Found A New Bucket, Filling It Up
Just down the block from the UCDC Washington Center is the Human Rights Campaign, which is an organization that lobbies for the interests of gay people. I believe that this fact casts great influence over this general area, because there certainly are a lot of gay men around here. I might even be so bold as to say that the density of homosexual men is greater than in the Castro.
And before anyone gets all crazy, raising fists and signs of protest and explaining the very critical role that the belittled-by-me Castro played in the gay world, I just want to reiterate that these have just been my experiences. I have not (yet) engaged in a rigorous sociological study as to the exact levels and ratios and proportions of gays both here and there. But the few times I’ve been to the Castro, I saw enough men strolling hand-in-hand to internally verify that I indeed was in a gay area. But here in the general Dupont Circle area, it’s overwhelming. It’s almost like being on another (gay) planet.
I’ve had a few of those Marvin Martian moments in the past four days I’ve been here on the East Coast. And that’s a big deal because my bucket for those types of experiences had been totally barren only a week ago. The truth is, I thought that I had filled that bucket already. But as it turns out, the overflowing “embarrassing sexual encounter” bucket was stuck inside the “totally and brazenly out of place” bucket. I actually had never had an experience to put in that one.
(This may be of some importance: I enjoy the image of all my life’s experiences being buckets, blue plastic buckets. And every time I have an experience, it fills the bucket. When it a new experience, especially a painful one, the first drop in the bucket is a big deal. But as experiences add up, they really do become just another “drop in the bucket.”)
I never realized how tough it is to be the only one of something. And I mean truly the only one. Not an invented difference based on insecurity or power or sports team allegiance. But a real glaring, consuming, distracting kind of difference that colors (yes, intended) every interaction, every glance, every single moment.
Growing up in predominant homogeneity, I/we invented differences among us in white middle-class suburbia to be able to break ourselves into groups (to be able to more effectively pick on one another, I guess). But those differences that I can remember viewing as massive and cavernous, those differences were nothing.
I can remember feeling the odd one out being a Laker hater among Laker fans. Wearing a pink polo shirt. Defending LFO as the best late 90’s boy band (which just so happens to be something I still assert because I maintain my position that, because their songs and look were ridiculous to the point of, well, ridiculousness, they must have been doing it ironically, and thus, because they were in on the whole “boy bands suck” joke, they are the best. LFO stood for “Lyght Funky Ones,” after all). But that’s nothing when compared to being the only white guy in an entire basketball gym. Or being the only straight guy for blocks and blocks of gay bars.
Differences like those didn’t make me feel uncomfortable, the way I would have felt if I were in Davis at a frat party. Like a pain so sharp and intense it doesn’t hurt, but rather blows way past hurt to just feel warm, I simply knew that I didn’t belong there. I was way past uncomfortable. It was such a forgone conclusion that I was bizarrely out of place that all I could think was “Man, I don’t fit in here at all.” I could feel everyone looking at me, wondering how and by what circumstances I had wandered to the point on the Earth I was presently occupying. I’d never been the focal point of a room like that before.
I’ve gained some much more appreciation for how difficult it is to be the only one. These people that are so different than me have always had to be the “only ones” in my world back in the suburbs. And now being their only one in places where they are the majority gives me pause.
How my good friend Foster must have felt moving to Santa Clarita…
Well, anyway, I get it now.
And before anyone gets all crazy, raising fists and signs of protest and explaining the very critical role that the belittled-by-me Castro played in the gay world, I just want to reiterate that these have just been my experiences. I have not (yet) engaged in a rigorous sociological study as to the exact levels and ratios and proportions of gays both here and there. But the few times I’ve been to the Castro, I saw enough men strolling hand-in-hand to internally verify that I indeed was in a gay area. But here in the general Dupont Circle area, it’s overwhelming. It’s almost like being on another (gay) planet.
I’ve had a few of those Marvin Martian moments in the past four days I’ve been here on the East Coast. And that’s a big deal because my bucket for those types of experiences had been totally barren only a week ago. The truth is, I thought that I had filled that bucket already. But as it turns out, the overflowing “embarrassing sexual encounter” bucket was stuck inside the “totally and brazenly out of place” bucket. I actually had never had an experience to put in that one.
(This may be of some importance: I enjoy the image of all my life’s experiences being buckets, blue plastic buckets. And every time I have an experience, it fills the bucket. When it a new experience, especially a painful one, the first drop in the bucket is a big deal. But as experiences add up, they really do become just another “drop in the bucket.”)
I never realized how tough it is to be the only one of something. And I mean truly the only one. Not an invented difference based on insecurity or power or sports team allegiance. But a real glaring, consuming, distracting kind of difference that colors (yes, intended) every interaction, every glance, every single moment.
Growing up in predominant homogeneity, I/we invented differences among us in white middle-class suburbia to be able to break ourselves into groups (to be able to more effectively pick on one another, I guess). But those differences that I can remember viewing as massive and cavernous, those differences were nothing.
I can remember feeling the odd one out being a Laker hater among Laker fans. Wearing a pink polo shirt. Defending LFO as the best late 90’s boy band (which just so happens to be something I still assert because I maintain my position that, because their songs and look were ridiculous to the point of, well, ridiculousness, they must have been doing it ironically, and thus, because they were in on the whole “boy bands suck” joke, they are the best. LFO stood for “Lyght Funky Ones,” after all). But that’s nothing when compared to being the only white guy in an entire basketball gym. Or being the only straight guy for blocks and blocks of gay bars.
Differences like those didn’t make me feel uncomfortable, the way I would have felt if I were in Davis at a frat party. Like a pain so sharp and intense it doesn’t hurt, but rather blows way past hurt to just feel warm, I simply knew that I didn’t belong there. I was way past uncomfortable. It was such a forgone conclusion that I was bizarrely out of place that all I could think was “Man, I don’t fit in here at all.” I could feel everyone looking at me, wondering how and by what circumstances I had wandered to the point on the Earth I was presently occupying. I’d never been the focal point of a room like that before.
I’ve gained some much more appreciation for how difficult it is to be the only one. These people that are so different than me have always had to be the “only ones” in my world back in the suburbs. And now being their only one in places where they are the majority gives me pause.
How my good friend Foster must have felt moving to Santa Clarita…
Well, anyway, I get it now.
posted by August Caravalho at 3:07 PM
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