Ain't Gonna Be the Same Fool Twice (12 page)

“We could join the ‘Lesbians of Color' contingent.”

“That would be cool,” Pat said, passing me the joint.

“We're marching with Maude's Bar. We're both on the soft-ball team,” Gretchen said. “Stevie, are you excited about marching?”

I almost choked on my inhale, partly because the reefer was a little harsh.

“Are you all right?” Traci asked.

I nodded. “I guess I sort of assumed that we would just watch the parade.”

“Don't you want to be able to say you marched?” Gretchen asked, reaching for the joint. “The one in Chicago is nothing compared to this.”

No, I didn't want to be able to say I marched. I mean, who would I want to say it to, back in Chicago? On the other hand, I didn't want to rain on Traci's parade.

“I think I'd rather watch. I don't want to miss anything. But Traci, don't let me stop you from participating.”

“Hey, if that's the space you're in, that's cool. Let's stick together. I don't mind cheering from the sidelines.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. A red-faced man walked toward us carrying a can covered by a brown paper bag.

“Is this the Women's Skills, whatever?”

Before I could nod, Gretchen asked, “What's it to you?”

“My wife is in there.” The man spat on the ground near us. “That's what it is to me, bitch.”

Pat stood up. She turned out to be taller and heavier than the dude. “You see a bitch, you knock her down. So, I can kick your mothafuckin' ass.”

The man sized up Pat. He probably concluded that she covered all the ground she stood on and wasn't to be tested. He took a step back but continued to face her.

“Hey, if your wife is in there, she must be where she wants to be at,” Gretchen said, raising her eyebrows.

“Yeah, they ain't put a gun to nobody's head up in there,” Traci added.

“Well, I'm gonna get her outta there. Move out of my way, you bunch of bull dykes!”

I felt my stomach tighten. None of us moved.

The man kept his distance. “I know what you are. I know what kind of place this is. You're not fooling anybody.”

Pat mashed the joint against the banister. “We ain't trying to fool nobody.”

“Cathy! Cathy!” the man bellowed. “Cathy, come out here!” The man sipped from his beer. “You mean to tell me that you can satisfy a woman?” he asked nobody in particular. “How the hell can any of you satisfy a woman?” He turned his can up and emptied it into his mouth. “You ain't got the equipment to satisfy no woman!”

Pat groaned. “Obviously, your rusty dick ain't satisfied nobody, or you wouldn't be here.”

“Fuck you, bitch.”

“Yeah, you would like to,” Gretchen cut in.

“I'm gonna pretend like I didn't hear that,” Pat said.

The voices had gotten loud, a group of onlookers had gathered in the doorway.

“Cathy! Cathy!” the man bellowed. “Cathy, come out here!” He still had sense enough not to try to get past us.

To my surprise, a dark-haired woman who looked like a young Mary Tyler Moore appeared in the doorway. “Rusty, it's over between us,” she shouted.

We couldn't help but laugh because she'd called him “Rusty.”

“Cathy, please, we can work it out!” he pleaded.

“Go home, Rusty. It's too late. I've discovered women!”

Rusty lunged toward Cathy as she turned to go back inside.

Two big, tough-looking women closed ranks with us. They announced that they were security, and if Rusty didn't turn around and leave, they would throw him off the property. The women had plenty of backup. Rusty looked at all of us blocking the doorway and turned around. He threw his beer can on the ground and muttered, “Dykes are destroying this country.”

“There will be no littering!” one of the security women bellowed. “Now pick up that can!”

Rusty hesitated and then stooped down and retrieved his can. “Goddamn commie cunts,” he muttered.

“Prick,” several women shouted. But the mood was upbeat. There was a sense of triumph in the air. There was even a full moon. People seemed ready to party hardy when we got back inside.

“Party over here!” I clapped my hands in the air and shouted across from Traci on the dance floor.

“Party over here!” Pat chimed in nearby.

“We having a funky good time!” Traci yelled.

After we'd finished getting down on the dance floor, Traci and I headed for home. Did I call her apartment home? I realized that it had begun to feel familiar.

Traci drove up to the top of Twin Peaks and parked. There were only a few other cars up there. The fog hovering above the skyline gave San Francisco a magical quality.

“San Francisco is a beautiful city,” I said.

Traci put her arm around my shoulder. “It's the most beautiful city in America.”

“Chicago has its beauty too, with its downtown and lake-front and great architecture. But it's beautiful in a different way.”

“I imagine Chicago to have a masculine feel to it. San Francisco is like a beautiful woman.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I think that's true.”

“Which do you prefer?”

I shrugged. “They're like apples and oranges.”

“So, you can still have a preference. Which do you prefer, apples or oranges?”

“Right now, I prefer being here with you.”

“Hey, I can't argue with that.” Traci leaned over and sank her soft lips into mine. It was a long kiss. I had to come up for air.

“Traci, you know, I still don't know that much about you.”

“What do you want to know?”

“How you grew up, what your family's like. I guess anything you wanna tell me.”

“Let's see, I was raised by wolves.”

“Be for real.”

“You really want my life story?”

“Yeah.”

“Sure you wouldn't just rather live in the moment?”

“For me, conversation can be a great aphrodisiac.”

Traci perked up. “My parents are divorced. My father had a roving eye. He owns a little fish market in Sacramento with his girlfriend. My mother's an administrative assistant at the State Department of Education. My brother is in the California Conservation Corps. My sister is a single mother with a little boy. She's a cashier at a grocery store. I'm the oldest. I was raised a good Catholic, went to confession, and the whole bit. I always thought I'd grow up to be a nun.”

“Are you serious?”

“As serious as gangrene. Lots of little dykes aspired to be nuns. It was one way of being in a community of women and still being socially accepted.”

“Did you know when you were little that you were a lesbian?”

“I'd say so. I mean, I didn't have a word for it. But I knew I was different. I knew I wasn't going for the okeydoke. I was four years old and I was playing one day and I realized I wanted to be the one who got the girl. I mean it was fucked-up enough to be colored in this society. But to be female on top of it. That was like adding insult to injury. When I thought of Negro women, I thought of suffering. I didn't want ‘Good Morning, Heartache' to be my theme song. I knew that at an early age.”

I arched my eyebrows, “So, you wanted to become a nun?”

“At least I wouldn't have to put up with the bullshit I'd seen my mother and aunts go through. And no matter what they'd been through, it was like you were nothing without a man. Damn if I was gonna honor and obey some mothascratcher. I wanted to be independent, so I ended up being one of the first girls with a paper route. I met these two women who lived together. And everybody said they were funny. They were into roles. Seems like everybody was, back in the early sixties. Of course I was fascinated. I was nosy and I always tried to prolong my paper collection duties. One day I just blurted out, ‘I think I'm like y'all.'”

“What did they say?”

“They were cool. They told me that they suspected as much. But that it wasn't easy being in ‘the Life.' You were forced to live in secrecy and shame. Your family members might turn their backs on you. The church saw you as a sinner, and the shrinks were convinced you were crazy. I told them that I was still drawn to it. It still seemed like more fun than being cooped up in a convent. They showed me the ropes, got me into a bar when I was only sixteen. And hey, the rest is herstory.”

“Were you ever with a man?”

“Yeah, but only one, and he turned out to be gay. Michael and I are still tight. He lives in Guerneville on the Russian River. He works at a bed-and-breakfast.”

“Is Michael black?”

“Yeah, very much so.”

“How did your family react? Did you ever come out to them?”

“Not in so many words. But they all know the real deal. Like I said, my parents are divorced. Neither of them are into the Catholic church anymore. They were never all that deep into it. They mainly wanted us to go to Catholic school.”

“It's cool with them that you're a lesbian?”

“My old man is cool with it. He said to me, ‘Why should you let some man rule you? You better go for what you know, baby girl. You always did have your own mind.' My father encouraged me to be a tomboy, pissed my Mama off. We used to fish together and shit. He used to tell me, ‘Always have your own money. Traci, always have your own shit. Find a man who loves you and that you like.' Daddy always said I had too much ‘get up' to be a girl. Daddy says, ‘I ain't worried about you, 'cause I know you can take care of yourself. I'm worried about your sister, 'cause she all the time hooking up with trifling-ass men.'”

“How does your mother feel about you being gay?”

“She says I'm all crossed up. Going against my nature and shit.”

“Sounds like my mother.”

“I mean she wants the best for me, don't get me wrong. But she's from the old school. Thinks every woman should act like a lady, find a good husband, and raise a family. I'm a renegade.”

“Stevie, when did you first think that you were a lesbian?”

“I'm still not sure I'm a lesbian.”

Traci smiled. “When did you first question your sexuality?”

“I got a crush on the school nurse back in high school. We never got involved sexually, though. Looking back, it was more affection than anything else. She was single and had a nice ride and stayed near the University of Chicago.”

“What did she drive?”

“A Ford Mustang.”

“They were superbad.”

“Last time I saw Nurse Horn, she told me she was going back to graduate school to get a master's degree in public health. I went away to school and we sort of lost touch. But I'll never forget her.”

“Was she white?”

“Yeah, but that's not why she was unforgettable. She was open-minded. She thought I was special. She could've been any color. I was put down by my friends because I was up in a white woman's face. I lost my best friend because she suspected me of being funny. Although Carla eventually did come back around. But by then, I'd outgrown her. She got pregnant senior year and went to East St. Louis to stay with her grandmother. I never kept up with her. I heard she had twins, a boy and a girl.”

Traci sighed. “I lost touch with my high-school friends after I moved to the Bay Area. But I don't have any regrets. Stevie, there's no community like the women's community. You remember how the black community was, folks looking out for each other and shit?”

“Yeah, nosey as all get out, but they cared. You felt like you belonged. If somebody dies, they're still there with food in my old neighborhood. And it's still a crime not to speak.”

“Speaking of crime, that's the problem with living in the 'hood. You get a sense of community, but you also gotta watch your back. And of course it's hard to be an ‘out' gay person. In the women's community you really get the support, plus a sense of security. I mean they will trash you and analyze you to death. So, I'm not saying the women's community is perfect. But when I broke my ankle playing softball last summer, plenty of women where there for me. I had so many visitors, till it wasn't funny. The nurse said she'd seen cancer patients get less attention than I did. Nobody supports each other like the gay and lesbian community. A lot of folks are ostracized by their families. So, friends and lovers become our families.”

“That's nice.”

“A lot of lesbians have been lovers with most of their friends.”

“Really?”

“It's different with men and women. They're seldom friends with their exes. I mean let's face it, men and women are seldom close friends, period. With dykes, if we break up, unless your lover was like Bette Davis in
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane
, you usually stay connected. I mean sometimes, you wait about three months. But some folks don't even have a cooling-off period. They go straight from being lovers to being friends. I know a woman who isn't even a lesbian, but she sleeps with dykes because we make such good friends.”

“Come again?”

“Rita's a straight feminist, but she's committed to being part of the lesbian community. She swears that the best way to make intimate friends is to sleep with them. Her sexual relationships never last more than two months, but then they always end up being great friends.”

“What about her sexual desires?”

“I know this woman who's a sex therapist, and she says with women, desire isn't that important.”

“What is then?”

“Willingness. It's her theory that you just have to start out being willing to make love. Desire may follow, but you don't have to start with desire. You just have to be willing to open the door.”

Maybe tomorrow night I will, I thought.

7

I was amazed by the sheer number of people marching and the hundreds more lining the parade route. There were men dressed up as nuns, women with their breasts exposed, drag queens galore, and a naked man. There was even a drag queen who couldn't decide what to wear and brought a closet on wheels along. And bunches of folks shook their half-naked bodies to blaring music atop an array of colorful floats.