Queen of the Roller Derby

I was getting ready to go home when Holtzman called me into his office. I shut the door and sat down. He poured two shots of Crown Royal and pushed one across the desk to me.

We drank, and he said, "Rough day, huh, Kitty?"

I shrugged. "Didn't surprise me none."

"Yes, I expected it," he said, "But I also expected you could take it."

When I didn't say anything, he poured himself another shot. He gestured toward me with the bottle, but I shook my head.

"Kitty, I have been involved with the derby for more than twenty years. My father owned a roller rink, and sponsored real derbies. Actual races. When it became a team sport, I began coaching. Dad started the Gotham Gals. When he died, I took it over, but I'm a sports guy, no head for business, so I took on partners and let them deal with that."

That was all very interesting, but I had no idea what it had to do with me.

"I like the way you approach the game," he told me. "I watch you skate and it reminds me of how it used to be, when it was about the race, not pounding on each other, girls beating up other girls. And it's going to get worse, now that the money is coming from television more than from the fans buying tickets. So when I saw you skate, I thought, there is the girl who can get people excited about the derby with speed and style. That's what we are going to do, Kitty. We are going to keep this sport from turning into cheap, phony theatrics like TV wrestling."

I didn't know about any of that. But I knew it would piss off a lot of people.

"Betsy isn't going to like this," I said.

"Betsy Brautigan is the reason we have won four straight championships. She's the best player in the game. But nobody is the best forever. And she doesn't run this team."

"I'm not going to just let them beat on me," I told him.

"I understand."

"Okay."

The next day, as we were doing warm up laps, I sped up, circling the track at top speed. Tilly was ambling along in front of me. She looked like she was standing still.

As I drew close, I squatted down low and extended my arm straight out from my side. I clotheslined her across the back of her knees. Her feet shot in the air, and she went down hard on her back. She slid off the track into the center of the oval, knocking over a couple of chairs.

I rose and spun, and watched her slide. "You want to fuck with me some more, Tilly?" I shouted as I skated away.

Everyone stopped still, watching me take another lap. I stared straight at Betsy. "Who wants to play?" I called, "Come out and fucking play!"

Holtzman blew his whistle. I skated toward him. "Take a seat on the bench, Kitty," he said. I could see a trace of grin on his face.

I sat out the morning practice. In the afternoon, I rejoined my teammates. I got some icy looks, but no more hard knocks. The atmosphere remained tense, though, while we prepared for the start of the season. I kept reminding myself of what Vicky had said; whatever they thought about me, they would like winning.

CHAPTER SEVEN

We opened with a game in Boston.The mood on the bus was an odd mix of excitement and apprehension. Everyone was eager to begin the season, but anxious about the new strategy. It was probably an even split between those who thought it was a good idea, and those who resented it.

Betsy played the first jam like she was skating for dear life. I had not seen that sort of intensity in our exhibition matches. The only time I had seen it was right before she knocked me to my knees in the bout between the Gals and the Comets.

She got us out to a lead, and the pressure was on me to match her performance. A couple of the blockers on my shift were her friends, and I wasn't sure I could trust them, but I also had Vicky and Doris there to watch my back.

I wasn't able to increase our lead, but I held it. That pattern held though the first half of the bout. I had noticed, while we were on the road, that Betsy's performance would lag in the later jams. I don't know if she realized it, but the breaks between her shifts were giving her a chance to rest and come out stronger when she returned to the track.

Boston never caught up. Betsy still lost some momentum as the game went on, and by the end of the night, I had scored slightly more points that she had. On the ride home, the team's mood seemed a little less tense.

Next up was the home opener against the arch rival New Jersey Devils Dolls. The Gotham Girls had beat the Devil Dolls in the last two league championship games. There was a lot of bad blood between the teams.

The bout turned into exactly the kind of rumble that coach Holtzman had been talking about. By halftime I had a black eye and a bloody lip. Betsy got it even worse. In the fifteenth jam, one of the Devil Doll blockers hit her hard enough to send her over the rail. She landed in the seats, and one of her skates came down right on one poor chump's head.

There was a long time out. They took the guy with the busted head out on a stretcher, and checked over Betsy and a couple of other fans. Meanwhile, a fight broke out in the stands and the cops had to come in to break it up. I understood Holtzman's point, but I could see why the television audience would eat this stuff up.

Eventually they decided to send Betsy to the hospital for x-rays. That meant that it was up to me to hang on to our slim lead.

As soon as the whistle blew to restart play, the New Jersey blockers surrounded me and bounced me back-and-forth like a pinball. But I managed to duck under their elbows and escape the trap. I shot off and they came after me, only to collide into a wall of our blockers. I thought another fight was going to break out. That was fine with me, I had put points on the board. In the end, we beat them by three points, and they skated off muttering about revenge.

Betsy had a bad sprain in her hip and would have to miss a couple of games. This would be my opportunity to really prove myself.

Our next match was against Brooklyn. I was at my locker, getting dressed for the game. Doris came over, leaned close to me and said, "Hey Kitty, you know that place we went to in Frisco?"

"Yeah, of course. I am not going to forget that."

"Well, somebody told us about a club like that down in Greenwich Village."

"No kidding?"

"We're gonna go after the bout. You in?"

"Sure."

I was still sore all over from the New Jersey game, but I still felt like I was barely holding loneliness at bay, so I didn't want to pass up the opportunity to meet other women like me.

That Brooklyn team stunk, but we were so banged up that they almost beat us. Coach Doyle stuck with the rotating jammers, and Tilly took Betsy's place. Even with my bumps and bruises, it was obvious I was much better than her. And it was just as obvious that she wasn't happy about it. As we got into Vicky's car to go to Greenwich Village, she stood on the sidewalk, arms crossed in front of her chest, glaring at us.

We had some trouble finding the Ruby Room Lounge. There was a beatnik folk music club where Doris had been told it would be. She asked the doorman if he knew where it was.

"Go around the side," he said, "Down the alley. Pink door."

It seemed strange, but we followed his directions, and there it was, a pink door under an unshaded light bulb. We went through, into a long, narrow corridor. Blue light and piano music was coming through a doorway at the far end. I felt like I was back in Prohibition days, going to a speakeasy.

The Ruby Room was probably only half as big as Coral's Club. There was no fancy decor. It looked like the kind of joint Coach Joe would hang out in, but it sure didn't have the same clientele.

"Really butch crowd," Ruth muttered. I don't think I had heard that term before, but the meaning was obvious. About half the women there looked like they took their style tips from Marlon Brando. They weren't drinking Mai Tai's or Daiquiris. This was a beer and a shot kind of place.

We found an empty table and Vicky said, "Kitty, you should go to the bar and get us a pitcher of beer."

"Why should I have to go?"

"You look the most like you fit in."

I wasn't sure if that was a compliment or not, but I went to the bar. I ordered a pitcher and four glasses. Before the bartender had it poured, someone had already pinched my ass. I didn't see who did it, but there were a lot of eyes looking me over.

I took the pitcher back to the table. The joint had a piano player, but no jukebox, no dance floor. That made it a little awkward if you were there looking to meet someone.That was okay with Doris and Ruth. They were happy to find a place where they could relax and have a drink together.

Vicky and I didn't have anyone, and the notion that we might get together seemed to have passed for both of us. Frankly, after how drunk she got in San Francisco, I didn't trust her to not accidentally expose all of us.

I was content to relax and have a beer or two, but she was disgruntled.

"I heard about a lesbian bar with dancing around here someplace," she said, "But I don't know where it is."

"Maybe you could ask some of the people here if they know," Doris suggested.

Vicky shook her head. "If they knew where it was, they'd be there, instead of here."

We ordered a second pitcher, but Vicky kept bellyaching, and it was no fun to listen to her. So we decided to call it a night. But I felt comfortable at the Ruby Room, and figured I would come back, with or without them.

Next up on the schedule were a pair of away bouts in Philadelphia and Baltimore. Betsy was still recuperating, and didn't even make the trip. That was fine with me.

Halfway through the Philly bout, with the score tight, Coach Holtzman sat Tilly down and kept me in for all the jams. It didn't stay tight for very long.

Baltimore was a bloodbath. I was scoring points at will. I felt like I was back at the Roll-A-Rama, dodging in and out between the handholding couples and the moms shepherding their kids.

Vicky had been right. The more we won, the more my teammates liked me. All of them, that is, except Betsy and Tilly.

Betsy probably should have taken more time off, but she insisted on getting back on the track. It cost us our next bout, against Boston. She was only skating at about half speed, and they took advantage of her. It was our first loss of the season.

In the locker room after the game, there was a lot of muttering. Betsy overheard Heidi saying "We'd have won if Coach had given Kitty more track time," and it took four girls to keep Betsy off of her.

At least that seemed to light a fire under her, because by the time we played the next bout, Betsy seemed her old self. We really went on a tear then, winning seven out of our next eight bouts. The only one we lost was a rematch against the Devil Dolls, at their arena in Newark. It was another wild brawl, and went to three overtime jams until they finally edged past us.

I asked the other girls if they wanted to go to the Ruby Room again. Doris and Ruth weren't interested. When I asked Vicky, she hesitated, then said, "Yeah, Kitty, I'm trying to stay away from that sort of place."

That surprised me, but there was an awful lot I still didn't understand about this lesbian stuff, so I shrugged it off. But over the next few weeks, I noticed that she seemed a little different. It wasn't just me, either. I mentioned it to Doris, and she nodded.

"Yeah, something's going on with her. She's been going out drinking with Betsy lately. She's changed."

If no one else wanted to go to the Ruby Room, that was fine with me. I liked the place, and began going there regularly on nights we didn't have a bout. I didn't stay long, and never drank more than a couple of beers. A few of the tough looking leather girls would flirt with me, and joke about who was going to take me home, but it was only playing around. I felt flattered, but I always went home alone. Mostly, I felt like I fit in. For once in my life I wasn't the oddball.

We notched up two more road wins in Buffalo and Scranton. Normally, we would have taken the day after we got back off, but Coach Holtzman thought our blockers were getting sloppy, so he called a practice session for that afternoon.

As I changed my clothes afterwards, Vicky approached me. "Hey Kitty," she said in a low voice, "Are you still going to the Ruby Room?"

"Yeah, I go there sometimes."

"It's been a while since I've been out. I was thinking if you were going tonight, I could meet you there."

Since we hadn't talked much for a while, and I still thought of her as a friend, I told her I would meet her there at eight.

As I rode the subway to Greenwich Village though, I had some second thoughts. I worried that she would drink too much, remembering her asking me if I would eat her pussy. A few drinks together was one thing. Sleeping with her was another. I hoped that wasn't what she had in mind.

Only a few of the Ruby Room regulars were there when I came in. A couple of them nodded greetings. I took a stool at the bar and ordered a bottle of Ballantine's. It was 8:05, bar time.

By 8:30, there was still no sign of Vicky. A few more women had come in, including four of the leather girls. One of them, Barb, dropped her arm over my shoulders.

"Goddamn it, Kitty," she said, "You gonna sit there forever, feeling sorry for yourself?"

"I don't feel sorry for myself."

"You're peeling the label off your beer bottle. That's a dead giveaway."

Maybe it was. My loneliness eased when I was at the Ruby Room, but it never really went away.

"So what's got you so down?" she asked.

"Right now, it's getting stood up by my friend who was supposed to meet me here."

"Oh, shit. Well, her loss." She nudged my shoulder with her elbow. "But if she doesn't show, come on over and join us."

"Thanks, Barb."

She signaled to the bartender. "One for Kitty on me," she said. She patted my shoulder, took her beer and returned to her friends.

A trickle of customers continued to come in. I was finishing my second beer and thinking about going home, when the door flew open hard enough to bang the wall. I turned on my stool, just as a half dozen cops surged into the room, blowing their whistles.

One cop, an older guy with a huge beer belly, was obviously in charge. He rapped his billy club on the bar and shouted, "This established is closed by order of the New York Police Department. You are all engaging in an illegal assembly, and are under arrest."

A cop grabbed one of the leather girls by the arm. She swung the other arm and punched him right in the kisser. He fell back, but another cop moved toward her, and took Barb's motorcycle boot square in the balls.

Most of the patrons streamed toward the door, while the cops and leather girls engaged in a full scale brawl. It had occurred to me before that the Gotham Gals ought to recruit them as blockers, and I figured they could be that for me now.

I ducked around the melee and ran for the exit. I made it down the corridor, but there were a lot more cops outside. As soon as I cleared the door, one of them jabbed me hard in the chest with his billy club, and knocked the wind out of me. The next thing I knew, someone had scooped me up and tossed me in the back of a paddy wagon.

Through the open back doors, I could see a crowd at the end of the alley. It was the people from the beatnik bar. They were yelling at the cops. "Leave them alone!" "Don't you have real criminals to arrest!"

But the cops didn't care. They tossed a couple more women in the wagon and slammed the doors shut. One of the last ones in was Barb. The right side of her face was swollen, and her lip was bleeding.

I moved down the bench to sit beside her. "Are you okay?" I asked.

She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, then looked at it, and wiped the blood on the leg of her blue jeans.

"Yeah, I'm okay," she said, "Ain't my first fight with the coppers. How you doing?"

"I got whacked in the chest with a billy club. No big deal. I get hit worse all the time."

"What do you mean? Who hits you?"

"Oh, I'm in the roller derby. It's just part of the game."

She leaned back and looked at me with her one good eye. "Hey," she said, lightly punching my arm. "I seen you on TV. You're the Comet!"

"Yeah, that's me."

"Holy shit. You know, the first time I saw you at the Ruby, I thought I knew you. That's why I came right up and started talking to you. Well, and you're damn cute, too, that didn't hurt."

The paddy wagon pulled out to the street and a second one took its place. The beatniks were still on the sidewalk, and they waved and shook their fists as we drove by.

"Is this going to mess you up with your team?" Barb asked.

"I don't know." I truly didn't. Roller derby had kind of a low class reputation to begin with. Maybe they wouldn't care. Or maybe they would decide that their image was bad enough, they didn't need some dyke making it worse.

"Well, I fucking hope not," Barb said, "Me and the girls are gonna want to come watch you."

They drove us to the precinct house and marched us inside. I was booked for disorderly conduct and loitering in an illegal establishment. I kept waiting for them to notice that I wasn't old enough to legally be in the bar. I even had a faint hope that because I was under twenty one, they might cut me loose, like a fish that was too small to keep. But either they didn't notice or didn't care.

They fingerprinted me and took a mugshot, then they told me I could make one phone call.

I wasn't sure what to do. I didn't know anyone's phone number in New York. In fact, there were only two numbers I knew by heart. I sure as hell was not going to call my parents. I took a deep breath, and dialed the long distance operator.

Myra picked up the phone on the third ring. I heard the operator ask her if she would accept a collect call from Kitty Boyd.

"Of course," she said, then after the operator clicked off, "Kitty is everything all right? I haven't heard from you in weeks."

"Yeah, I'm sorry, but..." I didn't know what to say.

"Talk or hang up," the desk cop barked.

"Who was that?" Myra asked.

"Myra, I need your help. I got arrested."

"Oh my god, what for?"

"I was at this place...a bar...you know, for people like us."

"Oh."

"And they raided it."

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah. But I don't know what to do. They said we would have to stay in jail tonight, and see the judge in the morning."

"Okay, I'll see what I can do."

"I'm kind of scared, Myra."

"I know you are. But it will be okay."

"Hang it up," the cop said.

"I gotta go."

"I love you."

The cop took the phone from me and hung it up. "Take this one back," he told a mean looking policewoman. She dug her fingers into my arm and led me to the holding cell. All I was thinking was that Myra sill loved me.

It was crowded in there, and got worse after the second paddy wagon came in. In addition to the two dozen or so arrested at the Ruby Room, there were a few women in there for prostitution or drunk and disorderly. Just another night in the big city, I guess.

Some of the women from the bar were distraught, worried about their jobs, or their family finding out where they had been. They sat on the benches, crying or huddled together for comfort.

The leather girls and some of the other dykes sat in a circle in the middle of the cell. They were in a surprisingly good mood, making wisecracks and comparing their battle scars. I sat down with them. Barb told them that I was "a big roller derby star."

They peppered me with questions. Was the action real or was it all staged? Did it pay good? Were a lot of the girls les?

I tried to answer as best I could. I was thankful for the distraction. But then Barb asked, "Your friend you were going to meet...is she on the team, too?"