[lbo-talk] Prop 8, James Baldwin

Chuck Grimes cgrimes at rawbw.com
Mon Nov 17 11:30:26 PST 2008


Sunday I was trying to catch up on the huge volumn on LBO, and wondered through the Prop 8 and black vote threads. I tried to remember where I have read all this before?

I went back and back and back in my way back machine. I got all the way to 1961. It was the summer after high school. We were relatively rich and living in a sprawling half acre, ranch style place in the not very well developed northwest end of the San Fernando Valley. We had a black woman who came a couple times a week to clean. During the last years of high school, when I got home from school G would be finishing up. We got to know each other a little, sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee and smoking. I wasn't supposed to smoke, G swore she as quitting soon.

I was asking her something, can't remember what. Maybe something about Malcom X. He had been to LA and gotten in trouble with the cops. It was big news about then. She said I should read some book. She said she would loan it to me. Thinking that would be next week, I said I can get it, write down the name. Okay. The Fire Next Time. Wow.

G stopped her part-time cleaning jobs sometime that summer. When she announced she was quitting on another afternoon session, I asked why? She said she was going back to school full time, meaning city college to finish an LVN. I think that's when I also learned she had a son a little older than me. We didn't talk about Baldwin after I read him. She knew I had gotten the book and read it. I left it out on my desk so she would know. I was too embarassed to openly talk about race. Talking about the news was one thing. Novels and essays was another. Also, I didn't know what to say. I was a kid. What did I know about it? My job was learning. She was older and smarter and black. A little too intimdating. Thank you G.

I followed Fire Next Time, with Go Tell it on the Mountain. Started Giovanni's Room but put it down as too complicated and weird. I did get into Another Country, because of its setting, a bohemian life style with musicans and writers in New York. I can't remember the details now. But Another Country reminded me of my first step-father and going to art school on the GI bill in LA and Guadalajara. I wanted to be like that, way cool, way away from jobs, regular work, into the arts. Another Country.

So, returning to today. The problem with gay marriage is, it is un-American, pure and simple. It's Another Country. It's not America. It's against a regular life of work and family. It congers up a life of weirdos. Weirdos like James Baldwin, even if almost nobody knows him and few have wondered around in his world the way I did as a fascinated kid. Black, white, latino, all have their own inner themes on weirdos, queers, bohemians, artists, writers, musicans, dancers, actors.

I guess I don't believe there is some special reason black, latino, asian et etc are more or less socially conservative than whites. A kid announcing he or she wants to do any of that kind of stuff, causes a very big blow up in just about any family.

The gay rights movement has been very effective in distancing the whole issue from association with seedy gay bars, art weirdos and completely irregular lifestyles---it's un-Americanhood. But then we watch the annual Gay Pride Day parade and get reminded. Oh, yes, that's what's going on. It's a damned art party of weirdos. Ugh.

CG



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