The Last Deaf Club in America
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About this ebook
Ghosts are everywhere.
The Deaf community today doesn’t seem to be what it used to be, so a small group of people must decide whether to sell the last Deaf club in America. As its board of trustees reflects on what it means to be Deaf, a few ghosts return to share stories of what it was like when Deaf clubs truly mattered: Mabel Hubbard Bell, the wife of the Deaf community’s nemesis Alexander Graham Bell; Nellie Zabel Willhite, the first Deaf woman to earn a pilot’s license; Olof Hanson, the first Deaf architect in America; and George Veditz, a charismatic activist who defended the Deaf community’s right to sign. Raymond Luczak offers a compelling look into the Deaf community then and now.
Raymond Luczak
Raymond Luczak is the author and editor of twenty books. Titles include The Kinda Fella I Am: Stories and QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology. His Deaf gay novel Men with Their Hands won first place in the Project: QueerLit Contest 2006. His work has been nominated nine times for the Pushcart Prize. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He can be found online at raymondluczak.com.
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The Last Deaf Club in America - Raymond Luczak
THE LAST DEAF CLUB IN AMERICA
RAYMOND LUCZAK
Handtype Press
Minneapolis, MN
***
ALSO BY THE AUTHOR
fiction
Flannelwood
The Kinda Fella I Am
Men with Their Hands
poetry
A Babble of Objects
The Kiss of Walt Whitman Still on My Lips
How to Kill Poetry
Road Work Ahead
Mute
This Way to the Acorns
St. Michael’s Fall
nonfiction
From Heart into Art: Interviews with Deaf and Hard of Hearing Artists and Their Allies
Notes of a Deaf Gay Writer: 20 Years Later
Assembly Required: Notes from a Deaf Gay Life
Silence Is a Four-Letter Word: On Art & Deafness
drama
Whispers of a Savage Sort and Other Plays about the Deaf American Experience
Snooty: A Comedy
as editor
QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology
Among the Leaves: Queer Male Poets on the Midwestern Experience
Eyes of Desire 2: A Deaf GLBT Reader
When I Am Dead: The Writings of George M. Teegarden
Eyes of Desire: A Deaf Gay & Lesbian Reader
***
in gratitude
The author thanks Bex Freund, Lilah Katcher, Rachel C. Mazique, Jeremy Quiroga, and Cynthia Weitzel for their support while writing this story’s first draft as part of the Deaf Artist Residency Program at the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Arts in Red Wing, Minnesota. He is equally grateful to Anthony Santos and Tom Steele for their continued support over the years. Much appreciation goes to Andrew J. Oehrlein for his historical clarifications, and to John Lee Clark and David Cummer for their editorial insights.
notice
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Even though celebrities and historical figures may be used as characters in this story, their actions or dialogue should not be construed as factual or historical truths.
smashwords license statement
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
copyright
The Last Deaf Club in America.
Copyright © 2018 by Raymond Luczak.
Author photograph by Raymond Luczak.
Copyright © 2018 by Raymond Luczak.
Cover photograph by Narve Skarpmoen (Norsk bokmål: Bildet er hentet fra Nasjonalbibliotekets bildesamling. Anmerkninger til bildet var: Påskrift arkivark: Hjemmet for Døve, Arkivnummer: 421, Nordstrand, Oslo, Oslo; National Library of Norway via Wikimedia Commons).
Cover design by Mona Z. Kraculdy.
To reprint excerpts from this book, please contact the publisher:
Handtype Press
PO Box 3941
Minneapolis, MN 55403-0941
online: www.handtype.com/
email: handtype@gmail.com
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN (print): 978-1-941960-09-7
Library of Congress Control Number (print): 2018905362
A Handtype Press First Edition
***
As long as we have deaf people on earth, we will have signs. And as long as we have our films, we can preserve signs in their old purity. It is my hope that we will all love and guard our beautiful sign language as the noblest gift God has given to deaf people.
—George Veditz, 1913
for Cynthia Weitzel
***
A NOTE ON THE TEXT
The uninformed reader may notice the seemingly variable spelling in the word deaf
throughout the text.
In Deaf culture, the capital-D Deaf
refers to those with hearing loss who communicate primarily through Sign and associate with each other.
Those who are deaf
tend to identify themselves with hearing people and think of their hearing loss in medical terms.
***
THE MEETING
Ghosts are everywhere. Their breaths, drained of blood, seep through cracks of the places they choose to haunt. They become oxygen that go into the lungs of those still alive. For a few seconds they feel warm and human. This is why they linger.
Yet they cannot be seen with the human eye; only felt with a whisper of chill on the neck and maybe with a light tap on the shoulder. Their sorrowful presence becomes heavier than lead. Elders older than time itself say that what ghosts see of each other are only mirrors of their physical selves the last moment before they died, but without none of the baggage associated with physicality. Only their faces and hands are imbued with ghostlight.
Ghosts are renowned for their language of unfinished longing, but few know Sign. Those who are Deaf find themselves in a peculiar position. All their lives they’d been told to use their voices, to be like everyone else, and yet in that halfway house between life and death, their silences are revered.
Yet with the passage of time and increasing rents, one Deaf club after another has shuttered. Remnants of Deaf clubs past have become crowded with these spirits aching to feel the full throttle of Sign coursing through their psychic veins once again. With a gush of breath, they enter the lungs of language itself but only for a moment.
The silence of ghosts is louder than sound.
*
Angela Morelli sat in her car facing the rear entrance to the Deaf club, but she did not step outside into the bright morning. She was afraid of what today would bring. Still, she had taken pains to look good. She had her bangs cut and her nails manicured, and she wore a simple navy blue top and jeans. She was proud of the fact that even in her fifties, she looked damn good. But being the president of the board of trustees in charge of the Deaf club these days was extremely difficult, especially when its finances were in questionable shape. She looked up at the nondescript building.
A hundred years ago the brown brick building sitting on the corner of Oak and Bryant Avenues was always filled with Deaf people. They came there to socialize, watch subtitled spoken English movies, and take part in fundraiser dinners. The building was filled with plenty of light from the windows. The upper half of these windows had beautiful stained glass, which cast a soft-colored glow on everyone’s signing. The hardwood surfaces on the first and second floors always shone, as if polished by spirits sweeping