Waiting for the Sissy Killer

By Omowale Akintunde

Waiting for the Sissy Killer is a fictional memoir that traces the life of Jamal McCoy from 1961, at age five, to 1986.

Jamal is a young black gay man who deals with issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, and religion and is struggling with the sociological as well as psychological impact of the aforementioned on his fractured humanity. The story, told from the first person and characterized by sporadic psychotic internal dialogues emanating from the biographical ruminations of Jamal, provides an analysis of American life and culture from a black gay perspective.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Sep 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781490741208

Omowale Akintunde

Dr. Akintunde is an Associate Professor in the Department of Black Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He received the Bachelor of Science and Master of Music Education degrees from Alabama State University, and the Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction and African American Studies from the University of Missouri. Omowale resides in Omaha, Nebraska. Dana received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Elementary Education from the University of Northern Iowa, and her Master of Science degrees in Reading Education and Educational Administration and Supervision from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Dana was an elementary teacher for twelve years, and she is currently a district administrator with the Omaha Public Schools. She lives with her husband and two children in Council Bluffs, Iowa. LaTosha Washington is an elementary teacher in the Omaha Public Schools. She has a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. She is presently working on a Master of Science degree in Literacy. LaTosha lives with her husband and three children in Omaha, Nebraska. Ashlee Barnett earned a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Master of Science degree in Education from Peru State College. She currently works as an elementary school teacher in the Omaha Public Schools. Ashlee lives with her two dogs in Omaha, Nebraska.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

D.C., 1986

W hen you’re lonely, every night of the week is Saturday night. So, the fact that tonight was actually Saturday night was only incidental to my loneliness. I took out the tin can in which I’d received an assortment of butter cookies a week of Christmases ago. I don’t even remember eating the cookies or even who gave them to me. I only remember thinking what an excellent reefer can it would make. I rolled a joint—not too fat—because my stash was low and I wanted to make sure I had a joint for the next day which would be Saturday night again. I made the first of three gin and tonics and put on a tape of 1970’s slow jams and pretended I was in my twenties thus beginning my weekly preparation ritual to go to my favorite gay night spot, The Bachelor’s Mill.

I went into the bathroom and with the help of Murray’s Pomade, a stiff brush, and much too hot water, stroked my hair into a row of reluctant waves. I noticed that my gin and tonic was about two swallows shy of completion. I wouldn’t have another just then. I wouldn’t be leaving the house until about one a.m. and I only had two more drinks allocated. Any more than that and I would collapse. It never failed. It was always the fourth gin and tonic.

I shaved my face with Noxzema and one of those orange disposable razors. I over-brushed my teeth which caused my gums to ache subsequently giving me adequate reason to make my second drink—which I did. I showered and sat on the side of the bed. I smoked a cigarette and lotioned my body. The phone rang. It was Frankie. I met Frankie outside a straight bar I’d decided to cruise on the advice of a friend that straight bars were actually the best venues in which to find the man of your dreams. Frankie was not the man of my dreams. However, through the sight of eyes soaked in gin and dried out in reefer smoke, he seemed an acceptable vision. But I was seeing clearly now and I did not want to be bothered with Frankie. Frankie was last resort trade and the evening was too young for that. I politely refused his offer to make my toenails grow and made a mental note to clip them before leaving the house. I went to the mirror over the sink and removed the stocking cap from my head much the same as one would a lid from a steaming entree. I inspected the results and declared my hair done.

I put on the jeans my mother called stretch pants last summer, my black boots and a white button down shirt. It was time for my third gin and tonic. I flipped the tape over and realized I’d forgotten to clip my toenails which, left untended, have been known to cause flesh wounds. I drove downtown to the Bachelor’s Mill and circled the block, which contained the bar, several times in search of a lighted parking space. A well-lit parking space ranks right up there with condoms on the metropolitan homosexual’s safe sex list. I’ve been known to bolt upright in the middle of fucking at the sound of a car alarm. I could hear the music pumping in the club and I was still almost a block away. As I passed a white Lincoln Town Car, someone hissed at me. I turned and noticed a row of really white teeth behind the steering wheel. Upon closer inspection, I noticed he was wearing one of those black do-rags and the hand lay across the steering wheel had on one of those rings that covered the whole hand like brass knuckles. A southeast D.C. block boy. I thought to myself, he probably wants to have cheap, demeaning, dehumanizing sex while calling me derogatory names, slapping me around while he pounded his hard muscular body repeatedly against mine. The idea appealed to me so I parked and walked to his car.

What’s up? he said, breaking into a grin and revealing a solid gold tooth on the left side of his mouth.

Nothing, I said, What’s up with you?

I’m just looking for a good time, he responded. I looked at him suspiciously.

Come sit down in the car, he said. I didn’t move.

What’s the matter? You scared?, he continued.

Of course, not, I said trembling.

I got in and without saying anything, he just started the car and drove out of the parking lot. Now the scenes dancing in my mind were of me being drugged, raped, beheaded and dumped on the side of I-95. He reached to turn the radio up and I jumped.

What’s wrong witchu? he asked.

Nothing, I said, wondering if decapitation hurt. He reached into his pocket. I squinted, steeling myself for the blow. When I stopped squinting, he was handing me a joint. He lit it for me. I took a toke so hard I damn near swallowed it. Pretty soon, I felt good. We were on what I assumed was the beltway. I was pretty high by now.

Feel better? he asked.

Yeah, where the fuck are we?

You ok. Don’t Worry, he said.

He went into the glove compartment and took out a flask. He took a swig and handed it to me. I took several swigs and handed it back. He was looking good in that do-rag and I had an overwhelming urge to lick his ring. He exited, made a few turns, and I swear we were in Europe. I didn’t know where the fuck I was. He started playing with his crotch and I pretended not to notice. Then he placed my hand on his dick. Instinctively, I squeezed.

Pull down your pants, he said. I didn’t move. He pulled his pants down though. He looked at me.

Well you gonna pull down your pants or what? he repeated. I pulled down my pants, which was no easy feat, and realized I wasted my entire educational life. I did not need a college degree for this. He used the electric controls to recline the seats.

Stick your ass in the air, he said. I looked at him like he was crazy.

I swear I ain’t gone hurt you. I just want to look at it and jack off, he said. Can I pick’em or what? I turned over and put my ass in the air a little bit. I swear I really did not need a degree for this.

Higher, he said, massaging his dick. With one hand on his dick and the other on my ass, I felt relatively safe. Safe but embarrassed. I thanked God they didn’t put missing sissies on the side of milk cartons. If I survived this one, I would carry it to the grave. He was really getting off now—jerking his dick and rubbing my ass like Aladdin’s lamp.

Higher. Stick it up higher, he moaned. I wasn’t sticking my ass up any higher. I didn’t need to. I could now look back between my legs and see my genitals hanging like tonsils. This was so much more fun when being imagined. Finally, he came. I turned around and started pulling my pants up.

Look inside the glove compartment and hand me those tissues, he said. I did and he cleaned himself up. He threw the tissue and my self-respect out the window. Just like back at the club, without a word, he started the car and left. When we got back to the parking lot at the club, he dug into his pocket and handed a ten-dollar bill toward me. I couldn’t believe this shit. What the fuck did he think I was? I’m no prostitute. But then, I remembered, I wasn’t rich either. I pocketed the ten dollars and got silently out of the car. He burned rubber out of the lot.

I could hear the music pumping in the club. I didn’t feel festive anymore. I got in my car. I sat there gripping the steering wheel, playing the night over and over again in my head. Is this what loneliness does? Is this what I’ve lived a lifetime to become? Is this it? Sudden rapping on my window scared the shit out of me. When I turned to look, it was Frankie. I opened the passenger door and he slid into the car just like I had with the guy in the Lincoln. Without any verbal exchange, I pulled out of the parking lot. As we drove silently back to my place, I squeezed the steering wheel with a strength I didn’t know I had, gazing at the highway through gin-soaked, reefer smoke-dried eyes hoping and praying with all my might, that tomorrow would be Sunday.

CHAPTER 1

Mobile, 1961

T hat boy gone be a sissy!

Everybody laughed. I was only five years old, so I didn’t understand the prophecy of this statement. I didn’t understand what a sissy was. So I wasn’t offended when my brother, Kank, said this. Kank, whose actual name was Lionel McCoy, Jr., was the eldest of my siblings. He was named for my father. Mama said they nicknamed him Kank because of his kanky red hair as a child.

He act just like Sissy Julius, Kank continued.

Sissy Julius was the town faggot who was known for wearing women’s clothes and cruising Davis Avenue, the Black Main Street in Mobile, Alabama. Kank then propped his right arm up sissy-style with a limp wrist. Everyone guffawed. So I laughed, too. I didn’t know I was being ridiculed, but this is my earliest memory of being called a sissy. I don’t remember at what point I knew what being a sissy meant. It’s like trying to remember the point you knew how to read. I remember everyone was there though: Mama, my brothers, Kank and Daniel, my sisters, Veronica and Belinda. Daddy wasn’t there; however, he never was. He was always at work. Belinda was six years older than me, Veronica eleven, Daniel fifteen and Kank eighteen.

I always felt alienated from my family because of my distance from my siblings age-wise. Of course, I couldn’t label the feeling alienated early in my life. I didn’t have the word for it then. But words are not feelings anyway. They are merely symbolic representations. But if I could have labeled my feeling it would have been alienation.

As I grew older, however, I knew what being a sissy meant and from that phase on, life would never be the same. Again, one cannot pinpoint at what point one knows these things. Like hair growth, the process of knowing is imperceptible. One of the questions still debated is whether homosexuality is a choice. You would think that if no one else knew, homosexuals would. You would think that every homosexual would be able to tell you of that pivotal point, that fateful day, that deciding event when you just knew. However, being homosexual is also an imperceptible phenomenon. Like the start of gray hair in your head. One day you comb your hair and there it is. That single gray hair standing there alone in a mass of black. Where did it come from? Why didn’t I see it grow? It’s like it has been a part of your being forever. So, I don’t know how I came to be gay just like I don’t know how I first knew what sissy meant. And what is really extraordinary about these things is that they are not mere occurrences; they are life-defining events. They form the basic core of your self—your very being—and yet you cannot recall their birth. There were no labor pains prior to their arrival. No expectant fathers proudly awaiting them. They are the bastard children of our human experience.

And yet these things are significant definers of our reality—the fabric from which we are sewn. In retrospect, I can see how it must have happened, how I came to know what being a sissy meant. Statements like, He walks like a girl, He acts like a girl, He throws a ball like a girl, He runs like a girl, He rides a bike like a girl…That boy gone be a sissy! Even my intelligence was a marker. I was smart like a girl. To this day, I cannot be proud of my intelligence. It is part of how I am a sissy. Queer. Gay. Shitpacker…

It was also at age five that Mama enrolled me in Faith Lutheran School. One of my earliest and most significant remembrances is the day I asked my sixth grade teacher during bible study class why God needed a judgment day when he already knew outcomes from the get-go. Hadn’t she just explained to us in her soft, little Christian voice how God knew everything before it happened? So wouldn’t God know we were going to hell when he created us? What the fuck was there to judge? Her response: She beat me and made me stand in the corner while calling me sacrilegious and I remember wondering in my ten-year-old mind: What the fuck was sack religious? And why did she beat me for just asking a question to which I really wanted to know the answer? I wasn’t trying to be belligerent. It was an innocent question from the mind of a ten-year-old. I was just asking about something that just didn’t make any fucking sense to me. I am amazed to this day at the fact that many adult Christians still get angry with me for asking this question or those Christians who say they never thought of it like that. I was questioning that shit at ten.

By public school rules, children could not start school if they made six after October 30th. So, I always thought that Mama enrolled me in a parochial school at age five because my birthday is December 19th. In retrospect, I think she did it to keep me from attending public schools where she feared a sissy boy might be too traumatized. It was in that parochial school, though, that I learned fear and self-loathing anyway. These were not actual courses; just by-products achieved through the hidden curriculum. I will never forget my first day of school at Faith Lutheran. It could not be clearer in my mind if it had happened yesterday.

Hair being pressed and flesh burning have the same, curious, schizophrenic aroma: bitter and sweet; like burnt corn and bananas; or the sweet yet repulsive odor of vomit; the smell of unwilling acquiescence. It’s the odor of the performing of processes not natural. That was the scent that woke me that morning. So I knew Miss Minnie must’ve been fixing Mama’s hair. I got out of the bed and walked down the hallway into the kitchen, the scent of Mama’s hair being pressed was getting stronger as I neared the source. There, Mama sat in one of the cheap, vinyl, floral-patterned kitchen chairs that she had often bragged about having gotten from Hoffman Furniture Store. We all thought this was really something, too. Mama never let us forget how blessed we were. She had often said we were some of the best-livin’ niggers in Roger Williams Projects. It would be years before I’d see the contradiction in that.

Behind the chair, stood Miss Minnie and the stove. The blue-yellow flame in the right front burner provided the heat for the crematory devices: The black, iron straightening comb and curling irons. This process also made our red brick tenement apartment about ten degrees hotter. It was early September, but still very hot in Mobile, Alabama. I would guess it to have been about a hundred degrees that day. Who knows? I was only five years old and heat was a way of life. It would be a very long time before I would even know that air conditioning existed.

Miss Minnie set the pressing comb on the burning flame and while the pressing comb heated, she took about two square inches of Mama’s hair and rubbed Royal Crown hairdressing on the top and bottom of the strip of hair that she had separated. This process completed, she took the pressing comb from the fire, waved it a few times creating small billows of smoke and took it through the strip of hair she had saturated with the Royal Crown. If you were close enough to someone getting their hair fixed, you could actually hear the hair straightening. It resembled the crackling sound dry wood makes when burning. And then there would be that curious, schizophrenic odor. Mama saw me peeping into the kitchen.

You hongry? Some simon balls on the stove, she said.

Gull, that chile spoiled, Miss Minnie replied before I even had a chance to respond.

Now, I was what all of the grown folks called spoiled. Though I didn’t know it then, spoiled was a euphemism for sissy. Mama’s friends would come in the front door, robeless judges, survey the home operation and within five minutes, declare me: spoiled. I may not have quite known what that meant yet, but I had sense enough to know that it wasn’t a compliment. So, before I knew its definition, I hated its context. It was one of those words with basements.

And of all the people that called me spoiled, Miss Minnie called me spoiled most.

Asking a child if he hongry spoilin’ him, I guess they all spoiled then. I asked all of’em if they hungry, Mama said.

Gull, Miss Minnie said while laughing, You know what I’m talking about. I know they gots to eat. But you can give him cone flakes sometime. My boy, Buddy, gets up and fix his own breakfast. Fix breakfast for him and his sista Sarah.

Buddy cook? Mama asked, her eyebrows raised in doubt.

Mmmm-mmm, Miss Minnie said, Cook Cheerios, Rice Krispies, Krispy Kritters.

Before Miss Minnie could rattle off another brand of dry cereal, Mama had doubled over with laughter. Saliva rolled from the corner of her mouth in a glistening drool. She was now at that state of deep laughter where the person goes into a kind of catatonic state: no sound, glistening teeth, damp eyes and a saliva drool. This is followed by a large intake of breath and then like a large wave that has hovered over the shore for what seemed a very long second as if to heighten the effect of what one knew already would be a deafening crash, Mama would exhale a cacophony of sound. Gut-born laughter. Pure. Uncut. Mama would always say, even twenty years or more later that no one could make her laugh like Miss Minnie.

I remember this day so well.

Mama never really needed a reason to get her hair fixed other than the fact that it had gotten knotty. I knew when Mama wanted to get her hair fixed, too. The signs were just as sure as dark clouds and high winds prophesy a storm. Late one evening she’d reach behind her head, grab two handfuls of hair as if it would ooze like slime through her fingers and then she would announce, Lord, my hair knotty. The next morning I’d be awakened by the smell of burning hair.

But sometimes when Mama got her hair fixed, it was an indication that she was going to go off—meaning go out someplace where how she looked was an important factor. You had to wait to see which would be the case. If when Miss Minnie finished fixing Mama’s hair she walked around, her hair in rows of rollerless curls all day, this meant her hair was just knotty and needed fixing. However, if as soon as Miss Minnie finished, she got up from the cheap, floral-print, vinyl chairs from Hoffman Furniture she coveted so much, went into the bathroom and started combing her hair into a style, she was going off.

That day after Miss Minnie finished fixing Mama’s hair she went immediately into the bathroom and began combing her hair into a style. I hated it when Mama was going off. Mainly because her going off didn’t always include me. Whenever I wasn’t included, I always made a scene. I suspect a lot of times Mama didn’t go off because she didn’t want to hear me bawl. But this happened mostly at night. I almost never got to go along at night when she was going to my Aunt Ethel’s bootleg house. I figured Mama felt that I would probably wait to see if I would be allowed to go along before I started bawling since it was daytime and there was a possibility I might get to go along. If Mama was indeed thinking these things then, she was absolutely right. I was waiting.

Mama came out of the bathroom with her hair styled. Miss Minnie was still in the kitchen cooling the crematory devices and straightening back up the kitchen. After a while Mama went into the kitchen and paid Miss Minnie fifty cents for fixing her hair. I always liked this part. It signaled that it was time for Miss Minnie to go home. Miss Minnie left. I waited.

Jamal, Mama started.

What Mama?

We goin’ somewhere this mornin’. I was a smiling ass then. Where we goin’, Mama?

It’s a surprise, she said. I loved surprises.

I ran into my room excitedly. Well it wasn’t exactly my room. I shared the room with my sisters, Veronica and Belinda who were at school at the time. Kank was a merchant marine and was off at sea. And Daniel was away at college. So, they weren’t home either. Daddy was at work. But like I said, he was always at work. Even at night, he was at work. I ran into the room because I knew if I was going off with Mama I would have to wear some of my good clothes. I liked wearing my good clothes.

I took out my brown and white two-toned shoes. These I knew would be appropriate for any occasion. After all, I didn’t know exactly where I was going and I wanted to look my best. I also knew that by this time all of my friends would be out in the backyard playing and would get to see me all gussied up. I loved going off with Mama. I was so glad Miss Minnie wasn’t there. She would certainly say that my liking to dress up and go off with Mama was a sure indication that I was spoiled. I was really feeling good and I didn’t want to hear that ‘spoiled’ shit that day. No sooner had we gotten dressed, the witch came and she was dressed-up, too. Lord, I prayed, please don’t let Miss Minnie be going! Mama greeted her at the door and asked, You ready?

Hope dashed out the window.

I first became suspicious of this surprise when we left out of the front door. Whenever Mama and I went off, we exited the back door and walked to the bus stop on Stone Street and caught the Davis-Highway 45 bus downtown. Certain we had made a mistake, I said, Mama, we goin’ the wrong way. Miss Minnie smiled and said something about how smart I was. I knew I was in trouble then. Miss Minnie was calling me something other than spoiled.

You see, you must first understand that Roger Williams Housing Project wasn’t just a housing project; it was a city within itself. In fact, that was the project’s nickname: