Friday March 3, 2006 SGN.org |
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Volume 34 Issue 09 |
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Thursday, Nov 20, 2008
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Not Thinking Straight by Madelyn Arnold |
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| GIVING US OURSELVES | ||
| About 1971, Indiana University's Gay Liberation Front established a Gay Outreach Number. Our idea was that Gay folk could call and - I guess - we'd buck them up. It may be hard to believe that otherwise sane people would distribute working phone numbers around a rabidly anti-Gay section of the U.S., but we did - and this before answering machines. I'll leave the details of most of our incoming calls to your imagination.
But I early took a few that were legitimate, including from a down-home girl who seemed desperate to talk, and she worried us all from the start. I WUNNA HOLD YER HAND... After a while, Lover and I expected her calls - after 10, before two (and after the first few, collect); her voice would drop to a whisper: rural school, church, home... loneliness. She could be shoved into a mental hospital, as had happened to me... she could be murdered. She had fallen in love and her diary had fallen into someone else's hands, and now she was being jeered at - shoved from behind on the stairs... she would walk into Study Hall and a hissing would start. Kids stared that way. I knew what way. Calling recklessly from her little farmhouse attic, on an extension she'd hooked up, she'd frequently stop, breathless - what if her family picked up the other phone? And I listened hopelessly because however much I wanted to help, what could I say? She was legally a child until 21. Queerness was illegal. I was in the position of corrupting a minor. I asked folks at the Kinsey Institute (constantly fielding such questions) who advised me to mention she was close to graduation. Could she stick it out? Did she have out-of-town relatives she could visit? I offered these ideas and whatever came to mind. After two or three more calls, it was like a litany, and suddenly one night she snapped: you don't want to talk to me! ... and the line went dead. WE QUARREL I didn't hear more for months. Then, during finals, Lover and I dropped by the GLF office and were told there was a present for me... there, partly hidden by the desk, was this small, doughty woman I had tried to help. She rebuffed my greeting - with an attitude somewhere between finding Satan slithering up her pants' legs and frank disappointment that he wasn't. Her small eyes darted - angry, accusing - unhappy with us, disgusted at the furniture. Did she have any money? Had she had a recent meal, a place to sleep? Every question vexed her a little more. Of course, all I could offer was somebody's couch, but everybody would have known that back then - except her. Finally, "you lied to me!" she said. About my partner? - Though I'd often mentioned I was happily in love (by which I'd meant encouragement). She stamped her foot. She yelled she was sleeping in her truck - then ran out of the office and out of our lives. WHY WERE WE SO BRASH? How did GLF - and other new groups - get into what we would now think were foreseeable problems (our Crisis Phone marked the beginning of many)? ... I think we'd decided that if we saw anything needed, we could fix it - just because it was our perception and our effort. Not quite abracadabra, but close. Youth generally think they can fix things better than their elders, but our braggadocio rose to the level of delusion. But you see, in our short lives we had seen great and terrible barriers shredded before our eyes. Think about African-Americans: when I was small, I knew not to speak to my "colored" classmates (1954 ended "separate but equal" schools) on the street because unfriendly eyes might see we were schoolmates, and bad things could happen. Now our old classmates had marched for freedom - and came to movies, gas stations, public restrooms, swimming pools, labor unions - were beginning to star on TV. Many whites were in awe of what we saw: Black people taking care of Business. And Stonewall: one night Queens and Dykes and ordinary Queers had just not allowed what had always been allowed to happen. Bar raids had always taken place - police showed up, broke arms and skulls, and not infrequently, reputations. It had all been an expected part of a miserable life, and we had decided not to be miserable. Thus, GLF thought we could probably just fix anything by trying. Such thinking makes interesting tactics, but unwise strategies. MY COMEUPPANCE I was in a circle at the Halloween dance, when a small, rude face butted in with: "see - I don't need you!" Dragging a shy femme teenager by the wrist was the caller I had tried to help. "Are you going to school, or living around," I began, but she cut me off. Her face was twisted into loathing. And then she was gone. Friends asked why it bothered me so... partly it was that she couldn't hear me as someone genuinely trying to help. Ours couldn't just be another outreach line, something helpful - good impulses had nothing to do with us, with Queers... The number she had called was doubtless to rescue/ensnare her and send her through some hellgate into organized Queerdom - giving her a lover. What else would I be doing on that phone but something lustful and selfish. Wanting her flesh. Human beings could be generous and honest, but Queers weren't human. I remembered what it was like to be that woman. I had only recently taken to meeting people's eyes again. A short time before, my first impulse had been to prevaricate about everything, no matter how trivial - hiding, frightened. Gay Pride was allowing me not to skulk around despising this club I was in - despising it because it would have me as a member. I just wanted the grocer to take my money, the doctor to meet my eyes. She had reminded me that it wasn't so hard to return to what I had been. |
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