Caleb Dukes, English + Visual and Dramatic Arts, Class of 2022

Brief Summary: Many people’s image of Houston has been fundamentally shaped by things like oil wealth, the Bush family, and the space industry. Bryan Washington’s Lot works to broaden this definition of Houston by spotlighting people that are often pushed to Houston’s margins: particularly queer, working-class people of color. As a member of Rice’s LGBTQ community, Dukes draws from Lot and his own experiences to highlight persistent racialized hierarchies within Houston’s queer scene and to urge his fellow students to confront their privilege.

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Bryan Washington’s Lot: Stories showcases a Houston that is rarely portrayed or even briefly mentioned in the media or pop culture. Houston, as we have been taught to view it, is all about a sprawling medical center, wealthy oil tycoons, and the birth of space travel. While none of these characteristics are strictly limited to the lives of white, straight, cisgender people, each is more accessible with the help of white, straight, cisgender privilege. It is much easier for the people that fit these narrow descriptors to gain access to and benefit from the gigantic resources they entail. And because power structures have held these few above everyone else for centuries, it is their perspectives that we are usually exposed to. Washington, in contrast, brings a new perspective to the table: a black, brown, and queer perspective.

Houston is a huge place. There is no one section, neighborhood, or event that can define the city in its entirety. Yet, for some reason, it is constantly being defined in such a way. And the single aspects that are usually chosen to define Houston are nowhere near universal to all  Houstonian experiences (or even the majority). However, Washington chooses to define Houston by streets and people that more reductive or mainstream narratives almost never recognize. As Dwight Garner points out in his New York Times review of the book, “‘Lot’ Offers a Fictional Look at a Vibrant, Polyglot American City” in which “oil is barely mentioned. The Bush family and the space industry don’t come up at all.” Instead, Lot follows the lives of several unique, but intrinsically connected, regular folk. Their connection lies in their identities. The main characters in each of the stories (aptly named after the real streets they generally take place on) are all black, brown, queer, or some combination of the three. They are also all working class or the working poor.

I will be focusing on the story “Waugh” and the way its characters represent a different perspective on Houston than most Houstonian narratives depict. This story stands out in particular to me because it shows ways in which Washington’s characters view popular places in “mainstream” culture differently than do the general public and even other marginalized groups. I put “mainstream” in quotes because it does not mean actual majority-favored trends and traits of society, but rather what we have been taught through thousands of years of power and structured inequality to believe are the majority-favored trends and traits: the trends and traits of the white, wealthy elite. To put it into our own context, the “mainstream” culture is the perspective of many Rice students, even those that are members of the LGBTQ+ community.  With a median family income of over $150,000 per year in 2017 (Buchanan, Aisch), Rice students on the whole undoubtedly occupy a privileged position that it is our responsibility to critically evaluate. At the same time, it is important to recognize that these experiences of privilege are far from universal, especially for underrepresented populations on campus, including nonwhite, first generation, or low income students.

“Waugh” not only shows a side of the Houston LGBTQ+ community that many white and privileged members within the Rice community never have to see, but also illuminates the fact that many of the problems that they think have passed are still very much around. Washington tells the story of a group of queer boys living together and hustling to stay above water. After their pseudo-pimp Rod falls ill with HIV, they decide to kick him out, letting him die rather than hurting their business. This is something that many privileged queer folks that come from elite, higher-education institutions like Rice University will probably never have to worry about.

It is obvious that Washington has seen a part of Houston that many Rice students will never even think about. He name-drops several places and streets that most would be familiar with (especially those within the LGBTQ+ community), such as Minute Maid Park, Fairview, Montrose, and Blur. But very few would see them the way that Washington draws them. Blur, in particular, might hit close to home. The mostly white population of Rice queers knows it well. They go there every so often to dance and have fun because it serves those 18 and up, rather than 21. It is a casual, safe, and loving space for them, perhaps owing to the fact of coming from a place of privilege. Washington describes the boys in “Waugh” viewing Blur and other nearby clubs as places to make a dollar, waiting in the cold for well-off patrons to wander out and pay them to get “jerked off in their cars” (Washington 153). While many Rice students have a joyful connection to Blur, the “Waugh” hustlers do not because they do not share the same racial, economic, and educational standing. As a white member of the Rice queer community, I can speak to this privilege with knowledge and authority. Even I am not immune to it. It is a real problem.

The young, often quite privileged queer community at Rice is so far separated from these experiences that they are sometimes able to forget or even dismiss the experiences of those that have to deal with them. This can be seen in the way many white queer people are able to dismiss that problems within the community, such as the high prevalence of HIV and AIDS and the poor treatment of black and trans people, are still around because they usually aren’t affected. In his NBC News article, “White gay privilege exists all year, but it is particularly hurtful during Pride,” George Johnson discusses the difference in experiences of queer spaces and events, such as Pride month, between white and black and brown people. He mainly points out how many white queer folk typically spend Pride month celebrating and “replacing corporation logos across the nation,” while black and brown queer folks spend it highlighting the black transgender women that started the LGBTQ+ movement and are the first ones “attending rallies for the death of [their] trans sisters.” While there are no trans women mentioned in “Waugh,” the idea that there are problems of privilege within the queer community still applies.

The very fact that the boys in “Waugh” are more concerned about their cash flow than Rod’s health says a lot about the problems within the community that are still alive today yet are often ignored by white people: especially the stigma surrounding HIV. Of course, such stigma has always existed, but when HIV was at its height in the 1980s, the stigma was mostly perpetuated by straight, cisgender people looking in at the community. As time has gone on and the number of new HIV cases and deaths has decreased, especially among white men, the stigma has spread farther into the LGBTQ+ community itself, starting with white queer people and eventually working its way into the minds of the people of color it most affects. As Johnson tells us in his article, “African Americans make up more than 40 percent of all people living with HIV in the United States, despite African Americans comprising only 12 percent of the U.S. population.” As soon as “HIV stopped being known as a primarily white gay epidemic, it began to feel more and more like an afterthought.” Stigma against HIV persists (Barnhart), and as treatments become disproportionately more available to privileged white patients, it comes as no surprise that those  with the virus continue to be labelled as dirty or a nuisance to be thrown away by their own community.¹

The blame is thus shifted onto the sick person, demonstrated by Poke almost telling Rod “he’d thrown it to himself” (Washington 158). Poke, rather than comforting Rod and feeling empathy, judges him and is consumed by anger that Rod broke his own rule and put the others at risk of losing their source of income.

This is even further evidenced in the way Nacho speaks about Rod, saying “we’ve got a motherfucking hypocrite in the house” (178) and “We can’t have fellas [sic] walking around talking shit about us, too. Saying we’re sloppy” (178). It could be argued that Nacho and Poke are themselves dismissing the existence of HIV and stigmatizing those that have it by kicking Rod out, but it is also important to note that they are saying these things because they worry that it will affect business from their clients, i.e. the privileged, white patrons of Blur and other gay clubs. Therefore, the judgement they place upon Rod does not come from their own heads, but from the privilege their clients are able to utilize in order to dismiss black, brown, poor, and queer experiences. These clients represent the wealthy elite, to whom Rice students are often equated, because they are able to use their privilege to afford preventative medication, stay off the street, and take safer jobs, enabling them to ignore HIV and other problems the community faces. Students even have access to affordable or even free STI testing and free condoms through the university (“Services”). In turn, they act as if these problems are all in the past simply because they are not personally affected.

By name-dropping several well-known, queer-friendly locales in Houston and painting them in a new light, Bryan Washington brilliantly illustrates the divide between levels of privilege within the Houston queer community. Writing about Blur through the lens of the hustlers in “Waugh” and narrating their condemnation of Rod for contracting HIV and hurting their business with their wealthy, often white, clientele helps readers to understand the stigmatization and dismissal these issues receive from LGBTQ+ people of great privilege in our day and age and demonstrates the divide in experience that exists even within the queer community of Houston. Washington paints Houston not as a place of one white, wealthy, oil-backed narrative, but as a place of more than one perspective. He pulls from the experiences of multiple underrepresented identities (queer, poor, and black and brown) to form a Houston that is rarely seen, despite how much it should be. We must keep pushing underrepresented narratives, as Washington does, and look at our own privilege to see how it affects others.

 

Works Cited

Buchanan, Larry, and Gregor Aisch. “Economic Diversity and Student Outcomes at Rice.” The New York Times, 18 Jan. 2017, www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/rice-university.

Barnhart, Gwendolyn. “The stigma of HIV/AIDS.” American Psychological Association, Dec 2014, https://www.apa.org/pi/about/newsletter/2014/12/hiv-aids.

“Services.” Rice Student Health Services, https://health.rice.edu/services.

Johnson, George. “White Gay Privilege Exists All Year, but It Is Particularly Hurtful during Pride.” NBC News, 30 June 2019, www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/white-gay-privilege-exists-all-year-it-particularly-hurtful-during-ncna1024961.

Washington, Bryan. Lot: Stories. Riverhead Books, 2019.