We're subscribing to the Advocate, a new experience for us. Once in a while almost any better magazine can scoop all the rest with a real article about a real person. While it may be premature for us to judge the magazine after only a few issues, the October 5 Advocate contained a once-in-a-decade “collectible”, a major feature “must-read” interview with tennis great Navratolova. We are not really up on tennis any more. In truth, we are not really “with it”, period, when it comes to following trends, fashions, sports and even “who's who” in our own gay/lesbian community. If they're good, really good, word reaches us sooner or later.

Out of Czechoslovakia storms Martina to beat the pants off the sissy girls on the American court circuit. Martina looks, in tennis garb, every inch the warrior: with bandanna and gold-rimmed spectacles, she could be a jubilant John Denver in drag. Off court, she fills her levis and denim jacket like a guy you want to watch out for, and walks with the bearing and carriage of someone who works or exercises violently. In fact, with the physical poise of an early David Carradine or Bruce K. Lee, this lady, through aggressive skill and intense physical training, has redefined the women's open -- forever.

It would be a big mistake to read a “butch” angle into the subject of this story.

The photos also show a strikingly attractive person of immense femininity, one whose facial features are consistent with reality, appropriate to that instant in time when the photo is snapped.

No beaming, smiling, politico-posing-at-the-natural-disaster, here. The photo at the march on Washington shows an alert, concerned and serious person, and a woman of great outer beauty.

What the words on the printed page show are: remarkable incisiveness, clarity of speech and thought; a flexible, imaginative mind of great prowess; an “objective warmness” and sense of compassion for specifiable others; a terrific command of the relationships of persons and events, and a strong and clearly-defined sense of justice rooted in down-to-earth, common-sense understanding of both the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- and what it means to live it. I see in this a woman of great inner beauty.

All of this adds up to a great sense of life, a tremendous achiever, and, in my opinion, a good role model for any woman or man who values personal growth and is actually in love with it as with life itself. This may be a lot to read into seven pages of text and photos, but I'll stand by it until and unless proven wrong. And I don't think I'm wrong about Martina, because no one can parrot, say or live the words and deeds found on those seven pages unless they understand and mean them.

Though as Editor I've been known to quote excessively from obscurer works, you can still buy this issue of the Advocate. You would have to be the judge in any event, but here are two quotes:

On Clinton: “He just didn't stick to his guns. He knows it's the right thing to do. He can't compromise with human rights. You can compromise with the budget-cuts here, taxes there - that's all compromisable. But human rights are not. What's astonishing to me is when people think they have a right to choose to give other human beings a right - or take it away! That's what blows my mind!”

On her Czech homeland: “ I left Czechoslovakia [ in 1975] about three months after I realized I was gay.” ... “I don't think they care. They just like me for me. They like the way I stuck it to the system and said, “Up yours, I'm out of here, and I'm going to do my thing.”

A Talking Crow Production

© Alex Forbes , La Parola October 1993