Fences

FENCES

Michael Halfhill

All Rights Reserved © 2013 by Michael Halfhill

I don’t like fences. When I was a boy fences didn’t exist in my world. Birds, squirrels, bunnies, cats, and especially dogs went where they pleased. My dog’s name was Poochie. When school began each year I’d leave Poochie behind not thinking he might go away. Of course he always did. Looking back, I seemed to have had a different dog every spring, and each was of the free spirit variety, and I tagged them all with the same name—Poochie. When Poochie wasn’t wading in the treacherous Kanawha River, he was close by me seeking nothing more than a pat on the head, or an ear scratched. Like all the dogs in that town, Poochie was the offspring of some itinerant curbstone Casanova—no fancy bloodlines for me! From morning to dusk my Poochie and I would explore the narrow band of valley floor that separated the muddy Kanawha River from the green -forested mountains that towered over the little town where I grew up.

Every Sunday, Poochie would sit outside the church door yelping, and whining his belief in the absurdity of religion. An hour lost in prayer was a terrible waste when compared to frolicking in a place that had no fences. For a young boy, it was a broad world, a place where there were no fences.

I’m all grown up now. I live far away from the muddy Kanawha River and those green mountains, in a place that was once full of meadows and woods sliced open with thin lanes of shiny macadam.  When a deer died it was because it was hunting season.

Nowadays, big new houses that few can afford to furnish fill the meadows. Roads are crowded with telephone toting drivers, and the deer find their natural death beneath the wheels of oversized vehicles. Fences divide the ground with a surveyor’s precision and the world is hemmed in and narrow.

My dogs are elegant, purebred canines now. I’ve given them quirky names that make people smile. I have a fence to keep them penned up so they won’t run away when the weather gets cold and school children huddle together in the early morning mists.

I miss Poochie. I miss the time when there were no fences, and the world was broad.

How To Be A Gentleman

How To Be A Gentleman

How To Be A Gentleman: A Timely Guide to Timeless Manners



Print Length: 240 pages
Publisher: Thomas Melson; Rev Exp edition (April 8,2008)
Language: English

          Formats: Hard copy E-book              

           ISBN-10: 1401604730

           ISBN-13: 978-1401604738

             How does one become not just a man, but also a gentleman? Most men, myself included, generally fall into three classes; those who are gentlemen, those who think being a gentleman is a good thing, and those who regard gentlemen as relics from an antique age, like the ones portrayed on Masterpiece Theater. We live in an age where a house is not a home unless it has what is often referred to as, a ‘man cave’. The word cave says it all. Men, it’s time to send that leopard skin loincloth to the Goodwill. Put the baseball cap that hides your bald spot on the peg behind the bedroom door. Buy sandals, if you must go sockless, and leave the flip-flops in the shower stall where they belong. In short, step away from the tree and become a gentleman. But wearing pants that fit, or shoes that don’t make slapping noises when you walk down the street doesn’t make a gentleman—these make a neater, sexier looking guy. Gentlemen are very sexy, not only because they know what to wear, and wear it well, but also because they behave like guys who genuinely care about the other people around them. Someone once described a gentleman as one who is kind to others, even if they can be of no use to him. It may be true that all relationships are symbiotic, but a lack of symbiosis is never a reason to ignore the feelings of others.

And so now I come to this little book. How To Be A Gentleman: A Contemporary Guide to Common Courtesy by John Bridges, is a must read for any man, and the women and men who love him.  I recommend this guide be kept at hand at all times. Read it often. There are ten short chapters in this book. They deal with everything from checkout counter courtesy at the super market, to how to eat caviar when dining at the White House. My partner Peter, knowing how much I love caviar and how often I dine at the White House, gave me How To Be A Gentleman: A Contemporary Guide to Common Courtesy as a gift. The inscription dedicated to me on the flyleaf read, ‘Not because you need it, but because you can appreciate it (and it’s funny)’. Relieved, I scanned the book’s contents page. The first chapter immediately caught my eye because it deals with real life. Eagerly, I read its advice. ‘A gentleman never eats his lunch while he is behind the wheel of a vehicle.’ One would assume this is obvious, but apparently not.

This one is especially timely. ‘A gentleman does not assume it is the other person’s responsibility to provide the condoms.’ Bridges also says, ‘If a gentleman eats in bed, he always changes the sheets.’ Don’t even go there! J

How about, ‘A gentleman never adjusts his crotch in public.’ It’s true. One should never draw attention to one’s own shortcomings.

A gentleman never wears a hat, or cap while dining indoors.

A gentleman always waits for a woman to offer her hand before shaking hands. If she doesn’t offer, he doesn’t shake.

I’ll leave off here with a few more thoughts from John Bridges. ‘A gentleman never drinks a cocktail through a straw.

—A Gentleman does not turn down invitations. He never waits for something better to turn up.

—When a gentleman feels the urge to color his mustache, he shaves it off.

—A gentleman does not brag.’

And lastly, ‘In the morning a gentleman always offers to get up and make the coffee.’

For me, the take away is this word in the title—Courtesy, which is the ritual where a gentleman avoids making himself the center of attention at the expense of others.

So my dears, buy this book, read it, and most importantly, employ its advice. It couldn’t hurt. 

The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals

The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals
by Richard Plant

• ISBN-13: 9780805006001
• Publisher: Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
• Publication date: 1988
• Language: English
• Pages: 272
• Paperback Only

Most people have heard of the infamous Nazi era Nuremberg Laws of 1935, even today, 78 years after the fact. Many of us, having seen the movie, Judgment At Nuremberg, featuring a grim and righteous Spencer Tracy as the chief judge, have come to believe that, after the crushing defeat of Germany and Nazism, those laws were repudiated and repealed.  Many of us, perhaps most of us, are unaware that paragraph 175 held within the Nuremberg Laws, criminalizing and setting out penalties for simply being homosexual, were still on the books, and being enforced until its repeal in 1969. So why was this particular law left unaltered after the world had rid itself of ‘Herr Hitler and his gang of desperados’*? Richard Plant in The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals, explains it thus. ‘One can only conclude that, for most historians, there was, and still is a taboo [exploring male / male sexuality], in effect. The territory of gay history is strewn with such taboos. This book seeks to end the silence toward the fate of homosexuals under the Third Reich.’

Richard Plant eluded being ensnared in the maw of the Gestapo; accidentally it seems, by enrolling as a student in neutral Switzerland. Many of his gay friends and acquaintances were not so fortunate. Plant’s personal reminiscences are drawn from letters and cards he received from Germany during the war, as well as his detailing his quest for the truth at the war's end. For the most part, the bulk of The Pink Triangle does not delve into the atrocities meted out, and meticulously documented by the men of the swastika. Rather, Plant explores the paradox of the fascination and simultaneous revulsion for gays, felt by the chief of the Gestapo—Heinrich Himmler. More than Hitler, Himmler was the driver of hatred against gay men, one hundred thousand of whom were arrested. Of those, five to fifteen thousand ended their lives in unspeakable terror at the hands of their Nazi oppressors.

This book’s most gripping parts are Plant’s prologue (prelude) and the epilogue, which is his personal first hand account of his life, during and after the war. These, I found fascinating  and at the same time, heart rending.

Plant leaves off with this observation, ‘Today, hindsight enables historians more clearly to assess the successes and failures of the Nazi regime’s policies. But the distance of time and professional ‘objectivity’ has by no means resolved the riddle of the Third Reich. The crimes, committed, and crimes planned, were so unspeakably monstrous that the human mind fails to apprehend their full dimensions. What happened is known; the question of why it happened remains unanswered.’

So by now you're wondering, why you should read this unhappy account of a history all too familiar. The answer is simple: Lest we forget.

The Pink Triangle is out of print, however,  new copies are available through e-tailers for under $6 US 

* Winston Churchill in his Memoirs of the Second World War

The Boys In The Bars

The Boys In The Bars
by Christopher Davis

Paperback: 216 pages

• Publisher: Knights Pr (May 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 091517538X
• ISBN-13: 978-0915175383
• E-book: No

The Boys In The Bars by Christopher Davis is a collection of short, and not so short stories that for the most part take place in pre-AIDS America. My first introduction to the writing of Christopher Davis was Joseph And The Old Man, which I reviewed earlier on this blog. The stories in The Boys In The Bars focus primarily on love, the search for love, the getting, or almost getting of love, and the loss of love. These are situations we all experience in some way, each different, each compelling, each a thread woven into the fabric of our lives. This book is a serious work. The writing, which I confess to envy, is compact. Davis uses simple, yet elegant phrases to describe complex emotions.

In Kaleidoscope he writes about the loss of love. ‘The bed was mine and he had left it. He left a large photograph of himself propped against the pillows. He was naked in it, and he looked very good. I looked closely at it and I remembered when we had first met and then I held it against my cheek and cried.’ In two sentences Christopher Davis admits loss and hints too of a love that is safe in memory.

In Fireflies, Davis touches on the loss of a loved one through AIDS. ‘…I learned how to live alone, how to know that there would be no one else there when I went to sleep, or when I woke up, how to live with silence, how to shop, how to cook for one, how to depend on television for companionship.’

History is the longest of the stories and it deals with AIDS before it had a name. ‘We were still young then, my friends and I…. We lived for fun, for sex…. We are old now, Danny and I. Survivors, as many gay men over sixty-five are now called. Most of us are gone…. But there are the young—God bless the young—and they are open and strong and confident, and when they read the histories of our youth and the neglect that accompanied the early years… they anger and they promise the world that it will never happen again. God bless the young.’

I said before this book is a serious work. Davis explores the nerve centers of our being in a way that deserves to be read.
The Boys In The Bars is out of print but good clean copies can be purchased online for less than 10 US dollars.

CATWOMAN by Michael Halfhill

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.