When I was 6 years old, in 1950, living with my parents, grandmother and 4 brothers in College Point, NY, I experienced real fear for the first time. My parents’ home was a 2-family antique, we lived downstairs, an Irish woman, Pat, lived upstairs with her boyfriend and daughter, Gail. Unbeknownst to my parents, Pat was married to a sailor who was Gail’s father, but the sailor father had been away in Korea for a long time. Gail was 6 years old, like myself. We were playmates.
Morally outraged father showed up on the scene and assaulted Bill, Pat’s boyfriend, inflicting serious injuries on him for which he had to be hospitalized, Little Gail came running downstairs. My mother took her to the nearby house of a friend. My father called the police. The police showed, arranged to have Bill and Pat taken to the hospital. A little later another police officer took charge of 6 year old Gail. Of course I was downstairs terrified hearing all the noise in the upstairs apartment. Furniture was being tossed about. My father reassured me it would all soon be over. After the police were through, the four actors in this drama had all disappeared. The apartment was silent and empty for a couple of months. Our new tenants were an Irish mother, Dolores, who came from the Bronx and her daughter, Edna. They created some of their own interesting stories.
From what my mother later told me, once recovered from her beating, Pat moved into an apartment over a bar but had to wait for about two months until her daughter was released to her custody. Then Dad came to her front door (at that other apartment) and banged and banged and eventually broke the lock and assaulted Pat once more. Pat obtained an Order of Protection (although they might have used a different term way back then). When the police again arrested Dad, he agreed to counseling from a Catholic priest. The priest was also in contact with Pat. Dad “repented”, for a while, but after about six weeks, he returned to his wife’s apartment in the middle of the night and again tried to terrorize her.
Pat was practical. She went downstairs and requested the assistance of the two bar bouncers. Dad was released from prison, and showed up twice more but was rebuffed, pommeled and humiliated by the two bouncers who were glad to assist Pat and Gail, to protect mother and daughter. Finally unwanted visits from the morally outraged husband ceased. So in this story the two heroic peacekeepers were the bar bouncers.
Moral: repenting to please a priest is one thing, but sometimes force or “gentle persuasion” is a better deterrent. This whole episode made me think about the mores of heterosexuals. The whole notion of imposing one’s will on someone else or on another group of people, using fisticuffs, is totally foreign to me and to my family. I suppose that, according to heterosexual rules, Pat was a sinner, but sinners are supposed to be forgiven not pommeled by a bully. Or am I being too civilized?
I remember Bill the other sinner. He used to bounce me on his knee and tousle my hair. I liked the way he smelled. He had good posture and was handsome. I guess I had an idea of who I really was at the tender age of 6. Of course, I did not know the terms used, “gay,” “homosexual” and the long list of derogatory names.
Yes Bill reappeared in Pat’s life after she divorced Gail’s Dad, but left after about a year. I heard from another well-informed College Point neighbor that eventually, except for daughter Gail, they all died. Did all their suffering have any lasting meaning? Guess not.
In College Point, there were a large number of wife-beaters. Naturally, I was horrified by hearing their stories and so embraced women’s liberation as a needed political movement to give women more options than to be a punching bag for an abusive husband.
Denver, 2013
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