Peculiar Extremes: Bigots, Encounter Groups and Mate-Swapping Clubs

Names have been changed to protect the guilty

I had a friend named Jack who was into some of the hard Right thinking. He subscribed to several of their periodicals. He was an educated and intelligent man who ran his own business. I had worked for Jack for a while. His penchant for the Rightist stuff seemed paradoxical, as he was usually a cultured and thoughtful fellow.

The Rightist periodicals were rather bizarre. I had looked over some of them. The articles covered a wide variety of subjects from Jew-baiting to racism, international conspiracies and anti-government rants. Interspersed between them were advertisements for laetrile, gold
 speculation and other crackpot investment schemes. Most of the people shown in ads were fat old men in white shirts and ties. Most of these rags were printed in the format of tabloid newspapers.

A small, Readers-digest-sized periodical was American Mercury. This one usually had pictures of the Founding Fathers on the cover, implying patriotism. Inside were the same racist rants, paranoid conspiracy chatter and anti-government diatribes as the other rags.

These rags claimed to support White folks. They were opposed to non-Whites, Jews, non-Christians ( me!), liberals, Democrats, Republicans, Catholics, Gays, junkies and a few others. Some were more extreme than others. Most of it was devoted to spreading hate. The factual content was minimal at best.

Jack really liked that stuff. Yet even he took half of it with a grain of salt.

One Saturday, Jack and I were going to a party at another friend’s yard. He decided to stop at his shop on the way. While there, a person assumed the shop was open and came in. He was a young Black man in a tye-dyed tank top and “Daisy Duke” shorts. Jack was by the front desk.

The man asked Jack if he could do a quick job for him. I could see that he had a typewritten sheet of paper with a few corrections. Jack told him he was closed, but could do it for him. He asked the young man to come back in half an hour. As soon as the man left, Jack smiled and said, “Beer money!”

Jack may have had his racist side, but when it came to business, all customers were treated well.

Jack set to work on the Selectric. This was a simple job that required no paste-up. As he typed, he laughed uproariously. In a few minutes, he withdrew the page, proofed it, and set it down on the desk.

“Look at this,” he said. Keep in mind, this was the 1970s.

I had to laugh, too. The flyer was announcing the formation of “encounter groups” for minority homosexuals. The lingo was typical 1970s jive talk. Terms like “hip”, “groovy” and “out-of-sight” were interspersed with other information.

The man came back. Jack handed him the copy in a folder. The customer was pleased and more  than happy to fork over $20. Both Jack and I were able to keep a straight face. In 1976, $20 would buy plenty of beer.

Of course, he could not wait to tell his cronies about the “Black hippy-dippy tooty-fruity.” For a fellow with Jack’s attitudes toward race and such, this was a treasure too good to keep to himself.

From my viewpoint, Jack’s reaction to the customer was more amusing that the transaction itself. He was a like a school kid who could not wait to tell his friends about the kid who pooped his pants in grammar class.

Before you get politically correct, remember that in the 1970s, people made fun of Gay folks. It was considered acceptable. And “encounter groups” were something of a joke, too. They were a hold-over from the hippy days. Nonetheless, we made beer money and the Black man later became a repeat customer.

****

One of Jack’s accounts was a swinger’s club. They met at different places. Jack did the typesetting for their bulletin, flyers and announcements. He had a thick file on them that included articles, ads and other information. There were excerpts from various porn magazines and other such literature. Jack liked to let his friends ruffle through the file.

In case you did not know, a swinger’s club is one where members have sex with someone other than their spouses. Couples meet and pair off with each other’s spouse. Larger gatherings can best be described as orgies.

The folks running it were a couple in their early forties. The husband was a good -looking man. The wife was an unattractive, flabby chick with a gravelly voice. She looked more like a Skid Row barmaid than someone associated with a sex club.

One day, they needed a flyer for a rush job. The gist of it was: “Anyone who did it with Debbie needs to be checked out by a doctor.” Apparently, Debbie was one of the guests at their gatherings and had the clap. And from what the couple said to Jim, Debbie was very popular that weekend.

Jack worked out of his house the first couple years of his business. His office was the room behind the front room. I was working late to help get a large job finished. Normally I’d be gone before his right wing cronies arrived for their weekly gathering. Jack and I finished up as his friends arrived and sat in the front room.

We were just about finished when who came to the door, but the swinger club couple. They wanted him to do a quick flyer. Jack let them sit in the front room. He figured his friends would be patient and the swingers would wait patiently.

Wrong!

I was just about to leave when the fun started. Apparently, two of Jim’s friends were talking about something “conservative”. The swinger husband jumped into the conversation. He claimed to be conservative and also said he backed Castro in the 50s. Meanwhile, the swinger wife locked eyes on me and said, “How old are you?”

I stated my age. And I instantly regretted it. For all I knew, she was the type who liked younger men. And believe me, she gave the word “unattractive” new dimensions in meaning.

“I have a 29 year old married Swedish woman who would be perfect for you," she said. I caught my breath. I had seen their printed material - in fact, I helped make some of it. I knew the kinds of folks with whom they worked. And making it with a married woman? That is dangerous territory. The brother of one of my former classmates was murdered over a married woman. Trying to preserve my ego, I declined. At least the swinger wife wasn’t talking about me doing her!

Jack sized up the situation and immediately showed the swinger couple into the office. I stayed in the front room in case he needed me to do a rush job. His friends asked me who the couple was.

“They are one of our more unique customers,” I replied.

In a few minutes, Jack ushered them out of his office. We were glad to see them go. I waited to see the couple get in their car and drive off.  Then I left. That was enough weirdness for one day.

Like many such groups in the 1970s, these swingers were poorly organized and careless. They had a lot of screwy incidents, conflicts and other nonsense. You learn a lot when you do someone’s typesetting. More than a few times, we designed “rush job” flyers and notices after some incident or another erupted at one of their gatherings. If I remember correctly, they disbanded before Jack moved into a larger office.

**********

In trades such as typesetting, you have to keep a straight face and take all customers. The only time to refuse a job, other than for technical reasons, is if it is illegal or very offensive. I remember one day we did work for a handful of religious institutions, from a Catholic parish to a gospel choir to the local chapter of a Satanic organization. The goal is to produce an end product that fits the customer’s wishes.

**********

Friends are friends. I do not demand that they agree with all of my principles. By the same token, I expect they do not demand the same of me. Some of my friends have odd beliefs to which I could never subscribe. Still and all, they are friends and will remain so.

I have friends who would not like each other for various reasons. It bothers me, but I cannot force people to change to suit my whims. Jack is an example. He knew that I did not agree with his racial and political beliefs and he respected that. Though I have not heard from him in 30 years - he moved far way - I like to believe some of his views mellowed with age. At heart, Jack was a good man with a generous spirit. Buried beneath that veneer of Rightist philosophy was an intelligent and cultured person. Paradoxes? Yes! But if you look at the folks in my world, who isn’t a paradox of one sort or another?

If you enjoyed this story, please feel free to check out the other articles in this blog.

Religious Crackpots, Southern Style

The main character in these stories is someone I know well. This was his first exposure to the nation’s “Bible Belt” and religious bigotry. Everything transpired over 45 years ago. As usual, names have been changed to protect the guilty.

A young soldier from the Northeast was stationed in the Bible Belt. He went downtown now and then. There were the usual kinds of stores, plus pawn shops, strip clubs and other things common to “G.I. towns.  There was a storefront place called “Christian Servicemen’s Center”.  They had a counter, some small tables and a ping pong table. The young soldier passed it but had no intention of going inside.

One Saturday afternoon downtown, the young soldier ran into a couple of friends from his unit. They told him they were going to the Christian Serviceman’s Center. He wanted to decline, but reluctantly joined them. Inside was a counter with a coffee pot and cookies, the ping pong table , and an old man. The friends called him “Brother Chizzum” or something like that.

The two friends invited the young soldier to play a game of ping pong. He played a couple of rounds. Then they went to the counter and introduced him to Brother Chizzum. The old man offered the Northeasterner some cookies. The soldier was eating the cookie when the old man asked him about his beliefs. The young man replied that he was Catholic.

“Well, you better watch out. You might choke on the cookie. That is a Christian cookie.” the old man said with a spiteful smile.

The young man was confused. Catholicism is a form of Christianity. He was baffled that a so-called Christian would want him to choke. His two friends looked embarrassed. The soldier finished the cookie.

“Thanks for a cookie,” he said, and left.

Later, back on post, the two friends tried to make an explanation for Brother Chizzum’s rude remark. They said it was a misunderstood joke. The young man was not buying it. Suffice to say he gave the Christian Servicemen’s Center wide berth after that.

This was how he learned that some fundamentalist sects of Christianity do not consider other denominations Christian.

There was a “holy roller” in the unit named Ray. He was a skinny Mexican fellow with a too-large nose and a too-skinny everything else. “Ugly Ray” was a cook. One day, on the serving line, Ray went into a religious tirade. As he served each soldier, he asked, “Are you right with the Lord, brother?”

As you can imaging, some of the replies were far from what he expected.

When it came to the soldier mentioned earlier, the young man did not want to fuss. He said, “Yeah, I listen to the priest”  and started to move on.

“You’re going to go to Hell with that priest,” Ray shouted.

Ugly Ray got into a lot of trouble for preaching in the chow line.

A month or so later, the unit was going on maneuvers. “Going into the field” for two weeks.

They were leaving on Easter Sunday. The troops were told there would be no excuses for not showing up to deploy. Most of the men were there. Ugly Ray and some of his holy-roller pals did not show for religious reasons. All I was told was that they got themselves into a lot of trouble. I can see the Army’s point. War happens regardless of holidays, and training reflects that fact.

These were the young man’s first introduction to religious bigotry. He never forgot the look on that old man’s face when he wished the young man to choke on a cookie.

Why not check out some of the other stories on this blog? An amusement assortment of stories, articles and anecdotes awaits you.