Rita Will_Memoir of a Literary Rabble-Rouser

by Rita Mae Brown

  Then a burning mattress was shoved up against a barred window, high up. Any minute now police were going to be diverted to this spot.

  Martha and I split up. She ran east. I ran north, then west. I made it to the Greenwich Village-Chelsea border, Fourteenth Street, before the cops cordoned off the Village.

  Thrilled as I was that gay men had finally fought back against the medieval practice of vice raids—rounding up and jailing men who did nothing more than gather for a drink and cruise one another—I knew that riot wasn’t my riot.

  Once any underclass expresses itself with violence, a few things are sure to follow. First come the police. Next come the lawsuits. Third comes increased vigilance on the part of the police, and finally come the drug dealers.

  I saw that when Watts and Fourteenth Street in D.C. exploded. If you lived through that time, didn’t you wonder why it became quiet so quickly? And didn’t you wonder why an eight-year-old kid could find heroin with no problem but the authorities never could?

  Drugs make some people feel better. The whole war against drugs is without moral authority, coming from a government only too happy, at one time, to do business with General Noriega.

  Accusations are now made openly that our government supplied the drugs to Watts and Fourteenth Street!

  I am not a person given to conspiracy theories but I do think this sordid chapter in our nation’s recent history worthy of intense scrutiny. Since so many careers could be dashed by such scrutiny, I wonder if this will happen before the guilty parties die of natural causes.

  The sudden calm after those riots beggars description.

  Strange to say, a sudden calm did not descend over gay men after Stonewall. There are some obvious reasons why gay men did not lapse back into quiescence. They were white and well educated. For men like them, being arrested in 1969 because of gathering in a bar was so patently absurd, many of them wouldn’t shy from pressing the city government, even if it meant “exposure.” The whole point of a vice raid was to cow them into submission by threatening said exposure.

  Well, a lot of them had developed a set of brass balls. City Hall’s strategy wasn’t working. You could almost hear the bureaucrats. “Jesus, the faggots are fighting back.”

  Over the decades so many gay men had been shaken down by cops or by lawyers who specialized in getting them off the hook that an abundant body of evidence was available for anyone who wanted to find it. These men knew that paying through the nose to keep your name hidden was part of the bargain.

  Blackmail infuriated them as much as the raid did.

  But also, it was time. Simple as that. You can only push people around so long, despise them so long, step on them so long, before they snap.

  The way in which I was held back differed in one dramatic manner. I earned fifty-nine cents to their dollar. Had I been arrested I would have sat in jail. Lawyers knew women had little money. Why bother with me? I couldn’t pay for a lawyer’s Mercedes.

  It’s doubtful that the police are going to raid a women’s bar or any gathering of women.

  People assume, but men in particular assume, that women won’t be violent as a group. The terrible thing about the way in which their minds work is that they probably won’t take women’s issues seriously until we snap just the way the men did during Stonewall … or the way the women did during the bread riots of the French Revolution.

  Once you establish your destructive potential, men listen. Of course, it depends on how you do it. The Stonewall riots were not directed against another large group of people. They were directed against the police during a vice raid.

  Huey Newton signed the death warrant of the Black Panther Party when he sat in that plantation wicker chair, weapons in hand. That photo made many young black men proud. It also gave those policemen who were racists and those nonpolicemen who were racists the exact image they needed to rouse white people. It preyed on their fears.

  A gay riot directed at the police did not alarm the average straight person. It seemed to have nothing to do with them and it didn’t, except that they tacitly went along with the vice raids. But they were safe.

  I could hear the sounds from the Village that night.

  Time for a change, inside and out.

  47

  O Canada

  Our family took two vacations during my childhood. The first one, when I was six, was to Wildwood, New Jersey. It is fixed in my memory because I met a blind man, Ralph, and his seeing-eye dog, a German Shepherd named Pal that I loved. The Florida trip constituted the second flight from daily responsibility.

  My third vacation, hard on the heels of nonstop political drama, came at the invitation of Cynthia Funk. Tall, stately and very intelligent, as one would expect of a Funk (Funk and Wagnalls Dictionary), she possessed something equally valuable, a serviceable car. She invited me to go with her on a camping trip to Nova Scotia.

  Jerry, shuttling between Wilmington and New York for DuPont, asked to work for two weeks straight in New York so he could care for Baby Jesus, by now tremendously spoiled.

  If you’ve never driven up the coast of New England in early fall, it’s the apotheosis of that season—towns with white church steeples peeping through the treetops, perfect squares surrounded by clapboard houses and small businesses.

  New Englanders, chilly by southern standards, believe in order, productivity and sticking with your own kind. You see more redheads in this region than anywhere else in the country, or so it seemed to me.

  The coast of Maine veers eastward into the Atlantic Ocean. Having seen only sandy beaches, flat as a pancake, I found that the rocky beaches had a raw quality that appealed to me. The scent of sea mist clung to my skin.

  We boarded the ferry to Yarmouth and were blessed with a smooth, though coldish, crossing. What a way to first see Nova Scotia, in full autumn foliage. Reds, oranges, flaming reds, dark russets and shocking yellows covered the hills. Green pastures rolled down to the ocean, and farmers gathered the last hay crops.

  I felt at home. Nova Scotia is Canada’s South. Poor, looked down upon by the other large and mighty provinces, its people have a quiet strength, a quick good humor that comes with hardship. At least that’s how it was in 1969.

  We’d pitch our tent and shiver. The mercury dipped into the forties at night, but during the day it climbed back to the sixties. We rumbled down dirt roads, visited tiny roadside churches with only ancient, huge wood-burning stoves in the middle of the church for heat.

  Saving our pennies, we’d eat sparingly or nothing at all during the day so we could order lobster for supper. The best lobster I’ve ever eaten was in Nova Scotia.

  My love affair with Canada and its inhabitants started on this trip, and it’s a love that intensifies with each passing year. By now I’ve visited every province that borders the United States. I haven’t gone into the far northern territories. Canada’s West is as wild as our own and British Columbia is God’s gift to the world, deep blue waters rolling up to a shore with snow-capped mountains in view. Zeus has probably vacated Mount Olympus for British Columbia.

  Time pressure kept us from going to the northern tip of Nova Scotia, but we covered the southern end.

  I made a point to get out and talk to men plowing with Percherons. Grandpa Brown used Percherons, and they’re my favorite draft animal. The horses I saw were working horses. I didn’t see any show horses or even hunters. I’m sure they’re there.

  Many of the people knew their family histories and happily shared them. And the English they spoke—clear, concise and perfectly enunciated—was heaven to a young writer’s ears.

  If I ever get disgustingly rich, you’ll know it because I’ll buy a cottage in Nova Scotia, to which I’ll repair during our seething August summers in Virginia.

  Today Cynthia Funk lives in Virginia Beach, has a daughter and has made a good life for herself. I wonder if she ever recalls that Nova Scotia sojourn. I’ll always be grateful to her for introducing me to Canada. I’ll always be gratefu
l to Canadians for being their original, refreshing, perfectly mannered selves.

  Anyone who thinks Canadians are like Americans probably thinks Germans are like Austrians. They’re another breed of cat.

  Nova Scotia sharpened my hunger for the countryside, my nagging sense of loss.

  When I returned, Jerry happily greeted me. Baby Jesus, a monster in residence, had driven him crazy. She shredded his papers and sang off key, and for her finale she saved the bookshelf trick. I used orange crates for bookshelves, stacking them one on the other. She’d wiggle behind the books, kicking them out with her hind legs. Her favorite time for this stunt was in the middle of the night, when she would send a thunderous cascade of books down onto the floor.

  The circles under Jerry’s eyes testified to his lack of sleep.

  “You’d better never leave this cat again,” he warned me.

  I did so only one other time. Her revenge was vicious then too—she deposited feces in the bowl of the Smith-Corona typewriter. The moisture rusted the long metal strikers of the keys.

  The bad thing was I had to buy a new typewriter. The good thing was, I bought an electric typewriter. Mirabile dictu.

  48

  Blonde Bombshell

  Gloria Steinem, blonde, gorgeous, smart, changed the feminist movement. She was a Johnny-come-lately to those of us who’d been scarred by the NOW wars, the struggles with gay men just to see our issues recognized and, of course, the unremitting hostility from the press.

  She used the media better than anyone thought possible. She knew what she could present and what she couldn’t. She knew that how you look is more important than what you say, sad but true. She was so beautiful, men couldn’t dismiss her.

  As in any small pond with a few big frogs, she stirred resentment. Not from me. I’d never been so glad to see someone in my life.

  I trusted her. Why, I don’t know. Southern manners enable me to get along with just about anyone if I have to, but I trust few people. Those I do trust, I trust with all my heart.

  My instincts told me to get out of her way and to help in whatever manner I could. She needed little from me. I represented a fringe group at that time. However, she didn’t dismiss me or the women from the New Left. She heard everyone’s point of view.

  She came at just the right time. She soothed other women by her noncompetitiveness and ripe sense of humor. She attracted acolytes. That mystified me. I have never attracted an acolyte in my entire life, then or now. Somehow my lone-wolf quality shines through and people know I’m not going to meet their emotional needs. I don’t know if Gloria meets people’s needs, but they sure get something out of their contact with her. For one thing, she makes them think. Gloria pushes people on. It’s one of her best qualities.

  I asked her what she thought of gay women.

  “Women are women.” That was that.

  I watched with glee as she twisted interviewers around her little finger. Wherever she moved, cameras followed. Apart from Jacqueline Onassis, she must have been the most photographed woman in America.

  As she took over New York, I left. The timing felt right. The women’s center on Twenty-second Street flourished in large part due to its board of directors and to June Arnold, a Texas girl with lots of money and keen business sense. Women in Media, a group to spawn writers, newscasters and journalists, was up and running. The first rape crisis center was on stable ground, with absolutely no help from the police; back then, if you were raped, the police assumed it was your fault. Underground newspapers grew fat off advertising. Universities had women’s groups. I helped organize Vassar’s feminist studies group, led by Christine Acebo, Lita Lepie and Carla Duke, a gathering of the brightest young women.

  Their enthusiasm was infectious and fun.

  Many people worked hard during those early days of the feminist movement.

  Mom would say, “You’re less important than you think and more important than you know.”

  I don’t know how important our work was, but I did my part and I was fixing to do more.

  I’d spent my teenage years and early twenties criticizing the government.

  What did I really know?

  After all the bitching and moaning, I figured I had to see for myself.

  I moved to Washington, D.C., that northernmost southern city.

  Martha Shelley helped me move, a great kindness. Baby Jesus bitched and moaned the entire way.

  When Martha got on the train to go back to New York she said, “I feel like I’m leaving you in the belly of the whale.”

  If Jonah could survive, so could I.

  49

  Lazy as Sin

  Building a city on lowland invites steam heat in the summer, raw, foggy winters and bloodsuckers by the squadron, both mosquitoes and humans. Philadelphia was our nation’s first capital. Since Spain controlled Florida, the City of Brotherly Love truly was smack in the center of the East Coast of the infant United States. It was the financial center, shipping center and cultural center. Putting our government there made supreme good sense.

  However, our first president, not overly fond of Philadelphia, desired a capital free from the taint of the Revolutionary War. Philadelphia, which had helped finance the war, paradoxically was a hotbed of Tories, people loyal to George III.

  I suspect the real reason was that the site of the new city was but a day’s comfortable ride from Mount Vernon. Washington deserved whatever he wanted. Without him we’d never have won the war or the peace.

  The Washington, D.C., that I came to was far different than the warm, open city of Harry Truman, that most accessible and human of twentieth-century chief executives. Washington displayed the stigma of a siege mentality. Cops rolled around in cars, a lot of them. A guilty conscience gripped this pretty town with a clammy hand. The Nixon administration knew to its bones that the war in Vietnam was foolish, wrong and totally immoral. They threw lives away to save face.

  It wasn’t a secret that Nixon didn’t want to be the first American president to lose a war. LBJ hadn’t either. Of course, it wasn’t a legal war since Congress had never declared the damn thing. Sordid, twisted and violating the fundamental tenet of our government, which is that the people, not the president, declare a war, the miserable conflict dragged on.

  My cousin Wade, a diesel mechanic, had still escaped frontline duty.

  Despite Washington’s symmetrical, beautiful plantings, the reds and golds of late summer flowers, I couldn’t square up the city I was learning with the city I visited in my childhood.

  I found a house, 217 Twelfth Street, SE. I was the only white person for five blocks. I lived next to the Inspirational Church of God. Choir practice enlivened my nights. Without a TV, which I hadn’t seen regularly since 1962, I’d sit on my stoop, listen to the choir and chat with my neighbors.

  Capitol Hill, a poor district, was ignored by the city. Washington, not a state, goes on its knees for a budget from Congress. Since congressmen go home to Nebraska or Arizona, they don’t give a fig for most of the city. Georgetown got what it wanted, but then plenty of congressmen and Cabinet officials lived in Georgetown.

  My neighbors, wise in the ways of the city, took care of themselves. Our neighborhood was clean; flowerpots sprinkled with color added to the flavor. We kept a sharp eye for plainclothes policemen who trolled through the neighborhood. Every time the Black Panthers made an announcement anywhere in the country, the cop patrol picked up. It was actually funny since the police were white. Did they think we wouldn’t notice?

  A tiny yard enclosed with a fence gave Baby Jesus fits of happiness. She played in the grass, jumped up for butterflies and brought me many grasshoppers. I started a small garden, a joy. I put in spring bulbs while Baby bent her gray-striped head over each hole. She’d rummage around with her paw to make certain it was suitable, then I’d drop in the bulb and cover it over.

  I walked constantly, just as I had in New York. I’d stop in the Treasury Building, the Health, Education and Welfare Bui
lding, the House and Senate offices scattered on either side of the Capitol. I enjoyed the Capitol itself, a relatively simple structure rebuilt after the British burnt it in 1814.

  What overwhelmed me, however, was the sheer, disgusting laziness of most federal employees. I’d walk into a building and a gaggle of people, old and young, women and men, would be behind the information desks, talking to one another. You’d ask for assistance. Maybe they’d come forward. Maybe they’d make you wait.

  It didn’t matter what federal building I entered, with the exception of the Supreme Court; those people were on the ball. But everywhere else, you’d walk in and the people working there didn’t give a damn, although some of the aides in the various senators’ and congressmen’s offices “hopped to.”

  The waste infuriated me. You and I were, and are, paying salaries for people who could not care less. And once hired, they were impossible to fire. Mistake number one. Even the main post office, over by Union Station, was in slow motion.

  I couldn’t believe it. Nor could I believe the disrepair and filth in Union Station. Once a majestic building, it offered most people’s first look at Washington, and it was a haven for druggies, drunks and ladies of questionable repute. The ceiling was grimy, stained from leaks. The windows probably hadn’t been cleaned since Truman left office.

  Union Station, now rehabilitated, is a wonderful place to visit. That’s to the good. As for low-level bureaucrats, I can’t say much has changed. When you encounter someone helpful, who likes her job, you’re gratified.

  I wondered how anything got done in Washington. In New York people hustled. They hustled back home in York; it might be a tiny town, but people worked hard for a living. I couldn’t understand the why and how of the laziness, the attitude. I wondered if it was the demoralizing times. Since things haven’t changed that much today, it really has to be the system. People are not held to rigorous standards.