When I Was as Naive as the World

So that's today's memory lane
with all the pathos and pain
  “Forth of July” - Aimee Mann

Today I found myself strolling down memory lane. Strolling? Okay, running like a madman. Like a man in love. It was the 1970s, I had fallen in love for the first time. Of course she didn’t love me back. Had she, I won’t be a writer. I’d be a happy idiot with five kids and good job. Nope -- not for me. I took the path less travel on. And I suspect Kris had a lot to do with that -- and in ways that only now I can comprehend.

Kris had ice blue eyes, was delightfully flat and tall. She had deep caramel color skin, long blonde hair and a deep chocolate voice that drove me crazy. Even today, I think it is a woman's voice that I fall in love with first. Voices that are different and full of character. Yep, you have a speech impediments -- you have my heart.

I confessed my love for Kris. She confessed that she actually wasn’t fond of people (of any kind) and wanted to be alone. She was close to one person, Renee. Renee had short black hair and looking like a tennis star from one of the Slavic countries. She was a very sporty girl.

My best friend at the time was Karen. We were both art geeks who’d listen to music and try to find the deeper meaning in the songs and life. I hung with a lot of girls. None of them seemed to have boy friends. At the time I didn’t think about that. I have just always been drawn to strong, independent gals.

You’re probably thinking. Umm, guy -- don’t you get it? It was the 70’s. The gay rights movement was just an ember. Lesbian were seen as crude stereotype. They were shunned by society and branded as freaks. Women didn’t have power back than. And a gay woman? Oh God, light the torches. Their is a monster -- a dangerous, unstable thing who clearly is up to no good. The closets were very crowded back then.

As for me? I honestly never even thought about it, too damn busy with my own pity and anger. Remember how you were as a teenage before you throw the first acme pad. I found solace for my broken heart by listen to a female singer. Their were rumors about her, too; “Didn’t she come out on the tonight show?”

“NO! That wasn’t her!” I’d correct.

She wasn’t one of those. Why were people slandering her? She was so pretty, so girly, girly! She was America’s sweetheart. Boys all around the world were looking at her and sighing -- their nights were filled with dreams of being in her arms. And, as it turned out, a lot of girls were looking at her, sighing and dreaming too. This singer had a very broad demographic. God, no wonder she sold a gazillion records.

Years later someone, probably a female fan of the singers, suggested I read a book: The Vinyl Closet: Gays in the Music World by Boze Hadleigh (Los Hombres Press C1991). Boze had an interviews with an unnamed famous singer, her “husband” and a girl who had an affair with the singer. There were so many obvious clues that anyone reading the book knew who the singer was.

At first I was pissed at Boze. Either he made it all up, or even worse, he betrayed her trust by outing her. That faded quickly. I was changed. I still felt the same about her, but how I looked at bi or lesbian women was different. They weren’t stereotypes anymore. They were people. Someone who I thought was the coolest person in the world, who sang very honest and true emotion. Someone who had a way of expressing my innermost feelings of longing, warmth, loss and the need to be needed.

It was like someone had lifted up a box that I had only seen the front of, turned it 180 degrees and set it back down. It was the same world it had always been, but it was not. Seeing it from another point of view (a view that was always there but I had never taken the time to consider) change me. I was no longer as naive as the world.

I send Boze a letter, explaining in detail what he had just done to me. He sent me back an autographed copy of his next book. A pretty damn big book, as I recall. I really don’t think he could afford to send that out to everyone. Perhaps my letter had the effect he was longing to have on the world. A world still pretty hostile to anything queer.

The songwriters I love the most today (who speak truest to my inner, deepest feelings) are women. I was talking with one of them recently, Jill Sobule, and she had her walls cover with the posters of same singer I did in the seventies. And knowing Jill, she was having the same rather impure thoughts about our cute girl-next-door singer. Pretty funny, know we have the same tastes in women. Yet I don’t know if Jill looks at picture of herself and sighs. I do. In some ways I’m still the fourteen-year-old boy, aren’t I? 

This week I had another epiphany. Another the box-had-just-been-turned-180-degrees day. I thought, “Hmmm, maybe I was a lesbian in a former life.” Out of the blue two of my best friends said the same thing on almost the same day. They both meant it as a complement. I couldn't have felt more proud.