by Fay Jacobs
I was over 30 and not long out of the closet. An acquaintance mentioned a women’s dance in Baltimore at the Glass Pavilion at Johns Hopkins University. My vintage ’82 internalized homophobia led me to ask “What moron books a gay dance in a glass room?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to go.
Fear of flaunting wasn’t the only thing that could have kept me home that night. Despite 16 years in D.C., Baltimore remained a mystery. I needed a tour guide. Moreover, it was unseasonably freezing out. I still don’t know what made me grab my Rand McNally and mittens, and head North.
Meanwhile, Bonnie might not have made it there either. Her date, a horsewoman, was riding the afternoon hunt, and asked Bonnie to meet her at Hopkins. Did Bonnie really want to go by herself? It could have gone either way.
The dance started at 9 and, after riding my own frenzied hunt to Baltimore, I arrived at a pathologically early 9:01. Yes, the ballroom was glass. Purple balloons and lesbians were visible from the parking lot. I started to get the vapors.
Inside the nearly empty hall, I took one good earful of the all-woman “new age” band tuning up and almost fled. Women began arriving, mostly in pairs. Finally, I saw the couple that lured me there. With no energy for games, I cut to the chase.
“Know any singles here?”
My friends exchanged glances and pointed across the room to Bonnie.
“I’m looking for somebody who isn’t screwed up,” I said.
They still pointed to Bonnie—an attractive, nicely dressed woman eyeing the door.
I marched over to introduce myself, but sadly I have no memory of the conversation. The sounds of the band tuning up turned out to be the actual new age women’s music and it was deafeningly awful.
We tried to dance, but after two tortured minutes without a detectable beat, I hollered the quintessential “Let’s go someplace where we can talk” and we fled to the coat check. With that the horsewoman arrived, minus fox and hounds, but standing an aggressive six feet tall. I started to sweat.
“We’re just leaving,” Bonnie said, slightly apologetically. To her credit, the mistress of the hunt shrugged and said, “I should have known better than to leave somebody as good-looking as you here by yourself.” I couldn’t have agreed more.
So we headed to Mitchell’s, an infamous Baltimore women’s bar. Against tradition, March was going out like the same lion it was when it roared in. Wind sent twigs, leaves and city trash swirling around Bonnie’s teeny Chevette as we drove past Baltimore Harbor and into Little Italy. We hit every traffic light on yellow, with Bonnie hollering “catch you next time” as we sailed through. By the fifth amber light it was a duet.
The bar was dark, smoky and as noisy as the dance, only we recognized the music. After two hours of Bad Girls, I Will Survive and Gloria we retreated to the car and reversed directions. “Catch you next time” we shouted, as ambers faded to red.
Back at Hopkins, we huddled in the ‘Vette (we wished), finally speaking below a scream and started discovering our differences. Bonnie was into softball and camping; the only diamonds I saw were at Bloomingdales. As for camping, I refused to sleep anyplace with turf between my bed and bath. My accent screamed Noo Yawk; Miss Baltimore said, “I love gewin’ downy ocean, dewnt yew?” It took me ten minutes to figure out she meant a trip to the beach.
I’d never had a soft shell crab; she’d never had a knish. She owned a dental lab; I was dental-phobic. I directed plays; she’d seen Hello, Dolly once. Bonnie built things and wired whole buildings; I couldn’t stop my new VCR from flashing 12:00.
It got worse and we just laughed. Me: obsessively early; She: generally late; my Manhattan clan loved museums, contemporary furniture and worked in advertising; her people hailed from the Virginia hills, decorated early American, and farmed. She was D.A.R. eligible, I was Ellis Island. And forget about religion.
Amid howling winds in the deserted parking lot, opposites attracted. So we exchanged numbers and promised to call. By early April we were an item. By the following November we’d bought a home together.
Somehow, our different lives meshed, as we practiced the high art of compromise. I direct shows and Bonnie does tech. We get everywhere exactly on time, rushing Bonnie and panicking Fay. She gets me to the dentist by heading toward the outlets, then diverting. And I got her to trade camping for boating—it still involved ice coolers and bug spray, but there’s carpet between berth and bath.
And every December we try not to burn down the Christmas tree with the Hanukkah candles. Sure, we occasionally scream “Princess!!!” or “Hillbilly!!!” at each other, but overall it works out very well.
And I have only one tiny regret. Collectibles.
Way back in 1983 I bought a Christmas ornament with a cute little seal on it because my mate loves seals. I was too stupid to notice the phrase “Second in a Series” on the box. In 1985, I bought a similar “Frosty Friend” with a penguin on it. To my horror, I realized I was collecting and felt compelled to buy the “collectible” every year from then on, waiting and praying for the words “Last in a Series” to appear. So far, no dice. I must have been AWOL in ‘96 and ‘98, because somehow I missed those.
Well, with our anniversary coming up, I wondered how I could round out my set, since Frosty Friends Collectibles (phony marketing ploy that it is) began production the year Bonnie and I met. So a friend introduced me to eBay. When I looked online for my missing ornaments, I was flabbergasted. Hundreds of people were embroiled in chaotic bidding wars for those hunks of Hallmark plastic. Get a grip, folks. These aren’t DaVinci.
According to the descriptions (“Original box, never opened, mint condition, blah, blah”) the cardboard packing is worth as much as the plastic geegaws. Just before last Christmas, the ’82 and ’84 editions were in auction battles topping $200 with “just 12 minutes to go!” I may be nostalgic, but I’m not nuts.
Then, after Christmas, we were able to acquire the late ‘90s editions for $27 and $29 each. It was outrageous for cheesy plastic snow scenes and arctic animals, but also somehow satisfying. In February, a friend found the ‘84 Frosty Friend (with a missing box, alas) for just over $40 and I bit—leaving only the elusive 1982 ornament out of my grasp.
So that’s it. Bonnie and I are celebrating twenty great years. We hope to make it legal whenever we actually get our civil rights, meaning we’ll be lucky to have the ceremony at the nursing home.
And while tomorrow we celebrate, tonight I have to check out eBay. God knows, after 20 years, Bonnie and I have everything we need, but a cheap ‘82 Frosty Friend would be lovely.
Happy Anniversary, Bon. As I write, the ’82 hunk of junk is up to $337.50 and I ain’t goin’ there. And if I ever again even glance at something that could possibly become a collectible, shoot me.
April 2002
BULLIE FOR YOU
Texas should change its slogan from Lone Star State toWaste Not, Want Not.
I dragged Bonnie along to Ft. Worth recently for a conference I attended. We arrived in Cowtown (its nickname) to find 100,000 beer swilling, boot wearing, silver belt-buckle clad cowboys in full Nascar regalia on the street in the center of town. It was race weekend. I could have just stayed in Delaware.
After checking in at our hotel—decorated with lone star logos on the carpets, bedspreads, sheets, soaps, beer and butter—we headed out to a bar that had saddles for barstools, to drink Buffalo Butt Beer under an actual fuzzy buffalo butt on the wall.
We escaped to the street, where not only isn’t it against the law to walk around with that proverbial “open container,” it’s encouraged. Outdoor vendors hawk chewing tobacco samples. You could just spit. And people do. Besides, where I come from leather and Levi-clad cowboys strutting their stuff and swaggering into a bar are going to one of our own, not some Honky Tonk to pick up girls with big hair. Texas is weird.
OD’d on liquored up guys in stupid hats, we hopped a bus to the hotel. Two Willy Nelsons, a mean-looking tattooed dude, and a straggly-haired woman devoid of t
eeth shared the ride. “You gals sisters?” asked the toothless one. The eyes of Texas were upon us, so we looked at each other and, in unison, said, “Yup.”
By the time we saw the Marriott again we were in lesbian withdrawal and took to the Multiplex to see Kissing Jessica Stein. It’s about two single gals, fed up with the men they’re dating, who decide to explore alternatives. It had the potential to be hugely insulting and terrible, but was instead refreshingly honest, hilarious and plausible. (Hooray!)
But the fact remains we were in Texas in an empty theatre except for a trio of 14-year-old girls, a straight middle-aged couple (the higher the hair, the closer to heaven), a blatantly heterosexual young couple flaunting it in public, and two lone women on opposite sides of the theatre who probably should have been sitting together. I prepared for jeering.
Well dang it, if everyone didn’t respond respectfully and enthusiastically, improving my opinion of Texas. After all, Molly Ivins and Ann Richards live there, too.
The next day Bonnie and I hit the Stockyards area with its faux General Stores filled with Georgia O’Keefe animal skulls, expensive cowboy hats, and every kind of tooled leather boot imaginable. There was also the unimaginable, like a change purse made from a bull scrotum (Waste not, want not).
I bought this “Saco de Toro” or Bullie (“Congratulations, you are the proud owner of an original Bullie—an actual scrotum of the proud, virile beast that once roamed the range and….”) for a friend who’d warned me of such Texas oddities.
Next, we waited along the street with the rest of the gullible touristas for the promised “afternoon cattle drive along the actual site of the Chisholm Trail!” I didn’t expect Clint Eastwood and a thundering herd, but what I got was three pathetic geezers in chaps on old grey mares helping twelve geriatric longhorns wobble down the street.
Frankly, the cattle drivers were extraneous. The bulls were self-propelled. None of the bulls wanted another cow’s long horns anywhere near their saco de toros, so they just kept moving.
All this machismo made us hungry, so we headed for our choice of anything we wanted for dinner - as long as it was meat. Apparently pasta, asian food or vegetables other than spuds don’t exist there. We tried Risky’s Barbecue, but knew not how risky.
After ordering Steak and Calf Fries for Two, the waiter asked, “What kind of potato do you want with that?”
This confused me. “I just ordered calf fries,” I said.
“You don’t know what those are, do you?” the waiter said, knowingly.
“No, I guess I don’t,” I responded.
“Cattle nuts.”
Now there’s no way to receive this news graciously. Suddenly I was in Survivor: Texas. My jaw dropped and I muttered, “Waste not, want not,” which the waiter took to mean bring ‘em on. Our unfortunate experience proves that after enough Buffalo Butt Beer, and with enough batter on the fried jewels, it’s possible to take a tiny taste of just about anything.
We rinsed our mouths out with ice cream and headed for the Cowtown Rodeo. Now I admit to a long-held desire to see a rodeo. It stems from my repressed childhood when, like lots of other women of my persuasion, I ran around with plastic six guns and a Roy Rogers lunch box—no matter how much my parents wanted me to emulate Dale Evans instead. So forty-five years later I’m at a rodeo.
It started badly. One of the horses in the arena waited until the guest artist warbling the National Anthem got to “so gallantly streaming” and peed like the racehorse he was.
I’d heard that animal rights advocates hate rodeo culture and I saw why. It was fun watching violently bucking broncos and bulls bounce cowboys into the dirt until I asked Bonnie what motivates the animals to behave so badly. Turns out the poor bastards have some kind of cinch around their privates until they manage to buck it and the rider off.
No wonder they’re cranky. Can you believe it, we’re talking about scrotums again. Although I don’t know why I was so upset about the bull’s bullie being cinched, when I’d just sampled his cousin’s nuts at supper. I was beginning to despise Texas.
It must be said, though, that while the cowboys tortured their mounts, the cowgirls, dressed in silky outfits with fringe, just raced horses around barrels. Girls are so sensible.
We had two more days of seminars and sights, visiting Billy Bob’s—the World’s Largest Honky Tonk, the Ft. Worth Woman’s Club, where until 1999 there was a deed restriction against women wearing pants, and the Buckboard Museum. Okay, there were also some fabulous fajitas.
On our last night in town, as we faced yet another slab of USDA Prime, our waiter surreptitiously leaned over and whispered, “Are you family?” We gave the secret nod and he became our best buddy. When settling the bill, in addition to his 20 percent, I gave him another tip: “Lose Texas, come to Rehoboth.”
In a bullie-for-you epilogue, back at our Rehoboth ranch Bonnie went to show somebody our Bullie purse purchase. She headed to the den to retrieve it, returning ashen faced, trying not to scream with laughter. “What, What??!!” I begged, as she howled until she couldn’t breathe.
It turns out that treating our Schnauzers to those little freeze-dried pigs ears and hoofs from the pet store resulted in their having a taste for, um…organic treats. Git along little doggie! There was nothing left of the Bullie but the tag. Like I said…Waste not, want not.
Nuts.
May 2002
ADVENTURES IN LIVESTOCK, FILM AT 11
No, I’m not writing about cattle parts again.
Living in Rehoboth is a trip. Not a road trip, like I used to take every weekend before I moved here, but a 1960s vernacular “what a trip, man” kind of trip. As a three-year local, I feel like I’ve never lived anywhere else. Okay, natives, I hear you sneering.
But much as I love my adopted hometown, there’s weird stuff here—like last night’s lead story on the 11 p.m. news: “Firefighters work together to save a horse caught in a chicken-house fire in Pittstown.”
Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for the horse. But they never got to the hard-hitting facts, like what the horse was doing in the chicken coop in the first place, or why it was news that the Pittsville firefighters worked together. Oh yeah, the second story of the night was “Israel responds to suicide bombing with historic vote and movement of troops….” Priorities????
Of course, I’ve come to love the Farm Animal of the Day segment on Good Morning Delmarva. Yesterday it was a hog named Helen, who I think got a pizza for the honor.
Then there’s the weather. It’s spooky to see the crawl at the bottom of the TV screen warning of an impending twister. Last week they actually told folks in Ocean City to head for a basement or interior room. While O.C. and R.B. are miles apart culturally, we’re really not all that far away as the cows fly. Come to think of it, I’d like the weather a lot better if Helen Hunt came here to track tornadoes.
As often as our weathercasters are wrong, every time there’s a tornado warning anywhere on Delmarva I head for the closet, if you’ll excuse the expression. But on the up side, last Wednesday meteorologist Tammy warned of thick fog and torrential downpours, advising us to allow extra time to get to work.
I added a minute. For twenty years I commuted an hour each way. Now, when there’s traffic, it takes 11 minutes. Off-peak, it’s five. So I just don’t get our friends in the neighboring town of Lewes saying “you’re going all the way into Rehoboth for dinner?” That would be a five to seven minute ride.
And it works both ways. People look at me like I’ve got two heads if I announce I’m off to Lewes for a 5 p.m. art opening. “But you’ll never get back,” they say. What am I, Ernest Shackleton leaving for Antarctica? Not to worry. I have lead dogs.
There are other weirdities. One day at my office I heard a rhythmic screeching sound, like somebody sawing through a metal dumpster. It got louder and louder and I finally looked up to see a pair of seagulls having sex on the roof of the Convention Center. When it quieted down I expected to see one of them smokin
g a cigarette.
The weird thing is working in a town quiet enough for this kind of behavior to be audible. I’m sure big city pigeons are just as busy propagating the species, but their love-making is drowned out by screeching taxi cabs. Around here, the honks are just short beeps by people waving at every third car or pedestrian because it’s somebody they know.
And I devour the local papers—especially the published lists of marriage licenses, building permits, and divorces. From my personal experience with home improvement, I think the three lists are correlated. People get married, they try to renovate a bathroom and, if they are not skilled in communication and first aid, pfffft, they move to the divorce column.
Along with all the weird things I love about Rehoboth life, I still occasionally find a need for consciousness-raising.
I joined Weight Watchers after Christmas, along with tons (literally) of other folks stuffed with excess yams. The program works; I’m a big fan. But that’s the problem, I want to be a smaller fan.
But let’s face it. Weight Watcher meetings are not our kind of girls’ nights out. We venture out of cloistered Rehoboth into a world of Sussex County moms, grand-moms, young marrieds and singles—heterosexual almost one and all. It’s culture shock.
The half-dozen lesbians in the room huddle in one row, each of us experiencing the oddity of minority status again. At the first few meetings, the instructor punctuated her discussion with phrases like “now girls, when you go home to your husbands…,”
or “ladies, your husbands will love this recipe, too,” or, my personal favorite, the question “Who’s husband lets her….”