Away from the Party

I snuck away from the party.  I mostly always sneak away from the party.  We've snuck away from some of the best parties in Mississippi's history together.  She showed me pictures of her first grandchild on her phone; she was tiny and pink and beautiful and had her turned-up mouth but twinkling brown eyes like a doe.

Do you remember that time when you called me from your prom to bring you a cigarette, and we smoked it in the parking lot and never went back in?  I always thought your date would be mad at me for stealing you away that night, but then he married that guy from New York, and I figured it was ok.  

You went away for college, but you came home for the summers.  Do you remember that night we got a belly full of good whiskey and climbed to the top of Sullivan Harrell and did unspeakable things in the moonlight?  I drove to Oxford to hold you when that boy cheated on you, then again when she dumped him, and we laughed. 

When my father died, you called, and we talked all night.  When I got divorced, you called, but I didn't answer.  I sent flowers when your child was born, and now that child has a child.

The moonlight reflects the silver in your hair.  You're as beautiful now as you were at sixteen.  We always hid from the spotlight together, but between us, a great garden of life grew and grew.  I've held you. I've loved you.  I've kissed you.  I held your hair when you drank too much.  I wiped away your tears, and you made it ok for me to shed my own.  You found a boy you liked and asked me if you should go away with him, and now you have a grandchild.  

May her heart be as full as yours.  May adventures blaze through her lifetime like a comet.  May she find a friend to sneak away from parties with.  May she continue the garden her grandmother and I planted.

Washing The Feet

 As a child, I saw the pope washing the feet of people lined up in the Vatican. It was such a strange thing to do.

In the middle east, feet held a special meaning. There were no cars or trains. No carriages and very few horses. Chariots were a weapon of war, not a means of transportation. If people moved, they did it with their feet, so having their feet touch the soil of the earth had significant meaning, and as a practical matter, their feet got very dirty.

At the last Passover seder before his death, Jesus took a towel and began washing the feet of his disciples. Peter, his second disciple, refused, saying he should wash the master's feet.

Jesus said, "You don't understand this now, but you will. If I do not wash your feet, you can have no part of me." To which Peter said, "Wash not just my feet, but my hands and my head as well." and Jesus said, "If you are clean, then your feet are enough. But, not every one of you is clean." He said this because he knew one would betray him.

According to the law, sacrifice absolves you of sin. If you sin, then you can offer a lamb or a dove on the altar, and its blood absolves you of your sin. It's an ancient ritual. Far more ancient than Jerusalem or Rome, or even Egypt.

Before Passover, thousands of Jews come to Jerusalem to offer a lamb or a dove for sacrifice so they may be cleansed. Rivers of blood flow in rilles cut into the stone surrounding the altar in Herod's temple. Some of it is gathered to put above the door during Passover to signify the covenant between the Jews and their God.

Jesus washes the feet of his disciples so they may be clean of sin, but they had yet to offer a sacrifice. When they went to the temple, their master overturned the money changer's tables and challenged the priests. They didn't know it, but he would be the sacrifice. His blood would run from the table, and at supper, they would drink of his blood so that the blood of the lamb is inside them, not painted over their door.

Washing the feet is an odd ritual, but it portends the crux of why Jesus came to earth. Your sins are washed away. His blood absolves you. His blood in you signifies the new covenant.

The Donkey Died

Along with music, food, art, and dance, we use religion to transmit the memes that create the culture that binds us and defines us.  Dawkins, who created the term, defines memes as the fractious anatomical parts of ideas, communication, and representation--the occupation of our higher mind.  It is part of how our genes seek to replicate themselves.  I've tried a thousand times to prove him wrong and always failed.

We provide our children with religious stories to arm them and populate them with the memes we use to bind them into our society and our families.  Despite being downtown and ancient and moderate and all the things to suggest that Galloway wouldn't have much of a youth program, Galloway is busting out with babies, toddlers, and young couples.  A welcome sign of continued growth.  That some of these tiny creatures in pastel color cotton easter dresses are third and fourth-generation Jacksonians with eyes that I recognize as the color and shape of their great-grandmother gives me considerable hope for the future and the survival of my own cultural memes.   

Today was Palm Sunday.  The day Christians celebrate Jesus entering Jerusalem during Passover. Zechariah prophesied that the Messiah, the seed of David, would arrive on the back of a colt moke so when Jesus arrived at the gates of Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, the people spread palm fronds before him and covered the rough road with their cloaks singing "Hosanna!" Their lord has arrived to deliver them from all the false kings of the world and establish the Kingdom of God.  That's a lot of pressure.

When I was a child at Galloway, there were different versions of a procession with palm fronds through the sanctuary to celebrate Palm Sunday.  I rarely participated in these because, for twenty years, we celebrated our cultural Messiah in the choir loft of the chapel at eight-thirty in the morning, where nobody but Clay Lee and God knew the Campbells attended church at all.  

In time, this procession evolved to a small army of children with palm fronds following a live donkey in a parade around the church, now an entire city block, from the great steps before our columned Greek edifice, down Yazoo street, across West street, up Mississippi street, then back down Congress street to the courtyard between the sanctuary and the chapel.  Since today was Jack's last day in Jackson until Christmas, I invited him to join the parade today with me since I missed most of his days in church when he was a child.  

The plan was to make some sort of reference to his father sharing some connection with the actual live donkey leading us, but when I got to church this morning, I found out that the celebrated equidae who led Galloway children on Palm Sunday for so many so years had expired and was now an ex-jackass.  I felt the sting of promising an entertainment to the fourth generation and not coming through.  We had a painted cut-out of a donkey, though, and with all our ministers, we joined a parade of a dozen young families and their pastel-colored progeny waving palm fronds in the downtown breezes.  Nobody sang Hosanna, but several commented on the prospect of rain.  I was the donkey.

Back in the sanctuary, Meg Hanes delivered the children's church part of the celebration.  Meg has a challenging job.  She's to infest our children with the stories that provide them with the memes that bind them into our culture.  This is huge; she's a gateway guardian into our society.  There are two primary schools of thought on this.  You can Disneyfy the entire concept so that children see our religious narrative as soft and inviting, like a toy or a cartoon, or you can make the entire process terrifying so that they are afraid to step beyond the boundaries of the stories.  Meg takes a less common third route.  She tries to relate the stories in terms of things already in the children's lives.  She makes the bible understandable in their own terms, making every effort to create something called a "thinking Christian," which some people say doesn't exist, but Galloway has been producing since before the Civil War. 

Meg's challenge on Palm Sunday is particularly complex.  It starts with the colorful pageant of palm fronds and singing and donkeys and little baby Jesus, now a triumphant man, but moves at a frightening pace where, the next Friday, the same people singing Hosanna shout, "CRUSIFY HIM!" Meg doesn't pull any punches, but she delivers the message at a sturdy, steady pace.  People are complicated.  Four-year-old eyes ponder the idea for a moment, then begin searching for Momma's face in the crowd again.  The meme is registered in their memory banks, but it's too soon to fully contemplate what all this means.  Maybe when they're twenty.

So many people I talk to immediately write off Galloway and Millsaps and Downtown and United Methodism and anything in the borders of Jackson and nearly everything in the borders of Mississippi as dead or dying or not worth it anyway, but at Galloway, there are green shoots pushing through the ancient scales on the streets of Jackson.  We are making new Christians out of ancient stock, and they are amazing.  

Mrs. Maisel In Smith Park

 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.