The Male Southern Belle byJohnny Greene Andrew Holleran on Dark Disco t .

Sissies,Cowboys, and Good School Citizens hs byArthur Tress

32 CHRISTOPHER STREET Sissies, Cowboys, and Good School Citizens he day I flew to Houston last July I was hung-over and T exhausted. I had had too much stimulation and too little sleep during a hectic week in New York and was looking forward to hiring a car, heading toward some sedate Tex- as hotel or other, and curling up for the night; I thought vaguely of buying cool summer pajamas and ordering toast and tea from room service. I was a bit surprised to notice that the plane was packed at one in the afternoon on a Tuesday, but I didn't become alarmed until the French engineer beside me said that a room might be hard to come by. "We're flying in from all over the world for a petrochemical conference. There are eighty of us. My assistant has been on the phone for a week searching for rooms somewhere, anywhere, but as of now we still have three vice-presidents on cots in a single." Fraternal and amusing as those ar- that he was "really" a writer; though rangements sounded, they didn't augur he'd been working for thirty years as- well for me; I have always, when travel- an engineer, that was just a curtain- ing, counted on fate to play the re- raiser to the main piece, his upcoming sourceful concierge. "But Houston is career as an author and thinker. Having like that," my engineer said. "Always myself been a teacher, truck driver, overcrowded, the whole world standing, editor, and PR man, I understood the hat in hand, at the door, wanting in. delay. We may laugh at it-it is frightfully In the airport I was cruised by two vulgar-but we are its clients." He men and asked them where I should turned back to his copy of Voltaire's stay. One of them recommended a mo- Micromegas. A bit later he explained tel where he had lived for a few months

Copyright © 1978 by Edmund White. This is the second in a series of Trave!s in Gay America

DECEMBER 1978 33 after first arrIving in Houston. It was, it's a bank, and those are desks. I kept he said, near the action, only somewhat thinking that there's no reason Houston "infested," and quite cheap. The other should have skyscrapers at all; land man expressed mild surprise that I was isn't that valuable here yet. Bu t of visiting Houston for "pleasure." None course for Houstonians the buildings of the rental services had a car; the are their tinker toys. They contemplate attendants smiled wearily at the naive the business district from a distance request. Nor could I find a taxi. At last and say, pointing, "Now you need I resorted to the bus-fortunately, since another black one over there-maybe the airport is a costly hour and a half a trapezoid. And then square that away from the city. (The optimistic corner off with a nice silver one." Houstonians expect that one day the city will reach out to the airport. he bus deposited me at a termi- Certainly most of them are predicting T nal where a long row of brightly that by the twenty-first century their colored telephones promised to connect city will outstrip all others in size, me instantly with a wide assortment of wealth, and power.) "A buildings in Texas give an hostelries (there are, it turns out, few As I rode in I observed through the hotels, and they are listed in the Yellow over. II sense of prefabricated unit tinted panes empty fields out of which Pages under "motels"). Every place was that have been erupted, here and there, not the expect- full, including the motel the guys at the ed house or store but an imposing landed airport had recommended. In a panic bronze skyscraper, jutting up like a on the terrain. " I decided to apply in person to their bold exclamation point following a motel. I ordered a taxi and after a long bland, run-on sentence. Past me flew My fir limpse of . s wait obtained one. At the motel office miles of mobile homes for sale, those the sudden, cloacal collapse of a sear- I was for some reason accepted; I was shingled and windowed rectangular ing, five-minute rain. It was as though directed to the sixth and last building boxes longing to lose their mobility the devil had decided the.infernal heat of the complex, a good half-mile down and sink peacefully into a plot and needed just a soupcon more of humidiu:, a blinding gravel service road. Behind join their pipes to those in the raw to become the sort of torture he had the motel were parked several semis; earth. Fields of weeds, dusty trees, had in mind. The buildings were indif- hanging over the balcony railing were the odd skyscraper, and then a mo- ferent to the miasma; with their spotless trim black women in microskirts, plastic tel; its raised billboard proclaimed not white mullions and smoked glass or boots, and bouffant wigs. The rather "Welcome Engineers" but "Waitress blue, mirrored skins or long, tall mer- dour whites I passed kept addressing Wanted-Top Pay-Bellboys, Too." We Ions flanking windows no wider than a one another as "Brother This" and swept past an extensive development medieval archer's crenel, they were as "Sister That." Saudis in turbans were of what I believe are called "town alien as space stations deposited on streaming into the restaurant. Dazed houses" (terraces of row houses), all hostile Mars. One suspected they were by the heat and feeble to begin with, crunched under top-heavy mansard self-sufficient, tenantless (there were no I had difficulty reconciling these ele- roofs. One ambitious design had even pedestrians in sight), and fully comput- ments with one another. Was I feverish? managed to pull the mansarding down erized, that if they retained windows at As it turned out, the motel was no- nearly to the ground, turning the top all, they did so only as a courtesy nod torious as a hangout for hookers who three floors into stacked garrets peek- to the past. serviced truckers. They and their stylish ing out at the weeds and skyscrapers Later, when I toured the business pimps occupied half the rooms; all night through dormer windows; only the district, I discovered why no one was long men were tapping on my door and ground floor had a clapboard siding, visible: all the buildings are intercon- imploring j udi to "open up." The rest painted the pale orange of an unlicked nected by air-conditioned second-story of the place had been rented by J eho- popsicle. The odd proportions remind- covered walkways or underground tun- vah's Witnesses; there were fifty-five ed me of a little boy half hidden by his nels. The major buildings are the head- thousand of them convening in Houston father's giant sombrero. But all build- quarters of oil companies, and all but for a powwow at the Astrodome. Hook- ings in Texas give an overall sense of one of them were erected since 1968. ers and Witnesses rubbed shoulders all prefabricated units that have been The latest development is the Houston week in the coffee shop, which was also landed on the terrain. They are pure Center, which will comprise twelve popular with Arab students who'd come expressions of will and bear no relation- buildings (including five thousand apart- to Houston to master the mysteries of ship to the surroundings. Even the most ments). The architecture is so advanced petroleum technology.' To add to the modern space capsule, however, .is that it was used with no modification fun, Barnum and Bailey (the six o'clock awarded a name out of history. If as the set of the sci-fi movie Logan's news reported) had also descended there is a restaurant in the building, Run. The floors and walls here are on Houston-elephants, like overheated it too will have a historical name, pink Texas granite; on a balcony one tanks, had rumbled through the empty though not necessarily of the same sees a bent aluminum tube (sculpture? streets that afternoon, their massive period. Thus we will have "Bluebeard's exhaust?); the escalators are outlined bulks hosed down with cold water every Dungeon" in the Queen Victoria, or in cold white neon. One glimpses into block or so to keep their radiators from the "Old West Saloon" in the Forbid- a restaurant filled with foliage and boiling over. Agitated by so much that den Palace. twinkling lights and sees flirtatious was mal assorti, I left my room, with Finally the city itself materialized. couples huddled over little tables-no, its moderate infestation of roaches and

34 CHRISTOPHER STREET water beetles and its two double beds, figure, the Southern Sissy? both their backs broken, and sallied "My father," he said, "liked me, forth for a walk-only to discover that but my mother never did. She didn't the town fathers had neglected to give want us kids, didn't want to cook for sidewalks to this neighborhood. There us-heck, didn't even want to talk I stood, far from a bus route and unable to us. My dad liked me"-and then to walk or rent a car or hail a taxi, and the grin is unleashed-"because he was watched the traffic hurtle merrily by. gay. I found that out by going into his I contented myself with an overdone closet (no pun intended) and discover- steerburger, a rather sweet little covered ing all these dirty magazines. When I basket of biscuits, and a large milk as was eighteen he died from lung cancer, I eavesdropped on Arabs, whores, and and he wasn't the smoker; my mother the religious, those poor souls su b- smokes and is still going strong. She scribing to a regimen of no smoking threw me out of the house as soon as and only light drinking in a city where he was under the ground." (Southern Mexican grass sells for twelve dollars speech, no matter how casual, always an ounce and more beer than water is "In one night at a bar lilts with little literary touches: the consumed in the summer months, a parallelism of "out of the house" and you can make four or five friends and place that has the third highest rate of "under the ground," even the old- they will put you up one after alcoholism in the nation and a crime fashioned periph rasis of "under the rate that rose 12 percent in the first six another. Everyone's ground.") months of this year. Houston also has new here." "I got a job and some credit cards. no zoning laws, and as a consequence And then I just charged and charged"- -a church can be squeezed in between by stage fright halfway across a winter the "charged" is drawn out, sung first a shopping center and an adult book- melon). All the little movements on a high note, then on a low-"until store and peep show (it is a city of un- he produced (and he was as active, I'd run up a bill of $15,000. I didn't likely company). Although one group as rippling, as the draperies of an know what to do. So I fled town and is campaigning to keep the porn shops Ascending : Virgin) arose from inner came to Houston with nothing but at least two thousand feet away from turmoil+the familiar conflict, for in- a bag and a five-dollar bill." the churches and schools, the proposal stance, between a desire to establish "And then?" I asked anxiously; for such a cordon sanitaire violates the contact and a fear of being snubbed. I am not one of those people who Houston charter, which grants every As he talked on, I turned my lidless believes, as Rilke did, that the world microbe the run of the city. eyes toward him, unscrolled my sticky will take care of you, that its hands tongue in a trial run, and watched my are under you and will catch your nsteady though I may have been, fly buzzing around another contradic- fall. Uat ten in the evening I sum- tion-his inclination to be flamboyant "It's very easy to succeed in Hous- moned a taxi and headed to the best and his resolve to be reserved (one ton," he said. "In one night at a b·ar leather bar in town, the Locker. There imagined him wearing a gold anklet you can make four or five friends and I stood in the back patio, propping my- under his cowboy boot). And then it they will put you up one after another. self up against a corral fence and look- wasn't clear whether he wanted to Everyone's new here." ing out at a withered, spotlit tree. Its seduce me or himself, for though half "And then?" small leaves weren't stirring. Along one his talk was abou t sex and the possibil- "I went into a beauty-supply store wall was painted a large mural of cacti ity of having it, the rest was devoted and asked for a job. I lied and told them on the moonlit mesas, looking like to his Past, a plot by Dreiser written I had a degree in cosmetology. They disembodied rabbit ears out for a mid- in the vivid style of Georgette Heyer. put me to work that very day. Now night stroll. At one end of the yard Apparently even his life, his novel, was it's a year and three months later and rose the false front of an Old West tremulously ambiguous, as was his I was just named the store manager." hotel, a Potemkin set where pairs recital of it; he had a trick of saying "How," I asked, already suspecting of men nursed funny cigarettes. The air something sad about himself, which the answer, "did you fake a knowledge was sweating, dreamless, more in a elicited sympathy-and then springing of cosmetics?" faint than asleep. The men around on me, out of nowhere, a big, dis- He seemed caught in another cross- me, conserving their energies, weren't concerting, shit-eating grin. When he current of uncertainty. His hand flew up talking; the only vital sign was an spoke he kept himself in modest profile, to pat an invisible but palpable chignon, occasional shift from foot to foot, but when he produced that grin he the chic saleswoman's bun, pierced unless that was an illusion performed turned toward me with shocking inti- ukiyo-e-stv le with several pencils at by the warping heat waves. macy. He seemed to be a writer who odd angles, while simultaneously his And then, interrupting this saurian enjoyed torturing both his reader and voice dropped into a lower register: torpor, someone entered who was very his protagonist, despite the fact that "I know all about that; I had a lot of much in motion. He hovered up to the reader in this case was a potential ... uh ... friends in drag." (The well- me, engaged me in conversation, and pickup and the protagonist his own known "friend" strategy: "Doctor, permitted me to buy him a beer. He immortal soul. My only fear is that I I have this friend who's homosexual was twenty-two and chubby and make him sound sinister; have I made and needs advice.") "And what do you was experimenting with a mustache it clear he was, despite the boots and do?" he asked. It was his first acknowl- (it looked like a caterpillar paralyzed mustache, that perennially endearing edgment that I, too, might have a life,

DECEMBER 1978 35 might be more than a reader, though Inside the Locker things were pick- I suspect he was more eager to get away ing up. It was midnight and the dance from the subject of drag than curious floor was crowded, as was the pool to explore my story. room. The prevailing "heavy" look "Write," I said. for this malarial climate seems to be "So do I!" he exclaimed, more de- a black, sleeveless Tvshirr, black or lighted by the coincidence than I, since blue denims, and cowboy boots. Here I had already been perusing his work. and there, however, were ensembles "I'm a writer, too. I loved English in that seemed ill-sorted. A tall, lanky school. My favorite period of poetry man ambled past decked out in a ten- was the Romantic, and my favorite poet gallon hat, a faded workshirt, patched Percy Bysshe Shelley." Naturally. If jeans-and sneakers. Home on the Americans, as Gore Vidal says, are both range in sneakers? Or the forty-year- Puritans and Romantics, then the old standing beside me wearing engineer Romance must begin in the South. boots, a black leather vest, chaps-and Shelley is the South's favorite poet; a cowboy hat. Yet another man had on Southerners name their sons Shelley. an S&M top (chains, leather, tattoos)- "Sex with strangers and shorts. These are expressions of individual, \'-\:<''' is an alternative to language. Ow if you're a Yankee I can hear / taste in a state where personal flair is \ the code that you grumbling, "Texas isn't in still regarded with nostalgic approval. N replaces speech. " the South; it's in the Southwest, which By day, as one walks through the miles is something else entirely." Or more up- of air-conditioned corridors below the to-date Yankees will refer to the "Sun- business district, one sees mostly fresh- belt" stretching from Florida around ans live in cities, they are often from faced execu tives in three-piece summer the Gulf to Houston and on west. I farms and dream of returning to them. suits. But every once in a while one must confess I find these to be distinc- The big, raw countryside-the fly- encounters an old, unbowed Buffalo tions without differences. The South- blown Nehi sign, the glass of ice tea Bill, his white locks flowing out from west was a fiction Johnson invented on the porch swing in the sweltering under his weathered Stetson, his three- when it became clear he would not win evening heat, the shriveled grapes in hundred-dollar boots worn but polished, the South; the Sunbelt, where Nixon the arbor in the back yard, the "bauk- and a string tie around his neck-he is liked to say his cronies came from, is ing" of chickens, the rust-speckled the magnate who grumbles about how a cultural fiction if an economic fact. blades of the creaking windmill, the the Yankees have turned Houston into Northerners choose to refigure the map, trail of dust behind the pickup truck- a damn dude ranch. I suspect, because the revision places this ~ countryside is both lit~ Despite its ~plen.durs" the energy and industrial wealth of ly and spiritually close to the booming and its hospitality to the arts, itsj!!.flllJL Texas in exemplary contrast to the metropolises. --- 5Zf N;;f'therners and it~~- racism and supposed rural character (a survey revealeCl that young executives of the "true" South. Puritans demand " 11f hat are you doing here in Houston regarded a 10 percent an- a. moral and hold that riches reward n in Houston?" my friend nual raise as the minimum they would . virtue; they are discontent with the asked. "Business?" accept), the city remains raw. One talks prospect of unreconstructed rednecks "N 0, just looking around." to a tall t~enty-year-old with an Adam's ~ becoming the most prosperous element "Y ou came here for fun? To Hous- apple that rises and falls obscenely along of the population. ton? " his taut neck. His voice is too loud given But Texas is Southern in the good Texans may be chauvinists, but few the social distance, but it goes with the sense and the bad, and it can never be of them are loyal to Houston (though depth less eyes that seem focused on understood if it is seceded from the some transplanted Northerners defend a distant figure. "My damn dad," he Confederacy. Take the racism. In small it). It is only a place to run away to, drawls rapidly-that is a trick of the towns and among older people it per- a town where you can make a fast Texas accent, a Southern intonation sists unchanged. Among the Houston buck and then get out without regret~ speeded up-"tried to stop me going young, the racism may be disguised -a sort" of cloverleaf in the American with guys. Ha! I beat that son of a bitch by lighthearted "nigger" jokes told Route to Riches. up. I slugged my goddamn brother, too, on the understanding that, of course, My friend, sensing I was more chatty till he was a bloody pulp. My mom was we're both liberals, we all know better- than randy, and confident that I'd screaming so I chased her around the and isn't it fun to say "nigger," to use studied his text with care, hailed a house. See"-here he lowers his voice the real down-home word, the very waiter he knew and started giggling a bit-''I'd gotten this damn bitch I word they use? with him. Perhaps we'd understood knew in high school pregnant, so the And so it might be if integration each other too well to be mutually old man was hollering about that, too. were more secure, equality more fully attracted. There were no occlusions But I'm bigger than him, I'll knock achieved, and the past more distant. in communication, those breaks in out his fuckin ' teeth. I told the bitch As things stand, the jokes betray anxi- [apprehension that awaken desire. to get her cunt scraped-then I moved ety at best and conceal bigotry at worst. Sex with strangers is an alternative in with j oey ." He told me more-of. Or take the rural character of Texas to language, the code that replaces night rides in old cars with six buddies life. Although four out of five Tex- \speech. iheehawing and gulping down a carton

36 CHRISTOPHER STREET of beer, of straight guys from high school he lured home and then fucked (using cooperative girls as bait), of par- ents howling around the house trying If you like the Island, to shut down a late pot-and-disco party -but I withdrew from him. I didn't want to hear any more. Sure, I like you'll love the Village: tough guys, but only if the tough- ness is undermined by warmth and experience, only if I sense that in this man's head there is somewhere a court ROXBURY RUN of higher appeal. I felt awed and over- powered-was this the gay liberation we had had in mind?-and headed home VILLAGE. to my motel, at last to sleep.

his rawness crops up everywher. e. T Houston is a city where business- merf chew gum, sport long ginger side- burns and Baptist pins on their lapels, smoke cigars, dangle calculators from their belts, carry pens above their hearts in aqua plastic inserts, and choose beige summer suits with dark brown stitching to match their dark brown shirts underneath. It is the place where, during, the fuel shortage in the North, a block-long Cadillac carried a bumper sticker that read, "Let Them Freeze In the Dark." It is also the town where I met Harv. ... He approached me at the big disco, 80· percent mortgages available to financially qualified buyers. Numbers, with an opening line so con- Design supervised by architect Earl Burns Combs, AlA. trived it was winning: "I'm doing Now you can enjoy your summer freedoms all year long-in a mountaintop a survey for the New York Times. townhouse community of your own, in the heart of the New York State ski belt. Escape to a woodland townhouse with an oversize scenic deck. Entertain be- Do you like blonds? How do you feel neath beamed cathedral ceilings. light a fire in the native stone fireplace and about blue eyes? And how would you stretch out in front of a riased hearth. like the best blow job in Houston?" Steps away is the Village's 75-foot heated pool, with sundeck, diving boards, We never got to the blow-job stage, racing lanes. Professional courts for sudden-death volleyball. Or to perfect your tennis under the resident pro. but we did have a couple of drinks Bridle paths to ride along. Woodland trails for jogging. Meadows for sunning, together in the glassed-in booth up- mountaintops for picnicking. Unspoiled places to fish, boat and hike; to ice- stairs. Downstairs, lights strafed the skate, and ski. And of course, the Village disco-where you'll dance, dance, crowded floor and glowed behind white dance till the spectacular dawn. silk curtains billowing inside tall, fancy All this, only a short drive from the arts and crafts of Woodstock. The glori- ous sounds of Tanglewood. The temptations of auctions and antique shops. The scrollwork frames (I was reminded unhurried pleasures of country dining. of the decor of a 1920s movie palace). When you come, at exit 19 of the N. Y State Thruway, go west on Rt. 28 to Harv was a computer expert; he had Arkville, go right to Rt. 30 and right again to Kelley Corners, at Kelley Corners been working late all week unscrambling go right and watch for the entrance to Roxbury Run on your left. a lousy program written by someone Mailing Address, Roxbury Run Village, 17 Bon Aire Circle, Suffern, N. Y 10901. Tel. 9 14- 357-6408 else. The pride he took in his work ____ Please send me complete information on the Village, was all the greater because he was including mortgage financing and homeowners' total- a self-made man. He had always fought care exterior-maintenance package. with his parents, he told me-dark, ~ NAME murderous fights-and they fought with each other. When he was eight he STREET, APT NO. begged them to send him away to CITY STATE ZIP _ boarding school. They complied, but ____ I have to see all this for myself Phone me at (AREA CODE) when he came home for holidays he found them even more intolerable. ___ (NUMBER) The old hostility flared up again. I'm easiest to reach at a. m. or p. m. After a particularly tormented, tor- This advertisement is not an offering in the Roxbury Run Village Association, Inc., menting session his parents kicked Which may be made only by formal prospectus. CS-4 him out. He was fourteen and had only three dollars to his name. He

DECEMBER 1978 37 worked in stores around his little cowboys are frugal people who wear Texas town until he finished high the same clothes year in and year out. school. He then joined the Navy and As the men danced to the impassioned was assigned a job in intelligence. At strains of Tammy Wynette singing night he took more and more courses, Johnny Paycheck's "You Hurt the determined to make something of Love Right Out of Me," their faces himself-until one night, during a were unsmiling. I was reminded of a calculus exam, the numbers swam story an Argentine once told me of a before his eyes and he could not read tango contest on the pampas: as the the questions. He had been, he told gauchos glided back and forth to me, "overcome by nervous exhaus- heartbreaking lyrics about jealousy, tion." great tears steamed down their stoic After the Navy Harv obtained faces. It was the same here, except a position in Houston with a computer- the words. also covered divorce and programming firm and rose rapidly. the Pill. Now he was just twenty-four and owned When a city slicker has a jerk-off a 1972 Oldsmobile and a two-bedroom fantasy about cowboys, he usually suburban house complete with a game "The cowboys, the rednecks, the forgets their true distinguishing marks room-and a wet bar and fireplace he outspoken self-made right-wing +the ai~~!..j.~!'~5.hmeJ+t...a.O.£Lrh~ite, had installed himself. Harv assured me millionaires strike us as either the old=faslriofied dec~ ~res this was just the beginning; his goal was best or worst examples of t~e low in er- to make two hundred million dollars. American manliness. " ceJveCfStatus, sus icir--mrrstders, His taste in men was correspondingly grave, ITIsecure, a bit to.!!-ch.ing=and ambitious: his first lover had won a qul~_ conven~wex (they would major muscle-building contest. The only their arbitrary but assured revolutions, be appalled by rough stuff, for in- problem was the lover's laziness. He the air would warm and thicken, the stance). At the Brasos River Bottom, was thirty-one and refused to work. tape would grumble into silence-and smoking grass (so common in all the "I did everything for him. I moved his we would be left in a hot tin shack other Houston bars) is forbidden, as mother into my house and took care of somewhere in the middle of the bayous. is pissing in the patio (a curt sign her. I bought him a new car and kept reads, "Rest Rooms Are Inside"). the old one for myself. But he kept he gaudy stereotype of Amer- The spirit that reigns is respectable pushing me. He didn't come home for T ican machismo is the Texas and cozy-a few old friends getting four days, so I went after him. I entered cowboy, but a visit to a gay cowboy bar together for a beer. that bar and ordered him out. He said, forces one to recut that worn old plate Only about half of the customers 'I ain't going.' I cleared the bar right and to print from it in fainter, more are genuine cowboys or farm people; out, I hit him, I ripped his shirt off, somber inks. The Brasos River Bottom they are the ones most reluctant to I lifted him by the seat of his pants and is on a quiet side street but looks out discuss their origins and work, as hauled him out. Then I asked him, 'You toward the glowing spires of the busi- though they are afraid you might wanna come home or you wanna go ness district. Inside are well-mannered laugh at them. But for all Texans back in the bar?' He said, 'The bar, but couples sitting around the bar. A few the emergence of the Western look I'm too bloody.' So I said, 'Well, I'll people are playing pool. Most of the has come as a relief. Ten years ago drive you home and you can change and men are in their forties or fifties. A most Texans were uncomfortable in drive your car back, 'cause I don't want jukebox plays sad country-and-western their alligator shirts, chinos, and Top- to fool with you no more.' 1 got him tunes while cowboys dance cheek to siders , now they have received per- and the old lady out of my house. Now cheek. They sway to the strains of mission to slip back into the clothes I live alone." "Waltzing Across Texas" or do the they wore as teenagers. I've omitted to say that Harv is a two-step, or they perform a brisk fox For most Northerners, Texas is the boxer and presses three hundred pounds trot to an upbeat song like "Big Ball's home of the real men. The cowboys, but is short and baby-faced and sprays in Cowtown Tonight" (the title always the rednecks, the outspoken self-made his hair and drenches himself in cologne. draws a smile). Over the polished wood right-wing millionaires strike us as We necked for a while and he was soft, floor hangs a sign, "Get Hot or Get either the best or worst examples of yielding. I had the impression of being Out." That is the only modern note, American manliness. The metal-drilling in the plush grip of a powerful andro- though the redneck belligerence neutral- voice; the flashes of canniness and dry gyne; beneath the hairless skin lethal izes the up-to-date vocabulary. humor; the loping walk and the rangy muscles lay coiled. On the dance floor The etiquette is formal, almost gestures; the readiness to offer help and four guys were passing poppers, stomp- severe. A brief nod of the head has the reluctance to accept it; the unspo- ing fast and hard, and ripping out rebel taken the place of the dance-class bow ken code of personal honor; the phys- yells. Given the heat, the humidity, the from the waist. If both men are the ical courage and the unexpected grace darkness outside, the feeble porchlights same height, one of them (usually the in combat-all these are aspects of the streaked with worryin~, the one who leads) removes his 10V Ranch Man, and for most of us He is a Texan. disco seemed all the more imj}ro able, cowboy hat and holds it in his hand This is, obviously, the movie version, an overnight Klondike improvisation. behind his partner's back. Since it is but it is based on fact. The ideal is not If the electricity being piped in were summer most of the hats are straw. an illusion, nor is it contemptible, no to fail, the lights would dim and cease The shirts, however, are long-sleeved; matter what damage it may have done.

38 CHRISTOPHER STREET Many people who scorn it in conversa- house, its pecan trees along the creek, until recently functional, needed. My tion want to submit to it in bed. Those its rooms tacked on to the original own father worked as a cowboy when who believe machismo reeks of violence cabin, its tribe of twelve uncles and he was young, before he moved North choose to forget that it once stood for aunts ruled by a mother who presided and became a businessman. My child- honor as well. Until recently, as a Hous- from an oak rocker where she read the hood was a battlefield on which two ton lawyer told me, Texas businessmen Bible, chewed tobacco, and concocted opposing Texas forces fought it out- could conclude staggering transactions herbal cures. Her husband was silent, the strictures of manliness and the with just a handshake. Today, the inva- hardworking, and strong. aspirations toward culture. My parents sion of Yankees has meant that all When my mother returned to her divorced when I was seven, and I was deals must be firmed up with written home town for a reunion a few years shunted back and forth between them. contracts. The gentleman might have ago and stepped breezily out of her What my mother wanted me to be was been more tough than gentle, but he Cadillac, an ancient woman wearing artistic, creative, someone who "con- was at least.bonest. a bonnet approached her and asked her tributed" to society; her father had Nor are courage, strength, a touchy name. The name was given and the been a math prof in a rural junior pride, and a muted range of emotions woman said, "Then I am the first per- college and she herself had taught grade without their usefulness. They are the son who kissed you. I was the midwife. school. (Texas has always spent large traits of the pioneer, quick to defend As soon as you were born, I said to sums on education. The school teacher what he has won and slow to complain your mother, 'I'm going to kiss her.' remains the beacon of culture; and about what he has lost. Nor is the fron- Your mother said, 'Don't kiss that nasty many a modest home has a good library tier a mythical past in Texas. Both my old thing till you've washed her,' but of the classics, headed by the Harvard parents are Texans and most of my rela- I didn't wait. I was afraid someone Five-foot Shelf, Even today a dedication tives still live there. My paternal grand- would beat me to it." My mother is to culture is maintained in Texas; after father came to Texas from Louisiana in seventy-five, the midwife must be in her all, ~~y--American city_ a covered wagon. My maternal grand- nineties. aside from New York to have a full mother's parents were homesteaders, I mention all this only to remind the S?~ lemen!. _oL ..les@enj ~lLera,_b.an~t, and my mother remembers vividly her reader that the day of early settlers is theater, and symphony. No matter girlhood on that farm with its smoke- within living memory for Texans, and thatold -oilmen snore through a Handel house, its cool dugout under the pump that the frontier ideal of manliness was revival; they have at least done their

DECEMBER 1978 39 bit for uplift.) tap, and at last crept sheepishly into My father subscribed to my mother's the living room. My mother was clearly values in passing, though they struck alarmed, my sister derisive, but my him as more appropriate to a girl grandparents beamed at me with all the than a growing boy. What he wanted charity of their innocent hearts. So in a son was someone brave, quiet, gay love must have been in the nine- hardworking, unemotional, modest. I teenth century. Other Texas boys have can remember traveling to Mexico with told me their own tales of gay idylls him once after I'd spent a year with my on farms and in small towns where mother; I embarrassed him by being general ignorance assured them personal a know-it-all and by admiring the immunity. I do not want to romanticize cathedrals with too much enthusiasm. rural life, nor do I long for a return to He drew me aside and said, "A man Arcadia. I am simply suggesting that in doesn't say 'I love that building,' he says the old Texas what could not be named 'I like it.' Don't talk with your hands. was unknowingly tolerated-a far cry And you shouldn't correct older people, from the half-informed but well-indoc- but if you must, say 'In my opinion' trinated Baptist bigotry of today. or 'I believe' or 'I may be wrong, but "Last year the A group had the I've heard .. .' " He also told me that Mother's Party-everyone he young man who took me to I should never wear a wristwatch, smoke who dared brought his mom, so T the Brasos River Bottom fell cigarettes, or use cologne-all sissy there were just hundreds of gay men into the category of the good school things. Men have pocket watches, and these nice old ladies. " citizen. He was not a cowboy, though smoke cigars, and use witch hazel. he felt more comfortable there than in These are principles, alas, that I have the other bars and had even, for a while, failed to observe. may date an equally serious, upright lived next door to it. He grew up in a girl and "respect" her virginity. This small town in Oklahoma as one of three 've talked with many Texas men option is the one most of the gay men children out of four who eventually Iabout the way machismo was I met in Texas took as teenagers. They became gay (the others are a grown instilled in them, and they all agree may have experienced themselves as sister now in Austin and a teenage it was done indirectly. I've never heard sissies, but they were not taken as brother-a whiz at macrame-still at one male Texan say of another, "He's such by their friends and neighbors. home with his folks). An older, straight a real man" or "He's not very mascu- There's one last thing that should sister lives in Houston but doesn't see line" or anything of the sort, though be said on this subject-the extraordi- Bill because she's "hurt" that he's I have heard a few women say of a nary naivete among rural people about homosexual. His parents know about child such things as "You'll like him. homosexuality, at least in years gone their children's sexual orientation, but He's all boy." (Usually the comment by. Today television talk shows and the the gay kids dare not say too much to is repeated: "All boy.") But manliness antics of Anita Bryant have made the their mother because she too becomes is never mentioned by men in Texas. word gay part of everyone's vocabulary, "hurt." The word reminded me of the I suppose the subject is too momentous bu t when I was a boy I never heard way some Southern women control and too tender to be voiced. What is homosexuality mentioned once. When their families by displaying a conspic- talked about is sissiness. The shape of I was twelve, my mother, sister, and I uous wound-the wound of pouting, the unspoken province of manliness visited my grandparents in the village of a long face and swollen eyes, of meals can easily be inferred from the explicit, where they lived, formerly "the oil eaten in silence and dishes washed in exact, and surrounding contours of capital of the world" (as a tattered martyred solitude, of unusual afternoon sissiness, much as Canada might be banner over the main street proclaimed) naps taken restlessly behind a half- deduced as a potent shadow from the but by then virtually a ghost town (the closed door to the tune of resigned glittering boundaries of Alaska and wells had run dry). My grandmother sighs. This is the mother who tells her our northern border. let me bunk with my grandfather and gay son, "I don't care what folks say If there were only two choices facing he and I made passionate, nonstop love about me, but it breaks my heart that Texas Wasps-manliness or sissiness+ all night. So far so good, but in the they should laugh at you." then most of them would resemble morning I heard him in the living As an adolescent Bill weighed a the Chicanos, who are usually either room telling the others, "That Eddie mirthful 230 pounds (he loved eating fiercely butch or extravagantly nelly. is such a sweet boy, we just hugged and and didn't mind the consequences). He But there is a third option available to kissed all night long." My grandmother was proficient on the tu ba, the trumpet, white, middle-class men in Texas: the cooed with affection, "Well, isn't he the piano, and the organ; his parents good school citizen. He cannot talk the sweetest tbang,' but my mother even bought him an organ. As he in a high voice or love the arts (though and sister subsided into ominous silence. explains without a trace of irony, he may like them), lest he descend into I slid ou t of bed and turned on the gas "My older sister wanted an organ, too, sissiness. But he need not play contact burner in the corner without lighting but she was too skeered to ask for one. sports or drink or brawl in order to it; it was one of those free-standing Me? I just upped and asked and got ascend into manliness. The good school grilles, blue flames reddening bone- me a big old organ." citizen can run for the student council, colored asbestos, fed by a hose out of True enough. earn excellent grades, do charitable the floor. Though I intended to kill During grade school and high school work, and lead his church group. He myself I chickened out, turned off the Bill saved ten dollars a month for col-

40 CHRISTOPHER STREET lege (he was guided to this goal by an especially kin, no matter how remote. aunt who taught in Denton, Texas). As an undergraduate he slimmed down to huck tells me that he runs his 160 pounds by eating nothing but tuna C own business, a pesticide service. and swimming daily. He became so For one hundred dollars a client's house talented in the water that he was asked is sprayed four times a year. He needs to join the swim team. He gained local to work only five hours a day; after- renown by singing show tunes in a noons he devotes to soap operas on silvery falsetto voice. After graduation television. He is enthralled by one he moved to Houston and became-well, program and proudly tells me he once I don't want to reveal his identity, so met two of its stars when they visited I'll say a repairman of expensive Euro- Houston to perform in a dinner theater. pean equipment. He likes this blue- He longs to travel to New York in order collar work that brings him into contact to see the studio where the show is with the carriage trade and earns him taped. a handsome salary. His friends, however, He explained to me the gay social regard him as "unsettled"-a polite way life of Houston. "The men in the A of saying "low-class." "But manliness is never group are well-to-do, over thirty-five, I met Bill at an interesting moment mentioned by men and very exclusive. They have lots of in his life. He is just twenty-two, blond, in Texas. I suppose the subject parties. You have to remember that handsome, and naturally trusting, is too momentous and too tender Houston is a big party town. We party though newly skeptical about other to be voiced. " long and hard. Last year the A group men's interest in him ("I know I'm had the Mother's Party-everyone who good-looking and don't want to be liked dared brought his mom, so there were just for that. Everyone is after me"). His tique toy cars-a crude Dusenberg In just hundreds of gay men and these attachment to the cowboy bar and the painted balsa wood and a Hudson In nice old ladies. It was supposedly a repair shop keeps him within a safe, gilded tin. Concealing the toaster in great success. I wasn't there. I'm not small-town milieu. Yet that familiar her skirts is an Aunt Jemima doll. a socialite. They also had the Bicycle circle is evaporating around him, a mist In the window hangs an etched-glass Party. About six hundred men rode burning off to reveal larger but more reproduction of a Mucha poster of from house to house on their bikes, perilous vistas. He dreams of knowing Bernhardt. No wonder Bill left his and at each place they were given educated and civilized people and hopes tigers on velvet behind; he is being in- drinks and joints. It went on all Satur- he may find them in Texas but suspects ducted into the new art of Art Nouveau day until everyone fell off his bike. they all live in the Northeast. He has and camp memorabilia. Or so I've heard tell. Now the other just abandoned his old apartment, two The living room is less resolutely up group-" rooms in a frame house where he kept to date. Though an impressively thick "The B group?" comfortable family furniture and su r- Houston house and garden magazine "No, we've got A's but no B's. rounded himself with images of his lies open on a chair, the decor here The other group, which is younger, totemic animal, the tiger-tigers painted has not yet emulated those coordinated puts on the Miss Camp America contest on black velvet, photos of tigers, stuffed pastels, those careless conversational to coincide with the real pageant in toy tigers. His new place is in ~ islands stranded in a sea of beige carpet Atlantic City. It's held in a hotel ball- Heights, the only hilly residential dis- under an abstract, palette-knife daub. room and more than a thousand guests -trict 0 Houston, an area of big trees No, in this room the presence of the attend. Each of the ten finalists displays and houses that have porches, back old Texas can be detected in the facing, his talent and presents himself in doors, even attics. Hsre someone gay matched couches covered in brown swimsuit and gown. I was Miss Hawaii, might buy his first" house before moving gingham, each paired with its own but they ruled me out for smoking on to a more modern ana ·costlY neigh- symmetrically placed mahogany coffee my grass skirt." He pauses; only a bo;hood. table, a place for dull visits from com- second too late do I realize I've been Bill has purchased his house with an pany rather than animated little chats. told a joke. "When the contestants older friend, Chuck, a native of Houston Inside a covered glass dish, tinted a are presented they're introduced with (that rare species). It is a nice, slightly delicate pink, rises a mound of minia- a dish." run-down place built in 1915, which ture Tootsie Rolls and foil-wrapped "A what?" they are restoring and improving. candy kisses; one pictures relatives "A dish. You know, an embarrassing They've already installed central air passing the dish around while discussing story about something they did during conditioning and assembled one of the route they took and the mileage the last year. Like: on the big cookout those kitchens that foreigners and New they got. The curtains are drawn and your steaks weren't rare; or on the Yorkers first envy and then laugh at the Venetian blinds tilted to screen out freeway last October you got an attack (a cause-and-effect relationship). Wood the afternoon glare. Here devolves that of diarrhea all over yourself; or you're cabinets, reaching all the way up to the tedious Southern ritual called "visiting" known to have sucked a nigger dick-no, twelve-foot ceiling, fill in the spaces (as in "Don't do the dishes right now; they wouldn't say that, since blacks left vacant by the microwave oven, sit down and we'll visit for an hour"). are present. They'd refer to dark meat the electric range, the dishwasher, the Visiting is a long, ambling account of or something." washing machine, and the garbage the births, marriages, and deaths of Lavish entertainments do comprise compactor. On one high shelf sit an- every person ever known by anyone, a large part of Houston gay life. Mern-

DECEMBER 1978 41 bers of the A group throw patio parties sioners, who decided in favor of the for more than a hundred men and gays, were equally squeamish, but their decorate the grounds with cabanas libertarianism overcame their distaste. and parachutes stretched from the One of them said, "As a conservative trees. Last spring's big event was the and advocate of limited government, I "Mardi Gras Madness." During the feel the constitutional protection of free holiday invitations were handed out speech must always take precedence in New Orleans to attractive strangers; over personal opinions of government as they passed back through Houston officials.' , on their way home, about a thousand The chairperson of the meeting was congregated for the party. Houstonians Ginny Apuzzo, a professor at Brooklyn stand in friendly opposition to Dallas. College and leader of the Gay Rights Whereas Dallas is characterized as National Lobby; the keynote speaker I snobbish pissy, phony elegant, and was Sissy Farenthold, a Texas feminist I uptight, Houston sees itself as down-to- and political reformer. Forty-two Texas I earth, butch, rowdy, and egalitarian. gay organizations were present. One of 1 The rivalry is amiable, and gay men these was an engineers' group that has from the one city are perpetually about a hundred members. As one of "Perhaps the biggest racing to the other to attend parties. them told me, "You'd never believe In Houston jeans, crew cuts, and S&M those fellows are gay. They talk about problem facing are in vogue; in Dallas designer slacks, nothing but oil drilling, offshore rigs, Houston gays is violence styled coiffures, and social climbing and freight forwarding. I guess we're in the streets. " rather than lovemaking are preferred ... deliberate, rational, macho. But we or so the Houstonians would have it. want to be freer." Chuck mentioned to me that he was gay life. A year ago the cops raided interested in gay liberation but was erhaps the biggest problem facing the Locker and made sure TV camera- unaware of al1yone active in it. He was P Houston gays is-Yi2.!~JLtill: men were there to expose the identities grateful when I passed on the phone streets. The gay ghetto is Montrose of the arrested patrons. There used to number of someone I was planning to '(~cepronounced "Mont Rose" but be a back room at the Locker where visit next. This young man, the perfect now said, Yankee-style, "Mon Trose"). customers had sex on a dark balcony; school citizen, was one of the organizers In May and June alone there were plainclothesmen infiltrated the crowd of Houston Town Meeting I, held in the three .stabbjngs and eigh L beatings-sin and picked up one person after an- Astroarena last May and June. The Montro;:'--The victims were gay men other by whispering "You're under meeting, an open forum at which all and the muggers teenage Chicanos. The arrest." Last January the police entered members of the homosexual community police ignore the danger; if they do the bar with guns drawn, turned off could vote on major resolutions, was respond to a call for help, they of tel) the jukebox, and ordered the customers the first grass-roots political event for arrest the gay victim on the charge of to put their hands above their heads gays in the country. Despite the fact public intoxication, a vague measure against the wall. A new mayor and a that homosexuals in Houston tend to that permits officers to harass anyone new police chief seem to be less hostile, be socially conservative, the meeting they choose to. The Town Meeting but gays have no legal assurance against attracted some 3,500 women and men. called for the formation of a citizens' further harassment. It provided Houston gays with a badly police assistance group to patrol Mont- The Town Meeting also called for the needed sense of community. There is rose. It also asked for a civilian police- repeal of Section 21:06 of the Texas no gay center. Until now the Wilde 'n' review board. penal code, the sodomy law. Finally, Stein bookshop and the Unitarian Police brutality remains troublesome. the meeting censured discrimination Church have functioned as the only Last' year Five policemen beat a Chicano within the gay community. The forma- meeting places aside from bars. named Joe Torres and drowned him tion of a gay Chicano organization was The forum covered such topics as in the Buffalo Bayou (two of the cops especially welcomed-in recognition of religion, mental health, the police, and were convicted of a misdemeanor). Two the pressures exerted on gay Chicanos the military. Before the meeting the years ago a gay bartender, Gary Wayne by their straight compatriots. Houston papers and television stations Stock, made an illegal left turn and was When the Town Meeting is held next had ignored gay rights altogether, but shot to death by a Houston policeman, year, it will undoubtedly discuss the the forum generated two front-page who was cleared of blame. The cop' problems of housing and employment. stories and several talk-show discussions. claims that Stock refused to pull over As things stand..Jiwo men or two women One of the newspaper stories concerned and was gunned down during a high- usually cannot rent a one-bedroom the attempt of the Harris County Com- speed chase. But only eight minutes apa.r.tment In someo missioners Court to refuse the use of elapsed between Stock's departure from t es an apartment on his or her own the Astroarena to a gay organization. work and the moment he was killed. and t en moves a oth of In the article, one commissioner ex- Since he was shot only a few blocks them can pressed his fear that a "nudist colony" away from the bar, he could scarcely Since ouses se or a out 80,000 in would be asking for the arena next; have been speeding. The court failed to Montrose, most gays are forced to rent another official, a Methodist, said, su bpoena any gay witnesses. and are thus clearly victimized by this "My religious beliefs don't go along Police raids on bars and adult book- form of legal discrimination. As for with this." The remaining three commis- stores are a familiar part of Houston job discrimination, four of the men

42 CHRISTOPHER STREET who organized the Town Meeting were earnestness. Yet when the phone rings fired from their jobs because of the.iI this shy man sounds jocular, back- A Magnificently activism. One ot the co-chairs of the slapping-a good ole boy. It is a manner ~eeting wrote his name simply as "X," that works wonders with older Southern Inustrated explaining that "his lifetime career businessmen. Houston gays are lucky to would be imperiled by openly signing have Tom (as I'll call him) as a spokes- History Of Male this decree." When photos were taken man. Homosexual Love at the Town Meeting, many of those The story of his coming-out is a attending panicked. The fuss was still tribute to his tenacity. As early as the going on a month later when I visited seventh grade he knew he was gay, but Houston. One gay group had gone so like many truly queer boys he did not far as to steal the photos from the engage in the normal homosexual romps archives. of puberty. In high school in Louisiana Oppressive as this situation sounds, he was the first-chair flutist and became ijouston gays stapd a real chance of friendly with the first-chair oboist, who gaining power within the Texils Qemo- was notorious as the school fag. Because oPHic Party_In a city of newcomers, of their friendship Tom was kept out where there is no Italian vote or Jewish of the prestigious junior Kiwanis Club, bloc or labor vote, where everyone is so he turned around and started an young, materialistic, and indifferent American Field Service Club (the to politics, a hardworking gay organiza- school-citizen strategy initiated danger- tion could become a force, especially ously late in the day). This office cata- since gays are so highly concentrated pulted him into the president's council. in the Montrose district. Similarly, His reputation as a homosexual, un- gays in Dallas are sending delegates deserved up to this point, continued By Cecile Beurdeley to the Democratic state convention, to haunt him; anonymous teenage boys Excerpts from the writings of where they almost passed a resolution called him and threatened to reveal his Pindar, Shakespeare, Goethe, against the sodomy law. If only more queerness to his parents, and two guys Verlaine, Oscar Wilde, Gore gays would vote .... in the band asked him outright for blow Vidal, Truman Capote, Gide, Despite the emerging gay clout, jobs. When Tom demurred, they started Genet, and many more classic Texas will probably soon be faced with a whisper campaign against him. a version of California's Briggs initiative authors are juxtaposed with The oboist had by this time discov- barring gays from teaching positions. handsome reproductions from ered a gay bar. Tom went along one An educator at Texas A&M, who night. When someone asked him how masterpieces of all periods. fought to integrate the University long he'd been gay, he didn't answer-he Published by Rizzoli. 304 pp. of Texas in 1969, is now trying to didn't know what the word meant. The ban gay student organizations from oboist was dating an older man. When • Please send me __ copies of .•• his new campus. He is working hand .------the affair cooled off, the oboist hanged • L' Amour Bleu at $55.00 includ- • in hand with a conservative black himself from a tree. The police grilled • ing postage (list price $65.00) • state legislator from Dallas who wants Tom for hours about a possible motive. • Pa. residents add 6% sales tax • gay organizations routed out of all Tom kept silent, but he was so upset he • Please send me __ subscrip- • state schools and will undoubtedly nailed the closet door shut. In college • tions to Giovanni's Room reviews. introduce a Briggs-type initiative. Few he majored in marketing, became an legislators want to vote on a civil-rights • And catalogs at $1.00. • officer of his fraternity, and went to issue, much less vote against such rights, • Amount enclosed • bed with women. But the cure didn't but if they're forced to express a yea Name • take. One of his school friends was • or a nay on an open roll call, they (please print) making gasoline money as a hustler. will surely vote against gays or abstain. • Address • Tom went with him to a gay bar and Obviously Texas gays must organize ran into a fraternity brother who said, : City, State, Zip : even more vigorously than they have "It's about time you came out, Miss already. Thing." • If you pay with Visa 0 or Master. • he young man I met who is Tom did come out-and immediately T high up in the Town Meeting came down with hepatitis. When he • Charge 0: . • and the Houston Gay Political Caucus returned to school his fraternity broth- • Ca~ No. • is in his twenties and from what Texans ers began to harass him; they hounded would call a' .ne family." Prematurely him out of the house. When he told his • Card Valid Date • balding, he h. only a tuft of silky hair parents he was gay, they were outraged. • Expiration Date • to indicate where his forehead once Rich and prominent in politics, his • Signature • stopped. His dimples are so deep that father said, "We don't want to consort in an overhead light his mouth appears with your kind." His sister, an admirer • Return to: Giovanni's Room, 1426 • to be a slim dash between thick paren- of Anita Bryant, dropped him. Ridi- • Spruce St., Phila., PA 19102. See. theses. His eyebrows grow together but culed and disowned, Tom could do • also our ad on page 45. • do not suggest jealousy, rather wistful nothing but leave town. Like so many ._------_. DECEMBER 1978 43 other gay Southerners, he was attracted dom) that slavery and freedom must to Houston, the Ithaca of so many be enduring categories, so the perpetua- adventurers. tion of traditional masculine and College graduates like Tom go to feminine roles by homosexual couples Houston to find good jobs in industry; serves to demonstrate the inevitability working-class teenage runaways become and "naturalness" of such roles. The hustlers. Recently Houston TV ran a only threat of anarchy that homosex- five-part program on hustlers that uality poses is in its openness to new "embarrassed" the gay community. relationships immune from the ancient The program did ignore the efforts corruption of the subjugation of one of gay organizations to help runaways. partner by another. If Eddie is not Nevertheless, I'm not convinced that Hank's wife, then marriage itself is embarrassment is appropriate. Houston challenged and heterosexuals are no is, after all, the site of the "Houston longer able to find in gay life fun-house murders," those grisly slayings of distortions of their own unsatisfactory homeless youths. There is no use pre- arrangements. I am not, mind you, tending the gay community is free opposed to gay role playing; that would of psychopaths. This problem must "Heterosexuals are no be impertinent and display an ignorance be dealt with openly and interpreted longer able to find in gay life of our moment in history. I'm simply lucidly to the public. Considering the fun-house distortions noticing that the new gay ethic, which way in which oppression deforms us, of their own unsatisfactory pairs equals and attempts to dismiss the miracle is that more of us aren't arrangements. " jealousy and possessiveness as leftovers mad. from an era when marriage was primari- In Houston Tom has found inde- ly an economic transaction rather than pendence and freedom. He has a good instantly tranquilized into friendship an affectional tie-that this new ethic position with a corporation that knows for him-the only recourse for an distresses even well-disposed hetero- about his activism and accepts it. He admirer since his beauty is the kind sexuals. owns a s~all apartment building, a that would otherwise inspire frustra- brick four-family structure on a pretty tion. He is lapis-eyed and wears his street, and he lives there himself. His black hair slicked back in a d.a., a hen I arrived in participation in gay politics has turned quaint "period" touch that lends Dallas it was suffer- him into a sane, steady man, the very poignancy to his slender neck and ing from the seven- sort of upstanding type his parents small head. His youthfulness embar- teenth straight day would embrace if they had sufficient rasses him and on the job he smokes in Wthe hundreds. It was, as Texans say, wit to do so. Tom confirmed me in cigarettes, drinks coffee, and wears one of those days when chickens lay my belief that activism is not only a tie to appear older. fried eggs. No rain had fallen for more valuable for the community but also Eddie grew up in a small Texas than a month and the trees were turning essential for one's own mental health. town but is now quite the sophisticate. brown. At night the temperature Being gay in a straight world, even in He works for a shipping broker (Hous- dropped only into the eighties. Peo- a hypothetically permissive straight ton is one of the country's busiest ple were buying four-hundred-pound world, is so alienating that the only ports), and most of the two hundred blocks of ice and dumping them into way to avoid depression is through fifty people in his office know he is their swimming pools, with no appre- the assertion of one's own gay identity. gay and accept it, even relish it. ciable effect. Everyone was pale; it was Anger can take three forms-self-hatred, Women ask him to explain the fine too hot to take the sun. Six people had uncontrollable rage, and calm but points of fellatio, which he does; died in the last week from heat prostra- constant self-assertion. The first solu- recently they've moved on to more tion. The incidence of crimes of passion tion is tiresome, the second useless, serious questions about back rooms had increased but the number of robber- the third wise; Tom has chosen wisely. and fistfucking. They also feel free ies had declined; it was too hot to go to pat him on the ass ("because I'm out and steal. The city was crazy with ank and Eddie, as I'll call them, a man and gay," he observes with a cabin fever. Hinvited me to dinner one night. trace of irritation). He's called the The mood of Dallas also struck me They live in a Montrose apartment "token gay" to his face; that's a stand- as near the riot stage. Down the street complex that is 70 percent gay and ing joke. When Hank sends him flowers, from my hotel a crowd of Chicanos in subject to the usual Houston rapid Eddie can put them on his desk and the park was protesting the slaying of turnover of tenants. Hank has been everyone beams. What they can't a twelve-year-old boy. The child had there longer than anyone else-three grasp, Eddie tells me, is that he's not stolen eight dollars' worth of goods. years. He is twenty-nine, a handsome Hank's "wife." Any suggestion that When he was arrested a cop interrogated Floridian who is as smooth as a public- their roles are reversible will puzzle, him while playing Russian roulette with relations man; he knows how to project even vex his straight co-workers. a pistol aimed at the boy's head. This his considerable charms, but quietly, Just as the Saturnalia, that grotesque game resulted in the boy's death-and quietly. Eddie is twenty-five but looks mirror of society, confirmed the Ro- a very short sentence for the officer, seventeen, a small, perfect, exquisitely mans in their belief that the world was who was convicted only of involuntary made animal so endearing that the hierarchical and proved (through its manslaugh ter. desire or envy he might awaken is temporary elevation of slaves to free- Dallas is surer of itself than Houston,

44 CHRISTOPHER STREET and concoct their fantasies of a polar QIOVANNIJ Paris of the Belle Epoque and seal them in air-conditioned cubes. ROOM NEW GAY BOOKS from the world's largest Steve wore a white, short-sleeved selection of gay books and records. Subscrip- Egyptian cotton shirt into which had tion to our reviews and catalogs-$1.00. For Lesbians and Gay Men been sewn blue panels. Around his Relax! This Book Is Only a Phase You're Going neck dangled a silver bau ble. His slacks Tbrougb , new cartoons from Christopher Street -$4.95. were pocketless, revealing his trim The Gay Report, Lesbians & Gay Men on Sex- figure; though he is in his mid forties ual Experience & Lifestyles, ed. by Karla Jay & Allen Young-list $14.95, only $12.70 (ship he still weighs just 145 pounds, lean January 1979). for his height (five-foot-nine). Under Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men & Women, by Alan Bell & Martin Weinberg his arm he carries a purse shaped like +list $12_95, only $10_95. a dop kit. He drove us in his Cadillac Word Is Out, text & photos from the movie- list $7.95, only $6_95. to the Bronx, a restaurant for straights Gay American History, ed . by Jonathan Katz, and gays with a friendly atmosphere, -r-Sm . pb., $3.95. Jonathan Loved David: Homosexuality in Bib- In Texas coffee is served throughout lical Times, by Tom Horner-$5.95. the meal. Over our first cup, Steve Gayellow Pages (guide to USA & Canad aj-r- $5.00. "In Houston gay circles, told me, "I've been wanting to have For Gay Men Especially The joy of Gay Sex, by Edmund White & Dr. money counts for little plastic surgery for some time now, Charles Silverstein+Iist $7.95, only $6.95. and family for nothing; but my daughter wouldn't let me. Dancer from the Dance, by Andrew Holleran- list $9.95, only $8.50. Dallas, by contrast, She said, 'People already think you're Nocturnes for the King of Naples, by Edmund my brother or boyfriend.' We went White-list $7.95, only $6.95. is status conscious." No More into the Garden, by David Watmough on a Caribbean cruise together and [Editor's Choice, Best Fiction 1978]-list folks did make that mistake. 'Wait $7.95,only $6.95. Three by Box, Death in the Fifth Position, etc., more rigid and smug. Whereas Houston till I'm married,' she said. Well, I just mysteries by Edgar Box (alias Gore Vidali+Iist is a young town, Dallas is the usual gave her away to a nice boy and now $12.95, only $10_95_ A Single Man, by Christopher Isherwood (new gerontocracy, Dallas is richer than I'm going to have my eyes tightened, reprint)-$1.95. Housto~ (it has one thousand million- my nose thinned, my chin made strong- Taking Care of Mrs. Carroll, by Paul Monette- list $8.95, only $7_95. dollar companies, as opposed to Hous- er. The whole thing will cost only three Game-Texts: A GuatamalanJournal, by Erskine ton's six hundred). Houston has new oil thousand dollars. I never get a chance Lane. [Editor's Choice, Best Biography 1978] -$4.95. money, Dallas old banking wealth. In to visit with my mother; she'll come Get Off My Ship' Ensign Vernon Berg vs. the Houston gay circles, money counts for to Dallas and take care of me for two U.S. Navy-$4.95. Walt Whitman.' Daybooks & Notebooks, 3 vols. little and family for nothing; Dallas, by weeks while I recuperate. The doctor's +list $75.00, only $63.75. contrast, is status conscious. here in Dallas. I like his attitude. He Gotham, gay nightclub music, record-list $7.98, only $7.30_ Dallas is the design center of the considers a face-lift preventive and says Power in the Darkness, by the Tom Robinson Southwest, and I was pleased to spend the second and third operations are Band, 2 records-list $7_98, only $7.30. The Rocky Horror Picture Show, record-list an evening with a successful decorator. always easier. Some of my friends, $7 _98, only $7 _30. His tenth-floor apartment was in Turtle I fear, waited too long." Spartacus International Guide (not USA)-list $15.00, only $13.50. Creek, the most expensive gay neighbor- I ask him how he happens to have For Lesbians Especially hood (Oaklawn is the less expensive a daughter. "I'm from a town in the The joy of Lesbian Sex, by Bertha Harris & Dr. Emily Sisley+list $7.95, only $6.95. ghetto). His apartment was decorated Panhandle," he says. "My father was Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her, by Susan Griffin-list $8.95, only $7_95. in taupes, browns, and grays and com- a deacon in the Baptist church, my Our Right to Love: A Lesbian Resource Book, manded a full view of the city. On one wife's father was a deacon, and I be- ed. by Ginny Vida [Editor's Choice, Best Non- Fiction 1978]-list $12.95, only $11.50. wall was a painting of the archangel came a deacon. My wife and I met A Reckoning, by May Sarton [Editor's Choice, Lucifer falling from heaven, a wing at a Baptist college, married young, Best Fiction 1978]-list $9.95, only $8.50. Six of One, by Rita Mae Brown-list $9.95, catching fire. On the facing wall hung and had a boy and a girl. Although only $8.50. an eventless Barbizon landscape, the I fooled around with guys, it never The Young in One Anothers' Arms, by Jane Rule-list $6_95, only $6.25. thick gold frame alone certifying the occurred to me that two men could All True Lovers, by Sarah Aldridge+list $6.75, significance of its frowsy pastoral love each other. We were married only $6.05. Berrigan, new comic novel by Ginger Lox- inanities. There were bookcases, but happily for ten years and then I met $5.50_ they were filled with untouched match- a handsome guy from California and Out Somewhere and Back Again: The Kansas Stories, by Nancy Stockwell-$3 .00. ing sets with good bindings-"book fell for him. I told my wife the next The Notebooks That Emma Gave Me, Auto- furniture" as they say in the trade, day I wanted a divorce, but I never biography of a Lesbian, by Kady Van Duers-> $5.00. ordered by the yard. A copy of Dona- confided in her that I was gay. Live Dream, by Cris Williamson, record-list tello's wicked David smiled in at me "Her parents were astounded; we $6.98, only $5.85. B 'lieve I'll Run On, by Sweet Honey in the from the glassed-in balcony garden. were considered the ideal couple. Rock, record-list $6.98, only $6.50_ The fur throws hurled everywhere Her father hired a private eye to in- Lilith, by Boston Ride-$6.98. Songs by Fire, Songs of a Lesbian Anarchist, by would have seemed oppressive had one vestigate me. The detective found Kathy Fire-list $7.95, only $6.95. remembered the temperature, but one out everything. My father-in-law con- Emerging, by Kay Gardner-list $6.98, only $5_85. does not remember it in Texas. Just as fronted me with the dirt and invited Gaia's Guide (Internationalj+Sc.Ou. Houston sells more sables in July than me to pray for strength to overcome add $.50 per item or $1.25 per 3 items postage New York does in December, in the this terrible sin. I refused the offer. and handling. Pennsylvania residents add 6% same way Dallas decorators ignore the A week later he tempted me with a tax. VISA & MASTER CHARGE accepted. GIOVANNI'S ROOM, Dept. C, 1426 Spruce climate, the terrain, and our century tremendous sum of money. When I Street, Philadelphia, PA 19102_

DECEMBER 1978 45 rejected it, he said, 'We're going to same way he took his girlfriend's, and ruin you, take every penny you've steered me down the hall. Nobody got. Boy, a year from now you'll laughed. When we got to the cafeteria be in the gutter.' In court my wife he went his way and I went mine. One demanded a million dollars, half of other time he touched me. We were my net worth, but she asked for it riding in a car to a church affair and he in cash. I was given three years to put his leg next to mine." come up with the money; to do so Suddenly my friend looked at me I had to sell my holdings at a big loss. with genuine fear. "Do you own this My ex-wife has remarried, this time place?" he asked. to a man whose first wife left him for "No," I said. another woman. Well, they have some- "Sure?" thing in common. "I'm certain." I have no idea what "My lover and I bought a twelve- he feared or why that idea popped into room Victorian house for the price his head. He seemed a naive country of the lot, $30,000. We spent twice boy, though he was thirty-three years that fixing it up, of course." old. I had the impression he had never "You stayed in that same town?" 'The Baptists in Dallas, talked about these things before. "Yes. For two years no one would as elsewhere, are the He went on with his story. He had speak to us, just whisper behind our storm troopers never had sex until, when he was backs. But we hung in there. One day, of the anti-gay twenty-seven, a married man at work I've heard, four important ladies were offensive. " went down on him. "I felt real bad playing bridge and one of them said, and the next day I said to him, 'Why'd 'Y ou know what they are,' and the you do that?' " (That comes out as grande dame of our town replied, 'I I set him up in several businesses, but "thigh-vat.") " 'I don't never want you don't care. They're the only interesting they all failed. Finally he blamed me doing that again.' " men in town and I'd sleep with either for his failures and left me. I've moved My friend laughed. "Two days later of them.' Everybody laughed and had to Dallas and started a whole new life. I was horny. His wife had gone to work to agree. It was a very dull place. It's very exciting." and he called me and asked me over Eventually we joined a country club "Are you still a Baptist?" for breakfast. When I got there he was as a couple and were invited to all "I no longer go to church, but I still nekkid. He was prancing around nekkid the parties." worship God. I just assume He will and I said, 'You look real comfortable.' "Did you live in an entirely straight reward me for the good things I've done He stretched out and said, 'Why don't world?" and ignore the bad." you get comfortable, too, if you want "Lord, no," he said. "We'd have "The bad?" to.' So I did and that went on for three big weekend parties of fifty men or "My homosexuality." years. He took care of me; I never did so. They'd drive in from Dallas, Fort anything. He looked like Chad Everett Worth, Houston, Austin. In the attic he odd thing was that two days on TV. Then he moved to Dallas and we'd set up an orgy room, twelve T later I met someone at the baths I visited him. His wife came downstairs mattresses on the floor, and show who was from the very same small town and said, 'Why don't you go on up there fuck films. On the second floor people in the Panhandle, though he didn't and sleep with him?' I said, 'Heck, no. would get high and eat. On the ground know Steve. Although he had been in I can stay on this here couch,' but she floor they'd dance. Our maid would Dallas for four years working as a clerk, insisted. I guess he must have told her. prepare several big meals in advance, he hadn't made any friends. He was But then he got religion and was saved but even so it kept us busy-people intensely shy; his cheeks were cicatrized and we broke up." wouldn't drive all that way just for by deep acne scars. His eyes were an "What religion?" one night. eerie blue, so pale he appeared blind. "Baptist. " "My children would visit and they He had a lovely body and whispered to loved my friend as much as me. We me with a sad smile, "Why don't you he Baptists in Dallas, as else- never discussed our homosexuality with lick me all over?" T where, are the storm troopers them. Then, when my daughter was He hadn't come out till he was of the anti-gay offensive. The zealous going to college, her mother wanted twenty-seven. Before that, the great if not over scholarly minister of the her to attend Baylor, the Baptist school. event of his life had taken place in high First Baptist Church in Dallas (the My daughter refused and I backed her school. A football player had awakened world's largest, as Texans say) thunders up. My wife was so furious she sent a grand passion in him, but they didn't against homosexuals regularly from his a letter to my daughter telling her know each other. In the fall my friend television pulpit. In interpreting a pas- everything about me in the ugliest had prayed for the athlete to be in one sage from the scriptures about who will terms. When my daughter phoned me, of his classes and was intensely dis- not be admitted into heaven, the min- I said, 'Well, it's all true. I'm glad appointed not to see him. "So I just ister identified "effeminates" as lesbians your mother wrote that. Maybe she'll wished him there. I knew that would and the "philanderers" as gay men. The calm down now.' We had a good laugh." work. I became calm and sure enough rest of his sermon was on that level. As "And are you still with your lover?" he came in the door. He'd decided to a teacher used to handing out grades, I asked. take Spanish after all. We didn't speak I couldn't: help feeling that this minister "No," he said. "He wouldn't work. but after class he grabbed my arm, the was himself the big D in Dallas.

46 CHRISTOPHER STREET Across the street from his church one finds the Baptist Book Store-the NOW IN PAPERI3ACK usual ou dines for sermons, a section for teenage missionaries, and many tracts designed to prevent Baptists "The bookthot may from lapsing into astrology, the occult, Buddhism, and Mormonism. Quite a few volumes were devoted to the "Biblical well become a landmark way to pray away pounds." Others ranged from the folksy (Ain't God Good?) to Colson's and Magruder's ofgayaffirmation:'* confessions, inspirational volumes (the tale of a famous star's blue baby told The sole purpose of The Joy-of Gay from the blue baby's point of view), and Sex isto enrich the lives of men books for teens in their own language whose sexual preference isfor men. ("I hear where you're coming from, Acclaimed in both the straight and Covering every aspect Lord"). For those who find reading gay press when published in hard- of gay sex and gay a nuisance, much of this literature has cover at $12.95, it is now availa- lifestyle including: been transferred onto cassettes; there Bars. Baths. Bisexual- ble - complete and uncut, with all ity. Bondage. Buns. is a whole battery of tapes on how to of the original illustrations and four Camping. Coming Out. save your marriage. Cruising. Danger freaks Glancing through a Baptist encyclo- color paintings - in a fine quality • Fetishes. First time pedia of psychiatric disorders, I found ooperbock for only $7.95. Hun- • Frottage. Hustlers. a long, seemingly confused entry on dreds of thousands of gay men Impotence. Jealousy. Kissing. Lovers. Lubri- homosexuality. The genetic argument have already confirmed *Publishers cants. Married gay men was rejected (you're not born gay); Weel"IY."sprediction: The Joy-of Gay • Massage. Masturba- I suppose the doctrine of free will Sex is "a land marl" of gay affirma- tion and fantasy. would insist on that. The causes of Meccas. Mirrors. tion ... A sex manual and sympa- Noise-making. One- homosexuality that were cited included thetic advisor ... offering fronk night stands. Orgies. faulty glands (aren't they genetic?), counsel on lifestyle, personal rela- Parents. Posing. Rim- a domineering mother, and a shadowy ming • Showering. Ten- or over-competitive father (such a tionships, self-image, societal hang- derness • Trade. Ups. mother and father have always struck ups, health, etc. ... More robust in V.D.• Wrestling me as sounding like Italians, and I style than those in The Joy-of Sex, wonder why so few Italian men turn the stylish drawings and paintings ~ out to be gay). Fear of women was convey the joy' with exuberant ,,,,," ~ ;':, listed as another possible cause, for candor:' . ~••:, ,llIW~_~ which the cure is-no, not man-woman "'" ~- sex, but mixed group therapy. Lesbians - " • q-.; were ignored altogether. The entry con- U /' cluded by saying that many practicing heterosexual men have psychological (}I .".'~.:.;. profiles that indicate they should be gay. The reason they're not is that ANtIHIT£1 book(s) within 14 days for a full refund. I am over 21 years of spend an hour alone with their Bibles .1 {; £~ UI' 1 age. (NY residents, please add sales tax) before breakfast. They have examined £~5r£h' every aspect of the scriptures, and my £55Ilv' 1 NAMLE _ cousin's son is learning Greek, Hebrew, nIl.O.jA~l 1 11" ADDRESS; _ and Aramaic in order to plumb the Bible's depths. Not only is religion "A really joyous book, witty 1 and authoritative:' 1 CITY _ an exciting intellectual sport, it also -WaShington Post v..1.. establishes decency within the family. "What we have here is an STATE 2IP _ (I think it might be hard for some of awful lot of Joy ... and Anita 1 0 Check here if you also wish to order The Joy of Lesbian Bryant has our leave to go 1 Sex. by Dr. Emily L. Sisley & Bertha Harris. Same price and my readers to understand that for terms as above: same 14-day return privilege. bonkers:'-Kirkus Reviews L:..19~lm.!!!!.an~ch~r .J

DECEMBER 1978 47 many households that are perilously both rich and promiscuous, as capable close to alcoholism, shiftlessness, and of indulging their every whim as con- violence, religion represents an oppos- sumers and Don Juans, then they GAY ing urge towards sobriety, industry, represent a temptation, an affront, and order.) Finally, I became aware which must be condemned. Moreover, that in order to raise their four children the very perversity (as they see it) of and send them to college, the parents homosexuality must seem like a first CAQD& had to make big sacrifices, never larger step toward abandoning all moral 6 Cards with Envelopes than now when inflation is squeezing strictures; if someone can face the ridi- MALE DESIGNS out the middle class. Daily sacrifice cule of being branded queer, then he is $2.00 requires a rigorous regime, and the egregious-literally, "outside the flock." Baptist church provides that discipline. He has broken the social contract. Write: To understand the vehemence of Atlantis Studios Baptists one must recognize what they f course gay men and women Box 56/Village Station are figh ting: the broken home; the don't really give up the har- New York, New York 10014 O drunk father; the philandering mother; monic principles of their youth; they (Dealers inquiries invi t e d.) the meals eaten alone standing in front simply transpose them into a new key. of the refrigerator; the arbitrary beat- That was made clear to me one evening ings of wife and children; the straying I spent in Dallas with a group of young P~~A~S of teenagers into truancy and drug professionals-a lawyer, an architect, BOOKS . RECORDS addiction. What we must bear in mind and an executive. One of them, brought GAMES is that what we gay people have been up in the Church of Christ, had come T~S saying defiantly and polemically is in out in college with his "little brother" • GREETING CARDS fact objectively true: the family doesn't in the fraternity. The lover was a local ~~n f1Ci? 0 Feat"ring work, especially not in the United rock star, and between them they dom- ~lN2JUiJ II Q Women's States, the only nation in the industrial inated campus life. In college in the late Free world that has no guaranteed family Sixties he did not defend gays-he did- Parking SOUND=cords income program. Since the U.S. is also n't know anyone else who was gay- CHAAL£S RIVER Pl.AZA one of the few advanced countries with but in 1969 as a high officer in the 173CAMBR100E STREET 6fn 523-5195 no public health system and very little student council he worked to integrate BOSTON,MASS. 02t14 free higher education, these expenses the school and ease blacks into frater- must be borne by the parents. Having nities. Today he is a bit closety on children in a city is economically the job bu t busy in gay politics. He 6J8-0606 useless, a drain rather than a benefit, is an attractive, liberal, thoroughly and the advantages of raising a family decent man. One of the other two today are only spiritual or conventional, men had been a Methodist minister never practical. Religion is a last at- before he came out. He is in an awk- Low Offices of tempt to keep the institution afloat. ward position, since he is a feeling LEONARD GRAFF Nor are any alternatives to the family person sensitive to the slightest sign visible, not even literally. of pain or unhappiness in someone When I was with my relatives I flew else-and also the leader of the most above their town in a private plane; snobbish gay clique in Dallas. Proust below me were nothing but family once observed that snobbishness is houses, one after another. I met not a deep but narrow vice that cannot 1029 Vermont Ave .. N.W Washlngfon, D.C 20005 one person who was over twenty-five be extirpated-but that need not infect and single. There are no apartment the rest of the character. Ted, never- buildings, no singles' bars, no discos. theless, feels the strain between his For someone living there, it must seem universal compassion and his exclusive RING of POWER that there are only good families and tastes. Naturally enough he denied bad families. The good families all that there were cliques in Dallas and FOR go to church, and religion indicates would admit to nothing more definite THOSE WHO not only piety but also education and than "overlapping circles." Once that DARE TO EXPRESS THEI EX-UALITY a commitment to decency. What can distinction was established, he pro- What could be more sensual than sexual freedom mean to such people? ceeded to tell me about last spring's adorning the loveliest of organs with a thin, 14 carat gold ring suit- In a real sense they can't afford it. Easter Bonnet Party (some men wore able for piercing the most delicate of Southern Baptists dislike homosex- feathered hats larger than those seen .!:'2=mbranes?1 U ( Erotic, exquisite, expensive, some uals because they perceive gay men at the Folies Bergeres), about camping, say the ROPe heightens ie power of (they seldom think about lesbians) weekends by a lake in Oklahoma where sexual pleasure, whil increasing sensual aWareness. 1/8 inch ring as hedonistic, selfish, dissolute-the some people ("not our circle," which is diameter. 14 carat goH:!. $30.00. very qualities they observe in families too butch and sensible) hung chande- Check qr money orher only. oraasmlc Erotica, 'jJnLtd.; that have gone to seed. Some of the liers in the trees above their tents and P.O. Box 12382, animosity must also be envy. Self- ate off silver service on damask, and Atlanta, Ga 30305 ' sacrifice doesn't come easily to anyone, about the big Texas-OK (Oklahoma) nor does fidelity. If gays are seen as football weekend in October when gays

48 CHRISTOPHER STREET swarm in the streets as though it were into gay social life and politics. erners to be "phony"; Southerners Mardi Gras and Dallas hosts throw open After Ted left we all discussed think of Yankees as "rude." These their doors to five hundred guests at cliques and the differences between differences are so su btle and yet so a time. Servants, stereos, drugs, open Northern and Southern manners. In divisive that a Texas university is offer- bars ... the South a host introduces a newcomer ing a course for Yankees in how to get It was easy to see how Ted had to everyone and says the guest's name along with Texans. climbed to his social pinnacle. He had at least twice to make sure it has sunk What irritates Texans the most is dark, almost Indian features, a solid in; in the North the host, sprawled and Yankee condescension. It is surely a white crescent of teeth worthy of a stoned on the couch, might confer a mistake to regard Texans as jejune, Wrigley's ad, an imposing build, and chilly nod on a new arrival. In the fun-loving braggarts or to expect them the nervous attentiveness of the profes- South people have a distinct party to rustle up grits or rope a bronco sional host who nods and grins through style quite different from their tete- at the drop of a Stetson. They are one conversation while devising a plan a-tete manner. At a party people joke proud, complex people who do eat to rescue Henry from the bore in the and clown, keep it light, and seldom black-eyed peas on occasion but who corner. When he left he kissed his disagree. In the North people don't also fuss over French wine; they do friends and murmured, "Well, good know how to behave in groups. They own ranches but they also buy villas night, Sugar Booger." My mother would isolate one other person and argue on the Riviera. No state has been like him; wouldn't yours? The energy with him. In the South, touching more satirized than Texas, and Texans, these men would have injected in signifies friendliness, nothing more; accordingly, have become wary of out- another, heterosexual life into church in the North, it is invariably a sexual siders. Even 'their own accent troubles clubs and country clubs is now diverted innuendo. Northerners consider South- them. They remember bitterly how

DECEMBER 1978 49 LBJ was made fun of by Yankees long His father, he said, was "a good pro- before he had done anything to merit vider but definitely of the laboring their ridicule. In some contexts Texans class." He was one of seven kids, a think of their accent as the way people grinning, happy-go-lucky teenager who should talk; it is the sound of sociabil- used to hang around the Frigid Queen ity and sincerity. But they also know drive-in and bang the carhops after it is considered comical, su bstandard. they got off. A year of college was Many educated Texans speak like followed by a rapid montage of events Yankees at work and like Southerners -Navy service, coming out in Germany, at home and with friends. a job in Dallas as a medic, a brief, bitter affair of one month in Oklahoma +that culminated with our hero in i,::;~:~~,,'2o~: Manhattan. He'd come to New York JMM to play the part of an escaped Texas l~f ~y favori~e cit- ies In America-vis convict in a play, but when the pro- Austin, the state capital and the home duction didn't materialize he earned of the University of Texas. My paternal a lavish living as a hustler. His madam grandfather retired there, and as a boy "If you want packaged and sold him as a Texas oil I would promenade with him past to meet simple, driller. After six months he returned storefronts where old farmers sat in hospitable, relaxed to Texas. Now he starts and stops straightbacked chairs In the shade. people try the school, dashes off to L.A., returns to They would tip their hats and we would Northwest. " Dallas. He wants to be an actor. Of tip ours. The brown capitol building course, he already is. Not only does dwarfed the one-story blocks of feed he have his stud rap down to a T (for stores and five-and-dimes surrounding it. with a particular ancient tree in their Texas), he also amuses his friends at This time I stayed with a friend up yard. The conversation ranged from the bars with a slow-talking Will Rogers in the hills west of town. He has twelve Conrad's introduction to The Nigger routine: "I had a dream last night about acres and a house that was built of of the Narcissus (they've memorized a dog. I'm sick, I should see a doctor. field stones by two lesbians fifty years long passages) to a turn-of-the-century [Pause]. I love dogs. [Pause]. He was ago. They positioned it on a promon- music critic to Ken Russell's films a beautiful Dalmatian. We were dancing. tory so that it would catch any breeze to a Texas painter living in New York He said [bass voice], 'You dance real that might be stirring. In the living ("his works look like jewels"). The nice.' I said [high voice], 'Thank you, room four sets of double doors are woman told me that she had visited so do you.' " The you is pronounced as flung open to the elements, since this her husband one day and sat down though there were an umlaut over the u. house is conditioned by the air alone. to read books from his library. "I This young man has become an At night one sleeps under a tent of didn't get up till twenty years later." image broker. He has made himself mosquito netting and listens to a One night my host and I drove into a sexual wish fulfillment for fountain splashing in the courtyard. into town and saw a production of other people, and in doing so he has We ate our dinners outside, looking Salome in Richard Howard's trans- preserved, with great sophistication, out at candles in glass-and-metal cages lation from Oscar Wilde's French. his own real-life teenage naivete. "I'rn suspended from the trees. We listened (Howard, who has always been known fixin' to come," which he once said to the music of Keith Jarrett, the sound for his dramatic readings, played Herod, with the panting urgency of youth, he of ice thawing if ice were silver. During revealing new if expected talents as now introduces inauthentically at the the day, when I became too hot, I an actor.) After the play, which filled critical moment of the well-rehearsed would wander down a winding pebble the stuffy old movie palace where it play. Method actors may do well on path to the swimming pool, circled by was presented with a continuous basso opening night, but it is the technical low gnarled live oaks and cedars hazy obbligato of desire, I went home with performers who can sustain a role with gray-blue aromatic berries. The a big hunk of a man who had jug through a long run. house would have pleased Matisse, ears, meat-packing hands, and slightly I would contend that most Texans with its blue-and-white striped deck overlapping teeth. We got stoned experience themselves from the same chairs, its rough whitewashed walls, in his "town house" and entered a quizzical, difficult, uncomfortable an- its straw mats, its fireplaces shaped fantasy in which-soh, I dare not spell gle. If Texas had been poor it might like beehives, its marble washstands, it out. Suffice it to say that he was never have lost its innocence. But its huge cacti-even the dead wasp the handsome stud, I his twelve-year- since its people are rich and travel crushed on the bleached wall. old son, and at one point he was in everywhere, since hungry Yankees are One day an old Austin couple nothing but boots and hat. descending on them in daily hordes, came out to visit. She was expres- His was the consummate Texas a new, ever more complex society sionless behind her dark glasses. She rap, complete with the expression, is evolving. If you want to meet simple, wore a large hat and sandals over at the moment of climax, "I'm fixin' hospitable, relaxed people try the white socks. Her husband had pulled to come." Everything one could desire. Northwest. Texas is a moire of old his graying hair back into a pigtail And of course it had all been learned and new, Northern and Southern, and when he spoke his gold teeth in New York. pristine and jaded. For that reason flashed. They lived in town because My companion had grown up in it interests me; I'm an aficionado they couldn't bear to part company West Texas in a town of 3,400 people. of the provisional. •

50 CHRISTOPHER STREET