A creepy story for a cold night

There is, or was a Gay bar in the Meatmarket called The Ramrod. It was there when John Lennon died, so it predates Restaurant Florent, or any parts of The Meat Market’s gentrification. It’s skeevy; I was taken on a tour of gay bars one very weird night, and it wasn’t as skeevy as The Anvil which had toilet areas in public. Well okay, enough. The Meat Market of today is an entirely different world than it was in 1980.

On November 19, 1980, Zachary didn’t come home until very late. I must have been watching the news when I heard that two men had been killed and twelve injured at The Ramrod. I was convinced that Zachary was the murderer. The real murderer I believe was captured immediately. Zachary was homophobic. That surprised me as he was a singer/songwriter very much in the Steve Earl vein. I was the one with Black friends as he was also prejudiced. Though he adored all my girlfriends and tolerated the boys who tolerated him.

Patrick, my best friend, gay category at the time, was also a bit jealous of Zachary, and didn’t like me having lived with a man for a year and a half, exactly. Several months later my friend Cassandra was at a church function with Nadine, my former assistant and some of her cousins. Cassandra teased Nadine about having the same last name as the Ramrod murderer. Nadine ran out of the bathroom hysterically crying. (Her name isn’t Nadine, and I’m not giving the last name here.) The murderer was her brother; their father, a rather well known pastor had a stroke and was incapacitate; Nadine’s 11 year old son was being constantly teased. Nadine and I had been good friends. We saw each a couple of times between the murders and the incident in the church ladies room. I knew her last name; she had been my assistant supervisor for almost a year. Just didn’t connect it.

Which is why she could still be friends with me. After I knew she felt too much shame. That was plain stupid as I thought my own boyfriend was the murderer. Knowing me I probably said something to her; knowing Nadine she laughed.

Nadine and her son changed their names and moved. I have always been known for having beautiful girlfriends and Nadine was one of the most beautiful. She had huge laughing doe eyes that even remained happy looking after the murders.

I have been told by both psychics and psychiatrists that I have a psychic side. A psychiatrist, a buttoned down analyst who I was in semi analysis with years later told me that I had the most highly developed intuitive skills he had ever seen and it could be called psychic. This man was the epitome of stuffy intellectual…I just wanted him to say “no, of course you can’t be psychic….” And maybe go into the reasons why. But he went into the reasons I was.

It’s scary and I have spent the ensuing years trying to be just intuitive enough.

Have a post on Bring it on! Wednesday that I like a lot. Should have cross posted it, but this is fun. My next post might be on my love for good true crime books.