Elvert Xavier Barnes Photography . Writings . Ads
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And though a very tumultous time but as much of my time, and life, with Greg has now proven to have been I would always reflect on that time as a New Beginnings. It, also, had been the year before that I would constructed a New Beginnings when as a result of Greg breaking off with me ... again ... and the fact that Design Cuisine had jilted me out of money that I would relocate back to NYC. Which is where I have always gone to 'get balanced'.
I'd arrive in NYC on a Saturday afternoon in early March 1984 and rent a room at the YMCA which was a quick walk from where I would began work on Monday morning. Later that night I'd visit the Everhard Bath House which is where I'd meet Tom Kerr. An Irishman, just a few years younger than I and the same age as was Greg, who had just moved to NYC from Aliquippa which is just out side of Pittsburg. Two years before in February 1992 when I had moved back to DC from NYC I had ... on my first night out ... also met Greg at the Eagle in Exhile who just days or the week before had moved to DC from Richmond. And the relationship that Tom and I would have over the next few months and ultimately over several years would be similar to the relationship between Greg and I. And though they were very different their relationship with me and the impact upon my life would be almost the same.
Greg and Champ would spend Easter 1984 with me in NYC at which point Greg would ask that I return to WDC. And on the very weekend that I had scheduled a photography session with Mapplethorpe at his Bond Street Studio Greg would arrive in NYC to visit me at my apartment in the West Village the week after Halloween 1984 asking if I, at least, visit him in WDC over Thanksgiving and reconsider 'getting back together again.' I'd visit him over Thanksgiving and would, indeed, move back to WDC the week after Thanksgiving 1984.
It would be in the spring and the fall that Greg would always 'flip-flop' on our position whereby I'd have to, either, move in or out. And though Jim and I were never involved the way that Greg and I had been, over the years, I had always remembered that it was after I had met Jim on Easter 1985 that Greg would break off with me. And though we would keep in touch over the summer it was after my trip to Atlanta with Jim over Labor Day weekend that Greg would resume a more involved interest in me. And though he remained in his apartment until its lease expired by the spring of 1986 we were looking at houses together. In the summer of 1986 we'd move to 417 15th Street in SE WDC. When I'd visit Mapplethorpe for the Spring 1987 Black Party at the Saint Greg would go ballistic. And days before I was to launch an events coordinating consortium with a benefit for George Dague who had been my roommate at 1320 Q featuring signed posters donated by Mapplethorpe Greg would ask me to move out because a white friend named Joe would ask me to fetch drugs from a white friend named Vince who, not unlike Greg, was a cocaine dealer.
Just weeks before I'd run into Jim on Palm Sunday 1995 and while in South Beach Miami in February 1985 I'd come to realize that these white men who had expressed a strong dislike for each other had actually been working in tandom and while conspiring against me would use their right to do, deal and traffic drugs as a means by which to dismantlle every aspect of my life. And when in March of 2005 I'd visit South Beach for the 2005 Winter Party ...