Just a few weeks after Creative Loafing made the questionable decision to hire me as a reporter in the summer of 1998, my boss suggested I do a story about Charlotte’s basketball culture. The story was to focus not so much on the kind of basketball action found at the neighborhood YMCA or local gym, but rather the elbow-throwing, trash-talking hoops played at places like Park Road Park and Camp Greene, where you take it strong or take it somewhere else. As a short white guy with a negligible vertical leap, there were few places in Charlotte where I could have been more out of my element. I absolutely loved it.I loved immersing myself in a culture that was totally foreign to me, soaking it all in, and writing about it. That experience sort of set the tone for my future niche at the Loaf. Since then I’ve written about all kinds of marginal, not to sayh unusual individuals and groups, as well as social, medical and cultural issues including swingers, Tourette’s Syndrome, raves, morticians, hardcore bodybuilders, stuttering, breast implant recipients, borderline personality disorder, animal psychologists, bouncers, psychedelic therapists, marriage trends, and the evolution of robots.
The year 2002 was just as varied and unusual. Over the past 12 months I’ve written about, among others, transsexuals, dwarfism, tabletop war game subcultures, bike couriers and a 79-year-old professional female wrestler. These stories provided me with an opportunity to meet some unique and memorable people and to get a peek inside their lives.
One of the most memorable of those stories was the one about transsexuality (“Right Sex, Wrong Body,” March 13) which refers to a condition in which a person’s mental perception of his or her own gender is inconsistent with their physical body and/or sex. The story looked at several individuals in Charlotte who were wrestling with this condition, and how they dealt with the pressures and societal expectations of school, family, dating, religion, and the workplace. Featured in the piece was local comic/songstress Tamalah Taylor, a voluptuous and boldly ambitious bombshell who — at least technically — came out of the womb a boy. Taylor grew up in a tiny, conservative town in Alabama. After sex reassignment surgery, a boob job and some time spent in Atlanta and Raleigh, Taylor moved to Charlotte, where she continues to use her talents to entertain.
Also featured was Hollis Aiken, a rarity in the already rare world of transsexuals. Aiken was born with female genitalia, but presents and considers himself a man. In addition to having to deal with the pressures of his own sexuality, Aiken had the added burden of growing up within the conservative environment of the Jehovah’s Witness faith, where deviation from “normal” sexuality meant being ex-communicated by not only the church, but friends and family as well. Unable to continue living a lie, Aiken left his native New Jersey and the church, lived briefly in Atlanta, then moved to Charlotte a few years ago with his partner. At the time of the story, Aiken was considering undergoing sex-reassignment surgery.
Unfortunately, this was also one of the few stories I’ve written in which one of the featured subjects very much objected to the way she was portrayed. Elizabeth McLaren, 20, who I described as being effortlessly and uncannily feminine despite being born a male, felt as if I’d portrayed her as “some confused young boy who developed into a weak, Marilyn Monroe-eqsue fragile twig of a woman who could barely speak above her breath.” McLaren indicated she hoped to move to Seattle and become a civil liberties attorney.
One of the more illuminating stories for me in 2002 was about
dwarfism (“Standing Tall,” January 9). It’s not every day that you walk into a room filled with about 50 little people (by the way, the preferred term is dwarf or little person, not midget). Such was the case when I attended the Little People of America Christmas party in McAdenville.
While the folks in the story unquestionably dealt with some unique challenges — from reaching light switches and ATMs to dating and job discrimination — they also went to school, had careers, paid bills, raised kids, drove cars, partied on the weekends and otherwise, somewhat to my surprise, led successful, happy lives. All of which was a testament to both their determination and bravery, as much as it was to my ignorance for expecting anything else.
During the course of the story I met some remarkable people, including Debra Rick, 42 years of age, three feet five inches tall, and born with slight appendages for arms. She’s also a college graduate, a single mother, and has traveled the world giving speeches and rubbing elbows (well, knees anyway) with folks like Isaiah Thomas, Zig Zigler and Les Brown.
A trip to Concord Mills resulted in a story about a unique and raging subculture when I happened upon a hyped-up, testosterone-fueled throng nearly 100 strong shouting and bidding for little metal figures and weapons held out before them by a black-clad auctioneer. (“Orcs and Goblins and Skaven, Oh My!” September 25). I had unknowingly entered the world of Warhammer, one of the most popular “tabletop war games” in the country. The game — in which combatants customize metal figures and create their own war-torn landscape — originated in England in the late 1970s. Today, annual tournaments are held all over the country, attracting thousands. Some local Warhammer veterans like Jerry Frazee, 42, and Tom Poston, 38, have invested countless hours and upwards of $10,000, and built expansive and intricate gaming tables at their home, where they gather weekly to battle it out with their friends.
“Some people play golf; some people bowl; some people hang out in bars and drink,” explained Frazee. “Warhammer just happens to be our hobby.”
Engaged in another battle of sorts are Charlotte’s downtown bike couriers (“The Two-Wheeled Path,” December 11), but instead of green-skinned monsters and heavily armed warriors, these guys are up against oblivious motorists, barreling trucks and lumbering buses. And once again, the folks I met and interviewed for this story were far different from what I had expected. Guys like Bill Fehr, a 33-year-old husband and father who gave up a $65,000 a year job at Sears and Roebuck for the freedom and exhilaration of being out in the world everyday instead of watching it from an office window. There was also Rich Dillon, 33 and the father of a 10-year-old boy. Dillon has been a bike courier in downtown Charlotte for nearly eight years, and says the highlight of his day is often during rush hour when he’s weaving between the city’s mammoth buses, narrowly escaping being squashed. He says it makes him feel alive, and that he would never trade that feeling for a standard nine-to-five job where you have to sit in a cubicle and wear a suit and tie.
And then there’s the one, the only, The Fabulous Moolah, the most famous professional female wrestler of all time. (“The Amazing Story of The Fabulous Moolah,” October 16). I spent the day with Moolah at her Columbia, SC estate where she runs a wrestling school for women, and lives with two other female wrestlers, including “midget” wrestler Katie Glass. Moolah was a pioneer in a rough and oftentimes sleazy business long before it became the slick, big bucks, “sport entertainment” spectacle it is today. During a career that has lasted over six decades, she met and befriended a bevy of larger than life characters and celebrities, including Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Hank Williams, Sr. Moolah is quite the character herself: part grandmotherly sweetness, part showbiz razzmatazz, and all old-fashioned Southern Belle, she hopes to make her national wrestling comeback next July 22 — her 80th birthday. Stay tuned.
I’m still not quite sure why I’m drawn to these types of stories, I guess only deep analysis will reveal that, but I’ll take a fringe group or under-the-radar individual living on the margins of mainstream society over an outspoken politician or powerful CEO any day. Of course when you write these kinds of stories you run the risk of being categorized as a “freak of the week” reporter, and lumped into the same category as Jerry Springer and The National Enquirer. I try my best to avoid that criticism by treating the folks and issues I write about fairly and with respect. At the same time, I think it’s important to not be condescending or patronizing to readers. While many of the folks I’ve written about are wonderful, brave and inspirational, at the same time, some of them, regardless of their condition or endeavor, have been disagreeable, self-serving pains-in-the-ass. I continue to keep that in perspective.
Contact Sam Boykin at sam.boykin@creativeloafing.com.
This article appears in Jan 1-7, 2003.
