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Episode 9: The phone rang, and
“Are you going to get the phone?” “No.”
“It could be important,” “If it is they’ll call back.”
“Hello,”
“Hello,
“No it’s
“Is “Yes.” “Can I talk to her please?”
“No,” “Why not?”
“I’m not over my mad yet,”
“Traitor!”
“So,” there was a hint of laughter to Stella’s voice that “Yes. How could you do that, Stella? How could you just lay us all out like that?”
“I had to, “No, they all think you did them some big-assed favor now. Hell, Milly even finished a book and sent it off.” “That’s wonderful.”
“Yeah, well when next you see Frances you need to kiss her whole entire ass
because if she hadn’t explained that you weren’t really trying to fuck us all up
the ass nothing would have been able to stop that lunch mob from hunting you down and
stringing you up. Hell, Jan suggested a class action suit and apparently
“So… I take it you’re still seeing “She’s living with me. Not that it’s any of your damn business, Stella. You gave up the right to tell me what to do a long damn time ago, and then you wrote that fucking book.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything bad, “Yeah, I know it… I’m still mad as hell about what you did to me, Stella.” “I figured you would be, but I couldn’t tell the story and just leave you out. Without you Stella’s house would probably be condemned right now. How is everyone doing?” “Fine, good. I gave everyone at Rhonda’s a raise, business is good. Judy and Mary’s baby started walking yesterday took his first steps in the rec room. He walked right to Jan and this one tear fell right down Jan’s face. She looked like that Indian in that old anti-litter commercial. A bunch of us went to one of Tammy’s basketball games at the college. It looked like they weren’t even going to put her in but then they had two players foul out and one got hurt and she made like the last three baskets of the game and they won by two points.” “How is Faye?” Stella asked carefully. “Good, she and Tammy have gotten really tight, and no I don’t mean they’re fucking. Faye’s actually just having a friendship with someone without trying to make it physical.” “Marcella.”
“Still in fucking “Isn’t her tour of duty up?” “I’ll tell you better then that. She’d only enlisted for three years and now she’s half way through her fourth.” “That’s fucked up.” “You think? Poor Milly. Marcella was supposed to be coming home this month, but now they’ve extended her tour six months and no chance that she’ll even get to come home to visit because of course she isn’t married and doesn’t have kids.” “Tell Milly how sorry I am, and when you talk to Marcella tell her I said to keep her ass down. Listen, they’re calling me I have to go. I mostly called to say that I miss you all and to tell you that I’m going to be on Good Morning America.” “When?” “Well from what Toni’s telling me, in about fifteen minutes. Bye.” “Bye.” Stella hung up the phone and
went to join Toni in the doorway, and just as she did something “Don’t forget to talk about the documentary,” Toni said. “I won’t.” How could she? Toni had been reminding her for three days. “And look at the camera.” “Yes.” “And don’t focus so much on the gay aspect of the book.” “All right,” Stella said, but she had no intention of taking Toni’s direction on this. She’d say just exactly what she wanted to say and deal with any consequences from Toni later. “So… How are things on “Good. I think maybe I should have left sooner.” In ten minutes the entire population of Stella’s House were gathered around the TV in the rec room, most of them still in their pajamas.
Tammy and Frances had grown up in the same town, gone to the same school, been best friends most of their lives, and yet they had very little in common.
Everyone was talking to each other in a near-deafening din and then Stella was on
the screen sitting across from that woman newscaster whose name “I’m sitting here today with Stella White, author of the new book The Residents of Hanna’s House. Good morning, Stella.” “Good morning, Katie.”
“Katie Couric that’s the bitch’s name,” “Shut up!” Everyone screamed at her at once. “There’s been quite a gap between your last book and this one. You care to explain that?” “I had a touch of writer’s block and rather than dwell on not being able to write I just went and found something else to do till this book kept begging to be written.” “So, that sort of sets up my next question. Why this book? Why now?” “I’m a lesbian, and I’ve lived in and around gay communities most of my life. I’ve seen how easy it is for people–especially young people—to get pulled into that very destructive lifestyle that too many people associate with a quote gay lifestyle, and which is unfortunately all too frequently the truth. They smoke, they do drugs, they engage in ill thought out sex, they drink too much, they eat junk food and basically just don’t take care themselves because often they’ve been abandoned by their families and feel cut off from a society that doesn’t want them. In short, they buy into the whole idea of living hard and fast and dying young, without taking into consideration that they might enjoy living a more keyed down but more actually fulfilling and longer life. “In the days since Bush stole the election and then used the tragedy of nine eleven to send our young men and women into the middle of a civil war, he and others like him have used the gay community as a target to pull attention away from these atrocities. That’s why this book now. When they’re trying to pass laws to push us ever further out on the fringes of society and a new wave of intolerance, mistrust, and out right hate is not only being allowed but encouraged by our government and churches, gay people are going to feel less and less connected. There will be more and more people falling into the depravity these groups say they abhor but which their actions cause, and more and more of our young people will be killing themselves. There is no reason for it because in amongst the chicken hawk clubs and drug dens that are in every ‘gay’ community there are also places just like Hanna’s House, pockets of people not unlike the characters in the book who band together and form their own families and help each other get healthy and/or stay that way.” “I thought the book was brilliant. I think it speaks to an entire generation of young people who often feel detached from society and their families and will, hopefully encourage them to hang together and make their own,” Katie Couric said, and her stock went way up as far as Adrian was concerned. She would have thought Miss White Bread would just have gone off on some of the graphic gay sex in the book. “There’s been talk, and so I’d like to know—is your book based on real people?”
“The characters in the book are not unlike people I’ve known and met over
the years, and I know of a place like Hanna’s House, but it is a work of
fiction,” Stella said. Around her “What’s next for you?” “I’m on a year-long lecture and book tour now. I’m talking to a lot of people who have either been through or are going through what the characters in the book have gone through, and I’m teaching people how to make places and communities like Hanna’s House. My partner Toni Harvey is filming a documentary about the tour, and hopefully it will be ready for viewing by this time next year.” “Do you have any closing thoughts?” “Young people think that everything they’re feeling today is forever, but it’s not. They can either surround themselves with good people or bad ones, and they can either build families as bad or worse than the one they came from or they can build communities that are going to help them lead a better, richer, more productive life.” “We’ve been talking to Stella White the Author of The Residents of Hanna’s House available at book stores now.”
Everyone in the room clapped and Adrian turned the TV off, more determined than
ever to keep Rhonda’s and the apartment building just what it always had been—a
place where they could all be a family, so what she said must have startled everyone at
least as much as it did her. “I’m going to change the name of Stella’s
house.” They all looked at her as if she’d grown another head. “Get up
baby.”
Tammy found herself sitting in Rhonda’s having dinner
with Faye.
“She’s such a tight ass,” “Come on Franny,” Tammy said in a teasing tone. “Our dorm room was a pit, and we’re living in near sterile conditions now, so she’s obviously been cleaning up after us for three months. I’m surprised it took her this long to say something.” “Yeah I get that, and it’s not going to hurt me to pick my own shit up and clean up my own messes, but does she have to be so anal retentive about the way things get picked up and put away?” She looked at Faye. “In the kitchen pantry the canned goods are shelved in alphabetical order.”
Faye laughed. “That is a little over the top, but let’s face it
there’s no way a normal human could get everything done that Adrian does if she
didn’t organize everything to an insane level. Let’s see, on a normal day, “Yeah, but it was sort of funny,” Tammy started with a laugh. “She’d been cleaning up after us for months, and we really are slobs, but what’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back? Franny put a can of green beans on the corn row. I thought her head was going to explode.”
“She said she had a temper. I’d just never actually seen it,” “It takes a lot to piss her off but when you do, look out,” Faye said then laughed. “What?” Tammy asked.
“One time this straight college boy wanders in here drunk. I don’t
exactly know how he got here; I sort of think
maybe some of his fraternity brothers dumped him on
“That’s not all that funny,” “I’m not done. Any way about an hour later here comes this little fucker back and he’s got the cops with him but of course it’s Pete and Brad.” “Pete and Brad?” Tammy asked.
“Pete’s gay and Brad is such a straight guy he’s not homophobic at
all, so they put them on patrol in the B Street district so that there aren’t a
couple of homophobic pricks running around busting gays just for being gay. Part of the
police department’s diversity program I guess. Any way here comes this guy with Pete
and Brad and he points at Adrian and says, ‘That’s her, that’s the
one,” and then Pete he just starts laughing and he says, ‘Boy let me tell you
something. There are three things you don’t do on They all laughed. “They talked to me and Adrian and Stella and then they charged the guy with public intox and lewd and lascivious behavior and carted his ass off to jail.”
“Franny, order up!” Jan screamed from the kitchen and “I think I’ll just keep my stuff picked up,” Tammy said to Faye.
“Tammy, what’s with “What do you mean?” “Well for years everyone knew the score. That Adrian was hopelessly in love with Stella and screwing every woman on B Street to console herself and making very sure that every woman she fucked knew that there was no way that she was even going to consider anything more than a sexual involvement with them and then she sleeps with Frances—someone she hardly knows—and then they’re together every night and then they’re living together, and well I’ve slept with both of them and while Adrian’s one of the most amazing lovers I’ve ever had Frances is… well sort of clumsy and… well distant like she wanted to connect and just couldn’t while you knew that Adrian didn’t want to connect but did in spite of herself. When I see them together… I don’t know they look like a couple but they don’t feel like one, does that make any sense?” “Actually yes. They have sex, they live together and sleep together, but it’s like they still live totally separate lives. They’re living together but they don’t ever tell each other where they’re going or what they’re doing, and if one of them wants to actually do something with the other one besides work or screw, they ask like they were going on a first date. Instead of just saying… ‘Hey lets go do so and so.’ It’s more like, ‘I’m going to go do this thing and if you want you can come with me but if you don’t that’s fine but I’m still going.” “Exactly,” Faye said nodding her head. “That’s it. It’s like they’re just with each other because it’s safe and it’s comfortable there is no real passion there.” “Oh I wouldn’t go that far. I live in the same apartment with them. There is plenty of passion there.” “Sexual passion is different than having a passion for someone,” Faye said. Tammy shrugged. She didn’t know, hell she wasn’t sure she even knew what passion was. The only real passion in her life was playing ball and that she was sure wasn’t the same at all. “They seem happy though, happy with their lives and with each other, and isn’t that what it’s supposed to be all about?” Faye nodded. “And who says there’s only one way a couple can be? I guess all that matters is that it works for them.”
“So,” Tammy started, “Doesn’t that ever bother you?” she asked “Why what did you do?” Faye asked. “Well Jerry and I were sitting around in the rec room…
Frances had gotten out of school a little early and
she’d found Adrian out back working in the “garden,” except it wasn’t
a garden yet it was mostly just a bunch of junk stacked around with great, huge holes
being dug in the ground and in one corner towering over the six foot privacy fence a
sculpture made out of old radiators welded together with two old stained bath tubs and six
sinks wrapped up in it and apparently held in place with a bunch of old copper pipe.
Still,
They’d started talking and like most people with a brain they had started
bitching about the war. “I think rich fucks should have to send their fucking
kids,” “Better than that, any President, Senator or congressman who is for a war ought to have to send their kids or serve themselves. I mean think about it, if the war isn’t important enough to send your own loved ones, what right do you have to send mine?” Now that probably would have been the point at which Adrian would have told her that Milly’s girlfriend Marcella was in Iraq, but then Adrian noticed that it was time for her to get cleaned up to go back to Rhonda’s, so she’d hurried off to the apartment to get a shower and change and Frances had wound up continuing her conversation with Jerry in the rec room. “I mean… just what the hell do we think we’re doing? we can’t win their civil war.”
Jerry agreed. “Those religious nut jobs have been fighting with each other for
centuries. Whoever is in power always screws the other group. Soonie, Sheite, does anyone even know why they can’t get
along? Is it by any chance like the stupid-assed Catholics and Protestants fighting in
“And whatever problem they have, us being there isn’t going to fix it,
it’s just going to make them come after us.”
Millie came in, and Jerry shoot
“Shut the fuck up, “Marcella?” and then she saw that Milly looked like she was on the verge of tears. “Oh God, Milly, I didn’t know, I swear.” “It’s all right. She is a stupid fucking idiot, and she is caught up in way more than she signed up for.” Milly sat down at the table with them, practically hugging the coffee she’d brought from the kitchen in her hands. “I told her, I said. It’s don’t ask; don’t tell right? So tell them now. Tell them. But she just kept saying all this crap about the guys in her unit and how she’d been with them down in Florida after all those hurricanes hit and how they counted on each other and it wasn’t right for her to get out of it when they couldn’t and… Well, I told her to choose them or me, and she said she wouldn’t but that she had to go, and in the end well I’m just stuck here alone waiting for her to come home hoping and praying she’s not going to do it in pieces.” Her voice broke on a sob, and then she just started to cry. Both Jerry and Frances moved up to her to give her a shoulder to cry on and she managed to use them both.
“I really am so, so sorry, Milly. Please forgive me,” “It’s all right.” Milly had straightened herself and dried her eyes and nose on a napkin Jerry handed her. “I actually need to talk about it every once in awhile. I love her so much, and I’m so fucking mad at her for doing this stupid shit. I can’t watch the TV or listen to the radio or even look at a paper because I can’t take not knowing whether she’s one of the bodies or not. I can’t stand that this administration says they don’t show the amputees or the dead for us the families of the service men and women. It’s not for us. None of us watch. We can’t stand it. Maybe if the American people could see that these are real people being dismembered and killed they might make this stupid-assed president get us the hell out of his fucking war. Maybe if they said people died instead of soldiers and civilians the American public would wake up and realize that actual human beings are dying.” She’d cried some more and finally she’d said she was tired and left heading for her apartment.
“Go talk to her,” Jerry had prompted
“Oh God, Jerry,” “Go talk to her.” “Don’t you imagine I’m the last person she wants to talk to right now?” “I think she needs to talk to someone, and I’m no good with crying women.”
So “It’s open,” Milly said. Frances walked in and… well she would have thought that she’d get used to it by now but no, the giant elephant painted on the wall with an Indian city fading to jungle all around him still gave her a moment of awe.
“Marcella loves elephants. Says they're her spirit animal,” Milly
explained with a smile. “It was her apartment first and I moved in with her. When
“It’s beautiful,”
“Yeah, and it grows on you, too. At first… well I just thought it was way
too much. Beautiful but the sort of thing you looked at not the sort of thing you lived in
but now I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t walk into the living room in
the morning and see Waldo looking at me. I asked Marcella why she liked the picture so
much. She said it was because it looked like the elephant was saying to the city you
haven’t won yet, I’m still in this fight I’m big and I’m bad and
I’ll go if and when I want to. Then she laughed and said How the fuck do I know? I was eight. So what
happens? The bitch gets sent to the war and they have a layover in “Do you get to talk to her often?” “She calls about once a week and we get to talk for like three minutes. Just long enough for me to miss her. You know, you didn’t really have to come up here to hold my hand, I really am all right.”
“Oh come on, I was a totally insensitive bitch. I just didn’t know.”
Then she added in an accusatory tone. “You’d think
“No she wouldn’t. In case you haven’t figured it out
“How did you meet her?” “She and Adrian came into the club
where I was working. I met them at the same time, but of course I slept with
Tammy smiled as
“
“She’s so lonely and so mad and I wish there was something I could do to
help but… I think maybe I should just drop out of college and just plan on waiting
tables my whole life,” “Order up, Franny,” Jan called from the kitchen, and she ran off to get it. “So what are you grinning about?” Faye asked Tammy.
“Hell, I didn’t know Marcella was in “So… did those idiots move you to the first string?” Faye asked, changing the subject. “They did,” Tammy said, “and I’m glad because it’s all about playing but I catch even more shit from the other girls now.” “Fuckem and feedem fish heads,” Faye said and started eating again. “What?” Tammy said with a laugh. “You heard me I said Fuckem and feedem fish heads.” “Oh that’s great,” Tammy said, putting it into her mental notebook of snappy comebacks she was probably never going to use but wanted to. “Where did you get that one?”
“It’s one of “Just don’t think about it,” Tammy suggested, and Faye looked at her and smiled. “And you see, Tammy, sane people like you who—don’t take this personally—have never had any real shit fall on their heads don’t just stand around waiting for the other shoe to drop, but people like me who know the worst life can dish out, we can never believe that doom isn’t just around every corner. You come from money so you’ve never gone without anything. Your parents love you, and even when you think you won’t make the grade you do, so… Have you ever felt completely helpless?” Tammy didn’t have to think about it. There had only ever been the one time. “When I looked at my little friend Laura and knew that what I was feeling wasn’t right for a girl, when someone told me what a lesbian was and I knew I was one.” Tammy took a deep breath and then let it out. “I didn’t want to feel that way. I hated it. I just wanted to be like everyone else you know?” Faye nodded. “At first I thought I could stop the way I felt, you know stop being such a Tom boy, start dressing more like a girl, acting more like they did, but when I did that… well then I really did feel odd, like a boy in drag. It was an awful time with my parents running along after me asking what was wrong and was I on drugs. I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t meet Franny.” She smiled. “ “I know it may sound insane, but “With Faye nodded again. “Anyway, that helpless way I felt because I knew I was gay… well I still feel that way. Part of me is glad I’m gay and the other part still hopes I’ll wake up one morning and be straight. I think it’s why it’s so hard for me to approach women because part of me feels so guilty that I’m not who my parents think I am and I’m not going to give them the grandchildren they want. I know I shouldn’t feel guilty. that I can’t help being who I am, and I want to be proud like you all are, but I can’t and I hate feeling this way.” “I think every gay person feels that way at least for awhile. Take heart; it does eventually go away. Come on, we’re done eating, let’s go to the house.” “Yeah.” Tammy smiled and stood up. “Let’s go to the house.”
If you enjoyed this episode and would like to see Selina post more about Adrian, Stella, Marcella, and all rest of the B Street crew, please donate whatever you think it's worth and/or can afford. In case you've forgotten how to do this, here's the info from the previous page: How To Donate if You Choose To Do So There are three ways you can donate. If you can think of more ways, please let me know. I'm always interested in YOU giving ME money. 2) Send me a check or a money order to SELINA ROSEN, 710 W. REDBUD LANE, ALMA, ARKANSAS 72921-7247 and tell me what it's for. 3) When you see me at a convention, come up to me, tell me what an awesome writer I am, and tell everyone else to go and start paying to read my shit. Incidentally, go to the Yard Dog Press table and buy ALL my awesome titles! (Oh, and there are other great writers there, too.) |
