A Window Seat To History

I flew down to DC on Monday to attend the inauguration. This was something of an impulse decision in late December. I had already planned to go to Utah for Sundance the weekend before, and I knew it would not be easy going from New York to Salt Lake to Washington DC and then back to New York in the span of five days. But Ryan really wanted me to come down to visit and it was hard to turn down the chance to witness history in the making. So I planned my convoluted trip and after a fast weekend of underwear parties and queer brunches, I boarded my flight to our nation’s capital.

There were extra security measures in place, including TSA agents waiting at the gate to check our IDs one last time before we boarded our flight. The night before, I had rechecked the seat assignments and finding an open window seat in the exit row, happily abandoned my B seat in the row behind, so at least I had leg room to look forward to. Once on the plane I settled into my window seat, and assured the flight attendant when he came by to have the exit row talk with us that if we had a water landing like flight 1549 in NYC, I would be out of the plane so fast that he would have trouble remembering what I looked like. As we neared the capital, the pilot let us know that we couldn’t leave our seats for any reason for the last half hour and in the last hour everyone had to use the bathrooms in the rear, even First Class passengers. Then, he gave a rambling, somewhat incoherent speech about the power of democracy and the Constitution and being an American and wrapped it up by applauding the “smooth transition of power without a lot of shooting.” Everyone looked a little puzzled. Was he expecting a little shooting?

As soon as I landed at National, I was off and running. Ryan met me in Crystal City and I dropped my bag at his place and took his friend Corey with me to the GLAAD cocktail mixer while he went off to the state ball for Kentucky. Along the way, Corey and I were accosted by a large black homeless woman who immediately won us over by yelling, “I need to talk to you. Slow down! I can’t run.” She insisted she was pregnant and needed money to buy food. I really wanted to say, “I can’t believe you got a man, and I can’t!” but she was already CRYING and we were so impressed by her commitment to the role that we gave her money and walked off to Bebar around the corner.

I ran into Neil (and why wouldn’t I? it’s his party!) and somewhat more surprisingly Dr. Sven. Like me, I think Sven was mixing two trips in one, but instead of Sundance, I think he might have been around for Mid-Atlantic leather. If I had to guess. Dreamy Cory Claussen was there, not a surprise either since he moved down to DC last year. Corey and I tried to engage in the crowd and the fun, but mostly I was starving so we dashed out of the party and went to Jack’s on 18th, where I paid $21 for a giant hunk of fat and gristle buried under about a gallon of sauce and calling itself a New York strip. The homeless woman was more believable than that.

We spent about a minute at Dik’s bar after dinner, but we were both pretty tired. So after a dash through the supermarket to buy Nutter Butters (peanut paste recall be damned!) and hot chocolate, we headed down to the Metro to go back home to Crystal City. Transferring trains, we ran into Cory once again. He was heading home too, and starving. I passed him a few Nutters while he waited for his train and he seemed very grateful for our fateful encounter.

Corey had to work, so he left very early in the morning, while Ryan and I made our way to the National Mall. The Metro station at L’Enfant was a zoo, and above ground, the crowd too seemed never ending. We walked several blocks down past the Smithsonian, planning to get to a less crowded spot down by the Lincoln Memorial. We ended up instead at the Washington Monument, and as we walked up the hill with the Capitol Dome to the right and the Lincoln Memorial to the left, and a sea of people all around, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the power and the privilege of democracy. To quote Michelle Obama, for the first time in my life, I felt truly proud of my country.

We stood on the North side of the Washington Monument and from there on the hill, I could see everything. The White House was to my left and I watched the various bands and organizations get mobilized behind the White House for the Inaugural Parade to come. Ryan and I shivered along with almost two million others, our own shining city on a hill, watching history unfurl before our eyes. It was the most moving experience of my life, and took me back so many years earlier to the March On Washington in 1993. Then it was all Don’t Panic t-shirts and denim shorts and the promise of a new President from a place called Hope. This time, however, instead of being from Hope, he was the embodiment of hope. A hope for a new direction, of change, of equality.

As it was ending, we made our way North to find a small diner to eat at before I had to cross town to the old XM studios to do my radio show. We walked up past a sea of PETA volunteers trying unsuccessfully to convince the phalanx of fur-coated women to turn vegan. I saw the DAR Hall were the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow Marion Anderson to sing in 1939, prompting Eleanor Roosevelt to arrange for her to sing in front of tens of thousands on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. I thought of Ms. Anderson singing “My Country Tis of Thee” no doubt conflicted inside about her “sweet land of liberty” still waiting for freedom to ring. And twenty-four years later, Martin Luther King on the same spot explaining his dream. And then, Inauguration Day 2009, and there is Aretha Franklin singing “My Country Tis Of Thee” on the steps of the Capitol. It is hard to believe it took seventy years to make it from one end of the mall to the other, but I think in the end, like my our trip to Washington, the destination was worth journey.