Racial Ugliness in Cheyenne

After the integration of Central High School in 1957 in Little Rock, Arkansas the country could hardly contain itself. It was a year later, but Central High played a part in some drama which involved me. Wrongly accused for hurling a racial slur at someone, I was put in a position which caused me to fear for my very life, or, at the very minimum a severe beating. I would admit it here if I had been the one who screamed out the nigger word, but it was someone else.

I had been, for the longest time, been getting "looks" from some of the black airmen I came into contact with. The fact that I was from Arkansas played right into their hands in thinking I was a racist. Well, I was a racist! I knew no other way to be. Everything we are comes down ultimately on who our parents were and what part of the world we were raised. If our culture, we find out later, does not fit in with civilized society's idea's of what is right most people with make amends and adjustments to better live with themselves. Some, of course, never do. Even so, I was wrongly accused and for a tense few moments, downstairs in the day room I feared for my life. I managed to extricate myself from a dire predicament, and it took a few days to defuse the situation. That was about the time I began running with a clique . . . Protection was important in those uneasy days.

I was making friends in Cheyenne not only for the protection it afforded us, but because I was finding out that I, Jerry Pat Bolton, could measure up to most anyone in terms of intellect and physical strength AND sexual prowess. This last trait was important to me because it meant I was pulling away from the feelings of being inferior to other people. I no longer was in a place where I thought everyone knew I was a literal bastard, they were accepting me on my own merits how I conducted myself. To learn that women were attracted to me was a boost in confidence big time and I, of course, reveled in it. The two girls in Taylor who had given themselves to me never made me feel the power in my true self. On the contrary, it was as though they were allowing me to take them in order to consider them attractive (they were) to themselves. Even in Juarez where I had many women, they were not women who felt anything for me, at least I never felt they did. It was merely sex they wanted, as did I. But in Cheyenne I was finding out a few things about women, they weren't as infallible as I used to think of them, and they, for the most part, wanted a man to be strong for them. It was a revelation to me. I had been raised in a household where the reverse was prevalent.

I was nineteen by now and my education was commencing quite nicely. I hardly even thought about Juarez anymore. Too much was happening. Even so, my rebelling nature would find a way to get me in trouble time and time again . . . And then I met Dorothy Connine.

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742