being butch

‘Chances Are’, as sung by Johnny Mathis was playing on the stereophonic HiFi portion of our GE television/stereo consul. The table lamps, two with their green shades, and one with some kind of yellow and orange doily material were off and the only brightness that could be seen was the reflection of the porch light which always had to be kept shining when my parents left the house. There was a big sigh of ‘wait, don’t play that song yet’ as Johnny Mathis started to croon, and someone trying hard not to scratch the LP picked up the arm of the record player and said ‘are you ready yet’? There was a rush of poodle skirts covering up silky under slips brushing against themselves or the pant legs of waiting boys, and someone must have dropped a bag of potato chips as an ‘oh damn, give me the broom’ was heard. Then when most of the fuss ended Johnny Mathis was given the go ahead and the living room was alive with symphonic melodies and a lot of girls giggling. It was a Saturday night in 1957, located in the living room of my house on Denniston Avenue in Pittsburgh, and my oldest sister Maxine was having a teen age party.

Maxine is the oldest of our four siblings and was given the responsibility of baby sitting her bratty brother and baby sister when my parents went out. Maxine was the most level headed of the kids at the time and mostly made life easy for all of us when she was in charge! (You listen to Maxine when we are gone my mother would tell my little sister and I, and if there is any trouble I will take out the wooden spoon when I get home, my mother would caution us as she readied herself for a night out.- the only time I remember the wooden spoon was ever used for discipline was by mistake as my mother had the spoon in her hand as she went to catch me by the shirt and mistakenly swatted me.-but the wooden spoon was the weapon of choice to instill fear!) But when Maxine was going to have a party, or as she would state it, ‘just some close friends over’, all hell broke loose in our house. She would pull out the clunky and noisy vacuum actually picking up the sofa cushions one by one to clean whatever had hibernated under there, and would actually take a cloth and wet wash the glass of the photos on our mantel piece. And as she did this she would growl, very quietly so no one but my younger sister and I could hear, and she would speak seemingly without ever moving her lips, ‘touch this and I will kill you.’ No matter how loud we would scream ‘Maxine is scaring us’, my mother would just smile at her oldest child and then say to us ‘come on kids, really’?

My little sister Francie and I had learned at an early age, make nice, behave nicer, and good things can come your way. I being two and a half years older then Francie also learned the art of veiled threats, as in if you don’t want us around then feed us. If Maxine and her friends were going to have potato chips, pop (Pittsburghese for soda), and some of my sisters home made meatball sandwich’s then our silence and our being good had a price connected to it. Easy bargaining, especially when some of Maxine’s best friends happened to be boys coming over. So, before the kids ate drank and did whatever teenagers did, my little sister and I were fed. Most of the time that was all we needed to occupy ourselves stuck on the second floor.

However this night my sister Maxine let slip to her girlfriend that someone special was coming to the party. Normally this kind of secret communication was done at high school or on the phone in Maxine’s room with her door guarded by dogs and barbed wire, but some how in preparing for the party, and perhaps too much Windex in her nostrils, Maxine let loose about Arnie, and Maxine’s affection toward him. I was sitting behind one of the two sofas in the living room so my presence was undetected, and upon hearing this news I had to contain myself from shouting ‘Maxine has a boyfriend’.

So here we have the living room dark, slurping sounds dancing in the air, some crunching of potato chips, a giggle here or there Johnny Mathis now singing ‘Its Not For Me To Say, and my little sister and I sinisterly sitting on the upper steps leading to the second floor, peering over the cut out portion of the wall looking to discover who of all these people was Maxine’s boyfriend. And then as if we had scripted the entire event, Maxine’s girl friend said, let Maxine and Butch sit on that chair (That chair being the chair directly underneath our lookout position). It took us a second to comprehend who Butch was. BUTCH, we had never heard that name, what kind of name was BUTCH???? We thought Maxine’s boyfriend was Arnie. Again, as if scripted someone said to the crowd, that Arnie’s nickname is, Butch. Well that was it, my little sister and I were flabbergasted, and we thought the name Butch was hilarious enough, but as a nick name it was just the funniest thing we had ever heard. As Maxine and Butch were about to kiss, Francie and I let out a squeal of laugher, forgetting for one second we were spying and in hiding and said out loud together….BUTCH!!!!

Needless to say a mad dash encompassed with Francie and I barely making it to the back bedroom of the house before Maxine, wooden spoon in hand caught up with us.

After that momentous event, Francie and I started to call each other Butch, first kiddingly and then lovingly, and to this day some 44 years after, we still refer to one another as Butch.

Since that time and until I turned 38 and finally came out as a Gay man, I had never met another Butch in person. If there was a character on television or the movies whose name was Butch, I snickered, the name still seemed funny to me. As a Gay man, I did meet a few butches most of them not by name but by particular roles they held within the Gay community. Butch had a completely different meaning and purpose for them so it seemed and being butch was not comical but manly. Butch was an identity that Gay men embraced and for some Gay men being butch meant being Gay but not that Gay. It permitted some men to discriminate against others because apparently being butch meant you were almost like a fantasized version of what a heterosexual male should be like. It got you places at the time and as a part of a minority placed you one rung higher on the social acceptance ladder then others.

Name calling; be it a nickname, a symbol of sorts, recognition of your social status has always been around. We are told as kids that sticks and stones may break our bones but names will never hurt us. But somehow in the world of American politics 2011, name calling is almost as dangerous as bullets. Somehow the only way we can govern is if we govern only and for people with our same name. If we are Christian Conservatives, Tea Partiers, Progressives, The Religious Right, Liberals, somehow we know what is best for us, and how to do worse for you, and if you can only talk to me or call me by name if OUR name is the same. Sadly our names identify us then in turn isolate us.

Butch was a funny nickname for a guy, hilarious as a nickname. It then turned into a compelling name for a sister then transformed to become a masculine moniker. The word American used to mean All of Us, then it morphed into Some of Us and now in 2011 it seems to mean None of You, unless You are just like Us. …kind of scary, don’t you think? Being butch used to be so easy.