Dennis Rhodes
Dotty, the Window Washer
“Somethin’s comin’. Somethin’ bad. Somethin’ real
bad,” said Dotty the window washer back
in the summer of 1981.
My friend John was reminiscing at brunch
early in the new year—this new century.
I smiled broadly at the thought of Dotty.
Anyone in town for years knew Dotty—
blue jumpsuit, squeegee and pail, no nonsense.
The more this town changed around her, the more
she stayed the same, same jumpsuit, same squeegee
same short curly hair that stubbornly failed
to turn gray. Hard to imagine tourists
giving Dotty more than a curious glance.
What does a window washer matter to
someone just blowing in and out of town?
But she has earned her status as icon
among the locals, along with “Popeye”
and “Butchie.” They died when the town grew rich.
But Dotty soldiers on. Eccentrics
seem more and more out of place…
I felt a chil, hearing Dotty’s warning
stumble down through the years, years that made us
a killing field before the stark mercy
of protease inhibitors. It was
something she’d read in the paper, something
in passing. Minute but insidious.
“Somethin’s comin’. Somethin’ bad. Somethin’ real
bad.” Knowing Dotty, she needed for the world
to know. She told John. She told everyone
no doubt in that gay, frivolous summer
of 1981. When the killing started
what else could she do but what she
was supposed to do—wash all the windows
on Commercial Street. Keep the quaint façade
gleaming. After all, Provincetown’s a place
to celebrate summer, not to suffer.
Suffering is something we choose to do
on our own time and in our own way.
Summer tourists do not come for a glimpse
into the window of our dark winter.
Editor’s Note: This poem is set in Provincetown, located at the northeast tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts. This small coastal resort is known for its beaches, harbor, artists, tourist industry, and its status as a vacation destination for the LGBTQ community. Given Provincetown’s historical connection with the LGBTQ community, it was profoundly impacted by the AIDS epidemic during the 1980s and 90s.
Dennis Rhodes is the author of Spiritus Pizza & Other Poems (Vital Links, 2000) and Entering Dennis (Xlibris, 2005). His poems and essays have appeared in BLOOM, Chelsea Station, Lambda Literary Review, The Cape Cod Times, New York Newsday, Fine Gardening, Avocet, Backstreet, Ibbetson Street, bear creek haiku, Aurorean, and Alembic, among others. Rhodes served as literary editor of Body Positive magazine (an important source of information for people living with HIV and AIDS in the 1980s and 90s) and later as poetry editor of Provincetown Magazine. He co-founded the Provincetown Poetry Festival and ran it from 1999–2001. For a number of years, Rhodes hosted a radio program on WOMR in Provincetown, featuring interviews and poetry readings with a different Provincetown or Cape Cod poet every week.
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Here is today’s prompt
(optional as always)
Today’s poem is about a place—Provincetown—and it’s people (Dotty, Popeye, Butchie, etc.). The HIV/AIDS epidemic has always been associated with specific places, often places associated with heavily impacted communities, including gay enclaves like Greenwich Village and Fire Island in New York, Provincetown on Cape Cod, Mass., West Hollywood in Los Angeles, and The Castro in San Francisco, as well as African-American and Latino neighborhoods in Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Miami, New Orleans, Newark, Philadelphia, San Juan, and Washington, DC, among others. Write a poem addressing the impact of HIV/AIDS in a specific community or neighborhood in the United States or worldwide.