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Introduction to "Predators" from The Mee Street Chronicles
The excerpt below is from the story, “Predators,” in my memoir, The Mee St. Chronicles: Straight Up Stories of a Black Woman’s Life. My memoir tells you stories about my battle to claim my own life and sexual identity. This story is about a time when I was living as a closeted Lesbian, masquerading as a heterosexual. The Anita Bryant campaign, which served as catalyst for what happened that day in the bar, was going full throttle in the 1970's. This is a story of how that noxious campaign affected me.
"Predators"
"Homosexuality is not a deviation; it is a variation. And people need to know that."
Peter J. Gomes, Minister
Allen's black and white television sat on a beer cooler in a corner behind the bar, and you couldn't really see it unless you were sitting almost on top of it. From where I usually sat at the bar, I could see it fine if it was on. Today it was, and I was watching Les build my drink when the CBS Evening News came on. The anchor, Walter Cronkite, always distinguished, always credible, opened with the story of the "Save Our Children" campaign. It had started a short while ago, Cronkite said, pausing to glance down at the sheaf of papers in his hand, with Anita Bryant and her organization pushing for Miami to repeal the city ordinance prohibiting discrimination against homosexuals.
As soon as the word homosexual rolled out of Cronkite's mouth in basso tones, everybody seemed to come to instant attention. I shifted my eyes away from Les to the television broadcast, feeling everything inside me go stock still, just like a rabbit that's caught the scent of danger in high grass.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Katie, the waitress, headed for the jukebox, but Cecil, sitting at a table behind me, stopped her.
"Wait up, " he said. "I wanna hear the news." Katie shrugged and backed off.
That was unusual. Watching the news got very low priority even when there were only a handful of us at Allen's, so my nerve endings went on alert. Plus, I'd heard about Bryant's campaign. Which in itself was enough to get anxiety skipping through my veins. The campaign was getting a lot of national play and in Evansville, people were paying attention. At the very least, conversations gave it a passing nod if not full blown commentary. Not long ago, a man that I'd thought was open-minded and liberal had stunned me.
“Anita Bryant is right,” he'd raged after I'd asked him what he thought about her campaign. “That scum should be hunted down and put in a concentration camp somewhere away from normal people.” I particularly remembered his eyes while he'd said it. They'd gone hard and black and lightless. It was his eyes that had frightened me the most. He'd shown me his Mr. Hyde face, a part of him that I didn't know. And that part had drawn a line of separation in the sand with me standing one side and him on the other although he didn't know it. Didn't know about Stacey, about my woman dreams, about the real me I kept chained in secret corners. Nobody here did.
Glancing around, I realized that only a couple of familiar faces, the regulars that made Allen's so comfortable for me, were here today. Clyde, on the barstool in the corner and John, next to him. The rest—Cecil, Sonny, Nance, Gloria, and Betty—came in less often. As always Les was behind the bar and Katie was waiting tables, but there were a few others that I didn't know. For some reason, without the regulars that I knew so well, Allen's felt less cozy, less like home. Was there a chill in the air? I pulled my cardigan sweater closer around my chest.
On camera, Cronkite reminded us that aside from being a Miss America runner-up, Anita Bryant was best known as spokeswoman for Florida orange juice commercials. Bryant had gotten famous for telling the television audience, "A day without Florida orange juice is a day without sunshine."
Now, I thought to myself, she'd switched to selling something else. Something dark. I could hear aggravated murmurs from Cecil and the other guys sitting at his table. I drew in a ragged breath. Keeping up my camouflage was harder with Anita Bryant stirring things up. Where was my drink? I glanced at Les; he was moving in slow motion.
Cronkite went to a film clip of Bryant at a Midwestern news conference. A newsman asked about her motives for the campaign. Surrounded by microphones, the dark-haired, former beauty queen beamed at the camera and opened her mouth to oblige.
"Since homosexuals cannot reproduce," she said, striking a tone of both sincerity and loathing, "they must recruit children to freshen their ranks. We must not allow them to continue."
I clinched my fist, furious, thinking: "How can she get away with saying a pure lie like that?"
Somebody, a woman's voice, growled: "One of them mess wit my baby and he gonna get his ass kicked!"
I blew out a frustrated breath. What Bryant was saying boiled down to a load of crap. You didn’t choose or get recruited like you were joining the army or some kind of club. You were born the way you were born.
I thought about Stacey and rubbed the palm of my hand across my lips. Nobody had recruited me into being attracted to women. Nobody had forced me to love her. That admission woke up The Corners, the place, at the back of my mind, where I'd vaulted my secrets. Like autumn leaves, they began to crackle and rustle. Which served to unnerve me even more than Anita Bryant. Mostly, I could keep them quiet and still as a tomb.
On screen, you could see the reporters scribbling furiously on their pads. Bryant was gabbing away, talking like she'd made some kind of a scientific study and was releasing the results.
It pissed me off that people put the rap on us for what pedophiles did. If you paid attention to your stats, or to what the neighborhood grapevine whispered about the husband down the street, you’d know that damn near all pedophiles were heterosexuals. To cover that up, folks muddied the water so that people would confuse pedophiles with homosexuals. But they weren’t the same at all.
I paid attention to the screen again. Why wasn’t somebody questioning Anita Bryant’s claims? The reporters were just standing there, eating it up like starving animals. That was the scary part. I lit a cigarette and I dragged my hand across my lips again. When Les put my drink down in front of me, I almost knocked it over grabbing for it.
One reporter finally asked Bryant a question. He wanted to know how she chose the name for her campaign. She put one white hand to her neck and looked earnestly into the camera's eye.
"We chose the name because we want to save our children by stopping these homosexuals. They're predators!"
(end)
Order my book at Amazon or Borders Bookstores or at my publisher’s website under the book title or under my name, Frankie Lennon, at
www.Amazon.com< www.Borders.com
www.Kerlak.com
Introduction to "Predators" from The Mee Street Chronicles
The excerpt below is from the story, “Predators,” in my memoir, The Mee St. Chronicles: Straight Up Stories of a Black Woman’s Life. My memoir tells you stories about my battle to claim my own life and sexual identity. This story is about a time when I was living as a closeted Lesbian, masquerading as a heterosexual. The Anita Bryant campaign, which served as catalyst for what happened that day in the bar, was going full throttle in the 1970's. This is a story of how that noxious campaign affected me.
"Predators"
"Homosexuality is not a deviation; it is a variation. And people need to know that."
Peter J. Gomes, Minister
Allen's black and white television sat on a beer cooler in a corner behind the bar, and you couldn't really see it unless you were sitting almost on top of it. From where I usually sat at the bar, I could see it fine if it was on. Today it was, and I was watching Les build my drink when the CBS Evening News came on. The anchor, Walter Cronkite, always distinguished, always credible, opened with the story of the "Save Our Children" campaign. It had started a short while ago, Cronkite said, pausing to glance down at the sheaf of papers in his hand, with Anita Bryant and her organization pushing for Miami to repeal the city ordinance prohibiting discrimination against homosexuals.
As soon as the word homosexual rolled out of Cronkite's mouth in basso tones, everybody seemed to come to instant attention. I shifted my eyes away from Les to the television broadcast, feeling everything inside me go stock still, just like a rabbit that's caught the scent of danger in high grass.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Katie, the waitress, headed for the jukebox, but Cecil, sitting at a table behind me, stopped her.
"Wait up, " he said. "I wanna hear the news." Katie shrugged and backed off.
That was unusual. Watching the news got very low priority even when there were only a handful of us at Allen's, so my nerve endings went on alert. Plus, I'd heard about Bryant's campaign. Which in itself was enough to get anxiety skipping through my veins. The campaign was getting a lot of national play and in Evansville, people were paying attention. At the very least, conversations gave it a passing nod if not full blown commentary. Not long ago, a man that I'd thought was open-minded and liberal had stunned me.
“Anita Bryant is right,” he'd raged after I'd asked him what he thought about her campaign. “That scum should be hunted down and put in a concentration camp somewhere away from normal people.” I particularly remembered his eyes while he'd said it. They'd gone hard and black and lightless. It was his eyes that had frightened me the most. He'd shown me his Mr. Hyde face, a part of him that I didn't know. And that part had drawn a line of separation in the sand with me standing one side and him on the other although he didn't know it. Didn't know about Stacey, about my woman dreams, about the real me I kept chained in secret corners. Nobody here did.
Glancing around, I realized that only a couple of familiar faces, the regulars that made Allen's so comfortable for me, were here today. Clyde, on the barstool in the corner and John, next to him. The rest—Cecil, Sonny, Nance, Gloria, and Betty—came in less often. As always Les was behind the bar and Katie was waiting tables, but there were a few others that I didn't know. For some reason, without the regulars that I knew so well, Allen's felt less cozy, less like home. Was there a chill in the air? I pulled my cardigan sweater closer around my chest.
On camera, Cronkite reminded us that aside from being a Miss America runner-up, Anita Bryant was best known as spokeswoman for Florida orange juice commercials. Bryant had gotten famous for telling the television audience, "A day without Florida orange juice is a day without sunshine."
Now, I thought to myself, she'd switched to selling something else. Something dark. I could hear aggravated murmurs from Cecil and the other guys sitting at his table. I drew in a ragged breath. Keeping up my camouflage was harder with Anita Bryant stirring things up. Where was my drink? I glanced at Les; he was moving in slow motion.
Cronkite went to a film clip of Bryant at a Midwestern news conference. A newsman asked about her motives for the campaign. Surrounded by microphones, the dark-haired, former beauty queen beamed at the camera and opened her mouth to oblige.
"Since homosexuals cannot reproduce," she said, striking a tone of both sincerity and loathing, "they must recruit children to freshen their ranks. We must not allow them to continue."
I clinched my fist, furious, thinking: "How can she get away with saying a pure lie like that?"
Somebody, a woman's voice, growled: "One of them mess wit my baby and he gonna get his ass kicked!"
I blew out a frustrated breath. What Bryant was saying boiled down to a load of crap. You didn’t choose or get recruited like you were joining the army or some kind of club. You were born the way you were born.
I thought about Stacey and rubbed the palm of my hand across my lips. Nobody had recruited me into being attracted to women. Nobody had forced me to love her. That admission woke up The Corners, the place, at the back of my mind, where I'd vaulted my secrets. Like autumn leaves, they began to crackle and rustle. Which served to unnerve me even more than Anita Bryant. Mostly, I could keep them quiet and still as a tomb.
On screen, you could see the reporters scribbling furiously on their pads. Bryant was gabbing away, talking like she'd made some kind of a scientific study and was releasing the results.
It pissed me off that people put the rap on us for what pedophiles did. If you paid attention to your stats, or to what the neighborhood grapevine whispered about the husband down the street, you’d know that damn near all pedophiles were heterosexuals. To cover that up, folks muddied the water so that people would confuse pedophiles with homosexuals. But they weren’t the same at all.
I paid attention to the screen again. Why wasn’t somebody questioning Anita Bryant’s claims? The reporters were just standing there, eating it up like starving animals. That was the scary part. I lit a cigarette and I dragged my hand across my lips again. When Les put my drink down in front of me, I almost knocked it over grabbing for it.
One reporter finally asked Bryant a question. He wanted to know how she chose the name for her campaign. She put one white hand to her neck and looked earnestly into the camera's eye.
"We chose the name because we want to save our children by stopping these homosexuals. They're predators!"
(end)
Order my book at Amazon or Borders Bookstores or at my publisher’s website under the book title or under my name, Frankie Lennon, at
www.Amazon.com< www.Borders.com
www.Kerlak.com
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