A Word In Edgewise: On Finding, then Living, One’s Self: Dwayne A. Ratleff

Dwayne A. Ratleff’s “Dancing to the Lyrics,” reviewed in Lavender in 2022, was told through the eyes of a 5-year-old self, aka Grant Cole, a small, fierce intelligence navigating 1960’s segregated Baltimore, and a home steeped in its own violence, dominated by a cruel stepfather.

Ratleff later commented, “The biggest problem was how to categorize the book. It is obviously a memoir, but I had to give the living plausible deniability. I also labeled it as fiction because a few of the characters were amalgams … [that] book is trans-genre. I think I will stick with that.”

Author Ratleff resides in the background, interpreting the boy’s perceptions without obscuring the observant youngster’s efforts to understand. Ignorance is not stupidity, but as its Latin “ignotus” indicates, means “not-knowing.” His lack of access to information, adequate vocabulary and historical context blinded others to the child’s keen, nuanced intelligence. Plucked from the Midwest and dropped into chaos, Grant’s naïve, “Do you have a day called Sunday in Baltimore?” could indeed seem imbecilic to some. Grant is black, (obvious to anyone­­), gay (there are hints), and throughout the book, given the sketchy educational system available, remains unable to read or write. Illiterate even at age 10 when he, his mother and sisters, and the unwanted step-father leave Baltimore for his maternal grandparents’ home in Connecticut. New England was not particularly welcoming to blacks, but death didn’t lurk around every corner as it did, literally, in their patch of Baltimore.

Humiliation did, however, for young Grant as well as for Ratleff himself, as he segues into his newest book, “See, What Had Happened Was…” In Connecticut, fear and embarrassment clouded every reading assignment.

“I had to repeat 4th grade and was put in Special Education along with my sisters. The class was in the basement/boiler room. Back then (1969) they didn’t have a dedicated classroom for Special Ed. As a matter fact, I believe Connecticut was the first state to address that issue … Special Ed. didn’t really help me at all. They weren’t addressing the main issue, which was why I didn’t want to read: I saw no point expending all that energy for something I didn’t think was useful.”

How could Ratleff or other children who never had access to books, or were forced to focus on avoiding domestic violence, ever have time or energy to consider the printed word? “There were no books in our house until I was eleven. My grandfather worked for a wealthy man in Litchfield who gave us a bookcase full of books. It was put in my room. It was perfect timing.”

Fortunately, a sweltering Spring blanketed the Northeast that particular year. “Our teachers would make us put our heads down on our desks, then would turn off the light and read to us.” His teacher chose “Charlotte’s Web”; Ratleff was entranced, and couldn’t bear interruptions or delays.

“That’s when it dawned on me that I couldn’t be dependent on others to read for me. There were whole worlds in books and I wanted to explore those worlds. By the end of the 6th grade, I’d progressed enough to start reading ‘Hamlet,’ ‘Taras Bulba,’ ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ and ‘The Odyssey,’ that were in that donated book case.”

Books became the portal through which Ratleff stepped into a new life, as narrated in his second, purely autobiographical, “See, What Had Happened Was…” It opens March 20, 1980, two days before his 21st birthday. “I didn’t want to turn twenty-one in Connecticut.” He had graduated with honors but needed a change. It was time to move beyond, and his destination was San Francisco. He writes as one who has indeed passed through earlier stages, but like a caterpillar still in its chrysalis was still liquefying, changing and reshaping … he remained on the verge.

His main goal was to be true to himself as a gay individual. Before leaving the east, when grandfather asked, “Boy, why are you moving out to San Francisco?” Ratleff was caught off guard.

But, Ratleff replied, “Grandpa, I ain’t never lied to you, and I ain’t going to start now. I am moving there to sleep with men.”

His grandfather astounded him with, “Dwayne, whatever you do, don’t go home with a man you can’t best in a fight, in case he is not gay, because I love you and don’t want you to get hurt.”

There is a lot of living and learning packed in this second volume, but the conversation contains the meat of the contents. The whole might be considered a bildungsroman, typical maturing of a young man, but is unique in that the author is presenting himself not precisely as a novice, unformed, but one finally freed to embrace that life for which he had long yearned, for which he had been preparing and expressed through young Grant in “Dancing to the Lyrics.”

Ratleff faced new mountains to climb in this city of nine hills, but he set about it directly, undergoing a lack of funds, employment, enduring trials from leaping out a window in an apartment fire to a White gentleman’s lecture on green food choices at the grocery. “All my life White people had told me I couldn’t have this or that. Now that those things were within reach, I was being told it was bad for me.” He replied only, “You’re White, I’m wrong.”

Ratleff’s tone throughout is engaging. He doesn’t lecture but rather uses what he as his child-self Grant observed and integrated within “Dancing”to both guide his readers and remind himself. Yes, he came to San Francisco to “sleep with men,” and did, plenty, but he was also searching for the affection Grant so rarely received as well as being honest with one-offs. This lends an unusual immediacy to a text that could have simply been a “look at me!” kind of exposé but is more of a cerebral Damron Guide to one young man’s exploration and growth. He’s poor but frugal, saving for things he’s never had; his first travel abroad, where, exiting Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum, he learns of the attack on the Twin Towers. He finds partners, some suitable, some not, and admits the loss of a true love was his own fault. His openness is the center of his narrative; Ratleff is working to illuminate his own path, neither blaming others nor wallowing in his own mistakes, but acknowledging, adjusting and carrying on.

Then came the 1980s and the HIV/AIDS plague which swept away so many so cruelly. It’s best to read in his own words. Ratleff didn’t get tested right away but assisted others through to the end, and when he finally did, and he tested positive, there were medicines available to stave off the inevitable.

It was time to move once again, and author Ratleff now lives in Palm Desert, Calif., with husband Michael and pup Lizzy. His 40 years in San Francisco remain in his heart. Both his books (to date) are highly recommended.