I am watching The Thomas Crown Affair on DVD—the classic ’68 original starring Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway—and listening to director Norman Jewison’s rambling, sometimes amusing commentary about the making of the movie. Just now Jewison is talking a bit about the versatile Jack Weston—an actor I loved, especially when he played bumblers—with whom he worked in several previous projects (including another McQueen film, The Cincinnati Kid) and who played Erwin, the luckless driver in Thomas Crown. I miss the roly-poly Weston, who died of cancer in 1996; I miss his sly smile, his raspy, distinctive whine and the way he could execute climbing hysteria like nobody’s business. (Check out his sniveling, conniving lawyer in the multi-talented Elaine May’s side-splitting 1971 comedy A New Leaf, or his turn as Rita Moreno’s lovable hypochondriac hubby in Alan Alda’s droll 1980 ensemble piece The Four Seasons.)
The Thomas Crown Affair is one of my very favorite movies, a stylish wink of a caper very much of its moment—costume designer Theadora Van Runkle’s wonderful wardrobe for Dunaway is pure sixties mod meets Paris chic—featuring then quite innovative split and multi screen effects (the bank robbery, the polo match) that must have startled and delighted 1968 cinema audiences as it startled and delighted me when finally I saw it start to finish and without commercial breaks, somewhere back in the ‘80s. Jewison and company make imaginative use of Boston locations, Haskell Wexler’s photography is creative, quirky and beautiful to look at, and the music is truly sublime, from the Oscar winning Bergman-Legrand love theme “The Windmills of Your Mind”—though between you and me I’ve always preferred the languid, sultry Dusty Springfield vocal to Noel Harrison’s brisk British recitation—to the jazzy high action sequences to Legrand’s lush scoring of the famous McQueen-Dunaway chess match (Jewison refers to it as “chess with sex”), the scene that epitomizes their tense, teasing cat and mouse romance.
This movie is also funny, with lots of amusing throwaways and odd bits of business. Witness the scene that directly introduces the glamorous, unscrupulous Dunaway character Vicki Anderson, the chopped exchange between Jamie, Gordon Pinsent’s harassed insurance company man, and Eddy Malone, Paul Burke’s tough, workaday cop (who seems almost an older, more hard-bitten incarnation of Adam Flint, the idealistic young detective he played on TV’s Naked City from 1960 to ‘63. Or the moment early in the film where Thomas Crown coolly strolls into the cemetery to retrieve the bags of money he’s just heisted from his own bank only to freeze in mid-grab at the unexpected tolling of a bell. Or the scene where Crown and the hapless Erwin sit opposite each other in a narrow police station holding room as Vicki and Malone watch breathlessly from behind a one-way mirror, waiting for the two to acknowledge one another. (It doesn’t happen of course; Crown is too smart for that.) And let’s not forget Vickie’s mischievous birthday presentation to Malone, the “Think Dirty” plaque.
There are also moments in Thomas Crown that are not funny but quite compelling, such as the stunning bank robbery sequence that opens the film (and has a documentary feel), where employees and customers stepping off elevators realize they’ve blundered into serious trouble and are quickly cowed into submission by the lethally efficient gunmen; there’s one young man who walks blindly into danger like the others, and you see first the confusion in his face and then his fright as he realizes his peril, almost involuntarily he makes a move to get away and is shot in the foot for the effort; he crumples to the hallway floor, his body clenched, and rolls around in spastic agony. You can’t even see his face now as he’s clutching his leg, just the hunched and rolling motion, but you feel the poor guy’s agony—from the moment I first saw the movie this scene struck me as one of the most realistic depictions of physical distress ever committed to film.
Also there’s that terrific terrace luncheon scene where an at first amused Eddy Malone needles Vicki—who has by now been monitoring every move Thomas Crown makes even though she is herself intimately involved with him—about Crown’s apparent romantic resumption with a former flame.
“You’re being had, Vicki girl” he teases her. ”Why,” she asks coldly. “Would you like to know where he went when he left you last night?” he grins, waving a surveillance report under her nose. “No,” she snaps, sipping her wine, before reversing herself to reach for the paper. She looks it over. “Her again,” she says dismissively. “Dirty old man.” But she is clearly rattled. Her food sits forgotten as she lights another cigarette, her mockingly playful self-assurance has vanished and her heavily lashed and mascara-ed eyes blink like warning signals. Malone watches her, increasingly discomfited.
Norman Jewison nearly didn’t cast Steve McQueen in this film; he wasn’t sure the combative, roughhewn actor could pull off a role a younger Cary Grant would have essayed with ease. But McQueen convinced Jewison to give him the part and for that we can be thankful; the reform school tough from Indiana completely transforms himself into the suave, moneyed Boston Brahmin. As Jewison notes in his commentary McQueen looks and moves differently in The Thomas Crown Affair than any movie he’d done before or since.
So does Dunaway; she is sleek and marvelous swanning around from one scene to the next in Van Runkle’s elegant sportswear, chic suits and soft, float-y dresses. She wears lots of hats in this movie and she looks smashing in all of them—and so do the men by the way; this is an era when men (of a certain age and social outlook, at least) were still wearing fedoras, porkpies and even homburgs.
Faye Dunaway has given many memorable, award-winning performances over the years but whereas I most admire her work in early films like Bonnie and Clyde, Chinatown, The Disappearance of Aimee, Network, Three Days of the Condor and Richard Lester’s wonderful Musketeer movies, I love her in The Thomas Crown Affair and never more so than at that brittle, bittersweet crescendo of an ending as Vicki helplessly realizes she has indeed been had, the games are over and she and Thomas both have lost something irreplaceable.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Sunday, November 23, 2008
D.L. Hughley and Prop 8
There’s a clip on the web of columnist Dan Savage’s appearance on D.L. Hughley’s CNN talk show, D.L. Hughley Breaks The News. I linked to it through my PlanetOut This Weekend email.
Mr. Savage, probably best known for the witty sex column Savage Love, was (of course) there to talk about Prop 8 and the angry accusation that black and Latino voters were responsible for the denial of gay marriage rights (and other LGBT rollbacks) on November 4th. I watched the clip twice—two and half times, actually—increasingly irritated by the way Hughley verbally danced all over the damn place, making one anti-gay statement after another and then immediately sort of taking it back, or not really meaning it, or something like that, talking out of both sides of his mouth as rapidly as humanly possible. “I’m not particularly homophobic” he says. Right, and then a moment later: “I don’t condone the gay lifestyle,” a slap he then he attempts to qualify with “I don’t condone the government being involved with people’s affairs.” Pick a position and stick with it a minute already!
And then Hughley did the utterly predictable thing: he started yammering on about how his homophobia-that-isn’t-really is natural and right because of, you know, the way he
was brought up and because of the church. YAWN. For Chrissake, can’t these Negroes be a little more original about their hostility to gays? Because of the way he was brought up? What exactly does that mean? I was brought up the way D.L. Hughley was brought up, so for that matter was Dan Savage. Basically, we were all raised in heterosexual households by heterosexual parents either oblivious or openly hostile to ways of living that strayed from what they’d been taught (by heterosexual parents in heterosexual households) was the acceptable norm. Religion, whether Christian or Jewish, played a significant part in the lives of our immediate and extended families. And whatever else we all grew up doing, we all grew up watching “Good Times” and “The Brady Bunch” and “The Jeffersons” and “The Partridge Family” or facsimiles thereof. I’m saying Dan Savage and I are from the same planet as D.L. Hughley—we weren’t hatched from eggs, we’re not pod people—and we’re gay. If Hughley’s “upbringing” explains his heterosexuality, not to say his homophobic clueless-ness, what explains Savage’s queerness? Or mine?
Remember the original Def Comedy Jam years? I do, in a vague, hung-over sort of way; I remember the seemingly endless parade of potty-mouthed brothas (and from time to time a sistah or two) doing stand-up comedy rants that, when they acknowledged the presence of gays in American life at all, usually did so with a sneer and an insult, the cheapest laugh of the night. Hughley was a part of that group, so was a host of others including Martin Lawrence, Cedric the Entertainer, Steve Harvey and the late, great Bernie Mac. And I laughed, and cringed, and finally stopped laughing, disheartened and bored, frankly, as finally one comic after another seemed mainly to be imitating Eddie Murphy, who in his own club routines seemed to be channeling Richard Pryor (himself not exactly the most enlightened entertainer regarding queer issues, his affection and admiration for Lily Tomlin notwithstanding).
I got so tired of being dissed and in such a spectacularly ignorant and complacent way--and from my own people. It still goes on and I’m still tired of it. I’m weary too of the thunderous silence from lesbian and gay celebs of color. Okay, yes, Wanda Sykes came out after Prop 8, but where’s… everybody else? I understand that black queers with any kind of public profile feel caught in a bind, wary of losing a hard-won success from racism on the one hand and community rejection on the other. Still, the silence is especially troubling to me because I think it sets in stone the meanness and myth that too often informs minority objections to gay rights, essentially guaranteeing that straights of color with such mindsets continue to view all things queer as a deliberate cultural assault on their values and religious beliefs. “I’ve never met a black atheist,” Hughley said to Savage and I just wanted to throw up. The hell you haven’t, I thought, snorting. You’ve met black atheists and agnostics, too. You’ve worked with them, you’ve partied with them, they’ve been members of your posse.
Oh, maybe they haven’t had the courage to own up, to come out of their own particular closets, but they’re there, trust me. It is—excuse me—a fairy tale, and a cherished one, that every single African-American is religious and/or believes in God no matter where they come from or how they were raised. The problem with that contention is that if we’re going to bridle at White America’s inclination to view blacks generally as threats or problems, if we insist white people recognize and respect that we are as diverse as any other racial or ethnic group, then by all laws of logic we’re obligated to do the same. Which also, Mr. Hughley, means admitting that there are gay, lesbian, bisexual and tranny African-Americans and other people of color who are—as Dan Savage attempted to point out to you—as disserved by Prop 8 as LGBT Caucasians.
“Ya gotta march a little while longer,” Hughley told Savage with a big, self-satisfied grin, before hurriedly shaking his hand and wishing him the best. Yes, well. I wonder if Mr. Hughley would have been quite as smug tossing that parting shot at the likes of a James Baldwin, Barbara Jordan or Bayard Rustin?
Mr. Savage, probably best known for the witty sex column Savage Love, was (of course) there to talk about Prop 8 and the angry accusation that black and Latino voters were responsible for the denial of gay marriage rights (and other LGBT rollbacks) on November 4th. I watched the clip twice—two and half times, actually—increasingly irritated by the way Hughley verbally danced all over the damn place, making one anti-gay statement after another and then immediately sort of taking it back, or not really meaning it, or something like that, talking out of both sides of his mouth as rapidly as humanly possible. “I’m not particularly homophobic” he says. Right, and then a moment later: “I don’t condone the gay lifestyle,” a slap he then he attempts to qualify with “I don’t condone the government being involved with people’s affairs.” Pick a position and stick with it a minute already!
And then Hughley did the utterly predictable thing: he started yammering on about how his homophobia-that-isn’t-really is natural and right because of, you know, the way he
was brought up and because of the church. YAWN. For Chrissake, can’t these Negroes be a little more original about their hostility to gays? Because of the way he was brought up? What exactly does that mean? I was brought up the way D.L. Hughley was brought up, so for that matter was Dan Savage. Basically, we were all raised in heterosexual households by heterosexual parents either oblivious or openly hostile to ways of living that strayed from what they’d been taught (by heterosexual parents in heterosexual households) was the acceptable norm. Religion, whether Christian or Jewish, played a significant part in the lives of our immediate and extended families. And whatever else we all grew up doing, we all grew up watching “Good Times” and “The Brady Bunch” and “The Jeffersons” and “The Partridge Family” or facsimiles thereof. I’m saying Dan Savage and I are from the same planet as D.L. Hughley—we weren’t hatched from eggs, we’re not pod people—and we’re gay. If Hughley’s “upbringing” explains his heterosexuality, not to say his homophobic clueless-ness, what explains Savage’s queerness? Or mine?
Remember the original Def Comedy Jam years? I do, in a vague, hung-over sort of way; I remember the seemingly endless parade of potty-mouthed brothas (and from time to time a sistah or two) doing stand-up comedy rants that, when they acknowledged the presence of gays in American life at all, usually did so with a sneer and an insult, the cheapest laugh of the night. Hughley was a part of that group, so was a host of others including Martin Lawrence, Cedric the Entertainer, Steve Harvey and the late, great Bernie Mac. And I laughed, and cringed, and finally stopped laughing, disheartened and bored, frankly, as finally one comic after another seemed mainly to be imitating Eddie Murphy, who in his own club routines seemed to be channeling Richard Pryor (himself not exactly the most enlightened entertainer regarding queer issues, his affection and admiration for Lily Tomlin notwithstanding).
I got so tired of being dissed and in such a spectacularly ignorant and complacent way--and from my own people. It still goes on and I’m still tired of it. I’m weary too of the thunderous silence from lesbian and gay celebs of color. Okay, yes, Wanda Sykes came out after Prop 8, but where’s… everybody else? I understand that black queers with any kind of public profile feel caught in a bind, wary of losing a hard-won success from racism on the one hand and community rejection on the other. Still, the silence is especially troubling to me because I think it sets in stone the meanness and myth that too often informs minority objections to gay rights, essentially guaranteeing that straights of color with such mindsets continue to view all things queer as a deliberate cultural assault on their values and religious beliefs. “I’ve never met a black atheist,” Hughley said to Savage and I just wanted to throw up. The hell you haven’t, I thought, snorting. You’ve met black atheists and agnostics, too. You’ve worked with them, you’ve partied with them, they’ve been members of your posse.
Oh, maybe they haven’t had the courage to own up, to come out of their own particular closets, but they’re there, trust me. It is—excuse me—a fairy tale, and a cherished one, that every single African-American is religious and/or believes in God no matter where they come from or how they were raised. The problem with that contention is that if we’re going to bridle at White America’s inclination to view blacks generally as threats or problems, if we insist white people recognize and respect that we are as diverse as any other racial or ethnic group, then by all laws of logic we’re obligated to do the same. Which also, Mr. Hughley, means admitting that there are gay, lesbian, bisexual and tranny African-Americans and other people of color who are—as Dan Savage attempted to point out to you—as disserved by Prop 8 as LGBT Caucasians.
“Ya gotta march a little while longer,” Hughley told Savage with a big, self-satisfied grin, before hurriedly shaking his hand and wishing him the best. Yes, well. I wonder if Mr. Hughley would have been quite as smug tossing that parting shot at the likes of a James Baldwin, Barbara Jordan or Bayard Rustin?
Thursday, November 20, 2008
On Being Not Where You Want To Be
Just not working out.
I am home, doing this. This is not where I want to be right now.
I stood outside the library--across the street from it actually, toeing the curb--in the fucking freezing cold trying to decide what I really really in my heart of hearts wanted to do tonight, where I wanted to be. Then I decided. Then I didn't do it.
I walked into Walgreen's drugstore to buy a notebook to take with me to scribble in. Then I really felt I should buy a nice razor point pen too, to go with it. Then I decided I didn't need the pen. Then I decided not to buy the notebook.
But I wanted to go somewhere other than home, some place warm and reasonably quiet with a nice aroma and good food. A restaurant. A place with soft, low-key lighting--candles on the table would be nice--and a corner booth. I thought at first Dixie Kitchen in Hyde Park which boasts a laid-back staff that is attentive without hovering and wonderful, spicy creole and cajun dishes (Order the fried green tomatoes, johnny cakes and a bowl, not a cup, of the jambalaya. Trust me).
Then I thought, No, it's too damn cold out here to walk it and I don't want to spend the increasingly expensive bus fare (have you seen in the news that the fares are going up? Again?) to go into another neighborhood just eat dinner, especially alone. There's a new soul food place here in Bronzeville, about a block away from me--great food, if a bit pricey--and if I was lucky I'd be ahead of the dinnertime rush and could get a booth. So it was settled; I was going to Chicago's Home of Chicken & Waffles, not to be confused with Roscoe's House of Chicken 'n Waffles, apparently for legal reasons.
Then I realized I didn't have enough cash with me (Why didn't I take that folded-over $20 off my desk and slide it into my wallet the moment I saw it? Why? It would have taken, like, two seconds and I'd have it with me now I need it. What good is it doing me laying on top of Anna Nicole Smith? Such an idiot!) and I didn't want to use plastic, so I came home.
Sigh.
The thing is, what I really wanted to do was to attend MoveOn.org's Big Obama Gathering (a campaign to help the President-Elect pass "a bold progressive agenda") tonight here in Chicago. I got Stephanie L's e-invite yesterday afternoon and hesitated for a long time before finally declining. I saw that something like 19 people had already committed to attend and I guess I was a little freaked out by that. All I could see in my mind's eye was little me walking into a room full of 19 strangers and having to make smart small talk. The very thought left me feeling shy and afraid. Who are those 19 people? Will they all be white? Will they all be young? Younger than me? Of course. Everyone's younger than me. Please don't tell anyone, but sometimes I feel so ancient being 50. I may as well be 90 or 100 or 1000 years old. I'm a relic now, a ruin. If only I were 20 years younger. And about 50, 60 pounds lighter as well. Especially that.
Michael R thinks I'm wonderful, bless his Canadian heart, and he doesn't even know me except through my random postings to Bill's blog. Would I have gone to the Obama meeting if those 19 attendees included him? And Bill? And Grant and Chris and Sue and...
Possibly. Probably not. Likely not. Like-as-not. I was as full of shit and fear 20, 25 years ago as now but at least I looked better. Now I don't even have that.
I am so tired and I feel so old.
I miss Joey. I wish he weren't dead. I hate God for taking my brother from me. I hate myself for not being there for him as he got sicker and sicker, for staying away from his house as he began to fade. I let him down and I loved him so. Did he know that at the end? Did he remember? As I type this, I am remembering Joey and me at ages 10 and 11, electric with energy, wiry and full of spirit in our matching new tees, jeans and spanking white sneakers, having a sidewalk race on a warm and sunny, nearly-summer day. We ran grinning elbow to elbow all the way up Drexel Avenue, and leaping over the cracks so we wouldn't break Mama's back. I don't remember now who won. I think we both did. And we knew all the songs on the radio that year and so did our cousins and friends, which was important. Remember when music was so important, the soundtrack of your life?
Come Together. Sweet Caroline. I Just Can't Help Believing. Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In. Get Together. Everyday People. You Showed Me. This Magic Moment. Time of the Season. It's Your Thing.
I should have gone to that Obama campaign meeting.
I am going to get something to eat.
I am home, doing this. This is not where I want to be right now.
I stood outside the library--across the street from it actually, toeing the curb--in the fucking freezing cold trying to decide what I really really in my heart of hearts wanted to do tonight, where I wanted to be. Then I decided. Then I didn't do it.
I walked into Walgreen's drugstore to buy a notebook to take with me to scribble in. Then I really felt I should buy a nice razor point pen too, to go with it. Then I decided I didn't need the pen. Then I decided not to buy the notebook.
But I wanted to go somewhere other than home, some place warm and reasonably quiet with a nice aroma and good food. A restaurant. A place with soft, low-key lighting--candles on the table would be nice--and a corner booth. I thought at first Dixie Kitchen in Hyde Park which boasts a laid-back staff that is attentive without hovering and wonderful, spicy creole and cajun dishes (Order the fried green tomatoes, johnny cakes and a bowl, not a cup, of the jambalaya. Trust me).
Then I thought, No, it's too damn cold out here to walk it and I don't want to spend the increasingly expensive bus fare (have you seen in the news that the fares are going up? Again?) to go into another neighborhood just eat dinner, especially alone. There's a new soul food place here in Bronzeville, about a block away from me--great food, if a bit pricey--and if I was lucky I'd be ahead of the dinnertime rush and could get a booth. So it was settled; I was going to Chicago's Home of Chicken & Waffles, not to be confused with Roscoe's House of Chicken 'n Waffles, apparently for legal reasons.
Then I realized I didn't have enough cash with me (Why didn't I take that folded-over $20 off my desk and slide it into my wallet the moment I saw it? Why? It would have taken, like, two seconds and I'd have it with me now I need it. What good is it doing me laying on top of Anna Nicole Smith? Such an idiot!) and I didn't want to use plastic, so I came home.
Sigh.
The thing is, what I really wanted to do was to attend MoveOn.org's Big Obama Gathering (a campaign to help the President-Elect pass "a bold progressive agenda") tonight here in Chicago. I got Stephanie L's e-invite yesterday afternoon and hesitated for a long time before finally declining. I saw that something like 19 people had already committed to attend and I guess I was a little freaked out by that. All I could see in my mind's eye was little me walking into a room full of 19 strangers and having to make smart small talk. The very thought left me feeling shy and afraid. Who are those 19 people? Will they all be white? Will they all be young? Younger than me? Of course. Everyone's younger than me. Please don't tell anyone, but sometimes I feel so ancient being 50. I may as well be 90 or 100 or 1000 years old. I'm a relic now, a ruin. If only I were 20 years younger. And about 50, 60 pounds lighter as well. Especially that.
Michael R thinks I'm wonderful, bless his Canadian heart, and he doesn't even know me except through my random postings to Bill's blog. Would I have gone to the Obama meeting if those 19 attendees included him? And Bill? And Grant and Chris and Sue and...
Possibly. Probably not. Likely not. Like-as-not. I was as full of shit and fear 20, 25 years ago as now but at least I looked better. Now I don't even have that.
I am so tired and I feel so old.
I miss Joey. I wish he weren't dead. I hate God for taking my brother from me. I hate myself for not being there for him as he got sicker and sicker, for staying away from his house as he began to fade. I let him down and I loved him so. Did he know that at the end? Did he remember? As I type this, I am remembering Joey and me at ages 10 and 11, electric with energy, wiry and full of spirit in our matching new tees, jeans and spanking white sneakers, having a sidewalk race on a warm and sunny, nearly-summer day. We ran grinning elbow to elbow all the way up Drexel Avenue, and leaping over the cracks so we wouldn't break Mama's back. I don't remember now who won. I think we both did. And we knew all the songs on the radio that year and so did our cousins and friends, which was important. Remember when music was so important, the soundtrack of your life?
Come Together. Sweet Caroline. I Just Can't Help Believing. Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In. Get Together. Everyday People. You Showed Me. This Magic Moment. Time of the Season. It's Your Thing.
I should have gone to that Obama campaign meeting.
I am going to get something to eat.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
More On Prop 8
I received in my email today, a forwarded article by Jasmyne A. Cannick titled “No-On-8’s White Bias.” It was published in the Los Angeles Times on November 8th.
I read Ms. Cannick’s piece with a mixture of interest and dismay and intended to reply to the sender, my cousin Mark, who by the way writes a lively and thoughtful blog of his own http://www.markyourtruthhere.blogspot.com/)
Instead I decided to post my reply here (and began by quoting the parts with which I most took issue):
The right to marry does nothing to address the problems faced by both black gays and black straights.
No, it doesn't, agreed. But, was it supposed to? Why is it that because gay marriage doesn't address all those other ills it is somehow invalid as a legitimate civil rights issue? I'm having trouble following Ms. Cannick's logic here.
The first problem with Proposition 8 was the issue of marriage itself. The white gay community never successfully communicated to blacks why it should matter to us above everything else--not just to me as a lesbian but to blacks generally.
"Above everything else"? Again, was that ever truly the intent? And as to why it matters--how about that the right to marry should be as available to eligible (of legal age, etc.) LGBT couples (of any race or ethnicity) who desire to do so as any heterosexual couple (of any race or ethnicity)? How about because without that legal right, depending upon the state in which you and your partner live or happen to be visiting, just what legal rights you truly have when your loved one is hospitalized, or dies, especially if there are young dependents involved, can vary in cruel and unexpected ways? How about because the determination of those straights who would devote enormous effort and sums of money to denying us those rights speaks volumes as to how they would have us regarded in this society, and what other rights they would deny us, if they could?
Second is the issue of civil rights. White gays often wonder aloud why blacks, of all people, won't support their civil rights.
So the gay rights struggle generally, and gay marriage in particular, has nothing to do with LGBT people of color? It's strictly for and about white people?? Since when? Even if you believe that the gay community too often presents itself with a white (especially white male) face--and I do, and it pisses me off--does that really justify the attitude that black and other non-white queers should just sit out the ongoing battle for gay equality? At the heart of her argument, isn't Ms. Cannick basically saying that gay marriage is a "white thing"? Do you suppose that she's aware of how close she comes to the homophobic misunderstanding that persists in the black community that homosexuality (or at least non-heterosexuality) is a "white thing" and nothing to do with decent, church-going, God-fearing African-Americans?
Why is it still news to some black queers that racism exists within the gay community anyway? It exists in every other stratum of American society, why not there too? There are times when I feel that racism--the fact of enduring racist attitudes and beliefs--has become a convenience to African-Americans, gay or straight. It lets us off the hook for dealing with so many issues it's easier not to confront. (That's certainly been true in my life; how about yours?)
And marriage, let's remember, is a civil institution--not a religious one. Many people marry in the church of their faith but many others do not. So long as a couple has applied for the license, taken the blood tests and performed whatever other rituals the law requires, they are legally married whether the ceremony is performed in a registrar's office, St. Patrick's Cathedral, leaping out of an airplane or underwater off the coast of Belize.
Ms. Cannick makes a strong point regarding the ineffectiveness and general wrong-headedness of the outreach campaign against Prop 8; on the other hand, reading her article, I'm left wondering just how many of those black lesbians and gays who warned that the reliance on NAACP participation "wouldn't work" followed Cannick's lead in declining to engage black voters about the issue at all. ("Even I wasn't inspired to encourage black people to vote against the proposition.") Maybe the larger problem has been not about what white gays didn't do, but about what black gays haven't done—and why.
But the black civil rights movement was essentially born out of and driven by the black church; social justice and religion are inextricably intertwined in the black community. To many blacks, civil rights are grounded in Christianity--not something separate and apart from religion but synonymous with it. To the extent that the issue of gay marriage seemed to be pitted against the church, it was going to be a losing battle in my community.
I would argue that African-Americans need to understand that it is the church that has pitted itself against gay marriage, not the other way around, against gay marriage and against the very existence of gay people. And though some may find the notion heretical, I would also argue that the church's influence in black American life has been at times as much destructive as uplifting, and not just and only about gay issues. It’s worth asking how much have black conservative churches have taken as their model white conservative churches, the very same white conservative churches that once denounced Dr. King and other civil rights heroes (including ordinary blacks and whites who courageously took the risks of joining and organizing marches, sit-ins and freedom rides) as troublemaking commies and worse? How many Sunday sermons sought to reassure racist parishioners--including night riding Klansmen--of the moral rightness of their view of non-whites generally and blacks in particular as sub-human beings? (And what frequently happened to blacks and other people of color as a direct result of the stoking of such sentiments?)
And how many of those congregations have remained lily-white, at least until it began to dawn on their canny anti-gay leaders how much more successful they could be in their efforts to squash gay rights by prevailing upon and joining with black ministers and congregants, using scare tactic campaigns filled with misinformation and outright lies? How many vengeful, self-satisfied churchgoers—black and white, then and now—use religion to close their minds rather than open their hearts?
And by the way... does anybody seriously believe that closeted ministers and sisters exist only in the Catholic Church?
Some people seem to think that homophobia trumps racism, and that winning the battle for gay marriage will symbolically bring about equality for everyone. That may seem true to white gays, but as a black lesbian, let me tell you: There are still too many inequalities that exist as it relates to my race for that ever to be the case.
Well, some people may indeed think that homophobia trumps racism, but I don't and I suspect I'm not the only one. Homophobia and racism are not rivals; rather, both are malignant symptoms of the kind of prejudice that kills, figuratively and literally. They are ghastly proving grounds for bigots, whom the late Vito Russo correctly identified as "people who resent losing control of a world they thought belonged to them." It would be helpful if more of whites, gay and straight, truly appreciated the continuing racial disparity in American life; it’s ludicrous to think that Barack Obama’s historic November 4th victory has single-handedly wiped that slate clean.
But rather than waiting for our white counterparts “to finally ‘get it’” about race, next time around maybe we black gays should go ahead and “say what needs to be said” about homophobia to our families and communities so that they can begin to understand just how and why gay rights—including the right to marry—is about us. And them.
I read Ms. Cannick’s piece with a mixture of interest and dismay and intended to reply to the sender, my cousin Mark, who by the way writes a lively and thoughtful blog of his own http://www.markyourtruthhere.blogspot.com/)
Instead I decided to post my reply here (and began by quoting the parts with which I most took issue):
The right to marry does nothing to address the problems faced by both black gays and black straights.
No, it doesn't, agreed. But, was it supposed to? Why is it that because gay marriage doesn't address all those other ills it is somehow invalid as a legitimate civil rights issue? I'm having trouble following Ms. Cannick's logic here.
The first problem with Proposition 8 was the issue of marriage itself. The white gay community never successfully communicated to blacks why it should matter to us above everything else--not just to me as a lesbian but to blacks generally.
"Above everything else"? Again, was that ever truly the intent? And as to why it matters--how about that the right to marry should be as available to eligible (of legal age, etc.) LGBT couples (of any race or ethnicity) who desire to do so as any heterosexual couple (of any race or ethnicity)? How about because without that legal right, depending upon the state in which you and your partner live or happen to be visiting, just what legal rights you truly have when your loved one is hospitalized, or dies, especially if there are young dependents involved, can vary in cruel and unexpected ways? How about because the determination of those straights who would devote enormous effort and sums of money to denying us those rights speaks volumes as to how they would have us regarded in this society, and what other rights they would deny us, if they could?
Second is the issue of civil rights. White gays often wonder aloud why blacks, of all people, won't support their civil rights.
So the gay rights struggle generally, and gay marriage in particular, has nothing to do with LGBT people of color? It's strictly for and about white people?? Since when? Even if you believe that the gay community too often presents itself with a white (especially white male) face--and I do, and it pisses me off--does that really justify the attitude that black and other non-white queers should just sit out the ongoing battle for gay equality? At the heart of her argument, isn't Ms. Cannick basically saying that gay marriage is a "white thing"? Do you suppose that she's aware of how close she comes to the homophobic misunderstanding that persists in the black community that homosexuality (or at least non-heterosexuality) is a "white thing" and nothing to do with decent, church-going, God-fearing African-Americans?
Why is it still news to some black queers that racism exists within the gay community anyway? It exists in every other stratum of American society, why not there too? There are times when I feel that racism--the fact of enduring racist attitudes and beliefs--has become a convenience to African-Americans, gay or straight. It lets us off the hook for dealing with so many issues it's easier not to confront. (That's certainly been true in my life; how about yours?)
And marriage, let's remember, is a civil institution--not a religious one. Many people marry in the church of their faith but many others do not. So long as a couple has applied for the license, taken the blood tests and performed whatever other rituals the law requires, they are legally married whether the ceremony is performed in a registrar's office, St. Patrick's Cathedral, leaping out of an airplane or underwater off the coast of Belize.
Ms. Cannick makes a strong point regarding the ineffectiveness and general wrong-headedness of the outreach campaign against Prop 8; on the other hand, reading her article, I'm left wondering just how many of those black lesbians and gays who warned that the reliance on NAACP participation "wouldn't work" followed Cannick's lead in declining to engage black voters about the issue at all. ("Even I wasn't inspired to encourage black people to vote against the proposition.") Maybe the larger problem has been not about what white gays didn't do, but about what black gays haven't done—and why.
But the black civil rights movement was essentially born out of and driven by the black church; social justice and religion are inextricably intertwined in the black community. To many blacks, civil rights are grounded in Christianity--not something separate and apart from religion but synonymous with it. To the extent that the issue of gay marriage seemed to be pitted against the church, it was going to be a losing battle in my community.
I would argue that African-Americans need to understand that it is the church that has pitted itself against gay marriage, not the other way around, against gay marriage and against the very existence of gay people. And though some may find the notion heretical, I would also argue that the church's influence in black American life has been at times as much destructive as uplifting, and not just and only about gay issues. It’s worth asking how much have black conservative churches have taken as their model white conservative churches, the very same white conservative churches that once denounced Dr. King and other civil rights heroes (including ordinary blacks and whites who courageously took the risks of joining and organizing marches, sit-ins and freedom rides) as troublemaking commies and worse? How many Sunday sermons sought to reassure racist parishioners--including night riding Klansmen--of the moral rightness of their view of non-whites generally and blacks in particular as sub-human beings? (And what frequently happened to blacks and other people of color as a direct result of the stoking of such sentiments?)
And how many of those congregations have remained lily-white, at least until it began to dawn on their canny anti-gay leaders how much more successful they could be in their efforts to squash gay rights by prevailing upon and joining with black ministers and congregants, using scare tactic campaigns filled with misinformation and outright lies? How many vengeful, self-satisfied churchgoers—black and white, then and now—use religion to close their minds rather than open their hearts?
And by the way... does anybody seriously believe that closeted ministers and sisters exist only in the Catholic Church?
Some people seem to think that homophobia trumps racism, and that winning the battle for gay marriage will symbolically bring about equality for everyone. That may seem true to white gays, but as a black lesbian, let me tell you: There are still too many inequalities that exist as it relates to my race for that ever to be the case.
Well, some people may indeed think that homophobia trumps racism, but I don't and I suspect I'm not the only one. Homophobia and racism are not rivals; rather, both are malignant symptoms of the kind of prejudice that kills, figuratively and literally. They are ghastly proving grounds for bigots, whom the late Vito Russo correctly identified as "people who resent losing control of a world they thought belonged to them." It would be helpful if more of whites, gay and straight, truly appreciated the continuing racial disparity in American life; it’s ludicrous to think that Barack Obama’s historic November 4th victory has single-handedly wiped that slate clean.
But rather than waiting for our white counterparts “to finally ‘get it’” about race, next time around maybe we black gays should go ahead and “say what needs to be said” about homophobia to our families and communities so that they can begin to understand just how and why gay rights—including the right to marry—is about us. And them.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Sunday Breakfast
I didn’t know Randolph Scott was in Roberta, did you? When I press the INFO button on my DirecTV remote the cast listing displays as Irene Dunne, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, that’s all. But that’s clearly Scott in his blonde and hunky 1935 prime charming some wily old dowager—can’t bring the actress’s name into focus just now; it’s not Marie Dressler though I simply adore her (Did you ever see her giving Chaplin as good as she got in the hilarious 1914 silent, Tillie’s Punctured Romance? Most people who remember Dressler think of the wicked funny repartee between her and the brassy, dressed-to-the-nines Jean Harlow in Dinner At Eight)—and yes, there’s the elegant and witty Miss Dunne trying to calm an apoplectic Ginger—what’s she fuming about now?—in what appears to be the next room.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve really only ever enjoyed the Astaire-Rogers pairings as far as the dancing went. The rest of the movies, the surrounding plots, were generally too silly to pay any attention to and in any case seemed interchangeable. I mean, you know, Fred’s pursuing Ginger and, usually due to a series of farcical miscues and misunderstandings, Ginger is in a snit about it throughout nearly all of the film. Sorry, tedious! The one exception is 1949’s The Barkleys of Broadway, their last film together, and yeah, they bickered and misconstrued in that one too, but Rogers was different somehow. Earthier. Funny in a more knowing and womanly way, like the characters she played in Stage Door, The Major and The Minor, and even Monkey Business. I even liked her and Astaire’s dance routines better, especially the droll “My One and Only Highland Fling” and the playful, assured “Bouncin’ the Blues.”
My mother loves the Astaire-Rogers movies, ridiculous set-ups and all, her favorites being Top Hat and The Gay Divorcee. She was not watching Roberta though; she followed me into the kitchen (where I was attempting breakfast), eager to talk about the comments she was hearing on V-103’s Sunday morning urban affairs program, Chicago Speaks. The topic today was Prop 8.
Now, my mother is 72 and Catholic and though she’s been very loving and accepting of me since my coming out, and has over the years had her own personal quarrels with the Church, she I have not always agreed on queer issues. So, when after a good morning peck on the cheek and several minutes good-natured teasing about my pancake-flipping abilities she cleared her throat and said “Well, people are calling in to Ty and Mary’s show about this Prop 8 thing and most of them are saying—“ I groaned inwardly and braced myself, half-preparing to mount a defense. So much for a pleasant Sunday breakfast…
But Mom did what she does best—she surprised me, or maybe I should amend that and say she surprised me somewhat, since I could pretty well guess the prevailing viewpoint of the average black radio caller regarding anything to do with homosexuality and I didn’t really expect her to throw in with that. She didn’t. On the contrary Mom was thoughtful and dismayed at the bilious rancor of the callers, most of whom not only defended their support of Prop 8 but also their denouncing of homosexuality as a choice (sigh), as though, assuming it were true, that justified denial of full citizenship, including the right to legally marry, to LGBT people.
And all these callers, she said, pointed to the Bible as proof of the moral rightness of their arguments. Well, I mean, of course. If there’s anything black folks feel safe staking their reputations on, it’s Holy Scripture. Who was it that said Americans pour religion all over everything, like chocolate syrup? Did I read it in a book? Was it a line from a movie? Whatever its source it was not a charge aimed specifically at African-Americans but there have been times in my life when I’ve felt it could have been. It represents to me the dark side of my people’s faith, the robotic insistence on letting words in an ancient book that can be interpreted a thousand ways do your thinking for you, or perhaps more properly circumvent your ability to think, to take the world as it comes, and deal with it standing on your own feet.
“Honey, don’t throw that away! I’ll eat it if you don’t want it.” Mom was holding out her plate for the comically misshapen misfire I was trying to scrape out of the pan. I didn’t used to like pancakes, don’t remember now why. Mom used to like to fix them for my brother Joey and me when we were little and I ate them well enough then. She also used to attempt homemade waffles, using one of those big old-fashioned iron contraptions that had belonged to my grandmother. They were always a disaster, those waffles. Poor Mom. She was forever misjudging the timing, either jerking open the top of the thing too soon, exposing a half-cooked, dripping goop of bubbling yellow-white batter, or way too late, after noticing curls of grayish black smoke coming out of the sides: waffles like blackened rock, like corrugated brick. I can still see the perplexed exasperation on her face and the resignation on my little brother’s.
My third, fourth and fifth pancakes were a lot more successful: golden, slightly fluffy and not too tough. I started adding in pecans halves and small chunks of banana, cocky now. Mom ooh-ed and ahh-ed, hurrying to set the table, pouring the orange juice. I drizzled more batter into the sizzling pan, trying to concentrate and halfway listening to my mother, half lost in my own thoughts. My mind conjured up angry dark faces and full lips twisting in disgust. This one made six; that should be enough, three each. Oh, maybe one more since there wasn’t much batter left anyway. Might as well.
“But there was another caller, finally, a young male,” Mom was saying, “saying something I thought was very important to all those folks using the Bible to justify their attitudes.” I waited, looking from her to the pan and back again.
“He made the point that the Bible says a lot of things” –Right on, I thought sardonically, banishing the faces as I loaded and passed her our plates—“including ‘Do unto others.’ You know, treat others as you would have them treat you? He said ‘I’m not gay myself but I don’t understand how it is that our people can’t see how the way they are acting towards gays is so close to how white people treated us. White people used to say we were only 90% human, that we weren’t their equal, and they used that to defend wanting to deny us full rights, including the right to legally marry each other let alone any other race.’” I was nodding vigorously as I chewed. I started to say something about irony, but the subject had obviously touched a nerve with my mother, and she plowed on, eager to speak her piece as I refilled our juice glasses.
“…And you know something, honey? I think in the back of the minds of a lot of black people is the suspicion, or the fear, that our rights—the rights we fought so hard for forty, fifty years ago—might one day be taken away, and if that ever happens there are certain issues we don’t want to be caught on the wrong side of—you know what I mean?”
That one caught me mid-swallow. I stared at her, not sure I knew at all what she meant. Mom shifted in her chair and leaned across the table towards me, her eyes intense.
“What I’m saying is—well, sort of like what that young man who called in to the show this morning was trying to say. That we seem to be taking our cues about how to feel about gays from whites who feel that way about gays and about us, siding with people who not that long ago didn’t want us in their churches or living on their street or being around their kids in the schools. As though to say, ‘See? There’s no need to discriminate against us, we feel just like you do about all that mess.’”
Ah, yes—I got what she meant. I thought of the writer James Baldwin, who was so outspoken during the civil rights struggles in the 1950s and left the United States to move to Paris, never to return. Baldwin was gay and his vehemence at social injustice was not limited to racist White America but extended as well to bourgeoisie Negroes who would seek to ingratiate themselves to sympathetic whites by incorporating white hypocrisy about class, sex and sexuality.
“When I was about seven years old there was this young gay woman—a girl, really, she was about the same age as your aunts Mary and Maxine, and I think Max said she’d been a classmate at Corpus Christi before she dropped out—anyway, this girl lived somewhere in the neighborhood, I could never figure out where, and no one would tell me. To this day I don’t know how this girl lived or who took care of her or what; her parents had kicked her out of the house and wouldn’t have anything to do with her. We would see her in church on Sunday mornings and after Mass she would come out with all the rest of us and linger for a few minutes, looking around at everybody. And I would watch the way everyone avoided making eye contact with her, nobody would speak to her or even acknowledge her presence. A few people (including your aunt Jean) would glance at her and then shake their heads… and I would pester Mama and Jean and everybody, asking ‘But what did she do? Why won’t anybody talk to her?’”—Here my mother laughed a rueful little laugh and shook her head—“And of course no one would answer me. No one ever told kids anything in those days. Your grandmother would just sigh and say sadly ‘Oh, honey…’ and that was about it.”
“And all this because she way a lesbian?” I asked, frowning. “How did you all even know she was gay?” Mom looked slightly embarrassed.
“Well…she wore men’s clothes, even the hat. Nobody ever saw her dressed any other way. Keep in mind this was in the early ‘40’s and we weren’t used to seeing that. She had a very pretty face, and pretty hair that she’d clipped short and slicked back. And there was something about the way she carried herself—you’d see her walking down the street somewhere and she had this kind of soul brotha strut.” Mom chuckled, remembering. “I used to cross the street when I saw her coming.” Her smile faded and she looked at me guiltily, her eyes pleading. “I was afraid of her and I really didn’t know why, except that I knew—I mean, it had been communicated to me by Mama and everyone else—that she was a bad person for some reason. She wore men’s clothes…”
I was trying not to get impatient with my mother, but all I could think about was how lonely and isolated that girl must have been, how terribly hurt, to be thrown away by her family and neighbors. I was blown away too at her stubbornness and courage in showing up for Catholic Mass each Sunday even though her welcome—or lack thereof—could not have been clearer. How old had she been? Max and Mary were in their teens when my mother, the family youngest, was seven; if this young woman was their contemporary, a classmate, she couldn’t have been much over sixteen. I watched Mom digging into her breakfast and said finally, “You know, you say she was pretty—wait, what was her name, anyway?”
“I dunno.” She shrugged, chewing. “I don’t think I ever learned.” I looked at her. She shrugged again, uncomfortably.
“Okay… well, I’m thinking maybe the menswear was a way of keeping men at bay, you know Mom? She might have liked the clothes, but maybe also they were meant to discourage unwanted attention.”
At this my mother brightened and smiled admiringly at me. “Yes! You know, it hadn’t occurred to me before, but now you say it that could have been it. I don’t know why we didn’t think of that back then.” I snorted. “It doesn’t sound to me like any of you were doing much thinking. You were all so busy being afraid and disapproving of her. All you God-fearing Christians.” Mom flushed and her guilty look returned. I softened. She’d been only seven at the time after all.
“Yes, well... but the weird thing,” she said, frowning a little, “was that there were these two men in the choir at Corpus Christi—they both sang tenor but Teddy, he had a beautiful voice, could have been a professional singer if he’d wanted—and everybody liked and accepted them. Nobody ostracized them. And they were a couple, Lorraine! It took me a quite awhile to get my mind around that, though I don’t know why since they did everything together; they lived together, they came and went everywhere together... They were part of our group, invited to all the parties and get-togethers and social functions we all went to—and they were a couple.”
I smiled, crookedly. “But they never talked about it, did they. Never touched each other, never told any of you, never talked to each other the way a hetero couple would, at least not in you all’s presence—“
My mother shook her head vigorously, her eyebrows up. “—No, they didn’t, and they would mock openly gay men, I mean the femme-y, swishy guys we knew, the hairdressers, you know, the ones who said “Girl” this and “Girlfriend” that, calling them sissies. Everybody called men like that sissies, even when we didn’t think we were being insulting. Freaks—your father used to say that—and sissies.” She looked at me sympathetically, reached out and squeezed my arm. “That girl was ostracized by all of us but Mel and Teddy weren’t. They were our friends. They were one of us.”
We were just about finished. We paused and stared at the dishes and the spoons and the coffee cups on the table. “I wish you all had gotten to know her too, Mom,” I said softly. “I wish you’d at least learned her name.” She sighed again and smiled, gently.
“Me too, sweetheart.”
I don’t know about you, but I’ve really only ever enjoyed the Astaire-Rogers pairings as far as the dancing went. The rest of the movies, the surrounding plots, were generally too silly to pay any attention to and in any case seemed interchangeable. I mean, you know, Fred’s pursuing Ginger and, usually due to a series of farcical miscues and misunderstandings, Ginger is in a snit about it throughout nearly all of the film. Sorry, tedious! The one exception is 1949’s The Barkleys of Broadway, their last film together, and yeah, they bickered and misconstrued in that one too, but Rogers was different somehow. Earthier. Funny in a more knowing and womanly way, like the characters she played in Stage Door, The Major and The Minor, and even Monkey Business. I even liked her and Astaire’s dance routines better, especially the droll “My One and Only Highland Fling” and the playful, assured “Bouncin’ the Blues.”
My mother loves the Astaire-Rogers movies, ridiculous set-ups and all, her favorites being Top Hat and The Gay Divorcee. She was not watching Roberta though; she followed me into the kitchen (where I was attempting breakfast), eager to talk about the comments she was hearing on V-103’s Sunday morning urban affairs program, Chicago Speaks. The topic today was Prop 8.
Now, my mother is 72 and Catholic and though she’s been very loving and accepting of me since my coming out, and has over the years had her own personal quarrels with the Church, she I have not always agreed on queer issues. So, when after a good morning peck on the cheek and several minutes good-natured teasing about my pancake-flipping abilities she cleared her throat and said “Well, people are calling in to Ty and Mary’s show about this Prop 8 thing and most of them are saying—“ I groaned inwardly and braced myself, half-preparing to mount a defense. So much for a pleasant Sunday breakfast…
But Mom did what she does best—she surprised me, or maybe I should amend that and say she surprised me somewhat, since I could pretty well guess the prevailing viewpoint of the average black radio caller regarding anything to do with homosexuality and I didn’t really expect her to throw in with that. She didn’t. On the contrary Mom was thoughtful and dismayed at the bilious rancor of the callers, most of whom not only defended their support of Prop 8 but also their denouncing of homosexuality as a choice (sigh), as though, assuming it were true, that justified denial of full citizenship, including the right to legally marry, to LGBT people.
And all these callers, she said, pointed to the Bible as proof of the moral rightness of their arguments. Well, I mean, of course. If there’s anything black folks feel safe staking their reputations on, it’s Holy Scripture. Who was it that said Americans pour religion all over everything, like chocolate syrup? Did I read it in a book? Was it a line from a movie? Whatever its source it was not a charge aimed specifically at African-Americans but there have been times in my life when I’ve felt it could have been. It represents to me the dark side of my people’s faith, the robotic insistence on letting words in an ancient book that can be interpreted a thousand ways do your thinking for you, or perhaps more properly circumvent your ability to think, to take the world as it comes, and deal with it standing on your own feet.
“Honey, don’t throw that away! I’ll eat it if you don’t want it.” Mom was holding out her plate for the comically misshapen misfire I was trying to scrape out of the pan. I didn’t used to like pancakes, don’t remember now why. Mom used to like to fix them for my brother Joey and me when we were little and I ate them well enough then. She also used to attempt homemade waffles, using one of those big old-fashioned iron contraptions that had belonged to my grandmother. They were always a disaster, those waffles. Poor Mom. She was forever misjudging the timing, either jerking open the top of the thing too soon, exposing a half-cooked, dripping goop of bubbling yellow-white batter, or way too late, after noticing curls of grayish black smoke coming out of the sides: waffles like blackened rock, like corrugated brick. I can still see the perplexed exasperation on her face and the resignation on my little brother’s.
My third, fourth and fifth pancakes were a lot more successful: golden, slightly fluffy and not too tough. I started adding in pecans halves and small chunks of banana, cocky now. Mom ooh-ed and ahh-ed, hurrying to set the table, pouring the orange juice. I drizzled more batter into the sizzling pan, trying to concentrate and halfway listening to my mother, half lost in my own thoughts. My mind conjured up angry dark faces and full lips twisting in disgust. This one made six; that should be enough, three each. Oh, maybe one more since there wasn’t much batter left anyway. Might as well.
“But there was another caller, finally, a young male,” Mom was saying, “saying something I thought was very important to all those folks using the Bible to justify their attitudes.” I waited, looking from her to the pan and back again.
“He made the point that the Bible says a lot of things” –Right on, I thought sardonically, banishing the faces as I loaded and passed her our plates—“including ‘Do unto others.’ You know, treat others as you would have them treat you? He said ‘I’m not gay myself but I don’t understand how it is that our people can’t see how the way they are acting towards gays is so close to how white people treated us. White people used to say we were only 90% human, that we weren’t their equal, and they used that to defend wanting to deny us full rights, including the right to legally marry each other let alone any other race.’” I was nodding vigorously as I chewed. I started to say something about irony, but the subject had obviously touched a nerve with my mother, and she plowed on, eager to speak her piece as I refilled our juice glasses.
“…And you know something, honey? I think in the back of the minds of a lot of black people is the suspicion, or the fear, that our rights—the rights we fought so hard for forty, fifty years ago—might one day be taken away, and if that ever happens there are certain issues we don’t want to be caught on the wrong side of—you know what I mean?”
That one caught me mid-swallow. I stared at her, not sure I knew at all what she meant. Mom shifted in her chair and leaned across the table towards me, her eyes intense.
“What I’m saying is—well, sort of like what that young man who called in to the show this morning was trying to say. That we seem to be taking our cues about how to feel about gays from whites who feel that way about gays and about us, siding with people who not that long ago didn’t want us in their churches or living on their street or being around their kids in the schools. As though to say, ‘See? There’s no need to discriminate against us, we feel just like you do about all that mess.’”
Ah, yes—I got what she meant. I thought of the writer James Baldwin, who was so outspoken during the civil rights struggles in the 1950s and left the United States to move to Paris, never to return. Baldwin was gay and his vehemence at social injustice was not limited to racist White America but extended as well to bourgeoisie Negroes who would seek to ingratiate themselves to sympathetic whites by incorporating white hypocrisy about class, sex and sexuality.
“When I was about seven years old there was this young gay woman—a girl, really, she was about the same age as your aunts Mary and Maxine, and I think Max said she’d been a classmate at Corpus Christi before she dropped out—anyway, this girl lived somewhere in the neighborhood, I could never figure out where, and no one would tell me. To this day I don’t know how this girl lived or who took care of her or what; her parents had kicked her out of the house and wouldn’t have anything to do with her. We would see her in church on Sunday mornings and after Mass she would come out with all the rest of us and linger for a few minutes, looking around at everybody. And I would watch the way everyone avoided making eye contact with her, nobody would speak to her or even acknowledge her presence. A few people (including your aunt Jean) would glance at her and then shake their heads… and I would pester Mama and Jean and everybody, asking ‘But what did she do? Why won’t anybody talk to her?’”—Here my mother laughed a rueful little laugh and shook her head—“And of course no one would answer me. No one ever told kids anything in those days. Your grandmother would just sigh and say sadly ‘Oh, honey…’ and that was about it.”
“And all this because she way a lesbian?” I asked, frowning. “How did you all even know she was gay?” Mom looked slightly embarrassed.
“Well…she wore men’s clothes, even the hat. Nobody ever saw her dressed any other way. Keep in mind this was in the early ‘40’s and we weren’t used to seeing that. She had a very pretty face, and pretty hair that she’d clipped short and slicked back. And there was something about the way she carried herself—you’d see her walking down the street somewhere and she had this kind of soul brotha strut.” Mom chuckled, remembering. “I used to cross the street when I saw her coming.” Her smile faded and she looked at me guiltily, her eyes pleading. “I was afraid of her and I really didn’t know why, except that I knew—I mean, it had been communicated to me by Mama and everyone else—that she was a bad person for some reason. She wore men’s clothes…”
I was trying not to get impatient with my mother, but all I could think about was how lonely and isolated that girl must have been, how terribly hurt, to be thrown away by her family and neighbors. I was blown away too at her stubbornness and courage in showing up for Catholic Mass each Sunday even though her welcome—or lack thereof—could not have been clearer. How old had she been? Max and Mary were in their teens when my mother, the family youngest, was seven; if this young woman was their contemporary, a classmate, she couldn’t have been much over sixteen. I watched Mom digging into her breakfast and said finally, “You know, you say she was pretty—wait, what was her name, anyway?”
“I dunno.” She shrugged, chewing. “I don’t think I ever learned.” I looked at her. She shrugged again, uncomfortably.
“Okay… well, I’m thinking maybe the menswear was a way of keeping men at bay, you know Mom? She might have liked the clothes, but maybe also they were meant to discourage unwanted attention.”
At this my mother brightened and smiled admiringly at me. “Yes! You know, it hadn’t occurred to me before, but now you say it that could have been it. I don’t know why we didn’t think of that back then.” I snorted. “It doesn’t sound to me like any of you were doing much thinking. You were all so busy being afraid and disapproving of her. All you God-fearing Christians.” Mom flushed and her guilty look returned. I softened. She’d been only seven at the time after all.
“Yes, well... but the weird thing,” she said, frowning a little, “was that there were these two men in the choir at Corpus Christi—they both sang tenor but Teddy, he had a beautiful voice, could have been a professional singer if he’d wanted—and everybody liked and accepted them. Nobody ostracized them. And they were a couple, Lorraine! It took me a quite awhile to get my mind around that, though I don’t know why since they did everything together; they lived together, they came and went everywhere together... They were part of our group, invited to all the parties and get-togethers and social functions we all went to—and they were a couple.”
I smiled, crookedly. “But they never talked about it, did they. Never touched each other, never told any of you, never talked to each other the way a hetero couple would, at least not in you all’s presence—“
My mother shook her head vigorously, her eyebrows up. “—No, they didn’t, and they would mock openly gay men, I mean the femme-y, swishy guys we knew, the hairdressers, you know, the ones who said “Girl” this and “Girlfriend” that, calling them sissies. Everybody called men like that sissies, even when we didn’t think we were being insulting. Freaks—your father used to say that—and sissies.” She looked at me sympathetically, reached out and squeezed my arm. “That girl was ostracized by all of us but Mel and Teddy weren’t. They were our friends. They were one of us.”
We were just about finished. We paused and stared at the dishes and the spoons and the coffee cups on the table. “I wish you all had gotten to know her too, Mom,” I said softly. “I wish you’d at least learned her name.” She sighed again and smiled, gently.
“Me too, sweetheart.”
Monday, November 10, 2008
Good Night. And Good Luck.
If you voted for this Proposition or support those who did or the sentiment they expressed, I have some questions, because, truly, I do not... understand. Why does this matter to you? What is it to you? In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships, these people over here want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your option. They don't want to deny you yours. They don't want to take anything away from you. They want what you want -- a chance to be a little less alone in the world.
Only now you are saying to them -- no. You can't have it on these terms. Maybe something similar. If they behave. If they don't cause too much trouble. You'll even give them all the same legal rights -- even as you're taking away the legal right, which they already had. A world around them, still anchored in love and marriage, and you are saying, no, you can't marry. What if somebody passed a law that said you couldn't marry?
That passage is from Keith Olbermann in his closing “Special Comment” segment tonight, inspired by the passing of California's anti-gay marriage initiative, Proposition 8. I truly appreciated Mr. Olbermann’s eloquent words but wished (still wish) these words had come out of the mouth of President-Elect Obama instead—and before November 4, 2008.
In fact I wish then-Senators Obama and Biden had been clearer—and louder—in their recently stated opposition to Prop 8. But then, how could they be? since during the VP debates Senator Biden declared, in answer to moderator Gwen Ifill’s question, that both he and Senator Obama had made clear that they absolutely do NOT, do NOT, support gay marriage. How could they explain being both against gay marriage and in support of gay people's right to marry?
I think it’s about time Queen Latifah came out. Don’t you? And Dexter King, and Mayor Willie Brown too. And all you hip-hop down-low rappers and multi-millionaire team sport athletes--give it up already. I know you're there and I'm tired of you getting to have it both ways. How I wish Luther Vandross, Barbara Jordan and Max Robinson had had in their lifetimes the courage to stand up and own up as well. There’s a lot of talk in the blogosphere these days about the need for more aggressive outreach from the gay activists to black communities and black conservative churches. I’m sure that’s true. No doubt that would help, given persistence and time.
But it’s clear to me that nothing is going to change significantly in African-American minds and hearts about gay rights and gay marriage and gay people until they are forced to confront the fact that "those people" are People They Know, including people whose lives and success they admire and aspire to emulate. I want to see these Friends of Dorothy of Color stand up and allow themselves to be counted, out in the open, out loud, where everybody, most especially their fellow People of Color, can see them.
What do you think, group? Everybody ready? Come on--on three. One.... Two......
Only now you are saying to them -- no. You can't have it on these terms. Maybe something similar. If they behave. If they don't cause too much trouble. You'll even give them all the same legal rights -- even as you're taking away the legal right, which they already had. A world around them, still anchored in love and marriage, and you are saying, no, you can't marry. What if somebody passed a law that said you couldn't marry?
That passage is from Keith Olbermann in his closing “Special Comment” segment tonight, inspired by the passing of California's anti-gay marriage initiative, Proposition 8. I truly appreciated Mr. Olbermann’s eloquent words but wished (still wish) these words had come out of the mouth of President-Elect Obama instead—and before November 4, 2008.
In fact I wish then-Senators Obama and Biden had been clearer—and louder—in their recently stated opposition to Prop 8. But then, how could they be? since during the VP debates Senator Biden declared, in answer to moderator Gwen Ifill’s question, that both he and Senator Obama had made clear that they absolutely do NOT, do NOT, support gay marriage. How could they explain being both against gay marriage and in support of gay people's right to marry?
I think it’s about time Queen Latifah came out. Don’t you? And Dexter King, and Mayor Willie Brown too. And all you hip-hop down-low rappers and multi-millionaire team sport athletes--give it up already. I know you're there and I'm tired of you getting to have it both ways. How I wish Luther Vandross, Barbara Jordan and Max Robinson had had in their lifetimes the courage to stand up and own up as well. There’s a lot of talk in the blogosphere these days about the need for more aggressive outreach from the gay activists to black communities and black conservative churches. I’m sure that’s true. No doubt that would help, given persistence and time.
But it’s clear to me that nothing is going to change significantly in African-American minds and hearts about gay rights and gay marriage and gay people until they are forced to confront the fact that "those people" are People They Know, including people whose lives and success they admire and aspire to emulate. I want to see these Friends of Dorothy of Color stand up and allow themselves to be counted, out in the open, out loud, where everybody, most especially their fellow People of Color, can see them.
What do you think, group? Everybody ready? Come on--on three. One.... Two......
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Election Day 2008
Thirsty again. What is going on with me being so thirsty all the time?
I must have fallen asleep watching a movie channel last night because as soon I turned on the set this morning there was Ethel Merman, she of the belting, bulldozer vocals, singing to the rafters. This is Call Me Madam, a 20th Century Fox musical from 1953 in which Merman plays American ambassador Sally Adams, and if you look close and don’t blink you’ll also see Lois Maxwell, better known on this side of the pond as Moneypenny in the first (and best) of the Bond movies, in a tiny role as a singing receptionist (or something like that). Call Me Madam is not to my taste first rank as Golden Era musicals go, but it’s pleasant enough. Donald O’Connor woos European princess Vera-Ellen in this one and they are a cute couple—and superb dancers—but their supposedly star-crossed love affair leaves me…well, not cold exactly. Tepid, more like. Audrey Hepburn and Greg Peck in Roman Holiday—now there’s your heartbreaker romance. Personally I think Vera-Ellen had loads more chemistry with Danny Kaye in White Christmas. I do find Ethel Merman and the acerbic George Sanders a hoot and a half as the other romantic pairing in Madam. Sanders would probably rather have been romancing the prissy Billy DeWolfe (or one of cute chorus boys, more like) than the brassy Hostess With The Mostess On The Mall.
It took close to two hours but I cast my Ballot for Barack this morning. Now all I have to do is stay the hell away from all news outlets and threaten with bodily harm any friends, family or coworkers who attempts to share exit polling numbers with me. I don’t want to hear squat about exit polls, people, I want hard numbers and I can wait until this time tomorrow if need be to get them. Leave us not forget that exit polls projected Kerry the winner in Election 2004 and Gore the winner in 2000, the Year of Great Debacle.
I live in a senior retirement complex with my mom and so was able to vote in my pjs this morning (what? I wore a robe, too) in the polling place set up on the second floor of this tower. I brought with me an interesting book about fear, but kept putting it down to look around, shift in my seat and grumble a bit at the goings-on. Though mine was not the nightmare wait others have endured, patience was the key as it was a sloooow process. Even arriving early (or so I thought) I stepped off the elevator to encounter a line so long it snaked around to parts of the building I didn’t know existed. (We have a movie theater room here? With comfy chairs and cup holders? When was somebody going to tell me??!) The line moved fairly quickly (my younger legs would consider 40 minutes “fairly quickly”; I suspect my mother felt differently) but the bottle-necking began when the Board of Election workers—were these volunteers?—began passing out to each of us who had reached a certain point in the wait little squares of paper with numbers on them, to keep track of who needed to sign in and who was next in line for the next available voting machine, only to wind up having to canvass the groups, calling the same numbers over and over again, to track people down. There were a lot of seniors waiting to vote, some in wheelchairs, some balancing shakily on walkers and canes, and as far as I could tell some of them were pocketing the paper squares and either forgetting which number they’d been given or forgetting they’d been given a number in the first place. They’d just sit there as their number was called, needing to be prodded back to consciousness by the person next to them—I did this twice.
Adding to the bog down was that percentage of younger people who apparently had never voted before (or hadn’t in many years) and needed assistance with the machines, refusing to move forward until they’d been rescued by someone who knew what to do, this in spite of the fact that there were big, bright “voting instruction” signs all over the place, most of them directly behind the ballot booths and voting machines. I heard around me a lot of anxiety-tinged jokes about wanting to vote for Obama and being afraid of mistakenly casting the vote for McCain.
And I watched some idiot girl actually taking an incoming cell phone call while she marked off her ballot. Jesus Christ. My people.
I must have fallen asleep watching a movie channel last night because as soon I turned on the set this morning there was Ethel Merman, she of the belting, bulldozer vocals, singing to the rafters. This is Call Me Madam, a 20th Century Fox musical from 1953 in which Merman plays American ambassador Sally Adams, and if you look close and don’t blink you’ll also see Lois Maxwell, better known on this side of the pond as Moneypenny in the first (and best) of the Bond movies, in a tiny role as a singing receptionist (or something like that). Call Me Madam is not to my taste first rank as Golden Era musicals go, but it’s pleasant enough. Donald O’Connor woos European princess Vera-Ellen in this one and they are a cute couple—and superb dancers—but their supposedly star-crossed love affair leaves me…well, not cold exactly. Tepid, more like. Audrey Hepburn and Greg Peck in Roman Holiday—now there’s your heartbreaker romance. Personally I think Vera-Ellen had loads more chemistry with Danny Kaye in White Christmas. I do find Ethel Merman and the acerbic George Sanders a hoot and a half as the other romantic pairing in Madam. Sanders would probably rather have been romancing the prissy Billy DeWolfe (or one of cute chorus boys, more like) than the brassy Hostess With The Mostess On The Mall.
It took close to two hours but I cast my Ballot for Barack this morning. Now all I have to do is stay the hell away from all news outlets and threaten with bodily harm any friends, family or coworkers who attempts to share exit polling numbers with me. I don’t want to hear squat about exit polls, people, I want hard numbers and I can wait until this time tomorrow if need be to get them. Leave us not forget that exit polls projected Kerry the winner in Election 2004 and Gore the winner in 2000, the Year of Great Debacle.
I live in a senior retirement complex with my mom and so was able to vote in my pjs this morning (what? I wore a robe, too) in the polling place set up on the second floor of this tower. I brought with me an interesting book about fear, but kept putting it down to look around, shift in my seat and grumble a bit at the goings-on. Though mine was not the nightmare wait others have endured, patience was the key as it was a sloooow process. Even arriving early (or so I thought) I stepped off the elevator to encounter a line so long it snaked around to parts of the building I didn’t know existed. (We have a movie theater room here? With comfy chairs and cup holders? When was somebody going to tell me??!) The line moved fairly quickly (my younger legs would consider 40 minutes “fairly quickly”; I suspect my mother felt differently) but the bottle-necking began when the Board of Election workers—were these volunteers?—began passing out to each of us who had reached a certain point in the wait little squares of paper with numbers on them, to keep track of who needed to sign in and who was next in line for the next available voting machine, only to wind up having to canvass the groups, calling the same numbers over and over again, to track people down. There were a lot of seniors waiting to vote, some in wheelchairs, some balancing shakily on walkers and canes, and as far as I could tell some of them were pocketing the paper squares and either forgetting which number they’d been given or forgetting they’d been given a number in the first place. They’d just sit there as their number was called, needing to be prodded back to consciousness by the person next to them—I did this twice.
Adding to the bog down was that percentage of younger people who apparently had never voted before (or hadn’t in many years) and needed assistance with the machines, refusing to move forward until they’d been rescued by someone who knew what to do, this in spite of the fact that there were big, bright “voting instruction” signs all over the place, most of them directly behind the ballot booths and voting machines. I heard around me a lot of anxiety-tinged jokes about wanting to vote for Obama and being afraid of mistakenly casting the vote for McCain.
And I watched some idiot girl actually taking an incoming cell phone call while she marked off her ballot. Jesus Christ. My people.
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