Beauty Queen

aching anger that was growing inside her.
    It made Mary Ellen sad and angry to see that the poisons preached by Jeannie Colter were even reaching the sunny Liv. Sometimes Liv was depressed and brooding when she came home from the post office.
    It was Liv's first encounter with anti-gay hostility in its most naked American form. Since her own coming-out, she had lived lapped in the joys of lesbian love, and of fellowship in the gay community. So far, her civil-service job had been only a neutral experience.
    But one night in the kitchen, bending over to put a clean dish of cat food on the floor for Kikan, Liv said, "There is this woman who works next to me who has always been very very nice to me." Something in the jerkiness of how she bent down gave away the tension and upset in her nervous system. "She tells me all about her family and her children. She is always trying to make dates for me, with nice young men there. But ever since this Colter lady is making so loud about the gay people, this lady is saying not so nice things about gay people, in her very nice way. She thinks they should all be put in concentration camps."
    She sat down heavily on a kitchen chair, and watched Kikan eat.
    "Every day I have to listen to her now. She thinks the Colter lady is wonderful. She says she is the best thing to happen to America since Richard Nixon. And of course she thinks that Watergate was nothing that Nixon was .. . how do you say... ah, yes, like in the gangster movies .. .framed. Every day she is quoting from the Colter lady, what she reads in the newspapers or hears on the TV."
    The teakettle was whistling, and Mary Ellen got up to turn it off and make them both a cup of Sanka with milk and sugar.
    Then slowly they climbed up the stairs toward the roof garden.
    It was a hot night, and it seemed even hotter up there, where the brick chimneys and tarpaper roofs seemed to hold the heat of the sun. The petunias blooming in the milk boxes made a heavy, almost exotic, scent in the air. The full moon rested over the Palisades, looking swollen and feverish.
    "Look, Liv," said Mary Ellen, trying to lighten the moment, "the moon is gay and some redneck punched it in the face."
    Liv shook her head as they sat down.
    "It is something in America that I cannot get used to," said Liv. "It is the violence. In Sweden we are not even allowed to see violence in the movies or on TV. Sex and violence. Americans are obsessed with them. At home, we do not love these things for their own sake."
    They sat drinking their coffee in the heat of the night, the sweat shining on their limbs.
    "Today," said Liv softly, "I could not stand it any more, with this lady. I said to her, you think I am a nice person, right? She said yes. I asked her if she would want me put in a concentration camp? She said no."
    Mary Ellen closed her eyes, knowing what was coming.
    "So," said Liv, "I said, but you should want me put in a concentration camp. And she said, 'Why?' She was very surprised, right? After all, in America they wouldn't put nice people in those camps."
    "So," said Mary Ellen, "you told her that you were a lesbian, right?"
    "Yes, I did," said Liv.
    "And of course the nice lady is a big tattletale, so now you're afraid that you'll lose your job."
    "How did you know that?" said Liv.
    "Just a wild guess," said Mary Ellen grimly, "based on my years of police work."
    "I am sorry, Mary Ellen. But I couldn't keep the words back any more."
    "For Chrissake, don't apologize for coming out. Especially to me! What was her reaction?"
    Liv was shaking her head in a puzzled way.
    "I expected her to be very shocked. To be very very angry. So I was very surprised. She said, 'Oh, you poor poor child
    Mary Ellen found herself whooping with laughter.
    "My God, one of those kind," she said.
    "She was talking about the Jesus cults, and how there are these people who kidnap Jesus people and. . ." Liv searched for the word. "De.. . de.. ."
    "Deprogram them?" said Mary Ellen.
    Liv's face lit up. "Yes! Deprogram. And she said there ought to be an organization that would kidnap gay people and deprogram them. She said that I obviously was brainwashed, that I really wasn't a lesbian at all, that I was a nice girl . . ."
    "Oh, they could always deprogram you in that concentration camp she is talking about," said Mary Ellen.
    "You know," said Liv morosely, "sometimes this lady, her name is Mrs. Whalen—she talks so much about how nice I am, how very nice, that I think she would