Day 7: I've Been Drinking

In 2003, I dropped out of college for a while. If you know about that particular time period of my life, you will know that that first sentence isn’t entirely true. It’s more complicated than that, but for simplicity’s sake…
I had moved from my very small town in Georgia to a very small town in Ohio for college. And then, a year and a half later, I dropped out and took a one-way train from Cincinnati to Washington, DC.

I had pretty much no money (about $300), no job and no place to live. And I slept in the living room floor of a really great guy I’d met just twice before. He and his roommate gave me a week. And then, with an unending grace, they let me stay a month…possibly because my raggedy ass sleeping bag was so holey that each morning, I woke up in a nest of down feathers. I was constantly vacuuming.

The first week, I spent much of the day in a coffee shop, huddled over a stack of applications to every retail and fast food establishment I could walk to – mostly in the Dupont Cirle area. We were headed to war. We had an international embarrassment for a president. But everyone was hiring – so by week two, I was slinging coffee at the big gay SuxBux.

Then, I thumbed through the gay paper, through the Post or any periodical that had a classified section for a place to live. I called middle-aged vegan lesbians w/ cats, but they wanted a woman and not even the tranny card could sway them. I called boarding houses for international students but was turned down for being an American vagrant. I went to see boarding houses, but turned them down for trying to rent closets with hot plates for exhorbitant prices. I rode the train for an hour and then walked a mile to visit one really nice place. And the guy there offered me a discount if I would model for him. Put a hand on my ass and offered me another discount. I told him I would think about it.

My poor, terrified mother was calling me daily. What the hell was I doing? Where was I going to live? Then her co-worker told her about craigslist. So, she looked for posts, wrote down the contact info, and I called them.
Finally, I moved into a storage room in a basement of a really awesome house. And the people I lived with there were so fantastic…and hot….Dear Brian – you were too fucking hot for words.

So, when I wasn’t at work, when I wasn’t fascinatedly wondering the streets of DC, I was camped out, writing, reading or doing the Post crossword puzzle at the SoHo Café down at 14th and P Street (I think). Everyday…I was there – pushing coins across the counter to buy tea that I would sip very, very slowly.

At the café, I met a radical faery. Then I met a storyteller. I met Raven. I met Lyra. I met a former advisor to Clinton on Native American affairs who did not like that I liked the word ‘queer.’ I met a dancer…a hot, hot dancer, a drag-queen, an addict, an addict in recovery, and the first person I ever knew to be HIV+. I fell in love, sorta, twice – with a leather man and a muscle boy. My partner visited, and I fell in love with him again too.

And then one day, I showed up at the coffee shop and had friends to sit with. People that did the crossword with me, told me stories, tried to teach me to dance. That was when I started to learn how to be a gay man, started to learn how to pass culturally. It was a really amazing time and all of it without the internet…sorta. All I did was work, drink and laugh.

Now, I told you that story to tell you this one – Three years ago, when I moved to San Francisco, I joined the SFGSL, the gay softball league. Novice Division, slow pitch, gay softball. My roommate and I were picked up by the Pirates – a team with pretty much no returning players and a losing record. We showed up to practice and met David – the dancer, Shawn Hong - the programmer, Craig – who didn’t tell anyone his name for the first two practices, Dave – WOOF, BJ, Andy, Dan and on and on and on…

We lost. The whole season. A lot. By a lot. Punctuated by one win that we could never imagine. That felt like winning the World Series ala bottom of the ninth, two outs sort of deal. Mostly though, I need to reiterate this, for two years… mostly, we just lost. But after almost every game, we went down to the bar and congratulated each other with beer over the good plays. Strategized about the bad ones and stood with each other as teammates. We may have lost a lot, but we lost a lot together.

I’ve played softball for three seasons now, the lineup shifting and changing each season so that I’ve fallen out of touch with some people, met new ones and gotten close to those I’ve been on the field with for a long time…people I hope I’m on the field with for a long time.

I’ve heard stories about Studio 54, the ‘Back to the Land’ Movement, having sex at Disneyland, calling 911 while stoned and the priesthood. I have traveled to tournaments with them, danced with them…made out with like…all of them. I have met non-softball people through them that I find absolutely fascinating. I have drank a lot with them.

So, it needs to be put out there that part of the reason that I may have decided to undertake this project…is that softball season is over. And there’s a comraderie in defending yourself from injury against a softball every weekend. It gives you something to look forward to during the week while your co-workers are getting themselves stuck in elevators or asking you how to use the fax machine.

I was lucky though. My first weekend without the internet, my brother newly in the East Bay and my roommates (really more like family) out of town, I was worried I would get bored and lonely. I was worried that I would aimlessly wonder the city in search of human interaction and contact. But no, softball friends and friends of softball friends called. They coaxed me out with beers. Told me stories and cruised boys with me. Let me go home when it was finally too late up to update any blog. I'm so fucking lucky to have these people in my life.

So, while I want to meet new people and hear new stories (maybe less alcohol oriented) with this project, I also hope to strengthen the friendships I already have.

If you wanna throw the ball around: antiochlogan@yahoo.com