Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home

            I was in the throes of a panic attack.  I was lying in a twin-sized bed with ratty sheets, staring up at a ceiling with chipped paint, sweating in the oppressive heat of a 6’x6’ hovel in Morningside Heights.  It was a bright sunny morning in August 2004, and I had been a New York City resident for three whole days.  I had also been in the throes of a panic attack for three whole days.  I missed my friends terribly.  I missed my apartment.  I missed my job.  I even missed my car, a black Honda Accord with two cigarette burns in it from my ex-boyfriend who insisted upon smoking even when I told him not to.  He was a son-of-a-bitch. 

            I flew out of Alabama crying.  I landed at LaGuardia sniffling.  I took a cab to Morningside Heights and was calm until we pulled up to my new residence.  An eight-story building.  Looked nice enough from the outside.  But inside.  Every floor had a different odor, depending on which floors had hot plates and which floors had workable toilets.  The lobby probably had white tile at some point.  Now it was a dingy brown.  The cab driver didn’t help with my bags—all five of them.  So I dragged them into the lobby and to the front desk.  A three hundred-pound black man named Patrick stared at me through bullet-proof glass.

            “What you need?” he growled.

            “A one-way ticket to Alabama?”                                                                                              

            He eventually showed me to my new home.  Fourth floor.  A 6”x6” room.  A twin bed.  A waist-high refrigerator.  A desk.  A chair.  A closet that I couldn’t fit into.  This room didn’t look like the room I saw on the internet. 

            “Where’s the bathroom?” I asked.

            “Down the hall.  You’ll be sharing with the other three rooms on this floor.”

            Oh Jesus.  I immediately started thinking of a way to find a better apartment.  However, since I moved to New York without a job, signing a lease was out of the question and this was it.  Patrick left me to my own devices, and I began to unpack.  But when I looked around for the air-conditioning unit and saw none, I lost it.  I sat down on the end of the bed, which almost tipped over since it was resting on blocks.  And cried. 

            Luckily, an obnoxious acquaintance of mine from Birmingham happened to be in town on business and invited me to join him and his friends for dinner at a Thai restaurant in the East Village.  I showed up for dinner and was delighted to see a table full of cute gay guys.  My delight soon turned to horror when I realized that my obnoxious acquaintance had inferred to the table full of cute gay guys that I was his ex-boyfriend.

            “So you actually went out with Dan?” Dumb Jock asked.

            “How was he in bed?” Hot Slut inquired.

            “Uh.  I don’t really—“

            Dan interrupted by waddling back to the table and crashing down beside me. 

            “How’s my New York City girl?”

            I cringed so hard I almost pulled my back out. 

After dinner, they went out for a few drinks.   But I was on a strict no-cocktail diet so the booze wouldn’t make me have the blues the next morning.  I explained that I had job hunting to do and should probably head home.  Dan offered to share the cab as far as 72nd Street with me, and the only reason I accepted was because I figured he would pay.  He expensed his dinner anyway.  The cab stopped at 72nd Street.  He got out and turned to me.  

“I enjoyed it.  I’ll call you before my flight tomorrow.”

            He slammed the door.  No cab fare, no free meal.  Nothing.  On my first night in New York City—jobless—I threw down $50 for dinner and $35 for a cab ride up to Hell. 

            On the third day, I started questioning my sanity.  I couldn’t get through a phone conversation with my friends back home without losing it.  My shrink from Alabama was on speed dial.  I left a good job, a great apartment, wonderful friends to move into a slum.  I woke up that third day, staring at the ceiling wondering if it would hurt if I jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge.  I emailed my shrink who in turn replied with a two-page email outlining the grieving process, tips to assimilate into a new lifestyle, and a small pep talk.  Basically, the kick-in-the-ass that I needed.  I went job hunting.  Within a month, I found a less than desirable temp job at a stuffy midtown law firm.  But my fellow temp was hot and I could pay the bills.  And slowly with time, the crying stopped.  I still missed home.

            My next-door neighbors were a smelly French tourist and an Asian transvestite.  The tourist’s name was Phillipe.  I knew this because that’s what his towel said in the bathroom.  And his shampoo, shaving cream, and toothbrush.  All bore his name written in permanent magic marker.  I guess he didn’t think to keep his toiletries in the refrigerator like I did.  The Asian transvestite never locked the bathroom door.  So I was constantly walking in to see Jack or Jacklyn pulling and tucking.  I’m still not sure if s/he was a prostitute or just got damn lucky every night.  There was a parade of men constantly, and each night the same moaning and groaning and knocking about.  The poor thing probably weighed only a hundred twenty soaking wet, so s/he had to have been sore from being slammed around so much. 

Eight months of living in this extended-stay hotel would drive anyone mad.  So just as I was about to check myself into Bellevue, an acquaintance told me about craigslist.  And the really great apartments on it.  After a few weeks of apartment hunting, which ranks right up there with trying to find a soulmate on match.com, I found a temporary home.  I moved into the basement of a cluttered little apartment on West 10^th Street in the heart of Greenwich Village.  The owner and my new roommate was Bette Davis.  Not the actress, but Miss Bette Davis, as I liked to call her.  She was a former dancer/chorus girl/teacher, and I was just crazy about her.  She cooked a mean Lean Cuisine and made an even meaner whiskey stinger, and she regaled me with stories from old Broadway. 

 When I first moved in, I thought she was around eighty-five.  Then it became apparent that she was actually one-hundred fifty-six.  The lady was pickled.  My Thursday weekly ritual was to help Miss Bette Davis carry her two bags of Johnny Walker Black in from the stoop.  She sat up watching television until around midnight every night and would get hammered.  Then sleep until noon the next day, go out to exercise and have dinner, and come back home to repeat the process.  Somehow, she managed to find time and circle jobs in the Times that she thought would be of interest to me.  She seemed to have a sixth sense about everything.  However, she assured me that eighty-odd years of living in New York would give anyone an inside track into the minds of others.

            Throughout the first month on West 10^th Street, I was going through the motions of living.  Same dull job, a dismal basement bedroom in an octogenarian’s apartment, and a new group of acquaintances who I shared no history with.  I wanted my old life back.  My job, my friends.  An easier way of living.  So I planned a quick trip to Alabama for the July 4^th weekend, almost a year after I moved to New York.  I lined up a job interview and made plans with friends.  I left New York for the weekend with one small suitcase.  However, the other four were all packed up.  Because I had every intention of accepting this job and moving back to Birmingham.

            The weekend was interesting.  The job interview went well, except that I felt nauseated the entire time.  The job would have been at a small bank in a suburb of Birmingham.  No tall buildings, no delis, no street vendors hawking pitas and falafel.  But, according to the rather large interviewer with an obvious sweat gland problem, there was a Red Lobster just around the corner!  Of course, I delighted in my friends’ company.  But every gay bar that we went—all two of them—there were the same faces.  The same ex-boyfriends, the same one-night stands.  And they weren’t going anywhere.  A few actually approached me, assuming I was moving home.

            “We didn’t think you’d last up there as a Yankee,” I heard more than once.

            I walked into Miss Bette Davis’ apartment after returning from my whirlwind trip down South.  She was in the kitchen, and I quietly walked downstairs to my room.  I did miss my old life.  The familiarity, the comfort, the sameness.  But that’s also why I left.  For diversity, opportunities, the prospect of really sexy investment bankers.  I could stick out this job until something better came along.  I could stick out this apartment until something better came along.  I could even continue to get to know my new friends until they loved me just as much as my Alabama friends do.  For the first time, I looked around and thought of New York as home.  And got really excited about it.

            “I’m making some dinner for us.  Come sit with me,” Miss Bette Davis called out from the kitchen.

            ‘What are we having?”

            “Lean Cuisine and whiskey stingers,” she yelled.

            It was that moment I realized that my four other suitcases had been unpacked.  I joined Miss Bette Davis in the kitchen.  She handed me a strong whiskey stinger and gave me a knowing smile that only an octogenarian who has seen it all could.

I took a sip and smiled back. 

My kind of dinner.  In my kind of town.

Guess Who's Not Coming To Dinner

                                                    
            I was dressed to the nines at the Birmingham Civic Center.  It was the Apollo Ball.  The gay social event of the year.  And very exclusive, unless you were a member or at the very least, fucking a member of the Apollo Club.  I was neither.  But lucky for me, my friend Paul treated “screwing for social status” as some kind of sport.  And after a few weeks of rolling in the sack with the Apollo Club’s treasurer, he was golden. 

We had a prime spot at a table near the front.  Mardi Gras beads and decorations adorned the tables, and a runway jutted out from the stage where a procession of drag queens and other notable dignitaries would strut out throwing beads to party revelers.  The atmosphere was festive.  But I was livid.  Because there at the next table was Stuart, the mop-headed thorn in my side.  Stuart, a prissy four-star bitch, never liked me for whatever reason.  And he constantly was knocking my clothes or trying to steal my men.  Again, lucky for me, Paul hated him too and spit in Stuart’s drink whenever possible. 

            But this night was different.  Stuart was seated with the guy I was supposed to be seated with.  The guy who was to be my date.  His name was Jim.  He was tall and successful and very handsome.  Kind and considerate, funny even.  So why in the hell was I on a date with my best girlfriend Marilee, while Stuart was sitting across the aisle making out with Jim?  Why wasn’t I making out with Jim?  We had dated for almost two months.  We were into each other.  He even overlooked my ornery mood swings.  So what was the problem?  Oh.  Yes.  I forgot.

            He was black.

            I was raised in Linden, only forty-five minutes from Selma, Alabama.  Selma.  One of the birthplaces of the civil rights movement.  And we were also close to Montgomery.  Rosa Parks and the bus.  And I eventually moved to Birmingham, site of the church bombings that killed four little black girls.  So I knew racism.  In Linden, there was even a doctor’s office with separate waiting rooms for blacks and whites.  Complete with separate water fountains.  And this was in the nineties.  However, I always sat on the black side.  Not because I was radical or anything.  I simply didn’t want nosy white women in my business, asking me what’s wrong and why I was at the doctor’s office.  I knew that if I sat on the black side, no one would talk to me.  Until one white woman walked into the black waiting room and leaned over and whispered in my ear.

“You’re not supposed to be sitting on the colored side!”

Maybe I felt a bond with colored people who were discriminated against and taunted just because they were different.  Or maybe it was because I had the flu and felt like shit.  Or just maybe it was because I adored Diahann Carroll on “Dynasty.”  Whatever the reason, I looked up at this white woman who always sat in the choir loft in church.  Above everyone else. 

“I’ll sit wherever I goddamned wanna sit,” I rasped.

“Your mother will hear about this,” she replied.

“She’s in the restroom.  She’ll be out in a second.  I’m saving this seat for her,” I shot back.  With that, the nosy white woman left in a huff.

So even though I’ve been exposed to racism all my life, I never bought into it.  Or so I thought.  Both of my parents are well-educated.  Both taught in the public school system early in their careers.  While many of our friends extolled the virtues of the Ku Klux Klan, we never heard those words in our house.  By the time I moved to Birmingham, I was well-adjusted in race relations.  A few years after I came out, I met Jim at a dance club.  I had seen him around but was always too nervous to say anything.  So he finally approached me.

“I always see you out, but you just look at me without smiling,” he said.

I’m imagining how many sexual positions we could get in without breaking any bones.

“I’m just shy,” I said aloud.

“Well, I’d love to take you to dinner sometime.  That is, if you’re into black men.  ‘Cause I’ve been interested in white guys before who suddenly have a problem dating black guys.  And I don’t wanna do that again.”

I assured him that I was more open-minded than that, and we made a date.  The next week we went to a small Italian restaurant in the historical district.  He was fantastic company and so easy on the eyes.  He could have been Blair Underwood’s twin…and I love Blair Underwood.  Conversation flowed, he put me immediately at ease.  We spent a lot of time together over the next two weeks.  Jim and I had so much in common.  Likes and dislikes, goals.  Even horizontally, it was well worth the wait.  My feelings for him had gone from warm and fuzzy to hot and fiery.  My roommate, Alan, finally noticed that I was spending an unusual amount of time with my new beau.

“You’re spending more and more time with him,” he observed.

“Well, I like him.”

“You know I don’t care about things like this, but…”

“But what?” I asked.

“Some people in the gay community here tend to look down on dating black men.  You could get a certain kind of reputation for dating black men.”

“Reputation?  What kind of reputation?  That I like fried chicken?”  I was getting angry.

“There’s just a stigmatism attached to dating black men, and a lot of white guys won’t want to date you anymore.”
            “Well, I don’t give a fuck what anyone else thinks,” I yelled.  “AND…it’s a STIGMA.  Astigmatism is in your eyeball!” 

With that, I went to meet Jim for dinner.

Again, the dinner was lovely.  Jim held my attention and was a charming date.  However, after my conversation with my vocabulary-challenged roommate, something was different.  I started noticing the stares.  Here were two gay guys out on a date.  Two gay guys.  And one was black.  I saw a small group of gay acquaintances across the restaurant. 

Were they whispering about us?  Snickering behind my back because I was dating a black man?  Or was it my imagination?

 I found it increasingly difficult to focus on what Jim was saying.  I was sure we were being talked about.  Jim noticed my change in behavior, especially when I turned him down for an after-dinner cocktail and a sleepover at his place.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing.  Nothing is wrong.  I’m just tired,” I lied as I kept one eye on the gay guys across the room.

The next few times we were together, our dates followed this same pattern.  I was nervous, aloof.  When we went to a gay bar, I stood by him but didn’t allow him to show affection.  It wasn’t long before he saw right through me. 

“I asked you at the beginning if you had a problem dating black men.  You said no.”

“I thought I didn’t.  Maybe I do, I don’t know.  I’m ashamed, but I don’t know what to do about it.”

“You’ve already done enough.  I thought you were different than these simple-minded people.  And to think I was falling in love with you.  I should leave,” he said.  And he did.

I was crushed.  Embarrassed by my behavior.  I prided myself on my sophisticated world-views, my staunch liberalism, my compassion for the disenfranchised of the world.  But here I was.  Letting a great man slip away because he was black.  Only worrying what others would think.  I was no better than the idiots who would call Jim a nigger.

I sat there at the Apollo Ball in my rented Armani tux as Marilee made out with a bisexual and Paul made out with half our table.  I sat there and watched Jim and that Stuart.  Having a ball at the Ball.  Jim looked over at me and gave me a half-smile.  I smiled back, and my chest ached.  He turned back to Stuart and kissed him passionately.  For once, I envied Stuart.  Stuart who was kissing what should have been mine.  Unable to stomach anymore, I headed to the cash bar.

I ordered a stiff Crown and Coke, turned around and ran right into Stuart.  I rolled my eyes and tried to get by him.  But he held my arm at the elbow.

“I’ve always been jealous of you,” he began.  “Always with friends, dating different guys.  But now I just feel sorry for you.  You didn’t know how good you had it, but now he’s gone.  And you’re alone with nothing but a cocktail.”

There was nothing I could say.  He was right.  Stuart walked back to his date, and I walked out onto the terrace that overlooked downtown Birmingham.  The cold February wind stung my face, and my eyes started to water.  I thought about marching back inside and telling Jim that I wanted him back.  Telling him that I liked him and was possibly falling in love with him.  But I didn’t.  I just downed my Crown and Coke alone.

Besides…what would the neighbors think?