So, I haven’t really written much about my impressions of Baltimore from the two weekend visits I have had there. Part of that is because, well, ahem, Mike and I haven’t been going out very much from the house, and part of it is because I’ve just been pretty busy since I’ve been back.
As you all most likely know by now, but I lived from 1990-1994 in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. Most of that time I was enlisted in the United States Navy, but the last year I worked for this mechanical engineering company as a computer programmer. When they found out I was gay, they fired me, and a few months later, I headed back home to Sacramento and employment. I offer that little piece of back story to let you all know that I am not unfamiliar with the mid-Atlantic region of the country.
One of the first things that struck me about Baltimore, though, was how random the roads seem to be laid out. The lack of sunshine made it difficult for me to gauge what direction we were traveling in much of the time, and I normally have an unerring sense of direction. Yet, the way the roads follow the landscape make them seem like paved deer trails. Granted, closer to the city’s center the roads are more grid-like, but the further one travels out from the center, the more meandering they seem. As a passenger for most of the first trip out in January, I was pretty baffled. The second visit, Mike had me drive his truck everywhere we went, with few exceptions, so I started to get a deeper feel for the lay of the land.
Baltimore is famous for its row houses, what might be called townhouses in another city. The loss of much of its industry, though, rendered huge swaths of its neighborhoods abandoned – there were sections of town we drove through were there were block after block of abandoned, sometimes burned out houses. Yet, over the past ten or so years, there has been an almost frontier spirit and a reclamation of these lovely houses.
That sense of abandonment, though, has left its mark on the psyche of the city. There’s this pervasive sense of despair that infects the people there. Hardly anyone smiled, and people seem weighted down. We were in a Giant brand grocery store one night, waiting in line at the self-checkout line, and a woman was scanning her groceries. She dropped a can and Mike bent down to pick it up for her, and she said, “could you step back?” It was as if she was frightened of us, except that she sounded more angry than anything else. We weren’t standing particularly close to her or anything. Of course, I understand that people are sometimes intimidated by my size, which is one of the reasons that I try to have as non-threatening a posture in public as I possibly can. I don’t know if it’s relevant to mention that she was black and Mike and I are white, but maybe she was frightened of us. I don’t know.
But the encounter was emblematic of the sense of I picked up from all sorts of people, no matter what ethnic origin they were. When we were in the Sprint PCS store exchanging his wireless broadband card, people just seemed to have dulled senses, as if they weren’t all there. There was a real sense of people just not being present. Yes, I know that that is something that can be found anywhere, but I’ve never seen it in such numbers.
It’ll probably help to get more involved in the gay community there to see another side of Baltimore. Next trip to see Mike is probably going to be down in Florida for his birthday in April. His mother is inviting him down, and he’s inviting me as well. Maybe a short trip to Baltimore in March if we can swing it. I haven’t met any of his friends yet, or been to any of the gay businesses in town, so those things will probably change my impressions. I hope so, because it’s not doin’ so much for me yet.
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