Alaska drew all sorts of people.

You never knew who would show up next.

I think Kodiak had a reputation of being a pretty accepting place because there were open gays there in the late 70s and early 80s and they were, for the most part, left alone. I say open in that they neither advertised it nor did they hide it.

While they were not still in the closet they didn’t put their sexuality on parade. They simply went about their business like everybody else.

Every now and then someone would take exception to one of the gay guys and get a little snotty. A couple people tried to do a little gay bashing and found out that just because someone is gay doesn’t mean they can’t fight.

One night three guys tried to rat-pack the biggest gay guy in the bar. They achieved an astounding lack of success when their intended victim simply picked up the chief tormenter and THREW him at the other two leaving a pile of three terrified young men in a heap on the floor.

It was the first of only two times I have seen a human being pick up another human being and casually use him as a weapon against other human beings.

When the victor sat down at the bar a couple stools down from me I leaned over and said dryly, “Not bad for a fairy.” The whole bar busted up, including the gay guy.

The chief tormentor later came up to me asking for sympathy. I simply asked him if he had learned to leave people alone. I had no sympathy for anyone that went looking for trouble.

By the beginning of the mid 80s I guess transgender surgery was beginning to get successful and I remember at least three people that had been transgendered or were in the process of it.

One was actually an MD that took care of me once. She did a good job and I had faith in her. I think she was pretty competent and that’s all I ask of a doctor. Their sex and sex life is their own business.

Afterwards someone asked me if it would bother me having her give me a short-arm inspection. “Why would that bother me?” I replied. “Hell, besides seeing a lot more of them than mine, she even used to have one of her own.”

There was also another transgendered person that arrived there for a while partway through the surgical process. She got a job there and became a part of the community. She left town for a while and had the rest of the process completed and returned.

She became a fairly well respected part of the community.

To tell you the truth, out of the three transgendered women I can remember, two of them would have been pretty effeminate looking guys had they stayed that way. The third one looked like a handsome woman.

I gotta admit the plastic surgery doctors know what they are doing.

What is interesting to note is the guys generally accepted them and left it at that. A few women were catty about them. One woman named Cathy after a couple of drinks made a catty remark to Alexis (not her real name). I was sitting there. I looked at Alexis and simply said, “Ever notice the women that take offense to you are the ones nobody wants to screw, anyway?”

A couple beer drinkers snarfed and the place went silent in anticipation of the impending horror show. My pal Blaine spoke up. “Piccolo’s right,” he said. “If a few of you would take heed at the way Alexis takes care of herself you’d be a whole lot better off. So would I. I’m tired of looking at your sorry raggedy asses.”

She started to reply and Blaine looked at the bartender. “How many beers have I had?” he asked.

“Four,” answered the bartender from across the bar.

Blaine looked over Cathy.

“Five more and you’ll turn into a ‘ten’,” he said to her, dryly.

The whole place cracked up. Cathy was humiliated. She turned beet red.

Katrina looked at Cathy. “I wish I looked that good,” she commented. Cathy looked shocked. I wasn’t. I knew Katrina well. She could be kind.

Katrina was a somewhat weathered for forty woman that was comfortable around men. She wasn’t a ‘one of the guys’ type, just a competent secure woman that men are comfortable around. They cleaned up their language around her but not simply because she was a woman. They cleaned it up because she was respected by them. Guys never referred to the lines on her face as sun lines or age lines. They referred to them as character lines. She was really pretty attractive.

Sometimes she could be self-effacing. She was then and I saw Alexis’s face light up at the left-handed compliment she had just made.

Incidentally, I seldom recall hearing an attractive woman make a rude comment about any transgendered women they met.

One of the things I learned in Alaska is grace under fire.

The woman that was half way through her trans gendering I knew because of my part time work at the strip club. I treated her well and sometimes we’d chat a bit. One time when I was fixing something at the dancer’s apartment she was there alone with me.

She took off her blouse and told me to check out her recently installed boobs. Truth is the doctor did a damned fine job. I’ll admit it, though. I was uncomfortable in that situation. I did manage to keep my cool though. I simply complimented them.

She told me she was headed south to California to get the rest of the job done soon and I wished her luck. I also told her to keep them under wraps because the strippers she worked with would likely get pretty jealous if they saw them.

When I said that her face lit up.

A couple of days later I ran into her downtown while shopping for grub. Blaine and another were with me. She came up to me and started talking. Then she blurted out that when she got back to town following the rest of her surgery she wanted me to try out her new vagina. This had come at me out of nowhere and I suppose if I were drinking a beer I certainly would have snarfed.

“That sounds interesting,” I replied. “I’m flattered that you think that highly of me.”

She beamed and wandered off. Blaine was agape and stared at me a minute. “That was gracious!” he said. Then he turned to the other guy. “You have just witnessed grace under fire,” He said. “He gave her a totally noncommittal answer and left her feeling like a million bucks!”

I turned to Blaine. “Who needs a deckhand and is headed to Dutch Harbor for a year or three?” I asked and the three of us laughed.

What eventually happened is she left for California and was gone a while. I heard she returned after I left town for several months to pick up my sailboat. When I returned she had a boyfriend of sorts which got me off the hook nicely.

Another thing I remember well happened one night when some clown non-rate Coastie with a snootful overloaded his face at the rock and roll club just as the band was beginning to play.

It came out of the blue and there was no call for it.

“I can beat the snot out of every fag in this place,” he shouted.

The band started playing a few seconds later and a buddy of mine ran over to my table and slid to a stop. “Piccolina, wanna dance?”

“Why certainly, Stephanie” I replied to my friend named Steve and got up.

We were not the first same-sex couple to hit the stainless steel dance floor. Just about everybody there had the same idea at the same time.

 This was not in the defense of the gay community. They could take care of themselves. This was about letting some dopey kid know that he was in the Big Leagues now and ought to smarten up before he got hurt. When that kid looked at the dance floor filling up with same sex couples he was stunned. I had seen him before and knew he knew the joint wasn’t a gay bar. Then it sunk in. He had thrown out a challenge and everyone in the place had accepted it. He fled.

Still, something was in the air and after he left the whole place continued same-sex dancing for a while. Then it changed back to normal.

We had a blast rocking out until the place closed at 0500. I sacked out on the boat that night soaked in sweat and woke up at about 1100 feeling pretty good. I had sweated the beer out of my system that night on the dance floor.

Nobody cared, especially the owner because he sold a lot of booze that night. That night was talked about for months. I think the only night I can recall that was as much fun was the night a guy named Uncle Bob came to town with a 5 gallon pail of magic mushrooms and started handing them out.

I didn’t eat any of them but laughed myself silly that night just watching everyone that did eat them. Sometimes there are times to join the crowd, sometimes there are times to stand back and watch the crowd. That was a night to stand back and watch.

I chose wisely that night.

I think a lot of the reason I got to see a lot of stuff a lot of other people didn’t get to see or have to deal with is because I simply figured that if it didn’t rob me or hurt me it didn’t bother me.

I dealt with people based simply on the way they acted and treated me.

I had problems of my own to deal with and in truth an insight to what I saw inside the gay/transgendered community made me glad I was who I was. I had it a lot easier than most of them.

As far as I am concerned the gay community had it a lot easier than the hard drug community by a longshot. I steered clear of that even though it was constantly around me.

Actually I saw that I had it a lot better than most people I met along my 63 years.

To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY