What I Owe Davy Crockett: The Making of an LGBTQ Ally

A Flash Memoir by Robin Reardon

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From our dear friend

Robin Taylor (he/him)

—a bold new initiative, GenderWild Press:

Today I’m sharing my dream with all of you because I need your help to make it real.

My next step is to become an independent publisher of books. Real books. The kind you can hold in your hand, the kind you can find yourself in, the kind you can share with a friend, the kind you can see on a library shelf in your hometown. Maybe even the kind with your name as the author.

Robin is seeking Collaborators, Expertise, Submissions and Funding to help bring GenderWild Press to life. Read his full post about this exciting project HERE.

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CONGRATULATIONS to

Your Trans Cousin

for publishing an article in

Jane Pratt

’s “Another Jane Pratt Thing” 🎉🎉🎉 “The Mormon Church Forced Me To Wear Dresses To Dances – And I Still Get Panic Attacks From It.” Here’s to many more!

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Our

Rhiannon D'Averc

of

Crowhill Cove

—author extraordinaire of M4M hot romances—will be appearing at Tunbridge Wells Lit Fest in the author’s alley selling signed copies of her books on the 10th May, 11am to 3pm. “It’s free to enter, you just have to turn up to the Royal Victoria and (probably) follow the signs (I haven’t actually seen the signs but I’m sure they will be there).”

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Qstack | The LGBTQIA+ Directory of Substacks highlights the diverse creative talent of queer writers on this exhilarating, maddening, ridiculous platform. Every post will always be free, but it takes an enormous amount of time and attention to produce.

Please support my work with a paid subscription. Click button for benefits. ~ MTF 💜🎩🐈‍⬛

Robin Reardon’s work always conveys a strong affirmation of the shared humanity between queer folks and our allies, among whom she is one of our greatest. She has been a paid supporter of Qstack from the start, and I am delighted to have been able to feature her on numerous occasions—by my count, more than any other contributor.

Reading this short “flash memoir” of her early tomboy years, playing in the woods and pretending to be Davy Crockett, is so very endearing. My own “tomboy” years were focused more on Star Wars and blasters made of Legos, but she would have fit right in, I’m sure.

Thank you, Robin, for all you do. ~ MTF ❤️🍊💛💚💙💜🩷🩵🤎🖤

What I Owe Davy Crockett: The Making of an LGBTQ Ally

by Robin Reardon of

Robin Reardon Writes

Publicity photo: pre-1978, no copyright

“Davy! Davy Crockett! King of the wild frontier.” This line was from the song introducing the TV series, Davy Crockett, broadcast in the second half of the 20th Century. (I’ll say no more than that about a time period; I’ve dated myself enough already.) I can still hear that song’s line.

During my pre-teen years, when my family lived in rural New Hampshire, I was what is now referred to as an effeminate tomboy, a girl who doesn’t hate or distance herself from girly things but who enjoys acting and dressing in more masculine ways.

I became fixated on Davy Crockett (as portrayed by the tall, handsome Fess Parker). Crockett seemed to be a perfect mix of manly courage and strength while also seeming thoughtful and compassionate. (Whether this described the real Crockett, I couldn’t say, and I didn’t care.) I loved his country swagger, his tasseled leather jacket, even his coonskin cap, which you can just make out on the table in front of him in the photo above.

Our house sat back from the road on 4 acres of essentially wooded land. The back boundary was a small river. It was the perfect “yard” for a tomboy. My best friend, Nadine, and I explored those woods and that river bank, endlessly. We created stories we would play out. She was always Daniel Boone, and I was always Davy Crockett. As far as I know, these two men had little or nothing to do with each other when they were alive, but each had a reputation for strength of character and of body, and that appealed to Nadine and me. (If I’m not mistaken, Fess Parker also portrayed Boone in another TV series.)

from Pixabay, by seaq68

While there was never a time when I identified with “male,” there were several years where I almost kinda sorta wished I were a boy. Was I already aware of the imbalance of power I would witness (and be affected by) later in my life? In an episode of the U.S. version of Queer as Folk, the character Melanie says that for any career carrying power with it, a straight man would be hired over a gay man, and a gay man would be hired over a woman.

My family was not aligned with the “men are better/smarter/whatever than women” trope. For my sixth grade graduation, we students had to give a short speech about how we saw our future. I felt torn between aiming for what fascinated me and what I felt would be more socially acceptable, so I asked my mother.

“Mom, should I write about being a housewife or an astronomy scientist?”

I got a glare telling me that only one of those was acceptable to her, and it wasn’t the housewife.

Through my teen years and as I grew into a young woman, physical strength was still something I wanted for myself. I loved hard exercise. I climbed mountains. I shoveled snow for fun. While I never had (or wanted) bulging muscles, I did crave a certain amount of muscle definition. And it was during this time that I began to like boys even more than I wanted to emulate them.

As I understand it, almost no one lands all the way at one end or the other of the gay/straight scale, and there’s probably something similar when it comes to gender identity. Individual humans are so very complex. So although I identify as female and straight, who knows where I fall on any scale?

For a few years I lived in Manhattan. Loving the arts as I do put me in touch with several gay men. Some of them became close friends. Some of these friends were quite masculine; some were not. All of them shared the qualities of my imaginary Davy Crockett that I had most admired, even emulated. And when I saw how horribly they were treated—how callous and even inhumane the response was to the AIDS crisis, because it was “just the gays”—the deep abhorrence of injustice that I’d learned from my mother ... well, it kind of erupted.

Photo by sergey mikheev on Unsplash

One of these gay friends had told me about what was then called “the gay plague.” Ten years later, it claimed him. I dedicated my first novel, A SECRET EDGE, to Jody Thomas. And I kept writing.

A lesbian friend once asked me if I’d ever write a story with a lesbian protagonist. I told her then, and I would say this now: I’m not a good enough writer. That is, I know what it feels like to want a man.

I’ve been told my writing is very realistic, that it puts the reader into the story, and also that my books could convincingly have been written by a gay man. I’m delighted by these descriptions. Fantasy has its place, but what I want to show readers is the reality of people who are too often pushed to the edges of society. In doing so, I’ve found a niche I can enjoy, one that’s fulfilling, one I can be proud of.

Hats off to you, Davy.

Public domain

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Bio: I’m an inveterate observer of human nature, writing novels about all kinds of people, some of whom happen to be gay or transgender or bisexual or intersex—people whose destinies are not determined solely by their sexual orientation or gender identity. Check out my work on my website. ~ Robin Reardon