The real Naples

Now that the hysteria seems finally to have died down, it's my turn.

Scores of horrified people assaulted the Naples Daily News with hysteria-filled letters after the publication of a photo and short story about female impersonators at a club in Naples.

I did not know there was such a club, and probably wouldn't have attended a show if there was. And I probably won't.

Not my kind of entertainment.

But to you hysterical folks: WAKE UP!

This is a part of the world in which you live. If you think you can drive through your big iron gated community bars and return to the blissful 1950s in which everything was wholesome, healthy, happy, straight and remarkably white, you are simply wrong.

This isn't the 1950s, folks (and for that matter, female impersonators existed then, too. So did blacks, poor people and even -gasp- homosexuals!). For some reason, you and the media found it easier and more convenient to ignore anything that wasn't Pat Boone back then. It was still there. It just was ignored.

It is a newspaper's job to reflect the community in which it exists. Reflect, not reinterpret. Not influence. Not ignore.


Spanky's is out there. In YOUR community. Female impersonators are out there. In YOUR community. As are gays, minorities, poor people, and (shock!!) Democrats and liberals.

Deal with it.

There is no place you can go that you can get away from that. Not even in your big ol' protected millionaires-only gated community.

Who knows what goes on behind the closed doors right across from your $4M home? How do YOU know dear Bob down the street doesn't put on a push-up and pumps once the doors are closed and blinds drawn? Do you REALLY know that Bill and Ed are just playing canasta every Friday evening when they visit? What do Madge and Betty and Mildred REALLY do out by their pool every afternoon?

The world is everywhere, folks. You can't avoid reality. You can't close your eyes real real tight and pretend everything's exactly what Saturday Evening Post depicted in 1955.

There's no chance you can close your eyes real tight, click your heels together three times and chant "there's no place like 1956; there's no place like 1956."

Real is real.

And as to the photograph itself, you can see more skin on any beach around here. Heck, you can see more skin walking down Fifth. Except THAT skin is sagging. A lot. The photograph wasn't pornographic. You KNOW that. It just depicticed a Naples you chose to believe doesn't exist.

Because if it doesn't exist, life for you is your own version of happier. But your own version of happier is a fallacy. A lie.

Sorry. Any 2-year-old knows that the world doesn't disappear whenever you close your eyes. Don't see a lot of 70-year-olds playing peek-a-boo, do you? ("If we just close our eyes, Marge, it'll all go away...")

Deal with it. Get over it. Live with it. It's 2008.

And so it goes.