Everyone knows a

Everyone Knows a……

I have heard so many people say: I know someone just like….and proceed to introduce me to some interesting character in their lives that remind them of someone from True Blood and the Sookie Books. So here are mine…tell me about yours…

Jason Stackhouse-
You know him, you love him, you may have even shagged him. Terry White was the Jason Stackhouse of Logan County. He was pretty: tall, dark haired, with eyes as pale blue as a swimming pool. Born with a terminal boner, Terry laid waste to many of the fair flowers (and a few weeds) at Logan High School. He once said there is no such thing as an ugly girl, just a boy with no imagination. If a girl thought she was special, she was doomed to disappointment. Terry still lives in Logan with his third wife and his seven children.

Lafayette Reynold-
When I met Lafayette Reynold, I was embracing one of my oldest and dearest friends. Victor and I met in second grade. Shy and sweet and illiterate, I took Victor into my heart and he is permanently tucked there today.

Victor could not read in the second grade, where as I was a voracious reader. The only African American boy in my class, he was an outsider. The color of coffee and cream with so much Irish in him he had red hair and green eyes and freckles, he was lost in a sea of pink faces. But that was okay, even in the second grade I was an eccentric and in a quiet corner where other teachers failed, I taught him to read.

Time did not soften our friendship and as we grew up, Victor’s dawning realization that he was gay made little difference to the love I bore him. With the grace of one under fire, like Lafayette, he didn’t let anything get him down and he stood as tall as his five foot nothing frame would allow him and carried himself with pride. Today, Victor is teacher and writer, writing on issues about gay black men.

Maxine Fortenberry-
Grace Evans was a member of the Logan County Town Council, leader of the Ladies Auxiliary of the VFW and past president of the Order of the Eastern Star and owner of the Dixie, a diner in town. But her principle job was as town scold.

Grace would proudly proclaim her great grandfather was the founding member of the Logan Klavern of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (now long defunct) but with the caveat she had never belonged to that group.

She was a social barometer. A girl who chews gum is a girl who would smoke and a girl who would smoke…well she would do anything. And when I lit a cigarette in her diner at 16 years old, I’d made her list of bad girls.

It’s an honor I brag about to this day.

Adele Stackhouse-
I was honored to have Inez Bailey as my mother in law. Small, soft with bearing seven children, four of them big headed boys, she was a lady profound with years.

Her schooling did not get past the third grade but she read everything put in front of her. Like Adele, she did not know a passive moment. She loved her flowers and her church. She belonged to the Secret Sisters Society. At the first of the year, they put their names in a hat and chose one, a sister for the year. They would write Christmas cards, Valentine Day cards, and Easter cards. She wrote her secret sister once a week. The letters were given weekly to the president who would pass them out at their weekly meetings.

She was an encyclopedia of knowledge of the families at Mill Creek. She knew who was who, who they married, and their children. That is how I discovered Jimmy and I were 5th cousins. She is gone now but I love her still.

Pam Ravencroft-
Pluke Damron was the first openly gay woman I had ever known. Of course she did not begin her past with me that way. She was the secretary of Judge Ned Grubb. Tall and fashionable, she was a bit on the horsey side and had a voice lower than most women.

Married once, she divorced him for kicking her nearly to death in a drunken rage. This made her a militant feminist and a hard line anti-abuse spokesperson. She came out of the closet in the mid eighties. She once told me it was okay for a woman to be a housewife, up to her elbows in soap and hot dish water so long as every now and then she dried her hands and jumped up on her soap box.

Sookie Stackhouse-
Christine Ball was not blond and she was not telepathic. She was shapely, beautiful girl who was endowed with coal black hair and eyes to match.

Like Sookie, she felt an outsider. She was the first girl to take her African American boyfriend to our Senior Prom. She double dated with me and Brian Petrosky. Whenever I see Sookie being put upon because she is dating Bill Compton I always think of her. She married her prom date and I am godmother to her children, Vickie and Taylor.

Tara Thornton-
Delara Johnson was the first African American Cheerleader at Logan High School. She always said she was the token chocolate drop. It did not matter to her why they forced the cheerleading coach to put her on the roster, all that mattered was she was there and the next African American girl to try out would have an easier time of it.

Built like an Amazon and with a tongue like an adder, she overcame her family which would make Tara’s family look like saints. But you would never know it. She hid her pain with a snappy comeback, brash humor and an intoxicating wrath. She feared no one. She stood up for herself everywhere that was not her home.

She is now a police officer on the Logan County Police Department. Yes, the first African American to do so.

Bill Compton-
There are two men who remind me of Bill Compton and both are men I love with a deathless passion.

Jimmy Bailey was a good old southern boy, a veteran of Vietnam and 20 years my senior. Soft spoken with a low deep voice, he was my first lover. He was not perfect, but he always intended the best for me. He was diagnosed with cancer, Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, and he would eventually need my O- blood. He was my own true love til the day he died.

Sean Michael David McIntyre comes to me from England but he could have been a gallant Southern Gentleman. Educated and interesting, darkly handsome like Bill, he treats me like a delicate Southern Belle. His manners are impeccable and his sense of honor and justice is ironclad.