Stone Butch Blues: A Novel by Leslie Feinberg (2004-04-01) [Reprint ed.] 1555838537, 1563410303

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PRAISE FOR

Stone Butch Blues

.. Reading this book changed my life. The narrator of �Lunt: Butch Blues both walks achingly alone and tells the sweet story of_con­ necting to a society in which agency becomes possible. Feinberg's Jess witnesses the vast criminality of homophobia, the tenderness and the wildness of love, and the tiny, massive vitalities of friend­ ship, work, and political community. Everyone needs to know Stone Butch Blues and pass it around. It's history out loud." -Eileen Myles, author of Cool for You "In a world of polarities, where all we're taught is black and white, Stone Bu-tch Blues added to what we know is really a rain­ bow. How we choose to live in our bodies and our hearts is much more than a Dick-and-Jane reality. This book opened our eyes to a transgendered hue now recognized among our many colors." -Jewelle Gomez, author of Don't Explain

"Stone Butch Blues is a unique take on the universal theme of self-love and identi�...written with a compelling passion that has its very own sound." or,.p,£ Awericano and Christ-Like -Emanuel Xa

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e_tte_r_than to confide in a single sou[ I was drowning in my own loneliness. One day my high school English teacher, Mrs. Noble, gave us a homework assign­ ment: bring in eight lines of our favorite poem and read them in front of the class. Some of the kids moaned and groaned that they didn't have a favorite poem and it sounded "bor-ring." ButI panicked.IfI read a poemI loved, it would leave me vulnerable and exposed. And yet, to read eight linesI didn't care about felt like self-betrayal. When it was my tum to read the next day,I brought my math book with me up to the front of the room. At the beginning of the semesterI'd made a cover for the text­ book out of a brown grocery bag and copied a poem by Poe across the inside flap. I cleared my throat and looked at Mrs. Noble. She smiled and nodded at me.I read the first eight lines:

From childhood's hour I have not been As others were-I have not seen As others saw-I could not bring My passions from a common spring. From the same source I have not taken My sorrow; I could not awaken My heart to joy at the same tone; And all/ lov'd, l lov'd alone. I tried to read the words in a flat sing-song tone without feeling, so none of the

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kids would understand what his poem meant to me, but their eyes were already glazed with boredom. I dropped my gaze and walked back to my seat. Mrs. Noble squeezed my ann as I passed, and when I looked up I saw she had tears in her eyes. The way she looked a1 me made me want to cry, too. It was as though she could really see me, and there was no criticism of me in her eyes. The whole world was in motion, but you'd never have known it from my life. The only way I heard about the Civil Rights movement was from the copies of UFE magazine that came to our house. Every week I was the first one in the family to read the newest issue. The image burned into my mind was one of two water fountains labeled Colored and White. Other photos let me see brave people-OY,erful longing pulled on me, almost drawing tears. "How'd you like a piece of her?" a guy in the seat in front of us asked his friend. Ben watched me cringe. "Hey, shut up," Ben told him. The man looked over the top of his seat at us. "What's it to you?" 181

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"That's my sister you're talking about," Ben glared. "Oh, sorry;' the guy said. He looked at me and squinted. "Don't I know you from somewhere?" "You ever work in Texas?" I asked him. He shook his head. "Then you don't know me," I told him. The bus lurched into motion. We were headed out to a plant in Tonawanda. The agency promised us a steady gig with the possibility ofpermanent hire. Ben and I rode in comfortable silence. When the noise level on the bus became boisterous I whispered to him, "Is Annie really your sister?" He smiled and winked. "Did you really work in Texas?" he asked me. I smiled and winked back. As we approached the plant I saw picket lines barricading the entrance. Then I understood-we were hired to break a strike. "Scabs!" the shout went up the moment we got off the bus. It was hard to catch my breath in the frigid air. Ben stood at my side. "I don't want any part of this;' he said. I heard a woman's voice shouting through a bullhorn, "We're gonna hold this line. We're not going to let a single scab through. I'm ready to do whatever I have to do to defend our jobs and our union! Are you?" The union women and men roared their agreement. The cops flipped the visors down on their riot helmets and held their clubs horizon­ tally across their chest. Those billy clubs were almost as thick and long as baseball bats. The cops were ready to attack in order to bring us in as scabs. Another temp bus arrived. The men who got off that bus gravitated toward us. We formed a group of sixty men. I looked around at the guys I rode in with. The oldest of the men announced loudly, "The Devil can't buy my soul!" "Well, I need a job, goddamn it. I got a family to feed;' someone behind me yelled. "I'm no scab," Ben shouted. "I never crossed a picket line in my life and I never will. And I've got no respect for any man who does." He took his UAW card out of his wallet and held it aloft so the picketer.; could see. Several of the other men pulled out their union cards and held them up proudly, too. I clenched my fist and pumped the air. The strikers cheered us. Less than a dozen of the temp laborers agreed to be escorted by police into the plant. Most of the guys got on the bus again and asked the driver to take us back to the agency. I listened to the men talk to each other as we rode. This bicentennial year was supposed to be filled with patriotism, but the guys were sounding more and more like Theresa used to talk. "There's more hard times coming, mark my words." "Yeah, but you can bet the rich are still gettin' richer." "It wasn't just Nixon-they're all a bunch of crooks. This new peanut man in the W hite House isn't going to change anything." They talked about the layoffs that had abruptly altered their lives. Harrison, Chevro­ let, Anaconda. Fifteen years seniority, twenty years, thirty years.

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"I gave Chevy my whole life," Ben told me. "W hen I got laid off I figured it was a vacation. But to tell you the truth, I'm scared shitless that I'm never going back. My whole life's in that plant, you know what I mean?" I nodded. Ben nudged me. "We'll still get paid today for last week. Let's go cash our checks at the bar and have a drink." I shook my head. "Naw, I better get home." "Jesus, Jesse. You always have something you gotta do. You're gonna have a drink with me and that's that. Unless you think you're too good for me." I sighed. "Just one drink." Ben smiled and thumped my thigh with his gloved hand. Someone played "Stand By Your Man" on the bar jukebox. I was lost in my own past as Ben talked to me about growing up without his father. "How about you, Jesse?" he asked. "Did you g row up with your dad around?" I nodded. "Were you close tohim?" I shook my head. "No." "Why not?" I shrugged. "Oh, it's a long story. I don't really like to talk about it." "Where'd you grow up?" he asked, signaling the waitress for another round. "Different places." I worried that I couldn't keep up this evasion for a third round. The waitress brought two shots and two beers. Ben smiled warmly at her. ''Thank you, darlin'." Ben turned his attention back to me. "You know, I'm curious about you." I tensed. "I told my wife about you. I told her there's this guy I really like." Ben stopped and held up one hand. "Don't get me wrong." I waved away his momentary fear that I might think he was sexually attracted to me. His speech was a little slurred. "I told her that every time I try to get tQ know this guy, he clams up. You know what my wife said? She says I'm the same way with her. She says that's what she's always complaining about." Ben leaned forward. "Are you in trouble, Jesse? Cause if you are, you can tell me. I'm not much in life. But I'm a good mechanic and a good friend. All my buddies worked at Chevy with me. I miss those guys." I nodded, thinking about my old friends. "Are you running from the law?" he asked me. "Cause if you are, I understand." His voice dropped. "I was in jail. Two years." Suddenly something changed in Ben. His whole body settled into a stillness that frightened me, like the smooth surface of a lake before a storm. I felt the turbulence churning beneath his surface. Ben's hurt was presenting itself. I waited. Pain emerges at its own pace. I sat in silence, my heart pounding. Maybe this was just my imagina­ tion or the drama that Wtld Turkey ushers in. But when I looked at Ben I knew I wasn't wrong. The storm was closing in, and it was too late to run. Ben opened his wallet and pulled out two pictures. "Did I ever show you my wife and daughter?" I saw an exquisitely warm Down's Syndrome smile on his daughter's face. "I love that child," his eyes ftlled with tears. "She's taught me a lot." I wanted to ask him what he'd learned but I was still emotionally barricading myself from Ben. He wanted so much to know me, and I couldn't let him. What if I trusted him and I was wrong?

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Ben flipped a small old photo on the table in front of me. I studied it and laughed. "Is that you?" He nodded, without smiling. I looked at the young Ben, a skinny kid with huge hands, slicked-back hair, and a beat-up leather jacket. "You were a greaser?" He nodded again. "Nice bike," I pointed to the Harley in the photo. He smiled. I could feel the pressure building. "When I was young," Ben said, "I thought I was a tough guy." Funny how much men express in a few flat words. It was a hutch's way, too, of revealing heart. "Then I got busted for stealing a car. You ever been arrested, Jesse?" I took a deep breath and shook my head no. Ben nodded. "I'd been in reform school a couple of times. I was a wild kid, I broke my poor mother's heart." Ben tossed back another shot. The waitress caught my eye. Another round? I shook my head slightly. "I was a tough guy. You think jail's nothing, those guards can't break me." I leaned toward him. I already knew. And then suddenly it was there, in his eyes, all of his shame. His eyes filled with water. I waited for the tears to drip down his cheeks, but they didn't. I wanted to touch him, to lay my hand on his arm. But I looked around at the guys we worked with every day and I knew I couldn't. I leaned closer to Ben. He looked me in the eyes. In silence, without words, his eyes told me what had happened to him in prison. I didn't look away. Instead, I let him see himself in my own mirror. He saw his reflec­ tion in a woman's eyes. "I never told anyone," Ben said, as though our conversation had been out loud. In his own way he had done what I had never been able to do-reveal the humilia­ tion. And I wanted to trust him, to tell him everything. But I was afraid. Yet I couldn't leave him alone inside himself. "You know why I like you so much, Ben?" His eyes were eager as a child's for the answer. "I like you because you're as gentle as you are strong." Ben blushed and dropped his eyes. "There's something about you, Ben, that's good and that I trust. And I'm wondering: how did you tum out this way? How did you get from all your hurt to the man you are now? What changed for you? What decisions did you make?" The great bear smiled shyly. This was the intimacy he'd wanted, the attention he needed. He leaned closer. "When I got out on parole, I went to work at a gas station. The mechanic there, Frank. That guy changed my life." Ben's voice dropped low. "Frank cared about me. He taught me to be a mechanic. He taught me about a lot of things. But there's one thing he told me I'll never forget. One day I was gonna run away. There was this guy who was always fucking with me at the garage and I couldn't fight him cause I'd go back to the joint if I did. It was making me crazy. I was all upset inside, you know?" I nodded. "I wanted to kill that guy and then take off. Frank knew. He pushed me up against the garage wall and he was yelling at me, trying to get through." Ben laughed. "You'd have to know what a quiet guy he was to appreciate him yelling at me like that. I told

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him I had to prove I wa� a man." He took a swig of beer. I smiled at the butchness in his story. "What happened?" ·TH never forget what Frank told me. He said, 'You're already a man, you don't have to prove that. You just have to prove what kind of man you want to be.' " My eyes filled with tears. Ben's voice was as intimate as his smile. "What about you, Jesse? What made you the way you are? What's your life been about?" In a world with any justice I would have poured out my life story to him. I would have ·given him back in kind the trust he'd shown to me. But I was afraid and so I betrayed him. ··There's not much to tell," I said. He blinked in disbelief. I wanted him to let it go, but he wouldn't. He was brave enough to bloody his head against my brick wall again. "Jesse," he whispered, "tell me something about you.'' _ I was frozen with fear, unable to collect my thoughts enough to invent a story that even appeared to reveal something about me. "There's nothing to tell," I told him. I was closed and protected. He was left naked. The wannth drained from his face and anger rose to replace it. He was too gentle a man to lash out at me. Like a butch, he kept it inside. I stood up. "I'd better be going," I said. He nodded and stared at his beer bottle. I let my hand rest for a moment on his shoulder. He would not accept the comfort or look at me. I wanted to say, Ben, I'm so sorry I hurt you. I only did it because I was

scared. I didn't know men could hurt the way I do. Please let me back inside. But of course, I didn't. Instead I said, "See you Monday.''

The loneliness became more and more unbearable. I ached to be touched. I feared I was disappearing 1IIld · I'd cease to exist if someone didn't touch me. One woman in particular turned my head every morning: Annie, the waitress at the coffee shop near my job. When she brought me coffee, it seemed she didn't notice me. But then she'd catch my eye and tum aW