For Frying Out Loud (27 page)

June 2010

WHO ARE THE REAL BOOBS HERE?

I got something in my craw this morning, and like a feline hair ball, I have to cough it up. In this case I am using my column as a literary Heimlich Maneuver.

What's with people? It's 2010 and a vicious double standard exists – so much that even our allies fall prey to it when discussing LGBT equality. And I'm not even talking about big subjects like gay marriage or gays in the military.

No, I'm talking about an everyday reaction to something like boobs on the beach. From what I understand, a couple of transitioning transgender females – in this case that would be men who are transitioning to women, but who have only gotten top surgery so far. Still with me?

Well apparently, these transitioning women decided to show off their new tits at Poodle Beach last weekend. And, as they should have done, the Rehoboth summer police requested that the exhibitionists put their bathing suit tops back on. That's because under Rehoboth ordinances, it is illegal to show female breasts on the beach, no matter who is wearing them on their chests.

Fair enough, I say, although the attitudes in Europe regarding this issue are more progressive and more to my liking. Frankly, since the ordinance relates to female boobs only, I hope those trans women know they will be getting their male privilege lopped off along with their privates.

But female boobs are to stay covered on our beaches. It's the law. And that should go for trans women with female breasts as well as any other woman with female breasts. After a bit of a boob-haha on the beach, the show-offs did put their clothes back on and that was that.

But it wasn't. In a phone call to CAMP Rehoboth, someone made the comment “Well, this doesn't help our cause,” referring to the continuing quest for LGBT equality in Delaware.

Excuuuuuse me??????? Okay, I know what the caller meant. Homophobes will have a field day with the story and it's already been the talk of Rehoboth talk radio and a great howler for bigots everywhere throughout the county.

But it really pisses me off (can you tell?) that the cause of heterosexuals everywhere was not damaged by a coinciding news report of a group of drunken straight people vomiting off hotel balconies and trashing lodging establishments. No, no, their cause, the reputation of straight people, was not denigrated a bit. While just the boob story made talk radio, I heard nothing about the straight people urinating in the street, the drunken idiot who led police on a dangerous high speed chase through almost all of Ocean City or the goofball who got tired of walking and stole a bike. You are not going to hear TV's talking heads shouting “Damn heterosexuals!”

And as if this didn't gag me enough, a second caller complained that two women were spotted in the surf at Olive Avenue behaving like randy teenagers in the backseat of a car. Frankly, I'm as nauseous as the next person over especially enthusiastic public displays of affection but I don't want to see frantic groping and a human rutting season played out in front of me, gay or straight. Don't want to see it.

But don't you dare tell me that while you are not prejudiced, one is worse than the other.

I am sick and tired of having gay people who misbehave used as a cudgel against our civil rights efforts. I am sick of having our morons (and we have them) used against us while their morons (and they have them) get a pass. Joey Buttafuoco did not set back anybody's civil rights but his own. Don't gay people have the right to have our own nincompoops without putting our
human rights
in jeopardy? I think it just goes to our forefathers' expectation of Americans having the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There should be a codicil – the right to make a complete ass of yourself, whatever your orientation, gender, religion or ethnicity without taking your whole minority group with you. Either that or we have to make
sure that majority groups take it on the chin for their lowest common denominators too.

It reminds me of the story I heard from the Cape Henlopen State Police one time. Two gals were at North Shores with their bathing suit tops off. A park officer asked them to put the tops back on as there was an ordinance against being topless.

The girls obeyed, but quickly disrobed again when the officer was out of sight. He returned to warn them a second time and they obeyed but gave the officer a lot of lip, threatening to claim anti-gay discrimination. The third time the officer showed up, he ordered the women to put their clothes on and escorted the pair off the beach – to the cheers of the rest of the lesbians on the sand.

Rules are rules, gay or straight, and please don't blame me for the flawed judgment of my brothers and sisters. My fitness for equality should not be an issue at all, but since it is, do not judge me by the actions of a couple of clownish kids who just happen to be transgender. That's as wrong as my entire womanhood being judged because there's a murderous woman on death row, or my Jewishness denigrated because of that cruel bastard Bernie Madoff.

Discuss.

There. I can swallow better now.

June 2010

WHAT'S UP WITH YOUR VUVUZELA?

Do you have one? Can you toot it?

If you don't know what I'm talking about, you may have been under a rock for the past month.

The vuvuzela is a South African plastic horn, made in China, used for cheering on soccer teams, or as they call the sport in that country, football. The appearance of the foot-long, brightly colored plastic trumpet in the stands at the World Cup has created quite a buzz. Literally. When blown by thousands of fans simultaneously, the resulting, insistent hum sounds like swarms of very angry bees. A single vuvuzela blast sounds like an elephant looking for a date.

Thousands of vuvuzela-equipped soccer fans have driven much of the on-site fans, television feeds and play-by-play announcers bonkers. The constant blowing of the vuvuzela in the stands during the games has become both an international joke and an international incident. Swarms of angry people are turning off television coverage of the games because they cannot stand the droning vuvuzela onslaught. How the players on the field concentrate, I have no idea.

Then, the media went on a toot. For days now I've been unable to watch the news without seeing one or more usually dignified anchors attempting to make rude Vuvu sounds at the camera. If that wasn't amusing enough, the marketing folks have gotten into the act. There is already a Vuvuzela App for the iPhone, so you can toot your $300 vuvuzela along with the $3 plastic ones. Wait, there are several apps available, multiplying like rabbits.

According to Wikipedia, the vuvuzela, used to be called the lepatata, also a great word (“I'll show you my lepatata if you show me your vuvuzela.”) and the instrument has been the object of concern for a while. It's been said that the high sound pressure levels at close range can lead to permanent hearing
loss for unprotected ears. I'm sure soccer fans are not happy buying an expensive ticket to sit in the stands, followed by purchasing expensive Bose noise-canceling headphones.

With vuvuzela news all over the media, somebody thought it was a good idea to give out free vuvuzelas at a recent Florida Marlins baseball game. Predictably, Marlin second baseman Dan Uggla said, “that was the worst handout or giveaway I've ever been a part of in baseball.” Frankly, the Marlins record is nothing to toot about.

Naturally, Facebook has a vuvulela page and now there is Vuvuzela Radio, a station dedicated to playing the sound of the vuvuzela,” non-stop, without commercial breaks, so you can get your full daily dose: anywhere, anytime.” I think it's a joke but I am not sure. You can, if you must, buy a vuvuzela online at dozens of sites, along with mousepads that say “vuvuzela-free zone” and other vuvu stuff.

So the world is still abuzz with the vuvuzela, fans galore are fighting the urge to mute the games, engineers everywhere are figuring out ways to filter out the annoying buzz from broadcasts and comics everywhere are having a field day. The Vuvu's 15 minutes of fame ticks away. Hey, by the time you read this, you may not even remember the vuvu-ha over the whole thing.

A friend of mine insists that Vuvuzela was a drag queen back in the 80s. Who's to argue?

July 2010

POSITIVELY STRANGER THAN FICTION

Everybody has secrets and some are bigger than others.

I had one back in high school. It was the mid-'60s, and I was the good little girl, dating boys, wearing heels and repressing a sexual orientation I didn't even have a name for. Did I know? I think so. Did I admit it, even to myself? No way.

I joined the high school drama club (or, as comic Jaffee Cohen once called it, “gay head start”) and had a ton of friends. Among them was a girl named Carmen.

Even then, 1965, she was an out lesbian, although no one used the word. She held hands with girls and both fascinated and terrified me. Some of my friends warned me to stay away from Carmen – she was, “you know, ‘funny.' One of them.” The ‘60s counter-culture may have been about to explode, but gays were still closeted, feared and shunned.

But I didn't stay away from Carmen. We were in school plays together, at cast parties, running around Greenwich Village, me playing the guitar at amateur nights in the clubs, Carmen and our other friends singing along. We were casual friends, friendly acquaintances. There were rehearsals and school lunch hours and staying over at our friends' houses. Underage drinking, too. Did Carmen and I ever mix it up? No. But I think there was one night when it was awfully, awfully, and tantalizingly close.

And then we graduated, everyone went separate ways and I continued on my repressive road for many mostly miserable years. And my frightening senior-year fascination with a butch dyke named Carmen was something I never ever breathed a word about to a single soul. Until right this minute as I type these words.

After high school I went to college in D.C., dated guys, did the “right” thing, got married, changed my name, got divorced, kept my married name because of my directing career, and
finally came out of the closet a long, unhappy 14 years after high school.

Fast forward to a June 2010 lesbian/bisexual writer's conference in Orlando. Of course, at this point I could not be
more
out – a lesbian author and advocate plus being happily same-sex married for almost 30 years. Life takes its own path in its own sweet time. And now is a sweet time for me.

At this conference, I taught a class on humor-writing and did some readings from my books. Flipping through the conference program I saw the sad news of the passing of a long-time bookstore owner and writer, named Ruth.

Following my class, as I talked with author, publisher and reader friends, I spied folks going over to give their condolences to the lone man at the conference – Chris, Ruth's husband, who was there in her stead. I, too, went over to extend my sympathies, telling him I remembered his wife from a visit I made to their bookstore in Albuquerque.

A few minutes later, as I was chatting with friends, I saw Chris moving towards me with a spectacularly funny look on his face. “Hey,” he called. “Did you go to high school in New York?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Rhodes Prep School?”

“Exactly.” He had my attention.

“Fay. From Drama Club. You played Maggie in
The Man Who Came to Dinner
?”

“Yes,” I said cautiously, amazed that a 41-year old connection was being offered and wondering why Chris knew me and I couldn't place him. It was a small school and an even smaller drama department.

“Omigod,” said Chris, “I was listening to you talk and I knew I recognized your voice. I'm Carmen, I mean I was, Carmen.”

Oh. My. God. Carmen. I stared. I grinned. I stared some more at the handsome, mustached man before me. He stared and grinned back. I thought my head might explode. Carmen.

We headed for the nearest bar in the hotel to share much needed full-strength cocktails and catch up.

I know that my path to coming out was long and filled with angst. But Carmen, now Chris, made, what seems to me, a much harder, riskier, but in the end, quicker path toward authenticity. Right after graduation Carmen made a decision considered brave today, so I cannot imagine the courage it took in the late sixties.

She, soon he, left home immediately, moved to an East Village hotel, and began finding ways of obtaining black market male hormones. He worked at the infamous 82 Club where performers were all drag queens; waiters tuxedo-wearing dykes. Soon, he was fortunate to find a medical study to accept him and provide the testosterone legally and under medical supervision. Carmen became Chris and never looked back.

Well actually, he did look back long enough to return to our high school and have his legally-changed name put into his transcripts so he could go to college. He moved out West, met Ruth and they lived happily as husband and wife for 30 years, until her sad passing in April.

Over inhibition-banishing alcohol, we easily recalled high school friends and events – the casting of our production of
Dracula
, the night we listened from the sidewalk on West 4th Street to the sounds of the Lovin' Spoonful before they were famous; the students who drove us crazy in drama club; our wonderful friend Mary, my friend to this day, whose stunning beauty was attractive to us both. And the sad loss of at least two of our drama club colleagues to 80s-era AIDS.

You know, as a writer, I always use the LGBT alphabet to describe my community. And while I advocate for and admire the transsexuals in our population I have had precious little personal contact with trans men and women. Finding Chris has had a profound impact on me.

Here is a man mourning the loss of his spouse of thirty years, so happy is an inappropriate word to describe him. I have empathy for his loss as he grieves and tries, I would hope, eventually to move on–made all the more difficult by his being
a trans man. I know that often neither the straight nor the lesbian community is welcoming, and as he said to me, “I'm 61 and transgender. I don't expect anything to be easy.”

Probably not. But for me, I want to use the word happy to describe the choice Chris made over forty years ago. He was desperately unhappy being made to live as woman, just a girl, really, and was willing to buck all of society, and sadly, his own family, to become the man he knew himself to be.

For what my opinion is worth, I am so proud of him. And for this Pride season and beyond, I have a new and personal connection to the T in LGBT. I hope Chris and I can stay in touch. I'd like that. But frankly, I hope he doesn't tell any of our mutual friends what a god awful actress I was back in our pre-
Glee
high school days. That's one secret we should keep.

Life can be much stranger than fiction. And more surprising and wonderful, too.