At the Millennium March A travelogue by Ed Rock Crabtree

Foreword

You see, I was a freshman in college and had gotten really involved with a fundamentalist Christian group in the local college town. American Christianity was just beginning to get into its political phase that has now become so widespread, well-known, and even profitable.

Several of us from church got together to attend Washington for Jesus. Washington for Jesus was a massive rally with several peripheral activities hoping to attract one million conservative Christians and to impress upon Congress (and voting America) the conservative ideals and agenda. Although it is doubtful that one million people showed up, the event was successful enough to attempt the same thing 8 years later. Washington for Jesus 1988 wasn't near the event, at least to me, that Washington for Jesus 1980 had been. At the 1980 event, I had felt a lot of community and brotherhood with the other believers who gathered. I only experienced a shadow of that in 1988.

But with the MMOW, I had hoped to rekindle a bit of the community feeling with my new community (coming out at 36, in 1997). I didn't experience the community I had hoped, but the event was quite successful and definitely worth attending.

For the past few months, I've run into people with wildly varying opinions about the MMOW. Some were convinced any real, concerned gay person would not even doubt attending. Others felt the whole thing was a commercial sham created to get money for sponsoring organizations and to compromise the queer spirit by attempting to show the world that we're normal. Some were concerned that their particular brand of gayness had not been explicitly encouraged to be present or worse, that the sponsoring organizations would rather that they not attend.

I'll do my best not to editorialize too much, but I wouldn't be true to myself if I didn't address some of these concerns. It's pretty evident that there is plenty of divisiveness among queer-folk, and I find that to be a shame. But very often the ones who feel marginalized create divisions. Benjamin Franklin said, "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." There's a lot of wisdom to that.

I'll leave my editorial with that. Now, on with my story.

Friday, April 28, 2000

Finally, we hit the road. We needed fuel for both us and the car, so we headed for one of Tim's favorite eating establishments, McDonald's. Hey, don't look at ME that way. I would have preferred some place with civilized food, but I can cater to my own dark side from time to time... probably more often than I should. No. Not probably. Definitely. Ok. Enough of that.

Back on the road, we started the lookout for like-minded souls also heading for our destination. My rainbow magnet was on the rear of the car and my MMOW bear was on the dash. W e were just the NC side of Richmond when we saw our first likely co-pilgrims. A truck with Bear Cub on their NC license plate blew past us. I considered attempting to catch up for a while, but since this was the same stretch of highway where I'd recently gotten a speeding ticket, I decided I'd pass. Unfortunately, we only encountered about 4-5 cars on the way up we thought were headed our way. We wondered if most had already left or if were coming later or, God forbid, that few were going to show up.

We began to hit the DC urban sprawl around 7:30 and began the trek around I-495. Tim wanted to drop by to visit an associate in Silver Spring, so we went there first. The outer loop traffic was snarled in two locations amounting to about 20-25 miles of almost standstill traffic. Thus we decided to continue on the inner loop to the Greenbelt METRO stop. We parked there for the night and took the train into the city.

Greenbelt is the last stop out on the Green Line. Because of that, there's nearly always a train waiting, but you may have to wait a while before you depart. No problem. As we sat and waited a man joined us. At first he seemed to plan to sit alone, then he decided to come and sit across from us. My gaydar was pinging somewhat, but I wasn't sure. Conversation began immediately, but the subject was still a bit general. All three of us skillfully maneuvered the topics until each had convinced the other we were all gay. The chattage with our unknown co-traveller made the ride much shorter.

The Chinatown-Gallery Place stop came soon. Regretfully, without exchanging names, Tim and I watched our new friend leave to board the Red Line. As we headed to the street and the hotel, we saw him hurrying for his train to DuPont Circle. We waved, and saw him no more.

Our Friday evening hotel was the Renaissance downtown, across from the DC Convention center - and a convenient 2 blocks from the DC Eagle, but we'll hit that later. We got our room and debated what to do for dinner. It was about 10 by this time, and we weren't sure what would be open. I called Raku, in the heart of Dupont. They were open and would be for another couple of hours. They said they could seat us almost immediately, and besides, I was dying for good Asian food.

We grabbed a train and walked the half a block from the Dupont North METRO stop to Raku. Sure enough, we were seated immediately. Tim opted for a grilled chicken appetizer with sliced ginger and marinated cucumbers. I chose a spicy noodle dish with poached chicken, green chilies, bok choy cabbage, and coconut milk-and a Mai Tai. Yum! (The Mai Tai packed a pretty good punch, but that was all the alcohol I had all weekend - believe it or not.)

After dinner, we strolled along Connecticut Avenue past Lambda Rising (the gay bookstore) and the Human Rights Campaign's store. We wanted to check with Rainbows and Stars to see if the promised 3XL MMOW t-shirts were available. Negative. Tim, being the smaller of us two, picked up a 2XL shirt-which really looks pretty darn keen on him, and a few other items. We walked back to the METRO, enjoying the multitudes on the street.

Back to the hotel to change (and make sure my overalls were being worn "regulation"), we darted in, then out and around the next couple of blocks to the Eagle. It was around midnight, and we anticipated a crowd, but there was a line about a block or so long, just waiting to get in. And it wasn't moving. We perused the line for a few minutes, thinking, "You've got to be kidding." We decided we'd just pass, go back to the hotel for our own private fun and be up early the next morning. As we were leaving, a couple of guys were coming out of the Eagle; they said it wasn't even really crowded. Whatever. I like the place, but that line would have gotten us in around 1:30 or 2. It would have been cool to meet up with some others and just hang out wherever, but the city still didn't seem to be overrun with queer-folk. We did as we planned, and went to our room.

Next: Saturday

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