Interview with Donald Burch III Part One

And all right. It is July 14, 2021. This is an interview with Donald Burch by Kai Walther for Cruising DC, recorded virtually. And do I have your permission to record this?

Yes, you do.

Awesome. And could you share with me a brief introduction of who you are?

Oh, my name is Donald Burch III, I'm a black gay man living in Washington, DC. I've been in Washington DC since 1986 and I'm a retired clinical social worker, and I'm very involved in the LGBT+ community, particularly the African-American community.

Perfect. All right. And so have you always identified yourself using the language "gay"?

Well that's - I use the term gay because it's simpler for people. I'm actually pansexual but I don't know that the word pansexual has always existed so I certainly haven't used it.

Sure, fair enough. And so, what was your coming-out experience like? Either coming out as pansexual or gay just because that's easier for all to understand.

Yeah, well, I probably came out as gay. I mean, coming out as pansexual is maybe something I do now and people just don't - you know, Black people I think have a different perspective, at least in my world and in my generation, of what pansexual means, just like queer.

Coming out as gay is something that I'm familiar with. And so what that experience was like - well, I'm not sure. I'm from Detroit. I came here to Washington, DC at 25. Left Detroit in '85 so I came here at 26 and it was easier to just be gay here than it was at home. So, the coming out experience is kind of different because I came here and considered myself gay, but I didn't always consider myself gay at home.

So I don't - I guess coming out here was, I don't know, there was a lot more stuff in the gay community here, so it was easier to be out here. And I never pretended on jobs or anything not to be gay here. And not that I necessarily pretended at home, but at home I was young and getting to know myself and certainly didn't always consider myself gay or bisexual. At times I've considered myself bisexual. So here I just consider myself always out, but that doesn't mean people necessarily when they meet me who are heterosexual know that I'm gay right away. I think - I believe I'm obviously gay, but sometimes people might take a day, they might take a week, they might have to see me for a month. So, I think it kind of depends on their perspective, but I think I'm the same all the time.

No, that makes sense. It's always interesting to see when people pick up on other people's gayness.

When people interview you for a job - I mean, I should use I statements - When people interview me for a job, if I'm being - Say if I'm wearing a shirt and tie and sitting up straight and talking in a certain way about the particular field, do they necessarily know I'm gay? I don't know. Or do they know I'm gay once they hire me and based on the things I talk about or they see me in a more relaxed setting, then do they then know I'm gay? Or do they then start to ask questions? And I've decided that that's kind of all their perspective and their journey. I think I'm the same all the time.

Absolutely. That's that's on them to figure out or have their own thoughts about. Not our responsibility.

So when you came to DC, how did you learn about or get involved in the quote-unquote "gay scene," whatever that meant to you at the time?

I came to Washington, DC by virtue of the Navy. I was in the Navy and I was being discharged from the Navy for being HIV-positive. And so I was with other people in what - Now it's Walter Reed, but it used to be the National Navy Medical Center. And so the people I was hanging out with after work, or after the eight hour shift, or after hours, were gay people, because they were also HIV-positive. So, we would hang out.

And they introduced me to Dupont Circle, getting on the red line Metro from from up in the Bethesda area and riding down to Dupont Circle. So that was my introduction. And certainly the Washington Blade. I would pick up copies of the Washington Blade and became familiar with that and became familiar with placing personals ads to meet people through the Washington Blade. Back then you actually had to write letters. How did it work? No, you placed the personals ad. Do you know this already?

I know about personal ads but I don't know the process of placing one.

Yeah, so you placed a personal ad, and if I remember - I'm sure it was because I never spent money on things. I mean, I came here 26, not that I had any money, And so to place of personals ad under a certain number of words was free.

And so I would place the personals ad and then people would actually write letters in response to the ad that were sent to a Blade box. It was like a post office box in theory that the Blade had. They probably just had a big, you know, put a rubber band around them in a stack, but anyway, it was called a Blade box and you put the Blade box number on your letter. And then they put it in your Blade box and I could go up to the Washington Blade and pick up my fist full of letters.

Oh, neat.

Yes. That's how life was before the internet.

Right. A little bit different.

It was very different. It was very - It sounds almost quaint now to even talk about it.

A little bit but it also sounds fun.

Right. But in those - Of course, people couldn't - I mean, they had no other way to reach you, but in the letter they would put their name and phone number and say a little bit about themselves and then I would call them and that's how I met.

And then I also got involved in the LGBTQ community through my church because I immediately joined an African-American LGBT church called Faith Temple when I moved to Washington, DC. And then I also got involved in the HIV prevention or HIV education community here in Washington, DC. So there were a lot of ways to get involved in being gay.

Okay. How did - or I guess how did - if you don't mind me asking, what sort of personal ads did you write? Or what were you looking for with those?

What was I looking for? Well, I was looking for whatever was out there. I mean, I don't even know, I know, acronyms like BGM [Black Gay Man]. So it'd be something like BGM ISO, in search of, BGM. I don't know if we used words like top and bottom, or I don't know if we said anything explicit. I think you could say, you know, BGM ISO BGM in search of fun. I think something like that. Because you had to keep it under, let's say like a tweet. I mean, you had to keep it under so many words, so you couldn't go too much into detail because anything over you had to pay for.

Right, right.

You might say and again, this was a hundred years ago. So you might say you lived in DC, you might say in search of LTR.

Long-term relationship?

There you go. See, you know some stuff! You might say that or you might say in search of fun. Yeah. There was only so much you could say and not have to pay for the ad.

Right. And so did that overlap with cruising at all? Or how did cruising fit into all that?

Well, I always cruised because I was introduced to cruising at home in Detroit. And so there were cruise areas in Detroit. So I knew the basic dynamics of cruising. It was just a matter in DC of finding out through word-of-mouth where those cruise spots were.

So in DC, we had Malcolm X Park, we had P Street beach, and we had Carnegie Library and, those I think are the main areas. There was also the court - We called it the courthouse down by the Canadian embassy and the Metropolitan Police Department. Yeah, that was a popular area.

Because there were kind of slightly different forms of cruising. Those were sort of just regular cruising areas. But adjacent to the courthouse where the Metro building is, there was an area where people who were looking for money cruised more, or hustlers or male prostitutes. Nobody used those terms like male prostitute. You might have used hustler, but probably to African Americans they were just called "trade" because those were the masculine men who might be passed for straight. Straight acting, straight appearing.

That was something else you said in ads: SASE. So straight acting - No, straight acting - SA - SASA, straight acting, straight appearing. Sometimes you would say things - That might be an acronym because you're again, you're trying to save on words. So but those were the men who cruised by the Metro building. They tended to be more masculine, straight kind of men or men who are often considered trade. Where in just those other places I mentioned, just regular old everyday gay people are cruising.

Okay, and so as you got into this, you learned about these places through word of mouth, was there - or do you remember any specific instances of someone telling you about it, or how that came up? Was it something you talked about openly among other gay, queer people?

Well we certainly talked openly about it. We would say - We would talk about going down to P Street beach or we would talk about going to the courthouse. Yeah, it certainly wasn't a secret. It was just talked about openly like anything else. Yeah, there was no - I'm trying to think, was there any judgment or stigma? And there may have been. I'm sure there were people who said, "I would never go there, I would never do that."

But - that wasn't also something you bragged about. You didn't - you weren't at a party and say publicly, "Oh, I would never go to P Street beach." I mean, it kind of makes you look a little pretentious and you were still having sex. So even if you didn't go to P Street beach, even if you met your trade or your pieces or you met people at church, you're still having sex. So I don't remember off hand.

But there may have been a few people who you would meet at a party and you would be talking to them and they would say, "Oh I would never go there." And then some of your friends, you knew who cruised where, and who didn't cruise, so everybody didn't cruise. But if I had a friend who didn't cruise, they wouldn't, you know, clutch their pearls and "Oh I would never go." They weren't that kind of person. You just knew that John or Bob or Leon didn't didn't cruise. They had other ways to meet people.

Sure. And so what about cruising appealed to you?

I liked cruising because it was convenient, and that to go to a bar, you have to do a lot more planning, to me. You have to get an outfit together. I mean there were times when going to a bar you didn't just put on the clothes that you had just mowed the lawn in. You had to put on a little outfit, often times there was a cover charge. I never drank, and so there was never an incentive to go to a bar to drink. And then I also I was never very much in the popular music. I might like show tunes or music from musicals, and they weren't playing that in the bar. So there was no reason for me to go to hear the latest songs. So it was not really- Bars were not the best fit for me.

Whereas while cruising I could go out late. I could do everything during the day I wanted to do and then I could kind of clean the house up a little bit because I was gonna bring somebody home, and then I could go cruising at midnight and, I mean, you could go to a bar at midnight, but the cruising spots just seemed more convenient to me.

Sure. So that makes sense, the convenience of it.

Yeah. And then I could cruise as long as I wanted to. The bars, like I said, closed at two in the morning. There were some some bars that closed later, some after-hours clubs, but if bars closed at 2:00 in the morning, I might still be cruising at 2:00 in the morning or 3:00 in the morning or 5:00 in the morning or 7:00 in the morning.

Was it something that you ever went out with friends to do?

No. No. Another thing that I left out t- here were also places you could go. I mean, I should come back to that question. So don't let me forget it.

There were places like Woody's Tea Room, which you could cruise. So if it's - Or Heck's Department Store or Martin Luther King Library, And so if it's two o'clock in the afternoon, you can't go to a bar but you can go into a tea room and cruise.

And as far as going with other people - that was considered - Me and friends, we would sort of poo poo, or turn up our nose at people who went out to cruise to be social. Because if you have - We went to cruise because we had a purpose and our purpose was to find sex. We weren't going out to socialize or to hang out with our girlfriends. The purpose was to meet somebody and to have sex with someone.

And my my purpose, I mean this gets a little bit deeper into my psychology, I always, although I cruised a lot, a whole lot. I always hoped to meet someone special. It never happened usually through cruising and I knew stories of where it rarely happened, but no I wasn't - And if I couldn't meet someone, then at least I could have sex.

Sure. Sure. That makes sense. You've talked about a couple different places where people went: Malcolm X Park, P Street beach, Carnegie Library. Were there different groups or types of people who would be more likely to go to one spot over another?

I wouldn't say so. I would think it would be a matter of convenience. The spots that I mentioned or that I named were all in Northwest, but DC tends to center around Northwest. But there were certainly people who lived in Southeast. I think I've heard some stories about where people cruised maybe in Southeast, but I don't think they were as popular as the Northwest sites and I couldn't tell you what any sites were other than Northwest.

I do know about - Only because to me it was sort of historic, LBJ Grove, which was in Virginia. Well I don't live in Virginia and I don't have a car, so I don't think I've ever been to LBJ Grove, but I just know it's a cruising spot. But back when I was - When I first came to DC, there was the Sears up in Tenleytown where now it's a Target store. But I didn't cruise up there often because it was far out of the way from where I live, but I guess if you lived up in that part of town, it was convenient for you to go to the Sears.

Sure. So where you are, whatever is nearby to you is where you're going to go.

For me, but other people have cars and and they might have - I don't know that there was a better class of person up in Tenleytown, Maybe there was. I'll never know.

Earlier before we started recording, you mentioned that it wasn't quite segregated but there was maybe a separation or there were more African Americans who were cruising than white gay men. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Well, I don't know. I'm thinking when I would go to - Oh, Union Station, that's a place where people still cruise - but Union Station, for example, because it was more people who were traveling, might have more Black and white people together. And I certainly don't mean to eliminate other races such as Latinos, although you don't see a lot of Latinx - I don't remember a lot of because they're just not the numbers there. You would see other races, but the predominant races that I remember are black people and white people, black men and white men.

And so - I wouldn't say all, but there would be some white men in Malcolm X Park but not a lot. Again, when I started cruising in the 80s DC was not gentrified as it is now. And so there weren't as many white people around, but there would be some. I think they'd be more in Union Station. There would be some in P Street beach or the Black Forest. There'd be some there because Dupont Circle had more white people than other neighborhoods.

Okay, so it sounds like it's a lot of who's living in the neighborhood at the time, is the people who show up.

I think so. But again, if you want to have sex and you live in Southeast, you just have to make more of an effort. And again I make certain racist assumptions that there were more white people in the suburbs, so then you had cars, so then you could go other places and cruise; you didn't have to come into DC. So there may have been more places to cruise in Maryland and Virginia that I just wasn't aware of.

Okay. Was there a time you decided to stop cruising or did it less regularly?

It was never - Well, no, I take that back. Yes, I discovered that I was addicted to cruising. I consider myself in recovery because - I mean, I've never gone to a lot of sexual compulsive Anonymous meetings or Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous meetings, although I have gone to some. But I did get to a point where I recognize I had an addiction to cruising, looking for men. Sex was a little bit further down on the list of my addictions, because although I would have sex, I don't think I had as much sex. I wish I could have had more sex. Is that a way to - In other words, I was never seen in the in the gay community as that desirable, you know, the more attractive you are, the more masculine you are, the more desirable you are and -

Are you still there? It looks like your screen is frozen.

Hello, can you hear me?