TRAPEZE

(Original copies of Sinister Wisdom; Issue # 16 is first in fourth row)

In the fall of 1980, I wrote "Trapeze", the short story below. I sent it to Sinister Wisdom, then the most prominent lesbian journal in the country, and it was accepted for publication in Issue #16, Summer 1981.

Right after I got my complimentary copy, I received a phone call from a pair of Dallas dykes who were on the road, heading for San Francisco and hoping I could provide them with a place to stay. This happened often in those days; lesbians put one another up in spare rooms, and there was (still is) an organized network for this as Contact Dykes in the publication Lesbian Connection. I never advertised to be a Contact Dyke because my name was already handed around lesbian circles in Texas and Colorado as a good bet for a spare bed. My roommates, too, frequently had visitors from other parts of the country. One of my roomies worked at the Women's Building, a few blocks away, and if a woman from another country showed up there looking for a safe place to crash, she was usually brought to our flat. We had one summer where a string of German dykes kept our spare mattress occupied for three solid months.

So, when I got the call, I said "Sure" and gave them directions. I had met one of the women only briefly, Siri Lini, a punk musician. She was friends with my ex in Dallas, the woman I had written "Trapeze" about, in fact. Siri and most of the women in Texas knew me as Meg Barnett then. With her was her new girlfriend, Linda Finnell, whom I did not know but would eventually consider a friend. Linda is now dead from ovarian cancer. I still have some of her handmade journals from her box-making and bookbinding business Two Women Boxing.

When Siri and Linda arrived, I gave them the house rules, a map of San Fran and recommendations about what to do and see -- in those days, the women's community was thriving. As I was about to leave them to unpacking their luggage in our living room, I saw Linda pull out the copy of Sinister Wisdom I'd just received. I said "You must subscribe, too."

She said "I got it right before we hit the road, and as we crossed the desert, I read the most incredible story I've ever seen out loud to Siri." Siri jumped in with, "Yeah, it rocked our world, you've GOT to check it out." Barely breathing, I asked which one it was, and of course they said "Trapeze."

When I stammered that I had written it, they were bowled over. I saw Siri's face register her beginning to make the connection -- it was about her friend, my ex, yikes. But Linda's expression was just raw amazement. Our friendship began in that instant.




TRAPEZE


We are snowed into the Wimmin's House. Even with the chains on we cannot move from the driveway. We wait all morning for the snow plow. I am so bored that I go into a frenzy of cleaning house. The others are glad and make sly suggestions as to what I might do next. I sing the same song endlessly, an old song with new words, whilst visions of Amazons sore in my head:

O once I was happy but now I'm forlorn
Like an old coat that is tattered and torn
Left in this cruel world to fret and to mourn
Betrayed by a girl in her teens
Now this girl that I loved, she was handsome
And I tried all I knew, her to please
But I never could please her one quarter as well
As the dyke on the flying trapeze, oh, ooooh
She flies through the air with the greatest of ease
The daring young dyke on the flying trapeze
Her movements are graceful, and how she does please
But my love she has stolen away

The plow does not come by three o'clock. At four o'clock, dark is nearly upon us, the snow is falling harder, and our electricity goes out. No heat, no water. The phone is not working. We are a little worried. I must go to work the next morning; I know my boss will not accept my excuse. Jobs are hard to find. I volunteer to walk to the nearest house, our neighbors' who are a half mile away and that much closer to a real road; they have a vehicle that can manage in the snow.

I bundle up, stuff chocolate and a flashlight in my pocket, and leave with my dog. She is so small that she keeps getting trapped in the drifts, and I pull her out impatiently. All the way I sing and think of how much you like the snow. I think grimly, I bet you wouldn't like all this. But as I think it, I am not sure. I remember that when we were falling in love, you would rather kiss me in icy fields than by a warm fire.

The neighbors are not at home, looks like they haven't been here for a couple of days. In desperation, I dig a path to the door and try the knob. It is open, and feeling like a burglar, I enter. I leave the dog outside and she howls a protest. I find the phone and, blessedly, it works. I call for help and am reassured. I call my boss and he says he will come pick me up. I thank him sourly. Then I trudge home.

When I sing my song again, moving my arms in the appropriate motions at the appropriate times, someone in the kitchen snickers. Ah, the supportiveness of collective life.

That night I dream I am a youngster, being taken up on the ropes for the first time. I stand on the small, slightly swaying platform; twenty feet below the net has been jerried; beside me is my mother, lean and firm and silent. We are both wearing old brown leotards. I am only ten.

I have been doing exercises for six months, to develop the muscles I will need. But today, after all, I do not use them.

My father and my older cousin stand on either side of the net; their faces are turned up to me, unsmiling. My mother is urgently repeating the instructions: control your fall, fall flat on your back, relax but keep your body parallel, let yourself bounce to a halt, only then try to move from the net. I am only half-listening. I do not sweat yet, but under my arms is unpleasant heat.

I am looking down, wondering how I can jump off into that emptiness. My mother lets me look; knowing always what is below is part of what I must learn in the act. Then she hugs me, says "Once you fly, you will never want to stop", and I almost smile. She says, "Now!" and raises her hand to signal the catchers. I do not go for a second, but before she can speak again, I crouch, spring, and am falling, twisting. I want to scream in terror, but there is no time before I hit the net sideways.

Great squares of hemp jerk at my body, my muscles down my spine are jangled and burn, I am airborne again for too little time to count, then I am shuttling back and forth from flight to net, a ball between two paddles, until finally the motion has subsided and I am cradled in the net. I am ready to cry.

I feel my father's hands, suddenly; he is reaching up through the net, he is telling me to move, his voice is tight with fear.

I say that I am all right. I sit up and bob in the net some more from the motion. I begin crawling to the side. When my arms or legs miss the rope and plunge helplessly through the holes in the net, my father eases me back through. He follows me to the edge. My cousin is there, trying to steady the net. I slide off into their arms and stand. I am bruised and giddy, but I have done it. Suddenly I grin and shout. I wave to my mother, who waves back joyously. I am standing on the earth but I am no longer her slave. I am ready to climb back up and jump again.

My father runs his hands over me, checking for breaks. He pulls my arms and legs, feeling the tendons, asking me if I hurt. I shake my head impatiently and pull away, swarming back up the rope ladder. At the top my mother holds me soundlessly, gripping me close for a minute. I welcome her embrace; I feel older. Her eyes are glistening as I face the edge again.

It is still not easy, to drive off into space. But as the day goes on, I become smooth and eager, able to move in the air, once crying "wheee!" all the way down. When at last we stop, hours later, I hear my mother tell my father, "I see why they are taught while they are still young; she will do fine." I am laughing as I wake.

I am startled at the vividness of my dream. That day I receive a letter from you, the first in months. It is written on the back of a flyer for a rally, a march followed by speakers. Your name leaps out at me: you are making a speech on "Classism in the Wimmin's Movement". I try to imagine you making a speech. I recall your resistance when I first explained classism to you. I turn over the flyer and read the three paragraphs.

You tell me about the rally, about your excitement, how it went well and you received thunderous applause. You say "Thank you for believing in me for so long, and helping me to learn to believe in myself." I feel a surge of pride; I am glad that you have written. Yet, as I reread over and over the paper you have sent, the pride gives way to an uneasy feeling. I am bitter that you grew only after I left, only after one too many fights over the gap between us. The bitterness turns into anger.

I rip up the letter. Jude sees me from the hall; she stops and quietly asks me what is wrong. I reply hotly "She says thanks for getting out of her life so she can live it for herself." Jude raises an eyebrow and leaves. I think about what I have just said. The ache returns. I decide to wait to write you until I am sure I will not fill the letter with passion and recrimination. I do not write for two months.

I dream again. I am chalking my hands and wrists. Again, my mother is beside me, the rest are below. But today, I will take the bar from its hook and swing out on it, hopefully to return. I listen intently to my mother: if you feel yourself slipping, she says, jerk yourself upward, pop your wrist, and get another grip. She hands me the bar, shows me where to hold. I take a breath, then pull myself up and point my legs as I start the swing.

Immediately, pain sears into my shoulders and arms. I hold on for a couple of feet, then let go, feeling the agony subside as I do so, relaxing into the familiarity of the fall. When I leave the net, I am embarrassed, but no one else appears to be. My father tells me something about centrifugal force. I listen politely and ascend again. My mother rubs my shoulders; they are already sore.

I take the bar and swing again; again, I must let go. No one laughs; no one criticizes. My mother says only "It is hard to learn." I am encouraged. As I take the bar, I think about the unbearable pull when my feet leave their support and my arms stretch out. I think about where it hurts, and try to flex those muscles. I can feel them; I realize the months of exercises have given me control where I need it. The third time, I think to myself.

I push out. Instead of abandoning my body to dangle from the bar, I keep the muscles in my shoulders just a little tight. I am holding myself up, not hanging. It hurts, but it can be borne. I am carried along to the end of the swing, like a clock's pendulum. Momentarily, I am motionless; then the return trip begins. It is too abrupt; I do not know how to make the change. I slip and fall.

No one speaks of the fall. They are glowing, praising me for being able to hold on at only the third try. Adrenaline flows through me. My mother whispers "This time," and I feel she is right.

As I fly out again, I am aware of the air brushing into the scoop of my body. In the split second at the end of my flight, I relax my legs and let my body go convex, readjusting the muscles. It is enough. I am returning, blindly, my back to the platform. I want to see the look on my mother's face, but before I can twist my head to the side, her arm is coming around me strong and sure, and I am pulled onto the stand, tumbling into my mother's arms. I tremble, with happiness, I think. Amid the cries from below, I hear my mother murmur "Fledgling rides the wind, hmm?" and I think of how much I love her. She takes a turn on the ropes, swift, fluid, and rippling, laughing as she lands back beside me. Again, I wake to my own laughter.

You write to me, asking if you may come for a visit at Thanksgiving. I call to tell you yes. I explain that we in the House will go to a cabin up by Lemon Lake on Thanksgiving Day, a crowd of dykes having a vegetarian feast. I mention that we all plan to fast the day afterward. You find this amusing. You will spend The Day with your current lover, our daughter with your parents, and you will fly up that night. I arrange to pick you up at the airport.

When you arrive, a snowstorm is blanketing the night. The effort of driving through it plus the prospect of the fast the next day has left me ravenous. When we get back to the House, I set out all the leftovers on the breakfast bar. You and the rest sit around on stools or on the floor, and we talk of the holiday while I nibble at this and that.

When we go to bed, I am exhausted. I cuddle into you and drop off. The next morning is delicious. We touch and giggle and are very cozy, until we wake fully. Then we slip back into our roles, self-consciously; you even go into the bathroom to dress. I grin at that.

I am ravenous again. I take my vitamins and watch you enviously as you make pancakes and scrambled eggs. I suggest that we spend the day up in Kenebec Pass, by Maiden Falls and the old ghost-towns. You agree and pack an enormous lunch, even after I remind you that I will not be eating. I fill a canteen and dress in several layers.

The day is still and clear, and much colder than during the snowstorm the night before. The snow is cleared away down in the valley, but as we drive higher, into the mountains, it is a thick cover everywhere. By the time we get to Kenebec, the chains are barely pulling the car along. Maiden Falls is half-frozen, with an edge of ice like new lace. An occasional sheet of ice is frozen into the swirl and tangle of the rapids, while the water can be heard rushing on underneath.

Even with all I have on, I am still cold. You look blue and enchanted; you have not seen a winter like this since you were a child. You sit on a large flat rock, gingerly, and watch the waterfall. I am hesitant to sit next to you. Because I am not watching the waterfall as intently as you, I catch a movement in the sky above us. I look, and see an eagle making passes in the windy reach over our heads. You follow my gaze; later you tell me that you have never seen an eagle before. You lie back on the rock, eyes to the sky, and stretch out an arm for me. I curl beside you, and we are an audience for the eagle.

When she leaves, a wall that was between us has fallen. We kiss shyly and then storm the mountain, following the falls ever upward but going slowly enough that we may talk. We talk of everything, open, intimate. It is scary, but you are reassuring and blunt. We talk of our other lovers; we talk of how we can raise our daughter away from each other; we talk of our parents, their progress in understanding our lives; we talk of our past, with a growing gratitude that the memories can be as good as they are, that we remember the same things; and we share what glimpses we have of our days that will rise ahead of us.

We find the remains of Parett City. I take a picture of you leaning out the three-cornered window of a crumbled gambling hall. We are friends again. That night I cannot help shaking when I slip into bed with you. You hold me, trying to soothe the tremors; then you make love to me. I am delighted to find that your body is not at all familiar, I can learn you once again, and you cry when you come, go to sleep with tears still drying on my arm. As our chests rise and fall together, I sleep, and dream.

I stand in the ring below the trapeze. All of us stand there together, my family and I. We will not chalk until we reach the top, because tonight we are performing. People must not understand how we do what we do; they want to be dazzled, mystified.

My mother goes up the rope first. For performance nights, we use a rope instead of a ladder. There is more drama in slithering up a thick, curling rope, hand over hand, without a pause. I follow her. My father holds the rope for me; my cousin is climbing the rope at the other end, to the catcher's bar. My cousin is catcher because he is the most powerfully built and least excitable.

When my father joins us, there is room only for our feet on the small platform. We lean our bodies out, hanging on the guys, trying to hide our nervousness with carefully rehearsed grace.

My cousin has begun swinging on his bar. He is sitting on the bar, his back to us. At a certain point, when the swing is going straight enough, he flips over backward. His knees catch on the bar, his legs wind round the ropes. Now he faces us, upside down.

He has practiced for hours at a time to keep the muscles in his legs from cramping, to keep from being dizzy as the blood flows to his head and stays there. If either of these happen, it could be fatal, though tonight we are using a net. We use a net because I am only twelve. In another year, we will again perform without a net.

I am not afraid of this coming, being without a net. I have learned how little a net really means: the fall is to be avoided always, whether the net is there or not. After the lessons are learned, there is no excuse for a fall. And the net is not so big. If one falls while in motion, one can twist, but not move bodily through the air to one side or the other. It is easy to miss the net altogether. Or break a bone in the net. Or slip at the platform. A catcher below is more effective than a net. But we are a small family. All of us are on the ropes.

Someday, my younger siblings will join us; then my father and my cousin will go below. They will be older, too slow to do their tricks well any more, but still strong enough and fast enough to break our fall with their bodies. Only someone in your family will volunteer to be a catcher below, because it usually means death to stop an object of a hundred or more pounds from a thirty-foot fall. Until we are more, we hope for no accidents.

I realize all this review and speculation has passed through my head in the less than a minute we have stood on the platform. With this realization, like the breaking of a spell, I awaken. The dream does not feel finished. Perhaps it is a result of the ongoing upheaval in my life.

I come to visit you, our daughter in the spring, to explain that I am moving to San Francisco, that the mountains have given me back my sense of self and now I must "do things". You are upset with my decision. You say I am always moving away from you. You are right. Still, we manage to spend time with each other that is not crowded with walls and judgement.

The night before I take my leave, crossing the continent to the land of dykes and honey, we spend hours saying goodbye after our daughter has gone to sleep. We sit in your yard, underneath a gentle crescent. It is warm enough to enjoy sitting out and damp enough to enjoy sitting close together. I keep saying "Well, it's really late and I must make an early start tomorrow", and we smile and touch hands, and then suddenly we are off again talking feverishly without realizing how it has happened. Finally I stand, looking resolute, and you hold me tightly, then you say "Wait" and run into the house.

When you return, you have a big Texas orange in your hands. You place it in my two hands, and I look at you with a wondering grin. "A present" you laugh, "to remind you of home when you miss it the most." I cannot help but cry; you cannot help but kiss my tears into your wet and wetter lips; we cannot help but kiss passionately, until I break away and jump into my car and run from your waves and cries of "Be careful!"

I leave the orange on the dash of my car. All across Texas and New Mexico I look at it, wondering if now is the time, is this when the pain is the worst, how can I tell when the bleeding will shortly begin to flow less and the wound commence healing over? The orange bothers me until Albuquerque, when I make up my mind how I will use it: When I go through the enchanted mesas and buttes just heading into Arizona, a place that had been ours once and that I had not reclaimed for my own. There, in the Painted Desert, we had gone through a sunset, and were so moved that we couldn't even talk. We only listened to the ghosts and ancient chants which came to us on the wind. One of our best times, and I had not yet come back to let the regret wash through me until I was clean and could make memories in my own name once again. When I came to that place, I would open the orange and eat it slowly, letting the smell and the acidity of the juice seep into my own flesh like salt, cauterizing swiftly, so that I might continue on without leaving a piece of me behind.

I stopped for the night, glad at least that I would not see the region at sunset again, but by the calmer light of morning, the unseen light of morning.

The next day, before I reach the place where I meant to eat the orange, I approach the inspection point that prevents citrus fruits from entering Arizona and California. I throw the orange under my seat in a panic and try to drain guilt from my eyes. Silly, to feel so paranoid over such a little crime, I've done things a thousand times worse. When I am asked, I deny that I am carrying any fruit. My voice sounds funny to me, but I guess not to them. I am waved on.

Without the orange visible, I forget about it. I reach Kingman before I remember it. Somehow I have driven through the place where I was going to eat it without noticing where I was. At this realization I am both agonized and exhilirating. I pull out the orange and eat it with relish. The trip begins to take on new symbolism for me. Not only am I cutting ties, I am filling up the spaces with new visions.

I try to remember what I had been thinking of that distracted me so when I drove through the familiar mesas. I cannot recall, but it stops mattering immediately. As I drive into California, I have a momentary sensation that I am flying. I throw the orange peels into the Mojave, hoping they will provide nourishment for the delicate life there.

That night, journey over, the dream returns, picking itself up where it had left off. I am standing in the charged silence of a people-packed tent, reaching for the bar so I may begin the show. I begin, not because I am youngest and least experienced; it is because I am the lightest, and better on my cousin to ease him into the tremendous impact of a moving body suddenly hanging onto the ends of his arms.

I do a simple move: Out to my cousin, my feet to his hands, one swing upside down, my face sweeping the crowds but I see nothing, back to the bar, then up to home. Now, in the act, there are no words of praise, no time for reassurance, only a glance that is, really, enough. My mother launches herself as soon as I hand her the bar. She catches hand-to-hand with my cousin, flips to return, and is not even sweating yet when lands. My father does a half-twist to my cousin, meaning he is caught by the backs of his hands. He does a full twist to return. My mother's hand is tensely resting on my neck. The first is over for each of us. From here, it is easier.

We build gradually until the climax of the show. I do a somersault to my cousin, still feeling a small kernel of panic rise in my throat as I hurtle end over end, trying not to flatten out in my forward flight. The panic is swallowed each time I am abruptly halted by callused flesh seizing my wrists. Then I return to the hands of my father, who has swung out on the bar just in time to catch me.

He returns me, then keeps swinging, reversing himself, as my cousin leave the catcher's bar and sends it out alone, timing its sweep to the finest fraction of a second. Now that the pressure is off me, I practice by watching my father. My mother has taught me that in order to do a series of moves as complicated as those in a single trick, practice is not enough. I must know every part of every move, like the building blocks that they are. Then I must put them together in order, imagining every detail, while an internal clock measures off the seconds. I must imagine this sequence so often that it is thoroughly familiar to me before I ever try it. But what I appreciate most about it is that it has transformed the air for me. In the beginning, the vast amount of air around the platform was just a space that thousands of my space body could fit into; I was never sure my body would do what I wanted it to in so much open space. But when I had learned a sequence in my mind, it became a track in the air, from bar to bar, a tunnel that just fit my body and seemed to hold me up. Now I stood and watched my father, remembering what he would do next, envisioning his track before he is on it. It is very comforting.

My father does a double somersault to the second bar that my cousin has sent to him, completes the swing, then returns with a one-and-a-half twist. I am impressed with the mechanical perfection of my father's actions, and I am tracking him, but I am not out there with him. I dimly hear the roar of the watchers. Already I am losing concentration, now that my role is almost over. My father and I bow.

My mother takes the bar and jumps off; my cousin has caught his bar and times is again. Now I can see the moisture on my mother's face. I hope she chalked herself before she began. We keep the chalk up here; we are supposed to use it every time under the lights, to counteract the sweat that runs down our arms. I feel a thin web of connection to my mother. As I watch her, I am learning, the empathy is so strong. I wish her part were over, yet I also thrill to the confidence and birdness of her.

My mother does not do anything on the first swing, though she could just as easily: She is playing to the crowd, prolonging their suspense. But on the second swing, she goes into a one-and-a-half somersault. The calf and ankle of each foot find the rope and swing; she has caught herself upside down, alone. Before the crowd can end its gasp, she is coming up high above the second bar and falling down to it in a two-and-a-half twist.

I want to hug her madly when she is safely back. Instead, we wave at the crowd. My cousin projects himself out and lets go, a churning spiral to the net below. My mother is next, with a series of convoluted somersaults; then my father; then me with as much as I can manage, a single flip, the colors around me blurring as I move within motion to the resistance of the net.

We flip over the side of the net in turn. I join them, the last, and we lock arms and bow. I am thinking about how much the crowd loves the solo stunts, how deceptive these are. The foot-and-leg catch is easier on the body, especially for my mother with her mighty legs. It is in a way harder to be a catcher, being responsible for those coming toward you, having to gear your timing to someone else's, keeping a sense of balance while always upside down, being jerked repeatedly, all the hard work with none of the glamour. That is why my dull cousin, who can perform over and over without making a mistake or being bored, is our catcher. I am glad to be on the other side. As we scamper out of the ring, I awaken, tired and satisfied.

The next time I see you, it is on your own territory. I come to your city, not mine any more. I drive through the heavy traffic one afternoon and knock at the door of the house you share with your lover. She is in the living room, watching television. I am slightly ill at ease; I do not know what to say to her. She ignores me altogether, her eyes on the screen. I am relieved. I stand there, watching the news with her, as you get ready.

We are going to eat. As you come into the room on our way out, the newscast takes on an urgent tone. Mechanically we watch. The camera is showing Karl Wallenda crossing the air seventy feet above a South American street. He teeters as I hear the words "…fell to his death today…" I want to look away but I do not. The wind catches him; we see him fall, try to hang onto the wire, then fingers give. He plummets to the pavement below. The camera is on him all the way.

I feel sick; I turn and bury my face in your shoulder. You say "Why are they showing that on TV?" Your lover shrugs and says "If they didn't, someone else would." She is angry at us both for embracing in front of her. I pull you out of the door.

I am unable to drive; I am shaking. We skip dinner. I buy a bottle of wine, get drunk gratefully, and we go to a quiet place in a thicketed park to talk. For some reason we are avoiding any mention of Karl Wallenda's fall. You touch me much, but are more silent than I am.

Finally I begin letting my feelings out. In some way the fall is a threat to me. I tell you about my dreams. It rushes out in a jumble and I feel better, but I need a response from you. I wait, oddly alert. You say that you think I am overreacting to the newscast, upsetting as it was.

I do not try to explain any more. I say, "I want our relationship to stay exactly as it is right now." You are very affected; you feel that you have finally pleased me, after all the years of my discontent. But I know that I have insulted you, I have laid a death knell on our association, because of course we will change, we will move from here and now, and I am not ready for this. I withdraw from you before we even say goodbye. You do not notice. You kiss me cheerfully and step away. I do not watch you go.

When I am at last home again, I pick up my dictionary and open it speculatively. I look for the root word of trapeze: trapezium, Latin meaning "a quadrilateral having no parallel sides." In front of me, suddenly, I see the bar, suspended from two ropes which are hooked to supports in the top of the tent. I see the curve of the tent, the widening ropes, the bar: a closed figure. I hear my mother's voice telling me the muscles in my shoulders that make me able to rise my head are called the trapezius. I consider my life, how the boundaries of it no longer confirm to any thing but the impulse that moves me. I think, I move from one part of my life to another, and the distance between the parts is never the same twice.

I put away the dictionary and go to bed. I stretch out in the width of my mattress, enjoying the luxury of so much space for myself. I do not dream, at all.



© Maggie Jochild.
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LOLMAGGIES #6

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THE RED QUEEN

(Maggie in Winter of 1983, San Francisco)

This is a short-short story that is, once again, mostly true. This is how I first heard of AIDS -- though once it had a name at all, it was called GRID for a while, Gay-Related Infectious Disorder.

The Red Queen was Arthur Evans.












THE RED QUEEN

In 1980, everyone wants Alby. “Everyone” is her girlfriend Randy, of course, plus the other two young dykes in Randy’s household, Francie and Leo. Alby is over there all the time. Their Victorian apartment has three bedrooms and no living room, but the entry foyer at the top of the stairs is huge and opens onto the kitchen, also big and bright. This serves as their common space unless it’s sunny, when you’ll find them on the balcony off Francie’s room, three stories above Castro Street between 18th and 19th – Faggot Central. They spend entire afternoons on the balcony, naked, young, hairy, with Alby at their core, the object of all desire.

Alby has two roommates of her own; they all moved here from a separatist land collective in Colorado. They live in a railroad flat near the original Levi Strauss factory in the Mission. She’s not going home a lot right now because her roommates, who are a couple, fight every day. Whatever they tell you they are fighting about, what’s really up is monogamy. They agreed to monogamy back in Colorado, when the number of out women in their small town was a list you could put on paper, and besides, they were newly in love. Two years later in Lesbos by the Bay, they are reduced to making three-month fidelity contracts. Another contract is coming due.

Jude, her middle class roommate, keeps saying Okay, let’s GO for it, let’s have three months of NON-monogamy. Lee, her working class roommate, is itching to cut loose, even bought a black leather jacket although she’s too pale to look good in it. What’s stopping her is: the idea of someone else being with Jude makes her flat-out crazy. She’s trying to figure out a way to have her cake but keep Jude on bread and water. This week her plan was based on class, how Jude’s privilege should keep her at home working on “issues” while Lee gets to experiment with the notion of “plenty”. When Lee runs this theory by Alby, Alby just busts out laughing. Since Alby has the impeccable credentials of having been raised poor, Lee knows it’s back to the old drawing board.

Alby and Randy are nonmonogamous but it’s not so hard for them because Alby mostly doesn’t care who Randy wanders off with, except for that weekend she spent with the woman from a CETA training, a new dyke from Oregon who wound up giving them both Trichomonas. That pissed Alby off. Alby’s slept with her ex twice and messed around with lots of women from their political group since she and Randy got together, and Randy is real relaxed about it all. But Randy draws a line about Alby going after women from Randy’s “inner circle”, says that’s incestuous. The inner circle includes Randy’s roommate Leo.

Leo wants to be a star, and is extroverted in the way that makes her friends thinks they’ve wandered into a rehearsal when they are with her. Her hair curls no matter how short she cuts it and is the color of strong red zinger tea. She earns enough to pay for rent, veggies, and tap lessons by working three nights a week as a stripper for the Mitchell Brothers. Alby doesn’t like to think about Leo stripping, and instead focuses on the hilarious skits Leo writes and performs at benefits. Leo saves the abandoned shopping lists she finds in carts at grocery stores and creates characters around these fragments of a stranger’s life. Alby’s favorite is the woman who sweeps into the store wearing a power suit and no smile. Her heels click rapidly against the floor like a playing card in a kid’s bicycle spoke. Her voice is impatient as she calls out the only items on her list: “TRIScuits………..”Summer’s Eve.”

Years later, Alby would think of Leo as a butch who cleaned up well. But in those days, well-bred political dykes didn’t let butch and femme have even a chair in the corner. By the time Alby will bring herself to admit that Leo’s bulging biceps and tucked in shirts are what really does it for her, Leo is living in Los Angeles and has made an appearance on the Gong Show. She was supposed to have been in some terrible Olivia Newton John movie, but Alby sat through it twice and never spotted Leo. She isn’t in the L.A. phone book. At least not under Schacter, her real name. Her stripper name was Leo Rising, but that isn’t listed, either.

Back to 1980. Randy’s other roommate, Francie, works part-time at a rock and bead store in the Haight. She plays the dulcimer and sings them stuff at night like “Blow the Candles Out” or “Matty Grove”. Alby keeps pestering her to change the pronouns in Matty Grove, it has the potential to be a great dyke ballad, but Francie refuses to butcher a classic, she says. Well, see if that attitude gets HER into Alby’s pants. Francie came right out with her attraction to Alby, asked if there was a chance. Alby used Randy’s no-inner-circle rule with a rueful grin, but softened it by giving Francie a back rub. Francie’s hair is too long for Alby anyhow.

Randy’s room has a bed that is bigger than a twin but smaller than a double. Alby complains about how little room there is to sleep in. Randy says Alby should be glad she has a bed at all – Randy is only 18 and barely getting by. She also says what’s the problem with spooning together all night?

One day Leo offers to swap her queen size bed with Randy. Leo is not simply between girlfriends, she never seems to have any – too busy working up her next gig. Alby is excited to sleep in Leo’s bed, even if Leo isn’t there. She and Randy have been bickering all day, and Randy is still a little huffy when they lay down, so Alby has to actually work at it to get Randy interested. Near the end, she keeps reminding herself to stay quiet, not because she worries about making noise but because she’s afraid she will say Leo’s name.

Alby hadn’t known Leo might have a crush back on her until last week. Francie let it slip, saying that nights when Alby isn’t there they sometimes all ask Randy questions about what Alby is like.

All?

Uh-hmm, Francie giggles.

In the morning Alby joins the coffee drinkers on the balcony. Coffee is all there is in the house. It’s chilly out here but the direct sun on her skin makes it bearable. Her cheeks are taut with dried eau d’Randee. When Leo suggests they all walk down the block for breakfast, the first thing Alby does is wash her face.

Next she buttons up the striped men’s shirt she got at St. Vincent’s, then steps into her white painter overalls. Her underwear is more of a debit than an asset at this point. She turns her ragg wool socks inside out to get another day out of them and laces her Vasqs tight. Since they are only going a block, she’s leaving her pack here, and in it her 9 mm. The steel toes of her Vasqs will have to be enough. She stands at the head of the stairs, considering the breeze coming up from the street, and goes back for old faithful, the baggy red wool pullover that is necessary even on (especially on) summer mornings in San Fran.

Her hair is too short to do anything but stick straight out, a dark walnut plush.

They’re all on the street waiting for her. Randy puts an arm around Alby’s waist inside the overalls. Alby’s other side is free, and she’s hoping Leo will claim it, but Francie scoots under Alby’s arm first. Leo takes left wing, and they sweep down the sidewalk. At 5’7”, Alby is six inches taller than any of the rest, and in public with her gang she often feels like Dorothy in Munchkinland. A very rough-looking Dorothy, with Munchkins who eat cunt.

No one mentions where they are going because it’s a given. Since Alby first started coming over, it’s always the Bakery Café. A year ago, a German establishment fag bought it and promptly fired all the waiters. Full of righteous honor, Alby and the others walk past the picket line that lasts for a few weeks, making a production of eating elsewhere. Leo calls the new owner “Gunter” and does a goosestep for the fired waiters, who cheer.

But restaurants where women are welcome are hard to come by in the Castro. The new waiters at the Bakery Café never make them wait half an hour just to get a menu like the snotty boys in some of the more expensive places. And breakfast is still a deal here. There is bacon for Alby, blintzes for the New Yorkers, and their non-political friends go there. After the picket line dried up, they wait almost a month, then sneak in as a group one Sunday morning without discussion or eye contact.

Before they reach the doorway to the Bakery, even Alby’s sleepy gaze notices a difference on the block. There are poppy-colored flyers on the wall around Hibernia Bank, across the street at the Chinese food place, and wrapped around poles. The Red Queen must have been out last night.

Alby and her friends know who the Red Queen is: One of the boys Leo went to camp with in upstate New York, Naphtali, is roommates with a man named Arthur. Arthur is a bespectacled Socialist faggot who will never pass as a Clone. Periodically his disillusionment with a movement that had such promise a decade earlier spills out of him in brilliant scathing diatribes which he prints on scarlet paper and wheatpastes all over the Castro. He uses the name “Red Queen” to keep everybody guessing. Alby loves his acid view, his battered hope, his East Coast rhetoric.

They stop by the nearest flyer, stapled to a light pole. Leo and Francie crowd in, and Alby touches Leo’s shoulder with her fingertips. Leo doesn’t look around. She has to get close to the print to read it – she refuses to wear her glasses – so to make up for blocking their view, she reads it out loud in one of her funniest voices.

But this one isn’t funny. This one is about how gay men are getting sick, are coming down with an impossibly rare form of cancer. One boy has even died from it. The Red Queen says something is afoot. He thinks there is a government connection. He thinks maybe it’s something in Rush or Locker Room. His words are almost shrieking. Alby stays with him until near the end, when he claims this cancer is contagious – can be spread from man to man.

Leo turns to face them. Alby feels a chill at her core, but she won’t show it to Leo. Instead, she rolls her eyes. Everybody knows cancer is NOT contagious, it wouldn’t be CANCER if it were CONTAGIOUS. Leo grins uncertainly. Randy is holding on tight. The Red Queen has really lost it this time.

Leo says, But the poppers thing, that sounds possible.

Alby agrees, Yeah, who knows what the fuck’s in them. But not cancer. And if there were something really contagious, we’d have heard, even from our fucked up media.

Randy says, No, not cancer.

Alby adds, Besides which, they only OD on poppers because they’re obsessed with sex, what do they expect?

They walk on into the restaurant.




-© 2008 Maggie Jochild; written 4 June 1999

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LOVE THEM WHERE THEY LIVE

In the autumn of 2003, I wrote an essay which was published in Voices For Racial Justice, a book produced by Evelyn Street Press in conjunction with the Racial Justice Program of the YWCA of Greater Austin. Edited by Sharon Bridgforth and Jennifer Margulies, this essay's demands on me as a writer became a work of solidifying my foundation that year. I share it with you after the fold.


LOVE THEM WHERE THEY LIVE

In October 1997, the U.S. government made a decision to change how it collected racial and ethnic data, allowing people for the first time to identify with more than one race. There are now seven major categories of race, which can be arranged in 63 different combinations. But, when I am asked to check a box, I check only "White.” And when I joined the Racial Justice Writer's group, being trained by Sharon Bridgforth in her "Finding Voice" method, I began answering her rigorous questions of self-identity by saying I am white, primarily of Scot descent, with a known mixture of German, Welsh, English, Cherokee and Kiowa.

I lived through the late seventies when a sizable minority of my white progressive cohorts, overwhelmed by the reality of racism and racial division, reacted either by bringing to the forefront of their identity a single ancestor of color or by simply attempting to "cross over", to no longer claim the race they were born and raised. They birthed or adopted children of color in order to have intimate relationships with non-whites. They flocked to powwows and crashed other gatherings intended for people of color to have a breather from dominant white culture. They said they didn't "feel white,” had never felt white "inside.” I was not one of these people, but I understood the hunger to deal with the lie of race as a construct by transforming my own identity. I wish it were that simple.

It's not the boxes that are the problem. Adding on new boxes or switching boxes is still, as Audre Lorde says, trying to use the master's tools to dismantle the master's house. It's the definition of the boxes, the value attached to them, that poisons the world into which we are born.

Since 1609 my people have lived in the South. My parents are the first generation to not earn a living by farming. My parents were raised rural poor; my mother was orphaned just as the Depression was starting and raised by her aunt and uncle. They married just as World War II ended but did not experience the post-war economic boom that is the myth of the 1950s. My father chose a line of work in the oil business that kept us constantly on the move, outside and underpaid, a job generally filled by young unmarried men. He refused to give it up until I was sixteen, when my mother had had three heart attacks from the strain of raising us mostly on her own with not enough money sometimes to even feed us.

Twice my father accepted jobs overseas (Calcutta, India and Aracaju, Brazil) because the pay was high and gave us enough to live well while we were in another country, maybe get a new car or housetrailer when we got back. When you are at the bottom of the white scale, the only way to rise in class is on the backs of people of color.

(Maggie and Nilmoni in Calcutta, India, 1958)

We moved 24 times before I was 18 years old. After my mother's illnesses forced him to stop traveling, my father worked at sales jobs, earning even less than before. I went to college on a full scholarship. We always qualified for any form of government assistance but my mother was ferocious in refusing it. As a result of inadequate medical care and stress from poverty, I've lost my mother (died at 56), youngest brother Sammy (died at birth) and beloved little brother Bill (died at 42), and my father, older brother and I are disabled and/or chronically ill. Now, at age 48, I still identify as white trash. I also claim redneck and cracker, and don't appreciate these class-origin terms being used as insults. We deserve a complicated truth. I am currently working class with absolutely no economic resources or safety net beyond what I earn each month. I am terrified about how I will survive financially when I am older.

Like a high percentage of those raised poor, my body has borne the brunt. I have three disabilities, all of them congenital: Bony deformities of both tibia (which my brother Bill also had) that went undiagnosed and untreated until I was in my 40s, which have destroyed my knees and make all weightbearing painful and difficult; moderate to severe lifelong asthma (runs in my family); and polycystic ovary disease, creating a severe hormonal imbalance (excess of estrogen) that results in profuse facial hair, steady weight gain, emotional lability, infertility, periodic severely painful cyst rupture, and high risk for uterine cancer. All of my disabilities would be far less disabling or possibly not a current problem if I had received early medical attention. The reason why I did not was because of my family's lack of money, and the fact that I was a girl child.

I have absolutely adored being a girl and now a woman - not the oppression of the constructed role, but the self-expanded reality of it. I have never wanted to be anything else. I first heard the word and definition of lesbian in 1965, at age nine, and realized with a jolt that that was what I was. I began writing poetry the same month I came out to myself, and have used poetry ever sense as a means of maintaining/expressing my true identity. I didn't find out I could live as something other than a heterosexual or that there were others like me until Stonewall happened, when I was 13. I came out to others at age 15, when I had my first lover. The lesbian-feminist movement saved my life and gave me my core values. When I was 17 I found out that the great love of my mother's life had been a woman named Mary Nell, and that when Mary Nell broke her heart, my mother returned to men as a means of never being hurt that way again. When I was 40 I found out that my mother's mother had also first loved women, and had chosen to marry my grandfather only because she could not be with the woman she loved. I don't believe that homosexuality is genetic, I think it is chosen, but do see a strong thread in my maternal emotional heritage predisposing me to be woman-identified.

I became a comother to a 2-year-old daughter when I was 17. She has been married to both a woman and a man. She has now given me two grandchildren, a boy and a girl, both of them mixed race and being raised working class in Dallas, Texas. Their experience of race in the United States will be different than mine.

I left the U.S. when I was six months old to live in India, and returned in 1958 when I was four. I remember, soon after returning, going to a five and dime with my mother in Lafayette, Louisiana. Down one aisle I spotted a black woman. I slipped away from my mother and followed the woman. I just wanted to see where she went. I can remember feeling almost desperate to find out where she went. Even then, I thought maybe there was a secret doorway into the other world. I think this belief is common to a lot of white children.

At the back of the five and dime were two water fountains. One was big, and clean, of shiny metal. The other one was much smaller, of cracked porcelain with lots of stains on it. The woman I was following went to the small water fountain and took a drink. When she was done, I stepped up to it and tried to drink from it, also. Despite it being lower to the ground, I couldn't quite reach. The woman was staring at me. I turned to her and asked her if she would lift me up. She just walked away, very fast. I could smell her fear.

A second later, my mother swept frantically around the corner and grabbed me, followed by a store clerk and a big white man. She hissed at me, "What are you DOING?" I told her I was trying to get a drink. She carried me over to the other water fountain and pushed the button. I said, no, I wanted to drink from the little fountain. Mama shushed me and hustled me out of the store. When we were in the car, she explained to me that I could not drink from the "colored" fountain, it upset people. When she called it that, at first I was even more determined to drink from it -- was the water colored? Color was good, as far as I was concerned. But when my older brother began laughing at me, taunting me, and my mother told him to shut up, I was suddenly ashamed. And scared.

Mostly my mother explained things to me without using pejoratives. (Thank you for telling me the truth about the water fountain, that it would upset white people if I crossed the line, not that it was wrong to cross the line.) Mostly she insisted that all human beings were the same, a rhetoric not borne out in consistent practice but still a rhetoric giving me a sliver of ground to stand on. She had a fairly enlightened grasp on racism for her time and location. But she had to fight my father and older brother constantly to keep certain language out of the house, and while I sided with her, I went on being scared of white people. I think everybody is scared of white people. I don't know if that's true, but it looks that way to me. And when I start from that theoretical assumption, I have the most success as a writer and an activist.

But, the greater truth is, I don't know how to talk about racism in my life without starting way before I was born. I know my family tree, more than most people do. I decided it was my business to know, and was aided in this by the ethos of my mother's family which runs contrary to the white Southern working class belief that what you don't know won't hurt you. This side of the family also has a saying: "Don't ask folks where they are from, 'cause if they are from Texas they'll tell you right away, and if they aren't, there's no need to embarrass them."

My ancestors on my mother's side came to Texas when it was Tejas, agreeing to become citizens of Mexico, then immediately participating in the land grab of the revolution. My ancestors on my father's side rode in the land runs in Indian Territory, displacing already displaced Choctaws. Before that, on both sides, they were Scots or Germans or Welsh who relentlessly pressed westward from Jamestown, Charleston, the Shenandoah Valley, indentured servants who bought their freedom, sharecroppers who became small landowners, white men who married North Carolina Cherokees or Kiowa women. Any black Baysinger/Basinger from Tennessee is my cousin, from my great-great-grandfather Nep Basinger and his grown brothers who owned -- and raped -- African women. But I am clear that the line coming down to me is the line that shook out on the white end of things, that chose race privilege, theft, rape, exhausting the land and moving on, as means of trying to climb the ladder. They are quintessentially European.

Here's a fact: Every single male in my family --direct line, siblings, cousins, any relation at all -- between the ages of 12 and 70 (this is no exaggeration) who was alive at the time of the Civil War enlisted in the Confederate States Army. We're talking about hundreds if not thousands of men and boys whose blood runs in my veins. I know their names, I know where they lived and what units they served in. For my direct line ancestors, I know where they were killed (though not always where they were returned to earth), or what kind of crippling they carried away from this war. Until I was ten, I didn't understand the war had ended ninety years before I was born -- the way my people talked about it, I thought it had happened shortly before my birth. It has gone that unresolved for us.

Of those Confederates, maybe 10% owned slaves ever in their lifetimes. That's about average for Southern whites. We fought for an economic system that was never going to reward us directly, and yet was the only way of life we could imagine. My people were hardscrabble, hand-to-mouth farmers. While I can't say any of them understood racism in a modern sense, some of them knew what was wrong with the culture they claimed as their own. I believe every white alive then knew, deep down, that they lived cheek by jowls with an evil. I believe the dissonance and unpredictable violence of white poor Southern culture stems equally from our own position near the bottom of the shit heap and our secret recognition that we are, even so, living in a way that shovels shit over onto those one layer down from us. I love my people. I have chosen to betray them out of heartbreaking love. I think I am the hope of my line because of that betrayal.

From one perspective, I am a sport, a rogue, an almost incomprehensible divergence from my heritage. I have looked long and hard at the reasons for my apartness -- coming out, living in India and Brazil, my mother's brilliance, books, Tikkun Olam, disability, those North Carolina Cherokee who infused us with a nonexploitative connection to nature and a fierce appetite for learning the truth, being a baby boomer, the salvation of lesbian-feminism. But, I have to say, it is likewise true that there is a strong current in me of being exactly the product of my heritage. I am the result of generations of people taking maybe just one risk, one step out of bounds, and surviving the punishment long enough to produce the next generation.

I see my primary job as a human being committed to ending ALL oppression and misinformation as that of bearing witness. I believe others will tell me what they want and need if I just listen hard enough. I think this requires of me a profound spiritual practice, a dedication to learning everything I can, living a good life, pushing myself to experience discomfort, speaking the truth even when (especially when) I am terrified, and following the Quaker dictum of "Proceed as the way opens."

(Maggie, summer of 1982, Bean Hollow Beach, south of San Francisco)

I left Texas when I was 21 because I could not see how to learn and live here in a way that fed my soul. In March of 1985 I attended an Eliminating Racism workshop led by Ricky Sherover-Marcuse in the San Francisco Bay Area. A large number of the people who attended were exiled Southerners. Golden California draws this country's refugees. At one point, Ricky got me up in front of the group to work on my family, my heritage, as a means of illustrating the need for whites to know themselves (not just assume we are the "default"). It was a watershed moment for me. Afterward, an African-American woman I didn't know came up to me and said, "I was relieved to see you loving your people. You all need to love each other, and stop expecting us to do that job for you. And I'm asking you to consider moving back to where you came from -- when you flee to the cities and the coasts, you leave all the rest of the country to the white people you have a hard time loving. But MY people have to live in those places, too. I'm asking you to not huddle here in safety -- go back and love your folks where they are stuck."

It took me four years to get the resource together, but I did what she asked. She was right. After that, it took me another seven years to adjust to the change I'd made. Too many of the Southern white writers who think and write about racism are doing it from places like New York, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago -- they don't come back home. And thus their perceptions are out of date, inauthentic, tinted with nostalgia and stereotype, unredeemed by distance. I moved back to ground zero for my people, to love them and heal them up close, to write about us with hope and humor.

This is my purpose, as a poet: To imagine a world that has not, before now, existed and share it in such a way that the reader can use it to imagine HER version of a world that has not, before now, existed. With regard to writing about racism, I must tell the absolute truth about my people, the kind of truth we/you have been starved for. I have shaped my day to day life so that I can recognize and report pieces of this truth.

So, I listen. I bear witness. I believe that if every single of us is contributing to the discourse, we'll create a good way of life. I show up. I practice the words of Fran Winant: "Eat rice/Have faith in wimmin/If I learn first/I will teach you/If you learn first/I must believe you will come back to teach me." And I proceed as the way opens.


(Carole, Dawn and Maggie at Texas Lesbian Conference, Houston, Texas, 2000)

[Note: Since writing this essay, my father and older brother have also died from health issues related to poverty. I have also discovered distant Choctaw ancestry, on my father's side.)
© 2008 Maggie Jochild.

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DANCING FOR ATONEMENT

Matt Harding has a new "dancing all over the world" video.



I am crying uncontrollably every time I see it. Too many thoughts to chain together coherently...

I notice when the people who join him include no women or girls: That place in the world has us locked down from free expression of our humanity. Too many places like that.

Tonight on PBS I watched Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North. This is a documentary made by Katrina Browne, descendant of the DeWolfs of Bristol, Rhode Island. She, along with nine other members of her close and distant family, confront their legacy as the largest slave-holding dynasty in U.S. history. They "retrace the Triangle Trade and gain a powerful new perspective on the black/white divide."

It's the best film I've seen about the reality of how America's wealth is based on human trafficking and centuries of pathology. As one of the DeWolf cousins eventually comes to say, "It was evil they did, they knew it was evil, and they did it anyway." This is especially true for the North, which controlled slave trade in the U.S. but managed to "buy" their way into no longer being held accountable by claiming they fought the Civil War to end slavery.

The emotional and spiritual process experienced by this family is shown in detail. By the end, they are able to also begin naming their class privilege, and to undertake action of reconciliation and reparation. The African and African-American voices in the film, especially that of co-producer Juanita Brown, also play a serious role in its development.

Do whatever you can to watch this film. See if it is being re-run this week on your own PBS channel. The PBS P.O.V. trailer can be viewed here.

From the website: "The issues the DeWolf descendants are confronted with dramatize questions that apply to the nation as a whole: What, concretely, is the legacy of slavery—for diverse whites, for diverse blacks, for diverse others? Who owes who what for the sins of the fathers of this country? What history do we inherit as individuals and as citizens? How does Northern complicity change the equation? What would repair — spiritual and material — really look like and what would it take?"

Last night I received an e-mail from a very distant cousin who also does genealogy who found our shared lineage posted at RootsWeb. She says there is an error in the pedigree I was given by another researcher, in the Davis line. If she's right, then I am possibly not descended from Captain James Davis of Jamestown, who was one of the first white colonists on this continent and one of the men who in 1619 decided to buy Africans as slaves, the first in America.

I've spent my entire adult life owning my heritage and doing the work of atonement. James Davis has loomed large in that landscape. If he is removed from the picture, I wonder what will shift.

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EMILE NORMAN: LIFE AND EXAMPLE

(Emile Norman and Brooks Clement)

I watched the PBS documentary tonight Emile Norman: By His Own Design, and it sparked a wave of thought in me about art, long-term lesbian and gay relationships, and the limits imposed on artists by class and gender.

Emile Norman is now 90 but still actively working and living in the stunning, hand-built home atop a hill outside Big Sur that he created with his lover/partner Brooks Clement in the 1950s. Brooks has been dead since 1973, but they had 30 years together. During the 1950s and 1960s, they were openly gay, and their home was a refuge, a magnet for all kinds of creative people.

(Emile Norman waves from tower atop his Big Sur home)


Emile is an innovative sculptor/muralist who relies on nature for most of his symbolism and themes. He dropped out of art school after one day and pursued his own path during an era when abstract expressionism was all the rage. When Norman and Clement moved to Big Sur in 1946, Brooks told Emile "You go into the studio and I'll show the world what you're doing." It was a deal that made Emile successful and happy. The two men were inseparable, excellent companions and at the heart of a wide circle of friends. When Emile became too old to safely live alone, a pair of young gay men (Jeff Mallory and C. Kevin Smith) moved in as caretakers and forged family.

The documentary was produced by Jill Eikenberry and Michael Tucker, neighbors and friends of Emile. You may remember them as the husband-and-wife lawyers who immortalized the imaginary "butterfly kiss" on the TV series L.A. Law. It's a good film, interspersed with home movies from Brooks and Emile plus letters written about them by another neighbor, a young married woman and mother who visited constantly. The two men found freedom to be themselves in an era when few did, and the story of a sculptor who has been able to live by his art for 84 years is rare.

Equally striking to me, however, was the contrast between their good luck and the stories of other equally gifted and innovative artists who struggle with isolation and poverty. In particular, I wonder if two gay men of color would have found the welcoming attitude Emile and Brooks did. I doubt the Masonic organization whose mural represents Emile's largest work would have given him a commission if he had been non-white. Or a woman.

(History of San Francisco mural at Union Bank of California, by Emile Norman)

Lesbian artists of any ability are much less likely to be treated kindly by rural neighbors (even in a liberal place like Big Sur) or the arts community. They must contend with continuous sexism, veiled and incidental as well as outright violence and predation. If one of a pair of women is attractive by conventional standards, the men who enter their circle are likely to hope for a sexual conquest -- all dykes really want, after all, is the right cock, either from a manly man or, these days, from another queer. Or so the myth persists.

And with denial of access to circles of influence comes poverty. No chance to live atop hillsides, commune with nature, avoid wage-earning, and travel for inspiration.

(Solarium in home of Emile Norman and Brooks Clement)

Paula Gunn Allen died last month, far too early, with inadequate support at the end of her life. She had managed, while contending with her cancer, to buy a mobile home for herself (all she could afford) but it and most of her belongings were destroyed in a fire not long before she died. A lesbian of color poet, novelist, historian -- once the short-list for Pulitzer -- one of the greatest minds of our generation, but her death brought no public memorials that I've seen outside a few feminist blogs. And not even the Generation X blogs. It's as if she never existed.

I'm deeply glad Emile Norman is getting deserved recognition. I'm even more happy for the apparent happiness of his life. Still, it's not the face of minority art and artists. Not nearly enough.

(Polar Bear by Emile Norman)

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LOLCATS WEEKLY ROUND-UP, 24 JUNE 2008

Here's the weekly best of what I've gleaned from I Can Has Cheezburger efforts. There are some really creative folks out there. As usual, those from little gator lead the pack.

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