Chivalry, Bravery: Part I

I remember a time from my childhood when my mother, myself, and one of her close friends went out to dinner. I had to have been around 11 years old - not yet out of the closet, but  it was obvious to anyone with any combination of two of the five senses that I was gay. I was precocious, sensitive, misunderstood... my best friend in the world was my mother, followed by my cat. I would have days where I would forget I was a boy. I would have days where I wished I wasn't a boy. I would have days where I didn't believe I was a boy. Not because I felt dysphoric about my gender - I have always appreciated and adored having a penis - but because me being a boy didn't make sense in the worldview of my peers, and my male friends often treated me like I was the "token female" who was cool enough to love video games but not cool enough to collect XMen cards.

Before the car accident that changed her entire personality, my mother was the epitome of what I call "Beautiful Feminism" (for reasons I hint at but won't entirely go into here). She had been a tomboy in her youth, just a year younger than her very raucous brother, and had picked up what were considered "male" personality traits. She was brash, extremely confident, impetuous but with wisdom. The very incarnation of courage. She was also utterly comfortable with her sexuality, and recognized that, so long as SHE was the one holding the reigns, it could be a powerful tool and sometimes a powerful weapon. She had been an excellent provider my entire life - even when we were destitute in my very early years, she NEVER stopped running the machinery of our family. But she was also gloriously "female," an effortless chiaroscuro of gender. Her motherhood was pure, unbroken warmth and love - I was 15 before I ever for a second doubted that my mother loved me entirely and I her. Her capacity for sacrifice remains unparalleled by anything I've ever experienced from any other being. And she was a KNOCKOUT beauty.

In case you were offended by that last paragraph, let me just make it perfectly plain: yes, the pictures I painted of male and female, the traits which I "assigned" to each, were intentionally ironic.

Lynne was - and pretty much still is - her closest friend. In those days Lynne was on the other end of Feminism: Militant. Men are controlling pigs. Voracious rapists. Oppressive idiots with only enough blood to run a dick or a brain but not both. But Lynne was also possessed of a magnetism you simply could not escape. Her humor was erudite, ubiquitous, and deadly sharp. She was impossible to quiet, impossible to forget, impossible to outshine. She'd drink, smoke, and captivate a room like a Mercury or a Tyler or a Jagger - the closest I've ever been to a real, in-the-flesh, Arena Rock LEGEND, and the first time in my life I identified with the feelings other people had toward God: I at once feared her and wanted her approval.

As far as I ever knew, Lynne LOVED me... probably not entirely independent from the fact that my sexuality was starting to become apparent and the only thing with which I'd be raping sorority girls was my incendiary fashion advice. She mistrusted me because of my unfortunate pre-existing penis, but she loved me as much as she could love any man or boy.

My mother and Lynne knew one another from working at CU Boulder together. My mother was a high level admin, her friend a Professor whose impending tenure had threatened an until-then-entirely-white-male regime in her department. It was entirely the actions and courage of my mother that won Lynne her tenure, and for that Lynne always felt utterly beholden. And for a gorgeous few years we were the three amigos - or they were and I was the tagalong, though neither of them ever made me feel that way.

We showed up to the restaurant in my mother's car - with Lynne's propensity for the drink, my mother knew better than to trust her with keys. I got out of the back seat and held Lynne's door open for her, and I noticed her make a very confusing facial expression, but she got out of the car anyway. I saw the same look on her face when my water glass got filled last. And by the end of the night she'd had enough wine that when her 11-year-old escort opened her car door to let her back into the car, she finally let it out:

Don't. Fucking. DO. That. Like I can't DO that MYSELF. Like I NEED a MAN to DO that FOR me. You and that waiter BOTH treating me like some DELICATE ROBOT who can't be bothered with HEAVY THINGS.

I may not remember her words verbatim, but I can never forget my mother's face as we all got into the car. She could see I was thunderstruck and totally humiliated, and was coiling around herself like a cobra trying to decide the best way to flash a danger warning without committing to a kill. But then again, part of the beauty of her maternal instincts was to let me stand up for myself when I felt I needed to. So she gave me right-of-way, and stayed coiled.

"It wasn't like that" was what I finally managed to blurt into the silent car.
"You don't think that's how you meant it, but it's always like that" came Lynne's slurred reply.
"Lynne, he's just a boy" my mother finally spoke up, voice thick with restraint.
"Boys become men, Patti. And Boys who don't respect women become MEN who don't respect women."
"I was just trying to be a gentleman, Lynne. I thought that's how I was supposed to do it." And she looked back at me and smiled her huge smile.
"WHY would you want to be a GENTLEMAN? All it will ever do is hurt you."
"Don't tell him stuff like that. Some women appreciate chivalry."

That was the last word on it. I sat in the back seat with a belly full of icy rattlesnakes because, as she turned back around, Lynne's facial expression was unmistakable: "Oh Patti. That's not going to help him at all."