Another transgender murder

AP, of all sources, has a good write-up of the horrible murder of a transgender teen in Jamaica, where homophobia is the norm. The idea of being killed by small-minded sociopaths is something that strikes close to the heart of every GLBT person. This poor kid deserved better, way better.

These incidents always remind me of Tracy, a "drag queen" I knew when I was about 20. Today, I'm pretty sure she'd be trans. She looked every bit the woman to me. In the phrase of the day, she was "black and beautiful". Every Saturday night, we'd dance our heads off at the Gay Activists Alliance Firehouse. It was all smiles and glitter and rhinestones on this one, safe night of the week. We felt so protected there, all of us, in those very early days of the push for gay rights. But we also knew that Tracy faced a tremendous amount of hostility on the streets, much more than was ever directed our way. Sometimes she'd show us the sledgehammer she carried in her purse. She said she needed it for defense. That idea sent a chill through me.

Then one day she disappeared. Some time later, we learned from the grapevine that she'd been murdered. It was so sick, so wrong. She was a darling, and someone murdered her for being who she was. Though I've known many transgender people since that time, I can't forget Tracy. Each time I hear about one of these senseless murders, I see her dancing her heart out at the firehouse, a huge smile on her face. She was terrific.

More than 40 years later, this sort of thing still goes on. It's monstrous. Every. Damn. Time.

Keeping an ear out for cicadas

I can't wait to hear the first cicada. Here in the northeast, the brood is about to awaken.

The last time they awoke was either 13 or 17 years ago. I think we're expecting the 17-year brood this Spring. Personally, I'm hoping it's bigger than the last awakening. They cite these astronomically high numbers when telling us what to expect, but it was no big deal last time this happened.

In fact, it was kind of fun. Yes, you heard them in the trees but not incessantly. And there certainly weren't billions, or even millions of them in our neck of the woods. They were about as common as sparrows, I'd say. No more, no less. But that may have been the 13-year brood. This year could be different.

I think everyone over the age of 30 has a story to tell about the day a cicada reared up in their car as they were driving. That happened to me and it's such a shocking thing. You don't realize you have one in the car and then it lifts into the air and begins to "sing". The noise is deafening, especially inside a car. And cicadas are notoriously clumsy. They'll fly right into you, including inside your car as you're driving. I didn't crash and I don't know of anyone else who did. But it's an event that you'll always remember.

And then it was over and their bodies were scattered on the ground. They have such a short lifespan. It seems like a helluva way to live. Anyway, wake up, cicadas! If nothing else, the local animals will have a ton of good meals.

Got a good cicada story? Share it in the comments.

Image: Wikipedia Commons
Note that you can hear the cicada's song at the Wikipedia link above. Look for the "song" link in the right column on the page. It says "Calling song of the Magicicada Cassini" (which is the exact brand of cicada that's about to awaken).

Memories that stay with you

You know how some memories are burned into your mind, seemingly for no particular reason? I find this so odd. For instance, I remember a snowy day when I was about 16. I think of that day often, though there's nothing unusual about the memory. Still, it's always with me -- how the day felt, the wetness of the snowfall, and how things sounded. It's exciting, this memory, though I don't know why. It's imbued with significance -- seemingly for no reason.

This also applies to things people say. For some reason, I remember remarks that people made decades ago. And it's not that what they said was so striking or perceptive; some are downright boring remarks. But they stayed with me and I think of them often. There seems to be no rhyme or reason governing what remains in our minds, and what passes through, virtually unnoticed.

(Don't get me wrong. Some of the memories that stay with us forever are important. But it seems our brains store all sorts of things, including stuff that is meaningless.) 

Of course, I'm going to bring this around to writing. The odd thing is that these memories -- both significant and insignificant -- are finding a home in the novels I write. I'm not aware that I'm doing this as I write a scene. But later when I read it, I'll realize that I've recreated one of these fortified memories in the book. The look of a room, the feeling caused by an offhand remark, an odd phrasing someone once used -- all these memories that stuck with me throughout my life are being released, one by one, into my novels. It's quite nice, actually. They finally found a good home.

Do you have strong memories of an event or a day that didn't seem to matter much when it happened, but nonetheless stayed with you all these years? It's such a quirky thing.

Turn it on and hope

For some reason, Amazon only shows me things I'm not interested in. I've been shopping with them for two decades and they still have no clue what I like. How is that possible? Aren't there these things called algorithms that could help them suggest items I might actually, you know, buy? Never happens.

Anyway, they keep showing me this radio lately and every time I see it, I'm filled with memories. In the days before clear transmission (of any kind!) we used to listen to radios that looked like this. (At least the later ones did. They were bigger and clunkier at first.) You'd have to bend the antenna this way and that, searching for the music. It was somewhere in that cloud of static. There! Gotcha!

Thinking of old radios brings back the beach, the park, the stoop and endless, hot summer nights. We would huddle around our little radios, listening to tinny music sparkling with static, and we would dream. The world offered endless possibilities then. Nothing was ruined; it was all still fresh -- the water, the air and our plans for the future.

I remember dreaming as I listened to the radio.

Miss Jessup, my alluring piano teacher

Miss Jessup's hair on Molly Sugden.

In my early teens, I took piano lessons. There was a storefront, fly-by-night "music school" a few doors down from the luncheonette my stepfather owned, and that's where I went to learn how to play the piano. I went weekly and enjoyed the heck out of it -- but I never learned a thing about music. I was too distracted.

The object of my attention was my teacher, an amazing woman named Miss Jessup. That's a photo of Mrs. Slocombe on the left, Molly Sugden's character from "Are You Being Served". Mind you, Miss Jessup was no Mrs. Slocombe. She was a hot mamma of the first order. I only want to point to Molly's hair -- paint it white-blonde and you've got Miss Jessup's hair. Well, if you pooch it up a bit higher, you do.

Miss Jessup was in her 20s and was attractive in the way starlets are attractive: noticeably, and as the result of much effort. She dressed like a starlet too. She had a big bust like Mae West, what appeared to be an 18-inch waist and wore skintight dresses every day. She was like a blonde Betty Boop. Her hair was, as I've said, higher than Mrs. Slocombe's and bleached almost white. She wore it arranged in ringlets that towered over her head, and the whole thing was lacquered into place. You would not see a hair move on Miss Jessup's head. There was never any doubt about this.

She wore very high heels, and rightly so. She must have been about 5 feet tall, if that. And she existed within a ball of perfume. I was too young to know what scent it was, but it was there. You couldn't possibly miss it.

She'd take me into her tiny piano room, a little closet, actually, with a white stand-up piano against the far wall, and we would go over my lesson. I didn't play well, had no talent at all, in fact. But I could read music and could brute-practice my way into being able to play a tune -- much to the horror of those who had to listen for months as I learned it.

She would ask me to play the lesson she'd assigned me, and after I did, she'd show me how to play it correctly. That was the Miss Jessup Moment. I would sit close by her right side, breathing in her cloud of perfume as I marveled at her white-painted nails, clicking madly over the keys. Miss Jessup's nails provided her own percussion as she played.

That's all I remember from our lessons: the Miss Jessup Moments when I would float in a ball of her perfume, staring at her make-up and nails and hair and clothes, and pay absolutely no attention to the music. I never learned a thing from Miss Jessup but I enjoyed my lessons thoroughly. I wonder if she's still out there.

Yoo hoo, Miss Jessup! Are you still among us? And more importantly, do you still dress like you live in a movie?

Underwater = heaven

"I like to be, under the sea," as they say in the song (though I could easily forgo the octopus' garden). I love to be underwater. The moment I'm under, I'm home.

This is something I feel in my heart. I don't care if it's a pool or an ocean, I'm happy down there. While snorkeling near coral reefs in Jamaica, with fish hovering near me in the water, all of us lit and warmed by beams of sunlight, I never felt more at home.

Is this an ancestral memory? The creatures that came before us spent a lot of time in warm, shallow waters. Did this perception of water as home travel down through the ages to me? Is it a sort of inheritance? There's something so right about life underwater. It sure looks like home to me.

Does something strike this same chord in you? Tell us about it.