Page 137 - Some Dance to Remember

Some Dance to Remember 107

feminist lesbian sexual revolution.
Not everyone saw the joke.
The moustached men who wrapped wimples tight around their heads,
and called themselves “The Little Sisters of the Pinched Face of Jesus,”
were all atwitter. At the Women’s Abuse Building on 19th Street, above
Castro, lesbians planned poetry readings to expose persecution of women
by, of all people, a gay man who should know better than to assert his cave-
man prerogative against feminism. They hated the author’s guts. Hearing-
impaired lesbians, demanding sign at women’s music concerts, shook their
fists at the mention of his name.
Kweenasheba sent him a dead bouquet of a dozen wilted red roses.
“We’ll not be pretty maids sitting in a row.”
“This is not what I meant,” Ryan said to Solly. “Joke ’em if they can’t
take a fuck.”
“The last thing any movement has,” Solly said, “is a sense of humor.”
He shook his finger at Ryan. “Try and keep yours.”
Ryan, truth be known, did not exactly invent the Manifesto. Its street-
smart guts came from the cafes, the bars, and the baths. He interviewed
men. He harvested, then gave voice to, their varied opinions, jacked up
with his and Kick’s, caring less than a Russian dissident how unpopular
his opinions were with what politically correct gay and lesbian liberation
dictated. There was more than one way to be non-heterosexual and Ryan
spoke up for the strong silent minority of manly homosexuals. The Mani-
festo warned the rising homomasculinist movement to avoid the mistakes
of the established feminist movement. His warning to men seemed to
defensive feminists to be a criticism of women. He had intended no slight
to organized women when he repeated Kick’s line, “The hardest thing to
be in America today is a man.”
He had cracked that small pun long before he had thought of the
Manifesto. The remark slipped out when Kweenie had wangled him an
invitation as a men’s erotic writer to facilitate a lesbian women’s erotic writ-
ing workshop. The women had laughed politely, but during the discussion
they chided his erotic writing. They searched to create a more meaningful
erotic literature for themselves. They challenged him to write something
to socially redeem what they called his pornography. They thought to
enlist him in their feminist cause.
Feminists recruit in ways homosexuals never dream of.
If Ryan refused to join forces with them, he had at least heard their
message. Those well-intentioned women had ironically inspired the writ-
ing of the Masculinist Manifesto itself.

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