I grew up in Waukesha in the 1960’s. We lived on Lincoln Ave. right across the street from Hadfield Elementary where I went to public school until we moved to Cincinnati when I was 12 years old and I made the big leap to nuns and priests and a funsy Catholic education through high school.
I’m the last of 7 kids…. Yep.
We lived in the corner house and had a big tire filled with sand in the backyard that we played in. Mostly our neighbor Wendy and me.. we were inseparable. We’d ride around on my bike with the banana seat… we could both fit.
Wendy and I would play “Lost in Space” in our attic. I won’t go into the details….
We’d walk to Rhode’s drugstore for penny candy and, because Wendy was older I had nothing to lose when she begged me to go in there and buy her tampons.
I mean, sure. I was 8. She gave me the cash so it was all good. I believe I got some candy cigarettes with the change.
Anyway, we would take walks downtown and go to the movies. My brother Ed worked at the Pix Cinema and I would sneak in when he let me. It was a badge of honor for me to sit in the back row and see movies rated “M”… for Mature.
Bliss.
I loved seeing boobs and butts whenever I could and, of course, developed my crush on Sean Connery as James Bond.. who was replaced by George Lazenby, who I appreciated but not in the connubial sense.
I saw “Funny Girl” probably 20 times.. there was an intermission where I would try to remain incognito due to my lack of paying. I got kicked out a lot, even as I tried to blend in with the seats.
I loved that movie.. and Barbra Streisand… in perhaps a deeper way than boobs and butts.
My brother Tommy adored musicals.. so did my sister Sally. We’d listen to Broadway records and we wore out “The Singing Nun” on our fancy, sassy console record player…. Sister Jeannine was a superstar in our house.
So began my love of musicals and a crazy career.
One of the fascinating sights on my very special trips to the museum in downtown Waukesha was this shark in a jar. I was so taken with it. A real shark! I never thought I’d get to an ocean so that was just dreamy.
I’d sneak away sometimes by myself and take what seemed like an epic trek to the museum just to see that shark.
The Holy Grail. In a jar.
This boy, Jackson, is sorta the 2021 version of me I would hope. But probably way hipper at 8.
He was killed a couple of days ago, along with 5 other people …Mowed down by a car during the Waukesha Christmas Parade.
I can’t imagine what his family is going through. I can’t.
But, I have a pretty solid guess as to what Waukesha is going through.
Outrage I think.
Waukesha weirdly seems to be the epicenter of who wins the presidency… at least the last 2. This tragedy will be a part of the next presidential race…in a very real sense. It’s not going to be forgotten.
Everything in this crazy, fucked up world we currently live in is viewed through politics. And race. And gender. We are obsessed with identity, and we are dug in.
Even an 8 year old boy being killed in a parade in a little town is seen through that lens. I doubt Jackson was thinking about any of that… I guess I do though. We all do.
So, I decided to sit myself down and listen to Waukesha.
I do believe the majority of people in Waukesha are decent folks who believe in equality and are Conservative, mostly religious and deal with cold much better than most.
The story of the carnage at the Christmas Parade, in the national media, is a career criminal fled a”domestic incident” in his SUV, broke through a barricade and killed 6 people while driving through the parade. No reference to race, skin color. Most people think, due to that narrative, that he was fleeing law enforcement.
The story Waukesha wants you to hear is a black man intentionally mowed down 6 white people in a racially motivated massacre during the Christmas parade.
Can we look at it that way?
I suppose context is required here. There have been, and still are, racial injustices that have gone on since the founding of this country. There hasn’t been a fair system in place for many, and that’s caused a lot of pain.
Here are some recent headlines from a just verdict. They are standard from the way his tragedy was reported…
Ahmaud Arbery trial: 1 Black juror, 11 whites decided verdict in death of 25-year-old man
Ahmaud Arbery verdict: three white men found guilty of murdering Black man as he jogged
I took a social media dive into the Waukesha Christmas Parade massacre, and read some far out conspiracy comments per ushz, but I also saw some videos and posts from this guy who decided to drive through a crowd and kill people.
He talked about race wars, not knowing that girl was only 16 when he pimped her out, and faggots(of course).. but the race wars stuff stuck with me.
We now live in an age when a Twitter deep dive will end a career, stir up a whole bunch of shit, or end in suicide. But it definitely gets reported on, or is the basis for a mainstream media blitz.
I’m wondering why the race thing wasn’t tagged in a headline, or revealed as a possible motive. He was charged with intentional homicide, and he was not fleeing the police..it was only after he sped through a barricade that a policeman responded.
There’s more to this story.
I think that’s one reason why Waukesha is pissed. I don’t think it’s a tit for tat. I don’t think it’s bathed in hate. I just think they want this story told. There was no mention on the nightly cable broadcasts I watched that mentioned Jackson dying by the way.
We don’t know the whole story yet I suppose.. but when or if we do it won’t matter as much. On to the next!
I guess the whole conversation on white supremacy and the If/Thens that we all engage in, particularly on social media, is incomplete and often weaponized. But, in one variation or another, we’ve all heard these….
“If a black man commits a crime, then he gets shot by the police… while white criminals just get arrested.”
“If a jury of 11 white people and 1 black person is seated, they will set white defendants free.”
None of those If/Thens and hyperbole that we so rely on, especially us liberal peeps, turned out to be true. Of course, there are exceptions. Horrible exceptions. I’m not sure how often they are true, but from my experience on 4 juries so far..with pretty much every possible racial mixture of jurors and defendants, the results were also just.
That kinda mundane stuff that’s just a part of everyday life..happening thousands of times a day in courtrooms across the country is usurped by stories that promote outrage. And the real progress that I think we’ve all made gets stuck in the mud.
Because theater has been my world for as long as I can remember, my frame of reference for the conversation surrounding whiteness, white people, white men..especially since George Floyd’s murder has been felt by me in regards to the Broadway mostly.
Maybe the Waukesha too.
I have always thought that the fairly successful coup on January 6 being labeled throughout the world as a result of white supremacists is not the whole story. It’s certainly a part of it, but I think we all need to take a deeper dive into religious fanaticism and dime store grievance.
A story of late that I find interesting is a black guy playing Judas.. for fuck’s sake… in the national tour of “Jesus Christ Superstar” was arrested this week on federal charges of interfering with the election and other serious crimes as a result of breaching the Capitol, presumably not while singing a high “A”.
He’s an Oath Keeper.. and was marching in formation military style with his traitor friends shitting on our democracy while he was wearing his Michael Jackson “Bad” jacket. You cannot make this shit up!
Then, there’s the leader of the Proud Boys who’s gonna stay in jail a bit longer….
They’re just not white. Are they white supremacists? I don’t know.. but there seems to be a whole bunch of white supremacists who aren’t white. And aren’t white men either.
I think we should give that some thought as we head into the continuing battle for our democracy, as the culture wars are just gonna get worse.
People do not want to be assigned an identity. By anyone.. no matter the intention behind it. That includes, like, everyone.
https://dusold.me/2020/07/09/i-decided-to-answereven-though-were-busy-dying/
I am a proud gay man who happens to be white. I will not parse myself. I will not split myself in two. I will not diminish my identity to fit into anyone’s narrative but my own. And I expect no one else to.
I have to give myself credit cuz that’s my quote
The hunt for the shark in a jar has taken me to some wonderful places in my life. Some places I never even dreamed I would go…. like the ocean and being on Broadway and the White House(I was invited and didn’t sneak in this time).
When I saw my little Waukesha on the news, and I saw the downtown I just .. I just never imagined something that horrible would happen there.
But, maybe that shark in a jar is still there.
I’m still looking for it.
May you find yours…….
Robert DuSold 
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