I was barely 21, had dropped out of the University of South Florida, was working at the Gas Company in the service department office, and taking one class at night at USF. Into that class came Leslie Carol Charbonnet, a plump little woman, a five foot tall dynamo of energy. Leslie had an expansive sparkle about her. In an instant one knew that she was "larger than life."
It was cold that night, and in conversation she had mentioned that her car was parked in one of the "free" lots at the edge of campus. I had a 65 Corvair hardtop, and it was parked close to the building, so I offered her a ride home. The Corvair was Chevrolet's answer to the Volkswagens of the day, rear engined, air cooled, but much more sporty and powerful. We got in and as we pulled out, I commented that it would take a minute for the heat to come up from the back. "Why does it come from the back?" she asked. When I explained that the engine was back there, she screamed, "But twice as many people are killed in rear engined cars !!" as if somehow I had entrapped her in a death mobile. I ignored her and when we arrived at her car, we traded phone numbers.
A Two door version of my 65 Corvair Monza
This was in the period of my life before I realized I was gay. In fact, I was still a virgin. I had spent my adolescence as the overweight kid with thick glasses. I was completely un-athletic, and had been more than a bit of a social pariah. Of most things related to courtship, and life in general, I was inexperienced. My primary focus had been on simply surviving my abusive father and emotionally unavailable mother. They weren't bad people, but they were not equipped to deal with an obviously "different" (if not downright strange) kid.
One of the draws with Leslie was that she had a similar background in terms of family. Her father, an Army sergeant, had traveled with the military. Her mother, a dutiful Army wife, kept things together in their very Roman Catholic home, mostly by doing what she was supposed to do, and ignoring her very unhappy, angry husband. In other words, she did not protect her children from the husbands wrath.
One of Leslie's earlier memories was when they were stationed in Korea, at the outbreak of the Korean war. She had commented upon the efficiency of Korean heating systems, buried in the floor. Then she explained that one day they heard what sounded like thunder from over the hills, laced with distant firecrackers. Her mother thought it odd, until a jeep rolled in with a driver, "Sorry to tell you this Mrs. Charbonnett, but I have orders. The North Korean army is attacking, they are less than a mile away, you have five minutes to get your valuables and then I am to drive you to the airstrip where a plane will be taking all dependents to safety."
The incident sort of underscored Leslie's life, everything would be extra dramatic, extra traumatic. It would always take a war to get rid of her.
The family went back to Hammond Louisiana to wait for dad, who eventually arrived. Her father "Les" had wanted his first born to be a boy, and in his disappointment that she was not, had named her Leslie anyway.
The rest of her childhood was spent not being able to please him. When puberty hit, his mantra at the table changed from how stupid and ugly she was to how fat and ugly she was. It took her years to figure out that the real issue was rather simple. Her father, an obvious "chest man" (as in "look at the knockers on her" at the sight of any well bosomed woman) and after years of looking at his very flat chested wife, suddenly had a daughter across the table with a "D" cup set of breasts. Like many of his era, if he had any feeling he didn't like or understand, his response was to destroy the object of those feelings, all in the name of love.
So, Les's torments of his daughter ramped up. It was around this time that she tried to hang herself. She got a coil of rope, went out into the woods, threw it over a branch, tied it, noosed it, and jumped. The new and very strong rope snapped. God had other plans.
Around this time, one night at dinner, her father got mad at her and threw his fork at her, she showed me the scars on her neck from the two holes where the fork had penetrated her skin.
Her mother, oblivious to all this, pretended that all was well. "Your father loves you Leslie" was her way of doing damage control. Much like my mother, she made excuses for inexcusable behavior, anything to keep the family together.
This was years before the beginning of the "Humanistic Psychology Movement" so any form of therapy was out of the question. Only crazy people went to psychologists.
After high school, she escaped her hell on earth home life by joining the Army. Having a sergeant for a dad prepared her well for such duty, it seemed like a good plan.
In the Army she met a man, who like her father, couldn't take his eyes off of her chest. He seemed to care about her, so they got married. Being "good Catholics" they quickly had a child. A pregnant Leslie had to quit the army, but married life suited her. They were stationed in California, at Ft. Ord on the Monterey peninsula, as beautiful of a spot as can be found. Shannon's family was from the Salinas area nearby, all looked good.
Their daughter Carol, looked just like her dad, darker complected, thin, and had a quiet temperament. Soon child number 2 was on the way and that's when all hell broke loose. He was no longer in the army, his enlistment up, his obligation over. It was Viet Nam, he had dodged that bullet, so it was time to party. He left the service, and Leslie. Stashing her and his young daughter at his mother's, he took off with his motorcycle buddies.
Leslie's interpretation said it best, "When he realized that having sex with me was making mouths he had to feed, the sex stopped and he was out of there."
The last time she saw him, he had stopped on his motorcycle to pick up some clothes. They had a fight, she said, "Shannon, I'm going to divorce you." His response, "You'll have to pay for it" as the door slammed and he drove away.
The next day, his mother came in to her room and said, "Since Shannon is gone, and you two are getting a divorce, you need to leave. Do you think you can be gone by the end of the week?"
So at 20, five months pregnant, with a ten month old baby, and family "back east" who had cut her off when she got married, she took desperate actions. She placed her ten month old into temporary foster care and signed herself into a mental hospital because she was again contemplating suicide.
Leslie with first born, Carol
Somehow she got herself back to Florida, where her parents were now living. Her kids went from foster home to foster home, where she presumed they would be better off than with an unstable mother who was still battling with major depression. When she found out something really awful had happened to one of them, she took them back, figuring that a not so good real mother was better than an abusive foster one.
She got a job working at "The Cape" (Cape Canaveral), and started at Brevard Junior College. While in school and working, the apartment above hers caught fire, all of her and her kids possessions were ruined by smoke and water damage. Her kids went to live with her parents, she came to Tampa to continue at the College of Education at USF.
She got a place in "the projects" in Tampa, and moved her kids into public housing with her. She would tell of becoming the president of her block club because she was the only one who spoke English. She loved the actual apartment, with many large closets, a roomy bathroom, laundry area, large kitchen. She was the first, and perhaps only, full time student at USF who was also a full time staff member. She got her classes free that way.
The family daily routine was to get up at 5 AM, Carol would fix breakfast for herself and her sister Rachel, and then get them both dressed. Leslie would fix and pack lunches for all of them. They would get into her beloved 59 Chevrolet, "Theodora" and she would drop the kids at day care and go to work, mixing her classes in during lunch hours and after work. She would finish around 8 PM, pick up the girls, go home and start over again the next day.
She became an exceptionally frugal homemaker. She could stretch her food stamp dollar farther than anyone on earth. Since you can't buy cleaning products on food stamps, she was extra frugal with them. She would cut her "Brillo" (scouring) pads in half, and dry them over the pilot light on the gas stove. Powdered milk was the only kind drank. A package of cookies became desert for two weeks of meals, etc. She calculated the cost of everything, counting slices of bread, how many sandwiches form a loaf, buying the cheapest bread with the most slices. As her daughter Rachel says, "Mom could squeeze a nickel till it screamed, and then she would water board it."
She survived all this scarcity and graduated with a full President's Award from the University for her 3.96 GPA. In four years, she made one "B", the rest, all "A's." Fulfilling her life dream to become a teacher, she landed a job in the recently burgeoning Hudson Florida, teaching 10th grade English, and rewarded herself with a move into a modern house in "Beacon Square" with all the modern amenities.
Her Chevrolet died, so her father gave her a Plymouth he had. She promptly named it "Clytemnestra" who was some evil figure in Greco Roman mythology. She hated her father, and everything attached to him including his name he had given her. She didn't have much kind to say about her mother either. She described her mother as a women who was dutiful to a fault, including her Sunday afternoon offering of her feminine parts to her father, while reading "Good Housekeeping" so it would be an out of body experience.
Quickly she realized that she was no longer living a subsidized life, and expenses were far more than she anticipated. She was going to have to move out of her dream house in Beacon Square, and it was devastating. Later she realized that part of her self destructive tendencies included messing up a check book register and bouncing checks. She closed the account, got purses for each of her expenses, food, car/gas, clothes, entertainment, etc. She was paid once a month, so she took her check to the bank, got money orders for her bills, put the rest into her purses and that's how she got by each month.
She found a simple concrete block house north of Tampa in Lutz, in a compound by a lake, and settled in, discovering the commute of 25 miles, mostly through the swamp, was not the hardship she thought it would be. I kept Clytemnestra running, offering tune ups, carburetor overhauls, setting the carburetor extra lean to improve mileage, adjusting the front seat so she could actually see over the dashboard.
When Clytemnestra finally died, she researched what car would give the best fuel mileage. Honda had just entered the American market with it's legendary 600 series, a tiny box on wheels with a two cylinder air cooled engine and a six gallon gas tank. It was $1,700 out the door. The man at her credit union told her she needed 20% down. She politely explained she didn't have it. When he started to brush her off, she threw a crying fit, "You don't understand, without a car, I'll lose my job, they'll take my children away, I'll be homeless on the streets." He quickly recanted and she got a check to take to the dealer for the car.
It was Leslie who taught me about spices and cooking. My mother was from North Georgia, Leslie was from the Gulf Coast. There was no comparison, she put onions, peppers and garlic in almost everything, as well as other traditional Italian, Spanish and French seasonings. She was an exceptional cook, and I was blown away by her ease and skill in the kitchen. The core of what I know about cooking, I learned from her. Every time I use olive oil I can still hear her refer to it as "poor man's butter."
I marveled at her perceptions and abilities. She had the best "single mom" skills I had ever seen. From her I learned to have separate toys in the car, and a third set in a bag to take to doctors waiting rooms, etc. The toys were "fresh" and it kept her kids well behaved and occupied.
Carol and Rachel were complete opposites. Rachel was her mother reincarnated, but a little less Italian/French and a bit more Irish (from her dad's side).
By now, both girls were in school. Carol, the consummate "good girl" was always appropriate and generally well behaved. Rachel absorbed all of her mother's displaced anger, as she had also inherited her mother's intelligence and creativity. Leslie was incredibly smart. I have known a few genuinely smart people in my life, Leslie may have been the smartest of the bunch.
Rachel went through the entire first grade declaring that she would not learn a thing. "I've figured this school thing out. It's a warehouse that the grown ups stash kids in during the day to keep us away from important things. I don't like it, and i'm not going to cooperate in my oppression."
Her teacher, a friend of Leslie's promoted her socially to the 2nd grade, but by November, Rachel was still saying the same thing, some sort of intervention needed to be done. So Leslie started reading the "Chronicles of Narnia" each night for an hour before the girls went to sleep. She had a water bed, so the girls would come in, slosh the thing around some, then their dog "Zonker" would follow, and the four of them would curl up to keep warm while Mamma read through the stories.
About half way through the third book, Rachel decided "This reading thing is good. I want to learn how because it seems like fun, and it's something grown ups know how to do, so I need to know how too." Within a month, she learned how to read, and had polished off all the "Lord of the Rings" books on her own.
Occasionally Leslie would snap at me because she was angry most of the time and I was male. But most of the time, she was very appreciative of my help and company. When she first moved into the concrete house (the interior walls were concrete too, and it was not insulated so the outside walls got quite cold at night, and very hot in the afternoon sun), I and my God sons Dale and Dean came out to paint the inside. She promised us, "Once the weather warms up, I'll have you all out for a swimming party here." The house was next to a lake, part of a family owned property with several houses on it. Though the house was not lake front, it was a short walk through the orange grove to the beach area.
By this time, she had started going with me to St. Mary's Church, where John Mangrum was the priest. We were all part of a Sunday entourage that I'm sure puzzled some of the more conventional members, but most folks liked us.
The promised Sunday came. Leslie prepared a huge meal, burgers, hot dogs, baked beans, potato salad, cole slaw, etc. The kids went down to the lake to swim. Leslie and I started cooking the food. All of a sudden Dale appeared in a panic, "Leslie, there's some man down at the lake with a gun telling us to get out." We dashed to the lake shore and there were actually three men, one with a shotgun. "This is a private lake and Niggers aren't allowed here." Leslie looked at him and said, "When I rented my house I was told that I and my guests could use the lake. These children are my guests, from my church." "I don't care who they are lady, Niggers aren't allowed in the lake and you've got about one minute to get them out of here before we start shooting."
The kids were already fleeing for the safety of the house. We just turned and went back, to try to at least enjoy our lunch. We endured lunch while small groups of neighbors walked around the house, loudly saying things like, "Red Birds don't flock with Back Birds. White people shouldn't flock with Niggers." As soon as they abated, we packed the kids in the car and took them back to Belmont Heights, leaving Carol and Rachel locked in the house as protection against someone throwing in a torch or other object to burn the place down.
When we returned, the shotgun trio was waiting for us. It was predictable, a short one to do the talking, a big one for muscle, and one with the gun for backup. Shorty dressed me down for 45 minutes, pulling out all his stops to try to get me to take the first swing so they could lay into me. One of the benefits of being an abused child is a thick skin and the relative inability to "take the first swing." So after I wore them down with my "Yes sir's" and "I understand sirs" and other forms of polite humiliation, they gave up and left. The sheriff was called, the deputy came out with his "UKA" pin on the lapel of his shirt (United Klans of America) and we knew that even though it was 1971, no justice would be served.
Racial stuff and all things "liberal" were important to Leslie. Her own southern Louisiana heritage was quite mixed, and she got very dark in the sun. She claimed Italian, French, Irish and enough African American to be considered legally Black under the definitions outlined under "Jim Crow" laws. One day, a mutual friend, Valeria P. came over in her blue VW Karman Ghia. Val was a bit hysterical. Leslie had been hiding out in my spare room, having left the girls with a friend, needing a night off. She was grading papers when Val stomped up the stairs, came in, slammed the door and exclaimed, "Some God Damn Nigger tried to run me off the road on the way over here." Val sort of had this gift for inciting the worst in people, so we ignored her tirade which went on for about ten minutes of "G.D.N." this and "G.D.N." that. Finally Leslie looked at her and said flatly, "Val, I wish you wouldn't talk about us God Damned Niggers that way. Some of us Niggers have been passing for white for years." Val's eyes popped out of her head. She was trapped, Leslie was between her and the door. No apology came, just a full on sulk, followed by a silent tip toe around Leslie and out the door.
We had a lot of fun, and that fun eventually turned "romantic" (euphemism here folks). Leslie sort of defined the term "Cougar" before it was coined. She was about five years older than me, and suddenly we became sort of sexual. After an initial duet, our singing became multi-layered, and included other women, whom she obviously was attracted to. It was in one of our evenings together that she invited another man to join us. "Tony is Bi" she said. I had read enough to realize that this was a man that I could kiss, and I was primed to try. I had very private fantasies, which I did not share with anyone, so this was an opportunity. It came, I engaged, and a flood of emotions poured out of me that scared me to death. My resolve was simple, "I'm never letting that happen again" and I also decided that I was not in love with Leslie and that she obviously was in love with me, so I had to break it off. Our escapades had revealed that Leslie had her own attractions to women, which she would speak of, but also felt that she was obligated to be a "Southern Lady" like all the women in her family. So as much as she had issues with men, she was unwilling to consider a relationship with a woman.
While I was struggling with my own feelings, I was indifferent to hers, and not easily able to communicate what was going on in me because I had no words for what "it" was.
As if by magic, a new man surfaced in her life, younger, seemingly sure of himself, and he started courting her relentlessly. They quickly became a couple. Soon after, they decided to move to Houston, which offered much more opportunities than Tampa Florida.
Leslie and Dick got married. She not only changed her last name to his, but changed her first name as well to Kathryn. She claimed it was after Kathryn of Aragon, losing the implications of that choice, Kathryn was Henry's first wife, the only one who kept her head and got to go back home to Spain, with their kids after a divorce.
She got a job at Baylor University as an administrator, where she really shined. Her organization skills and management skills were superb. She quickly gained the reputation as the go to person if one wanted anything expedited quickly and perfectly. In the mid 80s, I visited her and she took me on a tour of the new virology/oncology research building that was being built. She was the principle administrator on the project, and ran the place after it opened.
Part of the funding was for AIDS research. When I talked about how the plague was killing so many gay men, her response was, "Good, that will open up more jobs for women."
On that same trip, I took a Video of a new comedian, Whoopi Goldberg, her legendary "Live on Broadway" show done in 1985. Leslie's response to Whoopi's dreadlocks was, "She's gonna have a lot of trouble being accepted." Leslie had been a flaming radical, Kathryn was a very conventional person, desperately seeking approval.
Her work at Baylor had required that she work extra hard to be a proper "Lady" in all aspects of her life. Because of her intellectual capabilities, she rationalized all of her emotions. So the world saw a successful woman who wore dark blue business clothes (skirts only, never slacks), nylons, a string of pearls, a vision of heterosexual responsibility. This image served her well at Baylor, but it increased her emotional deprivation.
Kathryn in the 80s.
Soon after, Dick realized that he was more attracted to men than women. He left, and it all started falling apart. She got a new boss at Baylor who hated her. His preference was to have women around who were ornamental, not efficient. Soon she was out of work, and unable to find a new job. She was living with daughter Rachel, trying to figure out the next move, and taking comfort with the only friend who had never betrayed her, food.
Years later, I discovered that Leslie had done to Rachel what my father had done to me. My father in his torment, tried to beat out of me, all of the parts of him he could not deal with. As Rachel grew older, she was not conforming to Kathryn's expectations of proper Southern womanhood. So she made her life hell on earth for years, even signing her over the a bewildered juvenile authority, simply because she would not do things that her mother demanded of her. This drama lasted until Rachel moved out. Rachel herself joined the army to escape, and returned to UPS in Houston where she was a shop steward in the Teamsters Union as well.
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Rachel, Army Years
One day, while visiting Margaret in Santa Fe, with Alan (two previous articles) I got a panicked phone call from Rachel, "Mom just died." As the story unfolded between her crying, Rachel explained. She had awakened with indigestion, thrown up a couple of times, went back to bed, then got the chest pains and left arm numbness. The paramedics came but could not do CPR because she had so much fat on her sternum that when they pushed, their hand just "slid" off to the side. Everyone watched as she died in agony, unable to save her.
To add insult to injury, she was so large that they had to take her body out through the sliding glass door, it wouldn't fit through the apartment doorway.
Rachel and I talked a lot about her mother's death, and life, and her pervasive unhappiness. What surfaced was basically a woman who was very creative, unconventional, probably bisexual with a lot of baggage about men, and huge resentments towards men, that she never reconciled. She just kept trying to be someone she was not, a "Proper Lady."
That inspired her daughter to live her own life a bit differently. Rachel has become her own woman in ways that her mother would never understand, and would have been very frightened of. The tragedy here is that just like with my own father, the parents internalized homophobia, and and extreme need for approval from peers, made appearances more important than happiness.
While there is no "right or wrong" here per se, one grieves the loss of the soul of another. This is the essence of the evils of homophobia. Leslie might have been a lot happier if she's settled down with another woman.
Just like my father taught me the importance of emotional integrity, by way of his negative example, living a life based in fear, so did Leslie provided that legacy for Rachel.
Rachel sent me this video of her recent skydiving excursion, I hope you enjoy it: http://www.youtube.com/
I miss her laugh, her intelligence and wit, her dedication to her friends, and I mourn the loss of her life too soon.
