Amy Loves Books

I have often felt that I do not make a very good girl. It may have something to do with shoes. It could, quite possibly, be linked to Barbie heads.

I have never been comfortable around other girls. They make me uneasy. I just have never really known how to care about all the things they seem to care about. When I was younger, I blamed it on my parents. If only they had let me see the movie Grease, then maybe I could have joined in on the playground while all the girls sang “Summer Nights” and gushed over John Travolta. I have to confess though, that when I finally did see Grease, I thought it was stupid. I still don’t understand what Sandy (or I) was supposed to see in that moron whats-his-name - or why it was liberating for her to give up her comfortable, easy look and start wearing tight pants and spiked boots.

Another thing I blamed on my parents was the fact that I never could get into the whole “hair and make-up” routine. Being a high school student in the eighties, hair was, quite literally, a big thing. I blamed my lack of hair-fixing desire/ability on my childhood lack of a Barbie head. They made these toys for girls that were like huge Barbie heads. They came with hair curlers, and brushes and a whole palate of make-up - so you could practice your grooming skills on Barbie. I was never allowed to have one of these. I always wondered if maybe, having a Barbie head would have cured my hair and makeup fixing deficiency. Maybe it would have, but then again, the one time that I played with one at a neighbor's house I used all the green eye shadow to turn Barbie into the Hulk. The green eye shadow never really washed off all the way, and from then on, my neighbor’s Barbie head looked like she was on the verge of puking.

In addition to my failures as a stylist to Barbie, I am also completely ignorant about the whole “shoe” thing. Evidently, girls like shoes. This is what I hear. I see greeting cards with slogans like “she who dies with the most shoes wins”. I see little Christmas ornaments that look like shoes. I hear about not wearing white shoes after labor day. I hear that “you can always judge a woman’s style by looking at her shoes and purse”. I just do not get it. I tried to walk in high heels once. After that, I gave up. I have had three shoe phases. For a while I wore vintage 50’s dresses and saddle oxfords. Then, I wore prairie dresses and boots. Now, I wear one pair of clogs in the winter and one pair of sandals in the summer. The idea that my shoes should change with my outfit is incomprehensible to me. Which brings me (finally) to the point of what is going to turn out to be a long essay. The point being, that I really love gay people.

I had a great aunt that died before I was born. She was a Red Cross nurse during World War II. While she was serving overseas, tending to the wounded young soldiers, she feel in love with one of her fellow nurses. When the war was over, they moved to rural Ohio and built a farm together. My mother lists the times that she spent her aunt’s farm as her happiest childhood memories. Her aunt would make her a little lunch and tie it up in a red bandana attached to a stick like a hobo. They would go on long hikes through the woods, stopping to inspect hollow trees for evidence of fairies. One day, my mom asked her mother if Christine was Aunt Nellie’s husband. My grandmother washed my mother’s mouth out with soap and told her to never say anything like that again.

I had a best friend in high school. His parents worked for the state Democratic party and were ex-hippies and they had both a white VW wan and a white VW bug. We would skip school and ride around town, stopping for orange juice muffins and herbal tea at the Mill and listening to Cat Stevens and Simon and Garfunkel on the tape player. I would have my feet up on the dash and he would be driving, practicing smoking so that when he smoked around strangers, he would seem experienced and cool. Once we decided to learn to tie-die, so we tie-died his sheets black using his mom’s bathtub and then realized that the dye had seeped into the tub itself and turned it a nasty shade of gray. He puked on my tape of “Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me” and messed up the balance of it somehow so that Hot Hot Hot was always a little more distorted than it should be - but I loved it that way - because it made me think of him. I have a vivid memory of riding in the car at night and being in the drivers seat and my friend would be stoned and would lay down in the passenger’s seat with his head in my lap. And the Florida night would stretch across the flat highway in front of me and I would drive and U2 would sing “with or without you” and slight of hand and twist of fate, I loved him.

He would also use me as his cover story. His parents thought he was out with me when he was not. I was his boyfriend’s date to the prom. I was the only one that knew.


When I was a senior in high school, I had a chance to work with the theater department at Florida State on a production of Romeo and Juliet. For the first time in my life, I felt truly embraced by a group of people. There was one really brilliant boy. He was one of the funniest human beings I have ever met. He had this habit of breaking into sign language when he was talking to you and pretending to be deaf. Strangers, walking by, would look at you, talking to him, in amazement - seeing a real, live, deaf person . They would smile compassionately. He used to call me “Gidget”. Most of the actors were pretty angsty in that typical tortured artist way. Not this guy. He was just strong and funny and kind.

There was a crisis in the theater department the next year. I had abandoned theater to study art history and English, and I did not see my theater friends very much. I heard about the crisis from a friend whose mother was sleeping with one of the professors in the theater department. One of their new BFA students had just tested positive for AIDS. At this point, there were no drug cocktails to take. AIDS was a death sentence. This student had been asked to make a list of everyone that he had slept with. Evidently, the list pretty much covered the entire male population of the theater department.

That Sunday, I was sitting in church. My church was just a few blocks from the college campus. I was sitting in the back and I looked and saw, sitting on the front row, the brilliant boy from Romeo and Juliet. My heart sank. I knew there was only one reason that he would be in a church. I knew he must have been on the list. He was dressed in a button up shirt and tie, and I pictured him trying to dress the “right way” for church. I could not wait until the service was over so that I could go and welcome him. Unfortunately, the sermon began. With the emergence of AIDS in the news, the minister began to preach on the evils of homosexuality and the wages of sin. When the congregation bowed their heads for the benediction, my friend quietly slipped out. When I saw his empty chair, I rushed outside to try to find him. But he was gone.

There is no place for me in current debates. I side with the outcasts. I can not help it.

They did not play with Barbie heads; they understand my wool socks and clogs.
We have alot in common.

I see the stone set in their eyes.
I see the thorn twist in their side.

And I wait.

And I love them.