Pennsylvania Station

by Patrick E Horrigan

  Curt only said “Thank you” and embraced him, but the embrace turned sexual (making Frederick late for work after all), and the disagreement was put aside.

  By the end of July, Curt could talk of little besides the March on Washington. There was to be a massive Negro demonstration “for jobs and freedom,” as the press was putting it, and Curt, Bev, and her girlfriend, Kay, were taking the train to DC to join in. The Sunday before the march, the Times ran an interview with five prominent Negro leaders including Martin Luther King, Jr. Frederick read it with uncharacteristic absorption. He was especially intrigued, though at times “repelled” might have been the truer word, by the gnomic remarks of the writer James Baldwin, who, alone among the interviewees, felt almost no progress had been made towards achieving a free country, who repeatedly questioned the meaning of ordinary words like “equality” and “goal” before expressing, what seemed to Frederick at any rate, a tortured, even counterproductive point of view. For the first time in his life, Frederick thought seriously about the intricacies of the racial controversy: What exactly is meant by equality? How can it be achieved? How much progress has been made towards it? When will we attain it? And how does one eradicate racial bias in the thinking of white people? The answers were cloudy and unsettling. “One probably does not eradicate racial bias in the thinking of any people,” Baldwin said, though “more people would be free to do right if we could establish in this country a moral climate in which the individual mind was less penalized and the popular mind less adored” (Frederick did think there was wisdom in that).

  He mentioned the article to Curt the next day and, as they discussed it (Curt hadn’t read it but, to Frederick’s amazement, managed to cover more or less all the important points), decided he needed to join the March too. For Frederick had read the article in the Times through Curt’s eyes and, in so doing, gained enormously both in his sensitivity to the issues and in his imagined intimacy with Curt. Going to Washington seemed as much a “pledge” to Curt as it did to the cause of Negro equality. In fact the two things became fused in his mind, so that whenever he read or saw anything on the television relating to the civil rights struggles of Negroes, he thought of Curt. But it wasn’t because he thought, as Curt habitually did, that the struggles of Negroes were parallel or perpendicular or whatever geometrical figure best described Negro rights relative to homosexual rights. Frederick still wasn’t convinced homosexuals had or deserved any rights per se. Curt put two and two together and came up with five, and that was a mistake. No, Frederick was going to Washington because he didn’t want to miss what promised to be such a momentous day in the life of the nation and in the life of Curt. If anything, showing his interest in the cause of Negro equality was a way of apologizing to Curt for their disagreement over the cause of homosexual equality and even, subliminally, of distracting Curt from that latter cause. He was willing to take whatever risk participation in the March entailed, for the risk of not participating, he concluded, was greater: the risk that Curt would outgrow him and become, in a short space of time, a stranger to him.

  The train to Washington was packed to the brim. Their party—Frederick and Curt, Bev and Kay, and, at the last minute, Sam and Ed—were not able to sit together but divided into couples. That meant Frederick and Curt had each other to themselves for the entire four-hour journey. Curt slept most of the way, sometimes with his head on Frederick’s shoulder. At first the gesture made him uncomfortable, but at one point, going through a tunnel, Frederick caught sight of their reflection in the train window—an older man reading, a younger man asleep on his shoulder—and the pietà seemed right, not queer. Neither the train conductors nor anyone sitting around them seemed bothered by their physical intimacy. Curt looked winsome this morning with his uncombed, freshly washed hair and his loose-fitting black and white striped t-shirt, almost like a pajama top. Then they were surrounded by Negroes, and while at other times that might have made Frederick uncomfortable, he felt today was a day unlike any other day. Everyone was headed to the March this morning. Penn Station was choked by armies of people at 5:00 AM. Yet there was a palpable air of festivity about the station mixed with solemn purpose. He thought of that day during the war, after hours of waiting in despair, thinking his train would never make it, when Jon appeared seemingly out of nowhere…and they raced across the street to the Statler Hotel and…Frederick fell asleep, never knowing that his head rested on top of Curt’s, his cheek touching Curt’s hair, breathing in the boy’s aroma.

  They were woken up by Kay, who’d come to tell them they were due to arrive any minute.

  “You two look cute.”

  “God, I’m wasted,” Curt said. “What time is it?”

  “Almost 10:15.”

  “Where’s Bev?”

  “She’s in her seat. We switched places with these two guys so we could sit across from Sam and Ed. Sam’s funny.”

  “Never go on a long journey without Sam,” Frederick said.

  “He told us about the time you kicked your neighbor’s dog out of the elevator.”

  “What?!” Curt perked up.

  Nothing was sacred today, Frederick thought. “You’ll have to hear my side of the story sometime. Whatever he told you, it’s sure to be full of puffery. I didn’t kick the dog.”

  Kay laughed. “He says he’ll help us hand out flyers next week,” she told Curt and explained to Frederick they were trying to drum up new members for the Mattachine Society. Sam, apparently, had promised to pitch in.

  He’d thought Sam had a rather jaundiced opinion of Curt and his friends, but maybe everyone was changing. “Well, good, so if you all get arrested Sam can talk your way out of it.”

  The concourse at Union Station was filled beyond capacity, but Frederick didn’t feel confined. Human traffic flowed freely through the station, and he and his companions were carried almost effortlessly out of doors within minutes. As the dense crowd fanned out across the traffic circle in the direction of Constitution Avenue and the National Mall, he stopped, letting the others go on ahead, to inspect the shapely Beaux Arts façade with its three triumphal arches. A smaller depot than Penn, it nevertheless put its more ostentatious New York cousin to shame, so in keeping, he thought, turning away from the station, with the monumental grandeur of the Capitol building itself, which he could see now gleaming white through the trees, just up the hill. The problem, he was convinced (catching up with the others), is New York itself. When money is the driving force, as opposed, say, to government or the maintaining of our physical surroundings (he’d forgotten what a verdant city Washington was!), then nothing is sacrosanct, not even the finest architecture.

  In every direction, around every corner, people filled the sidewalks and streets, singing and shouting, wearing buttons and hats, waving signs and banners:

  WE DEMAND AN END TO BIAS NOW

  WE DEMAND DECENT HOUSING NOW

  WE DEMAND VOTING RIGHTS NOW

  WE DEMAND JOBS FOR ALL NOW

  CIVIL RIGHTS PLUS FULL EMPLOYMENT EQUALS FREEDOM

  NO U.S. DOUGH TO HELP JIM CROW GROW

  Already, muffled echoes of speeches and songs could be heard from the podium at the base of the Washington Monument where the March was set to begin. People had come from all over the country. Near them was a group of teenagers from California, a church choir from Georgia, a contingent of senior citizens from Iowa. Journalists and TV cameras were everywhere. Curt had brought along his transistor radio, so their progress along Constitution Avenue was marked, block upon block, by “Walk Like a Man,” “It’s My Party,” “He’s So Fine.”

  Spotting a couple of androgynous Negro women—or was it a woman and a man?—Bev and Kay began testing their powers of telling who was queer and who wasn’t. They agreed it was harder to tell with women than with men, which they attributed to the greater freedom women had to express themselves in public but also (Frederick, Curt, Sam and Ed to a man struggled to grasp the girls’ logic) to women’s relative powerlessness. This prompte
d a debate about sex discrimination—Bev had been reading the new book by Betty Friedan and argued that in 1963 it was as morally indefensible as racial discrimination. Curt, meanwhile, was keeping his eyes on the police, watching their faces, their hands and feet, the way they stood, the way they interacted with each other, looking for signs of jitters, or disrespect, noticing in particular the occasional Negro cop and wondering what went through his mind on a day like this. Remarkably, no disturbances were seen, no confrontations between marchers and cops.

  The March was supposed to kick off from the Monument at 11:30, but already the crowd had a mind of its own and, well before that time, was surging toward the rally site in front of the Lincoln Memorial. There seemed no beginning, no end, no shape to the movement. It was everywhere and time and space were suspended beneath the blazing sun and the overwhelming power of so many thousands of people.

  Eventually, as they neared the Lincoln Memorial, they heard voices of singers—Odetta, Joan Baez, Josh White—“Ain’t nobody gonna stop me, nobody gonna keep me from marchin’ down freedom’s road!” When finally they reached the east side of the reflecting pool, Curt grabbed Frederick’s arm in one hand and Sam’s in the other, as Ed, Bev, and Kay followed, saying, “I need water.” They managed to insinuate themselves through the crowd and decided to go no farther. They saw nothing but bodies from here to the Lincoln Memorial, and it was clear there was no hope of getting any closer. Amid the swaying and shifting and gently pushing crowd, a space along the edge of the water opened up, and pushing others aside, the six of them sat down. Curt took off his shoes and socks and waded into the pool. The girls followed, while Frederick, Sam, and Ed watched with amusement and some envy.

  “He’s very cute,” Ed said. But Frederick was numb to conversation, so overwhelmed by the scene, the heat, and the strangeness of his party of companions to reply with anything more substantive than a bemused “Yes.” He watched as Curt and the girls kicked water at each other along with a score of other teenagers and young people who took their cue and plunged in after them.

  Then the speeches began. Curt came out of the water and sat along the edge, squeezing himself in between Sam and Frederick. Under cover of the crush of bodies, he held Frederick’s hand tight, as if everything that had happened so far, everything he had done and said today, were summed up in that strong handgrip. Words echoed fitfully through the air amid the murmur of two hundred thousand souls. We are the advance guard of a massive moral revolution for jobs and freedom…Our ancestors were transformed from human personalities into private property…The sanctity of private property takes second place to the sanctity of the human being…Get in and stay in the streets of every city, every village and hamlet of this nation until true freedom comes, until the revolution of 1776 is complete, and with every phrase of every speech Curt squeezed Frederick’s hand as if recording his assent.

  But they were all growing weary. They had spent hours on the train, hours walking the streets and the Mall, the sun was hot, they were hungry and thirsty. Then Mahalia Jackson took the microphone and the crowd came alive! She sang how the Lord brought her, taught her, kept her, never left her, and Frederick envied her and everyone in the crowd who clapped and sang along and knew the words, envied their faith, their conviction in a personal relationship to God, their certainty they were not alone, and he marveled that a people so downtrodden, so disrespected, so demoralized could find within themselves the strength, the physical and spiritual stamina, to praise and sing and give thanks.

  At last Martin Luther King, Jr. rose to the podium and spoke of the Negro, how he lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity (this was greeted by a roar from the crowd), how they’ve come to Washington to cash a check that will give us the riches of freedom and the security of justice, and he reminded them of the fierce urgency of now, that 1963 is not an end but a beginning. They would meet physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy, he said, which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny, that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. The crowd cheered. But our children, he said, are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity. He commended his people for their creative suffering and urged them to go back to Mississippi, back to Alabama, back to South Carolina, back to Georgia, back to Louisiana, back to the slums and ghettos of the northern cities, knowing the situation can and will be changed. For he had a dream, he said, and conjured before their eyes in the blazing sun and the suffocating heat a panorama of the American landscape, the prodigious hilltops of new Hampshire, the mighty mountains of New York, the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania, the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado, the curvaceous slopes of California, leading them higher and higher until the final words of his speech were drowned in a pandemonium of rejoicing. Curt let go of Frederick’s hand to clap and raise his voice along with everyone else. Frederick turned to look at him and saw tears rolling down his face.

  Now A. Philip Randolph bid them stand and pledge to continue the struggle: “I affirm my complete personal commitment for the struggle for jobs and freedom,” they repeated after him, “I pledge that I will not relax until victory is won.” Curt said the words and believed he was making a promise to himself and his future, and Frederick said the words but felt someone else, another Frederick, was the one now speaking, for he wasn’t a joiner, didn’t believe in causes, though in his heart of hearts he admired those who did, and they said, “I pledge to carry the message of the March to my friends and neighbors back home and to arouse them to an equal commitment,” but mostly the pledge he made was a pledge to Curt, as if, before these hundreds of thousands of people, he stood up and declared his commitment to him, “and I will pledge my heart and my mind and my body,” he said, “unequivocally and without regard to personal sacrifice.” While Curt continued cheering the end of the rally and the proclamation of his hopes and dreams, Frederick stood silent, content, happy to be here with Curt, but most of all happy that the pledge, the promise of commitment to the cause, and now the March itself, had come to an end.

  CHAPTER NINE

  No clear decision was made that Curt should move in with Frederick. It happened bit by bit as Curt left articles of clothing behind in his apartment, bought a bookshelf secondhand and delivered it there because it was too big for Collin’s place. The day after the March on Washington, Curt returned home with Frederick and stayed through Labor Day. That weekend he asked Frederick to drive him to Collin’s because he knew Collin would be at the Jersey shore with friends. They loaded up Frederick’s car with the remainder of Curt’s things (a suitcase full of clothes, a stained blanket, a coffee percolator, a small television), and that was that.

  For Curt, moving in with Frederick had more to do with avoiding Collin than choosing Frederick. Ever since their reunion at the Metropolitan Museum back in February, Collin had been making some kind of scene every other night. If there was one thing Curt couldn’t stand, it was men trying to possess him. Plus Collin was aggressive and hot-headed, and on the Tuesday before the March he threatened to kick Curt’s teeth in for lying about where he’d been the previous weekend—Curt said he’d spent it with Bev and Kay, but Collin knew he’d been with Frederick. That was the last straw. Curt cried and cried in Frederick’s lap as he described the indignity of being threatened with physical violence by someone you love. “What have I done to deserve—?”

  Frederick interrupted to ask why he hadn’t mentioned the incident on Tuesday night when it happened—and why he said nothing about it all day Wednesday—they’d spent the whole day together in Washington, it hadn’t come up once in conversation, and honestly Curt had shown no signs—as, for example, his sister had when her husband slapped her—of having been traumatized by the altercation. And one more thing: why, after six months of “dating” (though
the word was totally inadequate to describe the chaotic intensity, not to mention the irregularity, of their encounters during that time)—after sharing so much, why did Curt persist in speaking of Collin as if he were still the most important man in his life? Frederick was genuinely sorry to think of him ever being abused by someone he loved, but he simply didn’t understand what transpired between the two of them. Still it was he who finally said, “Would it make you feel better if we just gathered the rest of your things and you stayed here?” “Stayed” was the operative word. He didn’t say “live” or “move in.” It was characterized as a temporary move to protect Curt.

  “But is he in love with you?” Sam asked upon hearing the news Curt had moved in.

  “I don’t know. Does he need to love me? Now, I mean? Love takes time.”

  “Sweetheart, this is 1963, not 1863. What are you getting out of it? I think I know what he’s getting out of it.” Frederick rolled his eyes dismissively. “I think he’s taking advantage of your good nature. You have a beautiful apartment in a reputable neighborhood, a good job, a car. He’s—what? Nineteen? Twenty? Barely holding down a job as a salad boy in a—”

  “He’s twenty-one, and he quit—”

  “Twenty-one is he? How long has he been twenty-one?”

  “What does it matter? The point is, he quit the restaurant job because he didn’t like the way his boss was treating him, and then he—”

  “So he’s unemployed?”

  “No, now he’s working at an advertising agency.”

  “Resourceful boy! How did he land that job?”

  “He works in the mail room and spends half the day on a bicycle making deliveries.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  Frederick almost hated to admit it. “I knew someone at the firm and was able to pull a few strings.”

  “So he can thank you for his job now too. Sounds like a good deal to me.”