Lesbian Dancing After The Show: An Improviser's Non Improvised Life

Chapter One: Lesbian Dancing Pre-Sale Life Tickets

The Funeral Of Lena Horne

I'm not religious, but my family is. Ever since I was little, my family has attended Trinity Church UCC Chicago.

Trinity UCC was founded in 1961. Ten years later, when the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright became its pastor, the church had 87 families. Today, Trinity UCC has more than 8,000 members, 70 ministries and three Sunday worship services.

I was born August 3rd 1965, and was a child of the Afro-American seventies. When I was younger it was a common practice on Sundays: watch my aunts and grandmother get ready for Church and see them head off with every other Baptist dressed to the nine's on The South Side of Chicago.

My mother was not religious so we never went. Well, not counting those two weeks.

That first time when she had the bus money to let me go. I got there and was put into bible study. It was actually a lot of fun, as I found what was being taught fascinating. I was a big science nut at this point and kept asking questions about how all of this history and information was part of science. There was not really an answer, so I just chalked it all up as "Really cool stories to make people be nice to each other."

I also thought church was neat, because there were people there my age who were pretty hip and nice. And I was a fat kid, so the food coming from the basement always signaled the end of service and a mouthful of YES worthy of seeing some members pass out and roll around in tongues.

Dinner and a show. In reverse, I suppose.

After the first bible class, I was asked if I would be interested in joining a club at the church. They asked if I could sing and if I would join the choir. I thought that was GREAT as I already had aspirations of performing. They told me to show up the next week early to rehearse.

The week leading up to all of this, I was really excited. I was going to learn to *sing*. My mom was surprisingly wary of the whole thing. Not knowing why, I did what any jackass kid would do to get their way: Cry. This worked really well and I was given the bus money to go.

Upon arrival to the church, they tried to fit me into a child's robe. I was a huge girl and none of them fit. I asked for an adult size, which they thought would be too big. So instead of swimming in a robe, I was sausage in one. It looked like I was bursting from the seams in this robe and not bursting with the love of god. I was bursting from the deliciousness of Fig Newton's, pop rocks and Fun Dip.

Sheet music was not given to me. I think they just thought every kid should know these songs. I had no idea what was going on. In lieu of words, a tambourine was handed to me. That was easy to do for the Sausage Robe Kid. When we got onto the stage later I shook my tambourine and mouthed along to words I did not know. I started to get to know where the bridge and the chorus were pretty fast so I started to even sing along a little:

mmm...lala...GODDDD!...mmmmmm...mmmlalalala (long, silent mouthing) GODDDD!

It was a little embarrassing. I felt like the kids they put by the speakers at gatherings, squeezed into my robe and given a tambourine, every once in a while spitting out the word GOD just a little too loud over everyone else.

I told this to my mom and she just shook her head. I was not given bus money to return the next week. Instead she bought me a flute (since drums, she believed, were way too loud) and I played that in my non-secular public elementary school.

This was pretty much the extent of my experience with my family's church, outside of seeing my aunts and grandmom downstairs getting ready Sunday morning and listening to Tower of Power.