Vanishing Rooms

The book Black Like Us is a book with short stories written by African American gay, lesbian, and bisexual fiction writers were we come to a story by Melvin Dixon, called “Vanishing Rooms”. Vanishing rooms is about a man named Metro who was killed by Lonny and his friends because Lonny told his friends that Metro had touched him because of his homophobic fear. In this story we are able to see how sometimes we are afraid of our own feelings that we say or do things that get other people into trouble.

The character of Lonny who is the protagonist is a gay white man who is insecure about his feeling. While on the other hand Metro is the antagonist even though he does not seem like a bad person. The story takes place in New York City. In this story we are faced with some of the different conflicts that we have seen in some of the other stories. One of those conflicts is the one between people because Metro is faced with having to get beat up by Lonny’s friends. This conflict also occurs when Cuddles starts talking about Lonny’s mom and so they also get into a fight because Lonny is offended. The other form of conflict is inner because Lonny is having a hard time accepting the fact that his friends killed Metro and he did nothing to help him. Another way in which he shows this is when he is thinking a lot about the conversation that he has with Metro when he asks him his name and he wants to know why he feels that way.

One of the passages that I feel that show why the author wrote this story is when Lonny says, “I was hot standing there thinking about Metro and hating myself for letting him talk like that to me.” In this passage it tells a lot about what he is going through and gives the impression that he is going to wan to do something to Metro because he feels uncomfortable around him. This shows how homophobia takes place into this character just like any other person and they will do anything to make the other person feel inferior. Another phrase that really gives me a better understanding of this story is when Lonny says, “I lay down in the shape of the dead man, fitting my head, arms, and legs in place. I was warm all over.” In this passage what the character mentions is that by being in that place he feels connected to dead guy because he knows that it could also be him. This is also a form of showing the significance of why the author wrote this story because he shows that we are all humans with some of the same feelings.

I really like this story and felt that sometimes we judge people because of the way that they come up to you. I feel that I have learned an important lesson with this story which is that no matter our race or our sexual orientation we are all the same. We have the same feelings and we can also have some of the same interest but we don’t notice them because we judge each other all the time. If Lonny would have just gotten to know Metro then maybe they could have something in common with each other.

I personally would recommend this book because a lot of people are very judgmental about others just because of the way they interpret things. This book would be a great opportunity to show people that homophobia is around and that sometimes we ourselves are at fault. I think that sometimes I am even at fault sometimes without noticing it. So we really have to be careful of doing this and it would be a good for people to see that this violence still exists.