For what it's worth, two decades ago, I wrote a piece for our local gay rag which provided a short, but revealing snapshot of a business trip I'd taken to Dallas, Texas. Somehow, the piece seems relevant today; informative perhaps; revealing.
Dallas was hot and humid when I arrived there, three years ago, and then a day later, the city became cold and windy and there was rain which turned to sleet which coated my rental car with ice a half-inch thick.
Those Dallas days were filled with business and the nights were mine alone. And, I was alone, there in the city where John Kennedy was gunned down and where so many of the natives weren't all that upset to see the fair-haired liberal with his frenchified wife suffer the tragedy which befell them then on that November day in '63. And, I drove by the stone monolith in Dealy Plaza commemorating the death of a president and I studied it for a very long time wondering what the monolith was supposed to evoke from me. Sadness? Regret? A feel for the lines of the architecture? Pity for the conscience-suffering Dallasties who erected it? But, I felt nothing. I only remembered that I was very young when Kennedy died and that I cried watching the funeral on teevee when the coal-black, riderless horse pranced before the camera with its neck held high and it head nervously buffeting the air as if to say, "Let's get on with it." And, from those child's tears emerged a singular consciousness that life is seldom fair, that heroes pass with the blink of an eye and the sweet promises of one's Camelot end abruptly in the severe reality of places like Dallas, Texas.
Those Dallas days and nights of three years ago, when the hard, frigid wind rushed against my body and pelted my face with the sharp sting of frozen rain, are remembered as collage -- bits and pices of unfinished images; of conversations begun in mid-sentence and ending too soon for comprehension; of the search for the baths across railroad tracks going ... somewhere and under viaducts leading ... where?; of finding the baths -- two nights in a row -- and me, oh naive me, wanting to fuck with some fine-assed Texan who would whisper molasses-sweet words in my ear and finding instead some fine-assed salesman from St. Louis speaking the King's English as precisely as William F. Buckley; of the bar hopping and the rum and Cokes swizzled to the heavy beat of L.A. disco and finding the brothers looking like West Hollywood clones and acting like Studio One prima donnas; of the beautiful, brown-eyed illegal who sided up to me with a grin and ended up in my hotel room sharing a mutual fascination with the poetry of Jorje Borgas; of the business meetings accomplishing nothing and the quick glances from the male secretary in tight polyester who carried papers from his desk to the copier with the slightest, most discreet hint of a swish; of the endless meals in the finest restaurants; of the perpetual talk of the Big D this and the Big D that and Big Egos burning bright and hot and the shameless talk of niggers this and niggers that and the hopscotch maneuvers of this or that fat cat bathing in oil and flusing gold-handled toilets and eating caviar with tortilla chips; and, yes, finally, of the $20.00 cab ride to the biggest ariport past the biggest sports arena, past the biggest spread of development across that fine Texas prairie and boarding the biggest Texas International jumbo to head back to L.A.
It takes a while to get to the heart of a city; to get to the soul of a city where its vital essence is stored and meted out sparingly. In my several days in Dallas, I saw the surface only. In my several days in Dallas, I formed an impression which is unfair and superficial. I would like to go back and begin to really know the city ... if only I could transcend the deep, deep childish conviction that if Dallas had not been there in '63, the promise of John Kennedy might have been fulfilled; that if Dallas had not been there the sweet innocence of my youth might not have felt the premature passage of the wonderful possibility of dreams coming true.
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