Being Chocolate!

The Kids Called Me Chocolatta-Weirdo

In junior high school, the kids called me “Chocolatta-Weird-o.” I’d already gotten the name Chocolate, not because I lived half an hour from Hershey, but because I was always stuffing chocolate bars into my mouth in homeroom. The nickname stuck and for the past 50+ years, I’ve lived my life as Chocolate Waters. Yes, it’s the name on my passport. Yes, it’s the name under which I pay my taxes. Yes, it’s my name.

My dad was a lifer in the Navy, so I grew up all over the continental U.S. and by the time we settled into the small conservative town of Mount Joy, PA I’d gone to 13 different schools. I hated Mount Joy and if the feeling wasn’t mutual, I didn’t know it. Poetry helped me find out.

I learned to adapt to being a misfit. I also learned to hide. I wrote my first poem when I was eight – it was about a horse. As soon as I wrote it, I knew I wanted to be a poet - and that’s what I’ve spent my life being.

Poetry Enabled Me to Tell the Truth 

It was through poetry I could tell the truth about what was really going on with me - why my parents didn’t see me, why the boys didn’t like me, why I was just different. Poetry became my love, my way of dealing with an environment I perceived as hostile. Mount Joy finally accepted me – at first because I could do a mean 10-year-old’s impersonation of Elvis, but later because I was a PA state spelling bee champ. In 1963 I got to go the National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C. and if that didn’t assure that I was better liked, it did give me some respect.

Expressing myself through poetry continued to grow and my first published poem was in my high school magazine. Later there was college publication and I began to develop a reputation as a poet my peers wanted to read. It was in college that I began performing my work for an audience. I played a mean guitar back then and sang too. The first poem I ever performed was about a woman I loved, a poem that disguised her as a man named Steve.

Ran away to Denver in the early ’70s

Mount Joy’s acceptance had always been marginal, so right after I graduated college in 1971, I escaped to Denver. It was there I found an amazing group of women who were fighting the women’s revolution of the era. I became a founder of Big Mama Rag, one of the first radical women’s newspapers of what came to be known as the Second Wave. We loved women. We hated men. We were always right. God, we were great! And the poetry I wrote – expressing my rage, my anger at the second-class citizenry of women was distributed all over the country and internationally. I published my first three books from 1975-80 in editions totaling 10,000 copies, now all out of print. It was a remarkable accomplishment for small press books of poetry with no financial backing or big publishers. Poetry had once again come to my rescue. It was not only my vehicle for expressing my truth, it saved my life.

A Suitcase, $1,000. and Scruff-o the Wonder Cat

In the intervening years, I came to New York, landed at JFK in the early ’80s with my cat, Scruff-o, a suitcase of meager belongings, and a thousand bucks. In the early 80’s I met up with a wonderful gay man, Lewie Friedman, who ran a club on 6th. Avenue called. S.N.A.F.U.  Barbara Cook performed there, Dori Hartley, Tom Steele, Karen Black, and a myriad of others, all of us memorialized by the colorful and vibrant artist, Lou Rudolph.  I’d always known that performing poetry could have a more dynamic impact than just reading the words from a book and that knowledge came to fruition while working with Stan Heller, an amazing and astute man who was then the director of a small theater in Denver. I’ve been performing my work in bookstores, bars, street corners, restaurants, and small theaters all over the country ever since.  Lewie gave me a nightclub platform to perform my poetry - an equal voice in the midst of much louder musicians. More than that he gave me the support and confidence every performer needs.

I Never Left

It’s now been over 35 years that I’ve lived in Manhattan, in the heart of Hell’s Kitchen on the edge of the Great White Way. I facilitate a workshop for seniors at the Hamilton House Senior Center, coach individual clients, and frequently perform my work on the New York poetry scene and, of course, write and publish books for myself and for others.