THE FILE ON STORMY FOSTER
A Cartoon Movie Serial in Twelve Chapters
CHAPTER NINE:
“THE QUEEN’S REBUKE”
TIME AND PLACE:
HAWAII, 1990 (and in flashback, 1944)
CAST OF CHARACTERS:
FREDDY BANG, the STUDIO OWNER
IRENE BANG, the CLUB OWNER
STORMY FOSTER, the GREAT DEFENDER
JEFF JUNE, the DOUBLE AGENT
BASIL SINGAPORE, the DECOY
SNOOKS, the PARROT
WILBUR von SCHWEISS, the BUND LEADER
It’s Irene Bang back with you again. Once again, let me take you back to the dark days of World War II. They’d have been even darker if not for the efforts of a forgotten hero: Stormy Foster! Over the last two weeks, my husband Basil and I have been telling you his story.
Yesterday, Basil described Stormy’s experiences on Pajaro Island, a hidden civilization where ancient mysticism was practiced. Basil lived among the people and was a convert to their religion. He was there with Stormy and witnessed what happened to him firsthand. I myself never set foot on the island, but many times I saw the awesome powers over air, earth, fire and water that Stormy said he acquired there. I have no doubt that it existed, and I believe that everything he and Basil told me about the Kauwa people and their mystical faith is true.
Stormy’s fantastic abilities enabled him to fight one of Adolph Hitler’s most insidious plots. In the early 1940s, that mass-murderer aimed to do to Gay Americans what he was doing to European Jews, and Hawaii was to be his staging ground! Diamond Faws, a fifth columnist who masqueraded as an evangelist, was responsible for advancing this secret Nazi agenda. We’ve told you how, as a masked and costumed hero called The Great Defender, Stormy fought back against demonizing propaganda and protected Gay Hawaiians from murderous “Christian” vigilantes that roamed our streets.
In retaliation, Hitler played an ace card: Having obtained damaging information about FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover’s secret life, he blackmailed Hoover into hunting The Defender down! Federal agents nearly caught Stormy, but some last-minute subterfuge kept him one step ahead of them.
HITLER’S FINAL SOLUTION FOR
HOMOSEXUALITY
As Basil has said, I was engaged to marry Stormy Foster. We did announce our engagement to throw the FBI off his trail, but it wasn’t just a ploy. We did love each other; my feelings for him weren’t amorous, but even in marriages where both people are heterosexual, is that so unusual? Sometimes, it’s all about having children. I did have a child with Stormy, and I’ll talk about that later. Right now, I’m going to tell you how he placed a spy inside Deacon Diamond’s organization.
After the feds failed to expose The Great Defender, The Deacon resolved to go after Stormy himself; he was convinced that they'd fingered the right suspect! Stormy's declassified FBI file confirms this. Diamond Faws laid a trap with his assistant Jeff June as the bait. Several “bashers”, really disguised members of a Nazi bund, accompanied Jeff to one of several parks that were known to be Gay cruising areas. They pretended to corner and attack him. The Great Defender was known for intervening in these kinds of incidents but this time, he failed to show up. The Nazis had to stage a few bogus bashings before Stormy finally fell for the ruse.
The last time, they used switchblades and fake blood to mount a convincing assault. Jeff cried out very loudly for help and The Defender came flying to his rescue. The phony assailants scattered quickly, but before Stormy could give chase, Jeff feigned hysteria so that he wouldn’t leave. He had been instructed to pull a gun and shoot The Defender dead once he was off his guard!
That’s how it was supposed to go down; but the Deacon chose the wrong man for the job. Jeff June was a Japan sympathizer, and he supported Axis forces against the Allies; for that reason, Diamond Faws trusted him. However, the cruelty of the Nazis had begun to give Jeff second thoughts. He was also a closeted Gay man, and he’d been secretly listening to the Great Defender’s pirate radio broadcasts. The concept of Gay Pride had a profound impact on him. He agreed to be the Deacon’s hit man but he had an ulterior motive: Finding out if there was any truth to Stormy's claim that homosexual orientation was a holy status. Jeff decided that before he killed him, he’d make him answer some questions.
Well, one question led to another, and the two of them ended up talking all night long. In fact, Stormy told me they ended up in bed together! He sensed that Jeff needed a guiding hand, and he offered one (among other things). He even unmasked so that Jeff would trust him. Then he proceeded to dismantle Jeff’s rationale for supporting the Axis, and he administered a concentrated dose of Gay Pride with a bit of Pajaro Island religion thrown in. In retrospect, such openness was risky, and not just for Stormy; if Jeff had betrayed his secret identity, me, my club and my employees might've been implicated in The Great Defender's "criminal" activities!
My brother Freddy and I both trusted Stormy's judgment implicitly, but Basil was not so trusting. He was very upset when he found out, but what bothered him most was Stormy making love to Jeff. Sex is a sacred Kauwani rite and although Jeff June did eventually convert to the Kauwa faith, that didn't happen until just before he died. Basil thought the intimacy was premature; given his feelings for Stormy, there may have been some jealousy on his part, too. My feeling about it was: Whatever works! After all, the lovemaking was pertinent to their discussion, and it no doubt underscored Stormy’s arguments. Jeff got the message, and it turned his life around: He ended up giving Stormy the gun he meant to kill him with.
Jeff didn’t break away from Deacon Diamond, though. If he’d openly disavowed the Deacon and his Children’s Protection Committee at that time, his life would’ve been in danger! He knew too much about the CPC’s inner workings. But besides that, Stormy learned that Jeff was hopelessly in love with Diamond Faws! Unbelievable! Fortunately, those misplaced feelings didn’t stop him from turning against the Nazis. He became an informer for us, and the information he gathered would prove invaluable later on.
The Deacon was a sick closet case, and Stormy knew as much. He had abused Jeff, both verbally and sexually, but Jeff still cared about him and thought he could somehow persuade him out of Hitler’s service. Stormy warned him not to try it but he wouldn’t listen. He never saw his error in judgment, not even after the Deacon punished him for failing his murder mission. We later found out that Jeff was sent to the hospital after getting a real and very brutal beating!
“SEX IS A CHOICE,
BUT SKIN COLOR ISN’T!”
There was one question Jeff June asked that Stormy couldn’t answer. He called attention to the fact that neither one of them was White. “OK, we both like sex with guys," he acknowledged, "but sex is a choice and skin color isn’t.” He talked about how wrong it was for the United States to send Japanese citizens to prison camps, and he also noted how poorly America treated other people of color: The Chinese, the Mexicans, the Negroes and the native peoples. Jeff demanded to know why The Great Defender only defended “sex perverts”? Why didn’t he use his powers to stop racial discrimination?
Stormy repeated this question to my brother Freddy and me, and we didn’t have a definitive answer, either. Freddy reminded him that even with his amazing powers, he couldn’t save the whole world! But Stormy seriously considered traveling to the mainland and taking on racial segregation - that is, until the gods of Pajaro Island appeared to him in a waking dream.
He said they told him that he was neither their first emissary nor their last: Heroes had been and would continue to be sent to defend other persecuted groups. They reminded him that his powers were meant to be used on behalf of Gay people only, and warned that they’d be taken away if he ever used them for another purpose! Later, Basil made a point of reinforcing that message at the weekly private prayer meetings the two of them had.
I only saw Stormy cry once, and that was when he told me about this visitation. Stubborn and argumentative as he was, he obeyed his gods. If he continued to have doubts, he never mentioned them again; we went back to fighting anti-Gay propaganda full-time. As our new ally Jeff June began taking part in Kauwa rituals, he came to understand Stormy's holy mandate.
THE HONOLULU TATTLER
Aloha! This is Basil again. When I came back to Hawaii and later traveled to the mainland, I was shocked to see anti-Gay violence. It was the same kind of brutality the Maka Inana had visited upon our ancestors, the Kanaka Tanga. Gay people of both sexes suffered, but I think Lesbians had the worst of it. In addition to beatings, they could be subjected to so-called corrective rape! You're no doubt familiar with this bogus method of "curing" homosexuality; not only is it a hate crime, it's also one of the more savage weapons of war. By no means is it a recent phenomenon! That sickness goes back at least as far as the 1940s.
Of course, such barbaric treatment did nothing but inflict injury, and invariably, the victim would refuse to go to the authorities. Reporting rape has never been easy for women, but just imagine how it was for Gay women: They were more in danger of arrest than their rapists were! Many of them suffered in silence; Irene knew of several victims, and but none ever risked filing a police report.
On his rescue missions that sometimes took him to every Hawaiian island in a single night, The Great Defender was accompanied by Pajaro Hina, the queen of Pajaro Island. She was a shape-shifter, and in Hawaii she masqueraded as his pet parrot, “Snooks”. Nobody but Absalom and I understood that she was really his guide. (You’ll remember that I always called Stormy Foster “Absalom”, because that was the name he used when I met him.) She never failed to lead him to Gay people who were in danger of bodily harm.
Inevitably, the day came when "Snooks" led The Great Defender to the scene of a rape-in-progress. A band of thugs had trapped a butch Lesbian in a Maui back alley and were taking turns assaulting her. When he arrived on the scene and saw what was happening, he went ballistic! Later, Absalom told me that the queen had tried to fly between him and the thugs. She had screamed a distress call, which was her warning to hold back; but it was too late. Brushing her aside, he unleashed the full force of his Akua power on those criminals!
"DIE, RAPISTS!"
The man he caught in the act of raping the woman was the first one to die: Absalom called up a hurricane wind that threw him hard against the side of a building. It broke his neck! Then, using his control over flame, Absalom created rings of fire that forced the other gang rapists to their knees. He demanded to know who had been first to commit the crime. When his terrified comrades identified the man, The Great Defender caused the ground beneath him to open up. That son-of-a-bitch was swallowed into the fissure and crushed to death when it closed over him!
His death screams brought a patrolman running to the scene. Why had the woman’s cries for help escaped his attention? Absalom fumed about that for days afterward. The Great Defender raised a small windstorm, giving him and the rape victim cover they needed to escape. He told me that the woman was bleeding from many wounds and severely traumatized! She was of Indian descent, so he was able to calm her by speaking in Tamil, their common native language.
Flying her to a hospital was out of the question, so instead he took her to a Lesbian whose home he’d saved from arsonists; Irene told you about her. That poor butch lady was cared for by other Lesbians, which was not just the best option but the only one! Her mannish appearance alone limited the quality of health care she’d have gotten.
The queen disappeared during that fatal confrontation. Stormy looked for her, but she was nowhere to be found and there was no longer any telepathic connection between them. The parrot wasn’t on her perch when he returned home. Clearly, the Kauwa gods were shunning him; he had violated their tabu against killing. The Magic Bird’s absence meant that he had lost his special powers! Without her, he could no longer become The Great Defender.
WRATH OF THE KAUWA GODS
So for a few weeks, Absalom’s nightly island patrols stopped; all he could do was continue his Gay Pride radio broadcasts. However, we’d scheduled one of The Defender’s infrequent public appearances just before that rape incident happened. Attendees had already been directed to the secret location where it would be held: A hidden cavern under the cliffs at China Walls. Freddy Bang had discovered it as a teenager. It was a large space, and we expected a larger-than-usual turnout.
It had long since become too dangerous for Absalom to hold these meetings, but he was determined to have this one. He said: “It’s been too long since the children last saw The Great Defender.” He’d gotten into the habit of calling Hawaii’s Gay community “the children”. Years later, I learned that African-American Gay people use that terminology. I’ve since wondered if he was somehow the source of that usage? When Absalom was drafted, he fought in an all-Black combat unit . . . but we’ll get to that part of the story later.
Even though he’d lost his powers, he wanted to assure Lesbian and Gay Hawaiians that he was still there for them; it was very important to him that they not lose faith. For his cavern appearance, he wore a spare costume along with the sacred shroud he'd worn during his Kauwa faith ritual. I think the shroud fortified his nerves; despite the outward bravado he always displayed, Absalom was definitely concerned for his safety! He also used bluing - a hair dye that was once popular with older women - to approximate The Great Defender’s glowing mane.
In retrospect, holding a meeting in that underground cavern was the most reckless thing we ever did! The gathering we’d held prior to that one was standing-room-only, so we knew that Absalom’s radio broadcasts were reaching a lot more people. Finding a venue that could accommodate them was logical. Trying to gather outdoors was too risky, so Freddy Bang suggested an early-morning assembly in his boyhood refuge; but there was just no minimizing the danger of addressing such a large group.
Wearing sunglasses, shorts and a swimming cap, I disguised myself as a lifeguard and policed the cavern entrance. During my time of residence on Pajaro Island, I had acquired Kauwani “Gaydar”, the ability to identify Lesbians and Gay men by sight. I am also a good judge of character, so that made me the best choice to screen people coming in. Anyone who made me uncomfortable was told that the meeting had been cancelled at the last minute. We should have cancelled it, because long before our arrival, Nazis had entered the cavern and concealed themselves! It was a group led by Wilbur von Schweiss, Hitler’s point man in Honolulu.
THE GREAT DEFENDER MUST DIE!
By then, Jeff June had become a “mole” inside Deacon Diamond’s organization, and he kept us informed of any dangerous developments. Too late, he learned that an infiltrator had attended the previous secret meeting, learned of the cavern event and informed von Schweiss. That infiltrator had been none other than Deacon Diamond himself, wearing one of his disguises! You'll recall that he sometimes masqueraded as an Indian holy man. Jeff headed to China Walls to warn Absalom in person about the ambush, but by the time he arrived, the Axis thugs had already abducted him.
They waited until The Great Defender had completed his speech. As the last attendees were filing out of the cavern, they attacked him! I saw the Nazis rush Absalom and tried to intervene but they knocked me out; Jeff June found me unconscious and bleeding on the cavern floor.
You've just read Chapter Nine! Click below to read
Eighth chapter in the Stormy Foster saga
Then be sure to read
Tenth chapter in the Stormy Foster saga
Concept by HAMPTON JACOBS and PATTY BALL
Art by STUFFED ANIMAL
Costumes by HENRIETTA la del BARRIO
Project Assistance by RODERICK MACK and DAVE PEARSON
Text by HAMPTON JACOBS