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!
***************************************
