RFD 142 Summer 2010

Coming in the Fall 2010 Issue … Queer Sustainability

We’re all been reading about the coming climate catastrophe and how reducing our carbon footprint and ecological impact will help make a difference. Obviously, the folks at RFD have known that “Back to the Land” is the best way forward as we’ve been talking about back to the land movements since the 1970s. Everything from homesteading, alternative energy and building practices to organic gardening and communal living. Now we’re looking for your take on these issues in a political climate which is getting somewhat better about organic food and a vegetarian (or low meat diet), green energy, reducing our energy consumption and living lightly on the Earth.

Ideas or themes we’d love to hear about for this issue:

• Organic gardening -- what’s worked for you? how do you store your produce for long term use?

• Local foods–are you a localvore?, do you have a share in a local farm?, are you a local grower?

• Diet -- have you gone organic, eating local produced food, or became a vegetarian / vegan? how has the experience been?

• Recipes -- what cool recipes have you come up with?

• Reducing your carbon footprint -- ride sharing, biking, buying local products (not just food), recycling, living communally

• Reducing your energy use -- buying alternative energy, using solar or wind on your property

• Alternative buildings - have you built a home with alternative materials (strawbale, mud, timber framing)? what suggestions would you share?

• What have you done to better your immediate environment (attend an anti-nuke rally, started / joined a coop, planted trees)?

• How do you think these issues tie into being part of the queer movement? How do you feel being gay identified informs the issue of sustainability?

If you are interested in helping guest edit this issue be in touch with Bambi at the email listed below. The deadline for this issue is July 18, 2010. Please try to have it in before the deadline if at all possible. Submissions can be sent to submissions@rfdmag.org–please title your piece within the attached file and if you are sending artwork or pictures please be sure they are at least 300 dpi and 1 megabyte in size. We encourage folks to send in photos, graphics for this and any issue. – RFD Collective

Vol 36 No 4 #142 Summer 2010

Retrofaeries From Dixie

Between the Lines

The Early Southern Faerie Issue

In many ways RFD often acts as a mirror; it reflects our current experiences, our dreams, and often our past.

In this issue, we spend some time reflecting on the experiences of our Southern brothers who worked so hard through the last three decades to create a vibrant rich queer (or as Dimid writes, “quear”) culture.

RFD has an obligation to speak, to remember those moments as we create new ones. Some have said, “RFD is the journal of record of the radical faerie movement”. I hope we serve as more than that moniker, because the movement we represent includes more than that but I think it also does justice to reflect that many a person associated with the making of RFD has ties to the Radical Faerie movement. So a while back we published remembrances of the first national faerie gathering in Benson, Arizona. We got a few polite, but piqued emails asking, “Well, what about the early gatherings at Mikel Wilson’s farm, Running Water?” Or someone would drop an email suggesting we talk about how “more if you can, less if you can’t” became a dictum of many faerie as well as larger gay men’s events as a result of LaSIS prompting an early response to classism amongst gay organizers back in the 1970’s.

So with a hat full of feathers, I started asking around for who might shed some light on this history. A number of folk immediately suggested I speak to Dimid Dearheart about LaSIS & through many wonderful phone calls (mostly while I was waiting for an Amtrak train to Saratoga Springs to see my boyfriend) and emails shuttling back and forth over a few months - Dimid collected his memories of LaSIS, Dennis Melba’son and his own early faerie experiences at Running Water, Short Mt. and beyond. He also provided us with some lovely poignant source materials from Dennis himself - I feel so privileged to be able to share with the RFD community words

from Dennis, a man who touched so many men at gatherings through the Cernnous Shawl which he crocheted and gave to the Faerie community at the second national gathering in 1980.

In my early inquiries about Running Water itself, I learned that Mikel and his partner Doug now live in Georgia. I found Doug’s email and he began sending me scans of early Running Water gatherings as well as amazing reminiscences about Running Water and Gay Spirit Visions, the offshoot from Running Water which just recently celebrated its 20th anniversary. Doug did a wonderful job culling together interviews and articles about both. It’s wonderful to recount some of the magic of those early gatherings as well as reflecting the fruits that have come from the experience.

Lastly, it’s worth thanking Gary for his photos of the stones from Running Water, many of them carved by Michael Mason as a memorial to men whose lives touched the community at Running Water. He took these photos before the stones were removed and relocated to Short Mountain Sanctuary where most of them remain.

In amongst all of this the current RFD Collective is aware of how many of these men have helped shaped the faerie movement, the gay men’s spiritual community as well as shaped RFD itself. LaSIS members produced a few issues of RFD and Ron Lambe and a small crew at Running Water produced it until it passed to Short Mountain in the late 1980’s. And scores of the names mentioned in this issue also have ties to the magazine through the years. It is so fitting that as the new collective starts shifting into it’s own after running the magazine for two years now that we turn, bow, and thank our sweet brothers who helped along the way.

Bambi

for

the RFD Collective

CONTENTS

On the Covers

Front: “Angel” by Rob Ordonez

Back: “Dean” by Paul Specht Inside

: “Mud” by Matt Bucy

Southern Faerie Roots

Image Credits

Artist Links

RFD appreciates the following artists whose work appears in this issue:

Rob Ordonez

www.redbubble.com/people/BOBBYBABE

Wayne Bund / Pan waynebund.blogspot.com

Paul Specht

RFD is a reader written journal for gay people which focuses on country living and encourages alternative lifestyles. We foster community building and networking, explore the diverse expressions of our sexuality, care for the environment, radical faerie consciousness, nature-centered spirituality, and share experiences of our lives. RFD is produced by volunteers. We welcome your participation. The business and general production are coordinated by a collective. Features and entire issues are prepared by different groups in various places. We print in New England. RFD (ISSN# 0149-709X) is published quarterly for $25 a year by RFD Press, P.O. Box 302, Hadley MA 01035-0302. Postmaster: Send address changes to RFD, P.O. Box 302, Hadley MA 01035-0302 Non-profit tax exempt #62-1723644, a function of RFD Press with office of registration at 231 Ten Penny Rd., Woodbury, TN 37190. RFD Cover Price: $7.75. A regular subscription is the least expensive way to receive it four times a year. Copyright © 2010 RFD Press. The records required by Title 18 U.S.D. Section 2257 and associated with respect to this magazine (and all graphic material associated therewith on which this label appears) are kept by the custodian of records at the following location: RFD Press, 231 Ten Penny Road, Woodbury TN 37190.

Mail for our Brothers Behind Bars project should continue to be sent to P.O. Box 68, Liberty TN 37095.

The Pantry at Running Water. Photo by Gary Plouff

ANNOUNCEMENTS, EVENTS AND CONTACT INFO

21st Annual GSV Fall Conference

September 30 - October 3, 2010

(Optional Early Arrival, Wednesday, September 29th) This event will be held at The Mountain Retreat & Learning Center near Highlands, North Carolina.

For more information visit GSV’s website www.gayspiritvisions.org

Big

Joy:

Death Made Visible

Special to RFD by BB Ha!

James Broughton died a good death, which is one of many reasons The Big Joy Project is making a documentary film about this vibrant faerie elder. His death on May 17, 1999 is only one of the scenes from his life that will be recreated in the feature-length documentary being produced by Stephen Silha (BB Ha!) and directed by Eric Slade, with design and music consultation from Javier Bryan Sanchez (Spiral).

On May 17, 2010, Joel Singer, who was James’s soulmate and life partner for the last 24 years of his life, deposited the rest of Broughton’s ashes at his grave site in Port Townsend, Washington. Look for the James Broughton cinema channel on YouTube for details.

In March, a number of faeries hosted a fundraiser for the Big Joy Project at the Q Center in Portland, OR. Over 60 people showed up, and raised over $3,000.

So far, the Big Joy crew has completed 21 interviews and raised $60,000 of a $350,000 budget. You can help bring the life, joy and work of James Broughton to this ailing world by making a contribution to the Big Joy Project.

By Mail: Send checks to the Big Joy Project, P.O. Box 2003, Vashon, WA 98070. Online: Go to http://www.bigjoy.org and click on “Donate” If you want a tax deduction, make check (for $50 or more please) out to Northwest Film Forum. You can also donate online at http://www.nwfilmforum.org/live/page/

donate and write “Big Joy” in the Gifts Membership field.

You can also support Big Joy by going to the website http://bigjoy.org and enjoying its contents, downloading free bookmarks and cards, and purchasing Big Joy goodies. Also by hosting Big Joy salons where you read and write poetry, have fun, and “Follow your own weird”...

You can get regular inspiration by joining the “James Broughton and Big Joy” Facebook page.

And remember Broughton’s motto: “Adventure not predicament.”

Gathering Guide

This guide was written on the fly by visiting the various community websites but with especial thanks to www.radfae.org. These communities may have other gatherings and events not listed here. So please visit their individual websites or contact them directly. If you would like your community event listed here please send it in at least two to three months before the event.

July

Canada Day Gathering at Amber Fox, Jul 1-5

Faerie Spirit Gathering at Kawashaway, Jul 1-6, 2010

Governess Gathering, Faerie Camp Destiny, Jul 2-5.

Midwest Men’s Festival July 20-29 www.midwestmensfestival.com

Summer Gathering at Folleterre in France, Jul 22-Aug 2, 2010

23rd Annual High Summer Gathering at Amber Fox, Jul 28-Aug 1

Lammas Gathering, Faerie Camp Destiny, Jul 30-Aug 8.

August

Lammas Gathering at Kawashaway, Aug 6-15, 2010

Laurieston Gay Men’s Week at Laurieston Hall, Aug 9-16 (contact Edward Carpenter Community)

Queer Shaman Gathering at Zuni Mountain, Aug 13-2

Grasmere Gay Men’s Week at Grasmere Youth Hostel, Aug 21-28 (contact Edward Carpenter Community)

Berlin Wannsee Gathering in Germany, Aug 21-29, 2010 (Contact Folleterre)

Summer Gathering at Breitenbush, Aug 1822, 2010

Blue Heron Farm Gathering, Aug 30-Sept 6 (set up Aug 28-29). thompsbs@tds.net

September Autumn Equinox at Folleterre in France, Sep 17-22, 2010

21st Annual Gay Spirit Visions Fall Conference Sept 30-Oct 3, Highlands, NC www. gayspiritvisions.org

October

Fall Foliage Gathering, Faerie Camp Destiny, Oct 6-11.

Short Mountain Sanctuary, Oct 7-16, 2010. Los Angeles Faerie Gathering, Oct 7-11, 2010

Thanksgiving Gatherette at Amber Fox, Oct 8-11

LumberJanes Gathering at Folleterre in France,Oct 15-25, 2010

Autumn Gathering at Whaley Hall, Oct 2224 (contact Edward Carpenter Community)

Faerie Sanctuaries and Faerie Friendly Organizations

Amber Fox McDonald’s Corners, Ontario, Canada akaamberfox.blogspot.com

Breitenbush (Cascadia Radical Faerie Resource) www.radfae.org/breitenbush

Edward Carpenter Community BM ECC London WC1N 3XX United Kingdom contactecc@edwardcarpentercommunity.org.uk www.edwardcarpentercommunity.org

Faerie Camp Destiny P.O. Box 517 Chester, VT 04143-0517 info@faeriecampdestiny.org www.faeriecampdestiny.org

Continued on page 42

Report from FaePoisum II

by Kwai

The second, now annual FaePosium was held in San Francisco for three lovely days in October, 2009. We gathered at Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory and the Center for Sex and Culture. Performance, discussions, fabulous food and dancing…it was all there. Part urban gathering, part symposium, part conference, some 200 odd faeries of many genders and ages mingled, munched, cuddled, argued and brainstormed from Friday to Sunday.

As we vision the third FaePosium, we pause to reflect on last years.

Friday morning one of our foremothers Murray Edelman from New York shared the story of his latest project “Circle Voting: From Faerie Fire to Facebook Application to World Change”. Arun focalized a delightfully nonlinear “Removing the Curse: Understanding Self-Destructive Programming Within Queer Culture”. We had the first of several rich panel/group discussions of “Diversifying The Faery Community In Regard to Race, Class And Gender. Part I: Coming to Terms: What It Means to Talk About Race, Class And Gender in the Radical Faery Community” with W’Fang, Jombi Superstar, Mother-Sister, Markiss Sagee, Angie and Oberon at the table and many folks in the room. Pan (who is receiving his MFA as I write this), presented a truly academic Radical Faeries in the Expanded Field: Defining a Faerie Aesthetic. Hawthorn, last year’s FaePosium Organizer the Mostess, welcomed us.

Wow dished up a fabulous, subtle and tasty lunch, then we moved on to a Hulio’s “he New Language of the Heart,” W’Fang’s sweet and provocative “Separatism And Faerie. Why, How And What The Fuck?”, Joseph Kramer’s (yes, the founder of Body Electric!)“Negotiating Subject-SUBJECT SEX, ” and Hawthorn’s “The Early Years of the Radical Faeries: Emergence”. MeadowDreamer challenged us (and used a PowerPoint presentation, yes, really) with “Green Faeries Unite! Sustainability, Spirituality, and Community,” and Pippin, a parent, shared and seeded from the heart

with “Children in the Faerie World.” We brought it all together with an Opening Ritual focalized by W’Fang.

Scrumptuously Suppered by Shade, we mingled on for an evening of performances and transformation. The lucky first few got to experience Cayenne’s “Who wants to look pretty?”-A Sacred Drag Makeover Workshop”—while Pan took the photos that grace this article. We had some amazing performers…too many to list here and I don’t want to leave someone out. The hardy (and energetic) stayed for an afterparty, and some of us went home. (Unlike some urban gatherings, the FaePosuim doesn’t have any central sleeping arrangement, alas).

Satryday morning the Diversity discussion continued, with “Part II: Speaking To Our Experience as Faeries of Color, Female-Bodied Faeries and Working Class.” Leeza Edwards offered “Quantum Healing,” Munk/Hitiris focalized “A Participatory Facilitated Discussion Entitled “Art and Mysticism as Tools for Transpersunal Transformation,” and Jesse Sanford initiated “Sanctuaries in the City.” Mykdeva and his collaborator Allen Page showed their beautiful slideshow from the 1979 Arizona Spiritual Conference for Radical Faeries.

Mother Sister Daddy Queen served

us a tasty lunch. Joey Cain presented a fascinating set of historical images and commentary “Roots of the Radical Fairies: Edward Carpenter and The Dear Love of Comrades” while Will Roscoe delighted our ears with “Desert Circle: A Celebration in Word and Sound of the First Gathering for Radical Faeries” in another room. Don Kilhefner, one of the writers of the call for the ’79 Conference, presented “The First Radical Faerie Gathering: The Vision,” while Murray aka ‘Hypnodad’ offered “Erotic Hypnonsis. Heron Saline helped us learn how each of us thinks with “Personal Thinking Patterns Intro: A Guided Tour of Your Own Amazing Mind!”

The Diversity exploration continued with the third panel by Jomb et al, “Part III Developing Strategies to Diversify the Radical Faery Community” while Stella Maris focalized a packed heart circle discussion (‘heart clump”?) “No Men Us: Voices of Female Faeries” (all welcome).

Clayton Robins offered a workshop “Mind-Body Connection 1, the basics of immune function and the bio-psycho-social cofactors that drive resilience and health.” Kaleo and Chas Nol led us on “Body/ Mind/Spirit: Getting the Sex and Touch You Need.”

Dinner was by Zuriel. We had another moving evening of performances, followed by a chillout, and then a Play Party. Wow. Thanks again to all the performers: we owe you a call out by name, but that will have to come anon.

Sunday Grand Central (Zach and co) hosted a brunch, followed by a faerie procession through Castro Street fair. Finally we came back together for a drum circle, then heart circle and closing circle.

Thanks to all for co-creating such a wonderful, provocative and yummy event. We (that’s this years collective) are excited to be continuing the work. Plenty of room to help: document, present, inspire, provoke. Kudos to Hawthorn and the other Radical Cross-pollinators for getting the ball rolling with the first FaePosium. Thanks to RFD Magazine for continuing to be our fiscal sponsor, making those big donations tax deductible.

This year’s theme is “Our Next Frontiers.” See the call art here and check out our web site at www.FaePosium.org.

FaePosium photos by Pan

RFD and White Crane Awarded 2010 Monette-Horwitz Prize

by Bambi

talented and beautiful gay men, died far too early. It is hard to know what more he may have contributed to the world. Paul Monette, who lived many years after, came to write some of the most moving books written about a lover’s death. For many gay men who suffered so many losses, his book, Borrowed Time, and subsequent books, helped bring together all of the feelings and emotions of grief and moving forward.

Along with RFD and White Crane, the other 2010 awardees include: Leslie Feinberg, the oral history project, Impact Stories, Iraqi LGBT, Los Angeles Southern Christian Leadership president, Reverend Eric. P. Lee and the largest AIDS NGO in India, the Naz Foundation.

RFD, along with sister queer culture journal, White Crane, have been given the distinct honor of being awarded the 2010 Monette-Horwitz Award, along with a number of other worthy honorees including Leslie Feinberg. It was a welcomed surprise to hear from the award committee that we were co-winners and would each receive a lovely check for $1250 and a black onyx obelisk award.

In these days of disappearing gay media, to have the Monette-Horwitz awarded to RFD, the oldest reader-produced queer journal at 35 years and White Crane, produced since summer 1989 and entering its 21st year, is a timely recognition.

We will be celebrating the award at Faerie Camp Destiny in southern Vermont on August 7, 2010 during the Lammas gathering. We’ll have a luncheon to celebrate with the folks from White Crane around noon and then folks will enjoy the Destiny Player’s Lammas play “Big Top Circus and Freak Show”. Back issues of both magazines will be available. We hope you’ll be able to come help us celebrate such a significant honor.

Folks interested in attending the luncheon can RSVP to us at RFD and we’ll pass the word onto the crew at Destiny. RSVP by sending an email to submissions@rfdmag.org with “award luncheon” in the subject line.

The award is named after Paul Monette and Roger Horwitz. Roger, like so many

The following information was provided by the Monette-Horwitz Trust. You can learn more about the trust and it’s awardees a their website - www. monettehorwitz.org

History of the Monette-Horwitz Trust Award

Paul Monette and Roger Horwitz were committed to bringing about an end to homophobia both through their individual activities and through their union.

Roger Horwitz wrote poetry in his student years and received his undergraduate degree from Brandeis University, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. His first jobs were in France teaching English and then working for the publishers Larousse and Gallimard. He received his Ph.D in comparative literature from Harvard University in 1972, writing his dissertation on French novelist Henri Thomas as he also began Harvard Law School. He received his law degree in 1973.

Paul Monette was an honors student at Phillips Academy in Andover, MA and re-

ceived his undergraduate degree in English from Yale in 1967, where he was Class Poet. Monette and Horwitz met September 4, 1974 in Boston, during the middle years of gay liberation. As he described their introduction in Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story (1992), Paul Monette said to Roger Horwitz, “Say hello to the rest of your life.”

Paul and Roger moved to Los Angeles in November 1977, and both men were associated strongly with the LGBT activities of that city until their deaths. Horwitz worked as a corporate attorney, then founded his own practice with clients such as the Downtown Women’s Center. He succumbed to AIDS in 1986. After Roger’s death, Monette did the writing and activism for which he will remain known, capturing in his verse, fiction, non-fiction, fable, and public speaking appearances, the hopes, dreams, and rage of an entire generation.

Before his own death from AIDS in 1995, Monette established the MonetteHorwitz Trust to ensure the continued fruits of their activism as well as the memory of their loving partnership.

The MonetteHorwitz Trust provides annual awards to individuals of diverse cultural backgrounds, genders, and sexual orientations who are, through their work, making significant contributions to eradicating homophobia. The Trust acknowledges the accomplishments of organizations and persons working in arenas ranging from academic research and creative expression to activism and community organizing.

Following Monette’s instructions, there are no applications for the awards. Recommendations are given by an Advisory Committee to Monette’s appointed Trustee, his brother Robert L. Monette.

Paul Monette and Roger Horwitz

The house at Running Water Farm. Photo by Doug Caulkins.

The Journey from Running Water to Gay Spirit Visions

by Douglas B. Caulkins

Mikel Running Water

OnSummer Solstice in 1973 a young man named Mikel Wilson turned 21 and came into a modest inheritance from his grandmother. That very day he met with a realtor in the mountains of North Carolina. He wanted to purchase some property with two conditions: it must be at the end of a road, and it must have water.

The first property the realtor took him to was at the very end of a long muddy road in a remote mountain cove. The driveway to the old chestnut cabin was overgrown with briars and blackberries – nearly impassable. The cabin was basic, planks nailed to a frame and a stone chimney, a wooden floor and a tin roof, a kitchen, living area and bedrooms. There were old rusty iron bed frames in the bedrooms and an ancient potbelly stove in the kitchen. One room was plastered with faded movie posters from the thirties and forties.

The cabin was in the middle of sixteen acres of mostly wooded property on the southern slope of Roan Mountain, not far from the North Carolina/Tennessee line. Clear cold rocky streams rushed through the woods, fed by several springs and interrupted by occasional small waterfalls. Above the cabin was an abandoned field, ideal for a home garden. In front of the cabin was an overgrown grassy area. Below the cabin were several large apple trees, old mountain varieties. And beyond the apple trees was the outhouse.

Later that day Mikel bought the property, paying for it with cash. This was to be Running Water Farm, where many men of the southeast experienced their first Radical Faery Gathering and all that means: heart circles, acceptance, gay spirituality, fabulous outrageous drag, unconditional gentle love, vegetarian feasts, childlike playfulness, amazing performances, fey ritual, hot genuine sex, natural native beauty.

A few days later Mikel loaded up all that he owned into his 1950 Ford woody station wagon and moved into the cabin. Later, while he was cleaning, he discovered that he wasn’t the only resident – a

five foot black snake lived in a nook at the top of the kitchen cabinets. They were wary housemates for the rest of that Summer.

He took a job in a small restaurant not too far away, cooking breakfast for the local mountain men starting at 5 am most days. And he began the long task of cleaning and repairing the cabin, tilling and planting the garden space and in general tidying up.

He cleared a small area in a nearby briar patch for growing herbs. This was the very first area to get irrigation and supplemented his income quite nicely for a couple of Autumns.

Something of a milestone was when he finally ran a pipe from a spring into the cabin and no longer needed to carry

residents closer to his own age. In particular, there was a hippy family that lived down the road from him. The husband ran the local VW shop while his wife, Carol Spunk, hosted a weekly discussion group. These discussions ran the gamut: feminism, environmentalism, radical politics, community. It was at these group discussions that he came to terms with his sexuality and realized he was a gay man.

In February 1976, he did what so many gay men do: he packed up his car and drove to San Francisco. He took a slight detour on his way out there, stopping by a remote cabin in rural Tennessee where he spent a few days with Milo Pyne, the last remaining resident of the Short Mountain Collective. Milo had big plans to revive the community...

In San Francisco he moved into an apartment on the corner of Haight and Ashbury. There was a rent strike, so he paid no rent for his entire time in San Franciso. He landed a job as the dishwasher at “The Elephant Walk”, a gay bar in the Castro. He cut quite a figure in San Francisco, hurtling down the steep streets on a large wooden skateboard while wearing a whirling dervish skirt, his long hair streaming behind him.

buckets of water in. There was no faucet on the pipe, so water poured into the kitchen sink, a constant sound of running water. This was how the place got its name, Running Water Farm.

As the seasons went by, he became a part of the local community. His neighbors were all old mountain folk, reserved but kind, with thick accents and odd colloquialisms that sounded more Scottish than American. They were pleased to have such an industrious young man nearby, even if he did have long hair. Mikel still remembers the old woman who taught him how to make biscuits the mountain way, directly on the top of her wooden table, without using a bowl.

But he also became friends with local

But the following September saw him on the road again, in a Volkswagon squareback with a broken accelerator. He and his friend Soma ended up driving straight through from San Francisco to Running Water with the accelerator wide open, coasting through gas stations to fill up the tank.

Mikel resumed his life in the mountains of North Carolina. He took two semesters of weaving at the local technical college, as much to spend time in the warm workshops instead of his drafty cold cabin as for the education. Mikel attended the occasional men’s conferences in the southeast when he could, meeting other gay men and participating in the workshops. These were the waning years of Gay Lib – progress had been made, but there was a realization that something more needed to happen.

In April 1978 Mikel drove down to Atlanta for the Southeast Conference

That June thirty men showed up at his cabin for the longest days of the year. This was the first Running Water Farm gathering and it preceded Harry Hay’s first radical faery gathering by more than a year.

Of Lesbians And Gay Men. The conference started out on a contentious note because the women wanted to host a women only sexuality workshop and this seemed discriminatory to many of the gay men on the planning committee. The rift between the lesbians and gay men continued to deepen as the conference proceeded, primarily because of thoughtless and insensitive behavior on behalf of some of the men – totally unintended, but there none-the-less. The women were at the conference to get serious work done, while many of the men just wanted to socialize and party.

By the end of the Conference, the women felt badly mistreated by the men. When everyone had gathered in the auditorium for the closing session all of the women stood up, essentially told the all the men that they needed to get their shit together before the women could work with them, and marched out, leaving all the men sitting there, flabbergasted.

The men began to talk. There was realization that, yes, there were important issues that they needed discuss and deal with. And there was a new idea as well, that gay men needed a men’s only caucus, just as lesbians had women’s only caucuses.

Mikel stood up and offered to host this men’s caucus at his property in the North Carolina mountains. He even suggested a date: the weekend of Summer Solstice. And over the next several weeks, he and others worked hard to make this happen.

That June thirty men showed up at his cabin for the longest days of the year. This was the first Running Water Farm gathering and it preceded Harry Hay’s first radical faery gathering by more than a year. Yet Mikel clearly remembers that some men already identified themselves as faeries. These radical, energetic young men from New Orleans were members LASIS, Louisiana Sissies in Struggle.

It was an amazing experience for all the men involved. For many of the men, it was the first time being with a group of gay men interested in such topics as spirituality, our place in society, relationships and personal growth. The men there were conscious! The men talked, walked in the woods, cooked meals, sang, shared, played...

Mikel hosted two more gatherings at Running Water Farm. At the third one, in the Summer of 1979, he announced

that the property was for sale. He moved to Asheville, bought a large old house near downtown and rented out the several rooms to an assortment of young gay men and lesbians, and so there were always friends, guests, one night stands, boyfriends and girlfriends, talking and partying and hanging out. But Montford House is, perhaps, a different story...

Stepping Stone

Ron Lambe was living in San Francisco when he read about the gatherings at Running Water Farm in RFD. He realized that he had to experience one of these gatherings, and so he attended the third gathering that Mikel hosted, in the Summer of 1979. He had a wonderful experience and was looking forward to future gatherings when Mikel announced the place was for sale.

Ron had been looking for a place to buy out in California for years but could never find anything he could af-

and John Jones.

A few years earlier, Peter had realized he was gay and that he wanted to meet someone compatible. After some thought, he took out an ad in the Mother Earth News. More then 100 men replied to it. Peter replied to these men, continued to correspond with some, and met some. These men included Sam Crawford from Chapel Hill, John Jones from Chicago and Rocco Patt.

Rocco was in the Army and stationed in Germany, but fortunately didn’t mention this in the first few letters he exchanged with Peter, who had consciously avoided the draft. Peter disagreed strongly with the Vietnam War effort and would have been put off by the fact that Rocco had voluntarily enlisted. When Rocco was discharged, Peter met him at Fort Dix, took him home and soon enough they were a couple.

Peter was living on Long Island at the time, but he decided to sell his house so that he and Rocco could explore the country and determine where they belonged. They loaded up their pickup truck and traveled to New England and Pennsylvania, extensively in West Virginia, then to Tennessee and finally North Carolina, where they decided to stay. They ended up in Asheville and began their search for a home.

Sam Crawford had been at one of the Running Water Farm gatherings. He wrote to Peter, saying that the property was for sale. Peter wrote John Jones, telling him they were planning to look at this promising property and inviting him down for a visit. He and Peter shared an interest in starting a collective and going back to the land.

ford. North Carolina land, on the other hand, was much more reasonably priced. He spoke with Mikel and made plans to come back in July, to check out the place.

It was a warm Summer day when he arrived and let himself in the cabin. He inspected the cabin and the various items left behind, which included a scythe. Being a little compulsive, he felt obliged to do something about the overgrown plants out front, and he began to scythe a path through the weeds. That was when another group of three men arrived to look at the property. These men were Peter Kendrick, Rocco Patt

The three of them walked down the overgrown driveway that July day, and found Ron there, scything away. The four of them talked and discovered they had a great deal in common. They all lived in urban areas, but wanted to move to the country to live in harmony with the land. They wished to live outside “the system” as much as they could by growing most of their own food and exploring alternatives for their other needs. They were interested in maintaining the twice yearly gatherings at Running Water.

The four of them formed a for-profit corporation called Stepping Stone, Inc. to manage the equity each of them was investing. On September 21, 1979, the Friday of the Fall Equinox Gathering,

For many of the men, it was the first time being with a group of gay men interested in such topics as spirituality, our place in society, relationships and personal growth. The men there were conscious! The men talked, walked in the woods, cooked meals, sang, shared, played...

they met Mikel Wilson in the nearby town of Spruce Pine and closed on the property. They used all their savings to purchase the property outright, avoiding a mortgage. It had rained hard that day, but the rain eased to a gentle mist as they drove to Running Water. They were greeted by a group of loving men already assembled there for the weekend. For the new collective, it was a glorious homecoming and the beginning of a magical journey.

After that Fall gathering the four men made a difficult decision. They had spent all of their money on Running Water, and quickly realized that there were no jobs to be found in the area. But Peter had been corresponding with yet another man who had answered his Mother Earth News ad. This older gentleman had an apartment in Tampa, Florida for rent, adjacent to his own. The four of them moved down there for the Winter and lived a “Tales of the City” existence as they became better acquainted. They all found jobs in Tampa: Peter as a waiter, Rocco as a cook, John as a groundskeeper, and Ron processing checks at the telephone company.

The following Spring, they moved back to Running Water – the only period when all four men were living there. They hosted a June gathering, which was large, with 70 men attending. And they tended to the farm, looked for work and met the neighbors.

The four of them tried to fit in with their rural Appalachian neighbors, but found it a challenge. For instance, several days before the 1980 Fall gathering, Peter and Rocco were in the apple orchard below the cabin when several bullets tore through the apple trees, dangerously close. Rocco followed the sound of the gunshots and discovered two neighborhood boys shooting in their direction. When the boys spotted Rocco coming after them, they ran home and hid the guns. Rocco, who was very upset, gave the boys a stern lecture about responsible, sensible and safe gun use, which includes not shooting towards a home.

A few days later, Rocco and Peter were driving out the drive way when they met a neighbor, the father of the two boys, coming in the opposite direction. He motioned them to pull next to him, rolled down his window, and said to Rocco, “Don’t you ever, ever come on my property and tell my family what to

do or we will run you off of this mountain.” This was so unexpected and upsetting that Rocco and Peter returned to the cabin to recover from the encounter.

That Fall Gathering was exceptionally large, with 150 men attending. Peter had written a letter explaining what Running Water was all about which had been broadcast via a pre-internet web of correspondence and mailing lists, and that is how most of the men who attended that Fall gathering had heard about it. There was no way the kitchen in that cabin could easily handle the meals for a crowd that size, so Rocco negotiated the rental of the kitchen of “My Sister’s Kitchen”, a small natural food restaurant, and that’s

where most of the advanced food preparation occurred. As well, they harvested the apples from the orchard and pressed gallons of apple juice – all of which was gone by the end of the gathering. The gathering was a huge success, with parades of men coming in from where the cars were parked, and drumming and dancing and singing. Somehow the story about the gunshots got told and there was some heated discussion about what to do about that, but no real decisions.

And perhaps just as well. After that Fall Gathering relations with the neighbors improved greatly. Peter speculates that they were impressed with the number of men that attended, concluding

A young Doug Caulkins. Photo by Frank Jackson.

that the four men had important and significant connections.

That was also about the time that the collective took over the production of RFD. Peter remembers that the four of them were somewhat surprised when they read in RFD that Running Water was to be the future home of the magazine, but that’s what happened. Faygele ben Miriam had been the sole person responsible for the magazine for the previous few issues, a herculean effort for one man. Ron Lambe drove to Faygele’s house in Efland, near Chapel Hill, and came back with a number of cardboard

Winter as an idyllic time, even though it was harsh and difficult to live in that remote cabin in the cold on the side of a mountain.

“We kept Running Water going and then we took on RFD. That went on for about eight or nine years, I guess. We were probably living on about $4000 a year, which was pretty back to the land. We grew a lot of our vegetables, we belonged to a food co-op and our main income was producing RFD and having the gatherings. The gatherings paid for the taxes. They were very cheap to host. And a little gas and insurance, we had very

couple who had been neighbors and friends.

“Running Water didn’t last forever but it was wonderful adventure while it lasted. It wasn’t the kind of thing that does last your whole life. For the adventure of it and trying something new, creating a social dynamic, a living space in a rural place, that’s how I feel about it, that it worked, it worked for a while and we all got a lot out of it.” –Peter

Kendrick

Gay Spirit Visions

The last gathering at Running Water occurred in 1989. At that gathering Ron Lambe and Peter Kendrick reconnected with Raven Wolfdancer, who had been at the very first gathering. They realized that the energy of these events needed to be kept alive, but perhaps in a less anarchic, more focused and structured manner. Ron, Peter and Raven had several lengthy conversations that proved to be the genesis of Gay Spirit Visions. Peter says, “Getting Ron involved made things happen. Ron is a networker and facilitator of extraordinary talent.”

boxes, and that was all that RFD was at that point. The magazine was in disarray, and it took a concerted effort to get the magazine organized and functional again. The magazine was published from Running Water until 1989, when Short Mountain Sanctuary took it over.

Neither Peter nor John were able to find jobs in the area. Peter applied for a number of local jobs, most of which he was overqualified for, but apparently the local people had as much of a problem understanding his New York accent as he did their rural mountain accent. Both Peter and John ended up in Asheville, where they rented rooms in Mikel Wilson’s Montford House, and were able to find paying jobs. Ron ended up staying at Running Water most of the time, with Rocco living there off and on. And there was one Winter when just Rocco and Peter stayed there. Peter recalls that

little expenses. But they were rich years of great food, great friends, colorful dinners, musical events. It was rich. We had great experiences with that. Many great memories.” –Ron Lambe, 2009 Gay Spirit Visions Conference.

Ron Lambe lived at Running Water most continuously during the later years. He also essentially ran RFD. He very much had to live on a shoestring budget as well. In the later years he was active with the Western North Carolina Alliance, an environmental group, and that eventually lead to his buying a house in Asheville, where it was headquartered. But this left Running Water empty.

Stepping Stone did find some caretakers, but that proved problematic, mainly because of monetary issues. After the caretakers moved out, Running Water was vacant for a while. Eventually Stepping Stone sold the land to a straight

Peter knew about this program at the University of North Carolina - Asheville, where he worked n the mathematics department. They would give grants to speakers to visit the university and talk on various topics. With the help of some friends on the faculty, Peter was able to draft a proposal for Harry Hay to travel from California to lecture at UNCA. But the lecture was incidental as far as Peter and Ron were concerned, merely a stratagem to pay for Harry’s travel so he could be the key note speaker at the first GSV gathering. And that worked like a charm.

More difficult was finding a place to host the gathering. Ron, Peter and Raven wanted a place with indoor plumbing. The date for the first conference was in the late Fall at the end of the season, and so they figured that camps would be very interested in the business. Ron and Peter traveled all over western North Carolina visiting a great number of camps, and indeed, most were very interested, that is, until the management learned that it was a gay conference. Then they were booked, or some other problem. It was discouraging.

Finally, Ron and Peter visited the Mountain, a Universalist Unitarian camp outside of Highlands, North Carolina.

Summer gathering circa 1986. Photo by Doug Caulkins..

The people at the Mountain were totally fascinated with the idea of the conference from the very beginning, although they were uncertain about the particulars. They made it clear that they wanted to host Gay Spirit Visions. And so that’s where the first GSV conference was held in 1990, and where GSV conferences have been held since.

Running Water Memories

That was a very special time for me. About six months before, I had just come out. I forget how I learned about the first Running Water gathering except that I had tied in with any gay and lesbian political stuff happening in the Chapel Hill/Durham area. It was a new beginning for me because I had just separated from my wife after seven years of marriage, and I had my two sons and was on my way back to Tennessee to my more permanent job. Gabby Haze had his kids with him as well, so the boys had other kids to play with and garden space and play space and lots of very gentle guys

who kept an eye on them.

It was a beautiful piece of land with all these streams coming down off the mountain. But it was quite different from the more organized gay and lesbian conferences that I had experienced in the previous six months. Sort of scary because it was, like, whoa, there are no rules here, I can do what I want. And there would be impromptu workshops for us to work on stuff that we needed to work on.

I do remember one of the workshops I participated in. I think it was Crazy Owl who organized it. Basically it was an outdoor no clothes circle jerk but with kind of a guiding meditation. It was very spiritual.

There was always music out on the porch and we were singing all these faery chants. Michael Mason who was a beautiful man from that area was very good at getting us going with singing rounds in the cozy back room of the cabin. Oh, I have to say that the food was fabulous, as well as the dress, or undress.

Another unforgettable thing was the sweat lodges we had. There would always be a sweat lodge down below the cabin in the woods next to a waterfall, and this

water was about 33 degrees Fahrenheit. So, it was sort of a test of your manhood to refresh yourself in that water after a round in the sweat lodge. Up at the cabin you would hear “wooo-ooo-HOOOooo” and you knew people were getting under that waterfall.

And there’s one more incident that I really must tell you about. So we were out on the lawn, on this sloped lawn, managing somehow to play a game of twister in a big circle and the kids were in the circle, men were in the circle, there were men in dresses in the circle, there were men in jeans and flannel shirts, there were men in no clothes at all. And we were managing this challenging game on a sloping grass surface when this old mountain guy comes up out of the woods. One of the neighbors, and I’ll never forget the expression on his face, I mean his mouth and eyes were so wide open and he didn’t say anything. I was in my underwear, and I just said “Helloo!” But he didn’t say anything, he just proceeded up the hill. –Gary Briggs, 2009 Fall Gay Spirit Visions Conference.

Harold was the neighbor who would cut through the property. His family

The yard at Running Water. Photo by Doug Caulkins..

lived below and he lived up above us and that was the old roadbed and so he naturally took that little shortcut through. He was very nice and asked our permission to come through the property. We said, “Sure!”

So he did get an eyeful of things but he was very discreet about it. I think he liked having this kind of secret going on. I remember another time when three of the boys put a mattress on the bridge over a little creek out in the woods and they were having a little three way party. Harold, trying to be nice said to himself, “I don’t want to disturb the fellows having fun – I’m going to cut through the woods” And he came upon these fellows just carrying on. He looked at them and they looked up. “You boys having a rest?”

I think he had some faery blood in him somewhere. When he died I went to the funeral and a lot of his family came up and said, “Harold always spoke well of you boys.” –Ron

Lambe, 2009 Fall Gay Spirit Visions Conference

I am discovering that these are spaces for intense personal sharing unlike any other. I find myself taking the vibrations of a gathering back to the dominant gay culture as found in “the bars”, not necessarily by talking with people but by being open and spreading a feeling of love and warmth around me when I am in that rather tired and tight environment. In our own small way we are changing the culture that we must take a part in.

In closing I would like to point out that there are beginning to be gatherings of this same nature all around. I am beginning to feel a web of energy develop among us that will make us free. –Mikel Wilson, RFD, Summer 1980, #24.

rience with grace and humor, we were all so relieved. –Peter

Kendrick

This photograph is of the very first gathering in 1978 and it’s got all 30 of us in it. The story behind this picture is that this fellow there (I don’t remember who) took this group photo and disappeared, and about a month later we all got a postcard in the mail, just a wide open postcard with a full ass shot on the one side, that said, “It was great meeting you all, thanks for everything.”

Mikel Wilson, 2009 Fall Gay Spirit Visions Conference

I loved the mountainside. Running Water is on the eastern slope of Roan Mountain, so there is no level land. It’s a wonderful, slanting place, and the little cabin was nice, but when we had gatherings it was such a pleasant place to be, with streams running, sweat lodges, meeting lots of people, occasionally some good sex.

Running

Water, June 1980, impressions. The largest gathering ever held at Running Water Farm attracted a crowd of 70 men. The weekend was yet another experience with open anarchy at work. Perhaps even more so than at previous gatherings. There was a continuous flow of circles that one could attend dealing with diverse topics from body work/new games to serious political discussion. The most important aspect was that one did not feel compelled to attend any of the structured events. Personally the only workshop I made it to was an hour long watermelon feast that was oh so sweet. I have a feeling that after a few years of infancy the “S.E. Network” has now come of age and that we will be looking for new and more complex ways to involve ourselves with each other and the world around us. The gatherings are still the only times of the year when I am able to be around spirits/ persons of the same desires, goals and emotions as myself.

Towards the end of one gathering there was a trip to the summit of Roan Mountain to view the groves of Rhododendrons in bloom. There were probably twenty of us there and it was wonderful to wander through this strikingly beautiful natural garden with faery friends. We had an impromptu circle in the picnic area, in plain sight of a number of people also there to see the blooms. Two guys were heading on to Tennessee and we each one us kissed them goodbye, right on the lips. This was very cutting edge in the day, bordering on dangerous. I found it incredibly empowering. I was one of the last to leave the area and I heard this rather large lady comment to her companion, “Must be a fraternity.” We had a good laugh over that.

–Doug Caulkins

During another gathering on one of these trips to Roan Mountain, we went up in several vehicles with a group close to twenty. When we came back and started dinner someone noticed that one fellow was missing. He was a shy and quiet individual who had not yet made a strong connection with anyone. Some of us raced back up to the top of the mountain and called his name. We did retrieve the fellow with much rejoicing. He had accepted the entire expe-

There were some men who were involved who were major gay activists at the time. Carl Wittman, who wrote the famous gay manifesto in 1970. He lived in Durham and taught a gay men’s folk dancing class that I attended fairly frequently. He was good friends with Allen Troxler, who wrote the pamphlet “Running Water Rounds”. Lee Mullis and his lover Philip Moon. Barry Yeoman, who turned into fairly major independent journalist in North Carolina. And, of course, Faygele Ben Miriam, we were good friends. Boy, he was one of those characters where they truly broke the mold, and really in your face, but just a sweetheart. But I know I have forgotten so, so many people who used to go there.

–Stuart Norman

Itwasn’t a huge gathering that I attended in 1979, probably only 10 or 13 men, probably about the third time I’d been up there. And I remember that we had all kind of settled in, sitting on the porch and we were just talking, and these women arrived. One of the first things they did was take off everything but their shorts, and I wondered about that because there were chiggers and mosquitoes and things that bit around that we had been dealing with. I think

someone mentioned this to them, but particularly in the late 1970s with gender issues and with women, you kind of let it all play out.

Later I saw them and they were just bitten all over. One women had these really large breasts covered with bumps and red bites, and they were sitting on the porch applying this stuff to help with the itching – it was some sort of natural remedy that Ron Lambe and Peter Kendrick had put together. At dinner they were wearing shirts and it was a real reversion. That’s one of my keenest memories of up there, because I was kind of intimidated by them when they starting taking everything off. –Roger Bailey

Iloved going to Running Water, and I always felt so welcomed and so honored to be a part of a faery circle. I remember the music – there was a piano in the cabin, and Ron Lambe played the piano. There were afternoons and early evenings by lamp light and candle light with people playing the piano and singing. I remember how people helped with getting the meals prepared.

I remember the heart circles, usually there was a morning circle. I remember how the shawl was passed around the circle. Frequently, it was used as the talisman, people speaking would hold the shawl, or wrap themselves in the shawl. Dennis Melbason had crocheted it, and presented it to Harry Hay, and it went around to a number of gatherings. It was of white cotton, triangular, about six feet across the top. In the center, a large representation of the god Cernuonos, the horned god. There were grapevines crocheted in the corners, grapes and vines and leaves. It was a very powerful object, I felt that it had a great deal of healing energy.

I do have a lovely memory of Michael Mason. He was reciting one of his poems with this flipchart thing. My friend Phil Smith ripped the page off and destroyed it – he thought he was adding to the moment with humor and in fact it

turned into quite a nasty little incident. It required some tender loving care and healing afterward. –Be

WhenI went to the second gathering I was just flabbergasted by the fact that there were all these people intense in black lace and champagne glasses and all of these fabulous things.

I remember feeling that I had found something that I didn’t think went on in anyone else except me. So it was really, really nice. It was very comforting and very, very nice.

I had my two boys with me, and they were maybe seven and four. There was some point where, after a few days people were getting more comfortable with each other and starting to get sexual. And I went through this whole thing about my kids, and walking around, and what was going to be going on and everything like that. But I decided that there would be no problem with anything they might see and I didn’t want to leave. –Gabby Haze

Oneof my favorite memories of Running Water is just how charming the cabin was. It had this porch, this little narrow porch with a porch swing at the end. And all those group photographs were taken on that porch. Really all we had to cook on was that wood cook stove and we were able to create all this food on this stove and the wood stove oven. And there was a loft, a sleeping loft.

One of my other favorite memories was of how much singing we used to do. Ron was really into the piano and we would sit around the piano and just sing. What a sweet memory of Running Water, all the singing that we did.

And I also remember we would often circle under those giant apple trees. So there we would be like circling under these beautiful old apple trees. I remember also going for a walk and not realizing how much stinging nettle there was around on the land. Suddenly I was in this place where there was only one way to go and it was through the stinging nettles so I had like

a little stick and I parted my way through the stinging nettles.

One of my other real vivid memories of Running Water was just how innocent people were. I think that maybe that was true in general of the early faery gatherings. I think that was something that really touched me about the early years at Running Water and I remember vividly there was a way we connected with one another that wasn’t as complicated as it is now. –Daz’l

Gay Spirit Visions Memories, 1991

IthoughtI would cry forever in the closing circle. As a gay man, I had never felt so safe.

We were feeling pretty unsafe two days earlier. Gay, black, and urban, my best friend Ricky was anxious about a trip into the South. It didn’t help that we spent a night in Lynchburg(!), Jerry Falwell’s home. We got lost in the mountains between Johnson City and Asheville (there was no interstate there yet), and we arrived in a fog to what seemed a deserted camp. Despite our nerves, we still felt called there.

Dinner Friday (the conference only ran Friday-Sunday then) eased our fears as we began meeting men on an incredible journey – gay spiritual seekers. Later, all 90 or us opened with a heart circle in the lodge (the upper treehouse didn’t exist yet). James Broughton and Joel Singer presented a late-night festival of their beautiful films. We began to breath and make friends. Many are still in my life.

Saturday was a whirlwind of keynotes, panels and workshops by Andrew Ramer, Franklin Abbott, Charlie Murphy, Dave MacDonald, Don Shewey, John Stowe, Crazy Bear, Sequioia Thom Lundy, and others. How to choose? Saturday night featured riches of music, dance, prose, poetry, and costumes.

The community capped the evening with wild dancing and drumming under a full moon. Looking into the beautiful faces around the fire, I knew that I had found a haven to which I would return often, safe and loved. And so it is. –Bob Strain

Jesus and Nobody

by Greg LeClair

Laying in the back of Gary’s pea green VW van named Marianne, speeding down interstate 95, felt like being on a flying carpet. Gary had modified the vehicle such that a luxurious sultan’s bed lay flush with the windows and one had only to relax there briefly and a light trance would soon envelop. We were on our way from western Massachusetts to the southland on a search for faerie culture.

Our second night on the road we got lost coming down off the Blue Ridge trying to find Fairy Stones State Park. We dared not stop to ask the locals for directions as each house appeared to us as menacing and ominous, its occupants ready to lynch a couple of queer boys quicker than you can say, “John Bill are you wearing that prairie skirt again?” Gary, not known for his nerves of steel, was becoming more and more overwrought as Marianne’s brakes had commenced making metal on metal sounds as we careened top heavy down the steep and winding mountain roads. But Marianne, true to her surname Faithful, got us to the Fairy Stones where we camped under the canopy of an incense cedar grove, all was then bliss.

The next day found us scouring the local dirt in search of said fairy stones and we actually did find some. Moving on, from the Stones we made our way to a fledgling Radical Faerie sanctuary then known as Willow Hollow. We had the place to ourselves and found many curiosities such as a vast collection of small jars of amber honey jammed full of all manner of herbs. We were completely seduced by the intoxicating sweetness of the southern spring; the warm breezes blowing up the hol-

lows were laden with the scents of wild magnolia and honeysuckle. We got naked and pranced around like we owned the place. We found a sweat lodge next to an enchanted waterfall, and there, swam naked, again in bliss.

We had heard that there was going to be a gathering of faeries at Short Mountain Sanctuary but not thinking we had time

We had learned from Ron that the last Running Water caretaker had one day driven his car off the road and into the river, where I am sure “running water” took on a new meaning. This was evidently enough for that caretaker, and he moved on, though there was, one last remaining resident. And as we drove the long driveway into the Sanctuary, there he was. His name was Nobody, and he stood tiny and shivering, his fur soaked and matted, with huge eyes that just screamed help or rather HALP!, and to make matters more poignant, he was poised thus in a faerie graveyard. A figurative graveyard I suppose, as there were no actual graves dug there, but a circle of hand carved stone markers, some colorful, some literary, some enigmatic, and all possessed. By the time Gary and I made our way around the circle of stones, crying and at times laying prone on the long pine needles in reverence to this place like no place else we had ever seen or experienced, Nobody the dog had decided that we were ok and he lit up like a spray of diamonds and danced around the memorial stones, our new Zen master of the charnel ground, Nobody.

to make it to Tennessee we decided to go to Running Water, a sanctuary situated on the side of Roan Mountain in North Carolina. We stopped off in Asheville to meet briefly with Ron Lambe who was one of the off-land stewards of the place. Strangely, we learned that we would have this sanctuary to ourselves as well.

After the existential shock of the scene had worn off, we decided to visit a couple of neighbors that Ron had said were friendly and kept an eye on the place. We were not really prepared for this as we walked up to the trailer complex. Sitting under a tin roof were May and Stokes. As I recall, they were shelling out some beans as we approached and as we introduced ourselves and could just barely understand every third word in their reply, we understood we were entering deep mountain culture.

Top: Lost on Roan Mountain behind Running Water. Bottom: On the way to Fairy Stone State Park. Photos by Gary Plouff..

Stokes was tall and stately in his worn denim overalls with eyes like Nobody’s only bigger and older.

Someone told us that when the Faeries were gathering up on the mountain, Stokes would stand on the perimeter and watch the naked city boys making love by the creek. May was tiny beside Stokes, and wore a cobbler’s apron and a smile that helped us both relax and feel like we were safe with them. After a lot of intense listening and deciphering, we learned from Stokes that we were in luck; we had arrived at the height of the ramp season. Ramps are in the lily family and are like a wild garlic/onion. He kindly told us where we could gather the ramps down by the creek and so off we went to gather dinner, ignoring Stokes warning of not eating too many cause they will put you to sleep. Having always felt passionate about wild food gathering, this felt like a gift from the mountain gods and goddesses and so Gary and I set to gathering a “mess” of the gorgeous ramps.

Back at the sanctuary with Nobody we began making dinner, preparing the ramps as May had suggested; we fried them up with some sliced potatoes. The aroma was tantalizing. We were hungry and ate and ate until the entire pan was gone. The next thing either of us can remember is that we slept for 14 hours and woke up heavy lidded with a new respect for Stokes’s herbal wisdom. After the ramp fog had partially lifted, we decided to hike to the top of Roan Mountain. With no map or compass and only a vague idea that we were headed up, we got completely lost and ended up just heading down certain that we would eventually find a road. Barely keeping panic in check, we were graced by the sight of a field of blooming wild flowers with a beautiful horse grazing serenely. Beauty turned to terror as we realized we were trespassing into someone’s backyard complete with wrecked cars, old washing machines and a very hungry looking barking dog. Looking on the bright side this did mean that we were close to a road and so managed to reach it without much trouble giving the dog and his appliance museum a wide berth.

Once on the road we began to hitch a ride to a place we didn’t know how to get to or describe. Truck after truck with men and full gun racks passed us by. Finally a woman with a young child on board stopped and gave us directions to “Ron Lambe’s Place”. She looked at us and said,”Jesus wouldn’t have left you boys by the side of the road!’ Ecstatic that we had been so sweetly saved by Jesus and his emissary , we found our way home to Running Water, the other Faerie Stones and Nobody.

Top: Nobody, the last inhabitant of Running Water. Bottom: Gary and Nobody. Photos by Gary Plouff and Greg LeClair..

Memorial Stones at Running Water – 1990

by Gary Plouff

Gary Plouff documented many of the stones left at Running Water during his visit with Greg LeClair in the spring of 1990. Many of these stones have since been relocated to Short Mountain Sanctuary and some are in private hands. It’s wonderful to show them in their original state and we wish we had the ability to show some of the vivid colors which are painted on them.

In speaking to folks who lived at Running Water, Michael Mason carved many of the stones - it’s unclear who painted them but some assume Michael also painted them. The picture shows many folks tied the Running Water and early RFD circle including Michael Waybaster, one of the earliest AIDS deaths tied to the Running Water community. –RFD Editors

LaSIS, Dennis Melba’son and the Early Fey Days–1975-1984

LaSIS, Dennis Melba’son and the Early Fey Days--1975-1984 by Dimid Hayes

In the fall of 1975, a group of gay men came together in Fayetteville, Arkansas to form the beginning of a radical experiment. The first four were Dennis Melba’son, Charlie Thornton, Michael Oglesby and me. (At that time I was know as Dean, my birth name.) I met Dennis through an ad he had placed in RFD, and Michael and Charlie, both from Louisiana, had met Dennis a few years earlier. The Mulberry Collective, as it came to be known, was named after the street on which they lived, Mulberry Street. For some seven years we four men shared our lives in the deepest ways possible. Working together, playing together, struggling and fighting together we barred our souls and our individual histories to create a shared identity that went on to influence many other men and women in Arkansas, the southeastern region and across the United States.

Dennis Melba’son was clearly a focal point of the collective’s identity. Being 2025 years older than the other members, residing in Mulberry House before any of the others, having a career as a freelance indexer of educational manuscripts and having a very outspoken way with words, Dennis was short, opinionated, educated, traveled and charismatic.

When I first learned of Dennis, from an RFD personal ad in the Summer 1975 issue, he had recently returned from a trip to India and had already generated a reputation among radical Dykes from several major US cities. These women were in and out of Mulberry House as they established “back-to-the-land” rural communities in the Ozark Mountains. They would come into town to clean-up, stock up on supplies, shuttle new arrivals from New York City or San Francisco to and fro, and see what their faggot brothers were up to. Mulberry House was THE center of quear, radical politics for all of Arkansas and probably for most of the southeastern United States at the time.

With this concentrated, unique exposure to the cutting-edge of radical politics, the Collective began a journey of exploration and discovery into personal identity and communal sharing. We pooled monies, slept and ate together, crawled

by Dimid Hayes

and cried through each others’ past histories to discover how we were differently influenced by privilege and hardship. We raised our consciousnesses around Class, Race, Gender and Regional differences. For a 21 year old country boy from Minnesota, having just recently come-out, it was a major awakening, to say the least.

us being SPIES. The first night of the gathering, we were the topic of discussion as to whether we would be allowed to stay. There were the hard-core politicos on the one side and the sissy faction on the other. After much heated debate, the sissies won out and we were allowed to stay. Almost nobody could believe a collective of radical

In the early Spring of 1976, the Mulberry Collective traveled to Iowa to attend a regional Gay and Lesbian Conference. There we met the founders of RFD and shared tales of living in collectives. We then traveled to the “Faggots and Class Struggle Conference” at Wolf Creek Sanctuary in Oregon. This was late summer 1976, I believe. For some reason, our registration had not reached the conference organizers. This being the west coast and it being organized by experienced labor and political activists, we were almost not admitted to the conference for fear of

queers could be coming out of Arkansas. The next day, the Sissies had a workshop of solidarity and when they came back marching and singing, into the center of the camp, Sissy Pride was launched. They weren’t going to be banished to do all the kitchen cooking and clean-up while the “heavies” had their meetings of liberation. This is where we first met Faygele ben Miriam, another quear who’s gone on to be a legend. Faygele was a strong advocate for our being allowed to stay at the conference. Harry Hay and John Burnside had been early planners of this conference,

Through the truck window: Michael Oglesby, Duane, Charlie Thornton. Collection of Michael Oglesby.

but dropped out and did not attend due to political differences with the remaining organizing committee. We would not meet them until the first Radical Faerie Conference in 1979.

I’ve been told that many in the Radical Faerie movement attribute Mulberry House and later, LaSIS: (pronounced laSIS’) Louisiana Sissies in Struggle, with the language “more if you can, less if you can’t and no one will be turned away due to lack of funds,” when paying for gatherings and events. This consciousness to pay what one can, at whatever level that may be, came directly out of these struggles to understand and act on our awareness of our privileges. Some of us had more access to financial and cultural resources either

the “sturm and drang” of the collective. We were resigned, this time, to the idea that that he may have been successful in suicide. He was missing for over two weeks. Then we received a letter from him. He’d made it to New Orleans where he found refuge with some friends of the collective and had gotten a job in the French Quarter, at a gay owned restaurant, as a dish washer. He was writing to let us know he was alive and asked to have some of his things sent to him. I traveled to New Orleans to deliver the items and to see him. Soon after that visit, I decided to move to New Orleans to continue my relationship with Dennis.

By this time there were two other members of the Collective, Stacy (Bob)

on male gender privilege and rape prevention; staffed the New Orleans Rape Crisis phone line; fended off in court two raids on our home on trumped up child-molestation charges (we lived across the street from an elementary school play ground) by the notorious New Orleans Police Department (Dennis and I were both arrested and jailed twice and Stacy once) in one week; we spoke at Tulane University and other educational venues on being gay; did childcare for various lesbian community events, were featured on an ABC Network television documentary “Gays in America;” hosted several faerie gatherings and attended the first ever national Radical Faerie gathering in Benson, Arizona, in 1979; invested in Short Mountain Sanctuary as it was first getting off the ground as a quear space*; started the Sissy Fund, a financial resource that funded several small quear projects around the country; met with Sally Gearhart, a Lesbian/Feminist activist from San Fransisco, who’d heard about our anti-rape activism; protested Anita Bryant when she came to New Orleans with her anti-gay campaign; hosted Faerie gatherings in New Orleans; attended several regional gay men’s gatherings both at Running Water in North Carolina and Short Mountain in Tennessee and hosted a cooperative food buying club.

from family, our education or work skills. It was less of a burden for some than for others. Why not encourage them to pay a little more? Maybe it’s a virtue to shoulder more of the financial burden when one can. This still holds true today.

At one point in late Fall, 1977, the collective’s struggles became very heated and passionate. One morning, Dennis had disappeared after leaving a suicide note. (See the following piece New Orleans, October, 1977 by Dennis.) Several of us went searching for him. Stacy and I found him in a park about a mile from Mulberry House. We begged him to come home with us at which point he only relented after I broke down and started sobbing.

A few months later Dennis again left

Raich and Aurora Corona (David House Speakman). A few months later they too joined Dennis and me in New Orleans. It was sort of agreed by all parties that we (the four in New Orleans,) representing the Middle Class of the Collective, had work we needed to do on our own. We named ourselves, LaSIS: Louisiana Sissies in Struggle. This name clearly captured our mission at the time.

Over the next five years LaSIS was very busy. We founded the Pink Triangle Alliance (the PTA); hosted the first ever Gay Pride event-GayFest, in the French Quarter; participated in anti-racism and prounion rallies with other activist groups; coordinated the features sections of two issues of RFD; wrote several chapbooks

All this, besides all holding down outside jobs (mostly in the restaurant business) we continued to explore the meaning of our lives from the perspective of rooting out unconscious assumptions based on race, class, gender and regional differences. Dennis was the only southerner. I was from Minnesota, Aurora from Kansas and Stacy from the Northeast. At one point Aurora and I had a cleaning service called Quean Cleaners.

In the Fall of 1978 I traveled to Atlanta for the first ever Southeastern Gay and Lesbian Conference. Dennis and I prepared a Bibliography of radical and quear writings and contacts for other activists which I distributed at the conference. It was at this conference that Mikel Wilson, the founder of Running Water in North Carolina invited gay men to join him at Running Water. The first gathering was held there over Summer Solstice, 1978.

It was after the first Radical Faerie Conference in Benson, Arizona in August of 1979, (later they were to be called “gatherings”) that Dennis got the inspiration to crochet the Shawl of Cer-

Dimid Hayes, circa 1973. Collection of Michael Oglesby.

nunnos. He unveiled it and gave it to the larger community at the second national gathering outside of Denver in the late summer of 1980. The Shawl, with Dennis wearing it, appears on the cover of RFD, #22. That issue was coordinated by LaSIS right after the Arizona gathering and contains a great deal of original material from this gathering. It was also during the production of this issue that Harvey Milk was assassinated. The shawl has gone on to have a career of its own, traveling from gathering to gathering, appearing and disappearing over the years. It has come to signify both positively and negatively much of the Radical Faerie movement over the years.

During the New Orleans’ years we had several satellite members coming and going for shorter times. Ron Lambe (one of the founders of the Running Water collective,) Joey Napolitano and Chip LeGrange were three of them.

Dennis has come to receive much attention in the years since the collective’s demise in 1982-83. This is probably due to his writings, strong opinions, personal charm and his gift of the Shawl to the Radical Faerie community. Dennis was a lightening rod, both for controversy and for insight. I believe if he were alive today, he would give as much credit to the collective’s stories, struggles, triumphs, and the hard fought synthesis of them, as he would to his own.

Dennis was born Walter Dennis Williams, Jan. 6th, 1933 in Dallas, Texas. He changed his name legally during this time to Dennis Melba’son, to honor his mother Melba Williams. Dennis was found dead on a side walk in the French Quarter on June 21, 1983. He’d fallen and hit his head. It was suspected he may have been mugged because a silver pentangle pendant he always worn was missing. This was never confirmed.

Dennis’ astrological sun sign was Capricorn and on June 21st, 1983 it was a full moon. The moon was in Capricorn. He was exactly 50 years old. I think Dennis would have appreciated all the symbolism in the timing of his death, no matter how he died.

In the fall of 1982, I had left New Orleans to study Herbal Medicine in Santa Fe, NM. Before I left, Dennis and I arranged for me to adopt him as my son, something that was easy to do in Louisiana because of its Napoleonic Codes legal system. We decided to have me adopt him for a couple of reasons.

GRID/HIV case that was misdiagnosed) and Aurora went on to live in New Orleans until he evacuated due to Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of the city. He now lives in his home town of Lawrence, Kansas and I split my time between Santa Fe in the summer months and Truth or Consequences, NM in the winter months.

*In the spring of 1980 I moved to Short Mountain after meeting Milo Pyne, the last remaining resident of a heterosexual commune residing on a pre-civil war homestead on the north side of Short Mountain, an outlier of the Appalachian Mountains. I moved to Short Mountain as a representative of LaSIS and because of my own desire to leave New Orleans. We saw it as a back-up and refuge for ourselves and others, if and when, the current social/economic system collapsed.

One, it countered the age difference of him being 20 years older than me; two, I still maintained my relations with my biological family; three, Dennis had long since severed any ties with his biological family—therefore, the adoption would not interfere with my continuing biological relations nor his non-existing ones. We learned later his parents were both dead, so he had just a remaining sister.

Of the four original LaSIS members: Dennis died in the summer of 1983, Stacy died later that year of spinal meningitis (although, it’s likely it was an early

Milo had recently come-out and was looking for kindred spirits to join him in re-settling the land. I was one of seven gay men and one lesbian, who heard Milo’s call to establish a rural, land-based sanctuary for quears. Those early members were myself, Milo, Cathy Hope from Atlanta, John Greenwall, Pearl, Crazy Owl, and a couple from New York City, Jerry and David. We called ourselves, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. That spring we held the first quear May Day festival. About 50 folks attended. At the end of the weekend, we all climbed up on a scaffolding-like structure on the great knoll to take pictures. With all our weight on it, it collapsed, injuring several. One person was taken to the hospital, but, thank goddess, no one was hurt seriously. It was a most climactic and un-forgettable first weekend of a now long tradition of community celebrations held at Short Mountain

Dimid Hayes, circa 1976. Collection of Michael Oglesby.

Dennis Melba’son Diary

by Dennis Melba’son

May 26, 1977–Thursday

Who knows where this will go, how long it will last, or when it will end? I haven’t tried keeping a diary or Journal since I was eight or nine years old. I had a dime store diary then (with a lock, as I recall), but my mother read in it where I confessed that I wished Mrs. Pillow where my mother. I was punished, and that’s the last time I ever attempted to put my private thoughts down on paper.

I am now 44... And a week and two days ago I came within 30 minutes of committing suicide. If the Goddess had not sent Dean (and Bob) along the route I was walking, I’d be dead. And now, nine days later, what to think about all that?

A part of me is half regretful that I was stopped. A larger part, however, is grateful-sometimes ruefully grateful, albeit, I know I’m loved, and it scares (the) hell out of me. It means I have the responsibility to look back, and I don’t know whether not I’m capable of Lifeon-the-line kind of love that Dean gave me that night. I am so fucking selfish! Today was a minor case in point.

The last week has been one of chaos and upheaval. The middle-class (Bob, Dean, me) was asked by the workingclass (Charlie, Duane, Michael) to move out of Mulberry House because we cannot get our shit together and change enough to stop oppressing them. The search for a house or apartment began, and of course with our lack of collective consciousness was managed individually rather than collectively-even though we tried ( or, rather, Dean tried, since, willy-nilly, he understands more of what they’re saying than either Bob or me).

We rented this House (316 Watson St.) last Sunday, the same day the working-class faggots discovered 40 acres in Madison County for $3,000, which, if we buy it, but take practically every cent the collective has saved. The question then became a practical one of whether the collective, no matter how difficult it was for all six of us to live together because of our lack of class consciousness, could

afford at this time to buy land and maintain two separate residences. Eventually, because of the collective’s responsibility to the prisoner Kelly, it was decided to rent the Watson Street house.

I was relieved, to say the least. The pressures on me since last October, and my inability to grasp what was happening and understand the changes required of me, eventually led to last week’s breakdown. Charlie and Michael’s (and now Duane’s) resentment of me because of past and present pains and cruelties is so great that my very presence at Mulberry House is a constant irritant. I have

the depressive task of dealing with Bob’s middle-class money consciousness. Later Bob and I did some shopping and got the phone turned on, while Dean bought cleaning supplies. When we return, Dean was here and obviously depressed, which I ignored. The money problem was again brought up, and again I copped out, leaving Dean to fight with Bob even though I could see he was already low and exhausted. Finally, Dean went off to Mulberry House which (he would have never been asked to leave if it hadn’t been for me), Bob went back to work, and I went off to do laundry and shoplift this Journal.

I woke up today subconsciously knowing that I would not have to deal today with either Mulberry House or the working-class faggots. I woke up selfish, and selfish I’ve remained so far, no amount of internal finger shaking has been able to blast me out of myself. And now Dean has just walked in and I must somehow make amends.

Later the same

O! please, GREAT Mother, don’t let this day be an omen, a presentiment of days to come and be recorded in this journal.

The day ended as badly as it beganindeed, some worse. At least this morning Dean and I were speaking. By the end we were shouting-and then silence.

never in my life felt so helpless, so weakand my dependence on Dean these past nine days is draining him dry.

So what happened today? It began with my sleeping very late (noon). I made a pot of coffee on arising, and then Dean came in from turning over our miniscule flower beds in order to plant vegetables. He offered to make us some French toast (bob was at work), and when the first batch was ready I set a place for myself at the table without considering him. He called me on my thoughtlessness, and in true form I got defensive, claiming grogginess from only recently rising.

Bob soon arrived and a discussion ensued about our tangled money situation. I took no part, leaving to Dean

Tried to make amends... Honest I did. And for while that seemed to be working. Or was that, too, an illusion? Like all my other dreams over the years of family and brotherhood and love?

The money meeting went very well I thought (but, then, who am “I”?). Bob finally accepted (or at least paid lip service) that the remainder of the money borrowed to set the middle-class up in House keeping should be sequestered and touched only in dire emergency. The issue of paying it back, as usual, devolves on me and my so-called rich “friends.” But that issue, tonight, was tacitly tabled by common and relieved consent. The budget was worked out surprisingly easily and agreed to; even the food stamp allotment (a thorny issue for Bob, your basic overstuffed Jew -

I woke up today subconsciously knowing that I would not have to deal today with either Mulberry House or the working-class faggots. I woke up selfish, and selfish I’ve remained so far, no amount of internal finger shaking has been able to blast me out of myself.

ish male child) was settled. Then came Reality Time. I tried dealing honestly with Bob-never easy task for me because he is so imminently ignorable. he wants it that way 90 percent of the time, and I fear I’m easily too willing to oblige. But of course that’s a disaster for all of us-particularly Dean, who has forgotten (Goddess bless him!,) how to ignore people. I tried to tell Bob some of the things I don’t trust in him, trying also to share the criticism I was offering by pointing out that I don’t trust the same things in myself: selfishness, not being open with one’s feelings, middle-class politeness-the usual conditioned shit. I doubt he heard much, but then he rarely does. (Do I ever hear more?)

Then we began to discuss things left to bring over from Mulberry House, and it was pointed out that the things I wanted (at least the things mentioned tonight!)-a wooden table, swivel chair, and desk lamp- would constitute most of my” possessions” from the back room........ That infamous back room of Mulberry House which seems inextricably associated in everyone’s mind (and thus resented) with me. I tried to say that those were items I needed to index, and was justly criticized by Dean for being individual and thinking of the indexes as solely my responsibility-which until now they always have been. ( and I’m still not sure they will be in the future as well, but I hope I’m open to change and at this point, from my experience in the past year, doesn’t make me overly sanguine. ) I thought I copped to Dean’s criticism, but I guess I didn’t beat my breast strong enough to draw the requisite pint (quart?) of blood or scream mea culpa loudly enough to raise the 13 martyred faggots needed to form a coven that could grant me exculpation for the heinous crime of thinking “ individually” about a middle-class resource that no one wants to sully their purely calloused working-class hands with, because when I finally said that I, personally, could do without the desk and chair but that because of my eyes would hold out for the lamp-the” personally” was all that Dean would hear. I could fucking will go blind as far as he was concerned, as long as I did it collectively and not individually.

But this time we were screaming at each other and Bob, of course, had

dropped out of the “ discussion.” he managed to stick his foot back in my mouth again, however, by introducing into our midst a small Sicilian chotchka I brought back from Europe eightfuckingteen years ago, which immediately reminded Dean, who has learned his lessons fairly well from Charlie, the lamb not expected to have had any life prior to two years ago. Inevitably the Tibetan rugs-the latest symbol and the Let’s Dump on Dennis Campaign-arose, and with that our voices and tempers and then the crashing silence that drowns out our love for each other.

How much longer can that love endure.. Nay, how much longer can Dean endure being torn between me and Bobwho relate only to him but not to each other-and Me and Mulberry House-ditto? how much longer am I going to put him in that position? How much longer will he put up with it? How long, Dear goddess how long? I love him too much to drain his energy the way I’m doing now, and yet every time, it seems, that I try to “ take responsibility” (our latest sibboleth (sic)) it backfires. I don’t know how to “ take responsibility” with Mulberry House because I don’t feel any change on my part-short of getting out-is wanted or would be recognized. I am too convenient a whipping boy for them at this point, and it seems to be a deplorable fact of history that every in group needs someone “ outside” on which to dump their fears and frustrations and resentments. I fulfill that role, seemingly, for Mulberry House... And somewhere that’s OK too. Perhaps I deserve it ( my karma, as ‘twere) for being selfish and falsely cruel. Perhaps I need a taste of what I so unconsciously dished out to my working-class brothers in the past. I can accept that. It hurts, but I can accept it. “ Fair’s fair,” as the Liberals say. But what I cannot accept is for Dean to be caught in the middle and to be torn apart by forces not of his making. That is not fair!

One thing I can do it is try to “ take responsibility” (Jeeeeezus! If only any of us knew what the fuck that phrase means) with Bob. (but I tried to do that tonight and look what happened.... ) Frankly, though, I don’t think any amount of “ taking responsibility” with Bob is an enemy and a great deal because I don’t think either Dean or I ( though we never say so out loud) hold out much hope for

Bob’s changing anytime soon-if ever. (Naturally, the same could be said of me as well, which is yet another reason why Bob and I don’t trust each other and why Dean and Mulberry House don’t trust either of us.) And besides,” taking responsibility” with Bob, while important, is not high priority with Dean, whose heart lies in Mulberry House, not on Watson St. Bob will hang out and put up with my nagging as long as he can get Dean in bed occasionally— he knows that as well as I do. The most that my “taking responsibility” with Bob could accomplish would be to take off Dean the pressure of a minor irritant. If I can do that for him, I want to try. But it won’t touch the heart of the problem, which is Mulberry House and me, with Dean in the middle.

Perhaps this testing time on Watson Street will serve to give me some experience of what “ taking responsibility” really means. Perhaps my pessimistic view of Bob is not really important. Perhaps what is important is that I learn what it means to deal with an oppressor (Bob and our shared middle-class conditioning). Perhaps how much I succeed or fail in taking responsibility with Bob will be a true measure of how much I succeed or fail with myself. Perhaps...

Also, of course, perhaps I’m getting carried away here, for Bob is a pretty thin thread upon which to hang my lifeline. But would I really be basing the measure of my (hopefully) changing consciousness on Bob? Would not, perhaps, the true measure be not how much Bob has changed, but how much I have changed?

This first day’s entry began with a question... perhaps it’s only “ fair” that it end with one. Good night, Sweet Mother, and please watch over Dean.

The identity of the prisoner and his mother mentioned in these letters has been changed.

Nov. 28, 1979

Dear Danny,

I’m a part of the collective now putting out the Winter ’79 issue of RFD. Well, to say I’m “part of the collective“ is not strictly accurate. I’m doing most of the typing. And today I typed your note. What struck me was your interest in hearing from Gay men over 40. In my experience, that’s rare.

I’m a waiter in a popular restaurant in New Orleans’ French Quarter. I am 47 (on January 6, 1980) and until recently have been living in a gay collective called LA-S-I-S (pronounced la SIS). I withdrew from the collective over issues of ageism, though we continue to come together around such issues as the forthcoming RFD. It’s very hard for younger brothers to understand me sometimes, especially the degree of sexual frustration I so often feel around younger gay men.

I’d like very much to write you.

w/caring, DM

Monday, Dec. 3rd

Dear Dennis;

I received your letter today and was pleased that you took the time to write me. Thanks.

I can understand your puzzlement by my desire to hear from gay men of 40 or more. As a matter of fact I hadn’t thought of the reaction it might cause. I’ll explain the best I’m able. In my experiences I’ve found that younger men as a whole, are emotionally unstable, too fickle and with my obvious other problems, I’m just not into dealing with that scene. On the other hand older men, if given love and understanding are sincere and honest. And I find older men very attractive (if not out of shape too much). I could list a number of reasons why I prefer to hear from older fellows. I’m not sure I understand myself, what you mean, by the degree of sexual frustration you often feel around younger gay men.

Let’s see, as you know I’m doing time,

Letters to Danny

by Dennis Melba’son

serving a 5-15 year sentence for drugs. I go up for parole in about one year and plan on leaving Ohio when I’m released. I had been attending college in here, until a couple of months ago. I’m in isolation at present, hope to be out of isolation by Christmas. At this time I’m not involved in anything.

I had been working on a couple of projects, but lack of equipment forced me to postpone them.

I’m not sure exactly what the ad read, so I’m 26 (on Dec. 20th) and in music, sports and have a strong desire to get into metaphysics.

And finally, I would definitely enjoy writing you.

Be Strong, Danny P.S. Excuse my penmanship, it leaves a lot to be desired.

Dec. 12, 1979, Tues. nite

Dear Danny,

It was good to hear from you and to learn that you want to write me. I’ll try to explain what I mean about the degree of sexual frustration I often feel around younger gay men.

One of the great joys of being Gay is that we deal with each other as total beings—a total being that includes sexuality. We look upon each other as sexual beings. Too often that’s all we see: Is he pretty/handsome/macho/hung/etc/etc/ etc? Apart from my work, where 90% of my co-workers are Gay men, and the couple bars I hang out in after work, most of the Gay men in my life are fairly politically aware. For several years my life has been involved in one way or another in The Gay Movement, sometimes on a personal level and other times

The five of us at Mulberry House circa 1976. Front Row: Dimid Hayes, Dennis Melba’son. Second Row: Michael Oglesby, Charlie Thornton, Carlotta (Jack). Eating strawberries. Collection of Michael Oglesby.

in community work. For the past two years in New Orleans my life has been intensely political, so much so that the police tried to trump up a child-molestation charge against two of the four of us who lived together. We fought them in the courts for 4 ½ months and won. But the struggle exhausted us as a collective. I am now living apart.

In all this time—these years of going to Gay conferences and helping to publish Gay magazines, marching and organizing, it has been my experience that the Gay Movement does not speak to the emotional and sexual needs of older Gay men. I cannot honestly blame my younger brothers for not answering my needs. The truth is, I do not always know myself what my needs are. Like most people growing older in this society, I have unconsciously learned to ask for less and accept gratefully any notice that falls my way. That’s not what I want for myself. And that’s not what I want for my brothers as they grow older. That’s not the kind of world I want Gay people to live in. And that’s why I’m living alone now: to discover for myself what my needs are and learn to speak out quearly and strongly.

And I think it must be somewhere around in here that writing you comes in. Perhaps by exploring with you your attraction to older Gay men, I can begin to discover what I have to offer younger brothers in return for my need to have them see me as a sexual being. I am tired as being seen as The Guru, because one doesn’t fuck one’s guru. I’m tired of being seen as a quaint relic of by-gone days, because one doesn’t fuck one’s history teacher. I am tired of being ignored because I remember dreary things like WWII, but have never seen Capt. Kangaroo. I want a suck and be fucked again by Gay men who enjoy getting down and getting it on.

The problem here is that I don’t fit anyone’s programmed sexual images. I’m 47, and that says allot. I don’t suppose I’m a total turkey, and neither am I anyone’s vision of the All American Male. I’m small: 5’4”, which means my movements have a tendency to be more graceful than aggressive. My brown hair is liberally laced with gray and a bald spot if beginning to appear at the crown. (Luckily, I can’t see it yet, except when I look in a double mirror.) I am clean shaven and wear gold wire-rimmed bifocals.

I also wear, even at work, six small stud type earrings, three in each ear: a globe, a star and a crescent–all symbols sacred to the Goddess.

My father and I never got along too well and he had a paunch, which developed in me a phobia about “fat.” I keep trying to overcome this lookism of mine, but it’s real hard. As a consequence, however, I also have a phobia about keeping my own stomach as flat as age will allow. I do this by eating little, taking tons of vitamins, and walking at least three miles a night four times a week when I work. I guess you could call my body “firm,” but “shapely” would probably be going too far.

feelings about writhing older fellows. As a matter of fact, I’d like to here as much about you as you feel good about sharing with me. I don’t want to pry. But of course, I’m curious about what you look like—how you see yourself. (I think there’s a pix of me in the next RFD. I’ll see you get a copy.) I have a thousand questions. What you were studying in college? What projects you postponed for lack of equipment (and can I help?) What or who got you into isolation (even though it’s none of my business)? What kind of music you like? What sports? What do you mean by having “a strong desire to get into metaphysics?”—and on and on.

But what I really want to hear about is your inner life: What your needs are, what you’re feeling and thinking. It’s by building up trust enough to share our inner lives that we come to know each other. And it’s by sharing our bodies and souls that we come to love each other. Gay people are the only humans I know who are capable of doing this. I want to live for a world where everyone can do it.

Growing Stronger, D

P.S. Thanks you for the Walt Whitman picture and the poem on back. I treasure both. The picture now sits on the lamp by my bed. I particularly like the line about the Manhattanese who kisses him. I lived 16 years in NYC (Whitman lived in Brooklyn,) and it’s been a long time since I’ve been kissed by a NY boy.

P.P.S. Your penmanship is just fine. Let’s see more of it!

My cock has always been a source of embarrassment and anxiety to me. I am neither large nor very round. A slender 5 ½” and there you have it. When I was in high school, gym class was daily hell for me. And today a night at the baths can be a series of frustrating rejections. Occasionally, I’ll connect with someone who is really into fucking and who, while not ignoring my cock, also gets into my shapely buns. (I do have shapely buns.) Those nights are heaven and very rare. Usually when he realizes that what he thought was a boy’s body has a 47-yearold mind inside it, he freaks out and splits.

Does this explain what I mean by feeling sexual frustration around younger gay men? I’d like to hear more of your

P.P.P.S. Enclosed are some of our newsletters. The ABC-TV documentary on us will be shown next Thurs., Dec. 18, at 10:00 EST (9:00 CST). The “Sissie” and “Faggot” pieces were written for our P-T-A table at this year’s GayPride celebration after our local gay paper, Impact, refused to let us use those words in our monthly column. The other two are about the trials.

P.P.P.P.S. Happy Birthday next Thursday!

Saturday, Dec. 15th

Hi Dennis, Got your letter today, good to hear from you again…….

Let me get some of your questions out of the way. I’ll start with my appearance. I’m six feet tall and weigh around

Dennis crocheting The Shawl in the back of SissyBus. Collection of Michael Oglesby.

175 lbs., medium build. I’ve got a well developed chest and I too have shapely buns (they can be a hassle in here, more on that later.) My hair is thick dark brown and with large waves (just part way over my ears) and I wear a mustache. My eyes are brown with flecks of green. I don’t wear any jewelry except a choker occasionally.

Something really important for you to know about me is that I’m just now (recently) becoming aware or rather excepting my sexuality. I’ve got a lot of fears (of course) and I’m sure that my present environment magnifies those fears and not without merit. I’ll try and clarify that. I don’t know what your knowledge of prison life is so I’ll assume that you know nothing about it.

It’s not a safe life in prison for anyone, for a gay it is even less safe (that’s an understatement.) The reasons are many. Off the top it lowers your chances for parole and one becomes subject to abuse from guards and prisoners alike, such as beatings from g. or p., rapes and even being sold. No, I haven’t come out and I don’t intend to while I’m incarcerated. Disappointed? While I’m at it, all of the mail is censored here, so I’ll ask you to please be discreet, pictures and such. That is if you still intend to correspond with me after my disclosure.

One to a lighter topic! School, I had been studying business administration. I was trying to be practical, and in the process, I was being impractical. I’m just not the type, not cut out for business. I feel that I’m too much of a free spirit for it. More of the philosophical type person. I suppose that’s what I meant or where I was coming from when I wrote that I had a strong desire to get into metaphysics. I have a tendency to be drawn to things I have difficulty explaining. And that covers a lot of ground.

Music? I like music period, of course I’ve got preferences. I like allot of music from the late 60’s and early 70’s, such as old “Traffic”, old “Fleetwood Mac” and Simon and Garfunkel. And lately I’ve been getting into what I think is termed “fusion”, jazz-rock. I’m limited to what I hear (######). What are you into?

I mess around in lots of different sports. Football, tackle not touch, I play cornerback. Softball, anywhere in the outfield, I’m a place hitter. Swimming, bicycling, handball. And I lift weights some. I’m not a muscle freak though.

Lately, I’ve slowed down a lot though, not due to anything physical, it’s mental. It’s hard for me to get motivated in here.

The projects I mentioned are a couple of booklets that I’m trying to put together. One is a football betting system that I’ve worked out, and tested this season. It works well enuff to sell. And the other one is some unusual recipes that I’ve scraped together. I’ve got all the data. The equipment I spoke of isn’t much, just a typewriter, paper and paper cutter. And no, I can’t ask you to help. I do appreciate the offer though.

I’m in isolation for some really crazy bullshit. I had a cellie (cell partner) (straight) when I was in population. Alright now back in August (the 29th) he received a package. Well, he didn’t actually receive it because the mail office personel (sic) found an oz. of grass stash inside of a clock that was in the package. Well they question him about it and evidently he told them that I had tried to set him up. Now his claim isn’t too unusual for this place. What laid me out was that they believed his story, so I ended up in isolation and he walked! I think what helped him convince them was the fact that he was to have a parole hearing in the near future (and he wouldn’t risk a bust at a time like that, dig?) Oddly enough I’m not bitter about it. I’ve had plenty of time to get my head straight, not that it’s straight, just more so.

You sound like my type, from your letter, of course that could be because I want you to be my type, which is or which isn’t. I’m not into the macho thing at all. And I don’t like loud people, ignorance turns me off although I’m not “the” intellectual by a long shot! I’m an ass man so you’re in! Age, well, if it’s carried well doesn’t matter to me at all. My impression of you is that you carry it well. Am I right? Be honest. And I could dig getting into your “shapely” buns, could I!

Got to be cool what I write, or I’d elaborate for you. A thought just struck me. Are you writing me to have me write you hot and nasty letters? If so I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. I dig guys that are gently maybe passive yet not feminine. Do you begin to see what my type is?

I just realized that I’ve written a bunch of nothing. Haven’t let you see me (or have I?) I’ve built a wall around my feelings in here as protection I suppose. So it might take me awhile to open up.

Can you bear with me? I hope so.

Merry Christmas, Fondly, Danny

P.S. Thanks for the happy birthday. The same to you on the 6th.

P.P.S. What or who is the goddess? Excuse my ignorance.

Dec. 29, 1979, Saturday

Dear Danny,

Sorry for the delay in answering you. The restaurant closed last Sunday (Dec. 23) for nine days. Since three of us work in the same place (one as a cook, one a dishwasher and me a waiter) and the forth was able to get off his cooking job in another restaurant, we took off for five days to visit faggot friends who live in the mountains of Tennessee. I nearly froze my shapely buns off and it was worth it! Even brown and gray with winter, the countryside is so beautiful. While there we worked out a plan for us to send them a percentage of our income for buying building supplies. We all think that within the next few years the cities are gonna collapse. And when that happens we want there to be a place where faggot culture and fairy magick will survive the holocaust.

But enough of gloom and doom! What a somber way to begin the last letter of 1979 to my new friend of the 80’s— Danny Fast.

Your letter raises many questions— all of which I have to ask myself rather then you. Am I writing you in order to receive hot and nasty letters? I don’t know, Danny. I don’t think so, yet in all honesty, my loins begin to tingle when I read your self-description and I get a hard on when you said you were an assman and would like to get into my buns. I’m getting a hard-on now as I write, just thinking about it! Yet it isn’t just the thought of a hard cock up my ass that turns me on (I could always buy a dildo), but the thought of sharing bodies with Danny whom I’m just beginning to know. That turns me on!

I fully appreciate your reasons for not coming out while in prison. I know something of jails—civil rights, antiwar and gay protest days—but very little from personal experience about prisons. I read a lot of gay prisoner newsletters, however, and corresponded and sent financial help to the MAS group in Washington before they got locked down. So,

I’m not totally ignorant about what it’s like to be an out front gay in prison. For me, it would be suicide. And yet I would have no choice. I’d be branded immediately (as I was last May when we were arrested here in NO) because of m sixe and the softness of my gestures. And that’s part of the reason I’m writing you. It is a very real possibility that I may end up in prison someday because I’m such an out front faggot. Last Tues., Dec. 18th I was seen in millions of American homes on national television saying some pretty outrageous things. So I don’t blame you at all for not coming out in prison.

Are you sure about the censorship? I thought the Gay Lawyers Guild and the ACLU won that battle a long time ago. They have the right to open mail and search for contraband, but they have no right to read or censor a prisoner’s mail. It that’s actually happening in Louisville, then someone needs to know about it. On the other hand, I respect your need for me to be discreet. They always have the power to shake down your cell and read personal mail. Anything I said that would reveal your sexuality could get you in trouble. It’s happened before. And perhaps that’s what I need to talk about.

I’ve been writing to gay prisoners off and on for about 8-9 years. Most of the correspondence has dribbled off into nothingness, or else ended abruptly on a note of anger or disappointment. When I look back over those years, I see now that I was writing out of frustration. I was never able to be honest with myself then, so of course I was unconsciously dishonest with the men as well. I’m trying not to make that mistake with you, Danny. I’m trying to be honest with both of us. It ain’t easy!

There’s a part of me that says, “Yes! Yes! Yes! Write me hot and nasty letters!!!!” That’s not only dangerous of course, but also stupid. Speaking for myself, I want more from our friendship then jack-off letters. And yet, if what you say about censorship is true, it’s gonna be very difficult for each of us to come-out to the other about our sexuality. If you felt good about sharing with me, I’d like to hear more about your growing awareness of a Gay identity. I understand the need for protective walls around your feelings, however. Without those walls you wouldn’t survive. And survival is the name of the game!

You say that age doesn’t matter to you

if it’s “carried well.” I’m not sure what you mean by that: Do I “carry” my age well? Hmmm……… I don’t know. I don’t “look” 47, if that’s what you mean. I look to be in my early to mid 30’s. But when I open my mouth—and I do open my mouth a lot!-the illusion vanishes. I am 47. I have the experience and the knowledge and the visions of a Gay survivor. I went thru the witch hunts of the McCarthy years… and being told my struggle for freedom wasn’t important during the civil rights and anti-war years…..and on into 10 years of Gay movement work. I have numbers of friends and admirers and not a few enemies––but no one wants to fuck me. I wish it hell I knew why! It has something to do with images……how we see each other as sexual beings. Some people look on me as a font of endless knowledge (most of it worthless). Others admire my grasp of history (did you know that Queen Anne had 17 miscarriages?). Others want to hear stories about Gay shamans and the Gods and Goddesses who have always been sacred to Gay people. But when bedtime comes, they hug me warmly, kiss me tenderly, and go off to bed…..with each other. I am many things to many people, but I am a sexual image to no one.

And perhaps here we come to the core of why I’m writing you. Somewhere I want to be seen again as a sexual being. I want someone to love me sexually. Of course I want him to love me many other ways as well, as I would hope to love him. I am not looking for a “marriage” or everlasting fidelity. I am looking for someone who can look at me and say “Yes, you do have a certain kind of knowledge, and yes, you do have some (not in fallible) wisdom, and yes, I can share your visions of a world freed from oppression––and now let’s go to bed and fuck!” If that’s what I’m looking for, then why the hell am I looking in prison? Now that’s a good question, Dennis. What’s the answer?

Maybe part of why I’m writing you, Danny, is that I think (perhaps wrongly) that across a bridge of sexual loneliness we can reach out and teach each other. I’m not sure I even know what I mean by that. It’s probably that we do not feel sexual loneliness in the same way. Or more likely, that your survival has dictated a way for you to deal with it. Out here in the “free” world, I am not dealing with it very well. (Is that what you mean by “carrying” one’s age? If so, I just dropped

it!) I’m getting very confused here and beginning to babble. I’m also afraid that I might be turning you off. I too have protective walls……….

Well, enough sexuality for one letter. There are other things in life!

School. I lasted one semester in business administration. In return for paying my room rent when I first went off to college, I agreed to major in Business Admin. Instead of the English/Drama major I wanted. After one semester I told my father to take his room rent and shove it. Since I’d worked to pay for tuition and books, I would take another job to pay for my room. So I fully sympathize with you. Metaphysics, however, is such a broad topic I don’t know where to begin. After a year living with the Tibetans in India, I got heavily into Buddhist philosophy at one time. Past Plato, Western philosophy has always bored me. I spent a bunch of years exploring Western and Eastern Religions. But the thing that really did it for me was discovering Gay history. It was there I found the affirmation of my sexuality and respect for the Goddess figures of the past. In every known culture, past and present, where the female image is respected and revered, there is an honored place in that society for Gay people. I could go on and on about this and probably bore you to tears. Are you allowed to receive books? Must they come from the publisher? Or can I get a local bookstore to mail them to you? Can I mail them? What books would you like?

Music. Yes, well, I have to admit that when I’m alone I listen to classical music, particularly opera. I know that makes me a quear among the quears, but there you have it. I love the sound of the human voice. When other people are around, however, I enjoy whatever music comes my way except for progressive jazz. I don’t know why, but jazz doesn’t speak to me. Now the blues! Bessie Smith rocks my soul!

Sports. You have to understand, I was very small as a child growing up in Texas where all boys are expected to be six feet tall. I also wore glasses from the age of four, and during the Depression my family couldn’t afford to replace broken lenses (this is before plastic, remember.) And besides being a bookworm, I was a Sissie. I enjoyed playing with the little girls because they didn’t knock each other around. I never wanted to knock other

boys around. I wanted to love them and touch their cocks. I haven’t changed a bit.

Isolation. Did they let you out by Christmas? Of course I’m glad (sort of) that the other guy walked. But will taking his rap hurt your chances for parole?

Projects. I think I can afford a second typewriter and some paper for you. But would they let you have them? Perhaps the prison chaplain could be of some help here. Which brings us around to the idea of help? How can I help you? How can you help me? How can we help each other? No answers….yet. As you said, it might take a while to open up. Shall we keep trying? I’d like to.

w/ Courage for the 80’s and Fondest thoughts for you, Dennis

P.S.–-Our advance copies of RFD still haven’t come. Will send you one as soon as they arrive. Any problem about getting it through to you?

P.P.S.—Any other things you need that I might be able to help with?

P.P.P.S.–-Perhaps before this gets in the mail I’ll break down and get a photobooth pix made of me. That should end our correspondence abruptly. Sexual image……indeed!

Dennis

Jan. 3rd, Thursday

Dear Dennis,

You write a fine letter. Your coming through loud and clear. I like you a lot Dennis. We’ll be friends no doubt about that. And I like the pictures of yourself. Yeah, I like ‘em! I’ll work on getting one of myself (it’ll be awhile).

Yes I made it out of isolation before X-mas. Got out the 21st. Although I’m still not back out in general population. I’m in a holding block waiting to be released to pop. Hopefully, the 7th of this month.

Yeah sweetness I’m sure that they censor my mail. I know that they have no right to censor a prisoner’s mail continuously. Here’s how they get around it, if they don’t mention no one is the wiser. If they happen across something they desire to use against a prisoner they claim that they censor a certain portion of said mail because said inmate was believed to be a threat to security. And of course your right about them shaking down a cell and busting a person

that way. I feel that it would be next to impossible to claim my civil rights concerning certain matters in here. Some things are just too vague! Enough of this–––––––

What I meant by carrying your age well was “mostly” concerning looks and you look younger than 47 for sure. I suppose a touch of what I meant would fall on where your heads at, and from your few letters I feel you’ve got a good head. Ah yes! Your wrong when you say no one wants to fuck you–––––––––. I think I know where your coming from though when you talk about “images.” A man desires something due to realization of certain ideals (images) in or about the “object.” So I apparently have seen in you one or more of my ideals to form an image that is desirable. What do you think? I guess that’s why I’m an ass man! And Dennis maybe I can help you answer a few questions like why your looking in prison for a lover and friend. I won’t be here forever and if we happen to hit a spark of passion it’s a sure bet I’ll carry it out of here with me. To who? You! Who am I writing, you! Let me assure you of something that I already know about you. You’ve got a good sense of humor, witty, intelligent and not bad looking at all! What the fuck! I really can’t understand either why on one (out there) wants to fuck you. Just a thought, but maybe the boys that don’t wanna fuck sense an urgency about you and either get scared or turned off. It’s something to think about. Who the hell do I think I am, sorry , I got a little carried away.

Dennis, I would like to hear more about gay history and this Goddess. I’m really ignorant of “myself.” I can honestly say that you won’t bore me with it. And yes, books have to come from a publisher. And that brings me to your flattering generosity. I cannot say yes send this and that! I’ll tell you this, if you want to send a typewriter and paper, I won’t refuse it. I’m not that proud. But you can’t send it to me, it would have to be sent to my mother and have her send it to me (only a member of the family can send things in.) I’ll include her address at the close of this, OK? Please don’t feel this is a request! I feel like hell!

How can you help me? You already have my friend. A letter means that someone cares enough to take time out of their life to write and share that time

with me. You already have my friend. Of course you meant something specific. I’m not sure there, time will tell us. Now how can I possibly help you? When you find the answer to that just ask.

I’m not sure if it’ll cause a hassle or not––a copy of RFD.

Dennis, I want to tell you about my becoming aware of myself. And of a little past experience that I feel played a big part in my life. But I really don’t know how to start. I just don’t feel comfortable and please don’t take offense at that.

Ah––––-let’s see actually I didn’t just become aware of my sexuality in here, more of accepting it. I suppose that I had been aware of it since I was in my teens-17, 18. I moved in with a gay dude a year or two older than me when I was 17. He was a looker! I hadn’t done anything at all up to this point. Well, I’d find myself walking around the apt. naked so he’d see me. Let me add he thought I was straight completely. Well he never approached me, and I never really approached him (damn fool). Instead I let some clown pick me up off the fucking street! I went to his apt. and took a shower with him watching. Then we get in bed. All this fucker wants to do is screw my ass, nothing else, dig? I didn’t let him. I got up and left. And didn’t or haven’t been screwed (sigh) haven’t sucked nothing! I haven’t sucked and I haven’t fucked, and I fantasize like all hell! Yeah, I’m a virgin! And I’m gonna see you when I get out, if it’s alright with you.

That’s just a taste of my action packed sex life as a screaming faggot! Hope this one gets by without them reading it!

I feel spent, excuse me for cutting this short.

I want to thank you for writing very answerable letters. It helps a lot. With thoughts of you,

Danny

Danny Fast 155-458

Box 45699

Lucasville, Ohio, 45699

Mom—

E.L. Fast

XXXX –B Village N. Lane

Dayton, Ohio, 45426

P.S. Promise a more colorful letter next time.

P.P.S. Remember you fit into my images!

New Orleans

Friday-October 7, 1977

I walked out of Mulberry House two days ago carrying a blanket, a quart of water in a plastic jug, and 44 gelatin capsules filled with lye--one for each year. A light rain was falling as I crossed the creek & turned once to say goodbye. I went deep into the woods until I found a huge oak tree with three mushrooms at its base. I sat down, wrapped myself in the blanket, and smoked the last cigarette I’d rolled before leaving the house. I opened the water jug, took a sip, & raised the first of the lye capsules to my lips. Suddenly, the golden mask of Tutankhamen flashed before my eyes, and I knew what I had to do.

The next two days are a haze to me now. A few details stand out: the black truck driver who gave me a ride from Alma to Little Rock and talked of revolution; the two older gay men who gave me a ride into Memphis and cruised truck drivers all the way; the trucker who would give me a ride from northern Mississippi into New Orleans only if I would suck his cock (I did), and who wouldn’t buy me a cup of coffee or give

New Orleans Diary

by Dennis Melba’son

me a cigarette because I had no money. I left everything behind-my reading glasses, my purse, my money, my friends, my lover. I arrived in New Orleans penniless, clutching a worn pink blanket and a leaking plastic water jug. Eventually, after walking for hours through a strange city because they did have 30¢ car fare, I found the Community Food Co-op, where I worked all afternoon for a loaf of bread and a hunk of cheese-the first food I’d eaten since Monday night in McDonalds with David and Dean. In some vague way, I suppose, I was counting on accumulated karma from all the hippies I’d put up over the years and was hoping that someone would put me up ‘til I could find a job and earn enough money to rent a room somewhere. I should have known better: a faggot should never trust hets to return anything. Finally, though I knew that Charlie and Dean would disapprove the political incorrectness of my turning to working-class faggots for help, I called Nic and Terry. Nic answered and immediately came across town, an hour’s journey for him by streetcar, to pick me up and bring me to their home.

Is this an adventure I’ve embarked upon? Or an extended death wish? What

am I doing here? At times during the ride down I would think that perhaps what I’m doing is attempting to shorten the ten years that Chairperson Mao says it takes for intellectuals like me to “fanshen.” But I wondered now if my attempt to experience working class oppression is not just as liberal-and as foolish-as Ralph Ellison’s painting himself with walnut juice in order to experience black oppression. If I washed dishes for the rest of my life, can I ever know Michael’s pain or Charlie’s anger? Perhaps at best I could acquire a deeper analysis and spout a more correct political line, but would that help Duane let go of his resentment and bring our sissies closer together? And what about David? And Dean? How will my actions affect them? And do they even care ( particularly Dean)?

I’ve got to let go of Mulberry House. “Be Here Now,” as Baba Rum Raisin would say. The next task is to find a job and a place to live. Political incorrectness notwithstanding, I cannot stay here. Terry and Nic are very sweet, but like Mulberry House they are too young to understand my pain and I have no right to involve them in it.

Dear goddess! What lies ahead?

Dennis Melba’son along the Mississippi, New Orleans, 1979. Collection Michael Oglesby.

In my dream life I live in a commune in the Northwest. There are many bedrooms, bathrooms, music chambers, and long-haired men. After a certain amount of time there has been an accretion of artifacts collected by the various people who have lived in this purple house. You hardly ever see everyone all at one time because of inter-stellar time clocks that could never be in sync. All I have to do is walk out the door and down a path of daisies to find the coolest café my mind could imagine. This cafe has comfortable, squishy couches, home-made art on the walls, unusual colors, mismatched pine and oak furniture, rickety and stable chairs, and knitted cozies on cupboards. Fantastic light streams through high windows. Groovy posters! No plastic forks and cups, or people!

My neighborhood is the same. Or, I can just sip tea in our own garden with honeybees whizzing around my head. There’s lots of laughter as golden girls traipse in and out, brought here by friends of friends of friends. There is no pressure to do anything but BE YOURSELF.

There is an antique printing press just below the stair, and piles of type and buckets full of rainbow ink neatly stacked on a shelf.

In my dream life I live in a commune of brilliant fops and swells whose finery comes not from ready-mades, and whose poetry is life itself.

The Purple House, this standard dream I dream of day and night: is it past or future or is it now and zen? Could it

The Pansy Test

by Lucius

be an mixture of documentaries somehow? I look back at places I’ve never seen hoping to see them come true. A Utopian time, a conglomerate on the shore of memory, a shoestring of a theory that Times of Yore were best.

The pattern of my bed sheets, most unlike the patchwork of someone’s greatgreat grandmother’s quilt, soothe me in the rare times of moodiness. Mostly, I laze about on these cotton shams and doze, body and soul, in endless repose. My door is always open, my hands at the

cabaret artists, we who live in this house. We spend hours before the gilt mirror until the look is just right. There are wind chimes and mobiles in the air. We have deep discussions about the world we want. We are connected to other communes by the grace of word-of-mouth, garage sales or psychic hunches.

We do put out a monthly magazine; FREE, of course, to any and everyone who lives in communes. We extol the hearth! Our multi-grain raisin surprise is much imitated, yet never rivaled. Why? Because we care. Just as we never till the earth save under the waxing moon, we find our best fermentation is impossible to write up into a recipe.

My next door neighbor wore a full beard for many years, one of those magical beards such as which sprout out only once or twice in a nation, a real oy-yoy-yoy beard with stars and crescents and streamers: but he cut it off. His room has dirt and roots and wilting flowers in it: his new beard.

ready to rustle up two steaming mugs of chamomile tea, which I’ll serve on the bright Butterflies of California tray, and upon which you will remark “how delightfully rare,” as you repose your cares on my many velvet pillows. We’ll sit inside the bay window and peer out at the world.

This is what I want. This, and music,of course. We are all musicians and funky

Yes, we all want to be new. It is this common wish that binds us. We live together when we go to sleep in seamless harmony. We give forever when we row too deeply in dreamless prosody.

These are all his ideas, his verbs and turns of phrase. I saw them set on a poster as it whirled off the printing press. Every house must have its soothsayer, every commune must do its best. Cause if it wish to flourish, it must pass the pansy test.

“Marc” by Paul Specht

Dress-Up

www.redbubble.com/people/BOBBYBABE

Rob’s convivial and hearty photos and portraits are like a fun day playing dress-up. You find the humor and randomness in all his images as he plays with colors, backdrops and props. His love of men in kilts, women with tattoos and everyone in space-gear or body makeup adds to the quirkiness and party-like atmosphere.

Catch his next show in NYC July 7, 5-9PM

LGBT Community Center, 208 W 13th St, Room 210 New York, NY

Rob also shot the front cover and photo on page 41.

“Simple, Honest, Handsome” by Rob Ordonez

Photography by Rob Ordonez

“Oleg and Sabrina” by Rob Ordonez

Jai Drawing Circle

An interview with Jai

Forfolks living around Short Mountain Sanctuary in Tennessee, there is a biweekly drawing circle that has been motivating people to come together to share through their art for eight years now. RFD is interviewing one of its active proponents, Jai Sheronda.

RFD: We’ve been hearing glowing things about the drawing circle for some time now and recently noticed that you’ve been posting some of the drawings from the circle on your Facebook page. How did the drawing circle come about?

Jai: Well, it started in part because my friend Ricky Boscarino was often drawing portraits, and he asked if I wanted to draw. I was reluctant, not feeling I was an artist, but I drew a self-portrait and I liked it. So I started drawing circle as a way to explore drawing as an art while I was living at Short Mountain.

RFD: When did this start up?

Jai: It started in 2002. My intention was to draw a portrait a day from life for a year. I did it as a part of a yogic practice, as a way to transform myself and to share another way of creating Faerie space, heart space that usually would hap pen as a circle.

RFD: What were the early drawing circles like?

Jai: It was a small group at

first, informal, usually in my room at the Mountain. Willie Loeffler joined, others at the sanctuary would pop in, model or take up sketching. We met about 330 days that first year.

RFD: How many people generally come to one of the drawing sessions?

Jai: We’ve been having the circles at my place or at Jackie Bigelow’s lately, We try to meet two times a week these days with two to five folks coming to participate.

RFD: Do you think your proximity to Short Mountain and being part of the large Faerie community in Tennessee makes drawing circle happen so regularly?

Jai: Definitely. It would be difficult anywhere else other than in a sanctuary context. When I was living in New Orleans, I tried to continue the practice of

organizing these circles, and it was very hard being in a city with so many things distracting folks and absorbing one’s time. But recently, I’ve begun to post some of the portraits onto my Facebook page, and it’s opened up conversation to a wider circle of people and it’s been great to hear the feedback and response.

RFD: Well, Jai, thanks to you and the other folks who have been a part of drawing circle, to me it’s a way of documenting our culture in ways in which a heart circle cannot and it’s lovely to see faces that you’ve seen at a gathering, at a heart circle and say to yourself, I know this person. Feeling that immediate connection – of this is my tribe.

Jai: Exactly, and having the shared experience of drawing and creating is so much like breathing, seeing, listening, being together in a very real and intimate

Some of the work from the drawing circle can be seen on Jai’s Sheronda’s Facebook page. If you are interested in learning more please contact Jai at jaisheronda@hotmail.com.

Portraits

“Will” by Paul Specht

Photography by Paul Specht

Paul Specht brings twenty years of experience to portrait, event and fine Art photography. Capturing the intricate emotions is passionately pursued as Paul creatively documents the events and people that contribute to his life.

Paul relishes in the individual, and all their facets. Portrait photography requires a special talent of capturing not only the physical presence, but also the

feelings and emotions of the model in the present–in their life. Creating a visual work that is representative of the subject, and at the same time presents them.

“The images featured here in RFD are all shot with medium format film. Each subject is photographed in a space that is familiar to each subject, creating a history to the image. My goal with each portrait is to create a thought provoking

representation that gives an enduring legacy to each person.”

Paul Specht, Photographer 617-256-3707 / Paul@PaulSpecht.com www.paulspecht.com

Paul also shot the back cover and the portrait on page 29.

“Pedro” by Paul Specht

FaePosium

Photography by Pan

I am currently investigating myth and fantasy through the realms of photography and performance. I am using the hero’s journey as a lens to insert myself into mythic narratives with the intention to create stories that speak about play, process, and transformation. My goal is to subvert conventions of storytelling, such as plot, character, and setting, to invoke in the viewer feelings of wonder and confusion.

Wayne Bund / Pan waynebund.blogspot.com

There is an old pagan belief that the reason one observes the rituals of the wheel of the year is to be reborn at the same time and in the same place as friends. I must have been off by about twenty seven years when I was reborn a second time as a faerie at the first Running Water Gathering in the summer of 1978.

Radical queer men had been coming together for a number of years through the Southeastern Gay Conferences. I was co-chair of the third conference that was held in Atlanta in the spring of 1978. Back then there was a deep divide between gay men and lesbians. The lesbians were furious about the sexism of most gay men and most gay men could have cared less. The few of us that did prevailed at the conference (we had voted with the women to allow women-only workshop space and the mainstream gay men had walked out of the planning and boycotted the conference). Even so the division festered and came to a head when the women exited the final session to caucus leaving the men to caucus by default (we would not have thought to do this on our own). During that caucus, we had a long, deep, and powerful discussion about what it was to be ourselves. Mikel Wilson was there from his mountain top farm in western North Carolina. He was a weaver by trade and wore his own cloth sewn into his own rustic clothing. Long hair and wooden staff gave him the appearance of an Old Testament prophet. He invited us to his farm for the summer solstice weekend and many of us took him up on his offer.

I drove up in the middle of the night with Raven Wolfdancer and Ti Barfield, set up my tent on the rocky slope and after a sleepless night emerged into a morning full of faerie magic. We cooked, we sang, we hung out, we had heart circle after heart circle, we built a sweat lodge, we had sex with each other and transformed each other from ordinary gay men into magical faerie beings. We cried when we left and promised to return, and we did again, and again for over a decade.

Becoming Faerie

by Franklin Abbot

I was lucky to be at the first gatherings at Short Mountain and the first urban gatherings in Atlanta and New Orleans. I went to the national gathering in New Mexico in 1979 and delightful small gatherings in the Ozarks. RFD was central in all of this and had come to the south via Feygele ben Miriam, one of the Wolf Creek originals who relocated back to North Carolina to be with his mother Miriam. RFD passed eventually from Feygele to Ron Lambe who was resident steward and shaman at Running Water and then to Gabby Haze and Sister Soami nee Missionary Position at Short Mountain. It had a long tenure in the South and kept us connected to each other and the land that gave us sanctuary. It is of utmost importance that we give credit to Mother Nature who took us to her bosom and healed us of so much pain and tragedy. The gatherings are as much about the faeries finding each other as they are about nature finding us and teaching us the mysteries of universal love.

I was lucky again to be invited to facilitate the rituals and circles of the first Eurofaerie gathering on Terchelling Island off the coast of the Netherlands. John Ferguson, known by a multitude of ever changing faerie names, was one of the organizers. He wanted to bring the faerie spirit to Europe where he lived at the time (he has since brought faerie spirit to Thailand) and so began the amazing trajectory of the Eurofaeries who now have there own sanctuary at Folterre in France. The Ozfaeries had origins at Running Water and Short Mountain and they have created sanctuary too in Australia. There are many sanctuaries large and small. Short Mountain covers acres and acres. My own back yard is small by comparison but the fey energy here is subtle and strong.

Gay Spirit Visions was born as Running Water dissolved. The farm was too small for gatherings and was sold. The money from the sale seeded the first GSV where I was lucky again to be asked to give one of three keynotes. Harry Hay

and Andrew Ramer gave the other two. The following year James Broughton keynoted and David Sereda performed and it was an honor to present at GSV again this past Fall at the 20th anniversary conference. The conferences are held on Little Scaly Mountain, North Carolina, at a Unitarian retreat center. The mountain has become a sacred place for many. Original faerie and GSV cofounder Raven Wolfdancer’s ashes were scattered from Meditation Rock. What the brothers who gather there know is what all of us lucky enough to know each other know: Faerie magic heals hearts and spirits, ours and those we touch, with our shimmer and our sass. Poetry perhaps says it best. This poem was written after the seventh summer solstice at Running Water:

Franklin Abbott is delighted to be an original Radical Faerie. He lives near Stone Mountain outside Atlanta where he practices psychotherapy. He is Chairfairy of the Atlanta Queer Literary Festival: www.atlqueerlitfest.com . He is author of three anthologies about men and masculinity and two books of poetry. His blog: www.pinkzinnia. wordpress.com.

Seven Cycles: Running Water*

wearing our long wingfeathers as we fly we circle around, we circle around the boundaries of the earth the boundless universe

-- Faerie chant

seven cycles running water is what we hear stream falling over stones joins our laughter a kiss is passed around the circle and we sing for a cloud to cover us to teach us about softness and we dance for the sun to make love with the cloud for golden light to penetrate the mist of gray and circle our circle with a rainbow for we, through seven cycles are lovers of the sky and earth just as we are lovers of each other charging souls and changing hearts we are men on a mountain our feet on the ground what we hear is running water stream falling over stones that laugh and sing like we do above us sun and cloud making love like love we make below and around the circle, around and around we pass a kiss and call our rainbow transformation for we are a radiant change of heart that is a long time overdue

* Running Water Farm on Roan Mountain in North Carolina hosted some of the first gatherings where gay men came together as Radical Faeries.

Franklin Abbott

Mortal Love

Photo by Gary Briggs. Running Water Men’s Gathering AWAITING ID’s

Berdache Boy

by Griffin Payne

He may throw like a girl, But he fucks like a man. Wild, stroking Hands, coarse with callous, through Disheveled strands of black stallion Mane; the sweat, wayward pearls

Pouring from crown to cheeks to chest, down To the cathedral carved Into the contours of rigid hips. His kiss is mist, gentle. Berdache, holy man who makes love

To men, primal and sweet, An old indigenous tradition, Cloaked in the French word for Faggot and reframed into broken Dichotomy. Two-spirit Boys born to be shamans; now, shadowed With shame, exiles outcast

To closets, to caves, to empty deserts. He has been wandering, His eyes closed, his hands tightly folded, And he opens to my touch, to the sensation of warm, moist Breath that condenses and Beads wet necklaces around his nape. The sweat transforms his skin

To slick, mossy slabs of granite: strong, Solid and slippery; And his thighs taste of the tides. Thrusting, The torque of his torso Is taut bowstring tense with pointed length Of an arrow flèched with Feathers. Within him is the ocean. The sweat is salty spray; And, I am swimming him, breathing his Water, whirlpool of flesh, Without shame, diving into deep, dark Mysterious seas, wild With waves of swirling black hair shining Obsidian in bright Moonlight. There is sugar in his step, They say, his wrist is limp, Soft like his shy lisp. His kiss whispers

Hidden strength and his posture speaks shame. Berdache boy stand up!

Answer faggot with fearlessness. Howl Windstorm songs from your heart. Warrior! Teach us your wisdom as we welcome You into the tribe that has always been yours. Berdache boy! We are waiting for you to leap, To swell with courage and immerse yourself within Water.

Moonlight. Tribe. Love.

Your own sacred nature.

May the full moon lift your undulating body into the harbor of my open arms Until you fully become the ebb and the flow of your pulsating heart.

“An Acoma Man” by Edward S. Curtis. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Curtis Collection.

Three Poems

by Glenn Allen Phillips

NOTORIOUS

Last night on the couch, as Bergman and Grant fell irresponsibly into love, I thought about how cold you and I are to one another and how this black and white romance will stay stale and lackluster until you are called to espionage, and I, your ranking official, am thrown into harm’s way. I think it is then you will turn your soft profile to me. It is then that I will hold your head like a globe and press you into me. Oh, where are those meddlesome Germans when you need them?

KISSING

You bit my lip while kissing, and I, none the wiser, bit back, but baby, if I had known you were devouring me, I would have run.

AT ATTENTION

The clothes in my closet hang like thin men at attention. One is wearing my woolen jacket, another my Parisian scarf. They all stand facing the same way. And people wonder why I don’t get sleep.

I don’t even know who the paper soldiers, feet from my head, are saluting.

“Friends” by Rob Ordonez

Continued from page 3

Faeryland

P O Box 495

Nimbin, N.S.W. 2480 02 6689 7070

ozfaeries@yahoo.com www.ozfaeries.com

Folleterre

Ternuay-Melay-et-Saint-Hilaire France info@folleterre.org www.folleterre.org

Gay Spirit Visions

P.O. Box 339 Decatur, GA 30031-0339 info@gayspiritvisions.org www.gayspiritvisions.org

IDA

904 Vickers Hollow Rd

Dowelltown, TN 37059 615-597-4409

idapalooza@gmail.com www.planetida.com

Kawashaway Sanctuary

P.O. Box 581194

Minneapolis, MN 55458 www.kawashaway.org

Midwest Men’s Festival http://www.midwestmensfestival.com/

Nomenus (Wolf Creek Sancturary)

Wolf Creek Sanctuary P.O. Box 312 Wolf Creek, OR 97497 541-866-2678

nomenus@hughes.net www.nomenus.org

Santa Cruz Radical Faeries www.santacruzradicalfaeries.com

Short Mountain Sanctuary

247 Sanctuary Lane Liberty, TN 37095 615-563-4397 Messages only

Starland Yucca Valley CA

www.starlandcommunity.org

Zuni Mountain Sanctuary

P.O. Box 636 Ramah, NM 87321 505-783-4002

zunimtn@wildblue.net www.zms.org

Corrections? Send them to submissions@ rfdmag.org with “corrections” in the subject. Announcements can be sent to the same address. Please be sure to list “announcement” in the subject line!

Drawing by Sigh Moon

Prison Pages

Edited by Myrlin (Harry Vedder)

Well March 10, 2010 has come and gone and my life partner remains in Connecticut with no sign that the powers that be in the prison systems of Connecticut or Tennessee will allow her to come home before end of sentence. Without going over the details shared in previous columns, Trixi is currently awaiting transfer to a half way house in Connecticut. She was just released from the hospital unit and must now deal with diabetes along with everything else. Shortly our readers will be able to follow further developments on Facebook in a group entitled “Free Trixi.’ My heart goes out to all family members of those who are in prison as I have now experienced first hand the trauma that goes with having a relative suddenly go missing for a few weeks within the system. Hopefully I will have better news in the Fall Article.

If you happen to be reading this column for the first time, you may not be aware that RFD Magazine has played an active role in assisting our gay brothers who find themselves in a locked environment almost from its inception over 30 years ago. Initially a listing of short ads appeared in each issue of the magazine. Now with the ever increasing number of ads, these ads are now published separately from the magazine. The ads along with poetry and artwork may be requested by writing Brothers Behind Bars, PO Box 68, Liberty, TN 37095. A donation of $3.00 to $10.00 is requested for a copy of the list. The editors receive well over 100 letters per week and postage mounts up quickly.

In this column it is my attempt to introduce you to the hopes and dreams of those who are incarcerated by sharing their creative efforts as exhibited in art, poetry and other written media. Unfortunately there is never enough space in this column or in the list to share all of these talented efforts. We hope to rectify this by creating a FaceBook Group entitled “Brothers Behind Bars” where we will be able to post additional items. You will also be able to find me on FaceBook as Harry Vedder.

Occasionally we receive a statement

from our correspondents describing what it is like to be gay in a prison environment. Recently I have received two such statements. The first is from Johnny Rae Lee and the second from Steven Thomas. The entry by Steven is abbreviated with the full text being made available on Face Book “Brothers Behind Bars” shortly. Following these entries I am including samples of poetry received from our Brothers Behind Bars.

Untitled

Iwouldlike to talk about being openly gay in a Federal (United States) Penitentiary. I am now in an institution in which I can be openly gay, but this was not always the case.

In the last institution I could not be openly gay because of the “politics” of the Caucasians. I have always had a problem being closeted, so yes, it was an issue for me. I have my attractions and that did not stop! I just had to be careful how I flirted and with whom I flirted.

If I would have been found out several things could have happened. 1) I could have been beaten or stabbed, 2) I could have been killed; 3) I could have been “checked-in” which means I would have been told to go to staff and tell them I couldn’t walk the yard anymore and I would have been sent to the SHU (Secure Housing Unit – The Hole).

I really like the fact that we can be openly gay here. We have several openly transgendered individuals here that look like women… They wear “makeup,” have long hair, female names and so on. We have Mo’Nique, Jenny, Jessica, Dee Dee, Donna, Nicki and a few others that I don’t know. We also have openly gay men that do not have female names because they do not consider themselves females, but males who like males sexually. Some are involved, some are not. Some are tops, some are bottoms and some are versatile.

I am versatile and I am hooked up (with someone). I normally play the submissive role, even though I can be dominant. I am growing out my hair though

I am not transgendered. I also shave my facial hair, chest and trim my pubic region. I do not however shave my legs nor arms.

My experience at my last institution was quite typical.. I found out that the Caucasian group wanted to “smash me” as is described earlier. They also stole all of my valuable property, which is a sure sign of being “smashed.”

I was lucky, however, because two African-Americans found out and warned me. I then went to protective custody for six months and then came here.

Johnny Rae Lee

AKA Sara Lee

Johnny Rae Lee 50824-056

USP Tucson PO Box 24550

Tucson, AZ 85734-4550

Prison and Alternative Lifestyles

There are a number of uninformed or misinformed individuals within the mainstream society who labor under the misconception that those who adhere to alternative lifestyles would find the conditions of involuntary servitude to be a kind of Shangri-La. Confined with hundreds of males deprived of conventional sexual outlets, sexuality exists at a fever pitch whose only relief is onanism, celibacy or each other. Therefore conventional wisdom dictates that those of alternative lifestyles should be happy as hogs in slop – or even more crudely, as “ecstatic as a sissy in a penis patch.” However, nothing could be further from the reality that exists for us among the incarcerated. Those that follow an alternate lifestyle find not an Elysian Field but more like one of the lower levels of Dante’s “Inferno.”

Those of alternative lifestyles must not only contend with the opprobrium and prejudices of the mores of the open society but those as well of the enclosed society in which they find themselves confined.

Based solely on their sexual preferences they exist at a severe disadvantage

within the enclosed society – for they must not only contend with the inherent biases and prejudices ingrained by the cultural mores of the open society which most prisoners carry with them into involuntary servitude. The condition which gives rise to even more onerous and malefic stereotyping causes most bisexuals to conceal for the most part their true sexual orientation within the prison culture.

Alternative lifestyles are accepted, yet reviled within the peculiar cultural norm that exists within prisons. Gays exploited and victimized as epitomizing the ultimate in weakness of character, morality, values within a culture that views homosexuality not as a lifestyle, but rather as a necessary evil in a society that categorizes all those who participate as various substrates or lower life forms. None of which is considered to be on a par or equal to the murderers, robbers, rapists, scam artists and drug addicts that comprise the general prison population, a perspective that could be considered a strange anomaly within an environ of enforced celibacy, subjected to emotional isolation. Yet, remember, these individuals carry within them the perspective of the greater culture that condemns homosexualty and those of alternative lifestyles as something immoral and evil.

Compelled into an enforced environment of sensory and emotional deprivations with all the more accepted modes of sexual release denied them - yet with all the normal procreative urges and emotional needs of the healthy biological male, it cannot be surprising that within such a society that the sociopathic and psychopathic individuals would tire of onanism and celibacy and look for other means of sexual release. There being no females readily available among them and openly gay individuals, too few to serve the needs of the many, they then seek out other avenue to gain such re-

lease by victimizing and exploiting the weaker members among them, in resorting to rape and manipulation of these traditional heterosexual males forced by the dictates of survival within a dystopian environ to serve as the means of sexual release by the many.

The predatory individuals avail themselves of the weaker among them for sexual release in a perversion of the law of the jungle or Darwinianism. Survival of the fittest - and the weakest should serve the needs of the stronger, inculcating a sense of contempt for those permitting themselves to be used in such a fashion. Those with any sense of humanity remaining to them, feel a sense of shame and degradation for being reduced to committing such vile act that human nature dictated transfer any guilt to those subjugated by them and forced to serve their needs, reviling them while using their bodies.

It is revealing that some of the deadliest insults in prison is to be called a “Punk” or “Dicksucker,” as lacking in any redeeming qualities of manliness or humanity, one so weak to stand for themselves within a culture that idolizes and seeks to emulate the psychopathic murderer as the ideal and epitome, one that is encouraged by prison administration as long as it remains directed inwardly against each other and not towards them.

Into this volatile noxious brew is added the all too human element of becoming attached emotionally to those that we share physical intimacy with – and/ or the sociopathic propensity to claim those that they victimize or exploit as items of personal property or chattels, to be kept, sold or bartered at whim or caprice. There in lies a recipe for violence.

Into this maelstrom comes innocently one who is of the alternate lifestyle. Those with a propensity for promiscuity in environ where condoms are prohibited along with testing for STDs, being killed

or having someone else killed because of them, being considered a problem by the prison administration because of this promiscuity that causes conflict and controversy among other prisoners, (or a combination of all three).

For those seeking relationships to serve their sexual, emotional needs, who become attached to or in love with their partners, the prison culture is one of impermanence – transfers, end of sentence, and/or separations resulting from others dropping notes to administrators to separate the couple in hopes that once the other is out of the picture they can step in. For one who has invested much emotionally in a partner – whose relationship with them ends at the prison gates. – can be devastating – creating bitterness and mistrust for humankind. There are many other deadly pitfalls that exist for those that follow alternate lifestyles in prison.

Steven Thomas #026260

Columbia Correctional Institution Annex 216 S.E. Corrections Way Lake City, 32025-2013

When the Darkness Has Fallen

When the darkness has fallen And the silence holds the night I reach for comfort, from the loneliness. Sometimes I dream you are here with me Only to awaken to a room full of memories

I reach for your picture

Looking into your eyes

Like a child afraid of the dark I break down and cry

With tear-stained eyes I whisper your name

However silence holds the night And the loneliness remains.

Johnny Rae Lee 50824-056 USP Tucson PO Box 24550 Tucson, AZ 85734-4550

Christopher Maddox (AZ) Timothy Lewis (TX) Gary Hunter (MI) Jessie Callione (IA)

No One

By Tod A. Bergemann

Hello my name is No One. I am the faceless person you pass in the streets, When you rush through your day in a daze. Never looking back, not even concerned, That I was hit by a car and am now bleeding to death.

Hello, my name is, No one. I am the unrecognized striver, trying to gain your respect. Yet you walk by me unconcerned , only stopping when you need something done, and even then you take credit for my work.

Hello, my name is No One, I am the uncertain face, that you see in your dreams, you don’t know me, now will you take the time so you can. yet, without me you feel incomplete without my presence.

Hello, my name is No One, I am the one you drive your knife deep into, it severs my spinal cord, and I am paralyzed, stabbed in the back. Yet why should you care. . . . After all I am No One!

this lonely and forsaken earth, without ever having felt life’s delightful mirth…

Forever haunted in my sleep by these horrifying nightmares, and eternally taunted in my waking hours by these terrifying voices…

Am I to be stalked by my inner-demons, like some lonely forsaken angel, or will I finally cast away the shroud of eternity and discover my Lost Sanctuary?!

“Visions and Voices”

By: Billy John Radan/Wolf BlueEagle (01-2010)

Through pain and agonizing misery, I’m terrified that I’m to be a soul damned for all eternity.

These visions are so terrifying… These voices are utterly horrifying. I wish only for a reprieve.

I can’t help but think that through death, I may finally find an external release.

Maybe I’m simply wishing for some sort of divine intervention, though I somehow feel that my soul is to be consumed by insanity and forever tormented by these visions and voices.

Perhaps I really am destined to be eternally forsaken to damnation!

Tod

A. BegemannPO Box 800 Mauston, WI

53948-0800

“Where is Our Love”

Where are your whereabouts, no one seems to know, lost, confused and alone and still no one to call my own…

I thought you said you love me every time I look up your not here to hold me, please come back to me so we could spend all eternity…

As I stare into the midnight sky, hoping to one day be by your side, only god knows our fate in our hearts we can relate…

Each and everyday I think of you, what would I be without you, a mystery must come to an end, so we could fulfill our destiny…

By: Bradley M Hixon 12-2-09

Bradley M Hixon T78115 F3-14-138

RJD PO Box799003 San Diego, CA 92179

“My Lost Sanctuary”

By Billy John Radan/Wolf BlueEagle (01-2010)

The Darkness within my soul well up from the Bowels of eternity, Forever Seeking – yet never finding the blissful release it seeks…

This infernal sickness I’ve suffered from since birth, keeps my weary soul bound to my rotting corpse, like a sorcerer’s evil curse…

More and more it seems like I’m destined to eternally walk

Billy John Radan #120535 CSP / F4-25 PO Box

777Canon City, CO 81215

Anthony Fernandez (CA)

We are still working on the task of counting up the back issues in our storage unit. Please bear with us if you’ve asked for back issues. Once we get shelving in place we’ll be in a better position to do the count of the remaining boxes. We’re third quarters of the way there. So with that in mind, we’re providing you with info on the back issues we know we have on hand.

Generally back issues from the last five years are selling for $5 each while older or rarer issues are going for a higher price.

Back Issues for Sale

Folks can email their requests for back issues submissions@rfdmag.org.

We’re also looking to create a crisp clean complete set of RFD’s for possible use in a scanning project. We have a working set but many of the issues have notations from an early indexing project in them. So we’d like to find some of the missing issues [1 - 10, 12, 13, 16, 18, 24, 25, 27, 29, 30, 35, 48, 49, 52, 53, 74 - 78] which we no longer have in storage to complete this set. If you have copies of the

following issues and want to consider donating them to the Collective we’d be most appreciative and would consider offering folks a renewal subscription for their efforts. We’d also love to create more complete sets to be able to offer them to sanctuaries which do not have full sets. Any help around this will be greatly appreciated. Contact us at submissions@rfdmag.org with “Back Issues” in the subject line.

To order: please make a copy of this page, circle the issues you would like, fill out the form below, and mail it with check* to: RFD, P.O. Box 302, Hadley MA 01035-0302, or email the same information to: submissions@rfdmag.org.

Edited by Don Kilhefner, Ph.D., and Mark Thompson

August 13th. -22nd.,2010

At this year's Shamans Gathering, a memorial service will be held for Dreamie and a portion of his ashes spread at the Sanctuary.

For More Information: Visit Our Website At:zms.org or call us at:505783-4002 or email us at: zunimtn@wildblue.net or mail us at: P.O. Box 636, Ramah, N.M.,87321

Advertise

Pub

MOUNTAIN SANCTUARY Queer Shamans Gathering

the skinny.....

SUBMISSIONS

We accept submissions via U.S. Mail, or email at submissions@rfdmag.org. When sending electronic files by either method, save the text files as an MS Word Doc, Rich Text (RTF), or Simple Text. Images should be high resolution (minimum one mega-byte (1 MB) in TIFF or JPG. Your work may also be used on our website.

WRITING

We welcome your submission. Suggested length is 500 to 2,500 words. We will carefully edit. If you intentionally mean to vary a spelling, let us know. We will contact you if your submission is selected. Contributors receive one copy of the issue in which their work appears and a second copy upon request. Your may also be used on our website.

ART

We always need fresh drawings and photos. Drawings should be quality black and white. Photos can be color or black and white. Original digital camera files work well. Original artwork should be scanned at 300 dpi or higher. Line art should be scanned at 1200 dpi. We may crop your photo to fit our format.

Advertising Rates

DUE DATES

October 20th for Winter, January 20th for Spring, April 20th for Summer; July 20th for Autumn.

ADVERTISING

For rates, contact us by phone or email or get it from our website.

BACK ISSUES

Recent issues are $7 postage paid. Many earlier issues are available. Call us or email us at business@rfdmag.org for availability.

COPYRIGHT

RFD is copyrighted. Credited material remains the property of the contributor. Non-credited material may be republished with attribution.

MAILING

RFD is published quarterly and mailed around the Solstice or Equinox of the quarter. Second class mail can take a while. Let us know if you have not received your copy after a month. Second class mail is NOT forwarded. Let us know if you move.

Our basic advertising rate is $4.00 per square inch per issue. For repeat issues we offer discounts of 5% for two issues, 10% for three issues, and 15% for a full year (four issues).

If you do not have a prepared ad, the RFD staff can prepare one for you from your photographs and text. We charge $75/hr for layout.

Prepared ads should be provided in PDF format or high resolution JPG or TIF (300dpi or 500KB minimum file size). We will scan ad artwork for a fee of $20. RFD is not responsible for poor reproduction due to low resolution artwork.

Following are some examples to help you size your ad.

Submissions: submissions@rfdmag.org

Advertising: advertising@rfdmag.org

We accept advertising for products or services that we feel may be of positive value to our readers. Repeating ads will be re-run as given unless new copy is provided by closing date. New ads coming in late will be run next issue unless otherwise stated. Full payment for ads is required by closing date for ad to appear in the new issue.

Announcing

the Winter 201

0 Issue: Divas, Gurus and Other Inspirational Folks

Who says RFD can’t use the internet for inspiration?

A friend on Facebook shared a link to a Diva websiteyes all things gay diva related - Judy and Joni and beyond. It made us think about who inspire us for whatever reason. We’re certainly in a time of reflection with Obama as the US president and the shifts that seem to be occurring daily on GLBT issues.

But we’re asking you, dear readers, for the dirt on who inspires you at present.

Is it an actress, an opera diva, a movie hunk, a porn star...

A politician of the people, a comedian who tells it like it is...

Perhaps it’s a creative artist, a best friend, a spiritual guru, an idea whose time has come...

Of course we’re also interested in places - a forest, a view of the ocean, your first Pride parade...

Old standards in diva-dom are certainly welcome -- so all you fans of Dolly Parton - come on confess “Little Sparrow” makes you cry each and every time.

One of the reasons we love putting together RFD is hearing from our readers and their experiences. Your diva stories will reveal all!

Submissions to RFD are gratefully appreciated - you can send your submission of articles, poems or artwork and photos to submissions@rfdmag.org. For this issue please put “Diva” in the subject line. For all scanned artwork / photos please send them at least 300 dpi and 1 megabyte. If the image is in color scan in color.