of the U Street Corridor, which is my neighborhood, and how the old-time residents feel about it. It won’t be a cover story, first of all because I’m a new writer for the paper and second, because the topic isn’t suitable for a feature story; it’s more newsy. He’s going to use it for the Street Talk section.

  I want to write this article because I’ve been upset by the racial tension in DC ever since I’ve moved here. My jail altercation with that hellcat who referred to me as “white scum” was just one indication. It seems to me that DC’s black residents are so angry at being ignored and disregarded that they are mean. When you walk down the street, the black folks either pointedly ignore you or glare at you, and when you’re in stores or other places they won’t look at you even when they’re waiting on you, and if you ask them if they have a certain item they automatically say “No,” or “I don’t think so,” as though they want you to be disappointed and get a taste of how they feel as unempowered residents of a federal city that ignores them. The resentment is fueled by the fact that there aren’t any working-class white people in DC for black folks to relate to. The only white people they ever see are power players in their expensive suits, tourists tripping around with their little maps, privileged college students, and older people shlepping around in boring clothes, who don’t care how they look because they are rich.

  In neighborhoods like mine, where whites are moving in, buying up property, and driving up housing costs, you can cut the tension with a knife. Middle-class flight and the 1968 riots destroyed the once-vibrant neighborhood, and now white urban pioneers are “bringing it back,” pissing off the established residents. As is typical, many of the homesteaders are gay men. It’s nice to see so many gay people around here, but it pains me that our black neighbors view us as invaders instead of allies. I want to go up to one of these black women who glare at me at the bus stop and say, “Listen woman, they did me wrong too! I’ve been disenfranchised just as you have!” But she would be likely to say, “That’s your punishment for goin’ against the Lord. So don’t be cryin’ to me, sinner!” And then she’d get up on the bus with her big behind glaring at me, leaving me feeling worse than I did before.

  But this article cannot be personal. It will be straight journalism. I have no idea how it’s going to come together, but it will get attention, because it’s a hot subject in this town. Of course, I shouldn’t be presumptuous, because the same thing could happen as what happened with my Coming Out piece that I wrote for the Cleveland Free Times, which I thought was going to be such a big sensation and there
wasn’t even one letter to the editor, and in my self-righteous irritation I refused to acknowledge that it was a terrible piece, with my dumb metaphor of wandering through the woods for thirty years. The problem was that I was all hung up on the impression I would make while I was writing it. With writing, the process is everything. You can’t be preoccupied with the results— with all the respect you’ll get from people and all the power you’ll have over them and how you’ll become rich and famous and win the girl and live happily ever after. You just can’t do that. So stop doing it. Yes, you. Stop it. Right now.

  June 2000

  My story ran in last week’s edition of the City Rag, and I did a good job. That’s what the editor said after I sent it. “Good job.” In editor’s language, that means: “This is an absolutely perfect, fantastic piece.”

  I covered a lot of ground in just 1,500 words. What surprised me most was how many of the black folks I interviewed expressed the conspiracy theory that the powers-that-be are working together to force all the black people out of DC. Young man in Ben’s Chili Bowl: “They got a plan. Take my word for it. They got a plan.” One woman, a community organizer and editor of the newsletter What’s Goin’ On, described the psychological effects of gentrification: “A lot of our residents have been living in the same houses for their whole lives, had lifelong relationships with their neighbors, and suddenly there they are, on blocks full of showpiece homes, half their neighbors gone, and their homes are the rattiest ones on the block. How would you feel if that happened to you?” There was a lot of trash-talking. Two young female cashiers: “These white ladies want us to stop what we doin’ to help them. They say, Do you have this? Do you have that?” Cashier 2: “Get it yourself, bitch. ’Scuse me.”

  I included statements from one white guy who has been living in the neighborhood for less than a year. “The racial tension around here makes me uncomfortable. I come from New York City, where people of different colors interact and don’t even think about it. Here, like, if you just nudge someone by mistake, it’s gonna cause a major war. I accidentally bumped into this woman on the Metro escalator the other day and she was ready to rip me a new asshole. Pardon my French, but my language is squeaky clean compared to hers. Motherfucker this and motherfucker that, and these motherfuckers think they can come in here and do this and that … It wasn’t pretty.”