Category: Reminiscences

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She Was a Friend of Mine

In 1964, I had a girl friend in NYC, and a job and radio show in Cambridge Massachusetts. Although the distance between them, two hundred ten miles, presented a challenge, I was young, motivated, and I commuted; for a week or ten days every day, by car, with the help of friends who lent me cars and drove with me and then often, but not daily. I was inured to the trip. One night, I drove a woman who wanted someone to dive her Porsche Super 90, and her, to NYC. She got there in under three hours, including a stop for coffee. I did not get stopped because every police car in Connecticut was sitting on the other side of the freeway on the border, waiting for something.

One winter’s night in 1964, I was leaving Manhattan, rolling up the parkways, tired and paying attention only to that which mattered to safe motoring; I knew the way by heart. It was dark, with a moderate wind, and wisps of blowing snow. The road was clear enough. I found myself following a black limousine, and vaguely remember, perhaps the result of post event suggestion, some movement in the rear window in any case I was thinking of my girl friend, my job, and whom to book for the show: I ignored it, in one sense or the other.

All at once I became aware of agitation ahead. It was a young woman, who had opened the window on the limousine, and extruded her head, shoulders and one arm which she was waving vigorously as the rest of her bounced up and down, as much as possible. It was Mimi, waving to attract my attention. I recognized her, flashed my lights, and waved at her. She smiled contentedly and slipped back inside, looking at me through the rear widow. She smiled and waived again. Her sister, sitting beside her turned her head for a glance, and did not look again for the rest of the night. I could see them talking together as I drove on.

When Mimi moved to Cambridge, although she was a couple of years younger than I, she was married to a successful author, and I always thought of her an adult, whereas I was a college student, at least socially. She quickly became one of the house bands, with her husband, at the Club 47, where I worked, and where I met most of the talent for my radio show. When other acts canceled, the house bands would graciously fill in, and Mimi and Richard, were very generous, filling in on very little notice more than a few times. I dealt almost exclusively with Mimi, and we saw each other a the club, where we both spent a lot of time, and we worked on projects, together mostly for the club.

For rest of the trip that night, she would turn around every fifteen minutes or so, smile and wave. Unable to converse, we traveled together through the night, a strange community based on sympathy and propinquity. At one point, I was running out of gas, but “pay at the pump” was new, and I managed to get in and out of a gas station on the Berlin Strip in Connecticut, in a time that would have pleased an Indy 500 pit crew. I got back on the highway, and found Mimi’s limousine, pulled in behind it, flashed my lights, and with a wave and a dazzling smile from Mimi, resumed our trip together.

When we got to Cambridge, our ways parted; I flashed my head lights, one last time, waved, and pulled out to find my way home. We never talked about it; I never forgot it.

More than a year later, I was at the Club, as Mimi waited, on her twenty-first birthday, for news from her husband, who was in California to sign a new contract. before she would head out to her birthday party. News came, but it was devastating: Richard had signed the contract, and left word he would call her from the signing party. Ecstatic, he left on his motorcycle, ran off the road, into a tree and was dead.

Too few years later, Mimi too was gone, and the world is emptier because she is no longer in it.

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James Brown and the concert in Boston

Forty-eight years ago today, Boston Massachusetts was shut down. Nothing moved; the streets were empty. Cars, buses, all banished from the streets in an attempt to avoid devastating riots such as had burned other cities in the wake of the assassination of the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr the previous day in Memphis Tennessee. As it happened, James Brown, the hardest working man in show business, was scheduled to perform at the Boston Garden on that day. As a performer who routinely whipped up his fans in to an emotional frenzy, and leader of the movement for Black Pride and advancement, he presented a challenge to the governor and the mayor. Allowing the concert to go forward presented the risk that overheated fans could ignite trouble, but canceling such a concert could also provoke disappointed fans who could believe that the gesture had dubious motivations.

At the time, even absent malice, there was much less mutual understanding between the Black and white communities than there is today, so it is a credit to the powers that were, that it was arranged that the concert would be presented, with two modifications. The local television channels would broadcast the entire concert, and while people would be admitted, they were urged to stay home and avoid large gatherings.

I need to go to the Garden, and so, starting in mid afternoon, I walked from Fort Hill in Roxbury, to the arena, down the center of a deserted Washington street. It was reminiscent of a scene from “On the Beach”. In the more than an hour that it took me to make the journey, I do not remember seeing a moving vehicle, nor more than a handful of people. One or two of them said “Hey, man.” to me.

When I arrived at the Garden, there were discussions about the police presence. There were scores of Boston’s Finest back stage, as might be expected, and I remember them as large, white, burly, Irish cops. The police plan was to place officers in the crowd, to dampen possible trouble. James Brown argued, begged, that they be kept out of sight. He did not ask them to leave, just to remain hidden unless they were needed. He was confident that he could control his crowd. In the end, he prevailed and the cops stood behind the curtain. The stage was large enough for the band, the Famous Flames, and James Brown’s athletic performance. Otherwise it was bare, and surrounded by a plain black curtain that ran from the front of the stage on both sides, around the back. Throughout the concert, right behind that curtain stood an immobile phalanx of Boston cops, shoulder to shoulder, batons in hand.

At the appointed time, the show went on. There were a few hundred spectators, mostly young, of mixed race. They quickly took to the aisles, dancing to the irresistible beat. At one moment the emotion became too much, and they surged towards the stage. James Brown made a motion to the cops, who tensed and started to move forward, and he begged the crowd to contain themselves and show that we could enjoy ourselves without getting out of hand. There had been no menace in the surge, just animal spirits, but they backed away, the cops relaxed into their alert attention, and the moment passed.

There is a documentary of that night, called “The Night James Brown Saved Boston.” As with the surge of fans, the grief and rage of the moment did not boil over and spared Boston, for the time.

I do not know how much credit James Brown gets for his efforts to improve race relations. He is known as an effective champion of the recognition and advancement of Black people, but he worked simultaneously for inclusion of white people and racial understanding. Although it caused him quite a bit of trouble, he traveled south with integrated bands, and when he sponsored local talent shows, in which he participated, he insisted, to the dismay or anger of local authorities that they be open to anyone who cared to participate.

One last memory: Although he had just completed the highest priced one night performance up to that time, a $100,000 concert for Félix Houphouët-Boigny in the Ivory Coast, and his concert appearances had a target price of $10,000 per night (if memory serves), a black high school in the south could book the full show for their prom on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday for $500.

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Leslie Feinberg Remembered

I read Stone Butch Blues years ago just after it came out. A friend of mine told me that I had to; it had affected her so strongly that she had been ill for ten days after reading it. I was a graduate student with no free time to read; I read the book: reread it, and cried both times. Then I recommended it to every TBLG person I knew, or met, and gave away at least a fifteen copies to straight people where I thought it could do some good. One of my friends told me that she read the book from cover to cover at one sitting, only getting up to pee. I visited Firebrand books, the original publisher, to try to order in bulk and arrange to use a chapter in my English classes at Indiana University. I am glad to see that the new edition will be available free online, not because I begrudge Leslie, or her family, well-deserved royalties, but because, in the past, the book has been hard to get and needlessly expensive, at least to my way of thinking. It is an important work that deserves wide distribution and recognition.

I got to meet Leslie when she spoke at DePauw University in 1998; they engaged her to speak to their students for their Diversity Week, and mandated that the students attend. The students were present and polite, but not really engaged and the question period was soon at an end. A book signing had been scheduled to follow, but the only person to attend was me. As a result, I got to talk to Leslie for at least twenty minutes. She presented as one of the most male presences I have met, wearing a man’s suit that I describe as “sharp” because it looked good on her, but more because I believe that you could have cut yourself on the creases. The suit seemed large on her, not ill-fitting, but as though she was protected inside it, as if she were wearing a suit of armor. Her comfortable shoes contrasted with the rest of her attire.

Reading Stone Butch Blues, I had been struck by the remarkable care she displayed in using pronouns throughout; I was just getting launched in the TBLG community, and knew almost nothing about gender variance; I do not believe that I attached the label “trans” in my mind to any of the characters in the novel. Along with the care in assigning pronouns: each character had a pronoun that fit the person, not the body, and such decisions were highly nuanced, not simplistic, I read a lesson to let people be who they are, without burdening them with a label not of their own choosing, and the difficulty that allowing them this dignity can involve. I believe that lesson was very important and has helped me ever since.

In my conversation with her, I mentioned my admiration for her skill with pronouns, and she expressed gratitude, noting that she had expended enormous effort on them, and was glad to see that it had been recognized. It is my belief that such effort is often rewarded even by those who do not recognize why they are so enthralled by a work.

I hesitate to question Minnie Bruce Pratt, Leslie’s spouse, but when she quotes Leslie in her lovely, caring, obituary: “I care which pronoun is used, but people have been disrespectful to me with the wrong pronoun and respectful with the right one. It matters whether someone is using the pronoun as a bigot, or if they are trying to demonstrate respect.” The language persuades me that she has erred, probably in the emotion of the moment. I believe that what Leslie said was rather: “I care which pronoun is used, but people have been disrespectful to me with the right pronoun and respectful with the wrong one. It matters whether someone is using the pronoun as a bigot, or if they are trying to demonstrate respect.”

Because I never saw Leslie using male pronouns for herself, I have persisted in using “she” and “her”, always a little worried that it would not be what she wanted. I am somewhat relieved to see that is what Minnie Bruce called her in her obituary, but even more so to have confirmed my sense that she would have cared more about the effort, and the care, than about the details of the final result even though the details mattered so much to her. I feel that Stone Butch Blues and other writings by Leslie Feinberg constituted a graduate course in the use of pronouns and respect for individuality that was of great benefit to me as I learned to honor people as they wished to be recognized.

In Transgender Warriors, she exposed the slight of hand that makes gender variant persons disappear when they can be classified in some other way. The example that struck home to me was Joan of Arc (who among other achievements invented the modern nation state). I knew for as long as I can remember that Joan was burned at the stake for refusing to wear a dress (yes, there were political influences, but they only served to ensure that the charge was brought and the penalty enforced). Until Leslie pointed it out to me, I did not make the connection in a meaningful way that Joan was trans; she was a warrior, a saint, a visionary, but those qualities did not accrue to the transperson, they overshadowed, erased the trans identity.

Leslie was a Communist. I disagree heartily with her politics, but still admire the person and the writer.

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In Memoriam

My sixth-grade teacher fought the boot of Italy as a Tech Sergeant in the Army of the United States during the Second World War. He operated independently, commanding two thirty-caliber machine guns, and two mortars and the men who manned them. He hated war and warned me that I should avoid it at all costs. He said there was nothing noble about it; that at a certain place and time someone had to do the job so that others would not have to later. One of the memories that haunted him was having to submit a requisition to the quartermaster for supplies, e.g. ammunition, rations, and one replacement. The replacement arrived after dark and was assigned to a foxhole, where he was needed to replace a casualty. By morning, he was dead; recruits did not often last very long. The idea of a human life, consigned to a supply list did not let go of my teacher. At night, walking among the foxholes to check on his troops, he could hear the safeties clicking off. He said, somewhat softly: “It is me, and I know where you are.”

His mortar gunner was a pacifist. He had been drafted and went along, but without enthusiasm until the day the telegram arrived about his brother. From that moment on, the gunner was on the phone: “Can I shoot? Can I shoot? I see some Germans, can I shoot?”

“Fire one at a thousand, and one at eight hundred yards, for range!” The rounds landed almost immediately. “Fire six at eight seventy-five, for effect!” All six rounds were in the air before the first one landed.

I never got a narration of the campaign; I got snippets, impressions and never asked questions. I just listened. Some of the conversation occurred years later, filling in details. The overall impression was dark, somber; often at night.

For a time they had a major in command who would not let them relax. There was nothing special about the company; they were civilian soldiers doing what they had to do to get the job done, and to try to survive. But for at least a couple of months they kept trying to move forward without a let up. They captured a German officer from an elite unit and interrogated him before shipping him to the rear. Before the first question, he offered: “Who are you people? Don’t you ever rest?”

Over the months he got to the point that he did not want to know anyone. Most of his friends were gone, and replacements did not last long enough to befriend. He went to a field hospital and found a psychiatrist who listened and said: “Do you see that soldier there?” Pointing to a bed at the end of the ward. “He has just lost his right arm and needs to write a letter home. Go and write it for him.”  After the letter was written, my teacher was assigned to the next bed and so on down the ward. Then he went back to his unit at the front.

He did not sleep. At night he went out across the lines, hunting. At night, across the lines, he could not risk making any noise. In the morning mist, he could hear the safeties clicking off as he came back to our lines. He had to call out to assure them he was friendly.

Once he was captured. He was held for a time, but before they could ship him to the rear, he escaped. There was a knife involved; his captors did not want to let him go. He had nothing more to say on the matter.

One fine day, in the sunshine, they captured a German field hospital. It was clean and bright. The doctors and the nurses wore clean, starched uniforms. The wounded lay in well-made beds. The captors walked silently through the hospital carrying their rifles and submachine guns at the ready. They went out behind the hospital where they found a corral made of long stakes driven into the ground. The corral contained young Italian men. The Germans were using them as a living blood bank, until they were used up. My teacher and his men returned to the hospital and shot everyone there without a word.

He told me that the hardest thing to learn was to walk away from the dead and wounded. If you could not help them; if staying simply meant that you would also be dead or captured, then you had to do what you could for them; give them ammunition, food, water, a cigarette; make them as comfortable as possible, and walk away.

He had a fiancée, a redheaded horseback riding teacher. They had an agreement. If he got home whole in body, they would get married. When he got home, after the job was done, he was whole in body and he called her to make good on the promise. She replied: “I am busy.” Shortly she explained that she was teaching children in a boarding school in the mountains. It was too important; she could not leave. He could join her. He was afraid of children. In Italy, children were desperate to survive. Their desperation scared him. But he had nothing better to do, and a promise to keep. So he went into the mountains.

He was hired as an art teacher. The owner of the school met with him (and each teacher) at least twice a day for a few minutes, giving him practical advice on how to interact with children who were not as desperate as those he was used to. Slowly he recovered his humanity, thanks to the mountains, and the children. After a few weeks it was his turn to supervise Saturday morning activities. He still was unsure of how to act with children, especially without the structure of his classroom. The head of the school told him that his job was to know “where they were, in every sense of the word, and stay out of their way.”

For the rest of his life, every couple of years, he would find a good psychiatrist and wrestle with his memories. He was a most remarkable teacher of young children and made many young lives better by being in them. Although he became prominent in an international organization, he never agreed to go to Germany.

He died after a long life, not in battle, but still living the aftermath of combat.