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ACT UP The Lady Chablis role in the Garden of Burroughs & Chapin was portrayed by Sharon Brown, an unsuccessful city council candidate in the general election. Brown is a transsexual and the performer of a Whitney Houston act at Metropolis by the Sea. Brown was the talk of the town, and most treated her with respect. Brown is also a friend of Chablis. “I love her. She is an entertainer and an actress. That’s her field. My field is politics,” said Brown, projecting heterosexual support for the march. “They wanted a change, and they got it,” Brown said of voters. “I’m not sure if I agree with all the changes. I’m happy for Mark McBride. We don’t agree on all the issues. I think he’ll make a good mayor.” -30- Tim Bullard, 42, was fired at the Florence Morning News for writing an investigative story in Feb. ‘95 on Trucker’s Motel and is writing a book on it. Bullard, a Laurinburg, N.C. native, he attended Appalachian State and is an Eagle Scout. I wish I had not written that story now because across our fax machine came an offer from B&C to buy our paper for around $300,000. There have been rumors floating around the community about the Florence Morning News taking over our paper, and the daily Sun News, a Knight-Ridder rag, is scared stiff we’re going daily. I don’t see what the problem is, although the paper looks a lot better than it did three years ago when I was hired. The N.Y. Times covered the gay issue here a few months go, and Newsweek covered it too. We have an ad lady who is constantly getting on my nerves, and it takes a lot to do that. She has sayings, while she bores advertisers on the phone, and daily our cramped, cubicle of an office is filled with the high octave volume of her voice which vibrates your eardrums like the voice of the boxing announcer, “Let’s get ready to rumble!” Wait a minute...she’s got someone on the phone now. Let’s listen in, shall we? “Life can be tough.” Her sayings highlight our weeks in eternal damnation as our disastrous telephone system loses calls with senators, our paychecks bounce and we work 16-hour days. “It could be worse.” “It’s a soap opera.” “Interesting.” “You do the best you can.” “It’s never boring.” “I’m too old for this.” “How ya doing?” “It’s too hard.” “What are you going to do?” “It’s a nightmare!” “One can only hope!” The S.C. Legislature just went back into session today over in Columbia, and as they enter their respective buildings, the Senate and the House of Representatives, a metal stand is located near the elevators as they jump the lift to the offices suites above. My story on the S.C. Pride 98 Gay and Lesbian Movement’s controversial spring rally, coming up in the spring, is slapped across the cover. “Oh crap!” I exclaimed, picking up my first copy at a TV and VCR repair store in Surfside Beach. The hippie-looking fellow who runs the shop has several thousands machines towering in there like dying hippos in a pile of black electronic pyres. I didn’t realize the story was going to get the cover. He took a photo of the Official All-Star Cafe, and it was on the front page, giving the story premier status, and this photo is staring all the legislators in the face 100 miles away as they prepare to meet the governor who decided to lash out against video poker with his executive budget this morning. Today another guy called and said he liked my gay pride story. He used to be the president of the chamber of commerce, and at one event he quipped aside to me, “When you cross that river into Horry County, you’d better make sure you bring your lawyer over with you.” He wasn’t kidding. He was absolutely correct about the litigious nature of this region. Lots of folks have been, like, making a point to come out of the blue and tell me what a great job they thought I did on the story. No other story in Myrtle Beach I have done had brought this kind of feedback, and it was all because they talked it up, I heard, on a local conservative radio talk show in the mornings. Banana Jack Murphy, a Republican DJ with an audience of glue-sniffing teenyboppers, plays AC-DC and father-raper music, but allows enough time to bash Democrats and other liberals. Apparently my story got hammered on his show, even after I had taken several pictures of him lately and featured him in a front page story. Some days you say, “I don’t care what they say about this story.” Other days you go, “Why are they saying that?” I shouldn’t care. But I do. And I hate it when I do and when I don’t. The trick is knowing when to care and when not to and when not to let any of it bother you and drip off your shoulder like rainwater off a duck’s ass. *************************** Today there’s going to be a little bit of ambush journalism. The Attorney General’s mother is going to be at a Catholic women’s conference at the Martinique where I’ll be wearing two hats. it’s a hard job to do. it’s like the Captain Kangaroo story, the Bob Keeshan version, about the guy with a bunch of hats he wore on his head. I think they all fell off at the end, teetering. It’ll be covering the bishop’s visit and the conference for the Miscellany, but also I’ll have access with the paper I work at. This is an accommodating feature because I’ll be able to snarf something for our paper and still make an extra 100 bucks or so from the religious publication. I’ll catch her in the most unguarded of moments - while she’s breathing. her son has been putting to death a record number of death row inmates, and what better way to change an incumbent running this year and his opinion against the death penalty than to introduce myself to his mother. It is probably her opinion that rules his, or at least shaped it many moons ago. I cannot go overboard identifying her religion and cannot go too far by letting her know where the interview is going until later when she trusts me and I gain her confidence by tipping my full house that I am not out to make her or her son look bad, but that I want to produce a well-rounded, fair story on the death penalty. I want to get on the press association’s “lottery” through which a person’s name is chosen from the media to represent the entire fiefdom of idiots who are pompous and Napoleonic in 50 or so offices across the state. What are the chances? I suppose they had good luck winning the draw. First, I’ll ask her why she supports the death penalty...then when I get to pick and choose into the interview, I’ll throw out some that don’t make me look bad and do not embarrass her. Like, “Is the death penalty a hate crime?” Yesterday at the Tom Turnipseed press conference all the Horry County Democrats, high functioning illiterates who, when assembled, resemble a collection of monkeys, when the Columbia attorney called me by name. People listen to you like hawks here, absorbing every phonic to see how they’re going to squeeze someone the next time they see them, either politically or socially, or slander them or praise them, whatever the feeling of the masses is at that particular second of the clock during the day. Tom’s grandfather was in the Klan, and he tells crowds while he informs them of his activist work also. Yesterday was Friday, so the group of Democrats were standing there, holding bright red and white signs, saying, “Sorry Charlie!” and stuff like that about sitting S.C. Attorney General Charlie Condon. When Mr. Turnipseed told them that his own grandfather had been a member of the Klan, those white folks acted like somebody had stuck an enormous, diseased prick up their ass without a rubber or any protection. He gave an impassioned speech, and I was very entertained. He would call me by name, asking for questions, and I was getting embarrassed, so I flung one out after he stated, in total disregard for my question (“Is it the Attorney General’s responsibility to jump into the Confederate flag issue (as Condom had done) or not?” He loves the flag. I do too. He came close to showing how hard it is to love it and hate it, the schizophrenia of the flag, and it was showing in his face. I thought he was going to have another heart attack, the former state senator. When he started talking about how it would be his grand idea to establish a gambling or video poker commission to enforce limitations on the industry, I was scared. the democratic party had gone overboard in supporting the video poker after first only giving it a nod and credence, but when the guy I interviewed a while back, Fred Collins, owner of the largest video poker company in the state, announced this week he was giving $50,000 to the party, I knew that it was going to be a downhill election year with a big hot steaming bowl of donkey doo-doo as a prize for the winners. Collins has put up a bunch of billboard signs, littering the countryside of Holsteins with the first batch boasting about an education scholarship program, then the next slew of ads promoting video poker and the latest after the GOP primary blasting Beasley for opposing gambling. A fellow called me from a group in Spartanburg where he said someone had broken into their office in a “black bag” crime. He said people were coming up to him from out of the blue, warning him to lay off video poker in the anti-gambling group Carolina Family Alliance. During a break-in he said someone had accessed the group’s computer at 3 a.m. with no property missing at all. “Speaking of hate crimes, what do you think about the death penalty?” I asked Turnipseed, tape recorder in the left hand, I shoved an imaginary mike in his general direction as the monkeys gasped. He’s for it too. There are no pacifists running in this race. No death penalty opponents this year. Fear is in the air. You can smell it like a fart from Charlie Daniels’ big 60-year-old ass. It will be a softball interview, but it could turn into a Tom Seaver finish, a Tom Glavine sleeper. When you ask someone about their religious opinions, you’d durned be ready to share your own with them and at least have some stowed away and at hand to share when challenged. On Sundays you don’t mow your grass on Sundays here, and when you go to a restaurant on Sunday at 12:10 a.m. or earlier without a coat and tie on, you’re a blaspheming incubus. When the Wilmington Star had a local freelancer, who got fired over handing a good story over to another paper, come down and rile up a Presbyterian secretary the other week, who wouldn’t even talk to me on the record, I called up John Meyer, the editor, and told him the reporter had allegedly failed to tell the angry church secretary she was a reporter. It was the first time I had talked to him in 10 years. “Is Donna Pipes still there? Tell her I said hey,” I told John. I had worked with Donna in Boone, and on the front page of the Charlotte Observer, she was in a photo after the hostage staff of The Robesonian in Lumberton had been held at bay by two deranged Indians. John hauled me in the office one day over the returned letter I sent Mark, who had changed addresses, a letter which he had read and that I had written on company stationery. The missive had returned, and all my rantings on company employees, my job, my personal life and the time of day had been turned over to John. “Your humility files” - that is John’s claims to fame in my book. That’s what he called the big brown cardboard detergent box you use to keep your yellowing clips smelling good in the storage room as ants and insects and industrial strength roaches crap all over your bylines from past newspapers. It was a copyrighted phrase of his. It should have his name under the phrase in the dictionary. I got in trouble over that envelope for drawing, over that seashell stamp they had back in about 1988, with the additional female genitalia that looks like it would surround the shiny inside wet looking interior of that pink shell. *************************** To: Mark From: Tim Durn I figured Catholics were probably more likely to succeed at marriage than Baptists...go frigging figure...just got back from waste of frigging time Catholic women’s conference.....spent morning taking orders from my wife on a.v. equipment for her speech.....spent last p.m. hrs. drinking bloodys at the bar waiting on suckers to finish mass...I tell you why I’m so pissed...all these frigging people expect me to publicize this thing and lo and behold our attorney general, who put a record number of people to death this last year....his mother is up for banquet honors and crap tonight...the heck with the banquet, and the heck with them. I’m about tired of freelancing for them...because i have put a lot of stuff on backburner because of this crap.....and I’m losing money doing it, making long distance calls and not being able to file for reimbursement. Off soapbox officially....now.... hope you had a good day...slipped off in huff and watched primary colors...depressing... No ambush....just this. MYRTLE BEACH - As legislators prepared to vote on gambling, the S.C. Council of Catholic Women at the Martinique Sunday, hammering out a resolution against gambling and adult entertainment to protect community and family life. Noting that “gambling can be addictive and injurious to the individual and to family life,” the group resolved that members educate and caution adults and youth about the dangers of addiction. “Whereas ‘adult entertainment’ found in night clubs, theaters, bookstores, the Internet and on TV is increasingly prevalent in our society, (it is) resolved that SCCCW members continue to protect their families and communities against such undermining of their moral values by protesting privately and publicly to such business enterprises.” The move comes a month after the parents of race car driver and Excalibur Security officer Rodney Graham, 22, murdered with a shot to the head at Stateline Video in Little River, issued a plea for help in solving the crime. County leaders are considering a business license to curb adult entertainment. There were 213 women attending this year’s convention which is an opportunity for ladies from all over South Carolina involved in their own churches to come together to share their ideas and concerns and to support each other on important issues. New officers include Province Director Harriet Condon, Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Charleston, President Monica Szymanski, Columbia Deanery, Recording Secretary Audrey Adduce, Florence Deanery, Treasurer Mary Sue Barnum, Columbia Deanery. Ann Mitchum, sister of Mgr. Thomas Duffy of St. Michael Catholic Church in Garden City, was presented the award of 1998 Catholic Woman of the Year. Her work over the past five years was judged. Father Duffy blessed my dying Olds Firenza in Florence once when I interviewed him for the Florence Morning Piece of Junk. A Charleston native, born Aug. 22, 1941 to Mary McMahon and John Joseph Duffy Sr., she has been an active member and was in charge of the Doll Project for abused children. Ms. Mitchum also received the Our Lady of Good Counsel Medal from by her brother, Duffy, the keynote speaker. A collection was made for school supplies through Catholic Charities, headquartered in Horry County on Academy Drive and serving 12 counties, and the supplies were distributed to all four deaneries. Proposed resolutions included one promising participation in the phase of the Synod in special honor of the contributions of Bishop David B. Thompson and one on legislative and family concerns, including support of a new bill in the S.C. General Assembly titled “The Right to Life Act” which states that the right to life and to protection by the laws be vested “in each human being at fertilization.” *************************** Controversial issues can span mundane budgetary battles to who’s bringing the fried chicken for the picnic, but on Saturday, April 4, St. Michael Catholic Church in Garden City, south of Myrtle Beach, convened a timely AIDS ministry provoking important, passionate discussion. Before a healing mass and lunch, heart-breaking testimonials by three HIV-positive residents were heard, and sitting through the testimonials without shedding a tear was tougher halting a tidal wave with a paper umbrella. Patrick Evans, a parishioner, helped organize the ministry meeting which evoked empathy after three HIV-positive speakers talked - including Evans. Evans, 45, helped organize Pride 98’s Gay Pride Festival in Myrtle Beach set for the month’s end, and the festival has drawn the ire of many church groups in Horry County. First Baptist Church organized a group of youth against the Pride 98 Festival, and local ministers have threatened a boycott of any businesses that sponsor the festival. “You are a sinner, and you are going to hell,” Evans said Pride 98 opponents have told him while pointing fingers at him in debates. Evans said he has to answer to teens who commit suicide in the struggle over homosexuality. “Thirty percent of all teen suicides are gay,” he said. “That’s just the ones you know are gay.” One parishioner shared his personal view and concern, not on the AIDS ministry, but homosexuality and the church. “You have a right to go in there,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, the priest has no right to bar you because it’s only a manmade law. “I get bothered by the church dictating themselves. It’s just like the father writing a letter in behalf of that guy who was executed. I respect his right. But I’d love to be the guy who pulls the switch. I believe in capital punishment. I think the thing that bothers me the most about listening to you three, the only thing I can think in my mind is, damn, I wish I had known you 10 years ago because I missed out on knowing you guys.” “It was we were afraid to be here,” answered Evans. “Everybody gets to know you and love you...just because you are you,” the parishioner said. “We fell in love with your friendship because of you. But I think when you walk into church and say, ‘I’m gay, and I want to be forgiven,’ you are challenging people...why can’t you just slide in the door like everybody else?” “It’s because many times prisons are built by attitudes,” said HIV-positive Keith Boling of CARETEAM, a local AIDS and HIV-positive client assistance organization. “We are talking about a time when there are many prisons being built, and I’m not talking about iron bars. “Now I don’t mean to go and push it in your house. I don’t mean to slam it in your face. I only need to find my faith, and if I find my faith, I’ll let myself free, and I’m not going to let that stop me. Does that help?” “No,” the parishioner replied. “I can’t see why you just can’t walk in the church and be one of us because that’s what you are.” “I’ve never came in and said, ‘I’m gay; forgive me,” Evans said. “In the darkest hour, I don’t feel alone, and that makes me live,” said Boling, who is on
Duffy said, “Fine, if you want to pull the switch. And you do that, and you could show love?” “That’s another story,” the parishioner admitted. “I’m a retired police officer. You’ve been on this side of the fence. I was on the other side.” Room 10 of the McCaffery Center became as silent as a tomb; Duffy’s opening prayer for “reconciliation” was a distant milepost. “It’s always that. “Father, you ain’t in the real world.’ You’ve got that cloth on you and so forth,” Duffy responded. “I am in the real world. “It’s a whole life story. It all goes together. Life is a gift of God, whether you have got AIDS or whether you’ve got male or female or anything else. Are we all really made in the image and likeness of God, and if we are, how can we look at one another and not see brothers and sisters? If we can call him our father, how in the heck can we not see everybody as brothers and sisters who need to be loved? We pray and ask God to forgive our sins, that we forgive those who have sinned against us.” Boling said the 3rd Annual Dining With Friends CARETEAM fund raiser will be held at the Hard Rock Cafe April 18. Call 236-9000 for more information. The event consists of different dinner parties, held simultaneously and tied together by a common invitation. The event was developed by Triad Health Project in Greensboro, N.C. and launched in Myrtle Beach in April 1996, raising more than $30,000 in one night. In 1997 there was $38,000 raised with more than 800 people and 75 parties. Since 1994 cities in North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, Florida and South Carolina have taken part. Participants will attended in private homes, restaurants and backyards from 7-9 p.m. with a private finale with dessert and champagne at the Hard Rock pyramid at Burroughs & Chapin’s Broadway at the Beach. Evans and Pride 98 have fought bitterly with Burroughs & Chapin, a development company which is the largest property owner in the city, after the company expressed its Download 2.99 Mb. Share with your friends:
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