Incident at Manhattan’s LGBT Center!

Tuesday, November 23, 2004 was a cold, cloudy autumn day in Manhattan. The meeting I was going to at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center on 208 W. 13th Street, was scheduled to begin at 6:00 p.m. I left my house in New Jersey at a quarter to four in the afternoon in order to have ample time to get into the city and to find parking.

Getting through the Lincoln Tunnel, at rush hour, can be challenging. Not everyone is considerate, or merges in an orderly fashion. In order to avoid a fender bender, with everyone jockeying into position, you have to be alert and on your toes. At this time of day, against the flow of the prevailing commuter traffic pattern, inbound traffic is confined two lanes of one tube. The other two tubes, four lanes in total, are designated for outbound city traffic.

Once you navigate through the vehicular tube from NJ and into Manhattan, you still have to be extra careful driving to your destination. Yellow Cab drivers, overworked and tired, sometimes behave unexpectedly and erratically. It is prudent to give them wide berth. A pedestrian may, in the middle of a block, step out from behind a parked van or truck and into the roadway. A driver in the city can’t take his or her eyes off the road for even a second.

On this particular day, I was lucky to have found parking on a street near 8th Avenue and 13th. This meant that I didn’t have to sit in the car and wait until 6:00 p.m. when daytime parking restrictions on many blocks end.

Arriving at the center at 5:00 p.m., I had a full hour to spare before my meeting started. I sat in one of the few remaining designer leather easy chairs in the lobby of the center. There used to be more of these cozy chairs, but many, if not most of them, have been removed.

I’m not sure of the exact reason for what happened next. Maybe it was the cold; the fact that now, at 5:00 p.m. on a cloudy fall day, it was dark outside; the traffic; that I had had a slight headache all day; that the book I brought with me to pass time, Karl Mannheim’s “Ideology and Utopia” is not an easy read, or because I am a human being, but whatever the reason, I did something that was out of character for myself. In doing so, and unbeknownst to me at the time, I violated a policy of the Community Center.

I thought to myself that it would be nice to rest my eyes, just for a moment, or two, mind you, then open them, both eyes (I swear) and commence to read the Mannheim tome. Now, truth be told, I don’t normally nap, which is why I said this is out of character for myself. In fact, it is always hard for me to fall asleep. My insomnia is with me 24/7.

No sooner had I closed my eyes, then I heard a woman’s voice intoning, “Sir, there is no sleeping allowed in the Center.” I opened my eyes and recognized the woman as the same as had been manning the front desk when I came in. As she is an employee of the Center, the woman’s face was recognizable to me. As I am regular visitor, I’m sure my visage was similarly familiar to her. Over the years, I have asked for information from her regarding room assignments, and up to that point, had found her to be both professional and courteous.

Now, I informed her that I wasn’t sleeping, but merely resting my eyes. She replied flatly that if I wanted to rest my eyes, I would have to take it outside. Since I was neither snoring nor disturbing anyone, I asked her if she thought I was homeless person. She replied that she didn’t, but informed that the no sleeping policy applies to everyone.

I reiterated that I was resting not sleeping, and again I was told I would have to leave. I became a bit flabbergasted and annoyed. I vented that I wished that I could have my membership money returned to me. I asked for her name and that of her supervisor. She gave me her supervisor, Julia Noel Goldman’s, card. On the back of the card, she wrote her own name. I left the center in a huff. I got coffee off the premises, and returned to the center, just as my meeting was starting.

The next day, composed and calm, I called Ms. Goldman, who is the Assistant Director of Institutional Services for the LGBT Community Center, to address my concerns and express my disagreement with the no resting policy. It was a congenial and friendly conversation. Ms. Goldman is a capable and mature sounding professional, but alas, and ultimately, there was no meeting of the minds.

I was not hostile and empathized with Ms. Goldman during the course our conversation, as she related the difficulty of managing the Center with the diverse expectations of the visitors among other seemingly infinite complications and considerations that arise daily.

I was given a specific reason for the offending policy that prompted my call: there are donors, sponsors and politicians who come into the center, and it looks bad if people are sleeping. I asked then if the center was catering to the needs of the donors, sponsors and politicians, or to those who use the center. I also clarified that I was not sleeping, but resting my eyes.

During the phone conversation, I speculated too that perhaps the Center’s policy was a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. There are immune suppressed people, elderly and individuals with various disabilities who routinely use the center, and who may require resting. At another point, I suggested that perhaps it wasn’t the policy itself that was wrong, but the zeal with which it was being enforced.

I asked about the homeless too. I have noticed their absence. I asked what had become of them. It was important for me to let her know that although I hadn’t particularly cared for them being in the Center, that I felt that we should extend and make available the restrooms to them. She assured me they are still there. This caught me off guard. In retrospect, I disagree. I rarely see homeless using the facility now. I can only assume that they are stopped at the threshold of the center, turned back out to face the tender mercies of a city not known for its hospitality to those living at the periphery of society. I stated that since queer people have been marginalized, we should be more sympathetic to others who are marginalized and cast off, rather than just being a center for the bourgeois.

We then got into a conversation about the meaning of a community center itself. I feel that a community center should be affirming and welcoming. She, on the other hand, stated that the Center exists primarily to facilitate meetings. In response, I suggested that in order to avoid confusion, the name of the Center be changed to the LGBT Meeting House. I mentioned that the de-emphasis on community saddened me, that I felt that our country is becoming less tolerant, if not outright fascistic, a nation which does not tolerate non-conformity, and in which everyone has to be an automaton, a tireless robotic worker-bee.

I broached the subject of the disappeared leather easy chairs. Ms. Goldman stated that the chairs, a donation from the designer, are like “sleeping pills.” “You sit in them, and you want to sleep.” I felt better. I am not to blame after all. It’s the infernal chairs. Feeling vindicated for the moment, to myself, I wished the rest of the possessed designer chairs, each and every last one, to an eternity of leather easy chair damnation!

Usually, in the hustle and bustle of daily life, I don’t follow through on complaints. In a way it felt empowering to voice my dissent in a reasoned manner. At the end of the conversation, I mentioned to Ms. Goldman that perhaps I would publish my experiences online. She wanted to know why I would do this, and I said that it would be to open up a wider dialog. She asked me if I would write to her boss Mr. Richard Burns, before going public with my complaint. I agreed that I would.

I never did write to Mr. Burns. Thanksgiving came. Then, I stopped smoking, and there is so much going on in my personal and professional life and the Christmas holiday is almost here. Perhaps I’m wrong for breaking my promise about going public before writing Mr. Burns. It does seem that there are bigger fish in life to fry.

I had more or less forgotten the experience, but then, today, I received my membership card in the mail. It says that I have been a Center member since 1996. Underneath this it says, “American Airlines Business ExtrAA”. The letter that came with the card goes on to tell how I can earn frequent flyer miles with American Airlines. Perhaps it was an American Airlines executive the center had in mind when they wrote their policy. The airline executive’s presumed sensibilities being more important than the need for an average queer Joe like myself to rest his eyes after a hectic day. I feel bad that for the Center staff I am determined to be an embarrassment to my own community. I wish I was younger, thinner, more fit, better dressed and didn’t need to rest my eyes from time to time. In this new corporatist world order, I may be ready for the pasture, but I protest.

Well, that’s all. Maybe this seems inconsequential to you, or maybe you’ll agree with me that it’s a collective thing, that there are a thousand and one assaults on our senses that creep us about the direction our country has gone. I do think that one large measure of society is how it treats its least desirable. I just hadn’t realized I am one.
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