If You Hang Around Emerald City Long Enough, You're Going To Meet Brad Pitt

My friend and I continued our treks to the club as often as we could over the next couple of weeks. I was due to move to Oxford and attend classes in theater department at Ole Miss. My director from MC, Judy, was leaving MC to finish her MFA there. I had basically done everything I could do at the MC theater department and there was no room for growth. So we agreed I should tag along with her and get my feet wet in a serious college theatrical setting.

I kept I-55 HOT! I came back to Jackson every weekend to go clubbing. Jackson was not large enough to support more than one, possibly two gay bars, so when a new club opened and people stopped going to The Other Side, we followed the yellow brick road, North State Street, to Emerald City. The fun just never stopped! I certainly was not the only straight person in these bars. There were many who came because it was just the most fun club experience in Jackson.

I neglected to mention that I didn't always let my folks know I was in town. In fact, to the best of their knowledge I came home once a month. In high school I had a curfew of midnight and my folks simply would not budge on a later curfew even when I was in college. Their home, their rules. Their favorite saying was “Nothing good goes on after midnight”. That may be partially true but, unlike clubs like Zoli's, gay bars didn't even get rolling until, at the earliest, 11:00 PM.

I decided to sacrifice my dignity and become the only 20-year-old having to sneak out the window of her parent's house. This was quite a feat in hose, stiletto heals and a skirt that barely covered my behind. But I was very careful when I left to put the window screen back into place. Glad we just lived in a one story house. My friend would be waiting in his car in front of my house and away we would go until I got a little sloppy with my screen repositioning skills when coming home. My folks and I were coming home from church one Sunday and there was my window screen on top of the shrubbery outside my window. Nothing was said but my folks exchanged that “I know she's up to something but I don't know what it is YET” look.

My next trip home my friend and I had our usual plans laid so I exited my window, carefully replacing the window screen on my way out. We went out, had our usual blast, and slowly rolled, headlights dimmed as always, in front of my house. I was never drunk, in fact, I drank water or nursed the same beer whenever we went out, but I was going to make darn sure I got that screen in securely on my way in.

However, that thought left my mind immediately when I got one leg over the window and into my room. Walter was always an asshole and he always carried a gun. The minute my foot hit the floor, my overhead bedroom light suddenly was switched on and there was Walter pointing that gun in my face, yelling “Stop! Thief!” with my mother standing in the doorway like friggin' Barney Fife. She did not have a gun.

In the all night (what was left of it) lecture that ensued they tried to pretend they actually thought it was a burglar. What a load of crap! But I just went ahead, told them what I had been doing and it was their stupid curfew issue that made me feel I had to sneak out in the first place! Nothing was decided or accomplished so we all went to bed until about 3 hours later when Walter ordered me up and out to pull weeds in the flower beds. He knew this was my most hated thing to do in the world and it made me sneeze. There would be more penance to pay later but after that day it was not mentioned again until months later.

Where there is a Denise, there is a way! I just completely stopped coming home when I came back each and every weekend. I just stayed with friends.

It was at Emerald City that I was spotted by a blonde, blue-eyed, tanned young man. Think Brad Pitt in “Thelma and Louise”. I cannot remember the details of how we actually got introduced but the next thing I knew we were on the dance floor. His best friend was the DJ and remember these were the days before computerized mixing. This was straight vinyl. He had orange crates packed with records organized by beats per minute. Best DJ ever and he played whatever we wanted. RIP Lin.

So Brad Pitt and I started seeing each other. As I came to find out Brad was straight, sort of. On rare occasions he would drift over the other way. AIDS was not on the horizon in Jackson at that time but was definitely at the fore front a couple of years later. It never dawned on me, or probably him, that we were engaging in very risky behavior.

Have I told you that I never told any of my high school boyfriends about my condition? Well, I had not. Luckily if things went beyond petting you were not required to take all your clothes off in the back seat of a car. Please don't get the wrong idea. That may have taken place twice. I was not, and never have been, a girl that was promiscuous. I believe God may have given me my little secret safeguard because He could see the big picture and knew that I might just be a bit promiscuous, so there! Situation under control.

So now I was faced with telling Brad Pitt because his mother didn't really seem bothered by what he did in his room. We also visited his friends homes sometimes. We were at one such residence when it was now or never. He never gave me an ultimatum or anything even close to that but I wanted it. If I couldn't muster all my courage and tell him that night, I would have had to walk away because I knew there were plenty of other fish in the sea for him.

My courage came in the form of 2 bottles of white wine. It still took me hours to tell him. I was petrified of rejection. I was telling a man about my ostomy and had maybe a 50/50 chance of having hot sex with Brad Pitt. The chardonnay told me it was worth the risk. So I told him, my condition didn't matter in the least to him and we proceeded to have the aforementioned tryst. Like a start at dawn and into the afternoon tryst. It was pretty glorious!

We carried on our relationship for the next two or three months until a situation occurred where I had to make another very tough life choice. We were already on a downward spiral in the relationship and this just tore us apart. Saying goodbye to Brad Pitt was hard but I had always known there was a beautiful little girl a year or so younger than him that had been in love with him since junior high school. He always knew she was the one he would marry. I think he was just sowing his very wild oats for a few years. They are a precious couple who live far away but Brad's wife and I keep in touch through Face Book. They have been married for more than 20 years and are as happy as any couple I've ever known.