ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD

A written creative work submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University In partial fulfillment of The Requirements for 3 6 The Degree 20lC

. 333

V • \ Master of Fine Arts In Creative Writing

by

Jane Marie McDermott

San Francisco, California

January 2016 Copyright by Jane Marie McDermott 2016 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL

I certify that I have read All the Time in the World by Jane Marie McDermott, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a written work submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree: Master of Fine Arts: Creative Writing at

San Francisco State University.

f Creative Wj n§>

Chanan Tigay Asst. Professor of Creative ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD

Jane Marie McDermott San Francisco, California 2016

All the Time in the World is the story of gay young people coming to San Francisco in the

1970s and what happens to them in the course of thirty years. Additionally, the novel tells the stories of the people they meet along the way - a lesbian mother, a World War II veteran, a drag queen - people who never considered that they even had a story to tell until they began to tell it.

In the end, All the Time in the World documents a remarkable era in gay history and serves as a testament to the galvanizing effects of love and loss and the enduring power of friendship.

I certify that the Annotation is a correct representation of the content of this written creative work.

Date ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Thanks to everyone in the San Francisco State University MFA Creative Writing

Program - you rock! I would particularly like to give shout out to Nona Caspers, Chanan

Tigay, Toni Morosovich, Barbara Eastman, and Katherine Kwik.

I wouldn’t have made it through the program without the love and support of my wife,

Mary. Te amo. 1

ONE

Every ear of com looks like every other ear of corn. Or at least it should - that’s what God intended. And every board run through the mill comes out looking like the board that came out before it. Uniformity, consistency. There is safety in this system - Indiana children learn this early on. It takes the guesswork out of life. Why waste time wondering “what’s next?” Only people who were different wanted something different. Why be different? Fit in, take your place. Buckle down, shoulder to the wheel, press on.

It’s easy to believe that the world is flat in Indiana. Flat as in careful: don’t go too far, you’ll fall off the edge. Beyond Indiana lay mountains and oceans and alcohol and

Democrats and fancy clothes. A decent person had no business even thinking about things like that. There was work to be done.

But what was so great about Indiana besides the predictability of it, the sameness?

The repetitive sun up, sun down of it day after motherless day? And what do you do if you think that maybe, just maybe, you want something else, something on the tip of your tongue that you can’t quite taste or say?

Well, son, you’re out of luck; you’re in Indiana.

Desire can only get a boy in trouble in Indiana. It can cause him that exceptional and gnawing pain that comes from yearning for things he cannot have but cannot find a way to stop wanting. 2

Hiram Maffey was bom in New Albany, Indiana. In 1933, he was eleven years

old. Hiram was a God-fearing boy who loved his country and his parents, probably in that

order. He was clean, decent, and hard-working - a true son of the Midwest. Hiram was

capable with his hands, he did well enough in school liking best those subjects that would

never do him any good - art and English - and he was good enough at sports. He was of

average looks and height. Nothing about him made him stand out in any way. This was just fine with his parents, almost a source of pride, in fact. As far as they were concerned,

Hiram was destined either for the plant or the plow just like every Maffey before him.

But for Hiram a lack of a specialty, a talent, a certain something, hung heavy on him.

Hiram feared that he was ordinary.

It was a feeling that preyed upon him making him both afraid and ashamed. He

wouldn’t know how to begin to even discuss it with his stem, stoic father. So he kept

these feelings to himself where he had been taught that they belonged and considered the

ways he could set himself apart. Was that sinful? He wouldn’t know who to ask.

Hoosiers are bom frugal. Being careful with money and things was like a mantra

in Hiram’s head. The word “waste” was always said like something to be spit out. “What

a waste,” someone would say. And those who heard would nod and shudder a little as the word leached into the soil like battery acid leaving a little ring of poison on the ground as

a reminder to everyone.

It was the frugality of spirit that Hiram stmggled with. His parents meted out praise and encouragement like little dollops of special occasion food being careful not to give him too much. They saw no point in commending him just for doing what he was 3

supposed to do. As for encouragement, neither of Hiram’s parents was probably certain what encouragement entailed never having had much of it themselves. After what had happened when Hiram was quite young, his parents extinguished whatever was left of their emotions.

When he was quite young, Hiram’s three older siblings drowned in a boating accident at a church picnic. Hiram was only three years old at the time and deemed too young to go out with the others in the canoe. Hiram’s oldest brother Cal was a strapping twelve year old and an experienced paddler. The day had been fine: light wind, just a few clouds, but just before lunch the wind picked up. Subtle, the way wind likes to be, but steady. People on the shore, including Hiram’s parents, ate watermelon and hot dogs and drank lemonade and pitched horseshoes without a care. Cal and his sisters Mabel and

Agnes were far out onto the lake when their canoe capsized. No one heard their cries for help at first. By the time anyone could get another boat in the water and get out to them, the three children had drowned. All the while the congregation and their parents watched helplessly from the shore.

Hiram had a vague recollection of his brother and sisters being laid out on the grass and his mother kneeling over them with her mouth open in a silent scream. People stood by in their Sunday best like wax figures. But more likely he had been told it and told it many times so the image was so vivid he could see it as if it was a memory.

After his siblings died his parents crawled up inside themselves and never came back. Those stony, heart-broken folks were the ones who raised Hiram with and the only ones he could remember. 4

He grew up lonely. He was meant to be the youngest of four, but instead he was an only child of terminally sad parents.

Hiram’s mother in particular made sure to gather up the pieces of her shattered heart and sealed them up tight so that no harm could come to them ever again. Poor

Hiram. He didn’t know what he had done wrong to be the one left to live with these loveless people. Nothing he did ever elicited much of a response from them.

Like nearly every boy of his generation and class as soon as Hiram was able, he got an after-school job.

“We work, “his father told him as if it had been written in the Bible.

Hiram saved some his money he earned as a delivery boy at the drugstore; the rest he gave to his mother who appreciated the contribution to the household however small.

Hiram’s only indulgence was the occasional comic book. He justified these purchases by the discount Mr. Duncan the druggist gave him. They also provided something else that he was ashamed to admit: sometimes a boy just needed a little luxury to make life worth living.

It was in the back of one of these comic books that Hiram Maffey read an ad that promised to give him the ability to amaze his friends and be the life of the party. Without telling his mother, he mailed a dime to a post office box in New York City for the advertised book entitled “ Ventriloquism Made Easy: Amusing and Instructive” by George

W. Callahan1, a professional ventriloquist himself.

1 George W. Callahan was a ventriloquist bom in 1862 in New York. In 1884, he married Delina Rose, a bearded lady. Callahan wrote a number of popular pamphlets on ventriloquism. He died in 1894, aged 32, after a long illness. 5

Hiram waited to intercept the mail every day for what seemed like months. When the package came he secreted it to his room and opened it with reverence and awe. The book contained not only instructions, but illustrations! There was a photograph of a man in a suit, looking very respectable, holding a ventriloquist dummy on his lap. A ventriloquist’s dummy! The illustrations showed how to manipulate the dummy and techniques for how to position your mouth. Yes - it wasn’t magic at all but a skill that with effort and practice even a boy like Hiram could master. Hiram could become an actual ventriloquist - just like this man in the book - and perform in front of people. And get paid for it! Not punch a time clock, not drive a tractor, but perform in front of people.

For a living!

An almost unspeakable excitement raced through him. Could he actually do that?

Forge his own path? Do something different? Perhaps even leave Indiana?

Hiram poured over every page studying the techniques and practicing them in front of a mirror in his room. He took care to assure his mother never saw him. He didn’t have a ventriloquist’s dummy of his own, so he’d put a sock over his hand to create a puppet. He spent hours having conversations with this sock puppet and watched himself in the mirror as he reacted to what the puppet was saying.

He was acting!

In a few months, Hiram felt that he had mastered the basics of ventriloquism. He created a brief routine, and felt ready to demonstrate his skill. In fact, he longed for a chance to perform even though the thought of getting up in front of people scared him to death. But in a good way. That way a boy must feel as he walks up to the plate before he 6

hits a home ran. He wanted to show everyone - especially his parents - that he, Hiram

Maffey, was special. Just a little.

His church’s annual talent show provided such an opportunity.

Trinity United Methodist Church in New Albany, Indiana was a tidy congregation that provided pastoral care to some 300 salt-of-the-earth souls among whom were a handful of decent singers and musicians and the occasional magician and tap dancer. The annual talent show was a much anticipated community event as it coincided with the town’s yearly Free Fall Festival which featured a band concert and a crafts fair, as well as a com maze and demonstrations from the Floyd County 4-H Club in canning and quilting. It was the apex of the New Albany social year.

In the year prior, Hiram had played the accordion at the talent show. He was an adequate player in a comer of the world where competition was stiff. That year, 1933, the audience, and in particular his parents, was surprised to see Hiram appear at the talent show without his accordion. Instead, Hiram resolutely walked on to stage with his hands behind his back. He was wearing a suit that was a little too small for him, the cuffs of his shirt hung four inches below his coat sleeves. This look was so common among boys his age that it was almost a style. His shoes were shining and his hair was slicked back. The total effect was, in fact, charming - he looked a little bit like Alfalfa from the Our Gang movies.

When Hiram got to the microphone at the center of the stage he eyed the audience. It looked like the whole town was there - probably was - and he experienced a momentary rash of panic in the pit of his stomach. This was it! He imagined himself in 7

front of the mirror in his room, took a deep breath, and pulled his right hand out from

behind his back to reveal a mouth that he had painted on to the side of his fist. Smiling

broadly, Hiram said “hello” to his hand. “Elio,” he had the hand reply. He asked his hand

how it was. “Eine.” He then proceeded to ask his hand if it wanted to sing a song for

everyone about Jesus. Hiram manipulated his hand while he said “E-es” through a

clenched-teeth grin. Then, Hiram asked the audience if they would like to hear a song

about Jesus. The audience responded with polite applause. Clearing his throat, Hiram

held his hand up to the microphone and directed it to sing Jesus Loves Me while he stood

by grinning through his teeth.

“Ee-us uvs us is I owe...”

He killed.

At the end of the song, the auditorium erupted with applause and cheers. Hiram

stood there for a moment, hands by his side, and let the response wash over him like a

wave. It felt like love: it was the most thrilling feeling he had ever experienced. He took a

bow, and left the stage.

By the time Hiram met up with his parents after the show, they didn’t know what

to say to him. What had just happened was not in their script. They had gotten over their

initial shock, but just barely. Had Hiram’s ventriloquism debut not gone as well as it had,

his parents might have simply dragged him into the car and confined him to his room for the rest of his life.

“Where did you learn to do that?” his father asked him.

“I sent away for a book,” Hiram replied. 8

“A book? They write books on such things?” his mother said.

“It’s not good to keep secrets, Hiram,” his father said. “It’s not good to keep

secrets from your family. It’s not good to keep secrets from your mother.”

Hiram’s parents hated attention, and loathed the idea that the community might be

mocking them. But it was very apparent that the audience truly seemed to get a big kick

out of Hiram and his talking hand. Dozens of people came forward to congratulate him

after the performance. Days later Hiram’s mother met women in the market who would

simply gush over Hiram’s performance. Hiram was all anybody was talking about when

his father went in to get a haircut. Men would clap Hiram’s father on the back and say

“That boy of yours! That boyl”

His parents found themselves in a quandary. No good could come from pursuing

something like ventriloquism they were convinced. Certainly show business in general is

a cesspool of sin. Why performing? Why not the ministry if he wants to stand up in front of people? Besides, a boy like Hiram had no business getting his hopes up about pretty much anything anyway. His path was clear.

But the responses from the community caused Hiram’s parents to do some soul- searching. Neither parent had illusions of grandeur or liked fuss, but people really seemed to enjoy Hiram. And he was singing about Jesus, after all. And he was good at it. The boy possessed, it appeared, a God-given talent. And, and, ventriloquism seemed to give their

Hiram so much pleasure. They were not unaware that pleasure was in short supply in their house.

Was it sinful? They prayed on it. “Lord, show us Thy will.” 9

The praying was inconclusive, but public opinion was unanimous.

So with not a small amount of reluctance with money being tight and all as well as trepidation about whether they were placing him on the road to ruin, Hiram’s parents agreed to get him a ventriloquist’s dummy from the Sears catalog for the Christmas of

1934 on the condition of this solemn vow: that Hiram promise to never bring shame to the family.

“Son, I don’t know where you’re going with this ventriloquist thing,” his father said, “But, I know that you’re a good boy and it appears that God has given you a talent for it. I want you to promise me, though, that whatever you do and wherever you go that you will make sure to keep your heart and mind pure and that you swear to never bring shame onto this family. I don’t think your mother could bear it after all she’s been through. I truly don’t. Life is going to offer you temptations aplenty, but I’m confident your mother and I have given you the directions to always take the high road. Can I count on you, Hiram?”

The solemnity of this exchange with his father made Hiram feel queasy. His father was talking to him like a man - he had never done that before. In fact, his father rarely spoke to him at all. And what was shame, exactly? Particularly the kind of shame his father was talking about? Hiram could only guess. Yet, when he was asked to promise, Hiram didn’t hesitate.

“You can count on me, Dad,” he said. “I won’t let you down.” 10

His father nodded once, patted him on the shoulder, and then they shook

hands - another thing that they had never done before and would do again twice more:

when Hiram was leaving for the service and on his wedding day.

“God has given me this ability. Even my father says so. God wants me to use it,”

thought Hiram. “Perhaps, my talent as a ventriloquist will be my way of distinguishing

myself. Perhaps,” and at this thought Hiram nearly choked, “it might be my way of

getting out into the world. Out of Indiana.” He quickly looked around him. He shouldn’t

be thinking like this, he shouldn’t be thinking like this, God will punish him, he shouldn’t

be thinking like this. He took a deep breath.

But suddenly life took on a whole new tone and vibrancy for Hiram. And he

viewed himself and the world differently. He was gaining something - what? - in his little

world. Something akin to prestige; he wore it like a red scarf: self-conscious and proud at the same time.

The dummy from Sears came in a little case and he was wearing a little suit and hat. When Hiram opened the box for the first time, he flashed on opening a coffin, so life­ like was the little fellow inside. But Hiram got that image out of his mind as soon as he could.

“He is a tool of the trade,” Hiram thought, although he wasn’t completely convinced. It felt more like he was having a roommate come and share his room. Like a little brother.

Hiram named his dummy Mike. Having a real dummy to perform with opened up more opportunities for Hiram. He made regular appearances at Sunday school to sing his 11

trademark “Jesus Loves Me” song (the rendition of which had improved exponentially

since its debut). He was invited to perform one Sunday afternoon a month at the old

folks’ home. By the time Hiram entered junior high school, Mike would often accompany

him to school where they became celebrities of sorts in the school yard.

There was something very engaging about earnest, young Hiram and his dummy

Mike. Hiram quickly realized that he could have Mike say things that he would never

have the courage to say himself. Mike interrupted people; he was outgoing and talked

easily with girls. Mike was very knowledgeable about sports, music, and movies which

made him popular with just about everyone. And Mike was funny - he could tell jokes

and make people laugh. Mike even received an invitation to Hiram’s senior year

Valentine’s Day dance saving Hiram the burden of having to get a date. Hiram just

showed up with Mike and had Mike chat and flirt all night long even with other boys’

dates and all the girls who came in groups.

Having a dummy on his arm made Hiram feel less lonely. He now had someone

to talk to. Hiram poured his heart out to Mike sharing with him all his deepest thoughts

and darkest fears. He told Mike all about his plan to go to New York and break into show

business. “Are you with me, Mike?” Hiram was certain that if Mike could really talk, he would say yes.

With Mike, Hiram was now allowed access to the inner circle of New Albany’s

elite teen world. The sons and daughters of the town’s managers invited him - with Mike

- to parties. Hiram discovered to his horror that they weren’t all the nice boys and girls people thought them to be. They told rude jokes and said mean things about people. They 12

made fun of the working class people of the town as if Hiram wasn’t there or one of them.

On the plus side, the football team asked Mike and Hiram to join them in the locker room for the pregame pep talk. The basketball team like to rub Mike’s head before taking to the court. Even the cheerleaders wanted Mike to stand with them on the sidelines and cheer.

Hiram wasn’t fooling himself; he knew it was Mike and not him who was popular. Mike allowed Hiram to be popular by proxy.

Throughout his teens and into his early 20s Hiram and Mike performed at talent shows and at the movie theater before screenings - right after the playing of a patriotic song and just before the raffle. He had a small following: Hiram was the closest to outrageous that any number of people in New Albany would ever see.

Life in Indiana in the 30s, while difficult, was fairly predictable depending on where in the state you lived. If you had a job at all you grew com, worked in a steel mill or at Studebaker or Duesenberg, or in one of the specialty industries particular to your part of the state. Hiram’s comer of southern Indiana, New Albany, touted itself as the

Veneer Capital of the World2 and there were half a dozen plants there making veneer and sheet paneling.

In January 193 7 after days of snow and sleet, the mighty Ohio River rose over sixty feet and flooded the towns along it. New Albany was not spared. The town was under ten feet of water for nearly three weeks. The damage was catastrophic along the

2 By 1920, New Albany, Indiana was the largest producer of plywood and veneer in the world. 13

river - Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky - especially for folks who had little to begin

with and were already suffering through The Great Depression.

After the flood, New Albany was the first town along the river to build a flood

wall. It was a model for other cities to emulate, a source of civic pride, and it became a

popular place to walk and reflect.

High on the flood wall at New Albany a person could practically spit on Kentucky

and many a New Albany boy did exactly that, sending out a stream of saliva as a sign of

superiority. Take that, Kentucky with your baseballs bats and horses and bourbon.

But Hiram wasn’t one of those boys. He didn’t dare do such a thing. Someone

might see him and tell his mother. His mother would tell his father and his father would

take Mike away. Hiram couldn’t risk it. He would just have to feel superior to Kentucky

in his heart.

It would have to do.

On the other side of the river boys went to school and rode their bikes and went about their business. They didn’t probably give Indiana a second thought.

They had no idea how lucky they were.

The floods were there before the flood and every fiber of New Albany was dedicated to bringing them back on line afterwards.

Even a determined young man like Hiram, set on becoming an entertainer, was hard-pressed to avoid working in one of them. He told himself that he was taking factory work only until he could make enough money to head to New York and start his show business career. 14

Of course, he never said any of this out loud and when he finally took a factory job his father nodded to him over the breakfast table in a kind of tacit benediction.

Hiram felt his heart break a little.

His ventriloquist’s gigs, which he continued when he could, yielded him three or four dollars in a good a week. It was not even enough to take a girl out for a movie and a soda. And there was one girl in particular that he increasingly very much wanted to take out. Her name was Dolly Klein and she had made Hiram’s heart skip a beat ever since they were assigned as lab partners in chemistry class. Hiram mustered every fiber of courage to be able to ask Dolly out. He realized that with Dolly, he would have to do all the talking, not Mike.

Hiram was terrified. He had become used to having Mike as a wingman. How could any girl be interested in just plain old ordinary him?

But Dolly - Indiana sunshine incarnate - was flattered that a boy of Hiram’s status would want to go out with her.

“Everybody knows you,” Dolly had said. “And Mike.”

The truth was that Dolly had long had her eye on Hiram. Lean, wide-eyed Hiram.

She knew he was a good boy from a good family. She knew of their sadness - who didn’t? But she, like everyone else, admired their steadfast determination. “They got on with it, the Maffeys” her father said. “Didn’t they?”

Dolly was so easy to be with that Hiram didn’t even think about Mike. He had no idea it could be so easy to be with a girl. 15

Dolly’s family, the Liebers, had been pioneers coming to Indiana from Ohio in th the late 18 century. She was about as Hoosier as you could get - industrious, modest, shy, and just about pathologically polite. Dolly could sew up an outfit, bake a pie, and plant a garden in an afternoon and still have time to read from the Bible. Having seen the dark side of New Albany, how money could corrupt, Hiram considered himself to be the luckiest boy in Indiana. Dolly Lieber liked him. Imagine that? Him, Hiram Maffey. Not the pretend Hiram Maffey with Mike on his arm, but him. The real him. He felt that with

Dolly by his side he could do anything. Why, he could really get his show business career off the ground. He hadn’t talked to her about it much, but he was sure she’d think it was swell. All he needed to do was save a little money and then he and Dolly could get married and head to New York.

Dolly’s parents, iron-faced Calvinists, didn’t think much of Hiram’s ventriloquist aspirations. They weren’t sure what to make of Hiram in general. He seemed all right and they knew that he came from good people. Oh, those poor Maffeys! But even though he had a reasonable job a mill, he would get all dreamy when he talked about the doll he called Mike. Something seemed not quite right about that, not quite right at all.

Hiram’s plans were to change rapidly and profoundly. His real ticket out of

Indiana turned out to be World War II. He was drafted in the spring of 1942. He was not quite 19 years old. Just before he was to report for basic training, Hiram summoned every morsel of intestinal fortitude he could to tell Dolly that he loved her. She told him that she loved him, too. He just about died.

“Really, Dolly? Do you really?” 16

“Really, Hiram. I really, really do.”

She promised that she would wait for him and write to him every day.

“I’m so proud of you, Hiram,” Dolly said. “I’ll be praying that God keeps you safe and brings you home soon.”

“Everyone is saying that this war won’t last long,” Hiram said. “Gerry won’t know what hit him. When I get back, we’ll get married and head to New York. If Edgar

Bergen can get a ventriloquist job on the radio, why can’t I?”

Dolly smiled her sweetest smile. Oh, Hiram. The boy with stars in his eyes.

“Just be careful,” she said. “And come home in one piece. Once you’re back home, well...” Dolly smiled again.

New York? Why? Everything they needed was right here in New Albany. But as your solider is shipping off, off to an unknown fate, fighting for his country in a far off land, any red-blooded girl smiled and was silent. And that’s what Dolly did.

“I’ll be here when you return,” she said

Hiram never went anywhere without Mike, so of course he packed him in his suitcase and the two of reported to Fort Knox in Kentucky to train with the First Armored

Division. Kentucky! Hiram could hardly believe it. Looked just like Indiana.

Hiram wasn’t sure, exactly, what he was signing on for with the First Armored.

He figured his work would be mechanical in some way, making use of his mill experience. But his country had called and Hiram was prepared to serve in whatever way the country needed.

He just hoped it was something he knew how to do. 17

Fort Knox was fifty miles from New Albany but it was still Hiram’s first time away from home. It was like a factory town dialed to “high”: trucks were everywhere and everyone was marching, running, loading up equipment to ship overseas. The fort operated day and night. It felt like an amped-up New Albany without anything to see but acres of tanks, jeeps, trucks, boxes, and other men. All the other recruits were within a few years of his age, but they were from all over the country. New York! California!

Golly!

Initially, being at camp was exciting. Kind of like a Boy Scout jamboree which

Hiram had never done but heard about from other boys whose parents thought such activities as scouting were character building and not frivolous as his did. The food at camp was decent and there was plenty of it. His uniforms were brand new. They got to use guns! There were hot showers and baseball games. Hiram began to think that he was going to be able to handle this army business just fine.

But within two weeks, Hiram was selected to be part of a tank crew. Hiram had never seen a tank before and at first he was excited at the prospect. But he soon found out that a tank is the most uncomfortable vehicle ever made. It was like being inside a bomb.

A slow, stuffy, smelly bomb.

The tank housed a five-man crew: commander, driver, bow gunner, gunner, and loader. Hiram was assigned the position of loader - the most thankless job in a tank as he had to be moving around within the tank all the time and quickly.

As loader, it was Hiram’s job to provide ammo to the machine gunner and, more importantly, load the shell specified by the commander either an “AP” (Armor-piercing) 18

or “HEAT” “High-Explosive Anti-Tank.” He had to select the right one, load the shell

very quickly and then nudge the gunner that the load was in place, usually with his foot.

If his nudged too hard, the gunner would swing around and punch him in the balls. Tanks

had to stop in order to fire the turret gun so timing was critical. Hiram soon learned to

right level of nudge so he wouldn’t get punched in the balls and the gunner could make

his shot.

The shells weighed about fourteen pounds and were about three feet long. The

tank would carry about seventy shells, plus about 6,000 rounds for the machine guns.

Add in the five guys, some rations and other gear and there was very little room to

remove the spent shell and wrestle the new one into the breech.

The men trained by living in the tank for days to replicate combat conditions.

They would eat and sleep in the tank and use the empty cases to relieve themselves. After

about a day the stench inside the tank was almost unbearable. At the end of the training

days he’d climb out of the hatch and collapse as his legs had turned to rubber.

Hiram had no experience in questioning authority so in that respect he was well

suited for army life. However, after a few weeks of tank training he had grave doubts

about whether he’d be able to survive months of spending so much time inside the vehicle.

His commander assured him, “The war will be over soon.” Everything kept telling

soldiers that the war would be over soon - newsreels, posters, billboards.

“Ok,” Hiram thought. “I can do this for a few months. I can do anything for a few months.” 19

From Kentucky, Hiram was shipped off to North Africa and found himself in a crazy place called Tunisia. Camels, men in ankle-length robes, sand everywhere. This is when and where Hiram started living in a tent. When he wasn’t living in the tank, he would continue to live in a tent for the duration of the war, until he returned to the states.

Three years.

North Africa was shocking. It looked like what he imagined the moon looked like, although he didn’t get to see much of it. As the loader, Hiram was the only man in the tank who couldn’t see out. He and his tank mates would roll around sometimes for days and Hiram never had a sense of where they were or where they were going. He felt like he was inside a blind armadillo. When they would stop and were allowed to get out, the landscape was so exotic that Hiram was certain that some kind of mistake had been made, that they had been transported Jules Veme-style to some other planet.

The inside of a tank was a bit like being inside a submarine. The men sat in jump seats essentially on top of each other. In the best of times, the tank smelled of farts and diesel3. They were freezing during the winter and condensation dripped from the walls and ceiling in the summer heat. They didn’t have too many occasions when they had to bunk in the tank, but when they did happen Hiram was by then so disoriented that he was able to shut off all his senses.

He would pretend it was summer, the middle of the night, and he was sleeping out in his backyard under the stars. Even the dogs in New Albany knew enough not to bark at night.

3 Sherman or M4 tanks had a tendency to easily catch on fire when hit. They were nicknamed Ronsons after the lighter’s slogan “lights up the first time, every time.” 20

When Hiram was fully aware of his situation he was miserable. Like all soldiers all he wanted to do was go home.

While all his letters to Dolly and his folks were cheerful, as he bumped around in the tank he thought “We’re sitting ducks. I’m going to be a dead man in a can.” He would lie in his cot at night and silently weep.

After Tunisia, Hiram and his unit were shipped to Sicily. There they began a crawl across Sicily and eventually up into Italy. The tanks moved in a convoy and went from camp to camp. Life in camp was not a lot better than being stuck in the tank. The camps were always crowded and filthy. A boy as fastidious as Hiram found it difficult to keep himself and his clothing clean. His cot was uncomfortable. The food was often inedible. Everyone was homesick. And many were just sick. Many of his camp mates came from big cities and the things they talked about were shocking to Hiram. He had never heard of such things! What they would say about women in particular Hiram found particularly appalling. After all, his mother was a woman!

And then there were the things that some of them would do to themselves and each other. Things Hiram had been taught to not even think about much less attempt.

“Doesn’t your girlfriend do this for you?” one of them asked. “She should. It helps relieve the tension.”

“It relaxes you,” said another.

There were times Hiram was almost afraid to touch his penis for fear that he’d like it so much, he was so scared and lonely. Letters from home just made him sad. This war felt like it would never end. 21

He had considered, briefly, letting another man touch him - a few had offered.

Surely, that wouldn’t be considered a sex act for the purposes of the marriage bed, for his future relationship with Dolly?

“What do you think Mike?” and Hiram looked deeply into Mike wide wooden eyes.

He sighed. “You’re right,” he said. “Of course, you’re right.”

“We need to get you laid,” Hiram was told after his division arrived in Italy.

“These Italian broads will do practically anything for practically nothing.”

Hiram had no idea what they meant but he didn’t know how to refuse to join his tent mates as they went on a search for a brothel. He wanted them to think he was a regular fellow; he didn’t want them thinking him queer. He was also feeling a little desperate. When Mike had been discovered in his footlocker he had already endured enough derision.

“Hey Maffey - what’s this? A doll?”

“Careful with that, please,” Hiram had said. “It’s a ventriloquist dummy.”

“A what now? You one of them ventrilowhatamacallits?”

“Hey, let’s hear you throw your voice!”

“Ok,” Hiram said placing Mike on his knee. “This is Mike. Say hi to the fellas,

Mike,” Hiram said.

“Hi fellas!” said Mike.

“Say, that’s pretty good. Make him say something else. Make him say ‘hey signorina, give me a kiss! 22

“Hey, how about, hey signorina, suck my dick!’”

The men roared with laughter. Hiram and Mike were silent.

Later that night, Hiram went from bar to bar with his tent mates until they came upon a house. Within minutes, Hiram found himself alone in a room with a narrow iron bed and a girl about his age. She was very sweet looking. She gestured for him to sit down on the bed. She then massaged his thighs and when she undid his pants, his penis popped out like a gopher from a hole spewing semen. Hiram’s face burned with shame.

“Scusa. Sorry.” said Hiram.

“Va bene cosi,” the girl said reaching for a cloth. “Non fa niente. It’s ok. Don’t worry.” She wiped him off and then she kissed his cheek, his neck, and his chest before moving to his groin. Hiram placed his hands upon this girl’s curly head and surrendered with a shudder.

The good news about Sherman tanks is that they were designed for easy maintenance. The bad news is that something mechanical would go wrong every thirty- five miles or so. Add to that the muddy Italian country roads and the havoc wrecked by

German bombers and Hiram in Italy seemed to spend more time under the tank than in it.

All Hiram could think of was the lovely girl in the room - how good it felt, how shameful it was, how confusing. He had never felt anything so wonderful before in his life. He didn’t know such feelings were even possible.

Life in the field was brutal and Hiram had little sense of how the war was progressing. All he knew was that he was filthy and exhausted. And there appeared to be no end to it. 23

“I can’t do this anymore,” Hiram finally concluded and after weeks of the grueling routine of driving, stopping, fixing. One day Hiram found himself alone under the tank, squatting in filth, repairing a mangled tread. He stared at the screwdriver in his hand for a long time.

“I’m having trouble getting this plate off, sir,” Hiram called out to his commander.

“Do the best you can, Maffey,” was the reply he knew he’d get. Hiram took a deep breath and jabbed the screwdriver deep into his thigh. Blood seeped through his pants. Hiram watched in fascination as the color darkened on his thigh and over his knee.

After several minutes, he crawled out from the tank calling: “I’ve hurt myself, sir!”

“You sure have,” said his commander eying all the blood. “How the hell did you do that, soldier?”

“Screwdriver slipped, sir.” The sight of all that blood was making Hiram woozy and he fainted.

He awoke hours later in his cot, wearing his mud and blood caked uniform. He couldn’t straighten his leg.

The wound turned septic within days and his commander flagged down a transport to take Hiram back to camp.

“This is pretty bad, soldier,” the camp medic said. A blackish line was being to run from the wound up Hiram’s thigh towards his groin.

“What is that, sir?” Hiram asked pointing to the line. 24

“Blood poisoning. We better get you to a field hospital. See what they can do.

Hope you don’t lose the leg.”

“Yes, sir. Me too, sir.”

Hiram practically crawled into his tent to pack his duffel.

“I’ve done it now, I’ve crippled myself. Idiot!” At the last minute he decided to

include Mike. He wasn’t sure he would return to his unit or when he’d see Mike again

and couldn’t bear the thought of possibly losing him.

“Yet another adventure, buddy,” he said while putting Mike into the duffel.

“Maybe I’ll end up with a wooden leg, too.”

The ride to the field hospital in the back of a truck was agony - pain raced through

his leg at every bump. A medic eventually gave him a shot of morphine and he passed

out. When Hiram woke up in the hospital in clean sheets he thought for a moment that he

was home. As soon as he sat up he saw he was in hell. Not only was he in a lot of pain,

but the field hospital was filled with dozens of guys and some of the injuries they had

sustained were horrific. Their bloody bandages barely concealed the damage that had

been done to them. Others guys with very ill with intestinal problems or fever. The low

moaning was punctuated periodically with the sounds of violent puking.

Hiram was ashamed of himself.

“A day or so longer, soldier, and you would have been in big trouble,” the doctor told him. “Big trouble.”

As soon as he could walk with a cane Hiram thought “I need to redeem myself.

Maybe I can perform for the guys.” 25

Hiram demonstrated his ventriloquism ability for the hospital’s Commanding

Officer. Guys in field hospitals were starved for diversion. Once the CO saw Mike, he asked Hiram if he would be willing to put together a little act to cheer up the other patients.

“We’re out here in the middle of nowhere, too far for the USO. Think you can you work something up for the boys, soldier? Can I count on you?” the CO asked him.

“Yes sir!” Hiram answered. “You bet!”

“Hey, soldier! ” called out a GI in the audience. “ What’s your dummy’s name? ”

“Hiram, ” said Mike. “ What’s your name sister and are there more like you at home?”

“I ain’t no dame! ” the GI replied.

“Sorry brother, ” said Mike. “ The gown threw me off. Guess the 5 o ’clock shadow should have been a tip off. Hyuk, hyuk. ”

“Say, Hiram, ” another GI called out. “ What’s the news from home? ”

“ What are you talking to him for? ” Mike said. “I told you he was a dummy! ”

“Now, Mike... ” Hiram said.

“Where you from soldier? ” Mike asked.

“Tennessee. ”

“Tennessee you say, I see. Say, can you see? Hey, what were we talking about any way? ” Mike said.

“You were asking the soldier where h e’s from, ” Hiram said.

“Where is he from? ” 26

“Tennessee. ”

“Tennessee? Heck, no! I Tennessee a dam thing. Got two wooden eyes, hyuk,

hyuk, hyuk. ”

The CO kept Mike and Hiram at the hospital kept for as long as he could. “You’re

quite the morale booster, Maffey,” the CO said. “But you’re able to walk without the

cane now so it’s time for you to rejoin your unit. Cheer up. The war is winding down.”

He was wrong. In the time to follow - Hiram wouldn’t return home for another 26

months - his unit rolled across Italian fields and through Italian towns, engaging with the

Germans occasionally, but mostly they made camp for weeks on end waiting to be told

what to do. Hiram passed the time drinking and visiting brothels with his tent mates.

There were many girls, but he was only ever able to remember the first one. She had been

so sweet to him, so patient. Hardship had hardened all the girls after her - he and they were all business by then - and by then Hiram knew what he was supposed to do. And had come to like it.

When the war began to wind down, Hiram got notice that they were being sent back to the states. The work left to be done was no job for the armored division. Hiram was now almost twenty-three years old. He and Mike spent the last months of the war knee deep in Italian mud dismantling tanks for scrap and counting the days until he could go home.

In the fall of 1945 Hiram and Mike came home to Indiana. Dolly and his parents met them at the train station in New Albany. Everything in New Albany looked pretty 27

much the same - a little older and shabbier perhaps, including his parents. The war had been long for them, too. Dolly was just as beautiful as Hiram remembered.

No, more.

Here was a clean, well-fed American girl who loved him. She was practically a poster for “what are we fighting for.” A girl as pure as the driven snow.

He felt so unworthy.

“You’re limping, Hiram,” Dolly said to him.

“It’s nothing. Just a little souvenir from Italy.”

In the spring of 1946 Hiram and Dolly were married. Hiram took a job at a mill just opening up again planning to stay there until they had saved enough money so move to New York. Yessir, he would soon be on his way. This whole war business was behind him. He had managed to block out every disturbing memory - no one needed to know. It was his time now. It was his time to get his life back on track.

Dolly made curtains. And baby clothes.

It was as if a starter’s pistol had gone off to get the whole country moving again.

The mill ran around the clock and Hiram pulled extra shifts when he could. The work was exhausting; he turned down ventriloquist gigs so he could spend time with his new wife. Whenever he did have free time, Hiram began carving and building his own ventriloquist dummies- ventriloquial figures was the correct term actually, he’d tell anyone who would listen. He used the trusty Mike as his model. Mike had seen hard action, too - he was chipped and faded. Every dummy Hiram made was a way of healing 28

them both. Each one was better and more life-like than the next. “We’re going to be OK,

you and I,” Hiram would tell Mike. “Everything is going to be ok from here on out.”

Hiram found that he had a real talent for creating these figures. And Dolly, ever

the helpmate, volunteered to sew outfits for each new figure. Fully decked out, they

looked like little people. They even named each one of them together.

Dolly and Hiram settled in to married life. They made each other very happy, the

only tension between them as the months went by was the difficulty they were having

conceiving a child.

Hiram pushed back his memories of Italy and convinced himself that he had come

into the marriage pure as he trusted Dolly had.

Dolly and Hiram read books with titles like Happiness in Marriage. Hiram

couldn’t believe how lucky he was to be married to a girl who was so willing to try

things. She surprised and delighted him. Together they puzzled over diagrams, and tried

different things to make sex more interesting and hopefully, fruitful. They played little

games. A few times a week Hiram would come home from work and knock on the door

and ask Dolly if she had called for a cab or he pretended to be the meter reader or washing machine repair man. He’d grab her and she’d protest saying that her husband would be home soon. Then they’d scurry into the bedroom as each of them was uneasy about making love on the floor.

There were many pregnancies, but all ended in miscarriage, each one harder than the next. By the time Hiram and Dolly approached their fifth wedding anniversary, as the 29

shelves in their basement filled with ventriloquist dolls, they had both come to believe that they might never have a real child.

But they were Midwesterners and they doggedly kept trying. If conceiving a child was going to be work then they were no strangers to that. They would plug along. They applied themselves and reminded each other of the astonishing fact that it took just one sperm and one egg from the thousands they each produced to create a child.

One balmy August evening in 1950, Hiram came home from work and walked up his front steps. He wasn’t sure why, but instead of going in, he knocked on his front door.

Dolly came and opened the door carrying Mike. Mike was wearing a little negligee.

Dolly wore nothing. Hiram and Dolly made love on the living room rug-hand-braided by

Dolly’s grandmother. Within the hour, their first and only child was conceived.

On May 28,1951 their son Hiram Jr. was born. Hiram and Dolly nicknamed him

Chip.

“A son!” thought Hiram. “I have a son!”

But what did it mean to be a father? Hiram had no idea. His relationship with his own father had been a series of demonstrations of how to use various tools, how to shoot a gun, how to fix a motor. These lessons were conducted in silence for the most part; his father considered talking an extravagance God bestowed on women and silly people. If a boy can’t learn what he needs to know by watching other men, then he was on the road to being a tedious chinwagger, a time waster. Boys like that grew to be men who couldn’t keep their accounts straight or run things tight. A boy needed to watch and learn. And keep his mouth shut. 30

Oh, but Hiram wouldn’t be that kind of father. No-siree-bob! Hiram would be open and eager for conversation with his boy. He wanted his son to know that he could ask him anything. What could a boy possibly ask a father that would be so hard to answer? He’d show him how to do things, sure. But they’d have conversations. Hiram and his boy were going to get along.

And especially, Hiram was going to talk to Chip about show business and his own dreams and aspirations. Perhaps they could have a father and son act!

And they’d be other children. Hiram knew all too well what it was like to be lonely. “Dolly and I will have a whole houseful of kids, a flock,” Hiram thought. “Chip will never be lonely.”

It seemed to Hiram that Chip was no sooner bom than he was in first grade.

No other child joined Chip in the house, although initially it wasn’t for lack of trying. Time passed and Hiram and Dolly’s hopes for more children disappeared.

And life went on.

It was always easy for Hiram to work an extra shift at the mill; there was always something that needed fixing around the house. And, if he ever found himself with time on his hands, there were dummies to make. Hiram wouldn’t have been able to tell you exactly when his dreams of a career in show business quietly blew away like the saw dust he carried home in his pant cuffs every night.

But they did. 31

He did continue to make ventriloquist dummies. And he continued to work at his job at the lumber mill until he retired in 1985. His show business career was clearly not

God’s will.

Life was not unpleasant for the Maffeys. Dolly kept a beautiful house, was a wonderful cook, and would have adored Hiram if he was a ditch digger. He was her man, her one and only, Adam to her Eve.

Hiram didn’t know what to do with such adoration so he just worked more.

Hiram and Mike or one of his many other dummies would perform occasionally at local events. They still loved him at Trinity United Methodist. And Hiram had his memories of those weeks in the field hospital.

Hiram allowed his other war memories to visit only as an abstract blur almost as if he had seen them in a movie long ago. Italy was a place he had read about it seemed.

And what happened there was a chapter in a book.

“No one needs to know about any of that,” Hiram told Mike. “No one needs to know.”

In the rarified world of ventriloquism, Hiram was making something of a name for himself with his custom dummies. They were truly works of art. Each doll had a unique personality, made to exact specifications. Hiram would also make dummies on spec so he always had an inventory of different sized figures. Dolly took pride sewing up little outfits for the dolls. The money they made from selling them was put aside for

Chip’s education.

“Chip will want for nothing,” Hiram would say. 32

The dummies would sit side by side on a shelf in Hiram’s workshop like mute villagers seeing all, but never commenting.

“Maybe we should wrap them up and store them,” Dolly had suggested. “Keep them clean.”

“I enjoy having them out,” Hiram said. “They keep me company.”

Their son Chip was a happy, easy-going baby and he grew to be a bright and robust boy. A little on the theatrical side, Hiram thought, although he wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that. He was just a little too .. .showy. Dolly agreed that there was something about the boy.

“He has a certain way about him, doesn’t he?” Dolly said.

Chip had the build but not the inclination for sports although that didn’t stop his school coaches from seeking him out. They particularly wanted him for football as he was so big for his age. After some urging from Hiram, Chip reluctantly complied.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” he told his father.

“You’re not going to hurt anyone,” his father said. “It’s football! A game!”

Chip’s interests lay in music and singing, in fact performance of all kinds. Chip took to the accordion like a duck to water. Dolly taught him piano and soon came a variety of lessons - guitar, tap, voice, even, briefly, ballet.

Hiram watched his son, his precious son, grow with a mixture of pride and wistfulness. His own childhood had been one of sighs and silences, furtive glances for approval, and stalwart dedication to hard work. He was taught to expect nothing and 33

choked down his own ambitions with the help of World War II, marriage, and fatherhood.

Hiram was now resigned to his fate. But surely things will be different for Chip.

Just look at what’s going on in the world - television, rocket ships, every convenience you could think of! And Chip clearly was very bright and talented. Perhaps Chip was the one in the family who would finally go places.

But to where Hiram could not say.

Because Chip was a different kind of kid. Different in ways that Hiram and Dolly could never quite put their finger on. Or didn’t want to. And neither could his teachers.

Remarks on Chip’s report cards ranged from “Such a sensitive, thoughtful, attentive boy. I wish I had a whole class just like him,” to “Hiram displays traits not often seen in boys. It will be interesting to see what path he chooses,” to “I’ve never had a student quite like Hiram before. I hope New Albany can accommodate his abundant skills t and interests.”

Some of Chip’s skills and interests might have given a lesser man pause, but

Hiram did not intervene when Chip wanted dance lessons and when Dolly taught the boy to sew. Chip showed remarkable aptitude for sewing. Of course, Dolly was a beautiful seamstress and wonderful teacher. It made sense. After all, tailors had to learn how to sew somewhere - probably from their mothers. And, of course, performance was the natural result of all the lessons Chip was taking. The boy loved to perform! He was good, very good. Both Hiram and Dolly enjoyed going to Chip’s recitals and plays. The whole town seemed to enjoy Chip. 34

But.

Hiram was troubled. Something about the boy didn’t set right with him, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He found it often easier to talk to Mike than to either

Dolly or Chip.

“Do you know what the deal is, Mike?” he’d ask. “What is up with Chip?” Hiram took to carrying Mike on his arm around the house, just like he did in high school. Like then, he was finding it easier to let Mike do the talking.

Hiram and Mike would stand in front of Chip closed bedroom door. Hiram had been a teen-aged boy, he knew what might being on behind a boy’s closed bedroom door, and lord, hadn’t he gotten an education in the service. But what else could Chip be doing?

Chip more often than not was writing some boys name in scrolly script over and over again on a piece of paper or “experimenting” with stage makeup even when he wasn’t in a show. Or pouring over the men’s underwear section from the Sears catalog.

The boy was developing a certain way about him that was also becoming hard for

Hiram for characterize.

Hiram would knock on Chip’s door and have Mike say “Hey there, sports fan, whatcha doing in there? I know it’s not your homework - 1 ain’t no dummy. Hyuk,

Hyuk.” And then instantly regret it, when he heard Chip scamper about and call out

“Nothing!”

“Want me to show you how to use the lathe, son?” Hiram would ask.

“Maybe later, Dad.” By the time Hiram sensed that he had a situation on his hands, Chip could navigate a Butterick pattern as well or better than Dolly could and had developed a singing style that reminded Hiram more of Peggy Lee than Perry Como. The boy had become an enigma. He was built like a linebacker but all he wanted to do was sew, strum his guitar, and listen to Patsy Cline.

Hiram had heard things around town, but he ignored them.

“Jealous,” Hiram shrugged. “Small potatoes.” Later, Hiram would blame himself for everything: he had never asked Chip, as his own parents had done with him, to never court shame. Hiram had been blind to the man Chip was becoming. Once Chip’s proclivities became clear, it was too late. It was too damn late. Hiram didn’t know what to do and Chip was ruined for Indiana.

“What could we have done differently?” Hiram had asked Dolly.

“Nothing,” she replied. “Nothing at all.

By the 1970s Hiram’s mill began making reproductions of period molding. The molding was in great demand by owners of ornate old Victorian houses, many of them in

San Francisco. He would often tell people that it was a great source of pride to him that the fruits of his labor traveled so far west. Now he remarked that the fruit of his family was moving to San Francisco.

His buddies down at the American Legion were not quite sure what to say.

They needn’t say much. The mill had made Hiram nearly deaf and his Methodist upbringing had rendered him mostly mute. He was a man among men who didn’t want to talk about it. He knew that there was no machine he could guide Chip through to mold 36

him into something other than what he already was. Plus there wasn’t a lot of opportunity around anymore even for a regular guy. How well had being a “regular guy” served him?

The boy was probably better off with his own kind and he and the town were probably better off without each other. No sense yammering over what can’t be changed. Hiram knew that at most all his comrades would offer him was an occasional hand on his shoulder while he sat at the bar at the Legion sipping his Schlitz pretending to watch the game on TV.

Years later at this same American Legion bar, Hiram would tell anyone still left to listen: “If I had it all to do it over again with the boy, I would have done it exactly the same way. One of us deserved to have a chance to follow his dreams.” 37

TWO

The fields of Connemara are littered with great rocks. You might call them boulders except for that fact that instead of being worn smooth they were as rough and jagged as giant’s teeth and just as sharp. From a distance, they look like sheep. But you can’t eat them and they don’t move. In fact, the farmers tending their meager little plots plowed around them they were so big. It was like farming in a sea of icebergs and the land was only a little bit more productive than if it was made of saltwater - good only for root vegetables and hay. The long summer days might yield some tomatoes and such and you might for a moment forget the bitterness of the rest of the year. But though those summer days would warm the body, they did little to warm the heart. The Irish have a history of forgetting any number of things, but bitterness isn’t one of them.

In this part of Connemara, on a clear day you could see the Aran Islands, but you couldn’t eat them either. The fisherman would go out in their low, black boats with their red sails4 and eye when they were halfway between the islands and the mainland they put in their nets. The boats were nimble and good for the strong currents. They were not so good for the men who sailed them as they were open boats without a cabin and prone to being swamped and sinking. Few Irish fisherman knew how to swim. If you fell out of the boat, you drowned. It was God’s will. Drowning was a way of life in Ireland be it in debt, drink or children. Actually drowning in the actual sea might have come as a kind of relief to those many worn down by the endless grind of the place.

4 The traditional fishing boats that plied the waters off the coast of Galway were called Galway Hookers. They were known for their particular mast configuration and distinctive red sails. 38

If you had a boat or access to one, you could perhaps catch some fish and feed yourself and family and maybe even sell a few provided that the weather would let you out on the water at all. If you lived further from the coast and tried to make your living from the land you were in for a far rougher go.

There used to be wild ponies roaming throughout Connemara. But they’re all gone now. Someone probably ate them. The land, the rugged, beautiful land, was reluctant to offer up much else to eat for any creature not having hooves. And the weather could make you go mad as well, being only good for growing drunks and babies. And you can’t eat them, either.

Every family who lived in this part of Ireland had too little work and too many children and the family of Maureen Moynihan was no exception.

Maureen Moynihan was bom in August 1922 making her as old as the Irish Free

State itself5. She was a simple country girl and happy, the way children are until they get old enough to see how the shoulders of boys and girls not too much older than themselves- as well as all of the adults - were rounded from the heavy loads they carried: the heavy load of making your way in Ireland.

Her own father was a sorry shell of a man, having had a rough time at the hands of the British. Her mother had been mad for him back in the day. So handsome! So clever! But all Maureen could remember was her mother being mad at him. So broken!

So needy!

5 Ireland has had several iterations of government in the course of severing its ties with Great Britain beginning with the Irish Free State in 1921 to the current Republic of Ireland formed in 1948. 39

When he was a young man everyone in his village thought that her father was gone in the head and attributed it to an accident he may or may not have had as a child that may have involved (depending on who told the story) a cow, a horse, or a shovel.

Surely, every man in Ireland has had an accident involving either a cow, horse or shovel and not all of them have left him funny. Her father was a dreamer or a malingerer depending upon who you asked, but to Maureen’s mother who married him when she was just seventeen, he was a kind, good-looking man who made her laugh, didn’t drink much, and worked when he could - a woman couldn’t have asked for a whole lot more from a husband in those days.

He was always a clever one for making money, albeit not a lot and not all the time. But he was always one for the ideas. It finally came to be that he could use his scheming as an act to make a tiny bit of money and keep one step ahead of the Black and

Tans6. Sure, they’d leave him alone thinking he was simple telling them all the while of his great plans for building some contraption or other. He had a wife and two little children at home and he was caught out at night wheeling a barrow full of bits and pieces of metal. Her father played the drunken fool and told them some great story about the aero plane that he was going to make of it all. Yes, an aero plane so he and the missus and the wee ones could go say hello to the pope. They beat him and took him away. After being beating him some more he confessed that he was moving guns and ammunitions - small amounts, mind, and for the tiniest bit of money - for his local IRA.

6 The Black and Tans, officially the Royal Irish Constabulary Reserve Force, were founded by Winston Churchill to stem the rise of the Irish Republican Army. The name comes from their uniforms of British Army khaki and Royal Irish Constabulary rifle green uniform parts. They had a reputation for brutality. 40

Certain fishermen would bring them in by boat and her father would wheel them off in barrow full of junk. It was doubtful that what he was doing could have started a fire much less a revolution, but the British took what they wanted out of him and he was imprisoned for a year and a half and was not the same man when he was let out. Maureen was the result of her parents’ reunion.

The others that followed were the result of nothing better to do.

There wasn’t much opportunity in Ireland for a clever, ambitious girl like

Maureen. In truth there wasn’t much opportunity in Ireland for anyone at all. But for girls in those days, Ireland offered three life choices: marriage, the nunnery, or emigration.

Maureen had wanted to be a nun ever since she knew what one was as she saw that they lived in a big house and heard that they had plenty to eat and each had their own bed. She was willing to put up with cutting off all her beautiful curls and the wearing of a habit as she saw all that as a smallish price to pay for clothes that were her own, not a used old thing out of the poor box. And as for all the bowing and scraping - sure, wasn’t she doing that already? Maureen saw the convent as a way to escape the staggering poverty of her family and be left alone to her own thoughts. Maybe she would teach, maybe she would get to go to Africa. At any rate, “Three meals and my own bed” is what she told herself.

Growing up, Maureen cared for her little brothers and sisters while watching other girls get dragged down into marriage, having to leave school, and be mothers by the time they were no more than sixteen. Maureen was iron-clad determined not to let this happen to her. 41

“I’ll not be handing over my own self to just any man,” she thought. “He needs to be worth more than the spit in my mouth. He needs to be more than just a good man. He needs to be going places and be willing to take me with him.”

Yes, Maureen would be the bride of Jesus Christ and become a nun rather than be just any man’s wife and trade the life of drudgery she had for another one just like it. As a nun, Maureen imagined, she would never have to earn a living, decide what to wear, worry about what to eat, or marry. And if she ended up washing women’s underwear - what of it? She did that now and didn’t she wear them herself?

When Maureen was thirteen her father died. He hadn’t been much for working for a few years before. There were twelve of them in the house altogether, including her deaf old granny, two orphaned cousins, and an unmarried aunt. Things had been bad enough for them before her father died, the all of them trying to eke a living out of the poor rocky soil. He left them with next to no money, some chickens, a couple of cows, and half of a fishing boat. They got a wee bit of relief from the state and the occasional box from that parish, but that was it.

They were on their own.

After his death, they sold their share of the boat and Maureen and her brothers worked their poor farm the best they could. The Irish laughed about the Great Depression as the yanks called what they were going through as if that weren’t just another day in

Ireland. In her house, they were all but boiling their shoes to sup.

One by one the boys began to run off and Maureen left school. It killed her to do it as she liked learning, but she was needed more at home. That was that. She was

i 42

fourteen. She milked cows for the man down the road, raised chickens for the eggs and meat, dug turf, and did whatever else she could to make a few bob including letting the pig farmer put his clammy hands on her breasts and showing the local lads her privates

for sixpence. Sure, but these boyos barely had a brain and a shilling among them, and she was happy to separate them from their money. Any one of them who tried for more than what they had paid her for found himself laid flat with a fat lip.

By the time Maureen was sixteen sure didn’t every girl in all of Ireland want to be a nun? But there were nuns and then there were nuns. The nun that Maureen longed to be, one with a job, status, and respect - a woman living an esteemed alternative to marriage and motherhood - required money and her family had none. She needed a dowry in order to be admitted into the convent as a choir nun7. Without money Maureen would be admitted as a lay sister and be subjected to the same or worse drudgery as she had at home.

“What’s the good in that?” she thought.

But now what? Marry some local boy and watch him break his back for pennies while she produced babe upon hungry babe for him? Surely, God, there must be something else.

Her mammy, seeing her Maureen’s heart broken, her so clever and all, and her only girl, had told her that if she was a good girl, continued to work hard, and said her prayers and helped her with all these damn kids she’d see to it, as God was her judge, that

7 Canon law in Ireland in those days prescribed that an entrant into the convent present the equivalent of a current dowry. Dowried nuns or choir nuns received training in teaching or nursing. Girls with a vocation but no dowry entered the convent as lay sisters and were, in effect, servants to the dowried nuns without possibility for advancement. 43

if anyone at all was going to America it would be her. “You’re the smartest of the bunch

and your father would have wanted it,” her mother told her. “Why shouldn’t a girl have a

go at a better life?”

A better life - didn’t that just make an Irish mother sigh? Why did God hate the

Irish so? But the truth was that God could never hate the Irish more than they hated

themselves and that good things do come to those who wait: Ireland’s day would come.

But only a madman would have said that in the 1930s.

“I hate for you to go, mind, but when the time comes, I’ll sell the Claddagh ring

me gran gave me that was given to her by her gran,” her mother said. “It’s gold and all

with a diamond right in the middle of the heart. It should be worth a few bob.”

“A few bob?” Maureen thought. “Woman, we could be eating that now.” But

wasn’t that just like her mam to be holding on to things like rings and hope?

“There’s nothing for any of us here at all,” Maureen thought. “This Irish life will never make anyone anything other than stupid or dead. I will leave this place and never come back.” She shocked herself to think this way, but she knew it was true.

America thumped like a drum beat in Maureen’s heart and brain. America,

America. She knew almost nothing about the country except what she read in magazines.

Whenever she found an old newspaper or magazine she’d go through it and cut out any pictures she found of America and put them in a little book. Eleanor Roosevelt. Cary

Grant. Some fella called Lou Gehrig who played a thing called baseball wearing a funny little suit with a cap. And the cars and houses! Everyone was rich in America. Even the 7 44

poor people looked rich. American men on the bread lines seemed better fed than the ones in Ireland.

“America, I’m coming,” she thought. “I’ll learn to swim to get there if I have to.”

She considered her prospects as a poor Irish girl with little education and no money and added: “And if I have to go marrying some man when I’m there to get by then that’s what

I’ll do as well. I’ll do whatever needs doing.”

The vaunted family Claddagh ring fetched just over three pounds - barely $15.

She’d need at least ten times that for the passage and enough to get by for the week or so until she found a job. She was such a long way from the cost of the passage! How could she make money? What skills did she have? Maureen prayed to the Virgin for guidance.

“Show me a way, blessed mother,” she prayed. “Shine your light upon me.”

It wasn’t the blessed mother but a fella by the name of Jimmy Doolan that put into her mind one Saturday night behind the pub that getting the cost of the ticket to America might require her to do a bit more than just let the fellas look at her titties.

“Oh, Maureen,” Jimmy Dolan moaned. “You’re such a beautiful girl. And I’m in such a way here. Won’t you let me get to know you better?”

“Better how, Jimmy Doolan?” Maureen demanded.

“Well, I’d be grateful if you’d help a fella out,” he said.

“Help you how?”

“Well,” he said motioning to the growing bulge in his trousers. “With this.”

Maureen stared at the mound. Horrified, she turned to run away. 45

“Please Mau,” he begged grabbing her arm. He groped into his pocket. “I’ll give you ten shillings.”

Maureen pulled away, but paused and considered. “Make it fifteen and we have a deal,” she said.

Those silly gits could too easily be separated from their money for a peek, waggle, and feel. If they wanted more she charges for it and they all knew that. She had her limits. She’d take the thing in her hand and yank and diddle on it until the fella discharged his wee load, but she wouldn’t put her mouth to the thing nor let it anywhere near her person. She wouldn’t let them do anything to her with. Well, if the price was right she might kiss it. Maybe a lick, but that was only for a fella she knew well, a repeat customer. She let certain fellas place his finger so, which felt wonderful good she had to admit, but she wouldn’t let them do it for long. Unless it was a fella she’d seen before a few times. But it was mostly all about them and their wee dingle-dangles anyway. As long as she kept them satisfied, they didn’t ask for more. They counted on her discretion and she theirs.

Men were so ridiculous. They went out on the water and either caught nothing or drowned. They made bad decisions that got them jailed or killed. They drank and got into fights and screwed things up. All because of those meats what hung between their legs.

Or at least that was the way it was as far as Maureen could tell.

The boys all liked her. She liked all of them fine, but she knew they had a different idea of what “like” meant. She had to be careful. They all wanted to be her 46

special fella and she told them all that they were. Anything to get those precious shilling

from their hands.

Was what she was doing a sin? She thought and prayed on it, but she didn’t think

so. But she didn’t take the question to a priest just to be on the safe side. Jaysus, didn’t

they think every little thing was a sin? And what business was this of theirs anyway?

Maureen took great care to ensure that her virginity as she defined it and as

generations of Irishwomen before had defined it stayed intact and it would still be

available to give as a gift to her husband on their wedding night should such a night come

to pass. She knew that none of the fellas would say a word, so happy they were to have

some relief in their hardscrabble lives. In her little part of Ireland she got the reputation as

a challenge more than a tease and many was the time Maureen took a club to a fella to get

him to stop.

She was all business.

Pence and pound the girl saved and put the fare together - her mother didn’t bat

an eye over where the money came from - and, as far as Maureen was concerned, she was

still a good girl when in 1942, with a war going on and Germans blowing boats up and

her not caring, she sailed from Ireland to the exotic city of Boston, Massachusetts with a new coat and hat, a new pair of shoes, new underwear, and the equivalent of S150 in a purse her mam gave her. Maureen never asked her mam where the money came from which was the understanding they had about all things. Maureen had the address of a rectory in this Boston place and a letter of reference and a letter of introduction from her parish priest. 47

“Make it a good one, Father,” she told him as she pushed a folded five pound note

his way.

This Boston! What a place! Cars and buildings and people everywhere. A movie

theater on every comer. Running water and heat from pipes. Stores full floor to ceiling

with wonderful things. A machine that did the washing - you put the clothes in dirty and

they came out clean! And everyone had a separate room with a toilet and tub right inside

their house.

When Maureen looked the rectory up, she found she was in luck indeed - the

good fathers’ live-in cook was about to turn 80 and the priests had convinced her to

retire. As instructed, her parish priest had written Maureen a sterling letter of introduction

and recommendation, good enough to get her a job at that place they called the White

House, even though the priest had heard the odd, unsettling rumor about her. But never

mind. That was the way of the world in Ireland. He got his money and he wrote the

fecking letter.

And Maureen took it from there. The priests could see that she was a sturdy,

competent country girl and the letter attested to her piety—and they needed someone who

wouldn’t be burning their breakfast and putting salt in the sugar bowl as their dear old

addled cook had come to do. As it happened, the girl who kept their house was getting

married - would Maureen be willing to take that on as well?

But Maureen had her wits about her. “Sure, then I’ll be compensated for doing the two jobs? You wouldn’t be expecting me to be doing two jobs for the price of one, would you now fathers?” 48

The rectory was the grandest house Maureen had ever seen. These American

priests had room upon room and running water, lights that turned on with a wee button on

the wall, a radio, and an automobile. And heat that came right up through these fancy

metal things in the floor! They were living like kings! In exchange for doing all the

cooking, the laundry, and cleaning the eight bedrooms in the rectory, she was given room

and board and fifteen dollars for a five and a half day week. A fortune, she thought.

“So what if I’m washing men’s underwear? I’m in America. I’d eat men’s I underwear if I needed to,” she thought.

On her free afternoons, she would go to the pictures. Oh, she was mad for them!

Of course, it only took her about ten minutes in America to know that things there weren’t anything like the pictures, but still she didn’t mind.

In Ireland, she slept in the same bed with her gran. The old woman would kick her and cry out in the night and occasionally wee the bed. In America, Maureen had her very own room not to mention bed in a clean warm house. And that came with plenty to eat, and money of her own. She wasn’t bad looking - she knew that about herself - and she’d catch the fellas eying her when she walked about town.

Lord, there were a lot of Irish in Boston! There were Irish bom there and Irish bom here. But so much better looking! The Irish here wore smart suits with fresh haircuts and shiny shoes. She could recognize them by their voices, even the American ones. All the fellas in the butchers and all the fellas that made deliveries to the rectory. All the handsome policemen she talked to. And all the fellas at church who weren’t Irish were 49

Italian or Polish. With names she couldn’t pronounce. Irish or Italian or Polish or

Martian, they sure they weren’t shy about asking her name.

Maureen knew enough about fellas - actually, she knew a lot about fellas - and

what they were after and to be careful and all, but she saw nothing wrong with letting them buy her an ice cream and walk with her in the Public Garden. She’d ride the swan boats with them and maybe she’d let them hold her hand and walk her back to the rectory. And maybe, just maybe, she’d let one or two of them give her a little peck. But that was it. None of these fellas had much money themselves. She had made her fare by making the boys back home pay. But now she was in America and didn’t need to do those things. Here is this new country, she had decided that she’d only jump for one of them fellas who could offer her something better-a lot better - than the good deal she had for herself at the rectory.

She was in no hurry.

Men. Truth be told, Maureen could take ’em or leave ’em, but they were part of

God’s plan, apparently, so who was she to question? Maureen had never given much mind to fellas beyond what she could get out of them. There had been so many boys at home and all the while she was doing for them. And her poor father struggling so just to keep his head clear. And then dying and leaving them all. Maureen had never considered fellas to be much more than big bundles of need. It seemed to her growing up that the only ones around her who knew how to get things done were women. Yet everyone talked up the men to keep their spirits rising. She supposed that’s the way God intended. 50

Figures, being a fella Himself. Any man who was going to be in her life needed to be useful and any man she knew in Ireland wasn’t worth a bucket of spit.

“Maybe here, they’re different,” she thought.

This Boston felt more like home with each passing month. As the War began to wind down, Maureen found herself wondering about what life would be like once all the soldiers - the regular American fellas - came back. Surely, the real American boys were better than Irish ones? Not that the Irish ones were bad, but Maureen couldn’t help feeling that anyone of them would cock things up given half a chance.

“It’s in the blood,” Maureen thought. “We cock things up, we Irish do.”

And Maureen had had enough of that to last a lifetime. She would lie in her nice

American bed and remember how things were for her in Ireland. The house so crowded and smelling like people, the food meager, her clothes mended until they could be mended no more. She missed her mam fiercely, but what she remembered most were the faces of all those fellas behind the pub or down by the train. Her so single-minded counting of every penny they gave her, every penny they paid for her good girlhood.

Was it worth it?

And then she’d hear the furnace kick into gear and survey the fine room she had to herself, to her own sink in the comer, the bathroom down the hall for her use only, to a closet full of her own nice things, and it would still and comfort her heart.

“You bet your Irish arse it was worth it,” thought Maureen. 51

The American fellas came back from the war by the boatloads. Suddenly Boston was full of handsome men in uniform looking to make up for lost time. There were easy on the eyes these fellas, but they scared Maureen - they were so ready to go.

Would she like to have one of them fellas for herself she wondered? She was getting on -she was now twenty-two. She had left school right after her father died, so the only thing she knew how to do was look after things. Necessity had made her sharp with figures, but she wasn’t sure what all she could do with that. She did know that the rectory didn’t offer much of a future. Sure, she could stay there forever, but as a spinster. Did she want to have a home and family?

Maureen was surprised at these feelings she began to have. She had always been so independent and having a man seemed like a lot of work if her father offered any example. And children, too, seemed an awful burden.

But she wasn’t in Ireland anymore. Here in America there were machines to make your life easy. Things worked in America. In Ireland she only resented other people because of the never-ending amount of work they caused. What if that wasn’t the case?

People weren’t so bad if you took most of the work out of them. And, the God’s honest truth was that Maureen was lonely.

She had met her goal of getting out of Ireland. Now what?

A respectable woman doesn’t live her life alone. People would talk about her being strange. And a life in servitude, even one as benign as in a grand rectory, was a slow ticking death. A girl can fool herself for a bit and then watch herself age as her dreams fade away. 52

“I think I can do better than this rectory, girl or no, education or no,” she thought.

“I think I might like to find someone. Maybe marriage would be alright, the right fella and all.”

But how does one find the right fella? All her life the fellas had found her.

Oh, God works in mysterious ways. Do not doubt that He has a plan for each of us.

Maureen had no sooner started this way of thinking about fellas and family and such when who should come along but a new handyman the rectory took on, a young fella named Martin Flynn himself bom in Ireland, though he’d come over with his family when he was a wee kid. He wasn’t much to look at, but Lord God was he big - the size of him! And he wasn’t like the other greenhorns, drinking and acting the fool. You can take the Irish out of Ireland but taking the stupid out of them was another thing altogether.

This Martin Flynn had a good head on those big shoulders.

Ah, but he was Irish. Maureen had been thinking about American boys, with their good teeth and all shiny in their uniforms. But he had been here since he was a little one; he was as good as an American. Wasn’t he as good?

This Martin Flynn ran all the errands, drove the priests to their sick calls, and fixed whatever needed fixing around the rectory. He caulked windows, repaired the roof and could figure out anything mechanical, including the boiler which must have come over on the Mayflower it was so old. And he was almost an American. 53

One night after Maureen had agreed to go to the pictures with him, he had

confided in Maureen that he was taking a correspondence course in automotive repair and was saving every penny he could to open his own garage.

“I’ve always been able to fix things,” he told Maureen “I reckon now that this war

is done, people will be back to buying cars and such. I reckon a fella could make a good living fixing cars.”

Maureen liked him talking about saving up and thinking about the future. “That sounds like a fine plan,” she said. She was liking this Martin Flynn, but there was something about him that troubled her.

“Why weren’t you in the service yourself, then?” Maureen finally got up the nerve to ask him. She liked him, sure, but she wanted to make sure there was nothing quare about him before anything got started between them.

Martin blushed and looked down at his shoes. He dreaded this question. “It’s well you should ask,” he said. “I went and tried to sign up and all. But, see, I’m missing my wee toe on my right foot. Happened on the 4th of July when I was eight. Do you know what that is, the 4th of July?”

“Yes, I know what that is. I’ve been here gone three years.”

“Right. Well, I was barefoot, my cousin threw a firecracker, I stepped on it, and well, it’s lucky I didn’t lose my whole foot the doctor said.”

“Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph,” Maureen said. 54

“Aye, that,” Martin said. “It made me unfit for military service. But I’m fine in

every other way.” He blushed again. “The way I’ve come to see it is someone had to stay behind and fix everything. Keep everything going so. It was my way of doing my bit.”

Maureen nodded and pondered. He was a decent fella, this Martin. He was built for hard work, clever in his own way - and with no monkey business in him. The

American boys could be so fresh.

In Martin, she found a big sturdy fella. He didn’t look like he’d ever wear out or wear down. He was cheerful and calm. Optimistic like a yank and worked like a sonofabitch like an Irishman.

“A bird in hand,” Maureen thought. “Why not?” She decided right then and there that she was going to marry this Martin Flynn and she put the question to him the first chance she got. That’s just the way she was.

Martin Flynn did not know what to make of this raven-haired spitfire. “Isn’t it the man who’s supposed to be doing the asking?” he said. “And we hardly know each other.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s written in stone anywhere who asks who and you need to be sure of one thing about me and that is if there’s something I want I won’t wait to be asked,” she said. “We’ll have a six month engagement - we ought to know each other well enough after that.”

After six months, in 1945, they were married. She had saved over $1000 from her wages and still had most of the $150 she came over with. Martin was astonished by

Maureen in every way there was to be. He managed to marry a beautiful, smart, ferocious woman, who was good with money and Irish to boot. And what she brought to the 55

marriage bed were the kinds of talents most fellas only dreamed about. Martin Flynn thought he had died and gone to heaven.

Maureen soon discovered that there were layers of fun to be had in this married way of being with a fella and a year after they were married, Maureen and Martin had their first child - a boy. Sixteen months after that, another boy. And then another boy.

But on June 27, 1952, Maureen and Martin had a girl. They named her Margaret after Maureen’s dear mammy whom she fiercely missed and would probably not see again in this life. After Margaret came three more boys. And then enough was enough for

Maureen.

“We’re done now, Martin,” Maureen told her husband. “They’ll be just the nine of us. An average-sized American family.”

The Flynn family prospered. Oh, it was grand this America life! Martin opened a garage and Maureen ran the office and did the books. By the time, their fifth child arrived, Martin leased the lot next to his shop and sold used cars. By the time all their children were bom, he owned the lot and another across town. Maureen remembered to be grateful and would send money to her mam from time to time. Should she lapse, she’d be given something to remind her.

I pray to-(jodour Almighty father thuvt thtfr Letter ftndyyou/ andyour fam ily CrvgoodJxecdth/ and/ that: thCngygo-well/fbr the/ a ll/ of 'you/ there'. When- 56

Isaymyprayeryatnightlsee'you/ytillaythe'Wee/sweetgirlyou/willaZivayy

be/to-me/, your own/ mam/.

I with/thatI had/better newy to- report to-you/from/here/athome'. Your

sweet old/grow caught the/grip andCjodsaw to call Jxer h^me/lait month/.

We'had a quietfuneral for her ay she/ wanted and decided/ not to- bother you/

a t aU/ with/our troubles ay her patting' way a/ blessing'really she/ being-so-old

and sickly. Both/your old auntie/ and I have/ had the/grip too- and it hay set

uylow aw t unable/to d^ too much/. The' weather hay been/ so- that we/

couldnt do- much/ anywayy. Although/the'poor weather hay c&u&ed uy to-

burn/ more/ turf thaw usual/ and caused an/ additional strain on/ our purse/

Stringy. We/pray that the'roof holdy. We/Ve/feeling/a/bit better now, praise/

(jod, though/ weak/.

(jodalto-saw fttotajce/our cow during'her calving/ so- ncnv we/have/

no- milk/ at all for uy or to sellfor what few pence/ It might bring'uy. We/can

no-longer get the/party to repair our old tractor so- Itstty now rusting'away

Cnthe'yard. Your brother frank/ way to bring'someone/round with/a lorry to

take' it away, butthingyhave/talcena/turn/fbr him/ay welt. Helyhurthiy

back/and then he/and poor Thereto/ loytthe' baby so-hely taking- thingy hard.

Of course'God willprovide/ayHe/alwayydoey inHiy wisdom and glory, although/ ifyou/ might be/sparing/ whateveryou/ cawfrom/your good life/ in

A merica/, we/ in/poor Ireland would be/grateful/. I would sooner cut off1 my arm/thaw see/yow d

hardship then/ God/fbrgCve' me',for everv me^ttonCng' Ct. We/wtlL manage/

iomehow according'to-(jod’yplan/.

’Slewing'you/foryour thotightyofgeneroiity towards your poor mother

here/ Crx/Ireiand/ who- loveyyou/ more/ than/ lefe/ CtseZf. I am/ loofUng/forward to~

the/day we' meet aga^n/ even/ Cf CtCy only Crv heaven/ when/ God/holdyuyaZl/£n/

HCy lovung/embrace'.

I remain; your only mother

The land of milk and honey - that’s what Maureen thought about America when she was in Ireland and she knew that’s what them left behind thought of Maureen’s new life. A big shot, their Maureen. Married to a man with his own business. Living in a grand house. Maureen couldn’t blame them for thinking that way. She’d have thought the same. Well, she would always do what she could for the folks back in the old country.

Never, ever did Maureen question her choices or consider them sacrifices.

Maureen was raising strapping American children who she took to doctors when they ailed. Their teeth were cleaned and repaired when needed. They had good clothes and shoes and plenty to eat. Maureen would go to a shop for the sole purpose of having someone tend to her hair and Martin let her have cards at all the fine stores that let her buy things without handing anybody any money.

This America!

Indeed. This America gave the Flynn children vacations and pets and music lessons and a good Catholic education. Maureen watched her little boys run here and 58

there screaming and hollering with their wee willies every which way just like she

remembered it back home growing up. In the midst of all of it, grew her rose, her

precious Margaret.

Girls are different than boys, this much Maureen knew and knew intimately. Girls

didn’t require nearly half the maintenance of boys. Girls didn’t have needs. But her girl, her Margaret was different than other girls. Maureen couldn’t quite say how exactly.

Was it the way she carried herself, the confidence in her voice? Oh, Margaret was a fierce one, a beauty, and brilliant and all - excellent at sports and in love with science and math. In fact, the girl seemed capable at anything she tried her hand at.

“More boy than many of the boys,” Margaret’s fifth grade nun had told Maureen.

“And I mean that as a compliment.”

“I’m taking it so,” Maureen had said. But it did make Maureen go thoughtful.

Maybe she wasn’t doing right by Margaret?

“What is it about our Margaret do you suppose that makes her so different from other girls?” Maureen asked Martin.

“She’s your daughter,” Martin answered. “What do you expect?”

“We should have called her Brigid like the goddess,” Maureen said “She was a warrior.”

“Our Margaret would be a warrior even if we called Mud,” Martin said. “The fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“True,” Maureen admitted. “Do you think she’ll be a scientist or a lawyer?”

“I think she’ll be president,” Martin said. 59

“Here’s what an Irish girl can do in America with good food and education and all,” Maureen thought. “Sure, it will be a sad day when the time comes and I hand over my sweet girl to some man.”

Some man. Maureen knew that was how things played out - didn’t it now for her own self? But somehow, she just could not see it happening for Margaret. Why did she think that? Margaret was just a child - who knows what the future held for her? Maureen quietly watched and compared her daughter to other girls. The older Margaret became the more striking the comparisons and still Maureen could not quite put her finger on it.

“Maybe it’s all them brothers,” Maureen thought. “Makes a girl a certain way so.” 60

THREE

Chip could remember being a very young boy and going for walks with his

mother. She would take him out of their neighborhood down to the banks of the Ohio.

From the flood wall, you could see far across the river and into Kentucky.

“That’s Kentucky,” his mother would say. “But this is home.”

On fresh Indiana spring days, his mother would say to him “Look at how good things are, Chip. Look at the world coming to life.”

They would walk through the fields just coming back to life after winter and his mother would name all the wild flowers for him.

“This is bloodroot, this is phlox. This is toad shade. And this one is called

Dutchman’s breeches. Isn’t that a funny name?”

The natural world was decoded for him as if his mother had been granted special powers.

“These flowers aren’t just pretty,” she told him. “They are also useful. Bloodroot makes a beautiful dye. It can be red, pink or orange depending on what kind of mordant you use,” she told him. “A mordant is used to set the color in the fabric so it stays. Do you understand? Can you say that? Mordant?”

“Mordant,” said Chip.

“We’ll try it sometime,” and she raised her face to the Indiana sun. 61

“The people who settled New Albany were brothers from Albany, New York.

Your father once wanted to go live in New York City, but I knew that would pass. We’re

Hoosiers. This is home.”

Sometimes Dolly would bring Chip with her to the fabric store. For Chip the fabric store was like walking through a differ kind of garden. Such abundance! Such richness of color! And it never faded - always in season.

His mother knew all the names of the fabrics and their uses - just like the wildflowers.

“Fabrics are a lot like flowers, Chip” she told him. “They need to be handled with care - lovingly, respectfully. There are so many beautiful things you can create with them.”

Dolly was a precise and imaginative seamstress. “You don’t want to be wasting your time ripping things out, Chip. You run the risk of ruining your beautiful fabric doing that.”

His mother would take him by the hand and lead him down the aisles of the store, stopping to touch and admire bolt after bolt of material.

Chip’s father would sometimes take Chip to a lumber yard to show him different kinds of moulding. “This is the kind of stuff I make, Chip,” Hiram told him. “This is called base cap. You use it to finish your baseboards, give them a fancier look. This is crown moulding. You run it along the top of your wall. And this is dentil moulding, a real specialty product. Hard to make. Kind of like teeth, see? That’s a way to remember it.

Den til is like den tal. Like teeth. Get it? Dentil, dental. ” ______

62

Chip would try to be interested, but the lumber yard just didn’t hold the same allure as the fabric store did. In fact, the lumber yard was just a little bit more fun than going to the dentist. Dentil, dentist. Deathly.

“This is chintz,” Dolly would tell him. “It was invented in India. It’s nice for drapes and upholstery. And this is chiffon - feel it, it’s like an angel’s wings.” Dolly let some chiffon flutter from the bolt to demonstrate. “See? Lighter than air! It’s used in evening gowns that ladies wear when they go to fancy places. Or out dancing. Remember that lovely dress that Ginger Rogers wore in that movie Carefree that we saw on television? Remember how it moved when she danced? It was made of chiffon.” Chip closed his eyes remembering.

“Chiffon,” he thought.

“This type of linen is called damask because of the pattern - see? And this is velvet. It’s very difficult to work with, but the results are beautiful.” She looked into

Chip’s eyes. “It’s worth it, “she said. “See how soft? Like a kitten.” She rubbed an edge against the boy’s cheek.

“And then there’s all of this,” she said gesturing to the rolls of lace and trim and fringe. “These are the things that can really make your garment, Chip. These put the finishing touch to your work. They add a certain finesse. As long as you don’t overdo it.

You never want your garment to look like you were trying too hard. Do you understand?”

Dolly was well known for as a seamstress in New Albany. She made custom dresses and petticoats for square dancers. Dolly had grown up with square dancing and square dancing had become all the rage in Indiana in the 50s. Many couples liked to have 63

a shirt made for the man that matched the women’s dress, especially if they were going to be in a competition of which there were many in the Midwest.

But the thing Dolly was best known for were her petticoats. As far as Dolly was concerned, a dress was only as good as its petticoat. A petticoat prevented a dress from clinging to the dancer’s legs. If a petticoat was too long, it could get in the way of the dancer. If the dress was too long, it would “lampshade” and the fabric of the dress would just droop over the edge. They needed to work together: a petticoat needed to be in harmony with the dress - it’s what gave the dress its swing. A good petticoat made the dress come alive; it’s what turned a dress from a garment into a work of art, a kind of kinetic sculpture. The right dress and petticoat combination added a whole other dimension to the dance. Chip understood this, but then Chip liked dance.

Dolly loved square dancing. But Hiram didn’t like to dance. It was his one major flaw, Dolly thought. If she could fix just one thing about him, it would be that: Hiram would dance with her. Hiram never gave dancing much of a chance, in her opinion.

“Square dancing isn’t like ballroom dancing, Hiram,” she would tell him. “In square dancing someone tells you what to do. Even clumsy men can square dance. Heck, anyone can square dance.”

But Hiram always refused and eventually Dolly stopped asking.

Chip, on the other hand, was willing to do anything with his mother. He took to square dancing right away. A dance partner at last!

In fact, Chip took to everything Dolly introduced him to. She had started him on piano was he was barely four, his little legs dangling over then bench. By the time he was 64

eight, Hiram had introduced the boy to guitar and accordion. Chip picked up instruments so easily!

Chip took to needle and thread like a natural. Dolly would look over at him all of eight years old with pins in his mouth and a measuring tape draped around his neck like a little tailor. He had such a good eye! That wasn’t something you could teach - no, he was born with that ability.

By the time he was in fourth grade, when other boys were making bread boards and book ends in shop class, Chip was making aprons and tote bags with his mother. By the time Chip was in fifth grade, Dolly was helping him pick out patterns so he could make his own Halloween costume.

“How fun!” said Dolly fingering a sample of a matador’s outfit. “What do you think, Chip?” But Chip was eying the Senorita’s outfit which was covered in ruffles and lace.

“It’s very pretty, isn’t it?” Dolly said.

“Yes,” said Chip. “Do you think I could make something like this someday?”

“I think that you could probably make something like that now,” she said carefully. “Maybe you can start helping me with the square dancing dresses and petticoats.”

“Really?”

“Sure,” Dolly said. “If you want to.

“I want to. I want to make beautiful things.”

He wants to make beautiful things. What eleven year old boy says that? 65

Dolly took a deep breath. “What do you think about this matador outfit?” she

asked.

“I did this,” Dolly thought. “Chip spends too much time with me.” She and Chip

walked to the cashier with their purchases. She watched him reach out and fondle the

fabric as they passed, just like she did. “No,” she thought. “Hiram did this. He does not

spend enough time with him.”

Chip was such good company, Dolly couldn’t help turn to him for conversation.

They liked so many of the same things and he listened to everything Dolly said as if it

was the gospel from on high. And Hiram, after all those years of working in the mill, was

now nearly deaf. He was becoming progressively harder for Dolly to talk to. He shouted

all the time apparently unaware that he was the one who couldn’t hear. Night after night

Hiram retreated to the basement to work on his dummies. All Hiram seemed to care about

were those damn dummies.

“The dummies scare me a little, Mom,” Chip confided.

Dolly nodded. “I know what you mean.”

It was clear to Dolly that Hiram didn’t need to simply spend time with the boy, he needed to talk to him. One on one. About, well, manly things. Chip needed guidance.

Dolly hardly knew where to start and she wished that Hiram would step up to the task.

“Chip’s a good boy,” Hiram would say.

“He is a good boy,” Dolly would agree. “But he’s growing up. He’s...growing up.”

“He’s a good boy,” Hiram would say. 66

Camp Pobcufion/

Ju ly 17, 1964

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Wezare/haA/Ong'a/<$ood/Wme/.

Love/from/your ion/,

ChCp

But some things were said about Chip in New Albany. Eyebrow raising things, unkind things. Of course, never to Hiram and Dolly directly. But Dolly had heard them

said at the market or outside of church when people thought she couldn’t hear.

“Hiram is the one who’s deaf,” she thought, her face burning with embarrassment.

“They’re jealous, that’s all. Jealous of all of Chip’s God-giving talent.”

Were it not for the fact that Hiram and Dolly were so highly regarded in the community and that Chip was, well, so exceptional, Chip might have had a very rough ride during his childhood and adolescence. But Chip had learned enough about posturing by watching other boys and his size - over six feet starting high school - made him intimidating on the playing field. And his musical abilities shut everyone else up. 67

There was not a lot of room or reward for being different in New Albany, Indiana.

Instead of reveling in his abilities, Chip spent most of his time being lonely.

The obligatory sports were made easier to endure by the locker room reward that came after them.

By the time Chip got to be about fourteen, it seemed that his heart was filled with music. He loved watching all the variety shows with his parents. He loved Dinah Shore,

Peggy Lee, and Lena Home. He was also very fond of Eddy Arnold and could imitate his yodel from the song “Cattle Call” - a full-throated falsetto.

“Maybe he’ll be a dance caller,” Dolly’s friends told her. “He’s got the pipes for it.”

“Yes, maybe he will,” said Dolly. He, indeed, “had the pipes.” But she knew in her heart that they were not destined for calling square dancing.

But Chip’s mind - and he couldn’t have told you exactly when or why or how - became filled with images of boys. Boys playing ball. Boys riding bikes. Ruddy- cheeked boys passing him in the hall in school leaving a scent in the air of sweat and fresh air and the mill workers they would soon become. Boys in their chinos and corduroys. Boys without shirts, the sun glinting on the beads of sweat blooming on their hairless chests and on the golden down that ran from the nape of their necks to the waist band of their pants. Sometimes the elastic of their underwear would peep out from the top of their Levis, encircling their bodies like a ribbon on a gift. All these boys, short and tall, crew-cutted or curly haired, they all seemed to be placed in the world for the sole purpose to catch Chip’s gaze. 68

And gaze is all he did and he did it as discretely as he could. As a cover, he began to ask certain girls out at school, which gave him all the more reason to hang out with other boys. The other boys would brag about all the sex they were pretending to have, so

Chip would do the same. It made him feel ridiculous. Didn’t they feel ridiculous? But it eased the pressure at home - his parents were beyond thrilled when they heard he was taking some girl, any girl, to the movies. And the girls Chip chose to go out with were grateful for his company. A girl he took out a few times was named Joanne and her father was a minister.

“Chip is such a gentleman,” Joanne told her best friend, Linda. “More like he’s...you know,” Linda said. “Well, if he is, there should be more like him,” Joanne said. “I feel perfectly safe with him and Chip Maffey knows everything there is to know about music and fashion.”

Chip’s sense of fashion actually made him very popular with girls. He loved talking about dresses. The girls were all eager to consult with him around prom time. The other boys watched warily thinking that Chip had come upon an angle they could never have thought of. By the time Chip was a sophomore, he and his mother were designing and making prom dresses.

When Chip lay in his bed at night waiting for sleep to take him he would bring into his ears the music he loved. All the singing and swinging from TV; everyone from

Bunny Paul to Mitch Miller and the Gang. He let his mind take him to a certain song, a particular favorite: Connie Francis singing “Where the Boys Are.” Into his mind he would review mental files of boys and bring the faces and bodies of boys he had seen. In 69

this way he would take himself out of Indiana and into a world he could barely imagine but somehow knew existed.

Both of his parents, in their way, knew that Chip was different than other boys.

They could see it but they didn’t know what to do about it. Or how to talk about it - with him or with each other. It takes all different kinds of people to make a world, right? God knows what He’s doing. Perhaps all of Chip’s gifts will outweigh his differences.

Chip was in show after show in high school - Oklahoma, Music Man, West Side

Story: he starred in them all. With his wonderful voice and presence, Chip wowed them in New Albany.

Hiram actually thought that Chip had been touched by the hand of God.

“He has a calling,” Hiram thought. “I never got a chance,” Hiram would say.

“But, my Chip - he’s going places.”

America was at war in Vietnam. Every night the war was waged on television and

Hiram and Dolly watched boys not much older than Chip jump out of helicopters and carry guns through the jungle. Hiram prayed that Chip’s ticket out of Indiana would not be the same as his was — a draft notice. While Hiram had always been ambivalent about college for Chip, Dolly considered it essential.

Hiram’s mind was changed about college for Chip when he learned that college students were eligible for deferments from the draft. He couldn’t see Chip going through the kinds of things he had endured in the service, he just couldn’t. He couldn’t see Chip working in a mill, but Hiram never imagined that he himself would either. The draft 70

business was put on hold when the musical theater department at Indiana University at

Bloomington offered Chip a scholarship.

“Thank God he’s staying in Indiana,” Dolly had thought.

“Thank God he’s leaving New Albany,” Hiram had thought.

When the time came for Chip to leave, Hiram took him aside. Chip feared this was the dreaded “talk” that they had mercifully managed to avoid.

“You need to remember that you’re a Maffey,” was all Hiram could think to say.

Father and son looked at each other, neither knowing what being a Maffey meant.

Chip was grateful for both of them that his father didn’t delve into anything embarrassing and appreciated that this was the best that his father could do. They never talked about anything. Chip, nodded. “Yep, I’m a Maffey all right,” he thought.

“I will, Dad,” Chip said.

Bloomington, Indiana is a lovely college town barely a two hour drive from New

Albany. But it might has well have been on Mars. Everything about Bloomington was so very different to Chip. The campus of Indiana University is gorgeous: Indiana limestone buildings perched around great expanses of tree-lined lawn. Chip felt like he was walking on to a movie set and in a way he was.

This was where he was going to stage his new life, he was certain of that.

Bloomington was where Chip was going to be himself. Whatever that was. Even Chip wasn’t certain. He’d been a dutiful son, a tailor, a small town musical theater star. What he did know was that he had yearnings that he dared not attempt to satisfy in New

Albany, but now at eighteen and here in Bloomington he didn’t know where to start. 71

And he could barely wait to.

It was 1969. There were regular protests against the Vietnam War in town.

Impassioned speakers held rallies against the war near the Sample Gates. This was all new to Chip. No one was impassioned about anything in New Albany, at least not to the point of actually saying something about it.

Among all the posters and flyers that Chip saw on campus for chess clubs and

Spanish clubs and guitar lessons and fraternities was one for a group called the Gay

Union. It had a picture of two guys with their arms around each other and two girls with their arms around each other. It said “Gay Liberation! Join the Struggle!” and gave a date and time for a meeting.

Chip had heard about the Stonewall riots that had happened that summer in New

York City8. But that was New York City, this was Indiana. Chip felt like such a bumpkin; he had never even heard the term “gay” before. Was that what he was? Gay? Queer? A sissy after all? All he had ever done back home was look at other boys. That’s all, just look; he had never actually touched one. He didn’t dare. Even his size would not have protected him from all in New Albany who would do him harm if he had.

But here at IU in the theater department and in the music practice rooms when

Chip looked at other boys, many of them looked back. Many of them spoke to Chip and took his hand and touched his face and kissed his lips.

g The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations by members of the gay community - many of them drag queens - against a police raid on June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in New York’s Greenwich Village. 72

Chip quickly made up for lost time.

When Chip met a boy named Jack Kniepfel he just knew in his gut that this life would never be the same. Jack was an athlete, lanky and muscular. He had been a star baseball player in high school. He was also a fabulous musician and singer. They shared all the same interests and they soon became inseparable. Jack was a couple of years older and he introduced Chip to a whole new world.

“You can live however you want to live, Chip,” Jack told him. “It’s your life. Just live it to death!”

“What does that mean?” Chip asked. “Live it to death - how do I do that?”

Jack placed his hand on Chip’s heart. “By doing whatever this tells you to do,” he said. “I know that sounds like a greeting card, but it’s really true.”

“It does sound like a greeting card,” Chip said.

“But it’s true.”

“Really.”

“Really.”

“How do you know?” Chip persisted.

“I know everything, darling,” Jack said.

“You do not,” Chip said. “Look at what you’re wearing.”

By the time Chip was a sophomore, Jack was bringing him to a bar near campus called Nick’s English Hut. Chip got in using the fake ID Jack helped him get. The Hut wasn’t a gay bar per se, but it was popular with gays and that appeared to be all right with everyone. Jack graduated in 1971 and Chip decided to go to summer school. On a day 73

Chip would never forget - July 23, 1971 to be exact-the owner of the Hut posted a sign on the door that said “This is a bar, not a fruit stand.”

Chip went in and demanded to know what was meant by the sign. “It means exactly what you think it means,” the manager told him as he escorted Chip out.

Chip was furious; he couldn’t remember ever being so angry. He was being denied access to a public place?

It had never occurred to him that anyone would ever have a problem with anyone until it dawned on Chip that the reason everyone was ok with everyone else is because everyone was exactly like everyone else. And if they weren’t they pretended to be. He remembered all the pretending he did in New Albany and he felt ashamed.

The night after being escorted from the bar, Chip came back with Jack and some other people from a newly formed campus organization called the Gay Liberation Front and organized a picket line outside the bar. They picketed day and night for three days handing out leaflets asking people to take their business elsewhere. They managed to essentially shut the Hut down.

The sign came down.

“Look what you did,” Jack said.

“Look what we did,” Chip replied.

“No, you. You did this,” Jack insisted. “You got the group together. You got the flyers printed out. You closed the place down. You.”

“I guess,” Chip said. “Maybe.” 74

“Maybe yes,” said Jack. “Now hurry up and graduate so we can get you the hell out of Bloomington.”

That fall, as Chip entered his junior year, Jack moved to Indianapolis.

“A brave new world awaits you, cookie. Come down on weekends, ok?” Jack said.

Jack, smooth talking, fast ball throwing, piano playing, drumming madman took

Indianapolis by storm. He hadn’t even been there a month before he had a lounge act in a gay bar. A gay bar! When Chip went down to visit Jack on weekends, he couldn’t believe his eyes. Jack was playing in a bar full of men, gorgeous men. He was wearing a floor length gown.

And he looked fabulous.

“Oh my God, Jack, you look fantastic!” Chip said.

“Don’t I?” Jack replied. “Don’t I just?”

“But you know,” said Chip, fingering Jack’s gown, “The fit on this is all wrong.

We can do sooo much better for you than this. Got a tape measure?”

It was a blinding flash of the obvious for Chip that after graduation he was not going back to New Albany. The only thing for him there was millwork and maybe music lessons. But to his chagrin, Chip realized that he was still an Indiana boy.

“I just don’t think I’m ready for New York, Jack,” Chip confided.

“Oh honey,” Jack said. “No one is ready for New York. Just bring your silly ass to Indianapolis. It ain’t gay Paree, but it’s better than Bloomington.” 75

Jack had established himself in Indy, knew his way around, knew people. Chip viewed him as the big brother he never had in a very gay kind of way as they had taken to calling each other “sister.” Jack was right about Indy being better than Bloomington.

Soon, Chip got a job doing alteration in a dress shop called Kouture by Karla. Before, he had been making outfits for Jack and himself - for the someday act he’d have. The shop owner, Karla, was a chain-smoking ferret faced German woman who wondered how she could have gone so very wrong to have ended up in Indianapolis. She was quite taken in with Chip’s sewing skills and with Chip. He reminded her of the old days. The anything goes days of before the war.

“Ve don’t see many like you in Indianapolis. Or Indiana. Or anyvere,” she told

Chip.

Karla had developed a decent business catering to Indianapolis’ bourgeoisie, such as it was. She knew what her customers wanted and what they could afford.

“Don’t you think it’s time Indiana women stopped dressing like Jackie

Kennedy?” Chip asked Karla. “Even Jackie Kennedy doesn’t dress like Jackie Kennedy any more. I mean, she’s Jackie O now. It’s a new era.”

Karla took a long drag off her cigarette, exhaled and then vigorously stubbed the cigarette out.

“Darling, listen to me,” Karla began. “The classics never go out of style. Indiana women have their little noses pressed up to the window to see what the rest of the world is doing. They don’t want innovation; they want classic. So does everybody. Look at that little Nazi- lover Coco Chanel - she’s been making that same fucking little suit for a 76

hundred years and women line up for it. We make clothes for women who can’t afford

Chanel but don’t want to look like Ship ’n Shore. Classic,” she said lighting up another cigarette “is what they want. So.. .sew. Give ’em what they want.”

“Give ’em what they want,” Chip repeated.

“And don’t stop!” Karla declared waving her cigarette in the air like a sword.

“Don’t stop!”

“Atta boy! Don’t ever confuse fads for fashion. Mark my words, a hundred years from now...”

“They’ll still be making that fucking little suit,” Chip said.

“Exactly!” Karla said. “Exactly!”

The women who shopped at Kouture by Karla loved Chip. Loved him. Chip gave these women the attention that their husbands wouldn’t and altered their clothes to fit them like their own skin. He knew what fabrics and colors would make these women look and feel like princesses.

“You are such a doll, Chip!” they’d gush. “A living doll!”

These were little Midwestern housewives, the little Hausfrauen as Karla called them - not so very different from his own mother - who had outgrown the Sears catalog or at least were trying to now that their middle management husbands made more money.

These were the wives of the city’s go-getters. Ayres Department Store still held appeal, but these women wanted something special.

“Gott im himmel, does everyone in Indiana yearn for something special?” Karla sighed. 77

“Yes,” Chip thought. “Yes, they do.”

All his life Chip had tried not to be flamboyant or to bring attention to himself -

unless, of course, he was performing. As he went about the business of high school, he

donned Levi’s and a t-shirt and tried to look and act like everyone else. He was big and

he held some cachet as a football player and star of school plays, but he never wanted to

press his luck. He had seen what happened to those deemed as misfits - weaklings or

worse, sissies. They were ostracized, beat up, humiliated. Chip always felt a twinge of

shame that he never came to any one of these unfortunates’ aid and stand up to the

bullies. He hadn’t dared risk it; he enjoyed a certain social status, but he knew how

tenuous it could be. Chip was a coward when it came to speaking up and the guilt from

that would stay with him his whole life.

But now New Albany was behind him and so was Bloomington. He was making

his way in the city, earning a living doing something he loved. Of course, Chip knew his

parents loved him, but for the first time in his life he was beginning to feel understood

and valued for who he really was by others. He felt lucky to have the support and

friendship of Jack and increasingly, he was becoming close to the recalcitrant Karla. She

really was a treasure. She knew so much about fashion and Chip loved hearing about

Europe before the war.

“My parents wanted me to go apprentice with that Nazi Hugo Boss in Stuttgart.

Stuttgart! But I wanted to go to in Berlin. So I did and had a fabulous time. I worked with a lot of wonderful designers who one by one changed their last name to Smith and left the country before the Nazis could send them to a concentration camp.” Karla sighed and 78

was silent for a few minutes. “I lost a lot of people I was close to during the war. My family all became Nazis. I was never a Nazi. I’m not a Jew either. At least I don’t think I am. But you never know, though, despite all the talk about German racial purity. I think there’s a little Jew in every German.”

“You would have been brilliant in Berlin,” she told him.

“Wish I could have seen it.”

“Yes,” she sucked on her cigarette. “You remind of someone I once knew. He was... something else as you say here.”

“Designer?”

“Nein, vorse - a musician!”

Karla pointed out to him that there were more than a dozen gay bars in

Indianapolis.

“Over a dozen! Don’t ask me how I know dis,” she told him. “It ain’t Berlin, but dere you have it.”

“A number of these bars have live music, you know. I’m just saying.”

“She’s right,” Jack told him. “And these places need musicians. They need you.”

Chip laughed. “Me,” he said. “I’m not even sure I need me.”

“Oh, sweetie. It’s hard, I know. But little way after little way we make things better. Someday, it’s going to be our time. You’ll see. Now put on something pretty and go talk to these bar owners.”

“I’ll think about it,” Chip said.

Jack was unrelenting. “Do it, sister!” he kept saying. 79

Chip finally screwed up the courage to audition as a lounge act. Of course, in his head he had been rehearsing for the role his whole life - he finally admitted this to Jack.

“Well, of course you have. We all have,” Jack said.

Chip remembered practicing in front of the mirror in his bedroom. He gave a brief demonstration for Jack.

“Good evening, boys. I think I have something you want.”

“That’s great!” Jack said. “You’ll do great!”

Still, Chip was terrified. He walked with confidence to the door of the lounge, but felt a wave of panic as he put his hand on the door. He took a deep breath, stepped out of his loafers, slipped into a pair of black pumps, and marched in and asked to see the manager.

“I’ll be over here at the piano,” Chip said. He sat down and started playing some

Cole Porter.

When the manager came out and saw a group of guys gathered around the piano listening with mouths agog, he hired Chip on the spot.

Chip couldn’t believe that it was that easy. Of course, that joint and the others that followed were all pretty divvy and he was paid in tips, but the experience felt magnificent to him. He was playing and singing. For men. Men who looked at him admiringly. Men who would pass a twenty to him across the piano rather than put it in the jar. Men who gave him their business cards with their personal numbers written on the back.

“Call me,” they’d say with a wink. 80

Chip played the piano and sang standards or show tunes or anything for whoever put a dollar in the jar on top of the piano wanted to hear. His repertoire was vast - Chip remembered every song he ever heard and he could deliver any song anyone asked for.

Playing and singing while men watched him. Heaven. It felt like heaven.

Gradually, almost imperceptibly, Chip added nuance to his act. Lipstick and mascara. Earrings. Feather boa.

His audience ate it up.

How did this happen? Chip, this hick from New Albany, had been tapped by an angel. He had an almost magical singing voice - on that everyone who heard him could agree - as well as a commanding presence made all the more intriguing in drag. For a few moments, the visual picture Chip presented made no sense. But once he opened his mouth the audience was hypnotized, seeing this large man morph into a petite chanteuse.

And he knew it. And it felt fabulous.

“Thank you, Mom, for teaching me to sew,” Chip thought. He made all his own outfits as he knew he would never be able to find them in his size. “Thank you for teaching me to play the piano. Thank you for encouraging me to sing. Mom, Mom, Mom.

You were teaching me to be me without even knowing it.”

When she came to visit, Chip took her to the tea room at Ayres. Dolly sat across the table from and took him all in.

“What an elegant man you’ve become, Chip,” she marveled. “I guess Indianapolis suits you.” She looked around the tearoom. “This is lovely, Chip,” she said. “And I’m so 81

glad that you’ve found friends. And employment! This Karla woman sounds like quite a character.”

“Oh, I am employed. Mom” Chip thought.

“Yes, she is,” he said. “Things are really working out, Mom.”

“But what about your music?” she asked.

“Oh, it’s coming along. Things take time, you know.”

Chip had always loved the twangy, sultry singers - Patsy Cline and Peggy

Lee - and he began to use more and more of their material. He even wrote a few torch songs of his own as well as some rocking tunes that begged for harmony. And Chip had always loved the square dancing dresses he used to make with his mother and he began to adapt some for himself, moving away from the evening gowns that were popular in the lounges.

“Gott im himmel, was is das?” Karla shrieked.

“It’s a Western swing dress,” Chip replied.

“For who? Who of my customers wants something like this?”

“It’s for me, Karla,” Chip said. “Like it?”

“Let’s see,” Karla said examining the fabric. She handed it to him. “Put it on.”

It was his own look. In Western drag, Chip was able to channel the women he adored and make their songs his own.

“Ya, I can see it now,” Karla said. “It’s you.”

These Indianapolis special bars drew all those other special sons of the prairie: the ones who were the flotsam and jetsam of their own scared and scary little Indiana towns. 82

Leaping from the dust of the pioneers, these were the boys with stars in their eyes - and scars on their psyches and various body parts. But they sparkled nonetheless.

It was at one of these special bars that Chip met two other boys named David and

Peter. They were adorable! They had just moved to Indianapolis from Muncie for many - or all - of the same reasons Chip left Bloomington: a need to get out of the college town and try on something bigger. But not too much bigger. They were all Hoosiers, after all.

David and Peter were fun incarnate. These are Indiana boys?

“Thank God and halleluiah,” thought Chip. And they got along great with Jack.

Well, who wouldn’t get along with Jack?

The more the four of them hung out together, the more they realized how much they had in common.

They were gay, loved music, and drag.

“Don’t you just love Dale Evans?” David gushed while they watched reruns of

Roy Rogers. “I mean, look at her. Would you just look at her!”

“I’m looking, I’m looking,” Jack said.

“I love the music,” Chip said.

“Oh, me too,” Peter said. “Dontcha just love that Western swing? Bob Wills!”

“Western anything,” said Chip and gave them his Eddie Arnold yodel.

The room grew silent.

“Oh my fucking Christ, who are you?” said David.

“’’Stop,” said Peter. “Just stop.”

“I know,” said Jack approvingly. “Didn’t I tell ya? What did I tell ya?” 83

“You,” David said, “are amazing. I mean, amazing. I could cry.”

“Aw,” said Chip.

“Oh, aw,” said Peter. “Can you believe it? Aw? I mean, shut up with the aw. That was amazing. Ama-zing.”

“It’s just from listening to the music,” Chip mumbled.

“Oh, ‘it’s just from listening to the music,” David said. “Is he the greatest or what?”

“The greatest,” Peter agreed.

“Spade Cooley!” said Jack suddenly filled with the spirit. “Ever hear The Light

Crust Doughboys? They have this song called “Pussy, Pussy, Pussy.” I mean, it’s outrageous, it’s so good.”

“Do you know it?” Chip asked relieved to have the attention off him.

“Yeah,” Jack said. “I mean, I have the record. “Beer Drinking Mama” is a good one, too.”

“Play it,” Chip said.

“Yeah, put it on,” Peter and David chimed in.

“Pussy, Pussy, Pussy?” muttered David. “Love it!”

This is how life went: as long as none of them pushed things or got too much into people’s faces, life was manageable for the four of them. They all had their gigs at night, and by day they all turned back into nice, clean cut, Midwestern boys. They worked in dress shops and schools and offices.

They got by. 84

Neither Jack, Peter nor David had much in the way of families, so Chip would bring them all back to New Albany with him for Thanksgiving. Hiram and Dolly liked the boys very much, got a big kick out of them in fact. Life had gotten quiet for them now that Chip was off on his own. They were both so glad that Chip finally had friends. And they were nice boys. Polite, good-looking boys. Pretty, almost. And musical like Chip.

The boys all called Chip “Hi.” Dolly and Hiram assumed that it was short for

Hiram.

And lord, were these boys entertaining! They sure loved their country swing music! After dinner the boys sang for them and their voices melded together as if they were siblings. It was uncanny.

“They sound like the Mills Brothers,” said Dolly. “Only different.”

“Well, they’re not black,” Hiram replied. “Or brothers.”

“That’s not it. It’s...”

“I know,” Hiram said. “I know.” 85

FOUR

David

Ever since I was a junior in high school, I pictured myself draped over a piano

being serenaded by some dark, handsome crooner. I ’d be both sultry and aloof and a

little kooky. Kind o f Peggy Lee meets Keely Smith.

My mother was nearly forty when I was born and my father was thirteen years

older than her. They were so unpreparedfor having a child that they never treated me

like one. My mother was treating me like a girlfriend by the time I was nine. “How’s this

bra, David? ” she ’d ask. “Too much? ”

My father treated me like an employee. “David, could you pick up my dry

cleaning? Here's ten dollars. Keep the change. ”

By the time I was in the seventh grade my father was retired and was home all

day. Doing what, I don’t know. No one did. I mean, he could have been a Russian spy for

all we knew. He spent the day in his “study. ” Cocktails were at 5:15 sharp and I learned

to make one mean martini. I made drinks for their friends when my parents had them

over. I used to wear a white shirt and a bow tie for the occasion. Mr. Boston was my best friend. My parents ’friends thought I was a hoot.

My father’s family had been in the upholstery business and my father had a little store in town. It never did very well. In fact, I ’m not sure it did anything at all.

Fortunately, based on a conversation he overheard ofpeople he admired, my father

invested money in a little company called IBM when he got out o f the service followed by 86

investments in both Coke and Pepsi (Dad always liked to cover both sides). His

investments did fabulously well and allowed my father to have his “business ” almost as a

hobby. It gave him a reason to leave the house and look like he was actually doing

something. He left every day nattily dressed for “the store. ” He retired so he could do full time what he did best — drink.

Every night before dinner, we sat around and listened to Louis DiPrima or

Sinatra while my parents drank their martoonies and pretended to be interested in

whatever I was doing.

“Oh, you ’re in a play. How fun/ ” my mother would say.

My mother was only too glad to let me help her with the house work as my father

was too cheap to let her hire someone more than once a week and she considered it a

Godsend when I learned how to cook and sew. I remember so fondly us sitting around, sipping ice tea, andflipping through the “women’s ” magazines. She reveled in being able to confide in me about the latest neighborhood gossip and she more than welcomed my fashion advice. She was fun to dress - she was built like a model. But, honestly, she

could be so clueless about how to accessorize.

My father acted pretty much as if I didn ’t exist only occasionally asking about how I was doing in school. He was always cautious around me in case I asked him something. Like what do I do with my penis besides pee and how come I like looking at other boys. Otherwise, everything I needed to know from blotting lipstick to pineapple upside-down cake, I learned from my mother. 87

I was the girlfriend she never had. She grew up an only child in Nowheresville,

Indiana.

I ’m not sure why my father married my mother. He was so distracted all the time

and he seemed to think my mother was a ninny, which she was actually. But while I saw

that as one o f her most endearing qualities, my father acted as if it was his personal cross

to bear. Some men had poverty or disability to deal with. My father had a ditzy wife. Poor

Dad!

Everything was splendid with the old folks at home until one summer while home from Ball State I tried on one o f my mother’s cocktail dresses. I knew it would fit me (it did) and I knew it would look fabulous on me (it did). What I didn’t know is that my mother would walk in on me wearing it and have a heart attack - the first o f what would eventually kill her.

“Oh, David, ” she panted, clutching her chest. “Guessing and knowing are two so very different things. They are oh so so so very different. She muttered this all the while I drove her to the hospital.

While waiting around in the hospital for my father to show up and the doctor to tell us how my mother was, I went and got a drink from the water fountain and wiped my mouth with the back o f my hand. I hadforgotten to remove my Up stick. No wonder the admitting nurse was looking at me like I had two heads.

Oh, David, David, David.

I ’m not exaggerating when I say that my life changedforever when I met Peter. I f not for him I would have just up and dropped dead in Indiana. I mean, you can only take 88

the foppish lay about thing so far before the neighbors start to talk. Oh, Peter was so

cute, all preppy and earnest and thinking he was fooling everyone with that fresh faced

boy next door routine. I could spot the swish from a hundred paces. Anyone who was

looking could as well.

He was so smart and sweet and funny. He sang like an angel. He was a pretty

good dancer, too. And we wore the same dress size, only his had to be hemmed up

because I ’m a few inches taller.

You know how we chose our drag names? We got high one night and starting

asking each other about favorite things from childhood, things that we remembered that

we liked that we d probably think were pretty gross now. Or not.

I thought o f Fruity Pebbles almost immediately. I was only allowed to eat them on

Saturday mornings. And I ate them while watching cartoons. Heaven!

Peter thought o f Pixy Stix right away. He loved the sour taste. But he loved even

more how it colored the inside o f his mouth and it would dye his hand, too if he poured it

into his palm and licked it off. We both got off on the “pouring it into his hand and

licking it off part. ” I mean, we went at it for hours after that.

For both o f us these silly kid treats were really wonderful childhood memories

and neither o f us had too many o f those. Sad, but true.

So after we finished fucking like little pink-eyed bunnies - lord, did we have fun! - we realized what great drag names they 'd make. “Kismet! ” Peter said. He was

always saying things like that, the dear. So, that’s how we picked our names, only we 89

jazzed them up a bit to make them our own. Plus we changed them enough to lessen the

likelihood o f getting sued. Peter thought o f stuff like that even then.

Peter

My real name is Peter Gunn. In fairness to my parents they had named me long

before the TV show and ages before anyone o f us knew I was gay. I t’s the kind o f name

that certain jokers just can’t resist, but I ’m all over that. I ’m all over everything -

everything. You can call me Peter, Pete, Gunner, Pix, Pixie, Mr. Peanut, Asshole, Hey

You - honestly, I don 7 care. I truly don’t.

I met Frutti - he was David then - in a comparative lit lecture hall in college.

Well, technically, I saw him in a comparative lit lecture hall. Boy, did I ever. D avid- tall,

thin, blond - minced down the stairs o f the lecture hall and sidled his way to a seat in the

middle o f a row. He was wearing a pink shirt. A pink shirt! In Muncie, Indiana in 1969!

He found a seat and shimmied down into it as if he was wearing a mermaid costume.

Once seated, he pointed his right index finger, raised it to his forehead, and pushed his

blond. Veronica Lake swoop a quarter inch to the right o f his cornflower blue eyes.

I almost came in my chinos.

Ijust couldn't take my eyes off of him; I had never, ever seen anything like him

before. The lecture hall had maybe two hundred people in it. After the class, I fell all over

myself trying to catch up with him without being obvious. I followed him across campus,

trying to run quietly and unnoticed through the autumn leaves, past the girls in their plaid kilts and the boys in their letter sweaters. Ifollowed him past some dorms and then 90

eventually behind a dining hall. There by a dumpster he spun around and faced me.

Grabbing me by the front o f my blue Oxford button down shirt, he said “I know you

now . ” And he gave me a quick, but decisive kiss on the mouth. I thought my heart would

explode. I stood stunned for a nanosecond and then put my hand behind his head and

pulled him into a lip lock that seemed to last the rest o f the semester. Weekends were

never the same after that.

“Greetings from Ball State”

VarlLnty Peter -

I dream t ofycrwloyfc night. I’m/ a t the/ laurulrowiat right now xvtMhCnfy' my iheety.

Love/, V

Now, about the guys. Let’s see. It was early 1976. I had a 1972 lime green

Gremlin. I ’m not kidding. You’ve got to believe me; in those days a lime green Gremlin

was just the bomb. All o f us were trying to figure out what do you do with a liberal arts

degree and no skills in the freakin ’ Midwest no less. Some o f us were campaigning for

Jimmy Carter in secret from our Republican parents so they d still send us money every

now and again. Lord, everything we did was in secret from our Republican parents.

Fru and I had a couple o f years before graduated from Ball State - don’t you love

it? - and couldn ’t get out Muncie fast enough. We thought we ’d try our luck in the big

city - Indianapolis! Oh, we were such hay seeds! 91

Anyway, we found ourselves a cute little place. Fru was as handy with a sewing machine as she was with a power drill. I was all thumbs. Still am. I have a great sense o f color, great sense o f style, just don’t get me near anything that needs to he plugged in.

Anyway, Heidi Ho was a big gal with a big heart and she had a great thing going with Western swing. She did Bob Wills and Spade Cooley covers and wrote tons o f her own stuff, too. She had these fabulous outfits, just fabulous - that girl could sew - with big Dale Evans ’ hair and she was so musical. Oh my goodness. She could play piano and guitar and accordion and pretty much anything else you could think of. And sing! People loved her. I mean, she killed. It was obvious that she was so much bigger than the town.

Isn ’t that the understatement o f the century? With a voice like Ethel Merman and a body like Jane Russell, she was a force to reckon with I ’ll tell you what.

Our community was small, dinky, miniscule, so it wasn ’t long before all us gals got to know each other. One way or another we had all pretty much outgrown Indiana.

But Fru and I really weren ’t sure what to do or where to go. Heidi wanted to bust the hell out o f Indiana and head west to San Francisco.

“Only in San Francisco, ” Heidi said, “can dames like us be dames like us. ”

San Francisco! Gay heaven! Were we worthy? Did we dare?

Hell, yeah! I couldfeel myself becoming old and ugly in Indiana. I mean, I was only 26, but I could see so clearly what lay ahead for me - nothing. Old nothing, ugly nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. So Fru and I started talking about going. For about a minute. We both thought it was a terrific idea right off the bat so there was really no discussion. I mean, what did we have to lose? What? 92

It was so exciting - Fru and I began talking to Heidi and her friend Bibi about forming a group and working together with the idea o f all o f us moving out to California.

As an act. And Heidi and Bibi had been thinking the same thing-you know, what if?

Kind o f thing. So we started singing together, just casually at first, but we could tell from

the get-go that we had something special. Our ears were so in tune with other’s voices

right from the start. The harmonies the four o f us could create made the hair stand up on

my arms. I mean, it was as if we were born to sing together.

Heidi - Chip - wanted us all to be H o’s but we had all already picked out our drag

names. Fru and I had been singing together in certain, you know, circles we knew from

college for almost three years as the Blister Sisters, but we knew that without a band or

original material we had taken it about as far as it could go. We were prepared to start fresh with a new group name, but we wanted to keep our own individual names. Bibi had

been around, don’t you know, and had her own act as a chanteuse at the Cockatoo

Lounge but was tired o f working alone. Hell, we were all tired, just worn-out by the

Midwest, our stupid day jobs, our oblivious, unimaginative families, getting harassed by

the police, getting beat up, skulking around, being afraid, feigning interest in football,

cars, and women. So after much, much bickering we finally settled on the Westward H o’s

as the name o f our group. I mean, how perfect? It wasn ’t just our group name, it was our

mission. Each one o f us claimed that we had thought it up. We were Heidi Ho, Bibi Gunn,

Frutti Pebbles, and me, Pixie Stixx. Oh, it all feels like a million years ago. Such a

simpler time then! Anything is possible when you ’re in your twenties, got a lime green 93

Gremlin, think a thousand dollars is a lot o f money, and yo u ’ve never heard o f wrinkles or AIDS.

Jack

My given name is Jacob Kniepfel. The whole Bibi Gunn thing would come much, much later. And no, Peter and I are not related. My family called me Jack. I grew up in rural Minnesota. My father sold life insurance which proved to be ironic later on. Lots o f things proved to be ironic later on.

I was a very good baseball player and I pitched for my high school team. They called me Jack the Knife because 1 could really cut ’em down at the plate. My mother disapproved o f team sports - it was against her newly acquired religion - so she never came to any o f my games. She pretty much disapproved o f everything. My father was dead by then.

My father was killed in a duck hunting accident when I was thirteen. At least, we think he was. Killed that is. It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving, bitter cold, and my

Dad and his best friend Charlie Knudsen strapped a canoe on top o f the Suburban and left well before dawn for a pond about 75 miles north o f our house to hunt ducks. They never returned. That night it began to snow heavily. My mother called the police. It snowed steadily for three days. The police found the Suburban with his and Charlie’s wallets in the glove box. They continued to search for several days but couldn’t find any trace o f them. That area gets several feet o f snow every year. The search was called off 94

for the winter. In the spring, the police found their boat and their guns, but not them.

Both guns had been fired.

For the months between my father disappearing and his boat being found, my

mother believed that he would simply show up one day. She refused to believe that he was

dead. People tried to reason with her, telling her that if he hadn't drowned or accidently

been shot, he would have succumbed to the brutality o f the weather in just a few days.

Even after his boat and gun had been found — but not the change o f clothes that he

always brought along with him hunting — I could see that my mother still harbored

doubts about whether he was really dead. Perhaps she thought he had run off. Perhaps

she thought he had run off with Charlie. Perhaps she had reason to believe that he might

do something like that. I never knew. She never talked to me or my sisters about it. The

only thing that she would ever say eventually was what everyone kept telling her: that our

father was really and truly gone and we must all move on.

We held a funeral the following spring and buried an empty casket in our town’s

graveyard. We placed a granite marker with my father’s name on it on top o f the empty grave.

My mother went back to work. She removed all pictures o f my father from the

house. She even went through all the photo albums and removed his pictures from them.

My sisters and I thought that was a little weird. Flipping through the albums after she

had removed all the pictures o f him was very unsettling. They ’d be a shot o f us around a

holiday table with a cut out in the middle or me on a camping trip holding a string o f fish

with no one. She also gave away all his tools and hunting equipment, but she made a big 95

pile o f his clothes and burned them in the backyard, shoes and all. In about a year, she

became a Jehovah’s Witness and we stopped celebrating holidays o f any kind.

I couldn’t wait to move out o f the house.

Thanks to baseball, I got a scholarship to the University o f Indiana. Thanks to

music, I got a life. And thanks to the Westward H o’s, and Chip in particular, I got the hell

out o f the Midwest for good.

I started playing the piano when I was seven. When I was about 12, my father

asked Mr. Schultz, our church organist, if he would give me organ lessons. I remember

Mr. Schultz picking up my wrist and laying my hand out along his palm. “You have

beautiful hands, ” he said. “Very strong. Must be all that baseball. I hear that you ’re very

good. ” And then he winked at me. I almost went into a swoon.

“His mother and I encourage both sports and music. We think it makes a boy

well-rounded. ”

“That’s very progressive o f you, ” Mr. Schultz said. My mother said nothing.

“How would you like to learn to play the organ, Jack? ” he asked me. I thought I ’d die. I

looked at my dad.

“Only if you want to, Jack, ” my dad said.

Only if I wanted to.

I couldn’t believe my luck. O f course, I wanted to learn to play the organ, but

more than anything I wanted to spend time with Mr. Schultz. He looked like Steve

McQueen. Well, I thought he did. Boy howdy, did I learn a lot from him. But not what you

might think - that man never touched me, never did anything inappropriate. There was 96

an occasional hug, a reassuring hand on my shoulder, a hair tousle, sure, but that was it.

He was a decent and lovely man. But we both got each other’s number, so to speak, without ever having to say a thing.

It is true that our relationship was about more than music. I was grateful to have an older man to talk to. I confided in him about everything - school, baseball, boys, my parents, and later, my father. We spoke in a kind o f code that I thought we had invented.

I ’dfind out later that many people throughout the Midwest were fluent in this language.

Mr. Schultz taught me a lot about showmanship. He had such style! In addition to our church, he played the organ in the movie theater in town before the shows. He wore a spangled jacket and when they hit him with the spotlight I thought he looked like God himself.

What I didn ’t learn from Mr. Schultz was how to live my life. This was in the early

1960s. Mr. Schultz was a sad, sweet man who lived with his mother. God only knows how or if he ever managed to meet other men. Midwestern men were men or else they were beat up a lot or they wound up dead. Or maybe they were living in another town somewhere with their hunting buddy Charlie running a hardware store under an assumed name.

Ah, the Westward H o’s! That was just an enchanted time. I don’t know if I ever would have worked up the nerve to leave the Midwest if it wasn’t for them. I mean, it didn 7 occur to me that I could be happy, especially as a gay person. I wasn 7 even sure what that meant. No one I knew was happy - my mother, my sisters, Mr. Schultz. 97

Everyone lived in a kind o f dutiful fugue. But the guys, the H o’s, Jesus Christ, talk about joy. It just felt like we were going to conquer the world!

I met Chip in college. He was like an uncut diamond, but you could see his light shining through. He was rock-like and stoic, but so cute and sweet. I recognized him

immediately because I was him in a way - an oppressed, repressed, nice Midwestern boy longing to slip into something more comfortable. Like chiffon. When we met, I was the

“experienced one ” o f the two o f us, but he caught up to me quick.

I can remember listening to Chip-as-Heidi go into her shtick like it was yesterday:

"Howdy! We ’re the Westward H o’s and we ’re from the fruited plains. We swing western style so hoist up your hoop skirt, grab a partner, and get ready for some corn-fedfun! Hit it Bibi!”

I ’d roll into the intro to Spade Cooley’s “Miss Molly ” and off we ’d go. When the

H o’s first got together, Heidi and I were the only two real musicians. I played keyboard and drums. Heidi played, well, everything - guitar, accordion, piano, fiddle, banjo. You name it. Frutti had had the requisite piano lessons as a kid so she could read music, including the bass line. Because she was tall, we tried her out on stand-up bass and pretty soon she could keep a steady beat. Pixie ended up being more than adequate on rhythm guitar; she d played a little in high school.

But the miracle o f it all was our voices. No four people ever sounded as good together as we did. At least not in my opinion. Singing together was like great sex. Some people say we blew it by sticking with the whole western swing thing. Maybe. I t’s what we knew and it's what we liked. The problem was we were a bit ahead o f our time. 98

K.d.lang wouldn’t hit for a few years. We landed in San Francisco in the middle o f disco mania.

In Indianapolis we were a big deal. Well, as big as you can be in Indianapolis.

Everyone knew us in our, albeit tiny, community. And let me tell you, everyone had had everybody, too. Except, o f course, for Frutti and Pixie. They were an old married couple.

By gay standards they were positively chaste. Well, all that changed when we got to San

Francisco. There. Were. So. Many. Men. So many. Sowing wild oats? Honey, we could have stomped out world hunger.

We gave the H o’s the old college try, as they say. We played everywhere we could, including a number o f weekends at Fife’s on the Russian River. As much as we tried to change it, the Westward H o’s were never anything other than a novelty in San

Francisco. We became the quintessential opening act, never the headliners. We were the act people listened to while they waited for their drugs to kick in.

After eighteen-nineteen months in San Francisco, things started to unravel. For starters, Frutti David and Pixie Peter broke up. What a car wreck! They weren't a couple any more, but they were still in each other’s business — they were those kind o f faggots; they were a couple for all eternity in that sense. This made for some tense — hilarious - but tense rehearsals. The drama!

Plus we had to fight, sometimes literally, for stage time. The drag scene in San

Francisco was a Donna Summer lip-synch nightmare. The girls all looked great, but nobody was actually singing. The gigs paid nothing and the costumes cost a fortune so we needed to figure out a way to keep body and soul together. We all got “real” jobs 99

here and there. There was less and less time to rehearse for fewer andfewer gigs. It was

exhausting trying to keep it going. By 1979, without much fanfare, the Westward H o’s

just faded off into the sunset.

Forever friends, though. We couldn 't live without each other. I was forever

grateful that I got to known them and call them my brothers.

San Francisco was home now, the Midwest but a memory. I enrolled in San

Francisco State to get my master’s and teaching credential. I eventually ended up

teaching music in the San Francisco Unified School District. I tried to honor Mr. Schultz

by attempting to be a better version o f him. I met a great guy.

Frutti David got his real estate license and started making money like nobody’s

business, hand over freaking fist. He bought this palazzo in the East Bay, wherever that

is. It had a pool for fuck’s sake. Pixie Peter went and got himself an MBA and got a very

respectable job in the financial district doing something involving investments — I was

never sure what. He also did very well for himself. Peter was the best dressed man on

Muni every day. And this was riding in from the Castro cheek to jowl with some very well

dressed gay men, don’t you know. Peter was so GO it almost hurt to look at him.

And then there was Hi. Sweet, sweet, Chip. It broke his heart when the band broke

up. After we stopped the act he slept a lot. And then he woke up. And then he got on with it.

Chip

My name is Hiram Earl Maffey Junior. I ’m a singer and a musician and a drag

queen known by some as Heidi Ho o f the late Westward H o’s western swing drag group. 100

It 's'probably redundant to mention this, but I ’ll do it anyway: I ’m a homosexual. A queer.

A fag.

I went through a period o f reinvention after the H o’s broke up only to find myself in a way, back where I started.

I ’m from New Albany, Indiana. Not heard o f it? I t’s the veneer capital o f the world. At least it used to be; I haven’t checked in a long time.

My parents have called me Chip as long as I can remember. I never irony o f the veneer-chip thing until it was pointed out to me in college. By then irony was just another wordfor “today ” that if didn ’t have much effect. I mean, everything just everything was ironic.

My father was a millwork as were most o f the fathers in town. As time went by my father became increasingly deaf because o f his work. He began to shout at people. Not because he was angry - he had about the gentlest nature o f any man I ’ve ever known - but because he could no longer hear himself. Having a conversation with him was nearly impossible. It got to be almost comical in a pathetic kind o f way. By the time I was in high school I don’t think he could hear much o f anything.

Which is probably why my mother talked so much to me.

My mother was a homemaker and a fabulous seamstress and made extra money designing custom outfits for square dancers. She taught me to sew and eventually with my help, we branched out to prom and bride maids ’ dresses.

My dad was also an amateur ventriloquist and had once aspired to a show business career. Apparently, it was something he really wanted. But it never worked out 101

for him. He was musical, too, as was my mother. They taught me to play the instruments

they knew and then I picked up a few on my own.

In addition to being a ventriloquist, my father made ventriloquist dummies. My

mother made little outfits for them. My dad was rather well known in the rarefied world

o f ventriloquism: his dummies were exceedingly well made and he sold quite a few o f

them. They were really remarkable. Each had its own personality. My dad used to walk

around the house with one o f his dummies on his arm. He'd use the dummy to provide a

running commentary about what was going through his head. And when he was down in

the basement working on them, he ’d talk to them. It was the only time he wasn’t shouting

when he spoke and the closest either my mother or I ever got to knowing what was on his mind.

Those dummies completely creeped my out when I was a kid.

When I was very young, about five, I was sitting with my mother in the waiting

room o f our doctor’s office. I think I was there to get vaccinatedfor school. My mother

and the other adults were flipping through magazines. I couldn’t read yet so Ijust sat

swinging my legs and looking around. The doctor's exam rooms were directly across

from the waiting room. I watched Dr. Perry come out o f one o f the exam rooms, walk to

the next one, open the door, and then turn to take a file and chat with his nurse for < ’ perhaps six seconds. Inside the exam room was a young man, maybe nineteen or twenty

standing completely naked. He was stunning and I was stunned the way you are when you

see something that overwhelmingly delights you like a toy you secretly, desperately

wanted that miraculously shows up on Christmas morning. 102

Anyway, from that moment I knew. Funny thing, I wasn ’t exactly sure what I

knew. I just knew. O f course, as I got older it became increasingly clear to me what “it”

was. There weren’t a lot o f resources available for boys who liked boys in the 50s and

60s in Indiana. I kept my desires - and my hands - to myself. But I let my eyes do

whatever they wanted to do and oh! the things they saw!

I ’ve always been self-conscious about my size. In my mind I ’m lithe like Cyd

Charisse, but in reality I ’m really more o f a Kate Smith body type. In high school, I was

more than adequate at sports and my size made me desirable to the football coaches.

They desperately wanted to get me to play. I barely knew the rules. I hated playing football, but I loved the locker room. True, football gave me an excuse to throw my arms around a boy and pull him to the ground, but I never wanted to hurt anyone and that seemed to be the whole point o f football. But I continued to play all through high school as it gained me the right to be in the locker room and feast my eyes. Oh, those Indiana boys! They were all so beautiful each in their own unique way. Like I said, I never touched anybody outside o f football. But in my mind I touched them from head to toe.

I was also very involved in musical theater in high school. I f it weren’t for football, I think I would have run into a lot o f trouble. You see, I was very good at theater and I loved to sing. In retrospect, I was pretty swishy. I don’t doubt that things were said about me behind my back; I don’t know if my parents ever got wind o f any “queer talk. ”

All I know is that I lived on pins and needles for fear o f being found out. Found out for lusting after boys in my head - isn’t that funny? I mean, I never touch a one o f them.

There was no secret tryst with the quarterback. Although knowing what I know now, he 103

probably would have been into it. No, I was just riddled with guilt over impure thoughts.

I should have been a Catholic.

I realize now, having swapped stories with many, many other gays, how lucky I

was. I led a kind o f charmed life in a way. Other guys would tell me stories about getting

chased and beat up left and right. Not me. Ijust beat myself up.

In my senior year, I took a lot ofpressure off my increasingly jumpy parents by

taking various girls I knew out. Girls liked me: I liked to dance and I knew everything

about fashion and music - all the things they wanted do and talk about. I became quite

close to one girl in particular, Janice Kane. It became evident to both o f us that we

harbored the same secret. What a relief!

It’s funny how Janice and I knew because we never talked about it. But we were

used to that, too - nobody in Indiana talked about much o f anything that really mattered.

(I would find out later that no one pretty much anywhere talked about much o f anything that mattered.) And our parents certainly never brought it up, although I believed they

had their suspicions. They just didn’t have the words. Or the nerve.

The other thing I knew from an early age is that I was not meant for mill work.

Which meant that I needed to get out o f New Albany as soon as was feasible. I was pretty sure that I needed to get out o f Indiana, too, but as a teenager that was just too scary to think about. Fortunately, a great interim step presented itself when I got accepted at

Bloomington. I had no idea when I left New Albany what a giant step Bloomington was going to turn out to be. It was like I could breathe for the first time. And I started meeting boys right from the get go. 104

Most importantly, I met Jack.

Jack. What a dear sweet soul! He was doing things and living in a way that I had never dreamt possible. He, like me, was musical. And he, like me, had been given a free pass by his community because o f his involvement in sports. But unlike me, Jack loved sports, in particular baseball. He was very good at it and he introduced me to a whole new way o f talking and looking at the world. H e’d take me to straight bars where they’d have a ball game on the TV. Jack would assess the crowd and then motion me to walk with him. He ’d sidle up next to some guy at the bar watching the game. They'd start talking sports and the next thing I knew the three o f us would be at the guy ’s place having sex. It was fantastic. Jack was able to spot guys who were interested in other guys wherever we went - stores, restaurants. It was amazing.

We had so much fun.

Jack was daring in other ways, too. When I went to see him after he had moved to

Indianapolis, I was flabbergasted to see him performing in a club in drag. It was the most fabulous thing I had ever seen. He was so good! And he looked great.

Jack already had the lay o f the land in Indy by the time I moved there and encouraged me to try out for my own gig in another bar. I didn’t have the guts to go into it in full out drag at first. I started with little nuances - a scarf some lipstick, heels. And then with Jack’s encouragement, I just went for it.

Drag had the added benefit o f allowing me to use my sewing skills. I missed sewing. When I was designing prom dresses for girls in New Albany with my mother, I could never convince any o f the girls to go that one extra step, to embrace a little more 105

flair. When I started sewing for myself I could do whatever the hell I wanted. In

Indianapolis I had started working for this crazy, wonderful German woman Karla who had her own little boutique. It was there that I started creating my own look - kind o f

Mae West meets Dale Evans. Karla told me that it reminded her o f the old days in Berlin before the war. She also told me that Indianapolis would become difficult for me.

I soon knew what she meant. It was impossible to integrate my two selves - Chip the modiste, helping the matrons o f Indianapolis shake off some o f their dowdiness and

Chip the drag queen lounge act, helping, perhaps, some o f their husbands shake off other things.

Well, you know the rest o f the story. We head west, we land in San Francisco, and the Westward Hos never really take off. It broke my heart when we broke up as a band; I probably would have killed myself if we had broken up as friends.

The years between 1978 and 1987 went so fast, just a blur. We all did what we had to do and we all did what we wanted to do.

And some o f us did what we must do.

I guess all o f us did that, too.

It’s about twenty-three hundred miles from Indianapolis to San Francisco. The

Arctic Circle was closer by about 500 miles David liked to point out.

“If you have fantasies about sitting on Santa’s lap. I’ve got news for you,” Peter said. “There is no Santa Claus.” 106

“There’s no Easter Bunny either,” Jack pitched in.

“There is a tooth fairy, though,” Chip said. “I did her last month.”

The Westward Ho’s were heading to California in Peter’s Gremlin and Chip’s

1969 Ford Satellite station wagon. David and Peter were in the Gremlin; Chip and Jack in the wagon. The wagon towed a small trailer containing all their luggage, instruments, costumes, and sewing machines.

“Maybe the Gremlin should pull the trailer,” Chip said. “It gets better mileage.”

“Oh, honey,” Peter said “We all know that you’re so much better at pulling a train!”

The guys planned to drive in shifts and make it from Indiana to San Francisco in three days, but the trip almost got derailed by a side trip proposed by David.

“We simply have to stop in Vegas,” he said as they entered Iowa. “We have to see

Liberace.”

“That’ll add another couple of days to the drive. Maybe three!” protested Jack.

“We’re not actually driving through Las Vegas. It’s further south.”

“But it’s Liberace! We can see him live! We must go - we must!”

“David, honey, Jack’s right,” said Peter. “It will add a lot of additional driving time.”

“And expense,” added Chip. “The Ford guzzles gas. And we’d have to stay someplace.”

“And eat,” said Jack. 107

“But guys - it’s Liberace. Live, not on TV,” David insisted. “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity!”

“Liberace’s not going anywhere,” Chip said. “He’s like the frigging Rockies.

Liberace will always be there. We can go see Liberace in Vegas some other time. Any time. Until the end of time. He’ll be there forever.”

“Sweetie,” said Peter. “Remember our plan...”

David gave a dramatic sigh. “Why is everyone so rigid?”

“Since when do you not like that?” Jack said.

“Fine!” said David. He sulked all the through to Nebraska.

The mini convoy of the Gremlin and the Ford Satellite station wagon and trailer endured a lot of dust, a hail storm, two flat tires, mild food poisoning, and the threat of a tornado. They rotated between the two cars as the wagon didn’t have air conditioning.

“Christ, this sucks,” David complained as he peeled his shirt away from his damp body.

“Just close your eyes and think of the artic,” Chip said.

On an August evening in 1978, they pulled into San Francisco. They had spent about 42 hours on the road. Exhausted and elated they piled out of the cars as if they had just arrived at the county fair. The sun was going down and it was a misty fifty-two degrees.

“Can you believe this?” said David shivering on the comer of Castro and Market.

He was wearing cut-offs and a tank top. “Haven’t these people heard of summer?” 108

“This must be the famous fog,” said Peter. “Look,” he said pointing up at Twin

Peaks. “The top of the broadcast tower looks like a ship and it looks like the ship is sailing on top of the fog.”

“That’s so cool,” said Jack.

“That’s so wrong,” said David. “It’s August for fuck’s sake. I’m freezing.”

“Christ, are you never happy?” Jack said.

“Cheer up, sunshine,” said Chip. “We’ve arrived!”

“Yeah,” said Peter. “Throw on a wrap. You’re practically naked. No wonder you’re cold.”

The guys huddled together and before they realized it, they had hung their arms around each other. The four of them just stood there taking it all in like the rubes that they then were. They were in San Fran-fucking-cisco, Cali-fucking-fomia.

The approaching sound of heels clicking on the pavement made them all turn their heads to see a pair or drag queens walking towards them.

“Hi boys,” said one of them as they passed.

“Welcome to paradise,” said the other. 109

FIVE

A roaring. A crashing.

When she was a little girl, Margaret Flynn had a recurring day-dream: she lived alone on a beautiful tropical island surrounded by palm trees, white sand, and a crystalline blue sea. She imagined herself alternatingly treading water and swimming as hard as she could in the blue, white-capped ocean. The sea was made up of the knees and elbows and armpits of what seemed like thousands of boys. All of them flailing about with their mouths open and screaming at the top of their lungs. She would come out of this reverie feeling a curious mixture of peace, excitement, and terror.

Margaret had six brothers. Everywhere she looked: boys. An ocean of boys. A hurricane of boys. As the only girl, Margaret had her own room. It gave her a respite from the bedlam and allowed to a place to reflect on her siblings. As she grew, Margaret came to look at her brothers almost as if they were a different species altogether. She enjoyed sports, she even enjoyed rough play. But the boys were demolished everything accompanied with a cacophony of grunts and burps and farts. There was something positively savage about these boys. Had she not known better when they took off their shirts she expected to see their bodies pelted like bears.

But even that wasn’t it and Margaret could never quite put her finger on it other than it was simply them. Their maleness. The way they were in the world and the way the world was for them. Their inescapable presence. Her brothers just hurtled head-first into 110

everything, leaving a wake of destruction behind them. And the world accommodated them.

Is the universe rigged? Are boys possessed somehow or just possessed of different information than girls?

It was their more disgusting qualities that puzzled her the most. Margaret was mystified by how her brothers could leave the house in the morning looking just so and become unbuttoned, unzipped, untied, filthy little beasts before even arriving at school. It was a sudden, cartoon-like transformation.

“Not all boys are like this, surely” Margaret thought. “Why would anyone marry a boy if they’re all like this. Was my father like this?” She couldn’t imagine it. Her big bear-like dad was shy and gentle and fastidious in his habits. His shop was immaculate, his tools always clean and ordered.

Her mother was much more outgoing, to the point of bold. She’s talk to anyone about anything. Hair flying, child in tow, she’d flirt with the butcher and the mailman.

She’d chat up the priest and find out all the gossip in the parish. She asked for samples and discounts from merchants without batting an eye. “I have seven kids. What can you do for me?” And she was the one who did the calling when a bill from her father’s garage was overdue. “You told us you needed the car fixed so that you could get to work so we know you have a job. When can we expect payment from you?”

When you live in a house full of boys, cock is king. Wee-wees, dinkies, dicks.

From Margaret’s new baby brothers coming home with gauze around their penises from their circumcisions to the rest of her brothers having testicles that wouldn’t descend or I ll

testicles getting in the way of line drives or a bully’s punch, Margaret soon became expert in the vagaries of male plumbing. She considered their equipment to be a bit of a design flaw. It made more sense for that stuff to be safely inside like a girls’.

Her mother referred to Margaret’s girl parts as her “hoo-hoo”. It was something to wash and keep an eye on, but otherwise leave alone. “It’s your own privateness,” her mother told her. “Best just leave it.”

Her brothers on the other hand were always finding a reason to yank at or scratch or adjust themselves. Margaret would find out soon enough what her hoo-hoo could do.

She would need no instruction from her mother about how it worked or what to do with it - ultimately Margaret would become a master of the hoo-hoo.

Her brothers were always grubby; it seemed that no matter of scrubbing would keep her brothers clean. There would be a brief window of heightened hygiene on

Saturday nights when everyone had a bath and was given clean pajamas for the week.

Margaret would then watch her brothers wrestle on the living room floor reveling in their fleeting cleanliness. Of course, the gang of them wouldn’t make it through the night without someone peeing the bed or puking in everyone’s slippers. The boys would arrive at Sunday’s breakfast table looking like derelicts again.

There was only one bathroom in their little house that the nine members of the family shared. Margaret performed her ablutions quickly and with barely a splash. When she left the bathroom, it looked as if no one had been in there. Her brothers were quite another story. Water everywhere, sodden towels on the floor. And the toilet - the toilet!

Margaret was continually astonished at what boys could do to a bathroom. 112

“How can they miss?” Margaret would complain to her mother. “They can throw a crumpled piece of paper into a waste basket from across the room. How can they not hit a toilet that they are standing over?”

“Ah, well, now,” her mother said. She was changing one of the babies. As soon as she got the diaper off of him the little fellow shot an arc of pee that hit him in his face.

“As you can see, darling, that thingy of theirs is an imprecise instrument. They have no control.”

Margaret let out a deep sigh. “You’ll get used to it, though,” her mother said. “I did. More than.”

Used to it. Like she wasn’t already. Her brothers little pee-sticks seemed to be everywhere. They sort of were their penises. It was the first thing they thought to protect even if something was falling from the sky.

“Why is that?” Margaret asked her mother.

“God’s plan,” her mother answered. “Oh, He’s a joker that God.”

“The body parts they’ve been given and the roles they are forced into playing are their life-long challenge,” he mother said. “They will spend the rest of their lives wrestling with themselves. Sometimes literally. Ok, often literally.”

She watched her daughter’s face grow pensive.

“It’s not worth fretting about, child. It is what it is.”

“I was just thinking about how it could be improved.”

“Oh, Margaret,” her mother thought. “The way your little mind works.”

She can remember Margaret looking at the worn out heels of her shoes. 113

“Where do they go?” she asked.

“Where does what go?”

“The heels. Where do they go?”

“You wear them down from walking.”

“But where do they go?”

Where do they go, indeed, her mother thought. And where will you go, my

Margaret, my own? Such a curious child. She wanted to know how everything worked.

She wanted to know the why of everything. When she told the children the nativity story,

Margaret wanted to know what happened to the donkey.

“What donkey?” her mother asked.

“The one they rode into Bethlehem on,” Margaret said. “What happened to him?”

One by one her father brought her brothers into his auto shop and tried them out on the engines. They were a disaster! They’d lose parts and break tools and fight and get grease all over themselves and everything else. Because she begged him, he brought

Margaret in as well. She was a marvel - listened attentively, kept track of parts, cleaned up after herself, and most of all, seemed to have a real instinct for the motors. By the time

Margaret was in high school she didn’t so much as repair engines as lay her hands upon them and heal them. Such a deft touch.

“Maybe she should be a surgeon,” her father thought.

A Catholic girls’ high school gave Margaret a needed respite from all the boys at home. It showed her a world occupied solely by girls. It this world, girls were the smart ones, the strong ones, the brave ones. An all-girls school did something else for Margaret 114

as well, something very unexpected. Something she could not explain. It was as if she

was waking up after having been asleep for years. The world was suddenly a little

brighter, clearer.

Margaret found herself falling in love with every girl she saw. Of course, she

wouldn’t have describe it that way. She didn’t know how to describe it, actually. What

was it exactly that she was feeling? How do you explain this rush, this excitement? Who

would she talk to about it anyway? It was this secret, delicious sensation that would begin

low in her stomach and then travel up her spine. She had all she could do to keep from

shivering sometimes as she looked over the top of her book in the library at some girl

going into a full, luxurious stretch.

Oh, sweet agony!

As for boys, those boys she was not related to, and only saw at church or CYO or

on the bus: they simply did not interest her. Margaret had enough of boys at home. By the

time she got into high school, she realized that these feelings of ambivalence about boys

were not shared by most of the girls she knew. To the contrary - all of her friends seemed to be obsessed with boys. They all wanted boyfriends.

Her friends were always telling Margaret which boys they thought were cute.

“Isn’t he cute?” they’d say to her. “So-and-so is so cute!”

Margaret just didn’t get it. Boys were just boys - flesh pods at the mercy of their anatomy. What was there to get all excited about? Of course, Margaret went to all the school dances - the winter galas, the proms - both at her school and at neighboring boys’ schools. She would be picked up by boys named Dennis or Kevin, boys whose parents 115

were known by her own parents, boys her parents approved of, boys from the parish, sweaty, pink boys who would no sooner get her into the car than they were trying to get their tongues down her throat and their hands up her skirt. Being in the car with them was like wrestling with an alligator, and these experiences left Margaret alarmed and angry.

“When did I give permission to them for this to happen?” she thought. “At what point did I indicate that doing that was ok, that it was what I wanted? Do girls actually like this? Really?”

She would return from these dances exhausted, angry, and confused.

Why would anyone want one of those things inside of her? Those dribbly, messy, unreliable things, why? Plus, wasn’t it a sin? Why are they all trying to force themselves on girls?

Through and through, Margaret was a good Irish Catholic girl. All her life, the nuns in school had convinced her that a girl should hang onto her virginity until her wedding night. Margaret shook her head at the idea. “Happily,” she thought. “No temptation there.” The thought of having actual sex with one of these marauders made her feel sick. “In fact, I might just hang onto my virginity forever,” she thought. Margaret knew all too well the havoc a penis can cause. She had a mighty hard time imagining having anything to do with a penis that way.

Margaret’s school friends, all nice Catholic girls as well, some Irish, some Italian, some Polish, but all nice, nice girls would tell her which of her brothers they thought were cute - cute! Her smelly, farting brothers! Cute! 116

Margaret used these girls’ interest in her brothers to satisfy her curiosity about them. She would ask her school friends that had particularly caught her attention to come over and study at her house. They could see her brothers for real. That should put them off boys forever. The Flynn house was a total free-for-all; it was the worst place in the world to study in. But the girls’ from Margaret’s school would quickly take her up on her offer, put on lipstick, and practically swoon at the sight of her older brothers.

She truly didn’t get it.

But girls. Now that was something else, another story altogether. Girls. What a marvel they were! Such a delightful discovery - who knew? “The novelty,” Margaret figured. “The contrast.” She didn’t spend much time worrying about how she felt; she was too busy enjoying it.

Margaret found herself awe-struck by the beauty of girls. Their grace. The way they smelled. Oh, their smell! Their skin, soft and shiny like fresh snow. Every girl was packaged in a similar way to herself and yet different - the mystery! The miracle!

Margaret considered several of her school mates to be cute. There was nothing wrong with that, was there?

By the time Margaret was nearing her senior year, she began to understand that what she was feeling was desire. She understood this just as clearly as she understood that what she felt for boys was nothing. Her mother had told her that God wanted her to use and enjoy her body. She had been taught by the nuns that her body was perfect and it was a gift from God. However she felt about anything, she decided, was God’s will. 117

“I am the way I am,” she thought. It did not occur to her that how she felt was called something, had an actual name, or that it was wrong in any way. In her blessed, oblivious teens Margaret felt free to fall in love with every girl she saw.

“I think you’re cute,” Margaret would tell a friend. “I’d go out with you in a heartbeat,”

“Oh, Margaret,” her friends would say. “You’re so funny!”

“God gave me a girl,” her mother thought. “Thank you, God, for not just giving me just boys. I don’t think I could have stood it. Amen.”

But this girl, her Margaret. It made her mother tear up just thinking about her. She couldn’t help but compare Margaret to her brothers. Same physicality. Same sense of humor. But her report cards were extraordinary. Her teachers would comments about how they felt like they had to keep up with her.

Is it just because Margaret is a girl, this difference? Or is it because Margaret is

Margaret and very different than other girls? Her mother was so driven about getting out of Ireland and so focused on how to do it, that all her life she had focused on the needs of men and paid little attention to her own needs. Oh, but she remembered those nights with the rare boy who was clever with his hands! She had tried to teach her Martin and he was a willing pupil, but alas he never developed the touch.

“Do you have anything you want to ask me?” her mother said.

“No,” said Margaret. “I don’t think so.”

“Anything at all,” her mother said. “Or tell me. Is there anything you want to tell me?” 118

“No,” Margaret said. ‘What do you want to know, Mom?”

“No,” her mother said. “What do you want to know?”

“What kind of woman do you think she’ll be?” Maureen asked Martin. “She’s so good at school. Maybe a teacher. Oh, or a professor! I like the sound of that. So many fancy things to be in this America.”

“She seems to be good at everything,” her father said. “She’s a marvel, she is.”

“She’s driven like me, she’s methodical like you,” Maureen said. “Hungry to know everything, me; wanting to help everyone, you.”

“Your looks, your smarts,” Martin said.

“Your big heart,” Maureen added.

“There is something, Mom,” Margaret said. “Tell me about Ireland. It seems so exotic. I’d like to go there someday.”

“Exotic!” scoffed her mother. “Jaysus! Tahiti’s exotic. Go there instead.”

Ireland! Living in shite, not knowing where the next meal was coming from, not knowing whether your da was dead or alive. Maureen spared her daughter the sordid details of what she had to do to leave the damn place. She spared her, too, of the whiny, pleading letters her own mam sent her. Maureen vowed that no daughter of hers would ever have to resort to what she had to do to get ahead.

“God forgive me, but it was necessary,” Maureen thought.

Maureen had married a good, hard-working, sensible American man - he wasn’t going to go off and get himself jailed or killed because of some high faluttin’ ideal.

Ireland just wore a person out, it was so easy to forget what all the fighting was for after a 119

while. The British? Freedom? Food? Did it matter? But here in America, a person knew what was what.

“There’s a dream in this country,” Maureen thought. “There’s nothing but a nightmare in Ireland.” But her daughter wouldn’t have anything to do with any of that.

Everything seemed free here in the states, but of course, Maureen knew in her heart that there was a price to pay for everything. But the price is known only by those who have to pay it. She prayed that when the time came whatever price her Margaret would have to pay would not be too dear.

Meanwhile, Margaret grew like a wild fire. She consumed all of her classes like an insatiable flame and when she wanted to escape from the chaos of her home life, she had her books. Her concentration was fierce - she could open a book and fall right into it.

She was Nancy Drew. She was Amelia Earhart. She was Jo March. She was Madame

Curie. She was Eleanor Roosevelt. She was Joan of Arc. All these fabulous women - did she have it in her to be like them, be daring, something other than a just a wife and mother, make a contribution to humanity?

“I think I want to be a doctor,” Margaret announced one day. “I think I want to find the cure for something. Something big.”

“She’s going to be a doctor,” her mother thought, rapturous. “The girls back home can barely write their names, but my daughter, my American daughter, is going to be a doctor!”

“She says that now,” Martin cautioned. “She’s young. She’ll change her mind.” 120

But she didn’t. The older Margaret got, the more resolute she became about studying medicine.

Of course, some of the world’s best hospitals are located in the metropolitan

Boston area.

“She can work in town. She doesn’t even need to leave her home like I did to follow her dreams. She can stay right here in Boston,” her mother thought.

Stay in Boston. Sure, why not? That sounded like a great idea to Margaret when she finished high school. What did she know of the world? Bostonians are encouraged to look at Boston center of the universe. Everything Margaret thought she needed was right in her own backyard.

She was a nice Catholic girl she felt, despite the things she chose not to tell the priest, so when Boston College offered her a scholarship it seemed like a perfect fit, although technically BC wasn’t in Boston. Margaret would live in the dorms, away from home for the first time. She would throw herself into her studies. There would be no interruptions like there were at home. She would be free to pursue anything and everything that interested her.

Anything and everything. And Ann.

Margaret could act in ways that she couldn’t bring herself to do at home and she found a budding special interest in her new roommate, Ann. She had never had to share a room growing up. She and Ann shared many of the same interests in science and math.

They enjoyed sports and had similar tastes in music. And one day while sitting on the 121

floor of their dorm room listening to James Taylor, they discovered that they had a heightened interest in girls and in each other.

An intense, special interest.

They started that afternoon sitting side by side on the floor followed by some

innocent hand holding, both of them acting as if their hands touched by accident. From hand holding, Margaret and Ann advanced to some exploratory touching of arms and legs and faces. Then thigh rubbing. Hugging. Furtive hands on investigatory missions under each other’s shirts. Then some stealthy, delicate kisses that lead to kisses involving their whole mouths and tongues. And then more rubbing and touching and feeling. And more rubbing. And then the taking off of each other’s clothes. First slowly, casually, and then in a frenzy. They had no idea what they were doing, but that didn’t stop them from acting like they did. They licked and sucked the ensuing night away. And the night after that.

And so on. Finally came the languishing in bed together on Saturday mornings until

Margaret had to get up and pack her books and dirty clothes and wait for a parent to come pick her up to take her home for the weekend. And the long, tearful kisses before opening the dorm door and the burning each experienced until they’d see each other again on

Sunday night.

“Do you have to go?” Ann would whine. And Margaret would melt and climb on top of her.

“I’ll be right here waiting for you,” Ann said pushing Margaret off and sliding back down into the bed. 122

Margaret would practically choke on her Sunday dinner in anticipation of getting back to her dorm room.

Good thing that Margaret was such an excellent student and quick study otherwise her grades would have gone to hell. As Ann’s did.

“My parents are going to kill me, “Ann said.

“Why don’t you let me help you?” Margaret said.

“Ok,” Ann said and pushed Margaret’s hand down her underpants. “Help.”

Summer came and Ann went back to New Jersey and when she returned to school she didn’t want to be roommates with Margaret any more.

“I don’t get any studying done around you,” Ann lamented. “My parents told me

I’ll have to transfer to a state school if I don’t get my grades up.” Plus, Ann had met someone else over the summer. Another, different girl. A Jersey girl. This girl and Ann had made a promise to each other to be faithful.

“It wouldn’t be right,” Ann told a tearful Margaret.

t “It wouldn’t be right?” Margaret thought. “You’re worrying now about whether it would be ‘right’ or not?”

So Margaret got herself assigned another roommate, one who was very uninterested in Margaret, but who had a boyfriend who had an apartment in town. Thus,

Margaret had the room to herself most nights and went about the business of meeting other girls. Many other girls. It was surprisingly not very hard, Jesuit school be damned - these girls wanted to be found. 123

“Where were these girls when I was in high school?” Margaret thought. But, of course, they had been right where Margaret had been - peering over the top of some book, gazing up from tying their shoes. Just to get a glimpse of some beautiful classmate and not be obvious.

These girls at BC would make eye contact that lasted a little too long, or make a flirtatious remark, or were out and out cruising in the locker room. Before long, Margaret would be kissing those red lips and pink pert nipples, touching that magnificent lush hair protecting that exquisite territory between their legs, and caressing that snowy skin across the magical landscape of a girl’s body.

Such fabulous adventures! Who knew that life could be like this? Margaret finally convinced her parents to let her spend the weekends at school so she could “use the library and get ahead on her studies.” They agreed and Margaret spent one blissful weekend after another in the arms of different girls and acquiring a unique set of skills that she most surely would never discuss with a priest.

“No one can ever convince me that this is wrong,” Margaret told herself.

Ann of New Jersey became a distant memory.

In this new world, Margaret was not only free to look at girls but, with a newly acquired discretion, touch them. Girls like her - from the neighborhoods, the Catholic schools, houses full of siblings, parents from another country. Margaret knew her catechism well, but she was a scientist at heart. How could anything about what she was doing be wrong? 124

Margaret ate up her classes with her muscular, nimble mind. She was becoming

so hungry for the world. She was beginning to seriously consider the world beyond

Boston.

She started looking into medical schools. There were close to 200 med schools in the U.S. Perhaps Boston wasn’t the center of the universe after all.

“What can you do in another part of the country that you can’t do in Boston?” her

mother had asked her.

“Well,” Margaret said thoughtfully. “It’s a question of people. I want to work with all different kinds of people.”

What can I do? Oh, Mom.

Margaret graduated from Boston College with every honor that they could come up with to give her. She had long since decided that she didn’t want to marry a doctor; she wanted to be one. She had her choice of medical schools and decided on Georgetown where she developed an interest in internal medicine and further applied her talent for breaking hearts. The bar, Phase 1, was a long way from Georgetown but it offered a welcome diversion from the intensity of her studies. There were so many cute Navy girls in DC!

When Margaret graduated from medical school she was at the top of her class and was being courted by hospitals around the country for her residency.

A tour she was being given by a second year resident at a Midwestern hospital helped her to narrow her choices. This guy was geeky, not a lot older than her, and she 125

had guessed him to be gay even though he managed to mention “his fiance” at least four

times in ninety minutes.

As they were finishing up over coffee, he looked at her quite pointedly and said,

“I’d shut up about your situation if I were you.”

“My situation?”

“You know, the way you are. That kind of stuff doesn’t fly in this part of the

world. Oh, I know it shouldn’t be an issue, but I wouldn’t push it.” He was leaning over

the table, practically whispering.

Margaret leaned in as well. “What do you mean ‘the way I am’?” she said. “How

am I?”

“You know,” he breathed. He sat up. “We don’t have to talk about it. If you don’t bring it up or flaunt it, it won’t become a problem. I’m just saying. Believe me, this is for your benefit. This is a fabulous hospital. We’re doing some really innovative stuff. It’s just that you’re probably going to be required to attend some fundraisers, meet and greet a lot of our big donors. Our donors tend to be conservative. Generous, but conservative.

Many of our old doctors are very conservative as well. You don’t want to rock the boat, if you know what I mean.”

Of course, Margaret knew what he meant. He had practically gone into an interpretive dance. But she wasn’t going to give him any satisfaction, the closeted dolt.

“No,” she said. “I have no idea what you mean.”

Margaret chose to do her residency at the University of California in San

Francisco. UCSF was one of the top rated teaching hospitals in the country. And it was in 126

San Francisco! Gay Mecca! Would San Francisco allow Margaret more freedom and let

her live her life out in the open? She wasn’t even sure what that meant, exactly. How

open can a girl who likes girls be? How open did she even want to be?

“Like I’m even going to have any time to worry about my love life,” she thought.

Her mother was heart-broken, but she understood. In fact, she knew in her heart

once her Margaret got a taste of the world outside of home that she would just be hungry

for more. Didn’t she, too, go out and follow her heart to realize her dreams? Didn’t

Maureen know first-hand that you must go where you need to go and do what you need to do?

And didn’t Maureen see something in Margaret that she couldn’t quite fathom?

What was it about her - so driven, but so solo?

“Are you seeing anyone, love?” Maureen would ask.

“Who has the time?” Margaret would answer.

Yes, Margaret was a different kind of girl. Just how different, her mother wondered? “Please God, give her a clear path,” she prayed.

The wild West Coast beckoned her as it did countless others like Margaret who would soon be comfortable calling themselves lesbians, calling themselves gay. All through medical school, she avoided calling herself anything. She never felt the need to give her sexuality a name. All those furtive encounters with other female medical students, all those awkward moments during rounds when they couldn’t even look at each other. But after her encounter with that scared little resident in the Midwest, she realized that she couldn’t live like that. 127

“Everyone is looking for something,” Margaret thought. “Most of us just don’t

know what. Or what to call it.”

Sure, she was sad to be traveling so far from her family, but getting away from the

East Coast would be good for her, she reasoned. It was necessary. It would allow her to

try something new. Throw herself into her work. Live out loud, as they say. Meet cute

girls. Maybe even one with red hair.

Margaret

I was named for my maternal grandmother, a woman I never met. She was much

loved by my mother or so my mother told me. My mother did love her, o f course, but I

also think my mother was riddled with guilt for going off to America for this great new

life leaving her mother to muddle along in Ireland. But that’s just a hunch. From what my

mother told me my grandmother was overwhelmed most o f her life by work, poverty, and fear. Fear o f the police, fear o f losing a child or her husband (which she did) and fear, I

suspect, that life offered nothing but more o f the same for countless generations on end

and the only thing anyone could hope for was a heavenly reward.

Scarcely a day would go by without my mother remarking how glorious life was

in America. Heavenly! Although, the real heaven is much, much better mind. Imagine!

To us kids, life was life. We experienced our own kind o f drudgery. School,

church, school, church. My mother was quick to remind us that we had absolutely

nothing to complain about. The folks in Ireland had it rough - they had reason to complain. 128

“Barefoot and starving, many o f them, ” my mother would say. Or blind or

crippled. Running sores. The afflictions o f the old country were endless. And every few

month my grandmother in Ireland would write to my mother to ask for money. They were

amazing letters; that woman would pull out all the stops. They were liberally laced with

Catholic guilt and filial obligation. My mother would cry for about an hour after

receiving one. And then, o f course, she ’d send her mother money. My mother came from

a large family. Several stayed in Ireland, but one o f her brothers emigrated to Australia,

another to England. When I was in med school, long after my grandmother had passed

away, my family hosted one o f my Australian cousins. My cousin informed my mother

that her father also received letters from my grandmother and that he, too, sent her

money regularly. No doubt my uncle in England received letters as well.

I ’ve had my doubts about heaven from a very early age. There’s no evidence o f it.

Then again, there’s no evidence that there isn ’t one. Kind o f like Schrddinger’s cat. But

I ’ve always been an empirical proof kind ofperson. There is simply no proof that there is

a heaven. There isn’t even an indication that there’s a heaven. Entering this kind o f

discussion didn t get me very far with the nuns at school, most o f whom were simple girls from Kentucky. Frankly, they didn’t have a lot o f education themselves - just enough to

teach us and they questioned nothing about Catholic doctrine. So I learned to keep my

mouth shut about it. There was a kind o f heresy about it, too, which upset my parents, particularly my father who was the more devout o f the two. 129

My biggest problem with heaven is how people use it as an excuse to stop trying. I

believe that we can always improve things, make things better. What’s the point o f life if

the only the only reward worth having may or may not occur after we die?

I took exception to a lot o f Catholic doctrine: water-into-wine, transfiguration,

immaculate conception. Catholics call these things miracles. Other cultures might call

them magic. By the time I was about sixteen, I called them bullshit. Again, no proof. Just

someone’s say-so. It's attributed to faith o f which apparently I had little. Look, Ijust

wanted to see the data.

Still, I understood the comfort religion provides people. In fact, I find myself

praying whenever things go wrong. I recognize it as a kind o f displacement activity, but

it’s remarkably effective in calming me down. And more specifically, I understand the

identity religion offers people, the tribal aspect. O f course, that identity becomes problematic when it promotes narrow-mindedness - in particular vis-a-vis sexuality - as

well as magical thinking. I mean, spending your life hoping for miracles is just ridiculous.

Being the only girl in a family o f boys emphasized my biological difference. We

had similar physical traits and mannerisms, but my brothers were ruled by a force that

was foreign to me and that I couldn’t identify until I had grown. My brothers were

barbarians, brutal to each other and to their friends. They went crashing through life. I

enjoyed them; there was never a dull moment in our house, but I never saw them as more

than as a kind o f chemical reaction. Clearly, they were driven by a chemistry I didn t have. 130

It wasn’t until my teens that it began to occur to me that I was different from other girls. At first, I thought that the pleasure I took in being around girls - looking at them, especially - was just a response to being around so many boys all my life.

After my first year in high school, I began to notice a subtle shift from “liking to look” to “wanting. ” Shocking. And I couldn’t articulate this wanting for the longest time.

I began to have fantasies - we call them “impure thoughts ” in Catholicism - regarding girls. In retrospect, they were pretty innocent. Mostly involving hugging and holding hands. Being alone on a beach together or on a hiking trail. Just girls together.

I had an exhilarating experience with another girl when I was about 12.1 belonged, briefly, to the Camp Fire Girls. My parish sponsored a group. At that time, the

Camp Fire Girls was full o f all this faux Native American malar key. I went on my one and only camping trip with them where we did, indeed, sing around a camp fire about

"wohelo ” — a word made from “work, health, love ” the camp fire motto. It was April vacation and the week was very cold and wet. The first night my bunkmate, Nancy, asked if she could sleep with me. She told me that she was cold and scared. There were eight other girls in our cabin so it wasn’t as if we were alone.

“I can’t get warm, ” Nancy complained. “Move over and I ’ll spoon you. ”

This was not an expression I knew, but I dutifully made room for her and she snuggled up against my back and I leaned against her as if I was sitting in a favorite chair. Nancy placed her arm lightly around me. It felt like heaven and I do believe it was one o f the most delightful night’s sleep I ’ve ever had. The next day Nancy was all business, wouldn Y give me the time o f day, and that night, she bunked with someone else. I was surprised to find myself heartbroken. I learned how fickle girls can be.

Interestingly, in light o f how my life worked out, I remember that in the Camp

Fire award system called Guideposts the first level was Faggot Finder. I t’s the only level

I ever achieved.

When Ifinally figured out that what I was experiencing was desire I was almost amused. Talk about a blinding flash o f the obvious. However, I knew that this wasn’t something that I would announce to my family. Oh no.

Everything in Catholicism is intended to freak you out so you won Y stray from the path. Therefore, I was surprised that when I realized I was attracted to girls that I wasn’t freaked out. I knew that these feelings would be described as sin, but they felt so natural.

They just happened. It wasn Y as if I set out to become a lesbian: lesbianism came to me.

And as such I couldn Y see how anyone who described everything as God’s will wouldn Y with this as well.

Everyone thinks everyone else is just like them. Gay people are like that, too. As much as we might wonder about why we are gay, we also wonder why everyone else isn’t. I mean, I get that whole go forth and multiply thing, but there are ways around that.

I f it’s a child you ’re after, a woman only needs a man for seconds. Boom.

So, to be clear, being gay isn’t a choice - let’s drive a stake through the heart o f that idea once and for all. You just are what you are. Period. 132

O f course, all bets are off when it comes to talking to your parents about your

sexuality. Just the word sex can make many Catholic adults o f my parents ’ generation

and ethnicity have a seizure (although my mother was a notable exception). My parents,

my mother in particular, suspected that I was “different. ” My mother exulted in anything

that distinguished me from an Irish plough-girl so I think it took her awhile to consider

that my sexuality might not be what she had had in mind for me, that is, if she any kind o f

sexuality in mind for me at all. I think she viewed me as her golden American girl and

hoped I go o ff and change the world.

I tried not to let her down.

As squirrelly as the Irish can be about the ways o f the body and as incongruous as

this seems, my mother was surprisingly forth-coming about sexual information. My

mother loved sex. We have that in common. She was also surprisingly knowledgeable

about sexual contact that didn 7 involve penetration.

“ There are so many ways to please yourself and each other just with your

hands, ” she said. “Men like intercourse. Men need intercourse. But, save for conceiving,

I never needed himself in me. I liked everything else just as well if not better. Mind you, I

worked with your father, showed him what’s what. It’s nice sometimes to let him think

he’s helping. ”

These kinds o f admissions would later be described as “too much information. ”

Everyone I have ever talked to told me that they would be shocked to have their mother be so forthcoming. How things worked', sure. But what they liked? Never! 133

Perhaps it was the scientist in me, but I was not upset by any o f this information. I

was grateful, in fact. I took everything that she told me to heart and kept it in mind.

It came in very handy.

I, on the other hand, while comfortable with talking about sex, was not

comfortable talking to my mother about my own sexuality. There would come an

appropriate moment to bring it up and I would just choke. Almost literally. As ridiculous

as it sounds, I had visions o f being struck by lightning for just uttering the words. Plus, it felt like it was none o f her business. I grew up having to share everything; the whys and

wherefores o f my sexuality was something I savored and kept to myself.

Eventually, it became so freaking obvious that she asked me. “So are you one o f

them gays now? ” she asked finally when it was so beyond the point. “A lesbian - am I

saying that right? ”

I want the record to show that when I moved to California I was not running

away. From the time I began college I increasingly lived my life the way I wanted to.

For me, it has always been about the work. Where is the best place for me to be

regarding the work I am interested in doing? Very simple. As was the answer — San

Francisco. There, they were doing the work that most interested me. Little did I know

how my background in immunology and interest in internal medicine would morph into a specialty that hadn't even been invented and that I would end up in the eye o f the hurricane, so to speak.

I ’ve always been fascinated by how things work. My father had a garage and taught me how to work on cars. In order to repair a car, you must first figure out what’s 134

wrong with it; in other words, diagnose the problem. A lot o f problems present exactly

the same way. An automobile is a very complex machine and there are many variables.

Sometimes the problem is obvious, other times it requires investigation to unearth the

real cause.

We humans are machines, too. And the things that can go wrong with us sometimes defy the imagination. Symptoms for many kinds o f illnesses are similar if not

the same. But there is always a cause behind the symptom. I had a very Zen professor in med school who used to say “look for horses, not zebras. ” Meaning, rule out the obvious

before you determine the patient has beriberi. Sometimes, though, it’s just not always obvious where to look. Especially when we physicians are faced with something completely new.

I am a doctor and a scientist. I become bored with treating just the symptoms o f a disease; finding the source is what fascinates me.

HIV offers endless fascination. It has also been endlessly humbling.

In my work with people with HIV and AIDS I have many times come to the point where I have completely run out o f options; there is nothing more that can be done. I can't offer hope, but I can offer comfort. Towards the end o f life, people often consider heaven and hell and want to talk about those things. I don’t believe in either, but the patient and I talk until we find common ground. These tend to be fascinating and poignant discussions.

A person dying o f AIDS eventually comes to a tipping point where heaven and hell aren ’t as important as an end. AIDS patients come to a place where they don’t just 135

want relief, they want it all to be over. The fear o f returning pain or another debilitating

symptom is often worse than the disease itself. No one wants to live with AIDS if he is going to be horribly ill all o f the time.

That’s my job. This is what I do.

As the crisis worsened, it became increasingly important to have gay physicians

to work with AIDS patients because straight people, doctor or no, can be so clueless.

These guys needed someone who understood how they operated and wasn’t afraid to talk about sex. As a woman, I could also offer a bit o f a Mom factor. Everyone wants their mother when they are horribly sick and so many o f my patients have been disowned by their families. Clinician and compassionate caregiver - that is the doctor I have tried to be.

I have met so many remarkable men at the absolute worst time o f their lives. I have had to deliver the diagnosis o f AIDS. I have had to watch them progressively sicken and eventually die. This work has only steeled my resolve to conquer this disease, to find a cure.

I made some grandiose statement to my parents once about wanting to save the world or some such nonsense. I felt things passionately even though I might not have been able to show it.

It’s much safer to live in your head when you have a big heart and feel so deeply about so many things.

O f course, didn 11 go and meet someone who would be endlessly dragging me out o f myself and challenging me on so many levels? 136

And haven’t I loved it?

We spend our lives looking for a mirror - someone to reflect our best selves back to us. I wasted a lot o f time looking for someone who was “like me. ” Instead, I got what I really needed: someone who “got me. ”

She kind offell from the sky. One minute, I was in a room crowded with women, the next minute I saw her. And from then on she was all I could see. And as foolish as this sounds, I knew right then that she was “the one. ”

Let me rephrase that. From the moment I laid eyes on her my whole metabolism went into overdrive. Initially, I thought it was simply libido, but no, it was so much more than that. I almost couldn’t swallow. It was as if an alarm went o ff and was ringing through my body: pay attention, seize this moment. Do not let her get away.

I don’t know how I managed to stay so relatively cool during the ensuing encounter. I started talking to her like I knew what I was doing.

Turns out that she was the one with the plan. 137

SIX

Darlene Johnson’s 21st birthday fell on a heavy, sticky Tallahassee August day in

1977 very much like the two hundred and fifty other heavy, sticky days one gets to

experience in North Florida. In other words, typical.

Her family - that would be her mother and older sister -had been talking up for

months how this was the day Darlene was to come into her “legacy.” Darlene had been

planning her escape accordingly.

She figured she was about three years late in leaving Florida, but she had to give

her girlfriend who was a year younger time to get out of high school and used to the idea

of leaving. Her girlfriend Roxanne had finally come around and the two of them had been

scheming to take off for months. They hadn’t quite agreed on where to go, but Darlene

reckoned that they’d hit the road, head west, and figure it out as they went.

Darlene really had her heart set on San Francisco, but she didn’t want to push too hard on Roxanne, but given what they both knew about San Francisco why the heck wouldn’t Roxanne want to go there?

Roxanne was still pretty attached to her mother, although Darlene could see that the connection was pretty loose on Roxanne’s mother’s end. There was a lot of comings and goings at Roxanne’s place, her mother took up with new men the way some folks change their socks. And some of those men were creepy as hell. Darlene reckoned that 138

over the years some of them had been more than just creepy to Roxanne. Roxanne never

wanted to talk about it, but boy, she sure didn’t have any time for men.

“They’re pigs,” Roxanne confided. “The way they eat. The way they smell.

Everything about them. Pigs.”

Darlene didn’t have much to contribute when it came to men. There weren’t any

at her house, just her mother and sister and herself. When Darlene was growing up, she’d

bring the matter up from time to time. “Where are our men at?” she’d ask. The kids at

school would occasionally taunt: “You don’t got no daddy. You don’t know where your

daddy is at.” Darlene could pretty much pound the stuffing out of anyone who bothered

her at school. And as for her mother, Darlene just stopped asking after a while. What

difference did it make? Father or no, they’d all still probably be living in a trailer park

working their way through day old buns and expired tinned food from the church pantry.

There wasn’t much coming and going at Darlene’s place: it was just coming and

staying. No one seemed to go anywhere or do anything. It was just the three of them at

Darlene’s house: herself, her mother, and her sister, Marlene. There was never much money, but they eked by. It was easy enough to get maid work at a motel, although not as easy to get the kind of hours you needed to pay for everything. By the time Darlene was in high school, all three of them were working at least part of the time so they got by. By contrast to Roxanne’s situation, the Johnson household seemed almost normal.

But as Darlene got older she knew in her gut that there was something hinky about the whole operation, like how come there’s no answer, even a crazy one, for how come there are no men at all? How come we don’t seem to have any family but us? This 139

is the South, after all. Everybody else seems to be lousy with family. Roxanne’s family being a notable exception; she didn’t know her daddy either. Maybe that’s why she and

Roxanne hit it off so quick at first.

Probably also had something to do with the fact that Darlene’s heart practically stopped every time she looked at Roxanne.

Darlene’s mother and Marlene had pumped up this legacy stuff to the point where

Darlene was sick of hearing about it. Still, she was hoping this legacy business would clear some of those questions she’d been asking all her life.

Boy, howdy, did it ever.

Darlene’s mother fried up a mess of chicken that night for Darlene’s birthday dinner. Afterwards, she brought out a big pink cake she had made and ice cream. She had even iced “Happy Birthday, Darlene” on it using one of them store bought tubes. An impressive effort, Darlene had to admit.

It was closing in on eight o’clock. The sun was just starting to set, but it was still in the 90s outside and about a hundred in. They had two fans roaring on the counter, a big one on the floor by the TV, and more in the back. All they did was make noise and move dust. That pink cake wasn’t going to last but a minute.

“Happy birthday, sweet pea,” her mother said.

“Yes, happy twenty-first birthday you old thing you,” her sister Marlene said.

Her mother lit the candles and Darlene endured her mother and sister singing a droning off-key version of happy birthday.

“Make a wish!” her mother said. “Blow out them candles!” 140

Darlene closed her eyes. Make a wish? Just one? Where to start? She looked at the women who looked at her from across the table. She took a deep breath and blew out her candles wishing she was anyplace other than where she was.

“Get me the hell out of here,” she thought.

“It’s time for presents!” her sister said. Her mother eyed her sister warily.

“Right,” her mother said. “Presents.” She grabbed Marlene by the wrist and whispered to her “You sure?”

Marlene nodded. “It’s time,” she whispered back.

Marlene slipped two packages in front of her sister.

“Open this one first,” Marlene said. It contained a camera, a pretty nice one, too.

Darlene was very pleased with it. “You’re always been talking about wanting to do photography,” her mother said. “Thank you,” said Darlene. “It’s really nice.”

“Ok, now this one,” Marlene said pushing the second package towards her.

Her mother stubbed out her cigarette, pushed her chair back from the table, and folded her hands in her lap. She looked at Darlene as if she was about to detonate a bomb.

Darlene looked over at her. “What’s up, mama? Why you looking like I’m about to set the house on fire?”

“No reason,” her mother said and turned her mouth into a thin, flat line.

Darlene opened the package to find a Bible. She didn’t quite know what to make of it, although her mother and sister had gotten quite religious recently. She attributed it to that.

“Shit, they’re trying to save me,” she thought. 141

“Thanks,” Darlene said, removing the tape from wrapping paper. She knew her mother would want to use it again. “So, what about this legacy?” she asked.

“Oh, that,” Marlene said.

“That,” her mother said.

“Yeah, that,” Darlene said. Something was not sitting right with Darlene; her mother and sister looked like they were both about to jump out the window. Darlene could feel the barometric pressure in the room drop, like just before a storm.

“Well, it’s not exactly a legacy proper,” her mother said.

“More like about your heritage, see,” her sister said. “It’s information, really.”

“I’m all ears,” Darlene said.

“It’s in your Bible,” Marlene said. “Look at the family tree.”

So Darlene looked at the family. There was information there all right and how.

According to the family tree, her sister Marlene, her senior by fifteen years, was in fact her mother. As in, gave birth to her. The woman she had been calling ‘Mom’ all her life was in fact her grandmother. As in gave birth to the one who had given birth to her.

Darlene put the Bible down. She felt her fried chicken start to climb back up her throat. Her mother and sister - her grandmother and mother now - watched her carefully looking ready to either fend off blows or run. Darlene truly was at a loss as to what she was supposed to do with this information. But she did know this: she couldn’t never not know it.

“Shit, don’t this just beat everything?” she thought. 142

Darlene gave a long exhale and felt the chicken go back down where it belonged.

There were more than a couple of pieces missing to this puzzle. She scratched her head of curly black hair. She reckoned shock might register later, but right now this felt like algebra.

“We figured it was time to tell you,” her mother Marlene told her. “And we wanted you to hear it from us.”

“Who else would I hear it from?” Darlene asked. “I mean, who else knows?”

It was damn hot. Anyone talking had to do it above the whir of the six fans running in their claustrophobic double-wide. These two women were Darlene’s only living relatives that she knew of. She looked like them, they looked like her - faces full of disappointment, hard work, and not enough fun. Except theirs - her mother and sister - had an extra element. Deceit. No wonder they looked so fucking old! She had been told since she was a little girl that her daddy had died in an accident, end of story. Now that the cat was out of the bag, so to speak, there seemed to be one daddy short. Her grandmother and mother stood there wringing their hands next to a table with an oozing birthday cake and melting bowls of ice cream.

“Who is my father?” Darlene asked.

The two older women looked at each other.

“Don’t act like you don’t know,” Darlene said.

“Well now,” said the older of the two said.

“Check your Bible,” the younger, Marlene, offered. :”Look close at the lines we drew in.” 143

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, “Darlene said. “Why can’t I just get a simple answer?”

Darlene looked at the inside of her Bible. There she saw the names of her grandmother and of her grandfather - a name she had never heard before in all her life. Arthur T.

Johnson. Who the hell was he? What the hell happened to him? After him can the name of her mother, Marlene. And the name of her brother, which was also the name of her father. Lines pointing every which way back and forth. Her father was her older brother

Walter who drowned under suspicious circumstances when he was nineteen and Darlene was barely two months old. This was what she had been told. Her stomach turned to lead.

She thought she just might never eat again.

Happy birthday, Darlene.

After being given this information, her mothers - she didn’t know what to call either of them any more - acted as if their earthly work was done and Darlene now knew everything she would ever need to know. Life could not possibly hold any more surprises for her.

“Let’s eat this up,” her now grandmother said, turning to plate up the cake and ice cream. “Before it all turns to mush.”

“Right,” Darlene thought. “Cake is going to fix this.”

Darlene stared at the pink puddle on her plate. It was now her turn to deliver surprises.

“So, y’all, I got something to tell you, too,” Darlene announced as her grandmother handed her sister-mother a plate of molten birthday cake and ice cream.

“Roxanne and I are packing up and leaving for California and we’re never coming back.” / 144

Her grandmother placed the cake on the table and sat upright in her chair.

“You and Roxanne? Why?” Marlene said.

“We’re lovers. Time for us to go out in the world and make a life for ourselves.

Not going to happen for us here in Florida. We’re heading west.”

“You’re lovers?’’ Her grandmother spit out the words then gasped.

“Yes, ma’am,” Darlene said. “Lesbians, if you prefer.”

The women’s manifestation of shock almost made Darlene laugh. They could dish it out, but clearly they couldn’t take it.

“A lesbian,” Marlene said. “You mean a dyke? One of them? Oh, sweet Jesus, no!”

Darlene’s grandmother threw her paper plate on the floor and spat.

“This is how you thank us?” she said. “After all we’ve done for you? May God have mercy on your soul,” she continued. “This is all on you. Don’t be blaming us for your sin when you stand in front of your maker.”

“Ok,” Darlene said. “I’ll tell him ‘hey’ for you when I see him and save you a seat. I’ll let you fill him in on everything else.”

The next week, Darlene left the Bible, took the camera, and was gone.

Darlene

The women in my family are so squirrelly they should have fur. I should have suspected there was something hinky in my family tree, but I got to hand it to them for keeping the game going for so long. 145

‘Course, when they let it loose it spewed out like a bad made for TV movie. But they sure managed to sit on it for a long time. I mean, women don’t have much choice in the South. Hell, women don’t have much choice anywhere. But, I ’ll tell you, growing up I believed in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and that I had a daddy that got killed by falling in a well or some such nonsense and that I was a lucky girl to have a momma and sister that loved me so much. So for that, I guess, I am grateful. Everybody's got to come from somebody and somewhere.

But you don’t have to stay there or with them.

Funny though, what with all talk about loving me, it was also pretty clear in my mind from the git-go that I wanted to get the hell out o f Florida.

Oh, you know Florida - it’s that penis-shaped land mass at the southeastern point o f the country drooping into the Atlantic Ocean. We ’re known for Cubans, old Jews, beaches, football, and chain gangs.

Florida is the only state in the union where the further north you go, the more southern it becomes. There are plenty o f exceptions to that, most notably Dade County, but for the most part, the further north you go in Florida, the more red-necky it becomes.

Keep heading north and you ’re in either Georgia or Alabama. The really scary-ass parts o f Georgia and Alabama.

In Florida we grow fruits like oranges and nuts like Anita Bryan91. Fortunately, by the time ole Anita got her “Save Our Children ” nonsense up and running I was

9 Former beauty pageant contestant Anita Bryant was a once a spokesperson for the Florida Citrus Commission and an outspoken opponent of gay rights. Her anti-gay campaigns led to a national gay boycott of orange juice. She was famously “pied” by a gay activist in Des Moines, Iowa in 1977. 146

already a step or two out o f the state. If I’d have stayed I was going to have to go find that bitch and slap her hard. I wouldn ’t fool with no pie in the face. I know that her whole homophobic thing was mostly directed towards men; lesbians were pretty much invisible in her world view. Well, in a lot o f people’s world view. But, the way I see it, queer is queer. You hate some o f us, you hate all o f us. We need to stick together.

Anyway, if you have to be from north Florida - and, given a choice, I would advise exhausting all possibilities, including hell itself first - Tallahassee is probably your best choice. It is hot, hot, fucking hot in summer and in winter it is less hot.

Tallahassee has bugs you could throw a saddle on. Yankees from the north come to

Florida to escape the snow and maybe to die. Dykes in Florida escape the state in order to just live. It was not a stretch to imagine myself dead out on a back road killed by some cracker who took exception to my proclivities. Girls who like pussy are not high on the

Florida food chain. I was getting the “Girl, why ain ’t you married? You one o f them lezzies? ” routine everywhere I went.

I had had my eye on Roxanne Moore since seventh grade. She had a young mother, too -one who was really her mother, at least as far as either o f us knew — and the music at her house was forbidden ay my house. My mother-granny had started playing all gospel all the time at our place. When Roxanne’s mother was between boyfriends, her house was a good place to hang out. Her mother never paid much mind to what we did.

I learned to slow dance to Brenda Lee at Roxanne’s house. I had tried to put my arms around Roxanne to kiss her when her mother came into the room. 147

“Darlene Johnson, ” she said. “ What are you doing? ” I was sure enough ready for her to pull out a gun or say that she was calling the police or something. Instead she

said “You ’re dancing, not wrestling her to the ground. Here, let me show you. ” And she

took me by the hand.

“You ’re tall, ” she said. “I’m going show you how to both follow and lead. When

you go to dance around here none o f these hayseeds know how or want to dance. Girls

need to dance together if they want to dance at all. It ’11 be good for you to know how to

go both ways. ”

Going both ways. Story o f my life.

Her mother pulled me close to her. She was very pretty; I could see where

Roxanne got her looks. “Now just relax and let me show you, ” she said as we moved to

Brenda Lee singing “Break It to Me Gently” while Roxanne watched us and laughed.

Later “just relax and let me show you ” became a catch phrase between Roxanne

and me. We showed each other stuff all through high school.

When Ifirst got out o f high school I thought maybe I ’d try and become a dental

technician or something. Anything but cleaning toilets in a motel. I even enrolled in a

technical school for a while. But I couldn’t stand being around people’s open mouths.

Other choices weren’t much better as far as I was concerned - drawing blood,

wiping butts. So I dropped out o f voc ed. Roxanne still having another year o f school, I

did anything I could find to do -p ic k fruit, sweep out garages, run a cash register.

Nothing that could even remotely be described as a “career path ”. 148

But then Roxanne got out o f school. She didn t have any “career plans ” either.

She sure did like to read a lot and hang out at the hippy bookstore and talk to those

college girls with the beads and shit.

After being out o f school for a while and working whatever stupid jobs we could

find, both Roxanne and I were plenty ready to get out o f Florida, too. I mean, it’s a head-

scratcher how long it took us to figure that out.

Plus, Roxanne hated the way her mother acted with men, hated to see her do

whatever they wanted her to do. I think she pretty much hated men. And both o f us hated

the way the world treated us.

The local boys called us “lezzies ” when we wouldn't let them take off our pants.

Guys we didn’t even know would talk shit to us when we went into stores. It was as if our just existing was a threat to their manhood. It was sooo hard not to mouth o ff at the

gomers, but we knew it was dangerous to do that. These cavemen might think twice about

hitting a woman, but in their mind a lesbian didn’t count as one.

The only question we had left to answer was where to go. I wanted to go to San

Francisco. Period. It sounded like the only place where we could live in peace. I knew 1

wouldn’t do well in a place where there’s snow like Boston or New York, although they

were a lot closer, same time zone and everything. I needed sunshine and a temperate

climate. I was done, done, done with the Florida heat and humidity.

I also needed to be near the ocean. The ocean calms me and reminds that life

goes on, good or bad, it’s just one more wave against the shore. And - most important o f

all - 1 needed to be among my own kind. Girls who like girls. Simple as that. Oh, and 149 i

putting three thousand miles between me and the carnival act masquerading as my family

couldn’t hurt either.

By then, Roxanne and I had known each other for five years and been girlfriends

for three. She was feeling like family to me, especially after what all had happened.

Roxanne was feeling like my whole life.

Roxanne, on the other hand, was quite taken by the women at the bookstore and

had been reading tons o f this lesbian feminist stuff. She wanted us to go try out living at a

womyn ’s land in Arizona or Oregon.

“ Women’s land? ” I asked her.

“Womyn, ” she said. “With a ‘y’. Dropping the men part.

“Ok, ” I said. “What is womyn’s land exactly? ”

“It’s a place where we can live off the land with other womyn - no men. We can

be free and make our own way in a matriarchal society, ” Roxanne said.

“What’s that mean? Matriarchal? ” Whenever she used words like this I felt like

she was making fun o f me.

“A society run by womyn, ” Roxanne said.

“Hmm. What are these places like? ” I asked.

“Well, they’re communes. Self-sufficient. No men. Out in the country. They’re still pretty rough right now. But the more o f us who show up, the better they ’11 be. They ’re

getting bigger all the time. We can build a female utopia, ” Roxanne said.

“ What do you mean by ‘rough ’, ” I asked. “How rough? ” 150

“ Well, right now, just tents and yurts. Simple structures. I t’s womyn living off the

land, Darlene - don’tyou see? Building their own structures, growing vegetables, living free. ”

“ What the hell is a ‘yurt ’?” I asked.

“It’s a kind o f tent, ” Roxanne said. “People in Mongolia live in them. ”

“Mongolia? Tents and shit? I am running away from a fucking trailer park,

Roxanne, ” I said.

Roxanne smiled. A kind o f beatific smile, I remember now. She had already made

up her mind. I should have seen what was coming. Damn, I loved that girl!

“But these places are in the country, Darlene, ” Roxanne said. “It’s a new

beginning. Fresh air, clean living. And womyn only. ”

“Seems like a big price to pay just to not wear a shirt when hauling water, ” I

said. “Hauling water just to wash so you can do this clean living you ’re all worked up

about. I f I’m going to live in Arizona, I want air conditioning and color TV. And I don’t really even know where Oregon is. Let’s just go to San Francisco and take it from there. ”

Seemed to me that Roxanne didn’t know what the hell she was talking about; she

was just parroting all the shit those hippy chicks had told her. I should have worked harder at resolving things before we took off. I know that now.

We packed up the car with all our worldly goods — a couple of duffle bags full o f our ratty clothes, some books, some tools, my camera, her guitar. We had adopted two mixed lab puppies about a month before and debated about whether to take them with us.

We decided that the pups, a brother and sister now both tipping the scales at nearly sixty 151

pounds o f slobbering dog love, were kind o f all the family we had left besides each other,

so we threw in a fifty pound bag o f dog chow, their bowls, leashes, and toys. The car took

on a very Beverly Hillbillies look; we were ready to head out to the Promised Land. It

was going to be great!

I figured we could work our shit out on the road and I could get Roxanne to come

around to my way o f thinking. O f course, that was what Roxanne was figuring on, too.

We had a long way ahead o f us and not just on the road.

A piece o f shit 1970 Dodge Dart sucks as a getaway car. Pedal to the floor, I

could barely squeeze her to 60 mph. Still, the first couple o f days were fine. Romantic,

even. We were excited to be on the road. We told each other silly stories and Roxanne

played guitar and we sang as we putted our way out o f Florida. As we wanted to save as

much money as we could, we camped out at night. That meant that we had to get o ff the

main road every night and look for a safe place to make camp. Then we ran into a little

weather when we hit Mississippi which is when I remembered about all the window seals

in the Dart being shot and how they let water seep into the car. The weather fuck near

turned into a hurricane by the time we reached Louisiana and our plan o f camping along

the way had to be scrapped. We were lying about the dogs and spending money we didn’t

really have to stay in motels. We spent two days in a motel in Slidell alone because it was just too scary to drive.

That’s when things started to get interesting.

Thanks to a cracked engine block and a couple o f knock-down, drag-out fights on

account o f us getting testy with each other what with the close quarters and everything 152

getting wet and the dogs puking in the back seat and burning through money and things

in general not working out so good, it took us six days just to get to west Texas. That was

about four more days than we had money for. We washed dishes at a diner, picked

tomatoes, beans, and cotton, and cut brush in back o f a scary-ass motel for a guy with no

teeth and one eye in order to put together enough money to patch the car up and get back

on the road. We even found a place in Midland where we could sell our blood.

We were close to hitting rock bottom.

In all the time we had known each other Roxanne and I had never not gotten

along. But now we were hating everyone and everything. I didn’t want to admit it, but I

could see that I was losing Roxanne. We ’d been together almost constantly since w e’d

met, but never under the kind o f refugee conditions we were experiencing then. The stress

was making her irritable and sullen.

Plus, Roxanne was spending a lot o f time just pouring over all this feminist shit

that she had picked up in the hippy bookstore back in Tallahassee and packed along with

her. She began using words I didn’t know. Words like misogyny and objectification. I

didn’t know what the hell she was talking about half the time. I knew she had kumbaya

tendencies, but we had known each other for so long and been there for each other

through so much that Ijust thought we ’d be together forever. I believed that we could

give each other enough room to do whatever we needed to do. But I just didn’t

understand what it was she was trying to do. I'm not sure she did either. Ifigured that if

we had survived high school and our families there was nothing that could break us apart. 153

By the time we made it to New Mexico, I knew there was no getting around it: we were going to have to drive through Arizona to get to California. And Roxanne was going to insist that we detour south and go check out the womyn’s land commune place that she was so het up about. Turns out that she had more than just a causal interest in it. She had been corresponding with these people for months. And had never told me. I realize now that during the whole drive across New Mexico we were actually saying goodbye.

“So, does this place have a name? ” I asked.

“Yes, ” Roxanne said.

“Are you going to tell me? ”

“Don’t make fun o f it. ”

“Ok. What’s it called? ”

“Camp Sister Warrior, ” Roxanne said

“Ah, jeez, ” I said. “Sounds like a bunch o f hairy hippy dykes. ”

“See, I knew you'd make fun. ”

“I ’m not making fun, ” I said, although 1 wanted to, badly. “It’s just so...groovy. ”

“Maybe so, ” Roxanne replied quietly. “Let’s see, ok? ”

Camp Sister Warrior was in a desolate area outside of Tucson in the high desert.

The landscape looked like nothing Darlene had ever seen before - sand, rocks, scrub pine, and cactus. She expected to see Indians to come whooping down on them like in the movies. Darlene couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about “dry heat” - hot is fucking hot. The AC had crapped out days ago and she and Roxanne decided they didn’t 154

want to spend the money to fix it. Darlene’s hair hung in loopy curls around her face and her t-shirt stuck to the vinyl of the Dart seat. Roxanne sat beside her in just her bra. It was just too hot and dusty to even think about touching each other and they were barely speaking to each other by then.

The Dart wasn’t liking the altitude or the heat much and neither was she. The dogs, Amber and Arrow, were drooping in the back seat panting and miserable. At least they weren’t puking any more. Roxanne was sitting up all perky and excited like she expected to see Jesus pop up at any minute.

“This looks like a movie set for hell,” Darlene said.

“You’re just not used to it,” Roxanne said. “It’ll grow on you.”

“Oh, hell no,” Darlene thought gripping the wheel.

The high Arizona desert landscape was rugged and sparse. If this was a cowboy movie, Darlene thought, this would be where the frontiersman, crazed by the sun and dust, died of thirst surrounded by their empty water barrels.

“Man, I would have sucked as a pioneer,” Darlene said. “I’d have taken one look at this place and said ‘get me the hell back to Ohio’ or some shit.”

“Don’t say that - you’d have been a great pioneer. And it’s not too late,” said

Roxanne. “We can be pioneers. You and I. Here.”

Roxanne scared Darlene when she talked like that all homesteady and weird like she’d never been in a swimming pool or had running water before.

“What is it they say about pioneers?” Darlene said. “Oh yeah, they’re easy to spot

- they’re the ones with the arrows in their backs.” 155

They had been driving route 89 for what felt like, to Darlene, their whole lives until they finally found a tiny sign pointing down a dirt road and the name of the camp.

The Dart was just about ready to give up the ghost. Darlene was losing patience; to her, the landscape looked incapable of sustaining life. All Roxanne had were hand­ written directions that someone had mailed to her. The directions reminded Darlene of a pirate’s map.

“How do we know that this place is even real?” Darlene complained.

“”Oh, it’s real,” Roxanne said. “These women have been telling me all about it.”

Roxanne waved her packets of letters. Darlene’s heart broke a little.

“How do we know that they’re not murderers or some scary cult?”

“Oh, Darlene,” was all Roxanne would say.

“What do we do now?” Darlene said, eying the hand-painted sign. “Find the tallest tree, face north, and count off a hundred paces or some shit?”

“Ha, ha,” Roxanne said. “Drive down the dirt road.”

The road was badly rutted with heavy brush on both sides. “Seriously?” Darlene said. “It’s going kill what’s left of our suspension.”

“Seriously,” Roxanne said. “Drive.”

“The things she makes me do,” Darlene thought.

So they went bumping down the road at about five miles an hour, the Dart complaining and the dogs whimpering the whole time. After about twenty minutes they had barely gone half a mile. At the end of the road there was a manzinita with another 156

tiny sign on it. Behind the tree was a big wrought iron gate. Darlene pulled up in front of it.

“Now what?” she said.

“I’ll ring the bell,” Roxanne said.

“Lurch will come a-running, no doubt,” Darlene said.

\ “Don’t be ridiculous,” Roxanne said pulling her shirt back on. “There are no men here.” She opened her door and both dogs bounded out. Roxanne grabbed a leash. “I’ll take Amber in with me. Try to be positive,” she said. She leaned in and looked at

Darlene. “Everything’s going to be ok,” she said. “Trust me.”

Darlene watched Roxanne leash up Amber and the two of them walked towards the gate and her stomach began to knot. She gave a whistle and Arrow climbed back into the car and onto her lap and started wagging and woofing.

“No, boy,” Darlene said. “You stay with me.”

Roxane rang the bell and stood there for a few minutes with Amber by her side.

“She’s so beautiful,” Darlene thought and she sat in the car with Arrow drooling on her.

Someone finally came to the gate. Roxanne stood there chatting for a minute or two and then the gate opened up. Roxanne turned to Darlene in the car, waved, and blew her a kiss. Out of habit Darlene reached up and grabbed it. She watched Roxanne go in and then sat in the car with Arrow and stared at her empty palm.

Arrow started to whimper so Darlene let him back out. He went bounding off into the desert. “How does he do that?” Darlene thought. “It’s a million degrees out here.” 157

The heat made Darlene feel like she was moving in slow motion. “This looks like another planet,” she thought. She shook her head; she couldn’t believe that Roxanne was actually thinking about staying here.

Darlene looked out into the brush. She couldn’t see Arrow. She called for him and he came loping over. “Good boy,” she said as she bent down to put the leash on him. It looked like there might be snakes and god only knows what out there.

Just as Darlene was stating to become anxious, a woman appeared at the gate.

“Hi,” she said to Darlene. “I’m Scout Warrior. Welcome to Camp Sister Warrior.”

“Hi, thanks,” Darlene said. “I’m Darlene.”

“Hi, Darlene,” Scout said. “Have you traveled far?”

“Florida, by way of every damn garage in Texas and a couple in Louisiana.”

She smiled. “Your friend is making arrangements for you to spend the night here.”

“She is?” said Darlene.

“Yes,” said Scout. “Would you like to come in?”

“Sure,” Darlene said. “Why not? I’m here.” Truth be told, Darlene was a little curious to see what dyke paradise looked like. She gave Arrow’s leash a tug.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Scout said. “That male dog can’t come in.” Darlene gave Scout a half smile figuring that she was joking. She could see by her expression that she was not.

“What do you mean ‘can’t come in’?” Darlene said.

“Females only,” Scout said.

“You’re kidding, right?” Darlene said. “I mean, look - he’s a dog.” 158

“I know,” Scout said. “I’m really sorry, but I can’t let him in. No males are allowed in the camp.”

Darlene was beyond stunned. Every version of every nightmare she had had about this trip tumbled through her mind, but this version was not among them. They had been driving since dawn. It had been a long, hot and dusty morning and all her coping skills had just about run dry.

“Look,” she said. “I get it about human males. But all males? Regardless of the species?” About a thousand miles of dread was beginning to well up in Darlene. “You keep male birds out of your fucking camp? Darlene said. “Snakes? How about bugs? You know that there are male lady bugs, don’t you?”

Scout wore a tight smile as she listened to Darlene. “Rules are rules,” Scout said after Darlene’s rant subsided. “The sisterhood has discussed issues like this many, many times. I’m sorry.”

“What am I supposed to do with him?”

“You can tie him up out here, in front of the gate,” Scout said.

“Out here? It’s over 100 degrees out here. There are coyotes and shit at night.

He’ll die,” she said.

“We don’t let males of any kind into the compound,” Scout said.

“Tell Roxanne to come out here,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” Scout said. 159

“Yes, you surely are,” she said. Darlene could feel the despair that she had been choking back since Texas rise into her throat. “Go get Roxanne. Tell her to come out here.”

Scout went back into the camp. Nearly an hour later Roxanne came back with

Amber on her leash. She had this kind of serene look on her face. Darlene wanted to slap her.

“What the fuck, Roxanne!”

“What’s up?” Roxanne said. “Why aren’t you coming in?”

Darlene could feel her temples pounding. “They won’t let Arrow in. They won’t let anything with a dick in their precious little camp. I’m not tying Arrow out here in this heat and I’m not leaving him out here overnight. If he can’t go in, I’m not going in either.” Darlene was practically in tears.

“Oh baby,” Roxanne said. “I’m so sorry.” And she kissed Darlene on the cheek.

“But I understand. I understand how you feel and I understand how they feel. They have their rules.”

I “Look, Rox, this is bullshit. Let’s get out of here.”

Roxanne looked at Darlene for nearly a full minute before she said: “I don’t think so.”

“What do you mean ‘you don’t think so’? Get in the car,” Darlene said. “Let’s go!”

Roxanne, too, was nearly in tears. She handed Amber’s leash to Darlene and

Darlene knew what she was going to say. 160

“I’m staying,” she said.

“You’re what?” Darlene said as a big chunk of her soul broke off and shriveled up right there.

“I’m staying,” Roxanne said. “I need to see what this is all about. I need to be here.”

“Are you crazy? You don’t know these people. We’re in the fucking nowhere wilderness,” Darlene said flailing her arms at the expanse of nothing around them. “You need to be with me. I need you to be with me. Come on, Roxane. Let’s go.”

“Darlene, I’m sorry. I’m really, truly sorry, but I’m staying.”

Darlene could no longer hold back her tears. She stood holding the dogs by the leash helpless to stop the rain of tears.

“Babe, can’t we talk about this? Let’s talk about this. Let’s go somewhere and talk about this. Let’s go get cold drinks. It’s the heat talking. We’re both done in. Let’s go somewhere and talk. ”

Roxanne shook her head. “I’m so sorry, Darlene. There’s nothing to talk about.”

“I don’t understand what you mean by ‘sorry’?”

“I’m staying here,” Roxanne said quietly.

Darlene felt a little explosion going off between her ears. “I don’t understand,” she said. “What about our plans? What about us?”

“I’m not leaving here, Darlene. I’ve done a lot of reading about this place. I need to check it out. I’m staying here whether you do or not.” 161

“Whether I do or not? And what do you mean ‘you’ve come too far’? We’ve both come far. Together. What about us?” Darlene was nearly hyperventilating. Amber and

Arrow were tugging at their leashes and whimpering. They hated it when Darlene and

Roxanne fought.

“Are you breaking up with me?” Darlene’s nose was running. She pulled up the bottom of her t-shirt to wipe her face. “You would rather stay here than be with me?” She could hardly see.

“Our plan...” Darlene said again but even as she said it she knew there was no plan, at least not one that they both agreed on.

“I need to know what this is like,” Roxanne said, putting her arms around

Darlene. “Just relax and let me...”

“Don’t say it!” Darlene shouted, pushing Roxanne’s arms away. “Don’t you dare say it!”

“Honey...”

“Honey, shit, no! I thought we were in this together,” Darlene said. “You got me all the way out here,” she said gesturing at the wilderness, “just to leave me?

Darlene began to pace, yanking the dogs along with her. “Roxanne, I thought you loved me. Don’t you love me? I loveyou,” Darlene felt as though her tears and the heat were ungluing her body parts. “Dammit, I can’t believe it! I can’t believe that you’d choose this place in Nowhere Fucking Arizona over a new life with me in San

Francisco!” 162

“I almost can’t almost believe it myself,” Roxanne said. “I didn’t realize how much I wanted it until I saw it. But, honey, you could give it a chance. I do love you and

I’ll always...”

Darlene cut her off. “Stop it, Roxanne. Just stop it. Fuck you, ok? Fuck you. Go ahead and stay here at Camp Whatthefuck. Go get your shit out of the car and stay here.

The dogs and me and going to San Francisco.” Darlene turned her back to Roxanne and wept holding a dog leash in each hand. The dogs bayed mournfully in response. Darlene continued to stand that way until she could hear Roxanne close the car door and walk away.

Darlene turned around to see Scout Warrior closing the gate. She fought the urge to run over and punch that smug bitch in the face.

Darlene and the dogs got back in the car and headed for San Francisco.

Roxanne cried wracking sobs for nearly 70 miles and then quietly wept for another 130 or so, almost a full tank of gas. The dogs drooped their chins on her shoulders from the back seat.

Roxanne had said she loved her, but she didn’t. She couldn’t: she was too full of want to really love anyone, not yet anyway. Darlene knew this, and worse, she understood. Wasn’t she full of her own kind of want herself? It was the shame that

Darlene felt that Roxanne could just throw her over and decide to live in the dust with strange women, working like a field hand. It was as if Darlene just wasn’t worth it for

Roxanne; her longing and desire were harder to deal with than building yurts and God knows what all else in that hippy-ass camp. 163

The dogs took turns licking Darlene’s face. She was kicking herself: she hadn’t even gone in. She should have gone in and at least seen the place, seen what Roxanne was leaving her for. Arrow could have handled being tied up for thirty minutes or so, she could have risked it, although she would have hated to do it. Just on principle. He’d have howled and cried the whole time.

No male dogs - fuck you!

Darlene could feel herself getting ready to sob again, but not over Roxanne. A wave of a different kind of shame was beginning to fill her gut. It wasn’t as if Darlene was incapable of hard work - she had done more than her share. She had picked shit and hauled shit and cleaned shit all her life. It was that she didn’t want to anymore. Darlene wanted to leave that all behind. She was trying to pull herself out of poverty and bring

Roxanne with her. She wanted a comfortable life. Was that so wrong? How was Camp

Whatever going to provide that? What was the point of the first twenty-one years of depravation with her crazy-ass family if there wasn’t some kind of reward eventually?

Darlene had dreamt that she and Roxanne could move to San Francisco build a life, a home, a future far away from their sordid starts.

“Well, if Roxanne don’t want to make a life with me than fuck her. Fuck her all to death.”

The dogs began to paw the back of the seat and lick her neck and ears, their code for letting her know that they needed to get out. Roxanne stopped at the first rest stop she came to and let them out to run and romp and pee and sniff. 164

She looked around her. She was just outside of Phoenix now, the landscape looked dramatically different than the high desert. She hadn’t even noticed it changing.

That detour down to Tucson had wasted a whole lot of time.

The dogs eventually came loping back over to the car, tongues lolling. She watered them up and fed them and then leaned against the car and ate the remaining half of a burrito. Across the parking lot, a sandy-haired girl climbed out of a VW bug with

California plates and gave a big backwards stretch revealing her taut sandy belly. She gave Darlene a slow shy smile when she saw Darlene was watching her. Their eyes caught each other’s for a moment or two and held there and then both looked away when another girl got out of the VW.

Darlene let the dogs lick the last of the burrito off her fingers and gave them both a good rub up as she opened the car door for them to get back in.

“Ok, y’all, time to go. Let’s make the most of what’s left of the light,” she said as she climbed back into the driver’s seat. 165

SEVEN

Sometimes you have to give up to gain.

When you’re not bom into a family that nurtures your curiosity, celebrates your talents, helps you develop your abilities and you happen to have a lot of those things, you can either grow up into a stunted, bitter individual or you can go find another place to grow.

Sounds easy; it’s not.

It’s not easy leaving everything you know and love in a place with which you so strongly identify. Every time you open your mouth, your voice lets the world know that you are from that place.

Beth Quinn did not set out to be different. It wasn’t as if going against the grain was a plan that she had created for her life or anything. She didn’t wake up one morning and say “I’m not going to be like other girls.”

But try and convince her mother of that.

Beth’s mother was a fussy, high-strung, rancorous woman who had married an easy-going machinist and regretted it every day of her life. Not the man, the machinist.

Why hadn’t she aimed higher? She wouldn’t let her daughter make the same mistake.

“It’s just as easy to marry a rich man as it is to marry a poor man,” her own mother had told her. She tried to pass this wisdom on to Beth. But would Beth listen?

Would she cooperate and make herself pretty and sweet and delicate and conforming?

No, that girl would not. How was she ever going to find a man? 166

In Boston in the 60s and 70s, there was a lot of talk about girls being able to do whatever they wanted to do, but, when you looked around, not a lot of reality. Sure, there were Women’s Lib marches around the college campuses, but around the dinner tables in the working class neighborhoods that sort of thing was dismissed as rabble rousing from girls who are not from here or like us. “Girls,” Beth’s mother sneered. “They look more like men if you ask me.”

If you were a nice Catholic girl, you could be anything you wanted to be as long as you ended up like everyone else. Meaning, you could want to be something as much as you liked provided that you got married to a nice Catholic boy, settled down, and had kids.

Evidently that system worked for other girls, but it did not sit well with Beth

Quinn. She had no idea what she wanted to be or do, but by the time she was twelve it was clear to her that she was never going to marry a man. She had no idea at the time that not wanting to have a husband was a “thing” - she didn’t do it to piss anyone off. It was a bonus that such talk upset her mother so much.

“Well if you’re not going to marry a man, just who are you going to marry?

Honestly, Beth!” her mother would say. “Stop talking crazy!” Beth just knew that a husband wasn’t in her future. That was not to say that she didn’t want a family of her own - she did, very much. And she was surely sick of the one she had been bom into.

The Quinn’s lived in Dorchester in the middle flat of a triple decker. Beth was the middle child; she had two good-looking, good-natured brothers who couldn’t find their 167

butts with both hands. They were destined to spend their lives in uniform with their names embroidered on their shirt pockets. If they were lucky.

Beth was the Quinn child who was clever, albeit mouthy, liked to read and was good at basketball. Alas, she was a girl. Such a waste! Her mother decked her out in dresses and sent her to ballet school, but that version of femininity just wasn’t sticking to

Beth. Her mother couldn’t understand what she was doing wrong.

“Why can’t you be like other girls? Why can’t you play with dolls? Why do you always have to be so dirty and noisy?

Beth had no answer other than “Because. Because that’s the way I am.”

“You should have been a boy!”

Her mother did not realize at the time that she was on the right track. But the wrong train.

Beth was very bright, but not encouraged to be. Being smart only got in the way of a girl finding a husband. Men didn’t like women who acted too smart. “Let him think he’s the smart one,” her mother would lecture her. “Showing off your smarts will only scare him off.”

If you were the kind of girl who just didn’t have marrying a man on your mind then you would find yourself on a rugged, lonely road. If you were a girl who aspired to do something besides nurse, teach or file, you were in store for some great challenges.

And, Jesus, Mary and Joseph - if you were a girl who liked other girls and planned on staying in Boston, you were destined to outwardly conform while you inwardly bit your tongue and ate your heart out. You were certain to live a secret life. Welcome to 168

spinsterhood, maiden lady-dom - the acceptable terms for what you really were: a lesbo, a dyke, a queer bitch. You were fated to be the unmarried daughter who lived at home, driving her widowed mother to shopping or to church or to bingo night with her girlfriends.

This is not what Beth Quinn had in mind at all.

“You know,” her mother would say. “If you would just do something with your hair - and I don’t mean cut it all off. And got out of those dungarees. You’re actually quite a pretty girl.”

When Beth graduated from high school she very much wanted to go to college.

Her mother wasn’t convinced that college for a girl was a good investment, but Beth’s father went to bat for her.

“What’s wrong with her going to college?” he asked.

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” he mother said. “I just don’t think it’s going to help her.”

“Help her what? Marry a Kennedy?”

“Help her be more... you know.”

“You know what?”

“Marriage-ready.”

“Marriage -ready? Is that even a thing? Pass the potatoes.”

Beth’s father was a jovial, simple guy. He thought Beth was just fine the way she was and scoffed at Beth’s mother’s grandiose ideas. “Your mother is kicking herself that 169

she didn’t hold out for a Rockefeller,” he’d say. “Too bad she already had a little Quinn in the oven.”

“Everyone wants to think they have choices,” Beth said.

Her father shook his head. “Sure, red dress, blue dress. Yellow curtains, white curtains. Your mother has choices. I got nothing. She has bought all my underwear and decided everything I’ve eaten for the past twenty-two years.”

“I want choices, Dad.

“Choices?” her father stopped chewing and looked at her. “Ok. I’ll give you choices. Boston State or UMass Boston?”

“UMass Boston,” Beth answered.

“There you go,” her father said. “You’re welcome.”

When Beth went to UMass Boston the school had no campus. The University of

Massachusetts Boston had opened in 1964in Park Square and by the time Beth started there in the early 70s it was a collection of office buildings and store fronts scattered around what was called the Combat Zone, Boston’s red light district. Beth got a job at the

Howard Johnson’s on Stuart Street right on the edge of the Combat Zone and close to school. She mostly worked breakfast and lunch.

Towards the end of her lunch shift these tall, outrageously dressed women would come in for breakfast. Beth knew that they were prostitutes just finishing for the night; it took her a little while to figure out that they were drag queens. They were magnificent - dressed in high heels or platforms and miniskirts and big curly wigs. They’d order hot 170

fudge sundaes and pancakes with extra syrup. Beth would watch in awe as they put five sugars in the coffees.

These women were a riot, always yucking it up in the booth. It was clear that they worked hard for whatever they got, but that they really enjoyed and supported each other.

“That color is fabulous on you, girl! Ima get me a dress like that! Where’d you get it? Filene’s?”

“Uh huh. 75 percent off!”

“Oh! I love when that happens!”

“Filene’s?” thought Beth. “That’s an expensive store.”

“You shop at Filene’s?” she asked them.

“Yes, honey” one of them answered. “Downstairs in the basement where everything is reduced. You know if you play your cards right and follow a dress as it gets marked down you can get it for practically nothing.”

“After three weeks only the big sizes are left,” said another.

“Just perfect for gals like us!” said a third.

“Look at these shoes,” said the first one lifting her foot onto the table to reveal bright blue satin spikes. “Gucci. Regularly a hundred and twenty something. Thirty bucks!”

“Nice!” said Beth admiringly although she never in a million years could see herself wearing something like that. “Very nice.” 171

These girls were also really respectful and left outrageously huge tips. Beth always looked forward to serving them. What a contrast to everyone else in the world she knew!

Beth enjoyed UMass, scattered though it was. It was full of kids like her from the neighborhoods, but there were a few that she recognized from the clubs. Massachusetts had recently lowered the drinking age to eighteen as an experiment and it opened up a whole new world for Beth. It wasn’t long before she found the gay clubs and was meeting nice girls who were looking for other nice girls.

It created a new kind of tension at home.

“Are you seeing anyone?” her mother would ask.

Beth would always answer no, but actually she was seeing someone. She was seeing several someones. Some of them Irish, in fact. But all of them were girls. And it was all done on the QT in the safety of the clubs downtown. It wasn’t like Beth was going to bring these girls home to meet the family and she sure as hell wasn’t going to talk about them with her parents.

Beth’s mother would shake her head whenever Beth said no and get on the phone and set her up with boys from the parish whose mothers she knew. During many of these set-ups Beth and the boy would realize that they shared a reason for not dating, or at least not the kind of dating that they could tell their mothers about. Beth would go out with these boys and eat Chinese food or see a movie all the while the two of them talking in code making it very clear why they were on this date. 172

All the while Beth’s mother was wracking her brain. What was she doing wrong?

No, it’s not me. It’s her. Beth is just not making herself marriageable. She is not

cooperating. You’d think she didn’t like men or something.

Beth majored in English because she couldn’t figure out what else to major in.

She liked to read. She liked language. She had no idea how either of these would produce

a career, but then, as a working class girl, she hadn’t been encouraged to give that a lot of

thought either. Her mother was just fixated on her marrying a white collar guy and go off

and live in suburban splendor.

How could her own mother get it so wrong?

When Beth graduated from UMass she was done with scooping whipped butter

balls and hauling cheeseburgers. She decided to give office life a try, what the hell?

Her mother was thrilled.

Beth got a job working at the Prudential Insurance Company on Boylston Street

as a group medical claims examiner. She soon became quite adept at medical terminology

and at pacing herself so wouldn’t finish her day’s work by eleven in the morning and piss off all of her co-workers.

“Don’t make us look bad, Quinn,” they’d tell her. “Be a team player.”

So Beth tried to be one of the gang. She even joined the office women’s softball team. The Pru used the rock of Gibraltar as their logo; “own a piece of the rock” was their slogan at the time. The name of the women’s softball team? The Prudential

Rockettes. 173

The building was a landmark on the Boston skyline. It was stone’s throw from

UMass’ poor excuse of a campus, but it was also close to Copley Square so the

neighborhood was definitely a step.

Beth loved being in town, but she was still living at home and hating every minute

of it. Her mother thought that Beth could finally get down to the business of grooming

herself for marriage and would tear out articles on make-up and hair styles from

magazines at the hair dressers and leave them beside Beth’s plate.

“It wouldn’t take much,” her mother told her. “You’ve got good bone structure.”

Her mother thought that an insurance company was a good place for Beth to find

a starter boyfriend, but not a husband. Insurance companies just didn’t pay very well regardless of the fact that the men all wore suits. But the girl had to start somewhere and

she wasn’t getting any younger - Christ, she was almost twenty-three! Her mother figured that she’d encourage Beth to move on to, say, an accounting firm or a law office.

Those were the places to find good husband material. If only she could get the girl to work with her. “Baby steps,” her mother thought.

Beth’s mother was right: Beth wasn’t getting any younger. And for Beth, the way she was living her life was starting to get old, too.

She was living a double life: working and living at home, going out on weekends to meet and dance with lesbians. But it was increasingly unsatisfying and frustrating.

Beth wanted a life. She wanted to meet someone and grow old with her, have a family, make a home. She wanted what everyone else wanted, except not with a husband.

Beth wanted a wife. 174

Beth gave this working-and-living-at-home life a good shot, over a year. She had caught the San Francisco buzz in the clubs. They were all dancing to The Village

People’s San Francisco. Was that really the place to be? Three thousand miles away in

California?

She met some women who had been there.

“What’s it like?” Beth asked.

“You won’t believe it,” they told her. “You fucking won’t believe it.”

So one August day in 1979 Beth decided to see for herself. She packed a suitcase, withdrew her life savings - nearly $7,000, told her weeping mother that she was just going to check it out, got on a plane at Logan and landed in San Francisco.

She expected San Francisco to be different. She was counting on it, in fact. She just didn’t expect how different. This San Francisco was living-out- loud place. Boys in short-shorts hollering at each other from across the street: “Hey girl!” Girls in flannel and cut-offs kissing in Cafe Flor like they were alone in their bedrooms. In the middle of the day!

The Wild West, indeed.

Boston had just wore her out, exhausted her to her marrow. There were too many potato-headed Catholics, too much homophobia. It forced her to live a kind of double life.

Make no mistake - she loved her hometown Boston. She loved the seasons, the

Red Sox, the Cape. And she had enjoyed the gay scene in town such as it was. She had a lot of fun in the gay clubs and met a lot of cute girls. But that’s all it was - fun. There’s 175

nothing wrong with fun despite what the nuns might tell you, but she wanted to have a relationship with girls outside of the clubs and that was crazy hard to do. Impossible, in fact. Outside of the clubs everyone just disappeared into the night. Everyone would leave the clubs, jump on the T, and scurry back to their parents’ houses in Dorchester or Hyde

Park or Roslindale. Come daytime and everyone would suit up and go to church or go sit in an office or classroom or whatever. In Boston in 1978, queers only came out at night.

Like vampires.

And then there was that danger thing. Increasingly, there was that danger thing.

Everyone in Boston was primed for a fight anyway. You lived your life in constant fear of being found out. Everything might be cool if you were found about, then again, it might not be. Things could go very, very wrong for you. You could never tell and you didn’t dare risk it.

It made her very sad. Sad enough to run away and not look back.

Beth

In Boston you can be anything you want to be as long as you are exactly like everyone else. White? Check. Irish? Check. Catholic? Check. Straight? Oops...

Two things happened that finally got my ass out o f Boston. Well, more like a hundred things, but these are the two big ones. One: I was dancing with this girl at

Somewhere, which I had been to like a million times. Women were welcome at the 1270 and I went there a lot, too. But Somewhere, down on Franklin, was just for women and sometimes that’s just what you needed. Anyway, this girl I was dancing with was so cute. 176

Just adorable. It was a Saturday night, the place was packed, the music was great, and

we were having a blast. Come 2:00 a.m. we stood outside the club talking about how

much fun we had and how we'd like to see each other again. I wanted her phone number

but she told me that she lived with her parents and didn’t have a lot privacy when using

the phone. I could relate. So we agreed to meet up again at the club the next week.

We were just giggling and flirting up a storm when these four guys appeared

across the street and started giving us shit. Crap like this happened all the time; we just

ignored them. I t’s not like we were kissing or anything. I don’t think we were even

holding hands. At that time o f night three-quarters o f the city o f Boston was drunk and

the rest stupid. We knew enough not to engage with these knuckleheads. There were

plenty o f stories about gays getting harassed or beat up. We could tell these guys were

shit-faced - we could practically smell them from across the street - and looking for a fight. Anything to break up the monotony o f their idiot lives.

Like I said, the bar had been packed and women seemed to have poured out o f the

bar. But, suddenly it was just this girl and me on the sidewalk. When you ’re in trouble

you ’re all alone.

This girl and I, we looked into each other’s eyes. We really wanted to kiss, we had

resisted all night, but we knew better than to do it now. We could tell that our lovely night

had come to an end.

These guys started calling us dykes —I was used to that. But when they started

calling the girl I was with a nigger and me a nigger lover, that’s when I knew that things

were taking a nasty turn. We were in danger and we needed to get out o f there fast. We ’re