I was too dumb to be scared of walking around the hood, didn’t even know those buildings between me and the all-night grocery store were projects. I just trudged up 5th staring at the ground, thinking maybe I could buy a couple packs of ramen. I had four dollars and some change. I could steal dried-soup packets and tea. Flat objects fit well into pockets. No one was getting any juice. Maybe Kool-Aid. A few cop cars had collected on the next corner with their lights flashing. I looked down again, and like some ghetto miracle, I saw a roll of cash on the sidewalk. There was no one around.

The cops up the street would never find what they were looking for because what they were looking for, seventy-six dollars and a couple rocks, I shoved in my sock, and shoved my hands back into my pockets. Kept on walking, even nodded to one of the cops like I appreciated their keeping the neighborhood safe.

I came home with a sackful of groceries—canned soup, ramen, apple sauce. And juice. And a few rocks of crack to throw in with our rent. Carl’s boyfriend, a tweaker with a handlebar mustache, had already made it clear he was happy with the barter system. The rocks bought us a couple weeks. In the meantime, I’d walk past the doorways and look through windows and wonder if they could see me at all.

Badlands

I was twenty-three years old when I got a job at Badlands, a gay club on the western edge of Dupont. This was back when Dupont was still a gay neighborhood, but it was already changing fast as rents climbed and million-dollar lofts sprouted from vacant lots and smothered gay video stores. “Gentrification” wasn’t a word really used yet, but we saw it. A few Pride flags hung on the porches of row houses as the gayborhood moved east, creeping into Logan from Dupont, renovations underway, a pile of drywall scraps and stained carpet ready to haul to the dump. The new walls painted a tasteful gray. The gays move in, renovate, rents go up, gays move east, to Logan Circle, then Shaw, whatever the neighborhoods are called in your city. The working class hadn’t yet been priced out of the District. I don’t know if everyone recognized yet that a Pride flag in a disadvantaged neighborhood signaled an invasion already underway. I didn’t give a shit. I wasn’t even working class.

Rumor was the Badlands building used to be an auto-repair shop and before that a carriage house. Seven bars, two floors, five rooms, and a massive dance floor. I truly believed I’d been hired for my military experience, or because I’m tall and had a crew cut and a walk like I might be able to fight. Truth is more likely that I spelled my name right on the application and showed up on time. Still, I was to be a bouncer.

   My manager at the club was a guy named Joey—pirate shirts and skater shoes. Stubbled head where he’d shaved what hair he had left. You might’ve called him “rugged” until he opened his mouth and his purse fell out. When he interviewed me, Joey said, “We’re a family here.” Translation: We’ll underpay you and overwork you and treat you like shit, but expect you to stay, expect you to smile, expect you to eat shit, out of some misplaced sense of loyalty. If you hear that “family” line at a job interview, the smart thing to do is walk the fuck out. I didn’t know that then. But it’s not like I had a choice. You don’t end up bouncing at a club if you have other options. I wasn’t all that concerned with what “family” meant to him. I just didn’t like the word. This is the sort of weird hang-up you’re left with when you were raised in a cult called the Family.

I was barely speaking to my own family. It wasn’t out of acrimony. For a while, it was mostly shame—about getting kicked out of the Air Force, about living in my car, about selling the car my mom had put on a credit card so I could rent a shithole off New York Avenue. My brother was still living with my stepdad, Gabe, in Amarillo. My mom had moved up to New England to be near my sister. I was in D.C. And I couldn’t remember why.

I had strong feelings about the word “family” when it didn’t apply to my own literal family. The word was bad enough in the South. When someone wanted to know if I was gay, they’d ask if I was family. Entirely possible I’d have made more friends were it not for my visceral reaction to the word, and the knee-jerk denial. Though I hadn’t chosen to join the cult, I had chosen to join the Air Force. Neither wanted me. I was fucking done joining.

   Dictional problems aside, I was out of options. I took the job and figured I’d keep my mouth shut and collect a paycheck, like any other job. I could play the role. Nothing new. I’d spent my entire life having to play a role.

In the cult, the smallest sigh, you’d think I’d shouted “Hail Satan” the way they reacted. Every job I’d had—fast-food cashier, waitress, hostess, pizza delivery—they all required the same act, happy to eat shit so that customers and managers would feel better about serving it. You’re absolutely right, sir. Appreciate the opportunity to satisfy your pathetic need to feel superior. I’ll be anything you want me to be.

The Air Force was easy comparatively. Military bearing was just the sum of what I’d practiced as a child: hide all emotion, fake the correct emotion, don’t make eye contact, don’t volunteer.

As a manager, Joey would be easy to keep happy. Bouncing is 80 percent cleaning and 20 percent convincing drunk or drug-addled adults with fragile egos that they’d rather not hit you, they like you actually, you listen, you’re on their side. Any child of narcissists, addicts, or rage junkies is an expert at de-escalation. And like I said, I grew up in a cult. Mopping up puke and cleaning bathrooms would never smell as bad as washing twenty toddlers’ cloth diapers in a bathtub.