CATWOMAN
Michael Halfhill
All rights reserved @ 2012*
When I ran away from home it wasn’t from a tyrannical household but rather from a tyranny of soul. I was twenty-three, a little long-in-the-tooth for escapism. I had traveled with my family as an army brat in a dozen states and had earned my Bachelor of Arts degree from a small Vermont College. By all accounts, I should have been a person with some life experience. The trouble was I spent the greater part of my adolescent and early adult years trying to sort out just who I was, and what I wanted to be. That’s not to be confused with what I thought I should do to earn my way in this world, but rather how I wanted the world to view me. You see, I was rather naïve. At the time I was sure the world was looking at me as intently as I was looking at it.
I decided that I needed to get away from the people I knew and head out to see what my life would be like on my own. I got my hair cropped in a boyish bob so I’d look more like a lesbian. At the time, what I knew about lesbians and how they looked would have echoed in one of my mother’s thimbles. I knew I was attracted to women in a sexual way, but I had no idea how to get them attracted to me. I thought if I looked like a guy, girls would leap at me with desire burning in their eyes. I laugh about it now but at the time this was serious stuff! I was determined to escape the sameness of my life as I had lived it, and become a writer of esoteric poetry. Ever since I read that Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote were habitués of Provincetown, Massachusetts, I dreamed of joining them in dim coffeehouses where we would share our thoughts. I imagined myself surrounded by these greats as I awed them with my deep understanding of tortured hearts.
And so on hot June day in 1979 I flew the coop. I took one hundred dollars, an army duffel bag stuffed with jeans, some flannel shirts, a portable typewriter and my entire jazz record collection—it was vinyl in those days. I slung the GI luggage over my shoulder, staggered a few steps and jettisoned half of my treasure on the bedroom floor.
I set off for Provincetown mid-morning. In hindsight, I suppose I was sort of like Christopher Columbus. I didn’t have much money. I didn’t know how I was going to get to my destination and I certainly didn’t know what I would find when I arrived. Still, I had high hopes that with nurturing, the why, what, how and who of Alexandra would emerge like a butterfly in the buoyant atmosphere of that fabled hamlet.
Alexandra. That’s my name. You’ll have to be patient with me. All this was a long time ago and the revels of memory sometimes make too much noise, but I’ll try to be coherent.
1979 was a very different time than today. People still hitched rides with strangers. Safe sex meant you had a padded dashboard in your car. Violence for pleasure was still the pastime of psychopaths. The lunatic fringe had yet to become so much apart of our nation’s tablecloth. A hundred dollars didn’t get you much, even in 1979, so I decided to try my hand at hitchhiking. How butch can you get! I headed north from my home city of Wilmington, Delaware toward Philadelphia. Excitement failed to mask the rebellion my aching muscles were mounting with each step. I was getting weary and I began to look for a place to rest. Suddenly the sound of a car slowing down on the gravel shoulder caused my heart to jump. I was daydreaming as usual. The driver eased his car up to me. His question was direct.
“Where are you headed?”
“Actually I’m going to Provincetown but I’d be happy for any distance you can give.”
“Will Boston do?” he asked innocently.
Boston! I could have kissed him; more if it came to that. It didn’t, so my new lesbian persona remained intact. I judged the man to be forty something. He had that East Coast preppie look, with the typical ‘70s haircut, just long enough to be trendy but short enough to be accepted in the boardrooms of American industry. His name was Mark Benson. He looked at ease, as if picking women off of highways was a natural thing for him to do.
Throughout the five-hour drive to Boston we chatted about our lives. I of course was bursting with the promise of a recently acknowledged sexuality. I blabbed on and on about my self-discovery until he asked me to please change the subject.
“It’s not that I’m uncomfortable with you,” he said. “It’s just that I can’t relate to it, and frankly I’m getting bored with the topic.”
Boy was I hot! How dare anybody not hang on every cathartic revelation! In hindsight the guy couldn’t help it. Oprah Winfrey had yet to burst on to the American scene with all the a la mode forthrightness we have come to expect from one another. But at the time I simply couldn’t understand that. I was using all the buzzwords that would soon become the patois of pathos so often used by self-help gurus. Awareness, personal demons, acceptance, acknowledgement, and self-discovery peppered my conversation. With such stimulating images, how could he be bored?
“Well if I’m boring you I can get out right here,” I said hotly.
“Okay, Okay, you’re not boring me… It’s just I’ve heard enough about your sex life… how about those Phillies?”
“The Phillies? You want to talk about baseball?” I asked incredulously.
“Yeah… why not?”
“You think that just because I’m a lesbian I should know about baseball.”
“No,” he said. “I thought that since you’re from this area you might have seen the yesterday’s game.”
“Okay,” I said. “What did you think of Pete Rose’s performance? Personally, I thought he could have done a whole lot better. I know he bats left-handed, but really now, he’s supposed to be so great. Personally, I don’t see it! If Nino Espinosa hadn’t pitched a near perfect game, they could have kissed the league goodbye for the season!”
We rode on for a few minutes in tense silence.
Finally, he asked. “So, do you have a girlfriend?”
We got to Boston in the early morning hours. Mark dropped me off at the Greyhound bus station after extracting a promise that I would abandon my hitchhiking ways for the safety and relative comfort of a Scenic Cruiser.
By afternoon I was in Provincetown, the gay capital of the east coast! The town lies on a strip of land that juts out into the deep Atlantic, its thin, sandy beach challenging the ocean’s mighty waves with insolent confidence. Huge grassy dunes shoulder the wind away from the frail houses that ring the shores. It was a humid June day. The bus stop is on an elevated patch of concrete covered ground overlooking the main square. I suppose I expected a Hollywood film vista. You know—something with splendid Camelot slightly out of focus and glowing in the distance. All sound would be muted and the people would move in slow motion so as to be seen and absorbed with awe and wonder. What greeted my eyes was not a movie set. Some people would have said it looked quaint. To me it looked frumpy.
“I hope this isn’t a taste of things to come,” I muttered.
I needed a place to stay. Isolated places like this are expensive to live in and since my funds were meager to say the least, I had to get a job, pronto. The manager of a women’s bed and breakfast called the Wayfarer said I could work for bed and board with evenings off. Board, as it turned out, was coffee and a muffin at sunrise.
“Great!” I said. “When do I start?”
Things were looking up. My first day as a maid went well and everyone was friendly. I wondered if I would meet anybody. Half of me was dying to fall in love. The other half was getting terribly homesick, and I’d been here only one day! What had I gotten myself into?
That first day the temperature shot to ninety degrees but as the hours passed, the salt laden air had cooled to a comfortable level. After a late meal, I wandered around finally settling on a bench near the town square. My sense of isolation, aloneness if you will, was beginning sink in. Across the narrow tree-lined street was a small theater called The Starlight. The doors were open wide to let in the night breeze. I could hear music and occasional laughter. I envied the camaraderie strangers feel in closed spaces like theaters or tour busses. I wondered how the paying audience felt about non-paying eavesdroppers enjoying the entertainment from the sidewalk. The passersby tried not to be conspicuous as they slowed to catch a glimpse of the show. It was just after ten o’clock when the second act began. A woman came out from the theater, crossed the street and sat down beside me. She pulled out a pack of Virginia Slims cigarettes and offered me one. I shook a no thank you.
The woman said she was the main act at the Starlight and I believed her. She was covered in a tight leopard skin leotard that looked more like a tattoo than a garment. The same fabric covered her stiletto-heeled boots. Only the exposed face and hands pronounced her human. Her voice, a combination purr and growl, was soft and seductive like a rare and dangerous panther that you want to pet even though you’re afraid you’ll be eaten. Her tawny skin glowed in the soft streetlight. Bending to a row of summer flowers where the soil had been scuffed up, she reached out, smoothing the depressions left by careless feet. The Catwoman looked at me with curiosity. Her eyes glowed. Were they really yellow or was it the street lamp’s pale reflection?
She noticed I had been crying. She reached out to stroke my cheek with the back of her hand and asked if she could help. I told her my name. She smiled, nodding for me to continue. My tale of confusion, disappointment and hope ran out in a jumble, like marbles spilling from a child’s pockets. She listened patiently, commenting and asking questions. Finally, she told me what I needed to hear. My life is mine and that it would be what I made of it no matter whom I chose to include. Ultimately I have the choices, and ultimately I would live with them.
Her voice purred close to my ear. “You are the only person who can make peace with yourself. That will happen when you live the life you feel comfortable with and not the one that others map for you.
“A planned existence is endured—but never lived,” she said wisely.
I looked at her, my eyes pleading for more affirmation that I was okay after all.
“Alexandra, you won’t be happy as long as you live as a mirrored copy of others with their hopes and dreams. When most people say they only want you to be happy, they really mean they want you to live as they live so that they can feel comfortable when you’re around them. It’s their happiness they want to preserve.”
I nodded my understanding.
“You look familiar to me,” I said. “Are you famous? I seem to remember something. I’m sorry… I don’t recognize you.”
“Famous?” She laughed. “Notorious is more like it. You see was blackballed in the American entertainment business because I spoke out about against our involvement in the Viet Nam War. That was ten years ago, and Honey, you don’t know what power is until you cross it. I had been asked by the First Lady to speak at a women’s forum on current issues. She wanted to talk about beautifying America by planting azalea bushes in front of junkyards. I wanted to talk about the war. There wasn’t a single news reporter in the room but two hours after I left the White House, I found I could no longer work in the United States of America—my home—my, land of the free.”
Catwoman shook her head. “It was that fast and that simple. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars, end of the game.”
She sighed and looked away. “I don’t know what fame is anymore.”
“But this is the United States. You’re working here, aren’t you?” I asked, a little confused.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m working here but that’s because the theater owner knows some big shot in the FBI who happens to be gay. He won’t name him, but I have a good idea who it is. I won’t be bothered here, thank goodness.”
The Catwoman cocked her head and smiled. “I love gay people. They’re brave. Know what I mean? Everyone wants to be loved and on that score I’m blessed, especially here. And then there’s the money. I have to work, and this is where the work is—for now. I work in Europe, France mainly, but believe me, as trite as it sounds, there really is no place like home. And, nothing remains the same forever. Things will change.”
Catwoman glanced at the clock imbedded in the tower over the town hall.
“Look,” she said. “I have to get back to finish my routine. You take care now.”
She patted my hand, crushed out the cigarette she had lit but hadn’t smoked, and walked across the street—back into the spotlight.
I remained in P-town for a few more weeks, continuing my maid work. I didn’t meet anyone to love or be loved by. I never saw the Catwoman again. It wasn’t until years later when I saw Eartha Kitt on the TV show Batman that I realized who she was.
I often wish I could tell her how much she helped me. I’m fifty-five now and I still get confused when life seems to be less like a bowl of cherries and more like a crock of something else I’d rather not discuss. It seems a shame that we don’t get detailed charts to success or survival, or even happiness. I don’t believe a gay life is more difficult than any other to live. The hard part is remembering that, just as Catwoman observed, everyone must make choices and then be happy with them.
* No part of this story may be reproduced by any means without the written permission of the author. Also, Catwoman is trademarked by DC Comics. The author claims no rights or profits from the name.
