Elephant's Memory
...mixed with a splash of prurient interest
Dallas, 1977. I am a television reporter married to a newspaper reporter who played guitar at Andrew’s Bar in his off hours. If the bar’s menu above seems vaguely familiar I’m guessing you read one of the very first publications of “Oh, Kay” - Lavender Stories, one from last November which explores the early adult years of my coming out of the closet as lesbian.
The original ending read: …to be continued. So, let’s get on with the reading, beginning at the beginning.
Rowdy with color and big round letters, the “seriously fun” menu was a busy place for my one-track mind to wonder through. I had no clue which cocktail I wanted to get serious with at this moment, on this date, which really wasn’t a date. The invite for the meet up came from me under pretense of a night filled with reporter talk and live music.
I looked up. She was sitting across the table from me scanning her menu. Very matter-of-factly, without looking up, she asked, “How about an Elephant’s Memory?”
I hadn’t noticed that one —too focused on the menu’s braggadocio on unique in-house liquor. “Hmmm. What’s in it?” My question felt slightly flirty. I tilted my head a bit and looked at her. There was a hint of a nod and she looked down at her menu.
During daylight hours, she was a radio reporter whose voice I often heard during news breaks on the country music station where she worked. This particular evening, she read from the menu in that voice she used in her radio reports, looking up at me after each ingredient, “151 proof rum…..Tia Maria….B&B.”
My interest in the particulars of the drink, of course, had everything to do with hearing that voice – her inflections, the soft drawl she was trying to lose. It wasn’t a full-blown crush yet, but I definitely felt drawn to her and eager to pursue a friendship, not knowing exactly what that might have in store for me.
This new friend had recently graduated from my alma mater, Southern Methodist University in Dallas, and her job was reporting on local government for WBAP radio, which covered the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area. My assigned beat for the ABC television news affiliate – WFAA-TV – was Dallas County government, specifically the five-member Commissioner Court and the Sheriff’s Department. I already had at least four years of news reporting under my belt at that point and was feeling pretty darn confident.
“Remind me what the B&B stands for,” I said as she took a drag off her cigarette.
Reminders, of course, are a way of gathering information without confessing outright that you don’t know the answer or you kinda think you know the answer but don’t want to get it wrong. She looked at me as if she knew I was dancing around like that. I shrugged and smiled and focused on her hair, tight curls and a soft, brownish red. I would learn the curls arrived at the early age of seven or so, when her mother insisted on routine beauty shop permanents that she continued with into adulthood.
“B and B — French brandy and benedictine, a proprietary blend,” she said before looking into her purse and poking around for something that apparently wasn’t there. I took a glance. She was cute, a bit of southern charm, nice smile.
“Well, let’s try that Elephant’s Memory,” I said, hoping for conversation that, with the lubricating effects of alcohol, might reveal a more personal side of her and inform my quest to know her better, in a deeper way. I continued to fiddle with the pack of Marlboro Light cigarettes I set on the table after sitting down. I pulled a single cigarette from the fresh pack and lit it. She leaned across the table as she brought one of her favored menthol cigarettes to her lips. I was eager to give her a light and gently flicked the lighter.
As her lips rounded the cigarette filter and she drew in a breath, my cupped left hand kept the flame steady and protected from the soft errant downtown winds shapeshifting into Andrew’s Bar & Grill every time the door opened.
At the time — oh, those late 70s in Dallas — plenty of women like us were twenty-something professionals practicing the adult enjoyments of drinking and smoking, part of the territory we were traversing. The cigarettes offered a bit of sophistication, a notion that was slowly fading as the decade drew to a close. We also liked the way the booze made us feel – boldly sure of ourselves. We could drink a lot and still get up in the morning and go to work, with success much of the time.
Our first morning cigarette was the one that got our heart to start beatin’, or so we thought, if you can imagine that. Youth gave us the stamina and self-assuredness that we later would discover, did not last forever.
One of the first few times I met up with this newbie radio reporter while I was covering a story was when she showed up and joined a cluster-fuck of reporters jamming their microphones as close to the target’s mouth as possible. They wanted to ask this particular commissioner why he spent taxpayer money to have a vinyl roof added to a Ford Thunderbird purchased for county business.
The novice reporter was not tall but managed to squeeze through the cluster of big men with video cameras and stick her microphone right in the commissioner’s face. “Why was it okay to do that?” It was clear she had some chutzpah.
My quasi-crush worked diligently to establish herself as a hardworking journalist, and I suspect the fledgeling reporter sought me out as a mentor. Sensing her interest in learning from me, I was quick to signal a welcome. And I was a good choice for her to make. I was a bit of a maverick, aggressive in my reporting and fearless.
For example, one time I snuck into the county jail without identifying myself as a journalist, and visited with an inmate accused of murdering her mother. Much to my delight, I was escorted to her cell as a visitor, talked with her, wrote some notes and then, much to my dismay, was identified by a sheriff’s deputy; was not handcuffed, but was escorted downstairs to Sheriff Thomas’ office where he declared I had violated policy, and therefore, for an undetermined period of time, all journalists would be denied access to prisoners. My bad. I asked the sheriff why he did it. He didn’t like reporters sniffing around behind his back was the gist of his answer.
This new reporter friend liked that mavericky part of me, I would bet. She was also a feminist like me, but in a properly-mannered Southern way, more like Feminist Lite. She was still conventional and didn’t care to buck the system, which I found a complete contradiction — the very reason the patriarchy has remained intransigent to this day.
Regardless, she and I were ready to lasso our dreams and crack those damn glass ceilings. It was 1977, for crying out loud! The world, and the workplace, should be better by now we thought. Civil rights laws had been updated to protect employees and job applicants from employment discrimination based on gender, for example.
However, the truth of the matter was — and still is now — that it’s always a slow crawl over a mix of pea gravel and glass shards to make any progress with women’s rights. The patriarchy constantly lobs shit at women and makesup ridiculous — yet darkly demeaning — rules meant to keep us contained.
A waiter finally arrived at our table, took the cocktail order and then asked about food. We probably ordered “Randolph’s Artichoke Nibbles,” and if it wasn’t that, it was the “Snack Tray” of cheeses and crispy vegetables.
Acoustic guitar strums, a chord here and there, and the flutter of a harmonica were floating down from a small balcony on a tall wall not far from our table. It was an airbrushing of chords and notes that provided a background for conversation, a separation of realities.
I looked up and saw my husband strumming the acoustical guitar he adored, sitting on a chair, his usual style when playing. It was a situation that pleased him and was flexible. His deftness with the strings, the heart he put into the tunes he played and sang reflected his values of peace and love – whether in a song by Bob Dylan or Simon & Garfunkel.
Hold your horses! Let’s slow down here for the obvious question. What in the world was I doing getting a bit tipsy with a quasi-professional semi-crush while my husband was looking down from a balcony, making music, his sweet self on display?
He looked over at me with his soft smile and I waved. I nodded to the woman across from me that he was up there. She turned around, waved and smiled too. I let him know earlier that day I had invited my friend to come with me for his opening night at Andrew’s Bar near downtown on McKinney Avenue.
It was interesting that I selected a table so very much in my husband’s view. But maybe not. On some unconscious level, I was giving him clues, but still didn’t acknowledge to myself – or anyone else for that matter – that he and I were moving apart because I was coming out.
A sensitive man, he may have already been aware, while I was playing clueless by staying in the moment, not considering the consequences as the path we were traveling was diverging. I was disconnected from that deepest place of feelings and emotions.
So, I defaulted — to my career as a journalist and my new interest. She and I each took sips of our Elephant’s Memory and started a conversation about a Dallas county commissioner dipping into road and bridge funds to pay for new carpet in his downtown county courthouse office. “How did you know he was dipping into those funds?” She flicked the ashes of her half-way gone cigarette into the decorative plastic ashtray next to the condiments.
“Well, I got curious when I saw workers installing carpet in his office,” I said with all seriousness. “I got a photographer to shoot some video of the installation then checked the Commissioners’ Court budget, saw the carpet money was coming from the funds designated for the Commissioner’s road and bridge district, not office expenditures. Busted.”
Scandalous at the time. But all this paled in comparison to what was possible. The deeper journalists dig, the more stink they uncover. That’s the other thing we talked about, where to dig next. As we moved on to another news story from that day, the warm and luscious social lubricant I was sipping had kicked in. Ahhh, a crystal brandy snifter of Elephant’s Memory. Nice to have on board.
I remember I had two that night, chased with a cup of coffee, her idea. I’m pretty sure this was the meetup that further grew our friendship and, more importantly, began to really stir up the lesbian in me. My body was giving notice, with twinges and tingles hiding out and surprising me when I least expected it. I was intrigued with the emotions that ping-ponged inside me when she was nearby. Spellbound is another way of saying it. I just knew, though, that, for the time being, I dared not touch her, or kiss her. No matter how many Elephants I drank. She was just not ready for a deep dive into self – like I was.
In deciphering memories, those feelings of mine for her were the beginnings of my flirtations with the notion of women loving women – the next leg of my journey into the lesbian world.
While I think my crush might have been curious about what was going on, she hedged against it, but did not buck it. There were times when I felt her flirting a bit. Maybe she just couldn’t help it. Very titilating for me.
My friend was happy to come along those times I invited her to Andrew’s Bar when my husband sang and played his guitar. It was an interesting courtship with this gal, driven by mouth watering infatuation. When I saw her at a news conference we were both covering, my attention got diverted. I soaked up her energy, engaged in conversation. It was puppy love stuff. Must have been glaringly obvious.
I was in her orbit quite a bit in the months that followed those first Elephant’s Memory cocktails. In addition to those frequent conversations while at work and there was the socializing, which included a softball team I had organized.
The team came about after an errand run I made to a nearby Walgreen’s Drug Store one day after work. Turning down an aisle, I stopped short in front of a display of softball gloves and other summertime recreational gear and was flush with memories of spring and summer days in high school playing softball. I tried on several gloves until I found the perfect fit for my left hand to wear and my right-hand fist to punch into.
It didn’t take long for me to start recruiting. I asked my crush if she was interested in joining the team. After saying yes, she agreed to help me find more players, which she did, including a co-worker of hers, who unbeknownst to me or my friend, was a lesbian. The co-worker would tell me years later that — thanks to her gaydar — she had both my crush and me pegged as lesbians, save a bit of initial uncertainty due to my crush dating men and me having a husband. Lots of confusion back in those days of transformation, the definition of what it meant to come out of the closet.
We pulled a softball team together quickly, which got us a spot in a city league. I felt much joy when I found out over the days and weeks we practiced and played that there were a good number of lesbians on our team, including some, like me, who were new to the scene and testing the waters. History tells us softball was one of the key and primary training grounds for girls and young women with a particular bent they didn’t yet recognize.
At my suggestion, we called our team Prurient Interest, a phrase that was introduced into the nation’s vernacular after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on an obscenity case in 1973 that defined pornography as appealing to one’s “prurient interest,” which the court defined in a footnote as “having a tendency to excite lustful thoughts.”
The day we had our team photo taken — wearing our red t-shirts embelisehd with Prurient Interest — my crush accommodated me when I motioned her to come sit next to me for the picture. I was very excited about that “get.” The look on my face in the photo says it all – fearless and in charge, wearing a slight smug smile, long blond hair pulled back for a full face view. I had my bluejeans on and I’m on my knees, butt resting on the heels of my tennis shoes. Hands on my hips, elbows stretched into wings, softball in my right hand, and left knee touching my crush. What a rush!
Softball season came to an end. My courtship with the crush came to a screeching halt soon after — the day I drove to her apartment and proclaimed my love, at which point she freaked, led me to her front door and then watched me and my perceived lesbian toxicity drive off into the sunset.
It wouldn’t be long before the novice reporter and full-time crush would ease into a different profession. She began working as a political consultant, who then morphed into a cataclysm manager, earning the moniker “Crisis Queen.” But all that came later, when our paths were no longer crossing at all. She went straight ahead and I took a hard left turn at lesbian.
As my ex-crush went her way, I went mine — moving away from the shenanigans at the county courthouse and jail into bigger stuff like graft and corruption at the Dallas Independent School District. In my spare time I befriended a couple of experienced lesbians who would eventually set me up to officially come out, the meaning of which is clearly known amongst lesbians.