YOU'RE WRONG
An Irregular Column
by Mykel Board
So I'm talking with this colored guy at a homo bar. White shirt, neat little mustache, he's got the slightest hint of a Southern accent. He drinks something clear, in a short glass with ice and a red straw in it. He says he's moving from the Upper East Side back into a "darker neighborhood."
"How come?" I ask him.
"I don't like being a minority," he tells me. "I'm the only white guy in my building. There's a black girl, but she's just as scared of me as the rest of 'em."
"I've been a minority too," I tell him. "I lived in Japan for two years. I was the only white guy in my building. Some people were afraid of me."
His eyebrows lower and come together over his nose. He takes a sip of his drink.
"I liked being a minority," I continue. "Haven't you ever been a party Negro?"
He doesn't know what the term meant.
"You know," I say, "somebody invites you to a party to show how liberal they are. You're the only black guy there, and you don't know anybody else."
"Yeah," he said, "I guess I've been that."
"Don't you love it?" I asked. "Don't you feel like you're the center of attention and people crawl all over each other to be nice to you. It's wonderful!"
He ponders. Ahead of me in his drinking, his pondering causes a bit of unsteadiness on his bar stool.
I explain that I had been the "party gaijin (foreigner)" quite often in Japan. I loved it. I was a king.
Hitching around that country I never had to wait more than ten minutes for a ride. A good portion of the ease I found was because I was a minority.
Of course, our situations were not exactly analogous. The white minority in Japan does not fill the jails there. People's contact with them is usually not in a situation of fear. Still it does happen and there is racism.
Japanese racism, however, is usually on an institutional level-- not a human level. I could not belong to a Japanese video rental shop because I was a foreigner. Restaurants had signs outside that said Japanese Only or Off Limits To Americans. One can learn a lot about prejudice, racism and its intricacies from being a minority.
Most foreigners in Japan treat their experience there like drivers treat their time as pedestrians. When walking, these drivers shout at cars who cut them off and treat them poorly. Then, when they're behind the wheel, they forget the experience and treat other pedestrians just as poorly.
The Negro tells me how he scared this white lady after he moved in. He entered the building at the same time she did. She looked at him, terrified. When he put his key in the lobby mailbox, the lady sighed in relief. He was angry that his just being black was enough to scare her.
When I first encountered a Japanese Only sign on a restaurant, I was furious. That was blatant, unreasoning racism, I thought. Then I discovered it was near a U.S. army base. The locals often come into town and start fights, or harass women. They were big and difficult to get to leave. So the signs went up.
"I wasn't an army pig." I say to the Negro. "I was a helpless English teacher. But, I could understand their point. After all how did they know?"
In the same way, not all Negroes are muggers or other criminals. But from experience and watching the news on TV, I could understand why white folks might not want to deal with them.
In Japan, it's easy to get mad at the banks that won't cash your checks because you're white-- or the occasional people who won't sit next to you on the train because the read that foreigners spread AIDS. But it's not so easy to learn from that experience.
It wasn't only about racism, that I learned. I also learned about work. The Japanese work from sun up to sun down. Full time workers there spend more human hours per year than any other country in the world. It's easy to criticize them for that-- but we're number two.
Actually, the Japanese have the logical alternative to our system. If you respect work, and think it's a good, then it shouldn't be separate from your life. The company, in Japan, usually takes care of the workers. It provides cheap housing, recreation, lifetime employment. In exchange, people who work in those companies dedicate their lives to them.
Unions, in Japan work with management-- not against it. They both work for the benefit of the company so both sides can prosper. It's corporate communism: the perfect picture of a society where people really value work. I could never permanently live there. But their work attitude sure is better than the Western one where folks work slightly less and hate their jobs-- and their employers-- a whole lot more.
I wrote a lot about Japan while I was there. Much of it was negative. I don't feel that way anymore. I have Japanese friends and I love the country and much of the culture. AND they make great music, are good looking, and don't have penises that keep hitting the gag reflex.
BUT! I want to write about something other than Japan, this column. I got a SCOOP!
As soon as I see her, I know she's too good looking to be hetero. We're upstairs in some bar. Bad music plays too loudly on the stereo. It's a party for Bruce LaBruce's new skinhead homo movie opening in NYC. This girl sits at a table by herself. She's got short blond hair, a leather jacket, Docs, and a body pretty as a little boy's. As usual, I trip over myself in my lesbo-lust, subtly jumping up and buying a beer whenever she does, smiling at her as we're together at the bar.
At first, she's not all that friendly. Then things take a nicer turn. It's while Bruce introduces me to Taylor Meade, the famous beatnik/Warholite. The girl stands nearby, listening. After the introductions, she comes up to me.
"I didn't know you were Mykel Board," she says.
I tense, holding my breath, ready to run for cover.
"I've been wanting to talk with you.... (Uh oh!) Yeah, I got kicked out of the New York RIOT GRRRRLS for being a whore and I figured you would be the one to understand. I hate those feminists."
Silently letting the air out of my lungs I ask, "Do you mean whore like 'promiscuous' or whore like 'sex seller'?"
"Whore like sex seller," she says. And then she goes on.
I don't hear everything that she says. I'm too busy watching her lips move and the way she shrugs her leather-jacketed shoulders with her thumbs tucked over her belt. She's a goddess! I catch enough of the story to know that it's a good one, though. I need a chance to talk when my head is clearer. I ask for her phone number.
"I need to call you to set up a date... er... interview." I say.
She gives it to me. I wait until ten o'clock the next day to call. I don't want to seem over-anxious.
To my surprise, it really is her phone number and NOT some Christian help-line. We've got a date to meet at a local bar. I'll get the whole story-- and I'll get to see her lovely lesbitude again.
So we sit in this yuppie bar with a hockey game blasting yelling at each other over our Guinness. I'm annoyed at the noise, but this is the closest bar. I'm not a very good interviewer, but I want the dirt on the Grrrls. I have other incentives to stay: First, the girl I'm talking to is sexier than a cheek mole. Second, I already bought the first round of beer. She promises to buy the second.
"I'm gonna ask you not to use my name in this." she says. "It's not 'cause I'm ashamed of what I do-- or scared of the Riot Grrrls. If it was just them, I'd shout my name from the rooftops. It's just that I've got these new customers and well, MRR gets around. The guys wouldn't be too happy if they knew I was doing it with girls. And the girls would get pissed if they knew I was doing it with guys..."
"You're a prostitute for girls?" I ask. "I didn't know girls did that. I mean have girl prostitutes."
"Oh sure," she says, "I'm just starting that now. But it seems like it's gonna be quite lucrative."
"Ok," I say, "actually, I'm happy to hear it. I'm sick of hearing how sex work is men using women."
We talk a little about that. I tell her that I've known plenty of kept women-- but most of them didn't consider themselves prostitutes. She's the first to confirm that the pay-by-the-hour girls are involved in the lesboworld as well as hetland.
Then she says she'll call me later in the week to tell me what name I should use. Events falling as they do, she decided to use Jackie O as her name here. Hah! Not only is she a goddess, she's a goddess with a sense of humor!
Back in the bar, we still shout at each other over the Ranger's game on TV.
"I started going with this girl that one of the older Riot Grrrls liked. She flipped out. This older girl was friends with my roommate. The next thing I know: my roommate moved out leaving this note on my kitchen table: You're a whore.... There were some other notes and some black magic witch stuff. A lot of Riot Grrrls are into witch stuff. One of the girls had a voodoo doll-- and she used it!"
"What was your relationship with your roommate?" I ask.
"She wasn't only a roommate, but she was a best friend," says Jackie. "They poisoned her."
"By revealing you were a prostitute?" I ask.
Jackie shakes her head "Not just revealing it, but by being so anti-sex work in general. At that time, I wasn't even earning my money through sex. But they thought I was, and that was enough to condemn me."
"Are the N.Y. Riot Grrrls anti sex?" I ask.
"Nope," replies the goddess, "but they are anti sex-work... which is really weird, since their idol Kathleen from BIKINI KILL is a topless dancer. But they just close their eyes to that."
"What about other kinds of sex?" I ask.
"Well, they didn't like het sex very much," says Jackie. "The group had two kinds of girls. The young naive ones, who really didn't know very much except that they wanted to be involved. Then, there were the older ones. Many of them were paedophiles."
She looks at me strangely, as if just remembering something. Then she adds, "Not that I have anything against paedophiles. It's just that it was hypocritical of them. Here they are condemning these girl's hetero relationships, then trying to seduce them. The whole Riot Grrrl thing is dressing up in these chaste clothes of the 50's. The last thing these older girls want is to be chaste."
"Do you see a power division between the older Grrrls and the new ones?" I ask.
"You bet," says Jackie, "the older girls make all the decisions. They're preaching this 70s-style women-are-victims feminist agenda: anti-porn, anti-hetsex, supposedly pro-equality. But there was no equality between the younger women and the older one who were running things."
"It all sounds pretty nasty," I shout over the rising volume of the bar crowd. (I guess The Rangers just scored or something.) "What made you get into the group in the first place?"
"I got into it for the music and the girls," answers Jackie. "I was new to the city and I kept hearing about this Riot Grrrl stuff. At first it was nice. I wrote for their magazines. I slept with a couple of the girls in the group. But then the tension started. The older girls got mad at me for sleeping with the ones they wanted. It pissed them off even more to find out that I was sleeping with men too. I mean if I want to fuck..."
During the middle of Jackie's answer, the Ranger's luck changes. Just as she starts shouting about how the older girls were mad at her for sleeping with... the crowd quiets down. Her words pierce through the air in the bar. All heads turn toward us. I sit with my back toward the crowd, so I don't notice.
"How many were you fucking?" I shout, not yet sensing the quiet crowd. I do sense, however, Jackie's face turning slightly red and her embarrassed smile. I look around and see folks watching us with toothful Yuppie smiles. Much to the crowd's amusement, I choke on my Guinness.
Fortunately, the game gets interesting again so we can continue the conversation.
Jackie tells me about how even the music got bad after awhile. At an ABC NO RIO benefit some all-girl bands were not allowed to play because "they drew a male audience."
"At a couple events," Jackie says, "there were Riot Grrrls delegated to throw the boys out of the pit. I thought I was gonna be next. In a way, I was."
"Talk some more about sex," I say, "as soon as the next Guinnesses come. It's your turn to pay."
Over our next glass, ($4.50 each!!!), Jackie tells me, "It scares the shit out of these girls that you can make money just by showing your tits. They said they feel sorry for me-- making $500 in two hours. It paid for my films and my schooling. I don't have to sit in an office. Other girls work for $30 a day in a restaurant...and they feel sorry for me!"
"So they were jealous of your money," I propose.
"No, that's not it." says Jackie O. "Most Riot Grrrls had money. Their rich parents paid for them. They had nothing to do but be students and Riot Grrrls. I put myself through school being a whore. It's letting me make movies. But they condemn it. Meanwhile Daddy's paying their way and they don't have to do anything."
That's the meat and potatoes of our conversation. We talked a lot more. Jackie O is still whoring, still pansexual and still a goddess. She maintains a long distance phone sex relationship with a girl somewhere in the Midwest. She fucks her male friends and still manages to stay friends with them. An amazing accomplishment-- especially in the 90s.
"I've always wanted to be able to do that," I tell her. "Whenever I screw a pal, it just gets hot for a while then the entire relationship breaks up. I had a friend-sex relationship only once. You know, where you call up and say, 'hey, wanna fuck?' or 'hey, wanna see a movie' and it's the same. That lasted only year. We had different desires. She wanted a baby and I wanted anus. How can you compromise on something like that?"
"It's no problem for me," says Jackie. "I have sex with my friends and we're still friends."
"Can I be your friend?" I wish I have the courage to ask her. I don't
The interview ends on a slightly drunk, cordial note. Jackie promises to return to look over the column before I modem it to Tim. (He's already pissed because I'm a week late with it. But isn't it worth the scoop?)
Why am I writing about this anyway? Am I just giving space to one girl's anger? Am I making a statement about feminism? If so, this doesn't prove anything, does it? The evidence is only anecdotal. Where are the hard statistics?
Anecdotal is what social and 'pure' scientists call stories from real people about real events. Although the scientists get their ideas from anecdotes, they don't much care for human beings. They'd rather have numbers. They want hypotheses, tested and proven by computers. They want figures and graphs, twisted to make all full look half empty. They want publishable results in prestigious journals-- or government reports. I want to be able to see it, hear it, ask it questions, think about it. Evidence for me is human beings and their lives-- not placebos and control groups.
I've been condemning the hypocrisy, anti-sexitude and totalitarianism of feminists for a very long time. Jackie O is my evidence. Like my life in Japan let me see racism-- as a human-- so I could understand it and not simply, thoughtlessly, condemn it. So my conversation with Jackie O. let me see feminists-- as humans-- with underlying motives and different intentions. That's more than any scientist will ever get.
ENDNOTES:
--> While the mainstream homo movement tries to claw its way toward becoming as boring as the rest of the world (legalizing gay marriage, homos in the military, etc), there are some folks who are ready to take a stand.
Gayme Magazine (PO Box 15645, Boston MA 02215, Fax (617) 266-1125) has helped organize a Spirit of Stonewall group that remembers the original gay liberationists wore dresses and rioted in the street.
This group is pissed that the organizers of this year's Stonewall 25 parade have banned NAMBLA and other controversial groups. Mainstream homos have to keep their air of respectability. S.O.S. have allowed NAMBLA to march with them in the parade. They are also seeking support from those whose goals are greater than an aspiration to Gay Republicanism. Presently, they have a petition and organizing plans. You can reach them at the above address or phone them at 617-695-98015.
--> Speaking of Japan, Roger Armstrong and Jun Doi, please contact me! I've been trying to get in touch, but my mail comes back and my phone numbers don't work. Where are you? Please let me know.
You (or anyone else) can reach me by snailmail at: PO Box 137, Prince St. Station, New York NY 10012. E-mail at: mykel@wps.com or via the Cool Beans BBS at 415-648-7865.
By the way, my columns are available at wps.com or COOL BEANS about the 15th of every month. I'm just covering my options, you see. You never know what's gonna happen in MRR-land. Speaking of happen, I think you can also contact Larry L at COOL BEANS, though he seems not to have checked in for awhile.
-->Punknet? I got a message from Chris at The Mental Playground (619-267-7650), a punk oriented BBS. They want to network with other punk BBS sysops to make the electronic highway more hardcore. You can contact the main sysop through internet at wrenmons@playgrnd.cts.com or through the TMP BBS. If this sounds like gibberish to you-- it's time you scammed an internet account and checked out the cyberworld. Remember, nobody in cyberspace knows how much you weigh, or how bad your complexion is.
-->Apologies? dept: A lot of the response to my Thai sex column-- my adventures with Lily-- has been that Lily seemed disagreeable in some way. People on her side thought I was mean to her. People on my side sympathized with me as a victim of 'abuse.' This means I did not communicate clearly.
The trip was wonderful. It would not have been half as good without Lily. Of course there are problems travelling with someone much better looking than you are. Those problems were interesting-- and funny-- I thought. But I didn't mean to imply that the trip was just problems. Lily is great-- smarter and funnier than you are. She's not an exploiter or inconsiderate. We have different tastes, but we're friends. I just wanted to make that clear.
-->More strokin' dept: Remember, I wrote about the guy MacLean-Jameson (PO Box 191544, San Francisco CA 94119) who does these vids of girl-next-door-types masturbating at home. He sent me a couple more vids. One with lots of white wetness and the other of a punkish type girl who really gets into it. MJ says that he's willing to offer the punk girl tape for $10 (reg. $25) to anyone who'll send him a naked photography of anyone. No professionals, just your amateur pic of naked you or somebody else. You also gotta enclose the $10 and an age statement.
-->I got a letter from TILT Tape Compilations in Greece (PO Box 77195, Athens 17 501). They're looking for bands to add to their compilations. I doubt if they pay any money. But if you want your music distributed in places it might not ordinarily get-- write to them-- or send them some stuff. They only do cassettes.
Cassettes are wonderful. They're still the best way to get music to places it wouldn't otherwise be heard. They're the ultimate people's form of communications. Only corporate publications, or folks with their heads in their anuses, wouldn't review them.
-->Speaking of foreigners dept: From Poland comes word from Wojtek Zdanuk (ul. Noniewicza 48/43, 16-400 Suwalki, POLAND) that he reviews zines, organizes shows throughout Poland and Lithuania, has a radio show and lotsa other stuff. Write if you want to take advantage of him. (Not that, way-- I don't even know what he looks like!)
-end-
