When We Were Outlaws

by Jeanne Cordova

  “Sorry, I forgot.”

  “I can’t talk now. That LAPD Criminal Conspiracy squad is dogging me. Meet me later this week.”

  “When, where?”

  But Joe had already hung up. Christ!

  I strode over to Penny’s office.

  She looked up. “Córdova, you look like you’ve just talked with a ghost.”

  “Worse,” I said. “Tomassi just called. He wants to blow up the Midnight Special Bookstore.”

  Penny stared at me. We both knew the Midnight Special was one of the major Leftist think tanks and meeting spaces.

  “When?” she whispered.

  “Apparently not until after he and I meet again,” I said, with a sense of relief. “I think he wants pre-publicity this time.”

  “Thank God! I’ll call the bookstore right now and warn them.” Penny sat back. “They can decide if they want police protection.”

  “He wants me to meet him, do a second interview. He’ll call back to set up when and where.”

  Penny’s face grew pale; she leaned back in her chair. “That’s a very bad idea, Córdova. I’m not going to let you go to him again. But you should stall him; let him think you’ll do another interview. We have to draw the line here. I must call the bookstore and warn them. And I don’t like it, but with this new information I need to call the police too.”

  I stared at Penny, nodding dumbly. My Nazi was evolving into a serial bomber.

  Seeing Rachel standing next to Lionheart lifted my heart. She looked particularly fetching in a loose flowing skirt and a tight fitting paisley blouse.

  “Allow me.” I ran to hold open my car door for her. “And good morning to my partner in subterfuge.” A part of me wanted to flip her over into the back seat and make love right now.

  In the car she leaned over and kissed me, asking, “Have you talked with BeJo yet about adjusting your arrangement with her?”

  Her question hit me like a left hook. I’d had Morris, our strategy session and a serial bomber on my mind. I sure wasn’t focused on a pow-wow with BeJo.

  “No,” I said, turning over the engine. “Preparing for Morris today, a bunch of other meetings —time has gotten away from me.” In truth I hadn’t seen much of BeJo over the last week. The one evening we’d had together, I’d tried to find the right words but the prospect of a prolonged deep and meaningful night of process had felt overwhelming. I hadn’t brought up our arrangement.

  “We don’t have time for personal things right now,” I snapped. “We have to talk about how to approach Morris.”

  “All right,” she gave in, her voice small. “We’ll talk about ‘us’ when you come over tonight.”

  I nodded absently. It was Monday—Rachel’s night.

  “Are you sure you want to do this, babe?” she asked as I pulled onto Hollywood Boulevard.

  I nodded. “I’m sure. This might get everyone’s job back. If the strike carries on into the fall, the picket line will wane. If it never resolves there will never be lesbians again at GCSC.”

  “But it’s your reputation on the line. You have a lot to lose if this gets out.”

  “My political reputation is strong enough to take the hit.”

  “You’ll be called a turncoat, a traitor. They’ll kick you off the Strike Committee.”

  “I should be so lucky! I read through the whole lawsuit document last week. I found no other cracks in the door. This is the only way.”

  I parked Lionheart a half block north of Morris’s well-known loft address, 1428 N. McCadden Place. Multiple other cars provided good camouflage. Surveying the street, I was suddenly anxious; my skin broke out in a cold sweat. What if Morris was setting me up—just so he could publicly say, “Jeanne Córdova crossed the picket line”? What if he had Don Kilhefner or Lillene Fifield in there with him?

  I turned to Rachel. “Please, go and knock on his door and see if he’s alone. I’ll wait in the car. If he’s alone, wave at me to come. If you see or hear someone in the background, make up an excuse and come back to the car. Don’t go in. Tell Morris I’ve lost my flat brimmed leather hat and think I might have left it here last spring. You came to check if he’s found it.”

  “That’s lame.”

  “It is. But it gives us deniability; if you see others inside don’t cross his threshold. Tell him you’ll wait while he looks for my hat. Then walk back to me.”

  Rachel chuckled and took my hand. “It’s a good thing I love you.”

  We sat studying each other. If we were caught the strikers would call us scabs. In the wider L.A. community of dykes we’d be outcasts, open to public ridicule. Seeing her flushed face, I began to have second thoughts. Was she doing this more out of love for me than political commitment? She kissed me on the cheek and opened the car door, and walked toward the line of fire.

  Nestling back into Lionheart’s protective leather, I watched Rachel approach Morris’s building, command-central to L.A.’s most powerful gay leader. The post World War II construction boom that revitalized Hollywood had skipped over his two-story Craftsman bungalow. The outside of the structure looked like the wood had wrinkled from heat and rain exposure, and hadn’t been painted since the Depression. Friends of Morris’s, myself included, thought he was nuts to move into the dilapidated structure. When he’d first seen it, he was delighted with its “fabulous possibility!” The first floor had no walls, it was one huge room that could, and often did, seat seventy or eighty people at a meeting. The first floor’s ceiling was partial, only jutting out over the back one third of the house. It created a second floor room that looked like a loft bedroom. Movement people never went up to the second floor. That was Morris’s personal space.

  Although I couldn’t see them from the car, I knew that in back of his house Morris had two smaller but equally rickety structures that housed his vast collection of movement memorabilia. My mentor had visions of rehabilitating all three buildings and turning them into a museum of gay art. Today, they were shacks.

  I sighed, realizing that I missed the days when Morris and I were close. Both of us were political centrists dedicated to grassroots organizing and almost always on the same side. With him I’d been constantly challenged, always learning new ways to think, strategize, and win. But this time, we were on opposite sides and I knew Morris was dangerous. My mentor had an almost frightening power to both create and destroy. And he’d taught me, “Never make yourself an enemy of someone whose bottom line is lower than your own. You’ll always lose.” Yet, here I was, about to face off someone whose bottom line was so low I sometimes couldn’t see it. Life had been simpler when the straight world was our common enemy.

  I saw Rachel knock on his door. A few seconds later, it opened. They were talking. Suddenly she turned and waved me toward her. I bounced out of Lionheart. Striding up the rickety wood-planked porch, it suddenly came to me that my mentor had chosen the new Highland Avenue location for his beloved Gay Community Services Center because it was only a ninety-nine yard pass from his McCadden Place house. Morris could finally be in two places at once.

  The front door was ajar. Inside I heard Morris talking to Rachel, being his usual loquacious self. I inhaled and pushed the door all the way open.

  Morris rushed me. “Ah, dahhhling, Jeanne Córdoba!” he greeted, and bowed as though I was Columbus returned from the New World. He was the only person I knew who pronounced my last name in its original Spanish form.

  “Good afternoon, Morris,” I said and bowed slightly, wondering why my body language became formal when I was in his company.

  “Come in, come in, dear woman!” Morris waved his turquoise-studded hands with a flourish. “This house is always honored by your presence!”

  For a few seconds his florid greeting stupefied me. I was always initially ill at ease around Morris, as I had been around my father. Perhaps it took a few moments to sort out my contradictory feelings and put them away. Most of us thought of Morris Kight as ageless, sprung from the head of Zeus full-grown a
s the effeminate alter ego of Alexander the Great. He was something of a genius and had practically invented gay liberation in L.A. But he was just a fallible man. I needed to remember that.

  My replacement father ushered me in with a tilt of his head and a grand, gathering sweep of his arm, much the same gesture as my father had employed when welcoming important people into his home. Both men had been poor boys, born the same year in similar no-name Texas towns that neither liked to talk about. I inhaled the familiar smell of musty old papers—history mixed with contemporary sweat and food.

  “This is Rachel.” I stumbled for a late introduction, seeking to regain my center.

  “Yes, wonderful woman!” Morris boomed at Rachel. “Your new lover,” he continued expansively, but I did not miss that his voice lowered, or that he studied my face intently as he announced Rachel’s position in my life.

  Morris was also the J. Edgar Hoover of the gay movement. He knew everything about everyone. He knew each person’s espoused political views, and he knew what he or she actually did. He knew where every major gay activist slept at night and whose bed they got out of in the morning. Bedroom knowledge translated well into political power. Unlike Hoover, Morris didn’t have to keep files. He kept everything in his head.

  “I’m not here to talk about my personal life,” I interrupted, seeking to abort personal connection. “I’m here to talk about the strike.”

  “Yes, yes, of course you are.” He shooed Rachel and me toward the sitting area with its sagging flowered couches. No one knew what Morris Kight lived on. He’d never held a paying job, he didn’t have family money. When he did have money he’d order more political leaflets, not paint. We all assumed Morris drew disability checks having somehow convinced the government that he couldn’t work, “compensation for discrimination,” as some of us full time activists who were receiving government aid called it. Other than that, Morris appeared to live off the kindness of strangers.

  I stood next to his dilapidated sofas. “Before we sit down, Morris, we have to come to an understanding. Rachel and I were never here. We never met with you. Do you agree?”

  “Yes, yes,” he bowed again, “of course. That’s the way it must be. Come. Sit. We’ll talk. Forgive these papers everywhere. The Stonewall Democratic Club has been meeting here with members of L.A.’s City Council.”

  “I hear you’re angling to elect a pro-gay City Council President,” I replied, wanting to let Morris know I was plugged in about his most recent political endeavors.

  “Yes, yes, quite exciting. You really must join this new Democratic Club. We’re working nationally as well as locally. We need lesbians…especially of your caliber.”

  Why was Morris pressuring me to join his new political club, I wondered, feeling my face pinch with annoyance. He knew I couldn’t ignore the picket line and join any new organization he founded, much as I understood its importance and might well want to be a part of it. We both knew that Jerry Falwell’s evangelical movement was growing so fast in the United States that our movement had to come out of its city-state mentality and learn to fight on a national level. That meant this strike had to be solved so that lesbians could rejoin gay men for these battles.

  Rachel and I took our seats. I said, “Morris, I don’t think you should look forward to me or other lesbians joining your Democratic club right now. The timing sucks, don’t you agree?”

  Kight lowered his head and rubbed his forehead between his thumb and forefinger. “Yes, yes, I suppose so. Another time then.”

  Morris noticed that the beautiful, large Navajo tapestry hanging on the wall opposite had caught my eye. “It’s from Truchas, New Mexico,” he said. “Fabulous, isn’t it?” A smile spread across his face. “And how are your parents?” he continued. “Such a wonderful family,”

  My mental discipline flew out the front door for a moment. I felt flattered. Morris was a student of ethnicity and had asked me countless questions about my background. He seemed particularly fascinated with my father’s Spanish-Mexican roots. But then I remembered who I was talking to. Watching my godfather parry and thrust, I realized that greatness often bred dissemblance. Most of human intercourse is mundane, so geniuses had to affect performance to pretend that they fit in socially. But Morris would get no buy-in from me today.

  “Let’s talk about the Center’s family, or lack thereof, Morris. The strike has gone on for months. The Center is bleeding to death.”

  “It’s a flesh wound.” Morris waved as if he were swatting a fly. “Your lesbian community will bleed to death faster than the Center.”

  My backbone stiffened and my voice dropped into a dark place. So he wanted to play hardball. “If you men are so concerned with the health of the lesbian community, why did the Center reject the Westside Women’s Center’s offer to mediate?”

  “It was felt that the staff of the Women’s Center was not neutral.”

  “‘It was felt? That is pretty damn passive, Morris. You mean you decided to reject that offer.”

  “If there is going to be negotiating,” Morris spoke cautiously, “it needs be between the dissidents…I mean, the former employees…and the Center’s Board.”

  I hated Morris’s dismissive word, “dissidents”; it was his way of not recognizing the strike. I leaned forward. “If the Strike Steering Committee formally called the Center through our lawyer with an invitation to come to the negotiating table, would your side say yes?”

  Morris pressed his hands together. “Yes, I would say yes. What the Board would say, I don’t know.”

  “But, you could persuade them.”

  “The Board would say yes, if in fact I would bring them terms and agreements we could live with.”

  I lit a cigarette. Now came the devil and the details. “Terms such as what?”

  Morris looked me in the eye, “We would want the picket line dispensed with—”

  “That’s our strongest weapon,” I interrupted. “That’s not gonna happen until the ink is dry on an agreement.”

  “Then you’d have to stop the harassment, the tire slashing and the shoving of our staff through the picket line to the front door.”

  “That could happen as soon as there is an agreement to talk,” I said. “The Center would have to agree to stop trying to get a legal injunction against the line.”

  “Agreed, only as long as talks are going on,” Morris said. “But all of you have to stop sending letters to our funding agencies.”

  “We’d agree to that if talks were going forward in good faith.” It was time to move the demands to stage two. “The Center would have to stop contesting our right to unemployment checks.”

  Morris drew a sharp breath. “If we did that, we’d be admitting guilt in the wrongful termination.”

  “Then, as soon as we reach a settlement. You’d have to let our people get those checks.”

  “Agreed.” Morris’s eyes flashed. “Then, you dissidents would have to agree in writing that there would be no further treasonous attempts to take more programs out of the Center.”

  I stood suddenly and began to pace. For a moment, I’d seen the contorted face of my father in Morris’s expression—a demand that I give in to his authority. As I turned back to face him, I saw him run his jeweled fingers through his hair. The femininity of the gesture erased my father’s countenance. Unlike Dad, Morris had never tried to humiliate me personally.

  The mutiny of the APW was one of the few victories of the strike. I chose my words carefully. “What’s done is done Morris. We won’t go any further down this path. And that was not treason.”

  Morris’s eyes narrowed. “That was our largest grant. The Center needed that funding.”

  Dwelling on this bitter pill was not putting Morris in the frame of mind to make other concessions. “Speaking of money, Morris, how much are you willing to offer in order for us to accept an out of court settlement?”

  Morris gasped and pointed a ringed hand toward the rotted timbers of his roof. “We have no
money! Not since this vile and violent picket line.”

  I sat down. Money could be a deal breaker. Despite my objections, the struggle to reform had become defined as a “strike”—not a gay versus feminist issue. Compensation was a central topic at the strike meetings. “The Center would have to pay back wages, as is the norm in strike settlements, and would have to pay some kind of severance to those who chose not to return.”

  “Impossible!”

  “Perhaps the Board will have to go sell themselves on Selma,” I quipped, referring to Hollywood’s male hustler street. “A public commitment of money has to be the backbone of the settlement. Morris, you did fire us! Did you think you could get away with firing eleven people just because you want to? This is not some agitprop like making Alpine County a gay state! GCSC is not your own little back pocket group of buddies. You have to take legal responsibility for that. There’s no other way to make it up to people.”

  “We have done nothing to you people that requires compensation!”

  “There has to be some token amount offered.”

  “GCSC is barely scraping by. I’m sure you know that.”

  Morris harangued me about the Center’s finances, or lack thereof, for the next twenty minutes. His information only confirmed my on-the-street calculations. I’d made it my business to know what donations were coming into GCSC. The picket line had destroyed what little reserves they had. Morris wasn’t lying. They had no money. As he talked, I pondered. Personally, I thought it was wrong to demand retribution money from a gay institution—no matter what the reason. It was a charity, for God’s sake. But I couldn’t concede without at least token payment. June and the others wanted their pound of flesh.

  Stalling for time, I lit another cig. Morris, I knew, had begun to cultivate a few rich closet-case gay men in town. These patrons would donate to see this strike disappear. “Let’s say, Morris, hypothetically, that both sides agree to a settlement sum of X dollars. The Center could start off by low-balling us; show us some records that reflect the nothing you have. The strikers would lower their demand. Then, GCSC agrees to the lower sum of Y but stipulates that because the Center receives donations over time, you need to pay down the sum over time. A long time. Like, five years. That way the Center can absorb the cost, without crippling financial damage in the here and now. And to the strikers, a symbolic justice will appear to have been served.”