Meeting with C&M
Had it truly been repealed, or could it still lead to punishment?
Article 248bis.
A provision in Dutch law that criminalized sex between people of the same sex if one person was over 21 and the other was under 21.
I turned 21, and Judy was 17.
Was I committing a crime?
The COC and the AJAH—the Amsterdam Youth Action Group on Homosexuality—fought for the repeal of Article 248bis.
That’s how I experienced homosexuality in the 1960s, those free-spirited years, when heterosexual men got their way, and women were allowed to join in.
On my 21st birthday, my parents didn’t call me. I’d been hoping all day that they would call, but they didn’t. I was very disappointed. They were on vacation somewhere in the Netherlands, and they’d called me the day before, but on the actual day, they didn’t.
Early Sunday morning after my birthday, the doorbell rang. Judy and I were still in bed. Judy always wanted to go out on Saturday nights, so we’d been to the café and had stayed out late. We did enjoy a drink or two.
The doorbell rang loudly and insistently.
I got up and pulled the cord connected to the front door. I heard the door open.
“Judy,” called a voice with a French accent.
“Come on up,” I called.
A petite, dark-haired woman stomped noisily up the stairs, followed by a woman with curly blonde hair and thick glasses.
“Does Judy live here?” the dark-haired woman asked in English with a thick French accent.
“Sure,” I said.
“Does she play the guitar and can she sing?”
“Sure,” I said again. “Have a seat.”
We didn’t have a real couch, just a piece of foam rubber wrapped in a rug.
The French woman sat down; the other woman remained standing.
I went into the front room where Judy was lying in bed.
“They’re here to see you.”
“Who?” Judy said, irritated.
“Two women—one is French, the other I think is Dutch.”
“What do they want?”
“I don’t know; they wanted to know if you played the guitar and could sing.”
This piqued Judy’s interest. She got up, put on her jeans and a T-shirt, and grabbed her guitar.
She sat down on the stool she always sat on and started playing; I don’t remember what she played—maybe it was a song by Melanie, maybe by Loudon Wainwright, maybe Sandy Denny, or maybe it was one of her own—but she played and sang, played and sang. The French woman tapped her foot to the beat. When Judy was about to start the third song, the French woman said, “I’ve heard enough. I’m Claude; this is my girlfriend Marit. I play bass, Marit plays piano, we have a Yankee who plays drums, and we’re still looking for a singer who also plays guitar. We’ve started a women’s band—Big Mama’s Blues Band. Want to join us?”
“Yes,” Judy said right away.
“Come with us—we’re going to rehearsal.”
“Let’s have some coffee first,” Judy said, and I went to make some.
That afternoon, we went with Claude and Marit, who lived a little further down in the Staatsliedenbuurt. Many more times followed.
With the Big Mama’s Blues Band, a whole world of lesbians opened up to me. Judy and I weren’t out; we stayed in the closet, but Claude and Marit weren’t in it. The Big Mama’s Blues Band’s first performance was at De Lange Gang. The lesbian café De Lange Gang on Langestraat, run by Hanneke Hurkmans—years later, I would become part of a group of people who did things for Hanneke, who was seriously ill; for instance, I walked her little dog every week, sometimes thinking back to that first time I saw out-lesbians. Lesbians who didn’t fit the old-fashioned image of the masculine lesbian with her feminine girlfriend. I can still vividly picture two long-haired women on a meter box dancing to the music of my Judy and my new friends, Claude and Marit.