Page 33 of Hush
And then, he saw it.
Spread before him, below him, stretched the National Mall. The green space of Washington DC, home to monuments, museums, and the city’s picnics, festivals, and parties.
And now, home to DC Pride, the celebration of their lives.
A rainbow arch of balloons rose over the entrance to the National Mall at the base of the hill. They fluttered and floated in the breeze, stretching for the sky, fifteen feet tall. Bright, brilliant colors, a bold statement, a declaration. His breath hitched.
Rainbow flags were staked into the ground along the edges of the Mall, flapping proudly, another vivid declaration. As far as he could see, all the way to the U.S. Capitol, rainbows waved and shimmered, the colors of his people, proudly flown for all to see.
The Mall was busy. Flamboyant dancers spun and twirled in one corner of the lawn, near the National Museum of American History. Farther down the grass, by the Smithsonian Castle, a drum circle beat out a fast and furious rhythm. At the far end of the Mall, by the National Gallery of Art and silhouetted in front of the Capitol, a stage had been set up. Rainbow balloons billowed overhead and banners flapped as music poured from the speakers. Even from where he stood, he could still hear the music, the songs, floating on the breeze.
Scattered on the lawn, people gathered on blankets and under trees, picnicking, playing soccer, walking hand in hand. Men and men. Women and women. His people, laughing, smiling, out in the open, having a great time.
Celebrating their lives.
Twenty-five years really was a long, long time.
Tears pricked his eyes, and he swallowed hard, trying to force back a choking panic that seemed to rise within him, a swell of grief that nearly knocked him down. What had he missed? When had all this—all of whohe was—become something to celebrate?
Etta Mae pulled at her leash, wanting to run and dive in. “Me too, Etta Mae,” he whispered. “Me too.”
They headed down, passing under the balloon arch on 14thand into the green. Couples smiled at Etta Mae, and a pair of women crouched and scratched her ears, cooing at her floppy face. Three young men passed by and one laughed. “That dog is everything,” he snapped, his voice lilting and full of warmth, of life. “Everything.”
Rainbow flags were sticking out of backpacks and back pockets. Pride screamed from t-shirts and shorts, body paint and rainbows and slogans screaming in defiant joy and painted in vivid colors on bare skin. Music danced on the tree branches, rose and fell through the laughter and the happy voices of everyone talking, shouting, calling out to each other. Waving, smiling, laughing, singing. Drums pounded by the Smithsonian Castle, happy beats, proud beats.
The last time he’d heard bucket drums had been years ago, blocks away in front of the Capitol. The Second National March on Washington DC, in October 1987.
The day had been crisp and clear, an autumn day that hovered between the start of winter and an Indian Summer.
A cold wind and a hot sun, like the world had been those days.
President Reagan, leading society on a frigid indifference to the millions and millions of dead gays, and the fiery passion of a people refusing to die quietly.
In the South, the meeting and mixing of heat and ice birthed storms that created tornadoes, tragedies that killed and wrecked lives, destroyed the present and the future.
That sunny autumn day in DC, the storm had come in the form of bucket drums, skinny sick men shouting at the top of their wrecked lungs, and people who gave their all because that was all they had left. Supporters—so few they could be named and counted in a single list—marched arm in arm with dying men.
He’d sneaked out of his house, telling his parents he was going to a friend’s, and instead went to the Capitol on his own. He watched the protest in front of the Supreme Court, protestingBowers v. Hardwick, a ruling which criminalized sodomy between two consenting men, even in private spaces, even in homes, and kept his existence—his desires, his life—a federal crime. Breathing in and breathing out, and dreaming his dreams at night, he was a felon-in-the-making, a man destined to go wrong, destined to break the law, and, of course, die for his sins. Wasn’t that how it worked in the movies? The bad guys got it in the end.
Seventeen-years-old, old enough to know, in the marrow of his bones, that he was one of them. He was one of the gay men his mothertsked about and his father shook his head over. He was one of the forgotten, tragic millions, destined to die by a thousand sad sighs and averted eyes. He wanted a man’s hands on his skin, his lips on his lips, his body moving over and around and into his own. There was nothing he wanted more, the summer he turned seventeen, than to drop to his knees and suck a dick, suck it and suck it until he feasted on the come while some man ran his hands through his shaggy haircut, the rage of the late 80s grunge culture.
He watched the AIDS quilt be spread out for the very first time on the National Mall—on thisvery lawn—in 1987, and felt like he’d soared out of his body. Flying high over the Mall, over the panels and panels of names and faces, the only headstone some men would ever know. He thought he was looking at the future, one long stretch of names and faces, a history of gay men that would lead to the end of their existence. The panels on the quilt, the names, the faces, were all that was left of so many men. They had died, their friends had died, their lovers, their partners, their families. Whole communities, erased.
When would he be on the quilt?
His soul had yo-yoed, then. He was gay, he was one of them. Surely he was destined to die. What would he do with his life until then?
No, he wasn’t going to go out like that.Look at this march, he’d thought.Listen to the drums! Change is in the air! I’ll be fine. I’ll go to college, to law school. I’ll be the change in the world.
When had his back been broken? When had his seventeen-year-old passion been snuffed? Was it his professor’s words? Or was it the hundreds, thousands, millions of side-eyed glares and breathless sneers, the looks that promised a beating, a killing, if he only waited around for the pleasure. The news that told him every day he was worth less than all others. He was expendable. He wasn’t worth saving. His life was measured in statistics, in timescales and chances andtsksand sighs.
He wanted to live and he wanted to die, and he was so fucking terrified of his own soul. His own existence. Too many hormones and too little frontal lobe development of his early adulthood. He’d been a shooting star that burned too bright, breaking apart in the upper atmosphere of life.
He’d given up.
And he’d missed the road tothis.
He was a refugee of his own existence, and he walked through the crowd, the pulsing, vibrant, celebration bursting with life that surrounded him. The sun was warm on his skin, on his face, like that autumn day three decades ago. But this was purely warm, warm with life, with future, with happiness. The cold wind, the terror, was gone.
