. . . all of us—facing the stars

 

On my way to the holding room, I see Alison wanting to skip down the hall and do a cartwheel—I can tell from the glee in her eyes. Without saying a word, she embraces me, and I pick her up, spin her through the air in my arms. Back in the room, I and my village of highly educated and respected professionals, who had worked so hard and seamlessly, know we’ve earned the right to celebrate unabashedly and get just plain silly in a private moment belonging to us, solely to us. Intoxicated with joy (and relief), we bounce around the room that can hardly contain our jubilation, hugging each other and making toasts with orange juice and water bottles. David wraps his scarf around me and we break into a conga step. Nikki darts around the room reporting the tweets coming in: “Oh my god, you’re trending worldwide! Oh my god, you’re ahead of Beyoncé!” All this being caught by Mark, snapping a photo every three seconds, recording the eternal moment being born inside us. My mother, in a stoic loss for words, asks me where the bathroom is, and in the same breath tells me she loves me and asks me to sit with her for a moment.

We spill back into the hall buzzing with people, where we meet Myrlie Evers-Williams, Rev. Dr. Luis León, James Taylor, Kelly Clarkson—all of us in electrified celebration. There are more handshakes, hugs, and mutual words of congratulations and praise. Then we hear from Beyoncé’s entourage that she wants to meet the poet, and we are escorted into her holding room. She tells me how much she enjoyed the poem. I thank her, compliment her on her performance, and ask, “Were you as nervous as I was?” thinking that surely a superstar such as she wouldn’t be. But she was, she says, and tells me that at least she was singing someone else’s song; she couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for me to read something I wrote myself. Beyoncé is gracious and genuine, and to answer the question I will get asked dozens of times: Yes, she is just as beautiful in person.

Mark and I are bused to the official presidential grandstand, where I soon after meet the vice president’s brother, Frank Biden, waiting in line for hot chocolate. He shares with me that my poem was the talk of the afternoon luncheon with the president and Congress. The woman tending the hot-chocolate stand overhears us. Oh you’re the poet, she smiles and shares the story of her mother—an immigrant like my mother—who came from the Ukraine and worked in a factory in New York City into her seventies. Others at the parade introduce themselves and offer congratulations. Some say it was the best moment of the inauguration for them. I am flattered by everyone’s comments and responses, but it’s a much more complex feeling, difficult to explain exactly. A kind of mutual gratitude, a moment shared in one joy of simultaneous giving and receiving.

After the parade, as Mark and I walk through the streets trying to find our designated shuttle bus back to the hotel, people begin recognizing me as the poet. They stop me, share snippets of their responses to the poem: I felt like part of America for real. . . . It was as if you were speaking to me. . . . It made me cry. . . . Thank you, thank you. We take pictures together, they tell me about their lives, their stories. Some are teachers, firemen, lawyers; other are secretaries, accountants, housekeepers—the same people that live in “One Today,” I realize. They ask how they can get copies of the poem for their children, students, grandmothers, and neighbors. A petite Asian-American woman darts out of an alley, kisses me, and insists I sign her copy of the inaugural program. A ten-foot-tall doorman grabs me in a bear hug and says, Come here—give me some love, brother. I had wanted to embrace America through “One Today”; I wanted Americans to embrace each other. But I hadn’t expected that America would embrace me and that the poem would be gifted back to me in such a way.

Mark and I become completely disoriented; we have no idea how to get back to the hotel. Most of the streets are closed; there are no cabs in sight, and we have about an hour to get ready for the inaugural ball. A woman—an angel—appears on a corner. She stares at me in amazement, as if she has been looking for me, and says, I knew I would find you. She hugs me and introduces herself as Lara, a psychologist and writer. After we explain our predicament, she says, Well, I got a car—I’ll give you a ride. We climb into her Toyota, her golden retriever Rusty growling at Mark in the back seat. On the way to the hotel we talk about Einstein, quantum physics, love, the source of creativity, and “One Today,” as if we have known each other all our lives. I promise to try to get her into the inaugural ball, but I never see the angel again.

Similar interludes and exchanges continue through the hotel lobby and in the elevator. In the hall on the way to our room I take pictures with some of the housekeeping staff, and we begin chatting in Spanish. I ask them where they are from and they ask me where I am from, which suddenly feels like a whole different question to me after the inauguration. Mark pulls me into the room; we shower, change into our tuxedoes in twenty minutes, then meet the others in the lobby and head to the inaugural ball in a caravan of taxis.

I had thought I was going to have a ball at the ball, maybe even get a chance to dance with the First Lady or have a quiet moment with the president to ask him what he thought of the poem and how I was selected. Not so. Soon after we arrive, I realize the grand scale of the inaugural ball: thousands of people from all over the country and the world. Not an intimate setting, but an intimate feeling nevertheless. Despite the fact that most are strangers to each other, there’s a sense of belonging to each other, a common motive for celebration, a oneness, much like at the inauguration, much like the poem.

Before the president arrives, and I realize I won’t meet him, we dash to the CNN studios for an interview with Anderson Cooper, whom I had long admired for his work and courage for leading an openly gay life. I’m a little starstruck when we meet, but he is the same person as he appears on television: gracious, friendly, genuinely intrigued—and a great interviewer who makes me feel at ease, as if I’m simply chatting in his living room. From the CNN studios we rush off to the Human Rights Campaign ball. The organizers had told everyone I wasn’t going to attend; they had wanted my appearance to be a surprise, and it is, for me as well: I walk onstage to say a few words, but I’m silenced by three minutes of whistles, applause, and hollers. Though I have lived an openly gay life for decades, I came of age in a generation fraught with homophobia. As such, I think there was still some small part of me that hadn’t fully accepted myself as a gay man until that very moment when I am overcome by the crowd’s response, the palpable love from my LGBT community. Not a town or a city but a home nevertheless, where I belong as much as I belong to America.