I sincerely hope that I can write this post and not melt the keys on my lap top. Going into this I know my blood pressure is going to rise. But as you will see, not without reason.
Barnes and Noble is one of my most favorite places in the world. It probably has something to do with growing up in New York City and the original B&N being almost a second home, the New Public Library was first. Then B&N caught the expansion bug and went global. But I digress.
Moving to Georgia almost four years ago now, and discovering a B&N within five minutes of my house was a source of great great joy. I've spent a lot of time there sitting, sipping, wandering, listening, reading, and of course buying books.
Last night though, I wandered in to my favorite B&N and inquired, "I'm looking for UPTOWN, by Virginia DeBerry and Donna Grant." Now understand, I only inquired after trying on my own to find this new book that was just published a month ago! It wasn't with the NEW FICTION-JUST RELEASED. It wasn't in the Fiction section that also has a space for JUST RELEASED. By now I'm scratching my head and feeling slightly perturbed.
So the kindly well trained clerk rapidly begins walking away from the fiction section, actually it looks like she's heading to the kiddie section, then a detour around a couple more areas that look like research and non-fiction and voila, she points to the African American section. Huh? To add insult to injury it is a right pitiful African American section at that. It can't rightly be called a section as it is only one book case and it isn't full. Hello. What's wrong with this picture?
My kindly clerk checks the few books in Afr Am, UPTOWN is absent. Like a run away slave, I wonder, maybe it ran to another section? So back we go toward the fiction section but we only get as far as the entrance to the golden gates for there on what I now know is called an end-cap, there are more books by Black authors! About six of them, and at the very bottom, there is UPTOWN. Your two or three year-old might find it, it would be at eye level for them. But for adults? I don't think so.
So even if not in the Af-Am section, just in case you don't get the message, it is "segregated" with other books by Black authors because they just have so so much in common.
Sensing the heat radiating from my head, the clerk inquired, "Is there something wrong?"
Is there something wrong? Hell yeah there's something wrong. Because as I looked around the fiction section, prominently displayed in the front so that it can't be missed with all the other books they want you to see as you come in the door is a book, Little Bee, by a white male British author, telling the story of a Nigerian girl in England. Excuse me! Why is his book featuring a story about a black female considered "General" fiction and put up front but a book by two black authors about black people is considered Afr Am and relegated to the back of the book bus?
Just writing this gets me infuriated all over again. The kindly clerk, by now figuring this is something over her pay-grade, tries to explain that the store gets the book, scans the bar code supplied by the publisher, and that tells them which genre or audience to place the book. Apparently the bar code supplied by Simon and Shuster for UPTOWN, African American.
Now here's one of those moments that makes you go, hmmm? Little Bee. Also published by Simon and Shuster. Yes, that's right. So I want to know, what does the bar code for Little Bee tell them? General market? White, black everybody? What exactly did it tell them that resulted in its being promoted as story that everybody should want to read?
How is it that in 2010 we are still fighting this same damn battle. Does it really mean that Simon and Shuster and Barnes and Noble think that books by black authors should only be read by, be of interest to, Black readers? Or that it has to be endorsed by an acceptable non-threatening Black person like Oprah before non-blacks might be comfortable reading? Really? Seriously?
What I do know is the effect of this re-segregation of Black authors is that once again, someone else gets to tell our stories, to become the authority, to explain us to us and to them. And where does this leave us? With less and less diversity of voices, perspectives, and experiences because Simon and Shuster, or Penguin, or who ever the publisher is would rather give the contract to, publish and promote to the general market, a book by a white writer telling a story about us, and a white male at that.
Must black authors write stories featuring white characters before they will be published?
It is time to stop the madness. Everyone knows the publishing industry is going through a major shake-up. Like newspapers they are losing the war against technology. How do they respond? By publishing tons of urban and Christian lit for black audiences. Say what? Don't believe me? Check the book shelves. This is great for those writers. Not so good for the rest of us.
Urban and Christian lit doesn't even begin to touch the places I may want to go when I curl up with a book. If you want something more complex and nuanced, something contemporary, something that might make you think, challenge you, or expand your point of view, dare I say something well written, apparently neither publishers nor book stores care. Nor do they think that white readers can find anything written by black writers that might expand or enhance their perspectives, or that they may even relate to.
Before I give up my B&N jones, I am going to give them a chance to do better and seek a meeting with the branch manager. (Shades of Dr. Maya Angelou, "if you knew better, you'd do better.") Simon and Shuster will also get a letter, as well as this post. Hopefully this might move you to look at your own favorite book store and see what books are being pushed at you, who's telling your story. Especially if you live in the South. I'd love to know what you find in your local B&N, or Borders, or Books a Million.
Black writers who have been published, who have an audience, established writers, skilled, talented, funny, interesting, writers are dying in this not-so-brave new world. Without us weighing in on our own behalf, black literary voices will go the way of the dodo bird before long.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Monday, January 25, 2010
The More Things Change...
It has been a couple three months since I last posted. In retrospect it felt as though there was nothing much to say, and then all too much. But the craziness over the past couple months just leaves me breathless.
Massachusetts decided that a right-wing Republican who snidely asserted that he wasn't sure the president's parents were married, that that idiot was the best person to replace Senator Ted Kennedy? Huh? Say what?
Then here in the South someone named Moose, or something such, took a page right out of the Old Dixie handbook. (New South 21st century, Old Dixie very 19th century.) Moose announced the formation of an all-white men, born in America basketball league, creatively named the All American Basketball League! (How clever is that?) No street ball for these guys, no sir, no girls league either I guess. If there are women involved you can bet they'll be wearing cute short skirts, tight tops, and dancing the night away. Moose's league, they will just play the fundamentals of the game thank you very much, none of that exciting dunking, and fast breaks, none of that breaking the backboard because the guys jump so high with such force that they often bring the whole thing down. Uh huh, there are millions of people who will line up for this. (IDFTS!)
Now Moose says he's not doing this out of hatred. No, no, that's too crass. No, he's doing this because he's a minority now. Yup, that's right, he's a minority! Huh? It makes my head spin to see how these folks contort themselves; they could join Cirque du Soleil as verbal contortionists, up is down, left is right, wrong is right. So 1984. Fortunately so far Moose isn't getting much traction with his league. But he has outlined that the league is focused on the Southern states, surprise surprise. Like many white men, especially in the South, seeing a sea change in the nation as we strive to continue our journey out of the Dark Ages of the 20th Century, they are not going willingly.
Personally my position is that when a system has been built to provide one with every advantage, every privilege, every break, a system that gives you the benefit of the doubt based solely upon your skin color and your gender, and you can't make it, feel a need to" lower the baskets" so to speak, then that sounds like a personal problem to me.
Ever since the election in Massachusetts, I feel as though I must have missed a step somewhere along the line. How do you rationally go from Kennedy to, what's this guy's name? It was just last August that people were lined up for hours in the heat and sun to pay their respects to Senator Kennedy. To thank him for his decades of work and effort to help us fix this hot-mess of a health care system. Really. Watching the outpouring of emotion and expressions of grief was just heart warming. And then the folks turn around and__??
Cognitive dissonance. The past few months have been a carousel of dissonant moment after dissonant moment. Where's the rabbit hole y'all? Or should I be looking for the hand basket?
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Outrunning the Express Train
By the time I post this, another anniversary of the day the earth shook will have passed, twenty years in fact. It was October 17, 1989 and at 4:25 pm I'd finally knuckled my way through traffic, jaws tight, much gnashing of teeth, inching across the Bay Bridge to take my daughter to an acting class in San Francisco and then head to the McKesson corporation for a meeting.
I worked in the theater as managing director of a company in Oakland so really was not conscious of the sports mania around me. But almost everyone around else was in baseball heaven around the fact that the Bay Area was having it's own version of New York's subway series, the Oakland A's versus the San Francisco Giants. I just wanted the darn traffic to end so that I could get where I had to go.
After seeing my twelve year old down the stairs of a very large, very solid looking office building, essentially in the basement of the building to her youth acting class, I still managed to be on time for my meeting, about ten minutes away by car. I walked into the office of the program officer for McKesson's foundation, hand extended to say hello and thank her for her time, only to hear a crunching, grinding, deep wrenching sound and discovered that I could not stand up. We both ended on our knees in her office. That was probably the proper place to be given what was happening around us and the devastation not too far away. I suspect we both silently prayed our way through what was the longest fifteen to twenty seconds in my life.
Once the moving stopped, and I could catch my breath, we looked at each other, nothing broken, no blood, and both bolted for the door. As any Californian will tell you, when it begins to shake, head for a doorway. In my ten years in the Bay Area, we'd always managed to make it to the doorway. Always. Now the only thing I wanted to do was to get through the door and down the stairs.
I don't remember anymore which floor we were on. I don't remember the pounding rush down the stairs, it could have been silent for all I know, the only thing I remember is the pounding of my heart. The stairway was dark as the power was out, there were no flashlights, and a ton of humanity with one goal, get out of the building.
When we hit the ground floor and rushed through the front glass doors, still intact, I couldn't figure out why there were so many people who'd gotten no further than a few feet from the building. Then I began to see, bricks and masonry on tops of cars, hoods and trunks, tops of cars bashed in with huge huge chunks of buildings on top, glass all over the street, buildings with yawning gaping holes where things used to be. It was eerily quiet, with the exception of the sirens. I finally understood that this may have been the big one.
I thought of my daughter in the basement of that big, solid looking building and my heart almost stuttered to a stop. I heard someone say something about a fallen span of the Bay Bridge, they heard it from a portable radio someone had. The bridge that my daughter and I been not twenty minutes ago, for almost a full thirty minutes because of the game.
My feet began to move and my brain caught up with them. "Where was my car, were the streets passable, the traffic lights aren't working, will they let me drive, where was my car?" My brain seemed be on a loop, fear, panic, think, fear, panic, think. I opted to walk rather than chance the streets, plus there were bound to be after shocks. I've never walked as fast in my life.
In the days before the ubiquitous use of cell phones we used public pay phones. And they worked. And they weren't vandalized. But I digress. But that day the system was over loaded and no calls were going out nor coming in right then. I couldn't reach her school, nor my husband and sons across the Bay, nor my office. I kept walking, and fear took three steps to my every one.
When I got to her building they'd managed to safely get the kids up the stairs and into an open air parking lot with no wires around, and not enclosed by buildings nearby. You think about these things in earthquake country. When she saw me, she grabbed me by the waist and hung on for dear life. She'd heard about the Bay Bridge but didn't remember if my meeting was in San Francisco or back across the bridge in Oakland. She'd been all but rooted to the same spot since they'd fled up the stairs with the noise of the earth moving around and through them, loud beyond measure seemingly following them, chasing them up and out of the dark to the outside. She was velcroed to me for the next two months. ("Really, I'll be in the bathroom for only five minutes." I'd come out and she'd still be there waiting. This was two weeks afterward.)
Now joined cheek by jowl to each other and not yet sure how much damage had been done, and if our family had survived, we made our way to a restaurant with, miraculously, power and television. There I saw with mine own two eyes the price one pays for living in California. Nothing however prepared me for the collapse of the freeway. It too had been a parking lot that afternoon on our journey across the bridge. And now it was...gone, collapsed, on top of countless people, missing my across the hall neighbor by twenty feet. Twenty feet became the difference between life and death that day as she watched cars right in front of her just drop out of sight amidst a cloud of smoke, dirt, dust, and debris.
My daughter wiped tears from my face, tears that I was unaware were even sliding down my face. So close, we were so close to having been a statistic.
I decided to make our way through the hordes of dazed and stunned people to my car and try to figure out how far north I had to go to find a bridge open to get me back across the bay and then head south home. Just as we stepped outside the restaurant, courage in hand and fear on a tight rein, I saw a colleague, the face of someone I knew. Brian was wending his way surely but very slowly home on foot, I had a highly dubious chance of making it across the bay that evening but I had a car. We got my car, went to his place and spent the evening glued to the television and trying the phone every five minutes until finally around 11 pm, Eureka, a dial tone. Brian graciously allowed me to go first as a woman with a family in harms way.
Undoubtedly my relief was all but palpable when my husband picked up the phone and I learned that he and the boys had made it through okay, that our apartment was fine, we'd sustained almost no damage at all. Now that he'd heard from us, our daughter in school back east could rest and stop calling every fifteen minutes, he could relay that the two of us were safe and sound and had a place to stay.
In those fifteen seconds on my knees in the office I'd prayed and promised. I prayed for the safety of my family and I promised that when the next earthquake came, "God, I won't be here." When I got back to work, after making a pilgrimage to the Cypress Freeway where they were still trying to locate survivors two days later, I announced, "I'm outta here."
What was so amazing to me was that everyone else wasn't saying the same thing. Instead they tried to talk me out of it. I finally explained that for me and mine, living in California is like living on railroad tracks. You know sooner or later that express train is going to come running through, and me, I'm getting out the way, getting off the track. I'm bowing to the superior strength of mother nature.
If it were just me, I'd have done what one woman did. Packed up her car, walked away and left everything else in her apartment with a note on her door, "Take it, it's yours, I'm not coming back."
Ten months almost to the day we left California for Chicago. We'd survived tremors, shakes, minor quakes and shrugged them all off. We'd survived the annual fall fire season. We even survived mud slides where the homes of two neighbors gave into gravity and soaked land and slid down the hill. We'd survived floods in the rainy season. And I said good riddance and good bye without a backward look at some of the most beautiful country God ever created, but I suspect he meant for us to enjoy it, passing through on our way some place else.
I worked in the theater as managing director of a company in Oakland so really was not conscious of the sports mania around me. But almost everyone around else was in baseball heaven around the fact that the Bay Area was having it's own version of New York's subway series, the Oakland A's versus the San Francisco Giants. I just wanted the darn traffic to end so that I could get where I had to go.
After seeing my twelve year old down the stairs of a very large, very solid looking office building, essentially in the basement of the building to her youth acting class, I still managed to be on time for my meeting, about ten minutes away by car. I walked into the office of the program officer for McKesson's foundation, hand extended to say hello and thank her for her time, only to hear a crunching, grinding, deep wrenching sound and discovered that I could not stand up. We both ended on our knees in her office. That was probably the proper place to be given what was happening around us and the devastation not too far away. I suspect we both silently prayed our way through what was the longest fifteen to twenty seconds in my life.
Once the moving stopped, and I could catch my breath, we looked at each other, nothing broken, no blood, and both bolted for the door. As any Californian will tell you, when it begins to shake, head for a doorway. In my ten years in the Bay Area, we'd always managed to make it to the doorway. Always. Now the only thing I wanted to do was to get through the door and down the stairs.
I don't remember anymore which floor we were on. I don't remember the pounding rush down the stairs, it could have been silent for all I know, the only thing I remember is the pounding of my heart. The stairway was dark as the power was out, there were no flashlights, and a ton of humanity with one goal, get out of the building.
When we hit the ground floor and rushed through the front glass doors, still intact, I couldn't figure out why there were so many people who'd gotten no further than a few feet from the building. Then I began to see, bricks and masonry on tops of cars, hoods and trunks, tops of cars bashed in with huge huge chunks of buildings on top, glass all over the street, buildings with yawning gaping holes where things used to be. It was eerily quiet, with the exception of the sirens. I finally understood that this may have been the big one.
I thought of my daughter in the basement of that big, solid looking building and my heart almost stuttered to a stop. I heard someone say something about a fallen span of the Bay Bridge, they heard it from a portable radio someone had. The bridge that my daughter and I been not twenty minutes ago, for almost a full thirty minutes because of the game.
My feet began to move and my brain caught up with them. "Where was my car, were the streets passable, the traffic lights aren't working, will they let me drive, where was my car?" My brain seemed be on a loop, fear, panic, think, fear, panic, think. I opted to walk rather than chance the streets, plus there were bound to be after shocks. I've never walked as fast in my life.
In the days before the ubiquitous use of cell phones we used public pay phones. And they worked. And they weren't vandalized. But I digress. But that day the system was over loaded and no calls were going out nor coming in right then. I couldn't reach her school, nor my husband and sons across the Bay, nor my office. I kept walking, and fear took three steps to my every one.
When I got to her building they'd managed to safely get the kids up the stairs and into an open air parking lot with no wires around, and not enclosed by buildings nearby. You think about these things in earthquake country. When she saw me, she grabbed me by the waist and hung on for dear life. She'd heard about the Bay Bridge but didn't remember if my meeting was in San Francisco or back across the bridge in Oakland. She'd been all but rooted to the same spot since they'd fled up the stairs with the noise of the earth moving around and through them, loud beyond measure seemingly following them, chasing them up and out of the dark to the outside. She was velcroed to me for the next two months. ("Really, I'll be in the bathroom for only five minutes." I'd come out and she'd still be there waiting. This was two weeks afterward.)
Now joined cheek by jowl to each other and not yet sure how much damage had been done, and if our family had survived, we made our way to a restaurant with, miraculously, power and television. There I saw with mine own two eyes the price one pays for living in California. Nothing however prepared me for the collapse of the freeway. It too had been a parking lot that afternoon on our journey across the bridge. And now it was...gone, collapsed, on top of countless people, missing my across the hall neighbor by twenty feet. Twenty feet became the difference between life and death that day as she watched cars right in front of her just drop out of sight amidst a cloud of smoke, dirt, dust, and debris.
My daughter wiped tears from my face, tears that I was unaware were even sliding down my face. So close, we were so close to having been a statistic.
I decided to make our way through the hordes of dazed and stunned people to my car and try to figure out how far north I had to go to find a bridge open to get me back across the bay and then head south home. Just as we stepped outside the restaurant, courage in hand and fear on a tight rein, I saw a colleague, the face of someone I knew. Brian was wending his way surely but very slowly home on foot, I had a highly dubious chance of making it across the bay that evening but I had a car. We got my car, went to his place and spent the evening glued to the television and trying the phone every five minutes until finally around 11 pm, Eureka, a dial tone. Brian graciously allowed me to go first as a woman with a family in harms way.
Undoubtedly my relief was all but palpable when my husband picked up the phone and I learned that he and the boys had made it through okay, that our apartment was fine, we'd sustained almost no damage at all. Now that he'd heard from us, our daughter in school back east could rest and stop calling every fifteen minutes, he could relay that the two of us were safe and sound and had a place to stay.
In those fifteen seconds on my knees in the office I'd prayed and promised. I prayed for the safety of my family and I promised that when the next earthquake came, "God, I won't be here." When I got back to work, after making a pilgrimage to the Cypress Freeway where they were still trying to locate survivors two days later, I announced, "I'm outta here."
What was so amazing to me was that everyone else wasn't saying the same thing. Instead they tried to talk me out of it. I finally explained that for me and mine, living in California is like living on railroad tracks. You know sooner or later that express train is going to come running through, and me, I'm getting out the way, getting off the track. I'm bowing to the superior strength of mother nature.
If it were just me, I'd have done what one woman did. Packed up her car, walked away and left everything else in her apartment with a note on her door, "Take it, it's yours, I'm not coming back."
Ten months almost to the day we left California for Chicago. We'd survived tremors, shakes, minor quakes and shrugged them all off. We'd survived the annual fall fire season. We even survived mud slides where the homes of two neighbors gave into gravity and soaked land and slid down the hill. We'd survived floods in the rainy season. And I said good riddance and good bye without a backward look at some of the most beautiful country God ever created, but I suspect he meant for us to enjoy it, passing through on our way some place else.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
The Low Down on the Down Low, Southern Style
"I've never had so much gay sex with straight men in my life as I did in Charleston!" His words had my head spinning in complete and utter disbelief. As my blonde friend spoke, his brunette friend vigorously nodded his head in agreement.
At first I thought maybe these two guys were talking about another Charleston, they must have been mistaken. But no, they meant Charleston, first to fire a shot in that war of northern aggression, the site of our nations first rebellion, first to secede, South Carolina, USA.
It was a beautiful glorious day in San Francisco around 1985, the sun was shining, it was warm, and if you've been to San Francisco in the spring you know warmth, spring and northern California are not on speaking terms on even a good summer day. I was giving a ride back across the Bay to a couple of theater colleagues, two gorgeous and very funny young white men who'd just moved back to the Bay Area after two years living and working in Charleston at the Spoleto Festival.
We were having a fabulous time singing along with Sylvester at the top of our lungs, windows rolled down catching the wind as we rolled across the Bay Bridge, the sun seemingly following us on it's way toward Hawaii and no traffic in sight.
Sure there are gay men in the South. I knew that but he explicitly said "straight men." (Even black folks from the big city of New York have stories about music directors, and choir directors in Black churches that everyone just turned a blind eye to and pretended ignorance. "Oh, meet Mr. Black, he's Mr. Gray's roommate.") So no, I didn't know any gay men in the South back then but, certainly there must have been many. It was just that most, no, all of the gay men I knew from the South had left; they'd fled screaming on the first thing smoking out of the South to environs more friendly. And it seemed that all of them had moved to the Castro District in San Francisco in the mid 80s!
"Can you believe it, we had to move back to San Francisco to get a rest." Huh, say what?
"These married men would get up in the morning, put on their suit and tie, kiss little Johnny and Suzy goodbye, buss the wife on the cheek, grab their briefcase, hop in the car, and stop at my house on the way to work for a little topping off before heading to the office. It was fun and exciting at first, but I just couldn't juggle them all anymore. It was just exhausting"
By now I was flabbergasted. All the gay men I knew were, well, openly gay. This was my first glimpse into a subculture of folks who are not just undercover, or in the closet even, but men who are actively passing because they have compartmentalized that part of themselves that likes sex with men. They were gay, I kept insisting. Then they must be bi-sexual? Right?
Very patiently, like trying to explain "blue" to a blind person, they kept saying, "No, not gay, straight, they just like a little diversity." So I had questions, how could this be? Mind you, this was pre-E. Lynn Harris, pre-down low as something that everyone is familiar with, whether you're white or black, Asian, Latino, old, young, gay or straight, the down low has now become a part of our lexicon. But it was 1985 and I was being schooled.
After the about fifteen-hundredth time I'd said, "But I don't understand, how this can be going on in the South?" Their response was, "Honey, let me tell you about living in the South. You can do anything in the South that people do in other more "liberal" (fingers as quotation marks) parts of the country. People do drugs, sell drugs, there are bootleggers to get around the laws in "dry counties," (fingers as more quotation marks), people screw their best friend's wives, or husbands, sisters or brothers, fathers rape their daughters, people steal, lie, cheat. You can do anything, just don't put it anyone's face! It's the veneer that's important, not the substance but the surface."
So there you have it! The low down on the down low. It's a southern thing. Well no, not really. But you get my point, the down low is about preserving the surface, the veneer of things, no matter how ugly it may be, how much "stuff" is roiling and boiling underneath, as long as things are civil and serene on the surface, as long we observe proper decorum and demonstrate good manners, it's all good. And that is very Southern.
There's something else that has stayed with me about the ride that day across the Bay Bridge. Within four years of 1985 I lost 22 friends and colleagues to AIDS, 85% of them within a two year period. Sylvester's voice was also stilled. The sheer loss of talent and creativity is incalculable. I don't know but certainly have ample reason to suspect that the two beautiful young men I'd given a ride that day, may also not have survived what felt like a tsunami of death. There were no drug cocktails back then, no one-a- day regimens, getting the result of your tests took two weeks, and though people were dying to get into drug trials, (pun intended) at that point AIDS was a virtual death sentence. So the chances that they made it out of that period alive are not great.
It makes me wonder though, what ever happened to the wives of the husbands in Charleston who needed a little "topping off" on the way to work?
At first I thought maybe these two guys were talking about another Charleston, they must have been mistaken. But no, they meant Charleston, first to fire a shot in that war of northern aggression, the site of our nations first rebellion, first to secede, South Carolina, USA.
It was a beautiful glorious day in San Francisco around 1985, the sun was shining, it was warm, and if you've been to San Francisco in the spring you know warmth, spring and northern California are not on speaking terms on even a good summer day. I was giving a ride back across the Bay to a couple of theater colleagues, two gorgeous and very funny young white men who'd just moved back to the Bay Area after two years living and working in Charleston at the Spoleto Festival.
We were having a fabulous time singing along with Sylvester at the top of our lungs, windows rolled down catching the wind as we rolled across the Bay Bridge, the sun seemingly following us on it's way toward Hawaii and no traffic in sight.
Sure there are gay men in the South. I knew that but he explicitly said "straight men." (Even black folks from the big city of New York have stories about music directors, and choir directors in Black churches that everyone just turned a blind eye to and pretended ignorance. "Oh, meet Mr. Black, he's Mr. Gray's roommate.") So no, I didn't know any gay men in the South back then but, certainly there must have been many. It was just that most, no, all of the gay men I knew from the South had left; they'd fled screaming on the first thing smoking out of the South to environs more friendly. And it seemed that all of them had moved to the Castro District in San Francisco in the mid 80s!
"Can you believe it, we had to move back to San Francisco to get a rest." Huh, say what?
"These married men would get up in the morning, put on their suit and tie, kiss little Johnny and Suzy goodbye, buss the wife on the cheek, grab their briefcase, hop in the car, and stop at my house on the way to work for a little topping off before heading to the office. It was fun and exciting at first, but I just couldn't juggle them all anymore. It was just exhausting"
By now I was flabbergasted. All the gay men I knew were, well, openly gay. This was my first glimpse into a subculture of folks who are not just undercover, or in the closet even, but men who are actively passing because they have compartmentalized that part of themselves that likes sex with men. They were gay, I kept insisting. Then they must be bi-sexual? Right?
Very patiently, like trying to explain "blue" to a blind person, they kept saying, "No, not gay, straight, they just like a little diversity." So I had questions, how could this be? Mind you, this was pre-E. Lynn Harris, pre-down low as something that everyone is familiar with, whether you're white or black, Asian, Latino, old, young, gay or straight, the down low has now become a part of our lexicon. But it was 1985 and I was being schooled.
After the about fifteen-hundredth time I'd said, "But I don't understand, how this can be going on in the South?" Their response was, "Honey, let me tell you about living in the South. You can do anything in the South that people do in other more "liberal" (fingers as quotation marks) parts of the country. People do drugs, sell drugs, there are bootleggers to get around the laws in "dry counties," (fingers as more quotation marks), people screw their best friend's wives, or husbands, sisters or brothers, fathers rape their daughters, people steal, lie, cheat. You can do anything, just don't put it anyone's face! It's the veneer that's important, not the substance but the surface."
So there you have it! The low down on the down low. It's a southern thing. Well no, not really. But you get my point, the down low is about preserving the surface, the veneer of things, no matter how ugly it may be, how much "stuff" is roiling and boiling underneath, as long as things are civil and serene on the surface, as long we observe proper decorum and demonstrate good manners, it's all good. And that is very Southern.
There's something else that has stayed with me about the ride that day across the Bay Bridge. Within four years of 1985 I lost 22 friends and colleagues to AIDS, 85% of them within a two year period. Sylvester's voice was also stilled. The sheer loss of talent and creativity is incalculable. I don't know but certainly have ample reason to suspect that the two beautiful young men I'd given a ride that day, may also not have survived what felt like a tsunami of death. There were no drug cocktails back then, no one-a- day regimens, getting the result of your tests took two weeks, and though people were dying to get into drug trials, (pun intended) at that point AIDS was a virtual death sentence. So the chances that they made it out of that period alive are not great.
It makes me wonder though, what ever happened to the wives of the husbands in Charleston who needed a little "topping off" on the way to work?
Friday, September 18, 2009
Nickeled and Dimed in the New Economy
Once upon a time people actually dressed up when traveling by plane. It was a big deal, an event, because as traveling went, it was a lot less expensive to drive, or take the train, or even the bus. Commercial flights were more business oriented than the preferred mode of travel for the every day Jane and Jack going home for the holidays. Flying was a horse of another color, so to speak. Unless one were going to jump on the back of that winged Esso horse, it was a damned expensive to take a trip. (Yes, I am dating myself here but I was but a babe in arms back then with a wicked memory. So there!)
Since the golden days of air travel, when you could smoke and drink in flight, when they served real food, even had a menu so you could choose your poison, the experience has had the life sucked out of it, so much so it is unrecognizable as anything other than a big metal tube with wings. It goes up, it lands, the journey in between is more akin to cattle being herded in the chute than taking a trip somewhere.
As gas prices went through the roof in 2008 and the economy went into free fall; as one industry after the other fell off the cliff of prosperity and profits, the airlines scrambled to find a response that made sense, that would act as a bungee cord twirling them back and up from the abyss.
As first one airline then another instituted a luggage surcharge, I shrugged. Hmmmph! Okay, I thought, no problem, carry on from here on out for me. Then it was no food, "let them eat peanuts." Find the food sucked rocks. I had been bringing my own anyway. So there!
Getting through security had become an exercise in frustration and measurement. Exactly how many ounces is 3 ounces? Will it be enough to get me through a week away from home? Take off my shoes on the dirty floor? Just damn, I developed a strategy for that as well, slip off shoes with no metal. Jewelry? Simple earrings that do not set of the alarms.
I was just rolling with it, whatever they through at me, fine, no problem. Until yesterday.
Yesterday I bought a ticket on Air Tran. It was exciting, I got such a good fare at the last moment. I love deals. Then comes the screen to select my seat, and... WTF? I am offered a choice, I can pay $20 for a seat with leg room in the exit row, or $6 for an aisle or window seat! Excuse me? What the hell did I buy when I just bought my ticket, all of two minutes ago?
Mind you, I am still in coach, it's not like I'm upgrading or anything. I bought an airline ticket and now I have to pay for a damned seat? Welcome to today's a la carte culture, boys and girls. What's next, buy a movie ticket then have to buy a seat, one price in front, another for the middle, and different one for the back rows? Going grocery shopping? That will be ten cents for each bag, fifty cents for the express lanes, and one dollar for bagging your groceries. Getting your nails done? That's eight dollars for the manicure and twenty-five cents per nail for the polish.
Seriously though. When I bought the airline ticket, what did it get me, transportation in the bulkhead? (Yes, I'm trying to work something out here because this does stick in my craw.)
All of this to say, it looks like they are going to nickel and dime us to death and we need to advocate on our own behalf before they take us off to the poorhouse, and make us pay for that, too! In the words of that wonderful 70s movie, I am mad as hell and not taking it anymore. Well, yes, I will take the plane but boy will I give those folks a piece of my mind. No! Wait. They'd make me pay for that, too. :)
Since the golden days of air travel, when you could smoke and drink in flight, when they served real food, even had a menu so you could choose your poison, the experience has had the life sucked out of it, so much so it is unrecognizable as anything other than a big metal tube with wings. It goes up, it lands, the journey in between is more akin to cattle being herded in the chute than taking a trip somewhere.
As gas prices went through the roof in 2008 and the economy went into free fall; as one industry after the other fell off the cliff of prosperity and profits, the airlines scrambled to find a response that made sense, that would act as a bungee cord twirling them back and up from the abyss.
As first one airline then another instituted a luggage surcharge, I shrugged. Hmmmph! Okay, I thought, no problem, carry on from here on out for me. Then it was no food, "let them eat peanuts." Find the food sucked rocks. I had been bringing my own anyway. So there!
Getting through security had become an exercise in frustration and measurement. Exactly how many ounces is 3 ounces? Will it be enough to get me through a week away from home? Take off my shoes on the dirty floor? Just damn, I developed a strategy for that as well, slip off shoes with no metal. Jewelry? Simple earrings that do not set of the alarms.
I was just rolling with it, whatever they through at me, fine, no problem. Until yesterday.
Yesterday I bought a ticket on Air Tran. It was exciting, I got such a good fare at the last moment. I love deals. Then comes the screen to select my seat, and... WTF? I am offered a choice, I can pay $20 for a seat with leg room in the exit row, or $6 for an aisle or window seat! Excuse me? What the hell did I buy when I just bought my ticket, all of two minutes ago?
Mind you, I am still in coach, it's not like I'm upgrading or anything. I bought an airline ticket and now I have to pay for a damned seat? Welcome to today's a la carte culture, boys and girls. What's next, buy a movie ticket then have to buy a seat, one price in front, another for the middle, and different one for the back rows? Going grocery shopping? That will be ten cents for each bag, fifty cents for the express lanes, and one dollar for bagging your groceries. Getting your nails done? That's eight dollars for the manicure and twenty-five cents per nail for the polish.
Seriously though. When I bought the airline ticket, what did it get me, transportation in the bulkhead? (Yes, I'm trying to work something out here because this does stick in my craw.)
All of this to say, it looks like they are going to nickel and dime us to death and we need to advocate on our own behalf before they take us off to the poorhouse, and make us pay for that, too! In the words of that wonderful 70s movie, I am mad as hell and not taking it anymore. Well, yes, I will take the plane but boy will I give those folks a piece of my mind. No! Wait. They'd make me pay for that, too. :)
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Alternate Universes, Theocratic USA
So I wondered, pondered, scratched my head looking at the Tea Baggers merrily marching looking like they were having a really good ol' time, and tried to figure out which planet they inhabit? Or is it an alternate universe, a parallel universe where down is up and up is down, and right is left and left maybe just doesn't exist. Really, I did. Yes, I was trying too hard to find a basis in reality for what I was seeing.
My eyebrows first reached for my hairline when I saw people on the news all but having an honest to goodness, I'm going to fall down, turn around and split my pants hissy fit because the president was going to, imagine this, address their little kiddies and exhort them to study hard, to stay in school! Whoa!! Scary.
These parents were frothing at the mouth so much that I had to wonder, what the hell? I know they think Obama's the anti-Christ but what, he's going to do an electronic Vulcan Mind Meld on young Susie, Bobby, and Jimmy Jay, and wrench their impressionable little minds and cause them to actually think? Oooh, think, oooh, socialism.
None of it was making any sense to me, I mean NONE OF IT, not nary one bit. The level of vitriol, of fear, of hate was just insane and quite frankly, scary as hell.
Then I read an article by Frank Schaeffer, author of the book, Crazy for God...and his article explained it all. I'm not crazy, these people are as out of touch with reality as I thought they are.
What I learned is that what we are seeing is the intersection between corporate interests to thwart change, channeling funds to the Christian fundamentalists as the shock troops who will go to any lengths, say anything, do anything, tell bald faced lies, pick up a gun and kill a doctor performing legal procedures that they disagree with, bring an assault gun to town hall meetings, or kill a security guard at a museum dedicated to ending hatred.
What I also learned is that it is impossible to have a reasonable rational discussion with someone who is basically a Christian flat-earther. These folks have more in common with Islamic flat-earthers than they have with those of us who believe in and abide by the rule of law in modern society, no matter how painful. Didn't we suck it up after the Supreme Court selected our president?
But for the right white wing there is no sucking it up, we lost. And therein lies the problem because according to Frank Schaeffer, these folks have no interest in nor intent to work within the system but, rather, they seek to over throw the system and replace it with a theocracy. Yes indeed. Our own fundamentalist theocratic USA, or a piece of it if they are able to build enough hate to secede, again. Because that is what God has deemed for this Christian nation.
In their USA, education curriculum, the bible. Court system, the bible preferably the old testament. Science, doesn't exist. Government, not needed. And there has been a generation of men and women who have been raised, home-schooled, for the past twenty to thirty years steeped in just such a culture as above. Oh, and many of them would love to put some folks "in their place," who have just gotten to friendly with freedom.
In the meantime, if the corporate vultures aren't careful they will wake up one day and discover that they waited too long. The beast they've been feeding is now knocking at their door and boy is it hungry.
So if like me, listening to our own homegrown terrorists makes you wonder if you've stepped into alternate universe, don't worry, you haven't.
My eyebrows first reached for my hairline when I saw people on the news all but having an honest to goodness, I'm going to fall down, turn around and split my pants hissy fit because the president was going to, imagine this, address their little kiddies and exhort them to study hard, to stay in school! Whoa!! Scary.
These parents were frothing at the mouth so much that I had to wonder, what the hell? I know they think Obama's the anti-Christ but what, he's going to do an electronic Vulcan Mind Meld on young Susie, Bobby, and Jimmy Jay, and wrench their impressionable little minds and cause them to actually think? Oooh, think, oooh, socialism.
None of it was making any sense to me, I mean NONE OF IT, not nary one bit. The level of vitriol, of fear, of hate was just insane and quite frankly, scary as hell.
Then I read an article by Frank Schaeffer, author of the book, Crazy for God...and his article explained it all. I'm not crazy, these people are as out of touch with reality as I thought they are.
What I learned is that what we are seeing is the intersection between corporate interests to thwart change, channeling funds to the Christian fundamentalists as the shock troops who will go to any lengths, say anything, do anything, tell bald faced lies, pick up a gun and kill a doctor performing legal procedures that they disagree with, bring an assault gun to town hall meetings, or kill a security guard at a museum dedicated to ending hatred.
What I also learned is that it is impossible to have a reasonable rational discussion with someone who is basically a Christian flat-earther. These folks have more in common with Islamic flat-earthers than they have with those of us who believe in and abide by the rule of law in modern society, no matter how painful. Didn't we suck it up after the Supreme Court selected our president?
But for the right white wing there is no sucking it up, we lost. And therein lies the problem because according to Frank Schaeffer, these folks have no interest in nor intent to work within the system but, rather, they seek to over throw the system and replace it with a theocracy. Yes indeed. Our own fundamentalist theocratic USA, or a piece of it if they are able to build enough hate to secede, again. Because that is what God has deemed for this Christian nation.
In their USA, education curriculum, the bible. Court system, the bible preferably the old testament. Science, doesn't exist. Government, not needed. And there has been a generation of men and women who have been raised, home-schooled, for the past twenty to thirty years steeped in just such a culture as above. Oh, and many of them would love to put some folks "in their place," who have just gotten to friendly with freedom.
In the meantime, if the corporate vultures aren't careful they will wake up one day and discover that they waited too long. The beast they've been feeding is now knocking at their door and boy is it hungry.
So if like me, listening to our own homegrown terrorists makes you wonder if you've stepped into alternate universe, don't worry, you haven't.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
The Fox in the Hen House
It was a lovely Friday evening in Atlanta a week or so ago. A few friends and colleagues were seventy three stories above the city at the beautiful Hyatt Regency Hotel, spinning slowly around in a complete 360 degree view of the city at the Sun Dial Restaurant. Celebrating the birthday of our board chair, we watched the sun set and the moon rise. Musicians were jamming behind us, it was a fabulous evening. (Helped along by a really good bar tender.)
But every now and then there was this discordant note that was struck. Not by the musicians, they never struck a sour note. But as the restaurant revolved, 360 degrees in an hour, we'd swing around to the bar area where there was a flat screen television with the sound turned down until it was inaudible, broadcasting Fox "news." (I can't take them seriously, the pity is that anyone does.)
You might ask, so what? The answer is, this is a Coca Cola town. Trust me, Atlanta is a Coca Cola town; created here, an iconic presence here, and the formula is deep in the vaults of Sun Trust Bank. (So I have been told.) If you dare bring in Pepsi, and there are venues that may have Pepsi, but they are few and far between, folks take note. CC doesn't take encroachment on its home turf lightly. It is serious business, Coca Cola and Atlanta go hand in hand.
This is also the home of CNN. Sitting in the restaurant looking out at the city, we had a lovely view CNN's headquarters. So when the Hyatt Regency is playing Fox news in a CNN town,within spitting distance of the CNN Center, that is a serious smack in the face. But it is Atlanta, in the state of Georgia, in the deep South. Soda may be one thing, its sweet and fizzy and non threatening. But politics is a whole different kettle of smelly fish.
Fox is the place where the psycho babble of fulminating fury and flagrant disregard of facts and sanity run rampant. (Fox is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Ahh, Macbeth.) Lies, distortion, misinformation and disinformation have a direct feed into the brains of rabid white wing racists providing their daily ration of hate and vitriol. (Yeah, I've been holding that in for a long time. :)
That's why the South right now is crazy making for liberals, progressives, and decent thinking human beings of all colors who care about things like right and wrong, principled discourse, civility, and value people over things.
It would seem to me that those who are on a steady diet of all things Fox are in desperate need of health care. The level of rage, hate, and fear must be giving them embolisms at the very least. I pity them but not so much that I'd turn my back on them, let alone the other cheek. They are too dangerous for that. But I digress.
There must be a way to gauge it but I would bet that CNN is being beaten by Fox in the South. Fox speaks to the "Old South" the good ol' boys South. I don't know where Michael Steel and his ilk think they fit in that equation but I guess being a token in that club must be comfortable or they wouldn't be there. CNN speaks to the New South with it's transplants from all over the globe and please God, keep on coming. Without CNN and other cable outlets to offset the madness, I suspect that by now the whole damn region would be up in arms, once again. And I ain't just whistling Dixie.
But every now and then there was this discordant note that was struck. Not by the musicians, they never struck a sour note. But as the restaurant revolved, 360 degrees in an hour, we'd swing around to the bar area where there was a flat screen television with the sound turned down until it was inaudible, broadcasting Fox "news." (I can't take them seriously, the pity is that anyone does.)
You might ask, so what? The answer is, this is a Coca Cola town. Trust me, Atlanta is a Coca Cola town; created here, an iconic presence here, and the formula is deep in the vaults of Sun Trust Bank. (So I have been told.) If you dare bring in Pepsi, and there are venues that may have Pepsi, but they are few and far between, folks take note. CC doesn't take encroachment on its home turf lightly. It is serious business, Coca Cola and Atlanta go hand in hand.
This is also the home of CNN. Sitting in the restaurant looking out at the city, we had a lovely view CNN's headquarters. So when the Hyatt Regency is playing Fox news in a CNN town,within spitting distance of the CNN Center, that is a serious smack in the face. But it is Atlanta, in the state of Georgia, in the deep South. Soda may be one thing, its sweet and fizzy and non threatening. But politics is a whole different kettle of smelly fish.
Fox is the place where the psycho babble of fulminating fury and flagrant disregard of facts and sanity run rampant. (Fox is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Ahh, Macbeth.) Lies, distortion, misinformation and disinformation have a direct feed into the brains of rabid white wing racists providing their daily ration of hate and vitriol. (Yeah, I've been holding that in for a long time. :)
That's why the South right now is crazy making for liberals, progressives, and decent thinking human beings of all colors who care about things like right and wrong, principled discourse, civility, and value people over things.
It would seem to me that those who are on a steady diet of all things Fox are in desperate need of health care. The level of rage, hate, and fear must be giving them embolisms at the very least. I pity them but not so much that I'd turn my back on them, let alone the other cheek. They are too dangerous for that. But I digress.
There must be a way to gauge it but I would bet that CNN is being beaten by Fox in the South. Fox speaks to the "Old South" the good ol' boys South. I don't know where Michael Steel and his ilk think they fit in that equation but I guess being a token in that club must be comfortable or they wouldn't be there. CNN speaks to the New South with it's transplants from all over the globe and please God, keep on coming. Without CNN and other cable outlets to offset the madness, I suspect that by now the whole damn region would be up in arms, once again. And I ain't just whistling Dixie.
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