a&e features
Whitman in Washington
New book from local historian honors late great gay poet
Washington-based author Garrett Peck on the Dupont Circle North entrance escalator where a quote by Walt Whitman is prominently inscribed. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Author speech and signing
One More Page Books
2200 N. Westmoreland St. No. 101
Arlington, Va.
Tuesday
7-9 p.m.
Politics & Prose
5015 Connecticut Ave., N.W.
April 19
5 p.m.
For other events including upcoming Walt Whitman walking tours hosted by Peck, visit garrettpeck.com.
Local author and historian Garrett Peck has been on a huge roll in the last few years. His first book, “Prohibition in Washington, D.C.: How Dry We Weren’t,” came out in 2011. Since then, he’s published five more. His latest, “Walt Whitman in Washington, D.C.,” was published last week by the Charleston, S.C.-based the History Press.
Peck, who works by day as a global market intelligence analyst for Verizon, admits it’s been an intense pace. The last few years have brought “The Prohibition Hangover: Alcohol in America from Demon Rum to Cult Cabernet” in 2009, “The Potomac River: a History & Guide” in 2012, “Smithsonian Castle and the Seneca Quarry” in 2013 and last year’s “Capital Beer: a Heady History of Brewing in Washington, D.C.”
“I’d just long wanted to publish,” Peck, 47, says. “I just love research, love writing, love giving the talks and doing the promotional stuff. I just kind of fell in love with the process so I kept doing it. I have a list running down my arm of ideas I want to pursue. A book a year is pretty aggressive. I’ve been told it’s insane and it kind of is, but it’s more my own pressure. I’ve got so many topics I want to pursue.”
He’s been gaining traction and good reviews. The Hill praised “Capital Beer” for Peck’s “brisk and lively prose” while the Lit Pub said he “seizes on important moments in history and livens them with 21st century insight.” He says he’s sold about 10,000 copies of his various titles so far.
The Whitman book, an idea Peck had for many years, was timed to coincide with this year’s 150th commemoration of Lincoln’s 1865 assassination, significant because Whitman highly revered the president and wrote a series of poems about him.
“He really adored the president,” Peck says. “Strongly admired him and saw him many times, though they never got the chance to actually meet. They were even in the same room once but the president was in a conversation with someone else and they didn’t actually get to meet.”
Whitman lived in Washington during the Civil War and beyond, from December, 1862 until June, 1873. Here initially to find his brother George, a Union officer wounded at the Battle of Fredericksburg, Whitman sensed a need and worked as a hospital volunteer — not a nurse, Peck says, as has been widely thought — who made an estimated 600 visits to between 80,000-100,000 soldiers and also continuing his legendary poetry writing including two further editions of his trademark work “Leaves of Grass” and others including “The Wound Dresser” from his work “Drum-Taps,” an 1865 publication that established him as poet laureate of the Civil War.
“It was an enormously important time in his life,” Peck says. “He was kind of infamous in a way for ‘Leaves of Grass’ by that point, but not necessarily famous. The Civil War gave him a more humanitarian purpose.”
Although scholarship widely acknowledges Whitman as a gay man now, Peck says it remained a challenging topic in his research since the word homosexual wasn’t used in print until 1892, the year of Whitman’s death.
So what was gay D.C. like then? Peck says despite there being no Dupont Circle or similar gay mecca, gays somehow managed to find each other nonetheless.
“There were bars where people would congregate and people had relationships,” Peck says. “It’s very interesting to see how these relationships developed, for instance with Walt and Peter Doyle, the … love of his life … Walt was 46 and Peter was 21, yet it was Peter who approached Walt. They were cruising each other on a streetcar, so people had ways of finding each other, even then.”
Peck says another challenge was determining to what degree, if any, Whitman was out to his friends and family, including his mother, with whom he was close. Peck says his mother “surely knew,” and argues that his closest friends “must have known.” The degree to which it might have been discussed, Peck says, is unknown.
And yes, there was straight washing happening, as one might expect. Peck points to a biography of John Burroughs, a Whitman friend in Washington, written by Burroughs’ wife, Clara Barrus, who went out of her way, Peck says, to point out — without ever saying exactly what she was talking about — that certain Whitman “controversies” were not true.
“I asked (other historians) what she was talking about,” Peck says. “They all said, ‘She was denying that Walt was gay.’ I’m like, ‘You’re shitting me.’ She was married to Burroughs, so she had access to all this great, first-hand information, yet she felt the need to address this. All the information about Peter Doyle and Walt was right there in front of her, so it’s very much like you hear people talk about global warming today not happening or the earth being only 6,000-and-some years old. People are often blind to the facts that are right there in front of them and ultimately they believe whatever they want.”
Peck says that although many books have been written on Whitman, none had focused exclusively on his Washington years. He says Whitman’s appeal and popularity remains strong because he’s widely acknowledged as “one of our classic poets” who has an “international reputation.”
“There’s a tremendous universality to what he wrote,” Peck says. “‘Leaves of Grass,’ the Lincoln poems, the more homoerotic works like “Calamus,’ and beautiful works like ‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,’ which if you’ve ever got 10 minutes, look it up and read it. It’s about the Lincoln funeral. Though it never mentions Lincoln, it totally captures this moment and is just devastating, probably his last great poem, which he wrote right here in D.C.”
Walt Whitman in 1869 during his years in Washington. (Photo from ‘A Life of Walt Whitman’ by Henry Bryan Binns via Wikimedia)
a&e features
Tickets on sale for chef Patrick O’Connell’s book launch event
Sept. 18 kickoff to feature José Andrés, Tom Sietsema
Acclaimed chef Patrick O’Connell is preparing to publish his new memoir, “Main, Middle & Gay” in September and he’s launching the book with an event on Sept. 18 at 6 p.m. at Lisner Auditorium featuring Chef José Andrés and former Washington Post food critic Tom Sietsema.
Tickets for the event go on sale Tuesday, July 21 at Ticketmaster; prices start at $55.
O’Connell, who’s gay, is the pioneering Michelin-starred chef and longtime proprietor of the Inn at Little Washington. He spoke with the Blade about the September event and the launch of his first memoir.
“I’ve known [Andrés and Sietsema] for more than 25 years and I have great respect for them,” O’Connell said. “I felt that it would allow us to add a different dimension rather than just have an interviewer. The chemistry will be fun and lively and unpredictable and exciting. I think we’re all different personalities and we’ll compliment each other.”
O’Connell has published cookbooks but this is his first memoir. The event will feature a short film that will highlight his work and the Inn.
“What I hope to do with the event is bring the book to life visually,” he said. “So we’re producing a short film that will be part of it. Most of the audience will not have read the book so it’ll give them a visual flavor of the book. It parallels the evolution of American cuisine over 50 years. It’s a rare perspective to be in the trenches for that long.”
The book’s title refers to the location of the garage on the corner of Main, Middle, and Gay streets in Washington, Va., where he launched his restaurant that became an international culinary destination.
The Blade will publish the rest of its wide-ranging interview with O’Connell in September in conjunction with the book’s release.
a&e features
The queer Asian comics building collective joy in D.C.
Spotlighting chaotic ways family, romance, identity take shape in their lives
Kevin Chen’s family tombstone has room for four: him, his parents and his boyfriend. The arrangement might prove to be a little awkward.
“My boyfriend is 100% white, and my parents are 100% disappointed,” Chen confessed.
Jokes about family traditions and the untraditional ways they’re practiced earned a burst of laughs at the bar where Chen was opening for the Pride Comedy Special. The D.C. stand-up event, produced by Comedy Bonfyre last month, spotlighted queer Asian comics who shared the chaotic ways family, romance and identity take shape in their lives.
From candid oral sex takes to top surgery hypotheticals like “Where do the boobs go?”, the night highlighted the loud camaraderie of the queer Asian experience — one that sounds like a cacophony of snorts, cackles and belly laughs. While the comics say they are not quite a community, there’s more than enough shared material to bring them together.
“It was such a magical experience. I loved performing in a queer API lineup. It feels so validating,” Chen said after the show. “I’m wondering, ‘Is this how white men feel all the time?’”
Each performance evoked queer Asian joy through a medium that could use more of its presence.
According to Chen, who is based in D.C., it’s hard to say whether there is a true queer Asian comedy presence in his city. There are only a scattered “handful” of Asian comics, and people of color are underrepresented in queer comic circles, he said.
When Tarunika Anand, a nonbinary lesbian comic, first entered the mainstream D.C. comedy scene, they mostly encountered straight white men, describing the experience as “a culture shock.”
“I feel like sometimes a lot of queer spaces are really white, and then a lot of Asian spaces are really straight,” Anand said. “I don’t feel like I fit into either.”
But feeling marginalized didn’t stop these comics from honing their craft and creating spaces for others like them. Alex Kim, who headlined the special and is based in Brooklyn, runs the queer Asian comedy group Boba Gays, which began on WhatsApp and has since made its way to Lincoln Center.
Every Wednesday, Anand co-produces a free comedy show called Funny Side Up. The queer-led group focuses on inclusivity and showcasing new talent.
“It’s really beautiful to speak about your experience and your existence in a way that’s uplifting,” Anand said.
Family is a major throughline of their comedic repertoires.
Chen, for instance, shared that he identifies with jokes about having Asian immigrant parents and the expectations they pass down.
“You see me, you know this part about me, you know this experience intimately, and I can see the truth that you’re trying to wrap a joke around,” he said. “That hits even harder because that’s my truth too. I think that’s what makes good comedy.”
Anand had the audience at the special howling when they explained that their parents’ be-more-like-them comparisons didn’t end when they came out. Instead, the expectations took on a new form.
“Now, my parents want me to be the best gay,” Anand said. “They’re like, ‘Do you know Ellen DeGeneres?’”
Kim said he’s been trying to unlearn things from his Christian Korean mom. Yet he described a moment when he was getting ready for the club and realized he looked just like his mother getting ready for church.
“I’ve been finding it hard to escape her,” Kim said.
Mutual recognition also radiates through the different ways queer love can take shape. From singlehood to death-do-us-part commitments, the comics cover just about every corner.
Anand is holding out hope for settling down with “a nice, pretty, Indian girl.” They recently went through a breakup and said they felt they dodged a bullet.
“As a person of color, I just don’t think I should be with a Swiftie,” they said.
Chen, touching on what it’s like to be in a queer interracial relationship, said that meeting his white boyfriend’s baby nephew for the first time felt like he was forced to participate in a diversity, equity and inclusion training.
“The dad was like, ‘Please welcome Kevin. Be curious about his culture, his history, his foods,’” Chen joked.
Laughter is not the only reward for the comics.
To Anand, comedy is a space where they can say whatever they want. “It gives me a voice,” they said.
Nik Narain, a North Carolina-based trans and nonbinary South Asian comic who performed at the special, said meeting older trans comedians and taking the stage helped him feel reassured in his identity during his transition.
“Stand-up was a really cool way to process that onstage,” he said. “[It] became a way for me to repackage my thoughts.”
Queer Asians are still figuring out their place in the greater D.C. comedy scene. The group is small in numbers and many are still working toward a full-time comedy career. But Narain feels he’s already made it.
Narain is reluctant to pin it all on one moment. He feels that success is already peeking through in milestones — opening for celebrities, traveling to performances and self-producing shows.
“As long as I can keep doing this, I’m super happy,” he said.
This story was produced as part of the AAJA VOICES fellowship program, a student journalism project of the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA).
a&e features
Mr. Henry’s celebrates 60 years of proud inclusivity
Capitol Hill staple remains ‘a caring community’
America’s 250th isn’t the only milestone birthday D.C. is celebrating this year.
Beloved D.C. restaurant Mr. Henry’s, that Capitol Hill staple, celebrates its Diamond Jubilee all year long. Named for its original owner Henry Yaffe, the restaurant opened on a warm day 60 years ago in the summer of 1966 and has never looked back.
Yaffe took over what was then a country western restaurant, renovated the interior to his liking, and created an institution. Yet Yaffe had another goal. As a gay man, “he created Mr. Henry’s to be a place where everyone felt welcome — not easy in 1966 — and he succeeded,” says current owner Mary Quillian.
“Mr. Henry’s has long been a place the LGBTQ community has supported because they felt and still feel welcomed,” says Quillian. Even in the current administration, “the gay community and the diversity-minded community continue to come.”
Since then, Mr. Henry’s has changed hands, opened and closed its second floor, welcomed famed musical acts, and played host to politicians, date nights, breakups, and birthdays. But it still feels like home (and has a note in the National Trust for Historic Preservation) at 601 Pennsylvania Ave., S.E.
Its wood-paneled, Victorian-inspired art-filled décor in the downstairs dining room and bar serves American pub fare for lunch and dinner daily, with brunch on weekends (and a dog-friendly patio). Upstairs, Mr. Henry’s hosts live jazz performances and special events most nights, continuing a musical tradition that has defined the venue for decades. That upstairs bar has played host to names like Roberta Flack and Woody Allen.
Musician Kevin Cordt said that, “Mr. Henry’s has been a part of my life for more than 30 years. I started as a customer, then became a bartender and server, and now I have the good fortune to play trumpet at one of the best live music venues in Washington, D.C.”
Aaron Myers, executive director of the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, is also a supporter. “Not many cities can sport venues that have consistently served the community in the space of culture for more than 50 years, let alone can brag as the birthplace of culture defining talent.”
From the start, Yaffe promoted a rare yet celebrated combination of locals’ bar and soulful nightlife venue. Mr. Henry’s has attracted a diverse crowd at a time when such spaces were – and perhaps still are – uncommon, a diversity that is credited with helping protect the pub during the 1968 D.C. riots.
Longtime customer Evelyn Branic said, “Mr. Henry’s has been my ‘Cheers’ hangout since my wife and I moved to the Hill in 1987. I’ve experienced many iconic moments meeting politicians, reporters, civic activists, and neighbors engaging in spirited conversations. Whether political, LGBTQ, historians, neighbors, or out-of-towners, everyone could find a special place to be greeted as a friend.”
Its welcoming tables come dabbed with a bit of tea: In 1971, in a moment that has since become part of Capitol Hill lore, Yaffe lost the pub in a poker game to Larry Quillian. The Quillian family, recognizing the special role Mr. Henry’s played in the neighborhood, took over ownership, and committed to preserving its spirit. Today, Larry’s daughter Mary owns the bar, having given it a bit of a facelift for the bar’s 50th birthday, bringing in new tables and some fresh menu items.
For example, the menu has some of those dishes that regulars would riot if they disappeared. The Reuben and the hamburgers, the chili and in-house roasted turkey have never departed the menu. Dishes do evolve, says Quillen: they added wings about two decades ago.
In 2026, the restaurant is hosting monthly ticketed “decades” parties, celebrating each of the 10-year periods the restaurant’s been open, plus there were specials in June for Pride. The official 60th anniversary gala takes place Aug. 29, featuring performers, beverages, timeless favorite foods, swag – and the unveiling of a new cocktail.
Inclusive, eccentric, eclectic, Mr. Henry’s is looking forward to maintaining its centrality to diverse crowds in Capitol Hill. Battling inflation, rising menu prices, changing tastes, and thin margins, Quillian says that Mr. Henry’s has — and will always be — “a caring community for so many different folks. And THAT is why I am committed to keeping us going. Society needs places like Mr. Henry’s, now more than ever.”
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