Pillars Galore: A Gay Traveler Gets Sycophantic
By Nick Vivion
Gay Travel Guru
Washington, DC’s Union Station gives quite the welcome: Vaulted ceilings soar above, creating colossal curved archways that add an air of infinity 96 feet above me. Marble, white granite and gold leaf accents mark each surface, shining brilliantly, suggesting that this is indeed, the greatest country on Earth. It’s a grand entrance, unlike any that I have ever experienced before.
Even skeptics are hard-pressed to not stop and gaze upwards on their first visit. It is truly magnificent, and a fitting welcome to the hallowed halls of Washington, DC. Grandeur was exactly the point when it was opened in 1907: This was the gateway to the federal capital, a building befitting the seat of a nation. This is America.
America is everywhere in this not-so-humble hamlet of one of the wealthiest nations on earth. Every national organization seems to have a presence here, among emissaries from every UN-recognized country and almost every Fortune 500 company. Things are happening here, and you can just feel the friction in the air.
Power oozes from every surface, and although I’m sure the shine of the taxi cab’s backseat is something else, I convince myself that it is the shine of mighty America, shining bright for all to see! My face is pressed against the less-than-pristine glass of the taxi’s window, as the Capitol Building looms before me.
Rain is beginning to fall, and I swear there’s just a little sizzle as it hits the pavement. It’s intoxicating to be in a place that feels so important, so central to the goings-on of the world.
This feeling continues as I wander the streets over the next couple of days. The Chinese Premier, Hu Jintao, is in town, and Chinese flags are waving next to the Stars and Stripes on lampposts around town. Protesters have taken up residence in Lafayette Park, calling out China’s human rights abuses. Black motorcades speed by, and Secret Service agents are pacing the White House’s roof.
The President is in there, I think excitedly, straining to see any hint of movement beneath the giant chandeliers in the windows. The platform for the world’s media sits just to the right of the White House’s main gates, where you can watch the journalists talk to the world, bright lights blinking on and off. A man walks confidently up to the gate near the Media Platform, and an officer calls out a warning to him. He looks over and flashes a badge, and the officer waves him through.
The exclusivity of it all! I quickly begin to walk around pretending to be a spy, by well, simply pretending to be a spy. It keeps me occupied for at least 12 hours. There are 10,000 spies in Washington, DC, I remind myself. I could be one of them!
Later, I walk by the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where much of the President’s staff works. I look up at the lights in the window and wonder what is being worked on there, what conversations are being had. I look across the street, and, with a laugh, discover the Office of Thrift Supervision.
There are pillars galore in this town, from the Treasury to the National Archives to the Capitol Building. Monuments of phallic public glory, they celebrate and memorialize all things American. Lincoln, Jefferson, WWII, Vietnam, Roosevelt, Washington. It’s a historical Who’s Who, creating a wholesome sense of America’s past.
There are also some unexpected ironies, and hidden truths that come with any country’s history. Lincoln’s slaves, for example, or Thomas Jefferson’s little-known proposal for castrating gay males and mutilating gay females. Granted he was considered a liberal, since punishment at the time for homosexuality was death. Nonetheless, I was thankful that his belief in equality as a fundamental right in American society set the stage for the human rights progresses that we have enjoyed over the past half-century.
Washington, DC, like any place, is complex. It’s made all the more so by the transitory nature of the culture, where each new election cycle alters the composition of the population. DC is a transient city, characterized not only by those who live in it but by the actions of a nation. It is the repository for American culture, at once the defining mechanism and the collective memory.
It’s only appropriate, then, that DC’s Union Station is such an impressive sight. Big, important, impactful things happen here, and it makes for an invigorating start to a historically charged destination.