DC Trip

by Sara Benincasa

  Gertie was beginning to feel like it was time for some truth telling. She couldn’t have said why she suddenly felt like sharing a few facts, but it just seemed like a good idea all of a sudden.

  “No,” she admitted.

  “I figured,” Geoff said with an understanding smile. “High school, right? Senior trip?”

  “Yes,” Gertie said automatically. “Yes, that’s exactly it.”

  That’s when Tammy brought another round of shots. “On the house,” she said with a wink, and the three boys applauded.

  “I’ll pass,” Gertie said.

  “More for me!” said Not-Brock, and he slammed two shots. Everybody else did one—except for Gertie, of course.

  “God, that’s disgusting,” Geoff said, wincing. “You’re right to skip a second round. So is this, like, your first time in a bar or what?”

  “Yeah,” Gertie said. “Is it that obvious?”

  “Sort of,” Geoff said with a warm grin. “Hey, as long as you girls are over eighteen!”

  “Why does that matter?” Gertie asked, her head swimming a little.

  “Well, one, I don’t think kids under eighteen are allowed in bars in D.C.,” Geoff said. “And, um, your friend just went into the bathroom with my boy.”

  “What?” Gertie exclaimed, snapping her head back to look for Rachel. Not-Brock and Rachel were gone, but Gertie got a glimpse of Rachel’s long blond ponytail from across the bar before she disappeared behind a men’s room door.

  “Oh, fuck no,” Gertie said. “Sivan, c’mon.”

  “I’m sure they’ll be fine,” Geoff said. “He’s actually in high school too. Prospective student. We figured we’d show him a good time. Just, uh, don’t tell anybody I told you that.”

  “Okay, it’s still gross,” Gertie said. She pushed Sivan out of the booth and made a beeline for the bathroom. She could hear Sivan behind her, asking, “What are we doing? I was talking about voting rights legislation!”

  When Gertie reached the door to the men’s room, she hesitated for just a second before pushing the door in. Rachel was kneeling on the dirty tile floor, laughing and unzipping Not-Brock’s jeans.

  “No way, Rachel,” Gertie said. “We’re going.”

  “What the fuck are you doing in here?” Rachel demanded. “Oh my God!”

  “Three on one!” said Not-Brock. “Not bad! C’mon in, ladies.”

  “Oh, ew,” Sivan said. “Rachel, get out here.”

  “Oh, well, fuck,” Rachel said. She got to her feet a little unsteadily. Gertie grabbed her and dragged her out the bathroom door, leaving a protesting Not-Brock behind them. They were out on the sidewalk in fifteen seconds flat.

  “What exactly were you doing in there?” Gertie demanded, hustling Rachel and Sivan away from the bouncer and down the street.

  “What did it look like I was doing?” Rachel said. “I was having fun!”

  “Rachel, that guy was gross,” Gertie said. “Sivan, wasn’t he disgusting? He was a fucking date rapist.”

  “No he wasn’t,” Rachel said. “I wanted to blow him! And he told me he’s not even in college. He goes to high school in Delaware.”

  “That was a dangerous situation,” Gertie said. “You’re too drunk to know what you’re doing.”

  “We’re not trying to be anti-sex or anything, Rachel,” Sivan said mildly.

  “Ugh, you two can be so fucking boring,” Rachel spat.

  “What?” Gertie said. “The whole reason we went there was because you had to meet boys. We didn’t go there so you could go down on some stranger!”

  “She’s just drunk, Gertie,” Sivan said. “It’s good we got out of there when we did. That was a smart move on your part. Don’t hold anything Rachel says against her.”

  The girls walked in silence for a few moments.

  “Why aren’t you drunk?” Gertie asked Sivan accusingly, aware that she was herself a bit tipsy. “You’re acting normal.”

  “Yeah,” Rachel said. “What’s your secret?”

  “I have a naturally high tolerance for substances,” Sivan said with a shrug. “It takes something really intense to make me feel any effects.”

  “Speaking of really intense,” Rachel said. “I have something that’s gonna make you—”

  “Wait, where are we going?” Sivan asked. “Stop. Let’s all just stop and figure out what we’re doing. Rachel, give me the map.”

  Rachel rolled her eyes and handed it over. Sivan cast a glance at the nearest street sign, then looked at the map. A strange gleam came into her eye.

  “We’re headed toward Dupont Circle,” she said slowly. “It’s off that way. Cool bars. Lots of stuff to do.”

  “Off what way?” Rachel said, confused.

  “Just follow me,” Sivan said. “It’s just a few blocks.”

  Dupont Circle was not just a few blocks away. Dupont Circle was about a mile east from where they stood in Georgetown, if you took P Street NW, and Sivan knew it. Sivan also knew that Dupont Circle was a historic part of the national civil rights movement for gays and lesbians, and the site of the country’s very first gay and lesbian bookstore. It was full of LGBTQ stuff. Which meant it must be full of lesbian bars.

  Rachel had gotten her chance. And Gertie had already had a couple of opportunities to talk to Danny Bryan. So why shouldn’t it be Sivan’s turn to have fun?

  “Let’s go,” Sivan said, and marched them off in the direction of her Sapphic destiny.

  Brian Kenner’s shift didn’t technically begin until two a.m., and it was one a.m. when Alicia Deats finally worked up the nerve to knock on his door. She figured he could deal with it. And if he couldn’t, well, they were obviously never destined to be friends or—or anything more than friends.

  When he opened the door, rubbing sleep from his eyes, she barged in past him.

  “What’s going on?” he asked blearily. “And why do you have your laptop with you?”

  “We’re going to watch something together,” Alicia said, sitting primly at the edge of his bed.

  “Right now?” he said, confused. “Are the kids okay?”

  “Probably,” Alicia said, opening her laptop. “Now come here and watch this.”

  Slowly, he settled in beside her.

  She brought up YouTube and started playing a video, “Doctor Who Senior Thesis.”

  “What the—” Brian said, then rubbed his eyes. “I mean, what the heck is—”

  “Shh,” Alicia said, holding a finger up. “Just watch.”

  He looked at the screen intently for a few seconds, then at Alicia, then at the screen, then at Alicia.

  “It’s a shot-for-shot remake,” he said, his tone reverent.

  “Shh,” she said. “Keep watching.”

  He was right, of course. She knew he’d know what it was within a few seconds of the opening. It was a recreation of a Doctor Who episode—season 5, episode 10. The original episode, “Vincent and the Doctor,” chronicled an adventure in which the Doctor (Matt Smith) and his companion, Amy (Karen Gillan) traveled back in time to save people from a terrible monster (the usual Doctor Who thing.) But this time, they had a very special companion in the form of Vincent van Gogh.

  It was a great episode about depression, and love, and the inevitability of fate, among other things. Richard Curtis wrote it—the guy who wrote Love Actually and all those Hugh Grant movies. Anyway, that’s not why Alicia showed this particular fan-created shot-for-shot remake of the episode to Brian Kenner. She showed it to him because—

  “That’s you!” Brian said incredulously. “As the Doctor!”

  “Exactly,” Alicia said proudly. It co-starred her then-best friend, Tallulah, as Vincent van Gogh. (Tallulah was a painter with bright red hair and soulful eyes, so it wasn’t actually that much of a stretch.)

  “That’s my old friend Tallulah,” Alicia said. “We were best friends since we were in kindergarten. This was our big joint senior thesis project. Our high school required a thesis project from each indi
vidual senior, but they let us do it together.”

  “And who’s the dude?” Brian asked. “The guy playing Amy—who’s he?”

  Alicia cleared her throat.

  “That,” Alicia said, “Is Dirk. He was my high school boyfriend. Until he dumped me a month before graduation to be with our Dungeon Master.”

  Brian looked at her, his eyes wide.

  “You play Dungeons and Dragons?” he asked excitedly. “Me too!”

  “I played Dungeons and Dragons,” Alicia corrected him. “Until Dirk dumped me for the Dungeon Master. The DM was Tallulah, by the way.”

  “Shit,” he said. “That’s rough. What’d you do?”

  “I left,” she said.

  “Oh, we had a couple people leave for different reasons,” he said sympathetically. “So who do you play with now?”

  “I don’t,” Alicia said, hitting pause on the video. “We don’t have to watch this whole thing.”

  “I want to watch it!” Brian protested. “Seriously. That’s my favorite episode of the reboot.”

  “Mine too,” Alicia said. The top of her head tingled the way it did when she had a really great yoga class.

  “And you don’t play anymore?” Brian asked. “That sucks. You should—” he hesitated for a moment, then plunged forward “You should play with us sometime.”

  Alicia’s heart warmed, and she smiled brightly for a moment. But then her smile faded as quickly as it had appeared.

  “Thanks,” she said. “But I just would rather not even risk something like that happening again. It hurt too much. I actually, um, haven’t even looked at this video in years.”

  “It’s so good,” Brian said admiringly. “I had no idea you were a Whovian.”

  “Was,” Alicia said. “I was a big Doctor Who fan. My older sister had this boyfriend in high school who bought me the first five seasons of the reboot on DVD. But I never got past the fifth season, because … well …” She trailed off.

  “What?” Brian asked, aghast. “You haven’t seen any seasons since then?”

  “Nope,” Alicia said. “I just figure it’d remind me of that whole thing back in high school. It just seems like too much of an emotional risk.”

  “This was a big betrayal, huh?” Brian said, studying her face.

  “Huge,” Alicia said. “I lost my lifelong best friend and my boyfriend. We had all planned to go to Chapel Hill together, because we’d all gotten in even though it’s really hard to get in as an out-of-state student. But after I got dumped, I called up Hampshire and asked if they’d still take me even though I’d turned them down. They said yes. So that’s how I ended up at Hampshire and …”

  “Fell in with a pack of hippies,” Brian said seriously. Alicia looked at him, and he did a double-take.

  “I didn’t think I said that out loud,” he said.

  Alicia cracked up.

  “You’re right, though,” she said. “I went full hippie. I left all my geek stuff behind me. Haven’t picked any of it back up since. Until tonight.”

  “I’m so honored,” Brian said, and he seemed genuinely touched. “Really. This means so much to me.” He and Alicia locked eyes, and he smiled gently at her. Then he leaned forward.

  Alicia thought she was going to faint.

  “This was more than a few blocks away, Sivan,” Rachel complained as they finally reached Dupont Circle. “Ugh. My feet hurt.”

  “But you’re the high heels expert,” Gertie said. “My feet feel fine.”

  “My knee hurts too,” Rachel whined.

  “Well, there’s a reason for that,” Gertie said, and she and Sivan giggled.

  “Laugh all you want,” Rachel said. “I almost got to—what base is oral? Third?”

  “It’s beyond bases,” Gertie said. “It’s not even in the stadium. It’s out in the parking lot somewhere, in the back of a van.”

  “Well, someone’s feeling sassy all of a sudden,” Rachel said.

  Gertie smiled. “We’re getting closer to the Henry Hotel,” she said. “I can feel it. All we have to do is ask somebody and take a cab there! Maybe we could even walk.”

  “No more walking for a while,” Rachel moaned. “I need to sit down.”

  “We can sit down in there,” Sivan said, pointing. She was illuminated from behind by a street lamp, and seemed to glow.

  “There” was a bar called Sally’s. It had a pretty brick exterior, and a big rainbow flag hung beside the pink neon sign. The flag fluttered gently in the evening breeze.

  “In there?” Rachel asked uncertainly. “You think we’ll meet more guys?”

  “Nope,” Sivan said happily, watching a butch woman pull the door open and enter the establishment. “Not a single one.” Sivan started walking so fast the other girls had to scramble to keep up in their precarious high heels.

  “Is this a lesbian bar?” Gertie asked.

  “Totally,” Sivan said. “Did you see that woman who just walked in? There are like a million of her inside, I bet. My people.” She grinned.

  That’s when the same butch woman walked out and gave the girls the same hard look the bouncer had given them earlier.

  “IDs,” she said.

  They produced their IDs quickly and waited nervously while she gave them a quick cursory glance.

  “Jersey, huh?” the woman said. “Welcome to the big city, ladies. Go on in.”

  “This is gonna be so great,” Sivan practically squealed. They walked into the bar and down a long, dark hallway to a door covered with a purple velvet curtain. Sivan paused for a moment.

  “My first lesbian bar,” Sivan said, almost as if she were talking to herself. “I can’t believe it. I’ve been dreaming of this for years, and now it’s finally happening.”

  “I’ve never heard her like this,” Rachel whispered to Gertie. “It’s kind of sweet. I just hope the lesbians don’t hit on me. I hate disappointing people. I’m not homophobic. I’m just so cock oriented.”

  “What makes you think they’ll hit on you?” Gertie whispered back. “I’m going to get all the girls.” She giggled and Rachel punched her in the arm.

  “Very sassy tonight, indeed,” Rachel said. She pulled back the curtain and pushed Sivan inside. She and Gertie followed close behind, and immediately bumped into Sivan, who had stopped short.

  “Oh, no,” Sivan said slowly.

  “What?” Rachel said, confused. “What’s wrong?”

  “Look around,” Sivan said. “Do you see any lesbians in here?”

  “I see like ten pretty girls just on that end of the bar,” Rachel said. “And there’s a ton more in here. So there’s some guys. You can’t get super mad about that. It’s a free country.”

  “Rachel,” Sivan said. “Those are not pretty girls. Those are drag queens. Look.” She jerked her thumb in the direction of the ceiling, from which were suspended nine individual giant silver letter balloons that together spelled out DRAG NIGHT.

  The place was packed with drag queens and with gay men bumping and grinding to the music. There was a stage on which lights flashed pink, then purple, then blue, but no one was onstage at the moment. The music thumped wildly with an infectiously catchy beat. And on a few raised platforms spread around the club, gorgeous drag queens of all shapes and sizes gyrated, bumping and grinding and vogueing. There were also some lithe young shirtless men in black booty shorts serving drinks to folks in a VIP section separated from the rest of the club by a velvet rope. The VIP section had plush chairs that looked like something out of Alice in Wonderland, and big tables for the ornate cocktails being served.

  “This place is awesome!” Rachel said excitedly, clapping her hands. “This is even better than the frat bar!”

  “Um, by like a million times, yeah,” Gertie said, straightening her purple dress and smoothing her hair. She wanted to look very grown-up in this cool bar.

  Then Rachel and Gertie looked at Sivan, whose face had fallen. She looked crushed.

  “Oh my God,” Rachel said. �
�I’ve never seen somebody look so depressed in the midst of such complete awesomeness.”

  “I was just expecting something else,” Sivan said. “I just—I wanted this to be my thing. And it’s great, I’m not trying to be disrespectful of a space specifically designed to celebrate homosexuality. I was just hoping the homosexuals involved would be, um, women.”

  “Oh, honey,” said a passing waiter with a tray of empty glasses. He stopped and looked sympathetically at Sivan.

  “Dyke Night is Tuesday, baby,” he said.

  “Thanks,” Sivan said forlornly. “I’m only in town for tonight. Are there any lesbian bars around here?”

  “None stupid enough to let in a high school kid, sweetie,” the waiter said. He laughed when he saw the surprised look on Sivan’s face.

  “Don’t worry,” he said to the girls. “Your secret’s safe with me. I grew up in Nowheresville too, and I used to sneak into the one gay club an hour away from my house. It was disgusting—I mean, Iowa, hello—but it probably saved my life.”

  “Oh, thank you so much,” Rachel said gratefully.

  “Why don’t you stick around here?” the waiter asked. “We’ve got an empty table in VIP that we save for surprise guests. We usually reserve it for secretly gay celebrities and closeted Republican politicians, but I’m happy to comp you in. Just promise me you’ll order drinks.”

  “We will,” Gertie said, even though she didn’t want to drink anything else. She just liked this guy. He was friendly and he wasn’t going to get them in trouble, and that was a position she could support one hundred percent. Plus, the fact that it wasn’t a real lesbian bar probably meant they’d get out of there quickly and be on their way to the Henry Hotel.

  The waiter led them through the crowd to an ornate, comfy couch and settled them in.

  “First round’s on me, dolls,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Are we really going to drink more?” Gertie asked Sivan and Rachel.

  “Yes,” Sivan said grimly.

  “Definitely,” Rachel said. “I mean, it’s free. We can always leave after the first round. But we’ll leave him a big fat tip so he won’t get mad at us.”