What would you tell him if you had the chance (Clinton's First Inauguration)

Thank you for your support and friendship which made this trip possible:

Don Lane

Janet Fine

Scott Brookie

Deborah Kolodny

Nancy Levine

Lori Klein

What Would You Tell Him If You Had The Chance?

I went to Clinton's Inauguration in the usual way, like many other Americans. I had a political connection which I discovered through personal friends. I used my credit card.

I had met up with an acquaintance at a party. He said he had received an invitation to the swearing in, as well as an invitation to buy a ticket to the parade and a Ball. I asked if he had a date, and that if he didn't I wanted to be it. He thought that it might be a stronger political statement if he took a same-sex date, but I thought that going with a lesbian was statement about gay community. As it happened, he didn't go, but he did help me get the ticket to the swearing in.

I asked some other friends who had an invitation, but they decided not to go. However, they did help me pay for it. When I told people I was going, their enthusiam and happiness for me surprised me. Anyone could go to Washington, if you have the money and the time. But I don't think it is that easy for people. Washington is a far, far away place for most people, and I think that twelve years of Republicans had sent it further way from most people's lives. But now, Bill was going to be President. Bill who probably had an affair. Bill who didn't inhale. Bill who didn't want to fight in Vietnam. Bill who cried. Bill who said "AIDS" in his acceptance speech. Bill was someone who could be our friend; Bill was going to Washington; he was like us, and I was going to be there on his first day at work.

In the end, I launched myself on to the trip at dawn, January 18, 1993.

Lots of people on the plane were going to the Inauguration. My seatmate, Dannie, was a clothing store owner from Chico with a background in City Planning. She was going because her aunt and uncle were active democrats in Virginia. They had tickets to a ball, and even though it meant being away from her baby boy for the longest time ever, she wanted to make the trip of a lifetime.

That's what everyone kept saying. This is the chance of a lifetime. To be there at the moment, to share this time in history with actual people, not lights on a TV screen. This is why I wanted to go; because if I pictured myself being home on January 20, or worse, at work at 9 am January 20, I also pictured myself disappointed in myself. And my father once warned me, "never disappoint yourself."

Dannie and I talked the whole way across the country, five hours without pause except to pee. Her story was familiar; like most of the people going to Washington this week her life was not exotic or rarified to me. She was about 35, went to UCSB, changed careers to be able to work with her husband. Was never interested in politics before, had a strong sense of ethics about government behavior--she was fired from a planning job in Chico because people there said she was doing too much and "making the rest of us look bad." Like me and other people I talked to or heard talking, she hadn't realized that it was possible to feel personally involved in politics. "I never felt like I cared about a politician before. I was talking to my grandmother about John F. Kennedy. She just loved him and I didn't get it. She said, "Just wait. There will be someone for you."

We talked a lot about Bill. "I can just imagine him and Hillary, after the Balls, going in to the White House and jumping on the beds," she said. I said that probably he and Hillary had hot-tubbed naked with their friends. Like most people, she had something ready to say if she had a chance to talk to him. "I would tell him, 'Watch your back.' I really worry about him." I could only think of one thing to say, but I didn't tell it to her. I could only think to ask "Do you really lick pussy like a champ?" That might get me on TV, but I wouldn't ever really ask him. Really.

I asked her a lot about her business. She showed me pictures of her store and was wearing some of the clothes. The photos showed a store that looked a lot like The Gap, but without every item being repeated across the shelf six times. The store is dying there. She says people in Chico only want to wear clothes with a brand name in eight-inch letters across the chest if they recognize the company. When they find a discreet brand name on some of her clothes that they don't recognize, they won't buy it because they don't know if it is a cool brand name or not. She has resigned herself to losing the store, but sticking with it until she does. I said she should move it to Santa Cruz. People need retail tenants downtown, and if she opened up right across the street from the Gap she could do very good business. "My husband and I call The Gap the Evil Empire," she said. Everyone I know says the same thing, I said, "They like The Gap's clothes ok, but they hate to go in there." "I once wrote 'Rags for Robots' across their doorstep," I confessed to her. She liked that.

Of course I was able to come out to her, and she's straight and seemed like a woman who is very comfortable with that. She's Christian, but not a zealot. She said she joined the Presbyterian church in her town, but her husband didn't and she doesn?t care. I said I was a pagan, and she dug that ok too. I think there are millions of women like her, and I think they are going to go into government. That's another thing. She wants to stay in Chico because she wants to get active in Butte county politics. She knows there are people there who would vote for her who aren't voting now. I said she still should try to move to Santa Cruz. She knows Santa Cruz, she went to girl scout camp there for ten years.

I was on the middle seat. We never paid attention to the man sitting next to us, yet we gabbed the whole way. He must have heard about our gay friends, and Christianity, and clothing, and politics. I wondered if he was a Republican.

We arrived at Dulles all too quickly. Our goodbye was hurried, but she asked for my card. I hope she calls me.

§§§

I took the Washington Flyer bus from Dulles to the Metro Station at West Falls Church. Everything has a very different kind of name out here, and often they involved cardinal directions. It all started with L'Enfant and his quarters. One of the porters or whatever you call people who call for an extra Washington Flyer bus when the one you wanted to get on is too full and who hauls your luggage onto the rack was clearly a dyke. Or so I hoped. I realized the last time I was here, in 1985, I was so newly a lesbian that I don't think I noticed the lesbians much. Or maybe 12 years of Republicans has brought them out.

One of the other porters spoke English with a thick Vietnamese accent tinged with Virginia drawl. It was like hearing English of the future.

When I landed at the DC metro station where I was to make my transfer to the Red Line, I thought again about how here I was at the Center of the World; there I was, where I was watching on TV last night. Yet it seemed ordinary. Life is rather ordinary. Even for Chelsea, I bet life seems ordinary, in a kinda stressful kinda ordinariness.

I felt an excitement in the air that has to do with the accessibility of the person of Bill and Hillary. I could imagine myself doing something that gets the attention of Bill and Hillary, and being able to speak to them, to have them smile at me, to have them say, "Yes, let's work together and we can make that so." I think lots of people feel this way. Why did the Sentinel ask me, "If you get a chance to speak to him, what will you say?" Would they have asked me that had Bush been re-elected? or even if Quayle had been elected?

§§§

I was going to stay for the week with my friend Deb who was once Lori Klein's housemate. She met me at the station and we chatted until late. The next day, I rode into town with her, and she dropped me off near Capitol Hill. We planned to meet that night at Lafayette Park, for a NOW demonstration.

I went first to the Supreme Court, because if they were hearing cases, you have to get there early to get a seat. As I approached--about 9 o?clock a.m.--I saw a group of children with grown-up chaperons. The kids looked like little adults, the boys even wearing suits and trench coats. "Is this a demonstration or a tour?" I asked one of the chaperons. "It's called Washington Workshops," the man said. "Washington Workshops," a woman next to him in the voice used by marketing representatives. She looked at me as if, if I didn't know what it was, I was going to find out in a minute. "Cold enough for ya?" I replied.

While we waited for the tour to start in the Great Hall, surrounded by white marble busts of all the Chief Justices bearing down on us, I got hungry. I carved out a few chunks of the apple I brought. Is it ok to eat apples in the Hall of the Supreme Court? Well, no one stopped me. There in the presence of the busts of all the Supreme Court Chief Justices. The 18th-Century Chief Justices are depicted in Roman togas. The 19th-CJ's in a kind of toga with a tie--one of those little bow ties like Lincoln often wears. By the Twentieth Century they are wearing long ties, with familiar judicial robes. How odd, to be a modern man and have a marble bust in a style 2500 years old? Is there something to this? Why do men do this for each other? I wonder if it's one of those secrets they don't share with women. And the building itself. It was built during the Depression, but it is just like a Roman Basilica, which were patterned on pagan temples, which were patterned on sacred groves. What's going on here? That everything sacred stays the same? That seems to be what I have found from doing pagan things. It's all too simple.

Before the tour started, everyone got to take a picture of the bench. Bulbs flashed like paparazzi, but the chairs were empty and again rather ordinary looking. The tour guide gave her talk. She explained which justice sits where, and there I saw Clarence Thomas's seat and O'Connor's, and Scalia's and all the other nasty people I have come to hate. I learned where the press sits, and the court artists, and the lawyers who are members of the Supreme Court Bar. I remembered that Blair and Lori are going to try to get sworn in to the Supreme Court Bar when they come to Washington in April. How fun that would be.

Just as I do in churches, I liked the allegorical friezes around the ceiling of the courtroom: The Power of Government, The Defenders of the Majesty of Law, the Rights of the People; The struggle of Good against Evil; Good aided by Divine Inspiration, Wisdom, and Truth. How can the Justices look up at that powerful art and say a man doesn't have the right to bugger whom he wishes in his own bedroom? Don't they get it? But maybe the artist didn't anticipate such a question coming before the court.

The gift shop and lunch room of the Supreme Court was closed so I fortified myself with more apple and went over to the Capitol to get the inaugural tickets.

§§§

I was on way to room 146: the Joint Congressional Committee on the Inaugural Ceremonies.

I listened to a tour guide out in front of the East Front of the Capitol. "Everything you see--inside, outside, all of it--tells a story. Every painting, every statue, the tile on the floor. And it's always changing, it will never be finished--unless the country is finished and we hope that will never happen. Just keep looking but stay with the group. You're going to have to stay close to the group--nothinglike you've been on the rest of the trip. The Capitol has 137 staircases and you better not get lost." This tour seemed to be male adults, so I guess that kind of rudeness in a tour guide works for that kind of group. Plus, the tour guide had that so-attractive gay-man bitchiness which I like, but I lost track of that tour immediately on entering the Capitol.

I wandered around a bit in the Capitol first, mostly because I couldn't find room 146. It was so crowded, even in the halls, then there were 50-person tours coming down little colonial staircases. And, probably because they only wanted people with legitimate business bugging them, room 146 had no "Joint Congressional Committee on the Inaugral Ceremonies" sign, just a thin, brass, highly-tarnished plate above the nine-foot high door that said "146."Which would have been easy to see if it hadn't been under an unlit marble staircase.

I walked in, cleverly hiding my camera in my bag so I looked like I was there on official business. I stepped down into a room with fold-up tables blocking my progress to the works of the room. Three pieces of paper scotch-taped to the table said "Legislature," "Judiciary," and "Electors."

"Electors, that's it,"I said, and stepped up to the table. A woman looked up, not yet skeptical. "Name?" "John Laird, of California. Well, I'm not John, but I'm with John." Now she's skeptical. "Do you have identification?" At this, a man jumped up behind her and took interest in me. "Yes, here is the letter to the Secretary of State, here is the letter to John, and here is the telegram he sent reserving the tickets,"I said officially. Good enough for the guy, so good enough for the woman. I showed my California DL, signed off on a form and trotted away. "Oh,"I said, turning around and trying to press this officialness just a bit more. "Could I make a copy of the form I just signed?" "Of course," the woman said, since I was obviously here on official business. She even made the copy for me and I was on my way, two official packets of inaugural tickets in my bag, right next to my camera.

With my business officially finished in the Capitol, I continued sightseeing there, as I had never seen it before.

I followed different tours around, getting snatches of story, but without sticking with any one for long. Some people brought their own tour guides, some people followed around women in red sport coats. But many many people were being lead around by young men in suits; these were the VIP tours. At one point, I started to follow a VIP tour as it went behind a "this corridor closed" sign, but chickened out. I had the wrong shoes.

When I ended up in the Capitol Rotunda --where the Statue of Liberty could stand comfortably, red-jacket women told us several times--one quarter of the room was behind what is called "media scaffolding." The next day, after the inauguration, the freshly presidential were to walk through the Rotunda and into the Old Senate Chamber in the next room. For that brief glimpse of the new president, I couldn't see Trumbull's painting of the surrender of Boyne before Washington. Humph. Got a postcard of it instead. Hope everyone liked seeing Bill walk through there on TV. Well, did you?

This Rotunda has a fresco painted around the base of the dome which tells 400 years of American history, starting with the landing of Columbus and ending with the flight at Kitty Hawk. The story this fresco tells is that the artist, Constantino Brumidi, took more than a year to do all the sketches, painted almost half way around to Penn buying Manhattan, but then accidentally fell off, clung by his fingers for 15 minutes 50 feet above the marble floor, was rescued by a night watchman, and never went back up again. He died at age 74 a few months later. So a new artist was hired. He used the same sketches, but made them a little more cramped. Some say he did that because he had some ideas of his own to add to the fresco. So they fired him before he could start on his designs, and for 50 years 30 feet of the circle was blank. Finally in the Thirties, they hired someone to finish. The last bit of the circular fresco are in that robust Thirties style so reminiscent of Tom of Finland.

I hung out a while in the Old Senate Chamber too, where you can hear someone across the room more clearly than you can hear someone right next to you. This is also the room where the floor is marked where certain Senators had their desks before they went on to be President. And the spot where a former President Madison, then a Senator again, died on the spot. See, everything does tell a story in the Capitol.

Then I visited the present legislative chambers, where government gets done. Unlike the House chamber, the Senators sit in little desks, which have ink wells and a place to write. Lots of people were messing around on the floor, but they were on VIP tours. On that day, the public like me had to be a Friend of a Congressman to get down to the floor. The room was very Victorian, and not very large. The House Chamber is not much bigger, but as the room was remodeled in the 50s, it rather resembles a bus station, what with rows of chairs all sharing armrests, no desks, and a huge lighted screen listing names of members like departures and arrivals. Some guy in casual clothes was messing around, sitting in the Speaker's Chair and chatting with his guide wearing his suit. A lady behind me in the Gallery said to her daughter, not more than ten-years-old. "When you're on a VIP tour, they let you sit in that seat. You don't remember, but when you were five, you sat in that chair." How cute. Everything in the Capitol tells a story.

While I was taking a few notes, a guard came down and told someone that they couldn't take pictures. In fact, you can't take any pictures on the third floor, that is, the galleries above the Chambers. Folks down there in the Chambers were flashing away, officially VIP-like. Anyway, in response to the guard telling someone else again they couldn't take pictures, a man sitting nearby told me, "You can't write." "Let them try to stop me," I said, obviously overcome by the revolutionary fervor ignited in me by the stories told by doorknobs and ceiling tiles.

Everywhere, you see one particular symbol, the fascia. The bundle of sticks tied around the labrys. I wonder if anyone thought it ironic, as they deliberated various decisions regarding Axis Powers and Hitler and Mussolini while in the presence of an ancient symbol of the power of the state over the individual. Just a thot.

As I left the House Gallery, a man said to his wife, in a tone of great wisdom and knowledge, "I'd hate to watch this in session; this is the House of Confusion." Then I heard a woman ask a guard, "Is there a place where both houses meet together? no, huh?"

Over and over I heard people say, "I thought it would be bigger." "It's much smaller than I imagined it to be."It was their way of noticing that life just about everywhere is ordinary after the age of eleven or so. I had a similar feeling when I saw the Star Trek exhibits at the National Air and Space Museum. And I heard the same comments there. The rows of bus station seats in the House looked as cheap as the costumes worn by Gene Roddenberry's tarts.

It's probably a good idea Americans think government takes place in bigger rooms than actual.

I wandered around to the side of the gallery and found doors leading to special House Galleries: the Executive, Diplomatic, Ladies, and Press. The Press Gallery has the worst view, worse even than the one for the Ladies. In the stairway leading to these non-public galleries is a very offensive mural called "Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way. 1862." You can imagine what it looks like.

It's true everything in the Capitol tells a story, but it was more obvious to me that everywhere in the Capitol, not just the building but the entire District, men feel it's ok for them to scribble their names in public places just like those kids back home who scribble in marking pen. Just because they carve it in marble doesn't make it less offensive. I can see why someone would scribble their names across a subway map, given the example of what local men with insecurities do with their good names.

As I left the Capitol, I heard a boasting child ask an adult, "Didyou get to meet any congressmen?"

§§§

I walked over to the Jefferson building of the Library of Congress because I could see a crowd gathered. Then I remembered the P-elect, and Governors, etc., were having a lunch in there. I took a few photos of the top of someone's head, and some limos, but no one interesting. When it became obvious Bill must already be inside, the crowd shouted "We Want Bill," as if he was going to satisfy them with a wave, a fist punching the air, and a chew of the lower lip. He didn't deliver, or maybe couldn't hear them, and I got attracted by a demonstration over by the Madison building of the Library of Congress. I thought it might be a queer demonstration, but it was instead African-American employees of the library in the sixteenth year of a class action suit. I'm sure Bill will be able to take care of it, real soon now.

I wandered back over to the West Front of the Capitol (there is no Back of the Capitol. It has a West Front and an East Front and Two Wings.) I overheard a Democrat from Wisconsin talking at a Democrat from Illinois that before Reagan, outdoor inaugurations had taken place on the East Front, the side that now faces the Supreme Court and various national labor organization headquarters. The West Front can fit a much larger crowd, because it faces the Mall. But the man from The Great State of Populism said Reagan wanted to face the country, not the Ocean.

I suspect someone made this up. I think Reagan just wanted to do things different because he doesn't value tradition or history. He seems to be a "change for change's sake fellow." Further, later that night I watched a program on TV that gave the history of Presidential inaugurations. Michael Deaver told the story of going up into the Reagan's rooms at Blair House, January 20, 1981 around 9 am and seeing that Nancy was dressed and ready to go, but Ronald wasn't anywhere to be seen. "Where's the Governor?" Deaver asked Nancy. "I guess he's in there," she said, gesturing to the bedroom. Deaver opened the door and the bedroom was completely dark with a huge lump in the bed. "Governor, you have to get up, in the next few hours you are going to become President of the United States," Deaver said. And Ronald rolled over and said to him, "Do I have to?"

I continued walking around to the West Front of the Capitol, listened to martial music for tomorrow's deal and took some snaps. I checked out where I was going to be sitting. Directly behind the beloved media scaffold, as far as I could tell.

I listened to people say to each other, "I thought it would be bigger," and "I can'tbelieve I'm here" while they messed around in front of the Capitol, near the Grant memorial. Before I came back here, I thought I would go up to interesting people and talk with them. But no one looked interesting. Everyone looked like they were from Fresno.

I was starting to get spacey from being hungry, so I remembered a very bad cafe in the West Wing of the National Gallery. I knew it had dreadful food, but I wanted to go there anyway. I also really wanted to keep wandering around, feeling superior, but I knew better.

I ordered a roast beef sandwich, $7.95, and it came on the plate very weird. You know those pastries where they spread out dough very thin and then spread cinnamon and sugar and butter all over it then roll it up and slice the roll diagonally to make little hand-sized pastries? This is how they made the sandwich. And then refrigerated it. And made it share a plate with odd Waldoff salad and served it with six kinds of bread which seemed to be invented by a people from six continents. This must be a sign of creeping multiculturalism in the art world.

§§§

Now that I had seen the Judiciary, the Legislature, and was scheduled to see the Executive tomorrow, I decided to try to see a confirmation hearing. Of course I picked the most popular one, that of the Senate Judiciary Hearing on the Attorney General Nominee. I found the column in the Post called "In Congress."Her hearing was in room 106, DOB. DOB?DOB, what could that be? Not Daughers of Bilitis, I'm sure. Hmm, OB must be "o"ffice "b"uilding, but none of my maps labeled any of the OB's beginning with D. I finally found the Dirkson Office Building an hour later. No one I asked knew what the DOB was.

I waited in line with some FOB's in the hall outside 106 DOB. The woman in front of me had paid $5000 for a pair of tickets to that night's Presidential Gala at Capitol Center. (I watched it on TV for free like everyone else.) The two men behind me were Fs of Fs of B, and they talked about politics, but not about Zoë Baird. We waited for about 45 minutes, while the committee took a break and they don't let anyone in during a break, only during the hearing, just the opposite of what happens at a play but I guess there is nothing theatrical about the Senate.

Most of the hearing I watched concerned what Zoë Baird knew about employing illegal immigrants, when did she know, and was she sorry now. Her mistake was letting her husband take care of the arrangements. How 30-something. The man taking care of childcare, and look what happens. She didn't blame the problem on her husband, but she said she regretted not being more on top of it. Everyone in the audience around me was snorting and saying, "Oh jeez, I can't believe they are going on like this. We've had crooks in this job; God, we've had Ed Meese. Leave it alone. These people are really stupid."

As various Senators asked Zoë how sorry she was to let her husband take care of the babysitters and if she knew domestics don't have to have income tax withholding, I noticed this room was also decorated withfacia as well as, Oh Lord, The Signs of the Zodiac. Do the christians know about this?

The hearing adjourned until 10 am Thursday. I walked down the street past the Capitol towards Pennsylvania to check out the parade route and see on which corner the queer folk were going to stand (at 10th), right in front of the J. Edgar Hoover FBI building. Well, wouldn't he be proud. It was dusk at the end of a long day. I wrote in my notebook:

Everyone here is cynical, snide, ironic, and sarcastic. How could you be anything but when surrounded by liberty, equality, justice and revolution; the glory and loss of war, the--as Bush said in his concession speech--the majesty of democracy. I guess I can still see that someone who has hope or a reason to believe that she or he could do things differently than them who's come before could make the monuments meaningful. Right now, I think that if I had the chance, I could, so why not Bill Clinton and the rest of his government appointees? He says he wants to try, so I say with DC cynicism, let's see him try; I'll like feeling superior.

In my walk to the Old Post Office, I not only saw more dykes, but just like at a women's festival, I saw dykes with matching clothes--one couple with matching ear muffs. How darling.

§§§

I continued walking down Pennsylvania Avenue and went into the Old Post Office, where I found a purple store, the rest room, and a marvelous photo booth.

On the way to Layfayette Park, where I was to meet my hostess Deb at the NOW demonstration, I passed a crowd of people standing on the sidewalk, like teenagers at a Metallica concert, but in evening clothes. They were there for the Tennessee Gala, "We're here for Gore," is how one man put it. Funny, later that night I saw the Gores at the other Gala at the Capitol Center. Hope the Tennessee Gala was worth the wait. These various Galas Tuesday night closed off all the big streets unannounced. People honked their horns in boredom, like pressing an elevator button to make it go faster. I got kinda lost, thinking Lafayette Park was on the Mall side, not the downtown side of the White House. But I enjoyed walking clear around the White House one and a half times, and really enjoyed running into guards and fences and dogs and things which protected the Bushes and the property from terrorism.

While I walked around the Oval, I remembered when Bush was elected, I had a premonition that he was the last president. And now, tomorrow, he was going to step down. He wasn't going to be president anymore. And a new one was coming in. So many year's of unconscious grinding dread.

I eventually found the queers near the Lafayette statue. I enjoyed being with my people again and even ran into Ann Chang, who lives in San Francisco, who I met on the computer lesbian network. Small world.

The gathering was small, Deb said, for a NOW event in DC. A woman sang "The Night Before the Inauguration," (like the xmas poem) we lighted candles, Patricia Ireland spoke, followed by a lesbian army colonel, dishonorably discharged. At the end, Patricia says, "Let's sing an old favorite." I wonder what that would be; I guess: "Waterfall?"but Patricia starts singing "We Shall Overcome." How nice. Patricia says our little candles will be held to Clinton's feet if he doesn't fulfill his promises, they will becomes fires, and then the vigil breaks up.

I was growing increasingly confused. Ok, so this guy who is going to make it possible for us to get things fixed is finally in the White House. But we are skeptical. We are used to being in the opposition. We remain in the opposition and The Media says to us all day--the day before he takes the oath of office-- "Clinton is already going back on his promises."

Deb and I had a fabulous dinner at Bombay Cafe. We had great conversation, and she says she will go to the Inauguration Ceremony with me.

§§§

We drove back out to Adelphi and watched the festivities on TV. Maya Angelou talked about being invited to write a poem for the Inauguration. She said, "There is so much I want to say about my country. I love my country. What a chance we have. If we work together, we have no idea who we could be." This feeling of potential for great change is greater now that it is a possibility, not just a campaign promise. Just like Reagan made promises and his government kept them, so can Clinton's people. Ok, so what Reagan didn't balance the budget or make gov't smaller. He and his folks did a lot of damage while they were in there, just like they said they would. What will happen now?

After the show about the Inauguration, we watched the Presidential Gala live on TV. Bill Cosby came in, and took his chance to speak to the President to say, "What I wanted to talk to you about..." for a laugh. Every time I have an idea about this whole experience, someone else says it first. Yes, it's all very simple and obvious. Everyone thinks they are going to be able to go up to Bill Clinton this week and say, "What I wanted to talk to you about...."

Cosby was wearing a red ribbon. He introduced a jazz supergroup and they all were wearing red ribbons. Every one of the performers the whole night wore a red ribbon except Barbra. And Bill. His tux was ribbonless, and baggy. Maybe that is his way of saying that his life has been touched by the tragedy of bad tailors.

Barbra sang her corniest song, the one Bill had requested her to sing at that famous fundraiser in Malibu last summer, "Evergreen." Then she sang a weird song about children listening, and she prayed for Bill and Al. Quite uncommon to see a woman praying on TV, I don't think I'd seen it since Tammy Faye Baker. Barbra did it without crying, but of course Bill teared up.

Ok, this crying thing. Men are crying in public now; Barbra sings her corniest song by Presidential request, and as soon as I realize this, I read in the Post that yes, men are crying in public in record numbers now that the Clintons have come to town and that all their friends say that the Clintons are corny and don't feel they have to apologize for it.

The reunion of Fleetwood Mac was embarrassing, but I don't think anyone cried about it. It was bad enough to make you cry, but that's not the crying that's happening in Washington these days. Sentimentality, Corn, Touching Feelings: it's enough to make grown men cry. Women? Perhaps we should take our lead from Hillary.

§§§

The next morning, bright and early to Fort Totten Station for the Metro ride to Union Station and a long walk to the other side of the Capitol to wait in our seats for two-and-a-half hours. I recorded our conversation.

As we walked to our seats, one of the military ushers asked another, "Have you seen anybody (pause) Interesting yet?"

We sat for two hours and talking about gays in the military, bisexuals being discriminated by name by the military, the quality of the Post, and the choral music then being provided for our enjoyment. I had never heard such a version of Home on the Range..

I showed Deb my press pass, courtesy of Qualyle Quarterly. I didn't have a chance to use it; one had to have made very specific arrangements ahead of time. Deb thought it looked like I was on drugs. It was only caffine though. We took photos of each other.

The youngest Elector in history, aged 20, sat in front of us. An Elector from Louisiana sat next to us who put his hand on his heart during the National Anthem. I find this a tender, symbolic gesture, practically extinct in people of my age. Someone passed out in the section of standing room near us and had to be carted away. The sun warmed us, the squirrels ran circles around the trees. We discussed the possibility of a Hawaiian succession. We discovered that Deb's friend, Larry the contractor on Kuwai, is the same contractor that Michele was working for, rebuilding after the hurricane. Everyone in the world is two phone calls away from everyone else. Sitting next to Deb I was two phone calls away from Clinton beause her boss is an FOB. I was also two phone calls away from B through my boss. We discussed the meaning of the flags behind the Inauguration Platform: The current flag, the flag as it was when Arkansas entered the Union, and the flag of the thirteen colonies.

Deb thought that the pool in front of the Grant Memorial was frozen over. It wasn't but it gave me the excuse to make a little speech about how the two war memorials at either end of the mall balance two centuries' depictions of war. Both memorials are both pro- and anti-war.

We couldn't see anything of the Inauguration, really. We wondered how many of the people on the scaffold blocking our view were men. The photos I took make it look worse than it was, because we could see motion behind the scaffolding. We could see the crowd behind us, stretching in a cramped mass back to the museums and beyond.

The Vice President takes his office first. I thought this was truely a moment I never thought would happen: Dan Qualye unemployed. See, I guess they do it this way so that if the President (in this case, Bush), dies before the incoming President can take the oath, then the new Vice President (in this case Gore) would become President at that moment. I worked all this out while Marilyn Horne sang a dreadful American Medley. I didn't like that situation one bit: Bush--President, Gore--Vice President.

Then Clinton took the oath. It seemed like he meant it. It didn't seem like Renquist liked it very much. We heard the I-Address for the first time, just like everyone on TV, but I am happy--very happy--to have the memory of that speech coming into my ears while sitting in the sunshine, my friend listening intently, both of us on the lawn of the Capitol, with hundreds of thousands, watching fragments of our new President's arms flapping up and down beyond the scaffolding. "There is nothing wrong with America that is not Right with America." Isn't that what he said?

We whooped and clapped and screamed at the end of Maya Angelou's poem. I was moved as poetry rarely moves me, and I thought that maybe people will start reading poetry now, now that they had a chance to hear what free verse can do.

Unfortunately we our elation was quickly brought down by the benediction by Rev. B. Graham. He prayed in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. He cut out all the other religions, not to mention women, and assumed that we were all xians. "Shee-ew, that's really offensive. I can't believe they're doing that." I whispered to Deb. "It would have been so easy to do it differently."

It was pretty hard, after a campaign full of "inclusion" to have Billy laid on us. Deb said I can do her benediction at her inauguration.

§§§

After the ceremony, I walked with Deb over to Union Station. She went home, and I, clever tourist that I am, took the Metro across Pennsylvania Ave--which I read was to be closed off at 1 pm--to 9th and F, only a few blocks above where the queers were hanging out, watching the Parade. Not only had the police closed off the Avenue, but about 600,000 people were between me and my people, at that moment. I hung out on the queer corner for close to an hour. It wasn't very campy or interesting as one might have thought. All the best seats were taken by risers (more scaffolding-stuff) and no one had organized any queer-waiting-around activities. The parade began 45 minutes late, but as soon as it started I realized I should probably just go find a bar to watch it in because I wasn't going to see anything from where I was, unless I got on some queen's shoulders. The hot dog vendors grabbed the best views anyway.

Around this part of the day I realize I don't think I have a story for the Sentinel, and probably not one for Hysteriaeither. If I had been able to travel with more Santa Cruz friends, I think I would have had funnier things to say. Right then, I felt bitter, cynical, sarcastic, and powerless. Not unlike most Washingtonians, but that story has already been told--in the Post.

After I left the corner, I took the Metro back to Union Station because it's near an Irish restaurant I wanted to try, and I thought the bar might have a TV. But there was a line out the door. I was out of cash--spending my last of a roll of quarters on a button with a ribbon and a saxophone attached--and waited in an ATM line seven-deep until it ran out of money six people in front of me. So I wandered around to the other side of Pennsylvania, in front of the Capitol, and then to the other side, Independence Ave. The Mall was closed off, and full of waiting Parade participants. They were letting people cross the Mall in the middle, so I had to walk all the way back to there and back because I was going to meet Nancy Levine between the two wings of the National Gallery at 5 o'clock. This way I was able to see some of the floats, like Sherri Lewis, my childhood idol. I'm glad I had to do this, because not only did I see the Names Quilt, waiting in line, I saw Vito Russo's panel, which I had never seen. I wonder how they picked the names to be carried in the Parade?

There were very few people who looked "interesting." There were no protestors or street theatres, few homeless people. This whole parade, its participants and spectators were rather flat, much like straight people. What it desperately needs is some drag queens. How can you have a parade without drag queens?

While I waited for Nancy near the fountain, I could hear the parade announcer quite clearly, and could see the top of the marchers'heads if I wanted to. At this time of day--5 o'clock--I could have even gotten a seat at the curb, but I didn't want to. Where do they find these announcers who sound like filmstrip narration? Do they train them somewhere or are they discovered? I think for most folks, this Parade was a bust. I'm sure Clinton and all the FOBs in the bleachers liked it, but as it is the one historically important event of the week that you don't need a ticket for, I think people thought they could see it. I guess they hadn't ever gone to a Gay Parade before. The kinda crush I've seen on Gay Day was here too, but without men in feathers, it's a drag. ha.

While waiting at the fountain, I thought more about my feelings about the new gov't, and what I thought people were feeling around me. Of course, I read all about these thoughts and feelings in thePost the next morning, but I truly did feel them myself first. It seemed to me we were holding our hope close. We didn't want to hope too much because for so long we had been cut away from the power to make significant changes.

From my journal:

But as I write this now, I know that I have not been cut away from the power to make significant changes, I have already made a contribution to the world in my first decade of adult life. Future generations won't read about it, and I won't have my name scribbled in marble in Washington, but I have not been cut off from power. There power here, but is not of a different nature, it is of a different quality because so many people are tapped into it. So many people are touched by the decisions that are made within these few square miles. People here seem powerful because people here are paid attention to. It's not because they do anything different from anyone else. That's why everything seems so ordinary when you are here, but majestic from California. Well, not majestic, but self-important in a way that we can't help but pay attention to.

A woman walked by me wearing a very curious fur coat. It was white fox, with little fox heads stuck into it in odd places, with painted blood around where the severed heads came through the fur. "That's a great fake fur," she said to me and my raccoon coat and beaver hat. "Yes," I lied. When she walked past me, I saw, written in "blood"on the back of her coat, "Fur is Dead."But I knew what only she knew: that it was still a fox and fox is a very warm coat, just like my raccoon. And everyone else was walking around in their down-quilted puffies, but we were wearing fur, and fur may be dead, but it keeps a girl warm and that's why I wear it.

I took off about 5:30 and found out later I had missed Nancy by five minutes. I finally got cash from a machine downtown, one that hadn't been cleaned out by tourists. I found a good news stand too, and bought more postcards and a tour book of Washington. Then I went back to Deb's to watch 48 Hours.

§§§

48 Hours had done interviews with people who had known Bill from childhood. One guy said, "Bill makes friends for life-- but he should never drive." He also said he likes peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Another friend said, "I'd always joked about playing football on the White House lawn. It's going to come true."

The Arkansas Ball was the hottest ticket in town that night, and these FOBs were going there. The guy who will someday play presidential touch football was shown with thick tears soaking his face as Bill took the oath. And all his friends said a curiously disturbing thing, ?"This country is lucky to have a man like Bill Clinton as President." It's disturbing because maybe if Republicans said this about their friends, they would be lying. I just think I could tell they would be lying. But they don't say things like that about their friends anyway.

This 48 Hours show also had an interview with Bill. They asked him about wanting to be President from the time he shook hands with Kennedy. He said he would like to, but he doesn't remember thinking that then, but he does remember realizing politics could be a noble profession, and people haven't believed in that in many years. The show interviewed Al Gore too, and he used that "c" word: "This may sound kinda corny, but he really feels in his heart when he sees emotion in other people. He is empathetic."

They asked Bill about the not-following-through-on-his-promises thing. And he answered, "One of my greatest advantages has been being underestimated by my enemies."

Then 48 Hours promised us they could give us the best view of the Inauguration, even better than what Bill Clinton had. And they boasted about it. All this emphasis on access to proximity to the best looksee. I got to watch some cameraman's saggy butt while the ABC cameras got a better picture than me, a living person. What was I there for? Was I just an extra in a photo? (in fact, because I was behind the media scaffold, my little head didn't even make it into a crowd shot). If it is better to watch it on TV, why do they let the public attend at all? I know: to make it a ceremony worth televising and selling commercials for. How diabolically cynical. They have to let the public see, even though the public who is actually at the event, can't see. But the public has to be there to make it a show worth watching, and all the public at home can feel superior.

This whole town is about feeling superior. Scribbling, access, using the Metro to cross the street.

The next segment of the show was about the military operation behind the Inauguration. See, the inaugural and its events must proceed very smoothly because the military believes it must show the rest of the world they had handle smoothly the transition of power. And this wasn't just any old transition. Not just one man to another, not just one generation to another (like with Thatcher to Majors) but one antagonistic (they appear so anyway) party to another. The TV show interviewed the Col. Tambone who was in charge of the whole operation. He teared up when he said that it's important to the military to have a smooth transition from one chief to another. This made me realize it is rather unusual for the military to go along with their chief being deposed like this. I'm sure Col. Tambone didn't vote for Pee-Rot or Clinton.

The best person of this segment was the major in charge of the Parade deployment from the Mall. She called it "The Mother of All Parades." Oh, how clever. snort. She called it the biggest change of command ceremony most of us have ever seen. Isn't that true.

Right after the Swearing In, all the hundreds of thousands facing the Capitol turned around and tried to walk to Pennsylvania on the other side of the Museums. But there already were hundreds of thousands who had been clogging up the street since 9am listening to the oath, etc, on the radio. I wonder where they thought we were going to go, home? Couldn't take the Metro, that was too crowded. Anyway, thousands of people mowed down fences and started hanging out on the Mall, which would have been great except that that was where all the folks in the parade were going to hang out, waiting for their turn, and they were all on their way from the Pentagon. So this Major gets some other Majors to deploy troops through the crowds and "part the Red Sea," that's what they said, that exact Biblical metaphor. So hours into the Clinton era, the military controls a riot. Inauspicious? Let's hope not.

48 Hours then went live and covered the Inaugural Balls and found the FOBs they had interviewed within the last 48 hours. I was particularly touched, although I didn't cry, when I saw that someone, I think it was the E-Street Band, gave Clinton a saxophone and He Played It On The Spot. The E-Street Band is one thing, but the B-52s also participated in these Balls and that makes me feel very old.

Then I watched the local news. They talked with the FOB who will not play football with B who said, "He's gonna get in early and stay late." God, I hated it when the only thing the newscasters could say was "everyone is having a great time, and so are we, wish you could be here, Gordon." Oh great, this is journalism? This one newscaster interviewed Carole King. She said Bill was going to make big changes. Then the newscaster tried to kiss her butt and said "Congratulations, I heard you are up for a Grammy for a song from A Few Good Men." Carole said the name of the song, which I forget, and said it was from A League of Their Own. The newscaster put her head down on the little desk in embarrassment and they cut back to Gordon in the studio.

After the news, I watched Arsinio who put together a tribute to Dan Quayle, because he and all comedians will miss him so much. In one monologue, Arsinio said that Dan had said Murphy Brown mocked fatherhood. Arsinio believes Quayle himself is mocking fatherhood, and is in fact, a Father Mocker. And furthermore, if he ever thinks he is going to be President, he is one fathermocker out of his fathermocking mind. Heh heh heh. After the great potato spelling bee, which they showed a tape of, Arsinio said, "He doesn't belong on Pennsylvania Avenue, he belongs on Sesame Street.?

§§§

The next day, I took the bus to the Metro after Deb left for work, and spent a leisurely day sightseeing, with no particular place to go. My first stop: the Star Trek exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum. The best part was this film, where writers, producers, and actors all talk about Star Trek. It's full of great irony, especially where Majel Barret, Gene's wife, says, "Gene hated censorship." ha ha ha ha ha. Tell that to all the folks who were promised a gay character in the 24th century.

While watching this film, and as the crowds around me in the little theatre grew, I realized the message of Star Trek and the message of Clinton's Inaugural Address were much the same. Bob Justman said it best, that Star Trek is about how to live an ethical existence. It's about learning to live and work with people who are different from you. People said Gene was trying to tell people in the middle of the cold war and the Vietnam War: there is a future, there is hope we can get past our difficulties. I wonder if Bill has seen this little film. I wonder if he watches Star Trek? Prolly.

After the museum I decide to walk down to the Washington monument and then over to the White House. I passed two joggers. "Have you ever heard of a politician doing that?" "I never have." "Expressing contrition?!"

I ate leftovers from my dinner with Deb near the big obelisk, walked past the graveyard of little fetuses and over to the Oval. A jogger smiled at me from the curb. I smiled back. I am shocked. "Do you live here? You're the first person who's smiled at me in days." "Oh, you just look like 800,000 other tourists. Can I help you with anything?" "No," I said, "I know where I'm going." "Ok, have a nice day." Then he doubled back, still jogging and said, "I work for one of those special interests that Bill Clinton said people should stay away from, but some of us are ok." Then he jogged off. I shouted to his back, "Sure, on a personal level."

I went looking for the Inaugural Store downtown, and found it, but the line was around the block and it was starting to rain. I took the Metro to the National Portrait Gallery.

Here I found a curious omission. Suffragists without feminism. Writers but not faggots. Even the famous American Buddha of Gertrude Stein, no mention of Alice. There was a photo of Sojournor Truth, but no mention of the Ain't I A Woman speech. I'd like to make a little diagram of this museum and sell it to the folks when we come in April for the March. Having hordes of queers standing around Langston Hughes and Andy Warhol will make quite a fun party. And the other tourists will see the pamphlet too. Maybe we can get The Media's attention.

§§§

I went downtown and found the inaugural store again, still with a line around the block. So I wandered over to the White House, this time from the Lafayette Park side. I was looking for someplace I could stand or sit out of the rain and think and write, but I wanted to look at the White House while I did it. So I was crouched under a trailer and a person in a raincoat invited me up to the trailer. It was her office. She was the coördinator for all events near Lafayette Park. I sat there dry and warm and wrote while she dealt on the phone with people about tearing down the operation there with the Presidential reviewing stand, and the three-story wall of media. Here I am, only a member of the public and not an FOB, yet I get special access to this trailer, this warmth and hospitiality. To this hint that this woman, broad of butt and thoroughly competent in her organizing skills was a lesbian. Across the street, the Clintons were standing in a receiving line, hearing over and over, "Bill, what I wanted to talk to you about...." This whole week, on one hand, Bill Clinton, FOBs, and all the promises of making the people come first. Contradicted by tickets, crowds, this corridor closed, and fences, media passes, cops.

I wrote:

Either Clinton is a great actor or the world's biggest liar, bigger even than Reagan. We all saw Reagan as a liar, but others saw the truth. Who to believe? Who to trust? But why bother trusting at all, it will always be the same. Cynicism. You can't trust. Why should I believe BC will do what he says. That's the big question, and 100,000 of his friends, all those folks who got to party at last night's Balls, all say he;s different; he's going to deliver on his promises to everyone. So now, whenever I see a little problem, or think of some injustice I think, well, good, Bill Clinton is going to take care of that.

I wanted to see the White House again, where BC lives now. I wanted somehow to give him a benediction.

From my journal:

He's moving in. Somehow I get the feeling he has healed Watergate, more than Carter. And he has healed the Kennedy assassination too. Somehow--something great has happened. Yet the Inauguration was brief, and quiet, although there were 800,000 people there. Very simple. George Bush said nothing, he was simply there for the process to take place around him. So different from other countries' governments. I'm so caught up in this. I got the Federal bug--what is it I believe again? that voting is immoral, that the two-party system is the sham of the oligarchy, that working in the system is collaborating? And then what happens? Someone comes to say some of what I want to hear and I have hope. I wonder if maybe he will make a difference, and all these people who will work for him. All those people who share some of my ideas, who now owe their careers to him and the carrying out of those same ideas. So much confusion and uncertainty.

I had seen the White House before. In 1983, when Reagan was there. The same house, the same oval. Then, it was like seeing one of those houses in Brentwood. In 1993, I saw a house where someone I like gets to live, and I'm glad he has the chance to live there for a while. Bill and Hillary have no grandchildren. This makes a big difference somehow.

The Lafayette Park Operations Coördinator took me over to the media stand and I took some snaps of the Presidential Inaugral Parade Reviewing Stand. We then went back to the trailer and I asked for a copy of the seating plan for the Stand. She looked it over before giving it to me. Probably doing a security review. I felt connected to her, one event organizer to another.

§§§

I met Deb at her office, and we went to the Takoma Park co-op. I found some figs which reminded me of home. We had a nice supper of sesame noodles and steamed veggies, then I went in to watch Inaugral TV. I heard Deb on the phone telling someone that she cried in the car when she heard on the radio that Bill played the saxophone at his Inauguration. She said she wanted to marry a man like Bill Clinton. "That would make a good personal ad," she realized.

I slept in on Friday, packed up, and took a small pile of stuff to Nancy Levine's in Pennsylvania. When I got on the Red Line at Fort Totten, I noticed a big crowd of people who didn't look like the typical regular Metro riders. They weren't. They were mostly older, and more men than women, but not by many. I thought they might be a group of elder hostelers, but they didn't look intelligent enough.

By the next stop, my seat-mate and I looked at each other when the whole platform was full of them. The car was instantly crowded and as he entered a man in a clerical collar shouted, "Only ladies should sit down. Men should stand. Only ladies should sit down, not those feminazis. Only ladies." He repeated this a few more times so I stood up and shouted, "Then I better stand up; I'm a feminist and I stand up for my rights! I stand up for the right to choose." I heard a few people applauding, so stayed standing and kept talking. "Please sir,you sit down, sir. Sit down old man, you can have my seat." He didn't want to sit down. We shouted at each other a while longer, then my seat-mate said, "sit down, you stood up for your rights, go ahead." The man kept talking to me a while longer, and said I should listen to Rush Limbaugh. "But they don't have him in Washington," he lamented. "Washington is the only city that doesn't have Rush Limbaugh. Because of the liberals. The liberals. Liberals feel. They say they love and they feel," here he put his hands on his heart. "But they don't think."Here he put his finger to his head like gun, "They don't think. Rush Limbaugh thinks."

My seat-mate and I talked the rest of the way into town. She said she was from a family of 9 brothers and three sisters and her mother died when she was 12 years old. We had such a good time talking I went two stops past Union station. As I got up she said to me, "Stand up for your rights, stand up for your rights every time."

The car was crammed tight by the time I got off, so I said to the Rush Limbaugh crowd who had to cram themselves even tighter to make way for me, "Don't touch me, I'm a feminist. I'm a feminist and a lesbian. Stand back. "

§§§

From my journal, Jan 24:

In all, I am glad I went to the Naug, and I think that I will probably be happier about it in the future than I am now. Why didn't I try to get into the White House the day after with all the other party crashers? Why didn't I try to stay in DC longer and get into more fights with priests? Why didn't I try to find Leon Panetta or other California congressmen? I didn't do enough, I guess. I didn't have the access. I learned that it is hard to do this, to work, to vacation, to see friends.

I am tired; I have pissed the day away reading in train stations and trains and airport terminals. All I want now is for the plane to leave, to fly, and return me to my life. My new life away from 314 Laurent and the craziness of my former household.

I should have brought my expanded books and read them on the Macintosh Powerbook computer here in the airport and impress the business men with their IBM PCs. See, this is what I mean? Now I think of things I should have done different. Now I think I know what I should have done. Instead, I followed my momentary desires, I wandered, and did the best I could, with no one to advise me or influence me. Am I like Bill Clinton? I keep thinking I am, but so does everybody.