Read Online Jericho by George Fetherling - Free Book Online Page A

wasn’t busy doing that, I was thinking hard, even when I was busy at something else. What I figured was that it was time to cut out. So I was selling the inventory, quietly, and getting rid of my stuff. Like a Boxing Day sale in springtime. I knew I should be gone before summer came up north and everybody started killing everybody else and the parents of customers start pressuring the city to clean house. I had a plan. I even had the Stick. My trusty Stick.
    What makes lesbians different from other persecuted groups is that we are discriminated against because of how we are supposed to look rather than on the basis of the way we’re accused of talking. The insensitive may think this sounds nonsensical. What about the racially disenfranchised, they will say. So permit me to explain it to you.
    What lies behind white racist attitudes towards African-Americans in the United States? Not skin complexion as such, for there is no standardization with regard to
either
race, no universal standard or set of charts that are consultable. The point of entry for the white racists is how black people are shown talking on television and in movies. That is, in oral fashion. All that jive-talkin’ mutha hoe upside-the-head stuff signals to the white ear: here is the enemy. So too with prejudice against First Nations people, which begins with reaction against their poetic language—soars like eagle and all of that. It always reminds white racists of that Canadian Native actor, what was his name, Chief Dan? Anti-Semitism is not unsimilar this way. The specifics ofJewish speech as practised in eastern Europe in, say, the late nineteenth century—initial w’s becoming v’s, the hard final
g
in words like
long
and the liberal use of certain supposed phrases uttered by Jews in show business entertainments—are the things that activate the alarm in anti-Semites. Wit French Canadians it’s da same t’ing (though of course anti-Catholic hatred is also a major factor in that case).
    Following along those lines, what triggers homophobia against gay men is that fey diction you commonly hear in the real-life West End and with even greater certainness whenever fags are featured in pop culture. But there’s no such thing as lesbian speech. Instead there’s only the stereotype of the large bull dyke dressed like a biker.
    That leaves me the most discriminated-against of all. I do not conform to the image, being neither butch nor femme in how others see my appearance. I’m nowhere near imposing enough for the former—to have such a thought is to laugh. Nor, which is humorous in its own way to the same extent, am I fluffy enough for the other one. In fact, not fluffy at all. I’m small and blonde with this pointy chin like an upside-down piece of fruit. People used to mock me about having to buy clothes in the kiddie department, and I never let on that it was true, or used to be so, well into very very late adolescence. I have no body art or piercings, for I am of the wrong generation. More importantly, I have few discernible curves beyond my face. Looking at me, one could not say with certainty where my centre of gravity is. So homophobes intolerate me while fellow lesbians do so as well, gratuitously and with calculated effect. Always have done. But if my free-time study of the science of the mind has taught me anything, it is that it doesn’t matterwhat people think of me because they wouldn’t like me anyway.
    Don’t miscomprehend me. This is not self-pity speaking. There’s nothing scientific about self-pitying behaviour, and we must bring at least some science to the job of assessing ourselves. I’m just looking at the facts. I’m
staring
at them without expression.
    Sometimes, in rare cases, a person’s coming-out is actually more of a going-in. It’s a liberation from having to pretend, yes, but also liberation from having to try—try to look like the people in media photographs, try to sound just the same as everyone else, try