24 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE NOVEMBER 24, 1995

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ABOVE THE FRUITED PLAIN

A gay male dilemma: Which baby formula?

by Aubrey Wertheim

A Saturday morning in spring in a neighborhood not unlike yours.

I am holding my placard high. I wear my pink triangle Lifeguard T-shirt jockily. I exude an air of impregnable dedication as I stand before a local clinic in defense against a march of mobilized anti-abortion forces. Pretty dull as demos go.

Our valiant number keeps to its side letting fly with the usual chants. (Can't we get some new material?) Their valiant numbers keep to their side waving the usual gory fullcolors (Addams Family Values, snap, snap). And the cops promptly, methodically haul off any of the fetal-tissue militia when they break rank and attempt any interruption of services.

All rather orderly. Very midwest.

A woman I recognize as a first cousin of a late great AIDS pioneer announces to the opposition with great gusto: "We are going to pray the rosary!" Clearly, there is division between the ranks as only a handful take up beads and kneel. After the seventeenth chorus (apparently, some rosaries are longer than others), most are not even respectfully silent and even greater gusto must be applied to finish the prayer in one humble voice: "Amen!"

Solidarity is a onerous cross.

I wander around, shmoozing and cruising. Here's Deb, a big union-organizing dyke. There's Rhonda, the latest, uh, er, erotic weight trainer of a journalist girlfrennamine. Here's a local flagburner soliciting funds for her upcoming trial (How dare people come to such auspicious events with hidden agendas?).

There must be some available men around this gig worth dating.

Oy, here are Kitty and Al, the Oldest Activist Couple in the state. At the drop of a McCarthy pin, they can launch into stories of Rubin and Hoffman, Sacco and Vanzetti, probably Sojourner Truth if you hold out long enough. They are beloved by the huddled masses. They are revered by countless generations. They are boring as all getout. I endure three stories and stagger off.

I cross the street where another clinic's molested. I wonder, as I wait for the light, if women compare abortion providers like other services at the drug store, fer instance, at the home test section. Why not? Makes sense. A little medical comparison shopping.

This clinic is where my friend Mario works. He's a hero of mine. Not just because he performs abortions in addition to an innercity multi-trauma practice, but because after medical school, when all his classmates tore off to establish high-yield yuppie practices,

he stuck to some ideals, went into socialized medicine and still made nice money.

But on the side, I worry about him. After we glibly talk on the phone of bulletproof vests and unlisted numbers and those folks who hold life so sacred they'd stalk, harrass, terrorize, hurt him. Don't gay men, we joke, have enough paranoia in other areas of our lives?

But we must break for pluralism.

Three cheers in all trimesters for the prolife lesbigay movement! May it be fruitful and multiply!

May they expand beyond these piddly baby boom and gloom issues to bigger and better invasive procedures. How about reinstating Ohio's sodomy statute? Say, there was one divine piece of civil righteousness. Eliminated this sticky business of queer bodies altogether. No more thorny choices of butch/femme/active/passive/top/bottom/ safe/unsafe/gray/positive/negative/open/

monogamous/etc./etc./etc!

State made all the choices for you: all banned, all criminal, all prosecutable. What a load off that was.

And remember Jerry Falwell's comment re his abortion platform-that if they ever discovered a gay/lesbian gene, he would graciously make an exception. Now there is a humanitarian after my own heart.

Cut to: the North Carolina shore last summer. Mario and I are here with friends for a much-needed getaway. With the vegeburgers firing up on the grill, we are returning to the cottage-walking along the ocean-sun slipping into the horizon, etc. Kodak homo moment deluxe. The good doctor's relating a recent incident.

The other day, a woman lay on his table being readied for The Procedure. He was in the tent, between the stirrups, nurse at his elbow, attending to prelims. Suddenly, from the opposite end, the patient, feeling no pain apparently from anesthesia, raised her head woozily and exclaimed, "I bet you just love this job! You get to spend all your time looking at women's vaginas!"

I almost lost my water breaking up. How lovely, if only for that moment, to be on the shore of a world where bodies were neither polarized nor policed; where these natural and gorgeous links between women and gay/bisexual men just forged and forged; and where sex, gestation and whichever road opted for were miraculously free and clear enough to incorporate a little humor.

For one brief, choice moment there, life was good. ♡

Above the Fruited Plain is a regular column by Aubrey Wertheim, a writer based in Oberlin.

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