by Fay Jacobs
Bywater Books
Copyright © 2007 and 2016 Fay Jacobs
All rights reserved.
By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Bywater Books.
Bywater Books First Edition: May 2016
Fried & True: Tales from Rehoboth Beach
was originally published by
A&M Books, Rehoboth, DE in 2007
Cover designer: TreeHouse Studio
Bywater Books
PO Box 3671
Ann Arbor MI 48106-3671
www.bywaterbooks.com
ISBN: 978-1-61294-074-8 (ebook)
To Anyda & Muriel and the people on the porch.
Winter 2007
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many people helped me with Fried & True. Thanks to Steve Elkins and Murray Archibald, who keep letting me have my say in Letters. They are my heroes for what they continue to give to the community of Rehoboth Beach and the selflessness with which they give it. Thanks to them as well for the enormous help they have given me in this, and so many other projects. My appreciation also goes to my-son-the-actor, playwright and diversity consultant Eric Peterson, who, in addition to everything else is now my-son-the-editor for his perspective and his lovely words. Much credit to my wonderful draft readers and editors Kathy Galloway, Tom Jones, Pam Kozey, Jennifer Rubenstein, Betsy Schmidt and my partner Bonnie, who were willing, at the risk of personal safety, to give me honest critiques. I love you for that. Extra thanks to Lee Mills, who used his brilliant mind to think about what this book could say and suggested that I say it. Credit too, to Kathy Weir, expert proofreader and reality checker. And of course, thanks once again to my father Mort, who taught me that even the worst event is not so awful if you can eventually tell a story about it. Special gratitude to my Letters readers for still being there even after all this time.
A heartfelt hug to you all.
Foreword
BY ERIC C. PETERSON
Fay Jacobs is many things to me.
She’s a dear friend, a sage giver of advice, a surrogate mother, a confidante, and someone who knows every line of Funny Girl backwards and forwards…as do I (it’s a curse).
In addition to this, I know Fay Jacobs is a writer.
And by writer, I don’t mean that she writes things down; a lot of people do that. Writing isn’t something that Fay does; it’s something that she is. Being a writer the way Fay Jacobs is a writer doesn’t just happen when she sits down in front of her computer and begins to type; it follows her everywhere she goes.
She began her enormously popular column in Letters from CAMP Rehoboth, a magazine for the gay, lesbian, and straight communities of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware back in 1996. But she was a writer long before that. She’s a writer down to her bones. She responds to a well-turned phrase the way a musician might respond to a particularly beautiful tune or an artist might be struck by a particularly stunning canvas.
And all of Fay’s friends have said at one point or another, “Um…that’s not going to end up in one of your columns, is it?” And the answer, quite frankly, is almost always yes. She can’t help it; she’s a writer. And yet, even when I’ve cringed at the thought of my antics ending up in print somewhere, I’m the first to laugh loud and long when I see them through Fay’s eyes. And even when she knows something won’t end up in print, she’s been known to write it down anyway, just to get it out of her system.
Fried & True is not only a collection of Fay Jacobs’ writings—although her latest columns are all here—it’s also about her life as a writer. Among other things, it’s about the way her life changed when she and her partner, Bonnie, met Anyda (pronounced like Anita, but with a “d’) Marchant and Muriel Crawford. The two couples were very different. They belonged to different generations and lived through very different times. But Fay and Anyda were both writers, in the true sense of the word. They were both lesbian writers, which made them even more rare, and their resulting friendship even more special. Anyda was, in fact, one of the most important writers in the history of lesbian fiction, and Muriel was her muse. Because of Anyda and Muriel, Fay’s first book, As I Lay Frying, was published in 2004. Bonnie and Fay’s lives changed the day they met these extraordinary women. And Fay’s writing changed, too.
Few people who read this anthology will know Fay as I do. For that, I am truly sorry. However, everyone who reads this collection will know Fay’s writing—and you know what? That’s almost as good as the real thing.
Onward.
prologue
I BECAME A WRITER IN 11TH GRADE
To be sure, I answered essay questions and scribbled things before that, but they were mostly dreary “What I Did on My Summer Vacation” chronicles.
But in 11th grade English class, taught by a gentleman who looked like a walrus and whose name I have regretfully forgotten, I think I became a writer.
The teacher asked the class to write a thousand words about something that had occurred in the past week.
Lots of things happened that fall of 1964 but none of it included me. The Beatles sang “She Loves You,” two teenage girls were arrested for scaling the wall of the hotel next to my building where they thought Ringo was holed up, Robert Kennedy chased mobsters, the Yankees were in the World Series again and Bewitched was on the tube.
But for me, it was a dull week. All I did was argue with my best friend over a yellow linen button-down shirt she’d borrowed, took forever to return, and when it did come back it was a mess. Not exactly fodder for Camille.
It was so dull that I started messing around, getting pretty silly. (“She took longer to iron that shirt than the Yankees needed to lose to the Cardinals….”) and using preposterous metaphors (“The drip dry garment looked like she had scrubbed it raw on a rock in the Amazon.”).
Certain that my prior pop quiz successes and mid-term grade would mitigate a D-minus for this particular assignment I handed the paper in with all its obnoxiousness intact.
The walrus loved it. On the top of my paper, circled in red ink, were the words “fetching detail.”
Heretofore the only time I had heard the word fetching it involved squeaky toys.
But I looked it up and was surprised to find it synonymous with “eye-catching,” “smart,” “enticing,” and the obtuse “natty.”
And so it began. I did very well in English that year, but less well the following as my teacher was humor challenged. She thought me a wise-ass.
But the deal was sealed and I went off to college, became a newspaper editor (keeping a lid on the fetching detail) and then a freelance writer where I could fetch all I wanted.
Then my mate and I started visiting Rehoboth Beach—a gem of a resort town on the Delaware coast, where gays had been vacationing since the early 20th century—albeit very quietly. But by those ACT-UP! 80s, Rehoboth started to attract a more visible gay and lesbian crowd. Out, proud and losing friends by the hundreds to the plague, people came to Rehoboth to eat, drink, soak up the sun and make as merry as possible. As in gay strongholds nationwide, people bonded in newly organized and compassionate communities to fight AIDS and its accompanying homophobia.
By the mid 90s Bonnie and I were loyal Rehoboth weekenders. And I was invited to write a column for a popular local publication Letters from CAMP Rehoboth. I wrote about the beach, drag volleyball and boating adventures. Ironically, week after week, the column was pretty much “Wh
at I Did on my Gay Summer Vacation.” What comes around, comes around again.
Table of Contents
2003
If They Asked Me I Could Write a Book
Nobody Asked, Nobody Told
Sunny Days, Party Nights at Carpenter Beach
We Did the Crime. Will We Do the Time?
Amnesia? I Forgot What That Means
The Case of the Maltese Salmon
Putting It Together
The Rise of the Naiads
Identity Crisis
Publishing R Us
2004
The Truth about Tallulah
Contrition Thy Name is Jacobs
Twilight Zone, N.Y.
Mow, Mow, Mow Your Boat
Grape Expectations
Keep It Simple, Stupid
Signing Bonus
The Spyware that Shagged Me
Got Ink?
Gambling for Love and Money
Editorial Pages
Gender Outlaw
For Whom the Toll Bells
Some Like It Not
Routine Maintenance
Cow Parade
Holiday Hell
2005
I’m 130,706!
The Boob Tube
Prime Time Views
In Honor of Robert Gold
Fore! Play
Up Yours Truly
Going South
Sibling Rivalry
Paw & Order—Special Victim’s Unit
Fried & True
The Costumes, The Scenery, The Bug Spray, The Props
Gay Sleepaway
Heart of the Community
Yellow Submarine
Tea Dance and Sympathy
PR Disaster 101
23 Hours in the Big Apple
Hurricane Mary Jane
Get Thee to a Nunnery
Our Inner Child
Ain’t No Sun Up in the Sky
Unhappy Holidays
2006
A Passing
And the Winner Is
Film at 11
Truth and Consequences
Landscaping for Dummies
Spilling the Beans
Renew, Recover, Rebuild NOLA
I Am Woman Hear Me Snore
Good Times Are Not Rolling
For Muriel
Flipping the Bird
Fore! Score! And a Year Ago
They Don’t Call Us Gay for Nothin’
The Devil Wears iPod
Is It Real or Is It…Marketing?
A Religious Experience
Squatters Rights
Underage Male Pages
Nose for News
The Accidental Publisher
September 2003
IF THEY ASKED ME I COULD WRITE A BOOK
“You want to do what?”
I thought I heard my friend Anyda Marchant, lesbian publishing icon and novelist say she wanted to publish my columns in a book.
Clearly this was a mistake. After all, 92 year old Anyda, known to the world as lesbian novelist Sarah Aldridge, was far too literary, too erudite to think my columns worthy. Her own novel, her 14th, O, Mistress Mine had just been released. We needed to work on publicizing it. What was in the vodka she was serving? Or the scotch she was drinking?
Anyda and Muriel, her partner of 55 years, (yes, 55; somebody please call the American Family Association) just smiled and told me to get to work putting the book together because they wanted it published by spring. And then the conversation turned to politics, squirrels getting into the bird feeder and if anyone wanted another cracker with Double Gloucester cheese.
FLASHBACK
On a Saturday morning back in 1994, I made my way into the cramped quarters of Rehoboth’s Lambda Rising bookstore. It wasn’t the big place it is now, but its tiny precursor at the rear of the 39 Baltimore Avenue courtyard.
I was there for a reading by Leslie Feinberg, author of Stone Butch Blues, one of the first novels ever to address transgender issues. This was a big event for little Rehoboth Beach.
As I squeezed into the minuscule bookshop and listened to the author read, I became aware of somebody setting up two folding chairs just to my left and then two elderly women being seated at my side.
“Do you know who that is?” whispered a woman to my right. “That’s Sarah Aldridge.”
The name sounded familiar, but rang no particular bell.
“I’ll show you her books later.”
Following the reading I smiled at the ladies as they rose to leave. One woman was tall, with a long gray pony tail and a somewhat remote, regal look—despite her casual corduroy dyke wear. She nodded to me. The other woman, shorter, stockier and relying on a cane, had twinkling eyes and responded to me with a pixie grin.
Later, I stood before the bookstore’s fiction shelves as my friend pointed out a dozen novels by Sarah Aldridge. I saw the imprint of the feminist publishing house Naiad Press on the book spines. Naiad was one of the nation’s first and arguably most successful lesbian publishers in this country, and probably the world.
Not much of a fiction reader, I bought the Aldridge book Misfortune’s Friend for Bonnie to read and wound up getting into it myself. The writer had an old-fashioned romantic style, an impressive grasp of historical detail and a passion for lesbian romance. I enjoyed the book and wanted to get to know the elderly author and her partner, our local celebrities.
After asking around, I realized I had known of the ladies, if not their names. They had actually been founders of Naiad Press. I also learned that Anyda Marchant and Muriel Crawford, both in their 80s had been together almost half a century and that during the past twenty five years Anyda wrote over a dozen novels. Muriel, a former executive secretary, transcribed them and partnered with the author by providing serious scrutiny and feedback for their fine-tuning.
Anyda was a member of the illustrious Virginia Woolf Society, Muriel liked popular mystery writers, and they both liked Dewars Scotch, growing roses, and talking politics.
I asked Letters editor Steve Elkins for an introduction and he told me about the Saturday evening “salons” on the ladies’ front porch, where everyone is welcome. The following weekend, Steve and his partner Murray took me and Bonnie to meet the ladies. It was one of the most important days of my life.
A LITTLE HISTORY…
What can I tell you about Anyda and Muriel? They have been in Rehoboth almost half their long lives.
Not part of Rehoboth’s gay community. Not until relatively recently. Anyda and Muriel spent a majority of their lives deeply closeted and silent about their relationship. In fact, Muriel couldn’t even say the word lesbian—she coined a new one. When they would see a female couple walking down the street Muriel would say, “Shhhh…” Eventually, they began to call their own kind Shushes.
Over many years, long before I came along to partake, the ladies hosted their front porch cocktail hour with a crowd as diverse as Rehoboth Beach itself—neighbors, clergymen, writers, artists, and politicians. And shushes and gay guys. They loved the boys’ attention and the boys loved to come to visit, flowers or homemade goodies in hand.
They were Rehoboth’s Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, serving scotch instead of marijuana brownies. On that expansive front veranda there might be a dozen people, four conversations in progress and visitors coming and going throughout cocktail hour, which started promptly at 5 p.m. and ended pretty much an hour and a half later.
When winter came, the ladies packed up whatever great big sedan they had at the time, Muriel at the wheel, and drove themselves to Florida for the winter months. The writing collaboration continued.
Following our introduction to those wonderful porch gatherings, Bonnie and I became regulars. We heard lots of rich history, including Anyda expounding on the virtues of the suffragettes. I had to remind myself that she was old enough to remember them.
“Oh yes, I saw them taken away in handcuffs from the front of the White House,” she’d tell me. Anyda als
o had plenty to say about the failings of both Herbert Hoover and Tricky Dick Nixon.
Local politics didn’t escape scrutiny either, nor did the deplorable condition of a garden down the street. “They should really be spraying those roses,” both ladies agreed, with an unspoken tsk, tsk.
And there’s no telling what subject from the past might come up to bring perspective to today’s conversations. The female cats, a gray tabby and an all-black beauty, would scamper around the guests’ legs and often completely interrupt weighty topics with their trapeze acts atop Muriel’s walker.
We’d be on the porch, listening to stories as Anyda and Muriel sat together, facing the street, on a well-worn couch, its sides doubling as scratching posts for the cats. We’d be across from the ladies, in wicker chairs or seated on a weather-beaten yellow vinyl glider, backs to the neighbors and all eyes on the storytellers. Anyda generally sat bolt upright; Muriel sank into the sofa, her feet not touching the floor.
Anyda loved talking about growing up in the Nation’s Capitol. “Washington was a one-horse town,” Anyda said. “My family lived in the second apartment building ever built in D.C., and I remember going to a tree planting to honor Teddy Roosevelt’s son, who had been killed in the war.” That would be the first World War.
“My father was a scholar who had been educated by French Jesuits. Books were very, very important. I read my way through the children’s section of the D.C. public library and then wanted to start with the adult books. My mother fought with the librarian and won, so I could read the grown-up books.”
From what I gathered, young Anyda was a handful. “Oh yes, I was quite pugnacious at the time,” she admits, describing how she had to protect her little brother from bullies, and that she herself got into a fistfight or two. “We were odd, we came here from Brazil, you know, speaking a jumble of languages.” That jumble—English, French, Spanish, Portuguese—must have served her well, because she eventually graduated first in her college class of 100.
All Bonnie and I wanted to do was soak up this living history. We heard how Anyda received a scholarship from the newborn Women’s Bar Association, and it was on to law school in 1930 as one of four women in a class of over 300.
