Thinking Back...The Manifestation of 'The Third Sex'

While 'Other boys my age'

(bully for them!)

were rocking out to their in-unison

worship of KISS, Queen, Led Zeppelin,

Billy Idol and The Eagles,

I had magazines and pictures and albums and,

yes--sleeping bags and pajamas--

for an array of fantastic female artists!

Linda Ronstadt, Lynda Carter,

Pat Benatar, Kim Carnes, Melissa

Manchester, Anne Murray, Donna Summer

and Olivia Newton John were my inspiration...

quite unapologetically, thank you very much.

By the posters and pinned up articles I kept,

the writing was literally on the wall for this boy!

(And, oh, how many of us learned how to be defiant

and sassy watching the Black Female Elite of screens

large and small? From the sassy mouths of Nell Carter,

Shirley Hemphill, Marla Gibbs, Lawanda Page and more

we learned how to speak up and be unafraid!)

What I didn't know at the time, in the very plain

suburbs of the South, surrounded by all that

testosterone and incompatibility, was that all around

the world were my fellows developing exactly the same

sensibilities!

That we, the select Homo-Elite, were finding our answers

to 'Differentness' under the banner of strong and proud

women...and that it was our shared media, even if invisibly

across the airwaves and on magazine covers.

Not every little gay boy found such warmth and comfort

in the images of Wonder Woman and the Bionic Woman

and powerful female vocalists and the like, but those of us\

that did (long before internet or openly gay kids or       )

have a rich and shared history of 'weathering the storm'

of loneliness by connecting to those outside our sphere...

and discovering like concepts and fringe meaning!

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