Being born and raised in what is known as Baltimore City, the point in which I moved "downtown" is subjective because downtown is generally south of where you happen to be at the moment. My mother would most likely consider my moving downtown to have occurred in early 1983 when I took up residence in Charles Village. Charles Village is located just below 33rd Street and 33rd Street denoted a dividing line where anxiety began at the first red light. Having never lived south of 33rd, nor having much reason to cross it, it clearly marked the end of a comfort zone for her while it highlighted the difference between then and now for me.
While I tend to agree with my mother on the time in which I moved downtown, it's based not upon geographical boundaries but upon the lack of boundaries about which I found myself concerned once I crossed that great divide. The move southward seemed then to only remove all obstacles to what I hoped to be and, since I had no idea of what that was, to open myself up to all the opportunities the world could offer.
Staying first on Abell Avenue and 31st, I was surrounded by the intriguing mixture of women that gave Abell it's nickname of Lavender Lane. At a time when the gay community was still suffering from separatist cultures, I was a rare example in being an unaccompanied male seen on the streets of that far-east corner of Charles Village. Being unaware of the fact that my penis was a vindictive and dangerous weapon thrust upon womyn-kind, I was initially stung by the disdain that I encountered from some of the more militant inhabitants of the neighborhood but, upon deftly acknowledging their viewpoint while never quite turning my own penis in for any of it's previous transgressions - and then volunteering my time to the Venus Rising Theater group, I received an eventual, yet begrudged, acceptance. From the less restrictive neighbors, I received a warmer welcome that was no doubt aided by the maternal instincts stirred by my awe of everything around me as well as my new found appreciation for Rita Mae Brown novels. I knew I was okay once the David Bowie-esque Marty began referring to me as "the Dyke Tyke" and I had successfully dented her view of Pat Benatar and Debbie Harry as nothing more than male created pop pornography and even found musical middle ground in Squeeze.
Just one block further east, on Greenmount Avenue, my blond and blue eyed self also stood out amongst the pedestrian congestion whose appearance led most visitors from further north to reflexively roll up windows and lock doors. If I was as equally rare on this block as the last, my constant late night presence at the Little Tavern, eating cheap burgers while feeding quarters into the jukebox to hear Angela Bofill or The Whispers, and my weekly visits to the neighborhood record store for the latest R&B made my assimilation far less complicated.
Eventually, I found my own part of Charles Village at 28th and Guilford Avenue, where Billy - a high school enemy turned beau, the aforementioned Marty, her girlfriend, and Esther, a good friend, surrogate big sister, and champion of my transitions, added two cats and a dog to the mix and attempted to build a home in a big but cozy four bedroom brick townhouse. In this part of the neighborhood, the crowd was much more diverse, fleshed out by Johns Hopkins students, long time and middle aged residents, and a few more gay men, yet the color line was as vividly apparent here as it was there and no one dared to park their car south of 28th Street without first circling the northern blocks one or ten times in search of a less menacing option.
Our house was the second from the corner, sharing with the corner house a wide set of concrete steps up from the sidewalk. At the top, the walk way diverged onto separate paths leading to the steps, and then spacious porches, of each house. The basement of the corner house had been converted into a liquor store accessible from an entrance on 28th Street and its interior was designed to keep your visit short and the staff safely separated from the customers by the generous use of bullet proof plexiglass. Should you wish to purchase a case of beer or anything else that would not fit into the revolving window, the cashier would sigh as if she'd been asked to donate plasma, and then demand that everyone leave the store so that she could safely open the lone, lock heavy, interior door and quickly shove the purchases over the threshold before slamming the door shut on any potential threat. Once her exhausted face could again be seen through the front windows, safely back behind her revolving window, you were allowed to come back in to collect your bounty. It's a testament to her demeanor that I never witnessed anyone attempting to alter her peculiar choreography of commerce.
The liquor store serviced both sides of 28th Street but seldom did you find inhabitants of the south side lingering on the north. Transactions were completed and the participants usually went directly back to their starting points, perhaps in fear of the natives getting restless. When our house was burgled that summer, even the police were surprised when fingerprints taken from our dining room window sash pointed to a seventeen year old boy from just two blocks down the street. Even more surprising was the formation of a small group of men who would buy their liquor just before the corner store closed, and then sit on the communal steps out front of our house to imbibe. After a few sips, a few jokes, and some wheezy banter, these men with burdened faces would start singing. A quick - and often sloppy - rendition of "My Girl" would lead to other Temptations staples before heading off into more esoteric examples of street corner harmony as the evening progressed and the group thinned out. Down to a quartet or trio, they would usually end the set with a number that I assumed was called "Been So Long", a song I'd never heard but quickly came to love, getting out of bed to watch through the window as the weight seemed to lift from their faces as they reached for a falsetto ending that may not have been technically perfect, but was perfectly beautiful to me.
The neighbors quickly took notice of this breach with mixed reactions. Those of us on the younger end of the scale found ourselves lucky to have these movie moment depictions of city living happening right under our bedroom windows while those who were older complained mostly of the disruption of their sleep. No one ever came out and asked what they were doing lingering on this side of 28th but everyone was surely wondering and some were probably worrying, too. Despite all the conversation, a consensus on a course of action was never reached so the show went on until winter turned serious, making the stage too uncomfortable for performances.
When spring arrived, the members of our household had changed dramatically with only Billy and me still remaining from the original set and I was already on the way out with eyes further southward toward a downtown which now meant Mt. Vernon. Climbing drunkenly out of a friends car one evening, I was surprised to find a solitary member of our stoop singers half-heartedly attempting "Been So Long" as a solo piece. Waiting until he finished, I asked, "Why do you always sing that song", to which he replied, "Back then we didn't have a lot of opportunities but we sure had a lot of hope". Unable to understand his answer, and barely able to withstand the weight of its delivery, I wished him a good night and went inside without confirming the name of the song or the artist.
Fifteen years later I picked up volume eight in Ace's series, "The Golden Age of American Rock 'n' Roll", and experienced time turning inside out when I heard the opening lines of The Pastels' "Been So Long". Reading the liner notes I found that it was released in 1957 and felt a slight tug as I realized that when the record was released, that man had probably been about the same age I had been on the night we spoke. Still unable to understand his answer, I was happy to have a musical mystery solved and left it at that.
As the years passed, "Been So Long" lost its affiliation with Guilford Avenue and became the anchor to my appreciation of Dee Irwin, the lead singer of The Pastels, until this Saturday, when it began playing as I did the usual weekend chores. Suddenly, "Been So Long" was nothing but Guilford Avenue as waves of memories from that time came sweeping through my head. Details like the inside of the liquor store, conversations with the neighbors, the theater group, even the long forgotten last name of the Bowie-eque lesbian became so vivid that I had to sit down for a moment to catch my breath and check my calendar. After doing a little suppositional math, I realized that if the man on the stoop was, at the time "Been So Long" was popular, the age I was on the night we spoke, I am now the age he was that night. While I'm finally able to understand his answer, I'm unsure as to what to do with it now, when I probably need it the most.
And what am I to make of the fact that while writing this, I accidentally kick the ancient and spell check retired unabridged dictionary that's kept under my desk and as I pick it up, find a long forgotten copy of Baltimore's Gay Paper, dated June 1983, tumbling out of it and, as it lands, opening to an article about the new production at Venus Rising Theater and a picture of Marty and Esther and several other ladies of Lavender Lane?
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