In season four of the Marvelous Mrs Maisel, Midge decides that since she's never seen Susie mention a man in her life or a man that she likes, then she must be a lesbian, so she makes a trip to a park on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village where she asks every man she sees wearing a carnation in his lapel if he knows of an establishment where a lady might meet another lady.
This episode touches on so much that's a genuine part of American history in the sixties, even here in Mississippi. In 1969, six years ahead in the show's storyline, homosexuals in New York rioted to protest police raids on the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street, a known homosexual gathering place. They rioted because, in 1969, police could arrest men for soliciting sex from other men, even if it wasn't prostitution. They could be arrested for being gay.
Midge is rebuffed by every gentleman she meets because they all think she's trying to entrap them and might be a cop until she meets an elegant, silver-haired creature with a pencil-thin mustache named Lazarus with a yellow carnation in the lapel of his tan linen suit. Lazarus is played by seventy-four-year-old director John Waters. If you're aware of Waters' body of work, this is a remarkably understated role for him, as he gently provides Midge with the location of lesbian bars in the area.
In 1963, in Jackson, Mississippi, it was also illegal for men to solicit sex from other men. There was an incident at the old City Auditorium, where Capitol Towers is now, where a sting operation was set up to catch the men who had taken up meeting in the lower level men's washroom. Several businessmen, church leaders, teachers at Central High School, and Professors at Millsaps and other institutions were arrested. Their arrests appeared in the paper but were buried in the back because one of the men arrested worked for the paper.
After the raid, men stopped using the Auditorium as a meeting place, and the city managers made sure the lavatories were locked up when there wasn't a performance. In a few years, they would begin construction on the new city auditorium, which we now call Thalia Mara Hall. Before openly gay bars began appearing in the 1980s, a new location where gentlemen could meet other gentlemen opened up, and they began using Smith Park at night. After the Stonewall riots in New York, the new Jackson Police chief sent out unofficial word that unless these men were openly soliciting for prostitution or having sex in public places, his officers had to leave them alone. An uncomfortable state of stale detente existed between the police and the gay community, and they were allowed to exist in this lovely small park between the Governor's Mansion and Galloway United Methodist Church.
That's where I come in. I was a member of Galloway United Methodist Church in the seventies. Although I was not very active in the Galloway Youth Ministry, my sister was, and as there were three years when I could drive, but she could not, I was often tasked with picking her up after youth activities or rehearsals in the Galloway Drama Ministry, which meant parking beside the church, across from Smith Park at night while gentlemen glid back and forth in the shadows of the parks ancient live oaks, discussing each other. Smith Park was also where I would meet a gentleman who worked for the Hinds County Sheriff's Department and sold me anabolic steroids. Sports drugs weren't considered a very serious crime at the time. It might not have even been a crime when we began, but it was always shady and always a bad idea. As a teenager, I specialized in bad ideas.
I knew what was going on in the park. I know what these men were and what they were doing but it never filled me with shock and revulsion like it did a lot of people. My main interests as a teenager were weight-lifting, performing arts, (especially special makeup and special effects), graphic arts, and dimensional arts; I was comfortable with homosexuals because they abounded in the fields I was interested in. Having met them, I new they were no threat to me.
Even before I could drive, I was starting to have my parents drop me off at the Downtown YMCA, where I could spend the entire day lifting weights, getting steam, and swimming. At my mother's insistence, my father sat me down for a talk about the men who also spent the entire day at the YMCA. I assured him that I already understood this and I was aware of them, and so far, none had approached me, which they hadn't. I don't know if it's because I was underage or if maybe I just wasn't very attractive, but I was never approached by another man in all my years in the gym. They existed, and I existed. Sometimes we were friends, and sometimes they ignored me. It simply wasn't an issue or a consideration.
At Galloway, I would sit in my Ford LTD in the dark with a sketchbook or a novel, waiting for my sister to finish her practice in the Mikado or Carnival while gentlemen took a chance on romance in the dark across the street. Every so often, somebody would say "hey" in the dark, and I would wave back at their shadow without really halting my reading or drawing. They never approached.
Almost never approached.
"Hey, I'm Ryan."
Ryan was remarkably small. Neatly dressed in polished shoes. If he was older than me, it wasn't by much. I wore old jeans, a ripped sweatshirt, and leather gloves with the fingers cut off so I didn't get callouses gripping dumbells. I thought they looked cool in Rocky, and they became my trademark for a while.
"You like to draw." He said. "Can I see?"
I showed him the sketches in my book. Mostly figure studies, some taken from the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, others taken from Muscle and Fitness magazine, and some skeletons from a book in the library. There weren't actual figure study classes for sixteen-year-olds in Jackson at the time. There weren't really drawing classes at all. I had to teach myself. My brother was teaching me for a while, but he lost his way, and I was on my own. I never quite forgave him for abandoning me while he was alive.
It never occurred to me to say, "I'm straight, fuck off." or do anything rude to Ryan. He was being bold, but he was also pretty scared. I could be a cop. I could also be a guy who picks up young gay guys and then takes them somewhere for my friends to beat the crap out of them or even kill them. These things happened, and he was risking them by talking to a stranger in a car that looked exactly like a cop car but without the decals or the lights.
To me, he seemed a gentle frightened creature, almost like a fawn stepping out of the woods to see my sketchbook and sniff my hand. I was aware that he wanted something from me that I couldn't provide, but I was also aware that I could ruin his night and make him feel really bad about himself with a word. I had friends, peers...acquaintances, I guess, who excelled at destroying people's sense of self with their words. I'd already exhibited an ability to do the same. I could move four times Ryan's weight in iron plates, but my real weapon was the words that came out of my mouth, but I withheld them.
"Do you come here much?" Ryan asked.
"I come here a lot. I go to church here." I said, motioning to Galloway's massive edifice with my thumb. "I have a girlfriend. Her name is Monica." That was actually true. I had an official girlfriend, who was a source of many and unexpected adventures. She also provided me with a way to say to this skittish creature who was ready to disappear into the night like a frightened bird at the first sign of violence that I wasn't gay, even though I appeared friendly.
Ryan smiled. "I'm gonna go talk to my friends. Thanks for showing me your drawings." And he slowly drifted back into the dark among the ancient trees and the ancient buildings, not fleeing danger like he could have, but returning to the world he knew, not as interested in the world I knew as he thought he might be.
By the time I got to college, there were established gay bars in Jackson. The most popular, just a block or two from Smith Park, and meeting in the park became more of an event for the city's growing homeless population than the city's gay population.
I knew men who had their lives ruined by the raid on the City auditorium. I'm not going to write about them like some people, but I knew them. I knew Millsaps professors who had their livelihoods threatened by the event, but neither my father nor Dr. Finger, nor Dr. Graves had any desire to press the issue with anyone with tenure or on the tenure track, although there were professors at other institutions who did lose their job over it. I was born into an era where it was very illegal to be gay and matured into an era where going to Jack and Jill's was the hip thing to do at Millsaps. You'd be surprised how many eligible young women required a gentleman like myself to escort them there, partly to prove a willingness to bend to their will but also because it was the best place to dance, and they didn't want to wander around downtown at night without an escort.
I never saw Ryan again. I thought about him sometimes. To be small and shy and gay in Mississippi in the eighties wasn't an impossible task but not an easy one either. I imagined him to be a sort of Dill Harris from To Kill A Mockingbird but in color. Would he grow up to be the Trueman Capote I saw on television? I'll never know.
There are people who wish nothing more than for homosexuals to return to the hidden world they used to inhabit. They could survive there. They did before. It would make me sad, though. Finding a companion can be a remarkably difficult thing under the best of circumstances. Forcing men to do it in the dark, under the threat of losing their job or getting beaten to death, is cruel. I don't want to live in a society where we have to be cruel to cover up a vulnerability I'm not even sure exists in the first place.
In a way, the gentlemen on Christopher Street in 1963 had an advantage over me. All they had to do to find someone who was lonely and looking for a companion was go to the park and look for someone with a carnation in his lapel. I suppose that's what Tinder is for, but meeting people in the park is ever so much more gentile than smudging filtered photos right or left with my pudgy thumb on my phone. At least in the park, I'd have to smile and nod and acknowledge their existence before I swiped them out of my universe. I'd rather live in a universe where people can meet and congregate civilly without fear of death or suffering. They don't want anything different from what I want. They just want it in a different way.
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