RFD 144 Winter 2010

Callfor Submissions

Spring Renewal

It’s the time of year to dust off your spring clothes and head back outside for some new adventures. What have you been waiting all winter to do?

A number of us at RFD are itching for the start of the gathering season, so we can flaunt ourselves across a multitude of continents, making appearances at faerie soirees from Amber Fox to Terschelling to Thailand. But for the rest of us, just eager to get out into our gardens

in the back yard, it’s time to be thinking of seeds and soil, tillage and top-dressing. What are your spring plans?

Let us know what sojourns or projects are in your stars. Or, if you’re feeling reminiscent, send us stories, poems, artwork or images from a spring fling past. Whatever springs to mind, dust it off, polish it up, and see it flower in the next issue of RFD.

Spring 2011

We depend on our readers’ submissions for our content, and your contributions are deeply appreciated. Please send all material to submissions@rfdmag.org, with “Spring 2011” in the subject line. Artwork and photos should be scanned at a resolution of 300 dpi or greater, and should be at least 1 megabyte in size. If the image is in color, scan it in color. The deadline for this issue is February 1, 2011.

Issue #145

Renata Fiona Dietrich

Vol 37 No 2 #144 Winter 2010

Between the Lines The Divas and Gurus Issue

While we’re all reeling from the tantrum of the American voters clamoring for the divas from the Tea Party, we thought it would be sensible to reflect on some true divas and heroes. While many of us identify with some torch singer or look to some screen diva to beguile us, some identify with the personal heroes in our daily lives or the people within the queer community who help shape our culture and identity. Like ice cream everyone has their own flavor when it comes to divas and gurus.

A major theme coming out of the pieces for this issue is how the diva is a political force, a champion for the underdog, albeit one often bathed in fierceness and sequins. Often the details of our connections to divas are bathed in our letting go of shame and transforming hurt into comedy or pathos. Yet, it’s also clear from many of the articles that faced with meta-

morphosis of difference that divas bring to the world–we all drink from the same well of ideas, dreams and desire to be “special”.

So we hope you enjoy the issue and that you are able to transform some of ‘ugly’ out there into something beautiful, something glimmering, alive and most of all uniquely you.

As we enter the solstice we hope everyone enjoys the holidays and that everyone gets those “black cha cha heels”. And since we’re making our holiday wish lists, we at RFD hope you are able to make room on your shopping list to make a donation, renew your subscription and even better give RFD as a gift to someone else, as we’re up for “seeing new people”. Like any diva we love swag!

–The elves at RFD who love our divas and think some gurus are hot.

Artist

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

Pixie Vision Productions www.pixievisionproductions.com

Amos Mac / www.amosmac.com

Richard Mitchell / www.richardmitchell.com

Luna Luiz Ortiz www.facebook.com/PhotographyByLuna

David King / www.davidkingcollage.com

Hummingbird

www.flickr.com/photos/hummingbird-dreams

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 #621723644, a function of RFD Press with office of registration at RFD Press, 231 Ten Penny Road, 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: 85 N Main Street, Ste 200, White River Junction, VT 05001. • Mail for our Brothers Behind Bars project should continue to be sent to P.O. Box 68, Liberty TN 37095.

Lillian Gish being pushed out into the White River for the filming of D.W. Griffith’s Way Down East. This magazine was produced within view of this location.

ANNOUNCEMENTS, LETTERS, EVENTS AND CONTACT INFO

A nn O unce Ments

Stewart Scofield, an RFD founder’s writing sought for compilation

In 1974, Stewart Scofield helped to found RFD. He did so with the intention of helping gay men in rural areas connect, grow and feel a sense of community. From his work with RFD, Stewart went on the work with the Billy Club in Mendocino County, Food for Thought - the Sonoma County HIV/AIDS Foodbank, and countless Gay Liberation and HIV/AIDS advocacy groups. In 2006, Stewart passed away leaving behind a life’s worth of writing both personal and public which he asked me to compile, edit and publish for him. I am asking any members of the RFD community who remember Stewart and his contribution to the early days of this publication or any other memories they have of him to please share those with me as I work to fulfill his final request of me - to create a memorial to a man whose life, in so many ways, tells a story yet untold - of those gay men who chose to stay in their hometowns, or in small towns across America living lives that are honest, open, loving and brave. My thanks to everyone.

Everett Charters: everettwcharters@ gmail.com.

Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture

Edited By Jonathan D. Katz and David C. Ward

Smithsonian Books

ISBN: 978-1-58834-299-7

Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture is an entrancing narrative focused on the impact of gays, lesbians and other sexual minorities in the world of American art. As part of a major exhibit at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery which is showing from October 30, 2010 through February 13, 2011. This book is being released as the companion to the first museum exhibition in American history to focus on art and culture by esteemed members of the gay community.

Hide/Seek features over 150 colored illustrations, drawings and portraits created by notable artists, musicians, architects and

writers including Georgia O’Keeffe, Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol.

Throughout the book, Hide/Seek shows and tells the challenges that the gay community has faced in the art realm since the days of Eakins and the worst years of the AIDS crisis. Through quotes, descriptions and historical facts, readers get a sense of what it means to be an under-appreciated gay artist struggling to make it in a critical American society. The book also reveals how modern American culture and art has paved the way for these artists to express themselves by using conceptualization of American art as their catalyst.

The book begins with attention-getting quotes from Eakins’s Salutat and Walt Whitman and concludes with works from Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Glenn Ligon, Catherine Opie, and Cass Bird. In between, readers can set their sights on mesmerizing works of art created by some of the most important American artists of the twentieth-century.

This fully, enriched narrative serves as inspiration for members of the art industry and a history lesson for art enthusiasts worldwide.

LETTERS

Summer Issue Feedback

Thanks to all who worked on the summer RFD. Coming of age in a radical queer collective in the middle 70’s as I did was a terrible beauty to paraphrase Yeats. The Ozark radicals were in the vanguard of the radical faerie movement but were detoured somewhat by the “Cultural Revolution”. There are so many more stories that should be told from that time that could be useful in getting back to the ROOT. And I like a good firm root every once in a while. I was credited with most of the pics in the article about Dennis Melbason and that was correct except for the one in which Dennis is knitting the faerie shawl. That one was taken by Doof of New Mexico. Thanks again to all who keep RFD going.

–Micheal Oglesby

Fall Issue Feedback

The fall issue is amazingly beautiful... keep up the good work production team.

– Sr. Clara

I love the Fall 2010 issue... it’s gorgeous... you guys are doing a great job.

– Kd Calfee

GATHERING GUIDE

This guide was written on the fly by visiting the various community websites but with special 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.

JAnuARY Asian Faerie Gathering Thailand, Jan 20-30, 2011

You are invited to join us at the 8th annual Asian Faerie Gathering, January 20-30, 2011 on the magical island of Koh Yao Yai near Phuket, Thailand. The gathering site is the remote and undeveloped island of Koh Yao Yai, at the beach front resort hosted by Khun Marisa. We look forward to another fabulous adventure of fun and self discovery. Look up the island on Google Earth or visit our photo galleries from past gatherings at http://www.asianfaeries.com/gallery. This is a non-profit event organized by a diverse group of guys living in Thailand, Estonia and the US. The idea is for gay people from all over the world to meet in a quiet and beautiful natural setting and get to know each other and ourselves better. We will have morning heart circles, nature walks, swimming, snorkeling and hopefully a cross-cultural romance or two. We improvise our activities as we go along through the week, but please plan on a talent show, fund-raising auction, and making new friends. We have sliding scale fees that will allow each person to pay what they can afford. We may be able to offer some travel scholarships for those wanting to attend from developing countries in South and Southeast Asia. If you don’t have money but really want to attend, please write to us and we will try to help you come to the gathering. E-mail us at: queen@asianfaeries.com.

Continued on page 45

Breitenbush / Wayne Bund (Pan)

My Hero, My Husband

by Marc Matheson

Hero (noun)

1. A man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities.

2. Classical Mythology. A being of godlike prowess and beneficence who often came to be honored as a divinity.

Itwas a cold morning in December, a week before Christmas. It had been so unusually cold that - as if we needed any excuse - my husband, Christopher and I had snuggled in our sleep.

After dressing for work, I kissed him good-bye – because his workday started later than mine and he works from home, he went back to sleep. I went downstairs and across the street to my car.

As I reached for my car door, a speeding sports utility vehicle appeared from nowhere, headed straight towards me. Although I don’t have any conscious memory of what happened next, but the eyewitness said that I was thrown into the air, landed on my skull and bounced, and landed again on my right side.

When I first opened my eyes I could not see. My first sense perception was hearing a woman screaming, crying, “I didn’t see him! I didn’t see him!”

It was the driver of the SUV. She was late getting her daughter to school and hadn’t cleared the ice from her windshield. According to the police report, the driver had been talking on her mobile phone, too.

Our neighbor, John, arrived. He was the first to call 911. John tried knocking on our front door, and then went down the side of our house and called up to our bedroom, which awoke Christopher. A few minutes later Christopher was standing by my side, stunned.

Both of my knees and a shoulder were fractured. Every joint on my right side, as well as a crescent-shaped area around my left ear, was bruised dark purple and black like battered meat.

That’s the day my husband became my hero, from the moment he found me lying there on the cold pavement in front of our home, seemingly lifeless and bleeding profusely from my head, sur-

rounded by strangers.

Even though it was, he would tell me much later, the most frightening moment of his life, for the next several months, and years Christopher has been unconditionally kind, generous and tender.

After I came home from the hospital with instructions to stay off my feet for six to eight weeks, Christopher became my nurse, constant companion, guardian and hero.

He’s not fond of cooking, but made my morning tea and toast just the way I like them. He taught himself how to make omelets and several of my favorite dishes.

Not fond of doing laundry either, he did it all: housecleaning, shopping, er-

when we finally went out for lunch, six hours hour later, that we discovered it was already evening.

Ours was love, and starry-eyed lust, at first sight. On Wednesdays I would pick him up at his workplace for extended lunchtime picnics in the Marin Headlands or some other scenic spot. On weekends we escaped to a friend’s Big Sur cottage and on the way home made love in the car, pulled over to the side of the road. We held hands in movie theatres, went for hikes, and made love in the middle of the night. And then moved in together.

During our first year of living together my early childhood memories of being molested by my father began to surface. Dad was dying and I was having my Chiron return, an astrological rite of passage signifying the death of childhood. In a word, it was deep.

Christopher and I might be talking in the middle of a conversation, or sex, and suddenly I would drift off, as if I’d gotten up and walked out of the room. He would come home from work, looking forward to being with me, only to find me glassy-eyed with fear.

rands, scheduled medical appointments and ambulance trips. He gave me luxurious sponge baths and even wiped my bottom until I could manage the portable toilet myself. Yes, the portable toilet that my darling husband emptied and cleaned.

Never once did Christopher complain or say an unkind word. He said that the experience of caring for me taught him the meaning of Love.

Never in my life, not since being a babe in my loving mother’s arms, had anyone attended to me as did Christopher. “Love” isn’t sufficient to express how I felt towards him.

We had met online, six years before the accident and corresponded by email and online chat for several months. Our first date took place on a Friday noon in his studio apartment, the first twenty minutes of which we spent making out just inside the front door. It was only

Lying in bed together on weekends and talking about together, I might begin weeping without rhyme or reason. In sex, if he played with my prick I became uncomfortable and distant.

How ironic that as my father was dying I’d finally met, at age 50, the man of my dreams and finally felt safe enough look at my childhood abuse, I was pushing Christopher away.

We worked successfully with a therapist, locating avenues of healthy communication. I learned to befriend the inner wounded father. Christopher and I accepted our dissimilar social, economic and cultural backgrounds, and our sixteen-year age difference. We cultivated our shared love of Nature, hiking, travel, music, and creative modes of living.

As communication improved, sex and living together became fluid and mature. In our second year we took a two-week European holiday, an enchanted trip that started with a post-rainstorm dawn stroll

Never once did Christopher complain or say an unkind word. He said that the experience of caring for me taught him the meaning of Love.

through old Amsterdam. We saw as an omen the pair of swans nesting outside our canal-side apartment. In Paris we made love in our studio near the Seine. More and more we felt that we’d found the ideal mate.

During San Francisco’s brief Spring 2004 same-sex marriage celebration, we had an appointment at City Hall to be married. Two weeks before our date the Supreme Court of California blocked the marriages.

also requiring that I, too, do the same.

Now,a year after our separation, we continue to improve our relationship, navigating a new landscape. It hasn’t been easy for either of us. We’ve both had our stages of having no sense of the future, of feeling less, not more, connected to life.

movie, talking by phone, emailing one another. He even slept over with me on Christmas Eve. We remind one another that it gets better. It has, for us both, and we remain not just connected but love one another.

Undeterred,

we created our own magical ceremony, writing our vows and reciting them, surrounded by family and friends, in a grove atop Mount Tamalpais. Musicians from the Ali Akbar School of Music played love songs from Persia and India. Wisps of fog and clouds of soap bubbles glided over fields bright with May Day wildflowers. Deer grazed at forest’s edge. Guests sipped Arabian coffee and fresh mint tea, nibbled on Middle Eastern pastries. We toasted with flutes of Champagne among the trees and afterwards, in our backyard garden, danced to a French café band.

But the honeymoon in Paris and Amsterdam was blemished by difficulties, the worst being an argument on a canal bridge in which we vowed that once back home we would cease to be a couple.

Yet stay together we did, continuing to work on our relationship. Six months later came my accident, by which time Christopher had realized that as much as he loved me he couldn’t stay with me. Finding me there in the street was frightening for him, but equally terrifying was the idea of having to care for me as I aged. He could see me through my recovery but couldn’t commit to doing it again.

We were driving out to West Marin, where I now live, a lovely rural and agricultural area northwest of San Francisco. As we drove past the Nicasio Reservoir, Christopher began telling me that he’d hit a wall, that his will to stay with me had simply given out, that in order to reconnect with Life, his life, he had to leave me.

While he felt intuitively that while his own future was dark and uncertain, he saw my future as bright, vital and happy. It was a deeply painful, wrenching decision that required him separating heart from mind. It was, for me, devastating,

More than once I’ve wished that I could hate Christopher, or that he’d fallen in love with someone else – anything to cauterize the wound and grief of being separated from the one person I love more than all else.

But through it all, Christopher and I have been here for each other, going for country drives, meeting for dinner or a

There are heroes in this world, people who meet us wherever we are, who tell the truth, who recognize and provide what we need before we recognize those needs ourselves. There is such a hero in my life, a man who married me on every level of his being, and yet realized that he had to leave me, for his happiness as well as mine. My hero has shown me, by his good example, how to be my own hero, my own best friend. That man is Christopher, my “wasband” and best friend.

“Click Here for Inspiration” by Justin Stone-Diaz

Book Review: My Diva 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them

Edited by Michael Montlack–Terrace Books, an imprint of The University of Wisconsin Press

by Sasha Vodnik

For anyone who has ever known an inspirational, one-sided relationship with a diva, editor Michael Montlack offers us a rich indulgence in this book of essays: a chance to learn about the feminine figures that other queer men hold dear, and compare notes. If you have ever spent time pondering the reason that divas hold such a prominent place in the hearts and lives of queer men, his collection is an amazing stepping off point for further musings, liberally sprinkled as it is with thoughtful insights.

I had heard of probably two-thirds of the divas in this volume; for the others, this was an introduction unlike any other. The 65 divas span centuries and genre, from the poet Sappho, who lived 2500 years ago, to Princess Leia, who entered our shared imaginations only a few decades past. The pieces share remarkable similarities that I had not expected when I picked up the book. In the book I found glimpses of writers coming of age, who were delving below the roiling surfaces of teenage sexualities to explore what they were recognizing and learning about difference, solitude, strength, and survival.

The essays are almost uniformly well written. Even so, a few standouts shine. Patrick Letellier’s piece on Queen Elizabeth I packs quite a punch into three pages, sketching an account both moving and humorous of how lessons from his diva helped him in mourning the death of a close friend. Forrest Hamer delves into the role Mahalia Jackson and her music played in helping him understand who he was as a teenager, and who he might be becoming: “Mahalia’s powerful voice necessitated that I find some way of aspiring toward her emotional power while accepting I would never be someone who would sing the way she did.” Wayne Koestenbaum offers 21 short paragraphs about the singer Anna Moffo. He cheekily confides how he “signed the ‘Relatives and Friends’ book [at her wake], but did not write down my address. I feared that her stepchild or cousin would send me a chiding letter:

‘You had no business attending Anna Moffo’s wake. Wakes are for intimates.’”

In my day job, I have had to learn and relearn the lesson that facts, figures, and mission statements can rarely match the power of stories when it comes to measuring impact. My Diva provides an intimate look at how these women’s

power, vulnerability, tragedy, and humor has affected, and sometimes shaped, the lives, ordinary and otherwise, of gay men who love them.

• The following excerpts on Margaret Cho and Kiki Durane are from this book, My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them. Thanks to University of Wisconsin Press.

Ms. Kiki Durane: Her Sound and Fury

by Christopher Schmidt, excerpted from My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them

KikiDurane is the more outgoing half of Kiki and Herb, the drag performance act that has been an underground, and increasingly aboveground, New York institution for the better part of a decade. I mean “better” in the primary sense of the word: Kiki and Herb have brightened my nights and given voice to a whole spectrum of desires and disappointments that I didn’t know were in me until given life onstage.

Meet Kiki, a washed-up cabaret singer with an epic backstory who stays afloat with a tumbler of liquor and a talent for the withering comeback. Played by Justin Bond—a dashing, androgynous, let’s say late-thirty-something performer—with an inimitable blend of ingenuousness and cynicism, one of Kiki’s least heralded virtues is her expansive taste in music. Kiki

and Herb bring their lounge-act stylings (Kiki’s gravelly baritone is backed by Herb’s thundering piano arrangements) to the indie pop canon, covering everything from Joni Mitchell to Kate Bush to Radiohead. Then, just when you think they can’t push their sublime ironies any further, they’ll unearth the piquancy in some pop trifle like Britney Spears’s “ . . . Baby One More Time” or Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy”—pure genius.

But the definitive moment in a Kiki and Herb show is when, amid one of many autobiographical vignettes, Kiki sparks to fury, attacking some chimerical or real foe (George W. Bush, for instance). Her anger is cathartic and oddly communal—the only time I’ve felt the queer fellowship I always anticipated I’d find in New York City. A Kiki and Herb

show is more glamorous than a meeting at the LGBT center, less competitive (and generally disappointing) than a night at the bars. Kiki possesses a rare, magical ability to electrify the audience’s raw need—that universal need to be rescued from loneliness and obscurity—and transforms that energy into a circuit of queer community and political activism, if only for one dazzling night.

Afterthe show, Kiki’s fans will act as if they own her, convinced Kiki speaks only to them. There are bragging rights. As for me, I’ll admit that I did not know Justin when he was—as legend has it—a precocious drama student at UC Santa Cruz. Nor did I see Justin/Kiki when s/he began her illustrious career in San Francisco, circa 1993, emerging phoenix-like

Kiki and Herb

Courtesy of Justin Bond

from the embers of ACT-UP.

My own bragging rights are paltry. I once interviewed Bond in his 13th Street tenement apartment for a magazine article. Bond was charming and whip-smart, but confessed to me the toll performing Kiki exacts: “Most people struggle to have a positive outlook in life, and to be productive and to enjoy some sort of . . . pleasantness in their existence. And when I’m doing Kiki five or six days a week, I have to work that much harder— really, fucking hard—to have a positive attitude and be happy. It strains me.”

Bond was trying to cut Kiki loose at the time of our interview by adopting alternate personas, like one called the “cool babysitter” (short-lived). I’ve seen Bond perform many times without Kiki’s agemakeup and prosthetic birdseed breasts. Bond solo is soigné, smoky-voiced, and dissolute—half Ute Lemper, half Lou

Reed. But folks still clamor for Kiki. Finally, Bond decided that to move on, Kiki had to be killed off. In 2004 Bond and Kenny Mellman (who plays Herb) staged a blowout farewell concert at Carnegie Hall called Kiki and Herb: We Will Die for You. I was there, as was half the gay population of the East Village—everyone, it seems, I had ever bedded or wanted to bed. (I attended with my boyfriend.) I had worried that the uptown venue might stifle Kiki, but the performance was better than I could have imagined—in a word, incendiary. For the first of many encores, Kiki lassoed up a gaggle of celebrities, including Rufus Wainwright, Sandra Bernhard, and Debbie Harry, to help her sing “Those Were the Days.” Amidst all that star wattage, Kiki still ruled the stage. After the show, rumors swirled. Were Kiki and Herb really splitting up? Could

they be successful doing anything else? Was Bond really off to London to study “scenography”? After a cooling-off period, Kiki and Herb returned to New York in 2006 for a five-week run on Broadway, in a show entitled Kiki and Herb: Alive on Broadway. They had been resurrected.

I saw Kiki and Herb perform again last month in a Christmas show at Bowery Ballroom, and they were as angry and brilliant as ever. Bond seems to have reconciled himself to life with Kiki, at least for a little while longer, though his performance of exhausted carelessness was brought very much to the fore. Selfishly, I’d like to see him perform Kiki until performer and persona become one, until Bond no longer needs the painted-on wrinkles to summon his alter ego. Some might call that tragic. But I’d watch.

Margaret Cho: How to Break Every Oriental Stereotype in the Book

Chink!” . . .”Freak!”

Ah, the verbal genius of junior high school taunting. Why do homophobic bullies never have anything clever to say? In the words of my diva, “Ooo, enchanté!”

The full details of those torturous years evade me now, but seared into my experience is Danny Fitzpatrick calling me (INSERT any “Oriental” slur HERE)

wherever and whenever he pleased—in class, the halls, gym, and once even in front of a teacher who only laughed. Name-calling, threats, and punching weren’t necessarily daily occurrences, but it was made crystal clear to me that as the single nonwhite kid in my school, I could be accosted anytime. Even the instructors were openly racist when

it came to Asians (and you gotta assume I was the tip of the iceberg). “How do they do it in China?” one blonde teacher skewered me with when my friend Michael and I passed notes to one another. Don’t ask me what she meant; to this day, I haven’t a clue. And why “faggot” wasn’t

my harassers’ slap of choice was never clear either, given that I was sensitive and long-haired with an obvious crush on the most popular boy. Since racism and homophobia were de rigueur throughout my teenage years, who better then to inspire my spleenventing adulthood than a kick-ass, foulmouthed, bisexual, brilliant San Francisco Asian woman who has an “inner drag queen,” and wouldn’t think twice about telling someone to fuck off? Whose diva would win the prizefight diva-bitch-slap contest? Mine.

Margaret Cho is a fully enlightened fabulous diva who is utterly unabashed about sharing her struggles with addiction, racism, and an eating disorder.

Kenji Oshima, excerpted from My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them

Photo by PixieVisionProductions

When a reporter once wondered aloud if her “Korean family was ashamed” of her, she shot back: “Any family would be ashamed of me.” That’s my mentor, of whom I am so proud.

Some of my adulthood has been given over to processing the gauntlet of childhood and rejecting all the lies punched into me: that as a biracial Asian gay man, I’m not unattractive, not second-class, not sexless, and never alone in struggles with my body issues and unfavorable internalized self-image. Luckily, I am off the rollercoaster self-esteem ride from hell. I have the “Notorious C.H.O.” to thank for helping to rid my psyche of these ugly beliefs.

I’ve never been one of those gay boys who lined up for Barbra or paid two hundred dollars to see Céline fly around on wires (would someone please cut them already?). In fact I’d be really hard pressed to name who’s on the cover of People magazine, because somewhere along the Fag-O-Matic DNA-dispensing conveyer belt, I didn’t get the gossip gene.

Who wants a diva who can strut around in a twenty-thousand-dollar gown, when my diva posted on her Web site the deluge of racist, homophobic hate mail she received after saying that “George Bush is not Hitler . . . he would be if he applied himself”? The same ignorant masses who spammed her with “Dyke, chink, gook from Mongolia, go back to your country where you came from, you fat pig” unintentionally included their return e-mail addresses and “all their work information and their home email, and their home telephone number . . . and what kind of ice cream they liked . . . what they’re [sic] second choice was.” She confessed, “I didn’t realize this, but there are people out there who realllllly like me, and they are pissed off to begin with . . . [so] in posting these emails I had inadvertently activated the terrorist sleeper cell Al-Gay-Da.” And we all know what happens when you piss off a bunch of queens who love their divas?

Particularly queens who vividly remember their junior high school years? I don’t think most of the morons who e-mailed Margaret knew what hit them. Can you imagine? Five thousand gay men, at work, bored, remembering being called something evil when they were little gay boys, now granted the opportunity to tell some of these dunces what they thought? She joked, “I was getting apology emails so fast . . . flooding in . . . I’m sorry, I’m sorry

I called you a chink . . . please make these gay people leave me alone! I’m sorry . . . hurry . . . I’m afrrrrraid . . . I think Cirque Du Soleil is warming up on my front lawn!!!”

Ifirst met the full force of Ms. Cho in a living-room-sized theater in my current hometown of San Francisco, when a friend suggested we go see her stand-up comedy in her new movie I’m the One That I Want. Of course I knew of her, because how many famous Asian Americans have had a show called, get this, All American Girl? Seeing an Asian actress on television who wasn’t “a prostitute” in a Vietnam War drama was an oddity. I mean, as Margaret says, we always have to “be something.” The dealer, the broken-English Kwik-E-Mart owner, or the asexual dorky exchange student. We can’t just be your neighbor or your coworker. Remember: I grew up in the 1970s, when “Oriental” characters always had to be the buck-toothed laundry boys who pined for the sexy girl, never the hero or hunk (not that it’s changed much). Ms. Cho points out that one of my favorite 1970s TV shows, Kung Fu, starring the Caucasian David Carradine, should have really been named, Hey . . . That Guy’s Not Chinese! It’s pretty much been that Asians, a.k.a. “Orientals,” were the ching-chong version of the Village Idiot in just about every American drama. Needless to say, I’ve tired of this in my “old age.”

My diva not only breaks all those stereotypes of the oh-so-polite eyelash-batting, teeth-covering Asian girl, but also manages to throw them out—the baby, the bathwater, the chopsticks, and the redneck. “So, Ms. Cho,” said a Midwestern TV announcer, “we’re changing our affiliate. Why don’t you tell our audience in your native language?” Margaret made a “what-the-fuck?” face, turned to the camera, and said, “They’re changing their affiliate.”

The thing about being gay is that I could always sort of hide it, but being the son of a Japanese man, it’s sometimes an unmistakable difference; technically, I’m “half” Asian—thank you, Cher: “HalfBreed, how I love to hate the word!”—no really, look it up. Cher sang that!

“What are you?” the bus driver, my date, or the kid sitting next to me in class would ask, puzzled by my “racial” features that defy categorization. I wish I could have been more like Margaret in

these situations, and especially in junior high. I wanted to be the Action Hero for gay Asian boys who refuse to fit the stereotypes: the sexless bottom or the “mathlete” for that matter—man, I suck at math.

My internal change culminated in a warm, close, and lovingly bitchy relationship with my friend Peter, who’s “foreign” born but from upstate New York. We would recite Margaret’s best lines back and forth to each other in this rhythmic have-to-be-in-the-know secret decoderring banter. Why? Because like me, he grew up on the East Coast thinking that as a queer Asian boy he was a second-class citizen, never a brilliant hottie, worthy of love and attention.

Peter and I had a ritual of sorts, wordplay to reinforce our shared “We’re tired of this racist shit,” and the only person who came close to expressing how we’ve felt our whole lives was our hero Margaret. “Go back to where you came from!” A common request thrown at people who seemingly aren’t born in America. Thankfully, Margaret made popular what we always thought but only occasionally said: “Well, I can’t go back to where I came from . . . I think the only people who can say that are the Native Americans.” I grew, I learned, I helped organize gay Asian men’s groups across the country. I found other mixed/Asian men, and I became a lot less bitter. While I no longer have a need to vent on every street corner, I still adore biting humor. I think it’s the bitchy-queen gene that I did manage to get.

Divas reflect our sense of drama, tragedy, and love of the limelight. Or at least a wish to be seen and admired, not punched and insulted. The myriad of divas, and the boys and men who admired them in this collection, just goes to show that there’s one for every one of us: some of them graceful, some tragic, and some who you’d want on your side in a bar fight.

I used to think that I could never identify with the Barbras or the Célines, but I suppose I do. I just needed mine to look more like me, to be the tomboy I wish I could have been, and to have a sailor’s mouth like mine—but as brave, beautiful, and outspoken as I have learned to become, I’ll never have the balls that Margaret has. She keeps me striving for more.

Dearest Bernadette

by Christopher Hamblin

Dearest Bernadette,

How overly familiar that greeting must seem to you. But over the time I have wondered about this letter and wandered around the writing of it, the time I have spent communing with your recorded voice and what I believe to be your wonderful Spirit which transcends recordings and geography, has endeared you to me to such an extent that my heart goes out to you as such—one of the Dearest.

I sit here in the Fort Sanders area of Knoxville, Tennessee in a park dedicated to the memory of James Agee (a native of whom we remain intensely proud) which lies just in front of my new home. I have found a nook finally worthy of that title—home. At the corner of James Agee Street and Laurel Avenue, one sees a grand, if unkempt, staircase of stone; engraved in the sidewalk are these words:

To those who in all times have sought truth and who have told it in their art or in their living.

Tonight’s full moon sets me to thinking of Ain’t it a Pretty Night from Susannah in which she covets the life of Knoxville, a much larger city than her small town home.

I move back into my home where three autographed photos of you live with me. The one is the peach Vargas album cover, which Marvin graciously had you sign when the World was Small and the Roses Came Up. You chose a modest green ink to compliment the hue of your name and the leaves covering your breasts. The other two, you graciously signed for me after your Knoxville performance: Playboy and Now Playing (the other Vargas, of course).

I realize this feels to me much like a love letter—a romance of sorts, which I am sure and aware cannot be mutual. My love affair with you began 11 years ago when I found “Hey, Mr. Producer” at Kmart. That was my world. Megastores were my only access to the “outside” world. I have often described my upbringing by stating that I had to fight to know who you are. And that is still true.

My social life gave me no reason to look for you, but look for you I did. That young man (whom you looked no older than) graced your hand as you entered to say, “Mum, I know you’ll think I’m potty…” and a G-flat later I was in love. That was a quite Unexpected Song and I did feel as though you and I were the only ones hearing it.

The loneliness of that time of my life has only begun to repair itself and the reason for this letter is to offer you the intense gratitude that is duly yours for reaching out to me through your work during my life. Finding you was like find-

with you that, as an audience member, I was intensely aware of Your ability to share. As you sang Shenandoah, it was as a prayer. A song that many avoid for its overuse was finally there in front of you—as it should be. The metaphor of the song—the “crossing over”—had never rung true to me. You shared so clearly your spirit life with us. We saw you as simply present as transcendence requires. No pretense. You knew that the silence was Ours—not just that the stage was Yours.

As I met you ever so briefly afterward and your bubble of self mingled more closely with mine, I became even more fascinated. Your eyes had never looked into mine. I saw You—not your name. You wanted me to see that and I thank you so very much for the respect with which you treated me. I felt a sincere concern for where I was coming from and what I was about which has carried me through many low points of the last months.

ing the answer to questions I didn’t even know how to ask. My heart had wanted to Be Alive, but had only been taught to hate itself for the desires it held so tightly.

For artists like us (I say “us,” of course, knowing that you know virtually nothing of what I do as an artist), it seems that our “art” and our “living” are inseparable. Not knowing your emotional existence in any way other than how it manifests onstage, I might be assuming too much. But when you sing, I feel heard. I feel spoken for. I feel that the world is being told that, Truly, I, I, I, I am not Alone. There are others who hear my world, who bask in the vulnerability that allows us to create. I see in you the kind of artist I want to be and I am forever changed by having gotten to see you work.

I could gush to you about your career, your good looks, or other things to win your validation, but I’d rather share

There was so much I wanted to say to you so much we have not told you. We have not thanked you fully for carrying Us with you. Us being our whole community of men that you watched get robbed from us. I see them with you. I can’t not see Peter Allen next to you when we are together. He is in your eyes. You and a few of your peers have had a completely unique and unspoken experience of watching your fanbase, colleagues, and loves die and performing for us through it all.

I cannot imagine your life—the parameters that one must have in place to keep balance. I can empathize with the self-doubt, with the wondering why someone wants to talk to you, sit next to you. For clout? For what? I have examined my heart for months now about just getting to meet you and appreciate the mirror you provided for me. Is it fabulous to say I met you? Of course. And I’m sorry for that. BUT!!!... It would be fabulous, I honestly believe, if you were a nobody down the block. I choose to believe that I see you as a whole person that I know a lot about but simply do not know well.

Finding you was like finding the answer to questions I didn’t even know how to ask. My heart had wanted to Be Alive, but had only been taught to hate itself for the desires it held so tightly.

Marvin cannot be left out of this equation. Listening to your collaborations has made me a better musician by far. Your commitment and agreement on the telling of the story of any song is impeccable. Your ability to elicit such giant emotions by understating them is perhaps the key to your magic and also what most frequently gets overlooked for other, more obvious parts of your act. I do talk to Marvin about you, ask about your well-being and career. We talk about his as well. I try to separate them when possible. He has become a dear friend and a great encourager, as I am sure you well know from your own experience. The pride with which he talks about your work together exudes into any conversation.

I was perhaps most honored to be in your company when we realized how much we both love that old Bonnie Raitt tune. I was stunned when you began to sing “Love Has No Pride” from your memory, as though along with the radio. As many hours as I have spent singing “Gee Whiz” and “Only Wounded,” it was stunning to remember that you know more songs than are on your records! I so look forward to seeing if that particular song ends up in your act. I’d like to think of myself as a good barometer for your audience, and I know I’d love it!

Well, here it is. The end of the letter I’ve been meditating over for months, poured out over a fully mooned evening and a light cocktail. My gut may be wrong, but I’m going to go with it and

With a “Z”

The red woman points Her polished nails up Past her black helmet Of Weimar coiffure.

I stare at her shoes Puncturing the stage. The brass gets louderDeafening our senses.

Her long lashes peer At the denizens Of her voice. Passing Each body with love.

We unknown peopleMysterious side Profiles in the Passenger side win Her ruby glances. We feel her vocal Chords-Glitter-GershwinIntoxicatingAutumnal smooth swing.

–Anthony Marando

share with you a final thought. I imagine that it is very easy for someone in your life position to perhaps not feel heard. Audiences are not what they were, and we can’t all be Beyoncé, I suppose. But I want to make sure that you know that someone out there IS listening. Your music has mothered me through times that I did feel like a motherless child, as clichéd as that sounds. After years of listening to you and not knowing you, I want to thank you so much for treating me like a whole person and not “just” a fan. I thank you from the bottom of my heart and look forward to opportunities to know you better. Give Us More to See, right?

Love, indeed, Christopher Hamblin

Thecrowd is on its feet, clapping and shouting anything that will draw its cipher back to the stage. For the last hour and half, she has kept them rapt in her presence, tripping on her words, reveling in her joy and crying with her sorrows. And she has given them all, one wonders if she have anything left?.

Success!

She has reentered, her beaded white A line dress picks up the stage lights and for a instant she is, as we have always known her to be, incandescent. Shimmering she sits down at the piano, and hesitantly at first, places her gloved fingers on the keys. Baring down chords fill the room as delicately she begins:

“Across the morning sky, All the birds are leaving”

To say that upon arriving in New York at the age of 17, I was slightly delusional is a phrase of such understatement that it could only be surpassed by something like:

We may have taken some missteps in Iraq or Sarah Palin is not a Rhodes Scholar.

Justin Bond

by Justin Sayre / Contessa

There should be a new word for my delusion, my wide-eyed expectancy that led me around in a fog of my own creation for my first few years in New York. My glasses were not rose-colored they were black. I had no idea what was going on. None. Now this is not to say I was some sort of localized tourist, or some unsophisticated country mouse venturing out into higher climbs with a small town sense and a sack full of dreams. No Tammy. No. I was capable. I could instantly find my way around. I had prepared for New York, solely to not be seen as the rube, I imagined myself to be. The Bronx, it was up, the Battery down, I had even ridden in the hole in the ground. New York, New York, it was quite something and I was here to make it my home. For those first few weeks I was simply overwhelmed by her beauty and my teaming brain imagined all sorts of plans on how I would make her mine. Soon, I thought, soon this city would cleave me to her steely bosom and cry out, “Yes, my son, my son at last you have returned to me.” And I would be home. I would go the Astor Bar and pick up unsophisticated Sail-

ors from places like Kansas or Iowa for sinister sexual purposes with the likes of Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal. For my birthday I would have dinner at 21* and maybe catch a glimpse of Jackie or at least Truman and Babe, who would send over a drink to congratulate me on this my special day. My late nights would be spent in some underground grotto of a coffee house listening to the poetry of Ginsberg or Corso, popping my fingers to the sheer ingenuity of Bird. This was to be my New York. My new home. All set to the score of a beautiful Gershwin tune...

By the time I arrived in New York, most of the afore mentioned city-dwellers were dead. 21* was ghastly expensive, even for my birthday and The Astor Bar that had become a Kmart. My bubble was burst. I could not regret coming to New York. I just regretted not coming to New York in 1953, which would have been more to my liking. So much had changed in 50 years, all of which I was unprepared for. Where were the smart set? Where were the Beatniks? How could I find a home in this place? I be-

Photo: Amos Mac

came overwhelmed with a sense of nostalgia for a time I had never known. And besides this pang for a land of might have been, I began to have a sinking sensation about New York. I began to fear I had missed it. That in all those years I had wasted not being born and then finally coming into the world and lazily growing up in semi-rural Pennsylvania, that in all that time, New York had thrown up its collective hands and cried out, “We’ve had enough. We can’t do it anymore. We’re done. Let’s get a Pottery Barn.”

Had New York become a place imitation rather than creation?

Had she really chosen to concentrate on the convenient over the curious?

As one of the last of those angel headed hipsters told me:

Man, why do you think they don’t like Wild Flower at Golf Courses?

–Why?

‘Cause manufactured landscapes can’t handle beauty they don’t create. No room for Wild anything in a world that’s meant to be pretty.

Had New York become Pretty? Not gritty, or sophisticated or even interesting? Just pretty?

Had I come to late to walk on its wild side? Had I indeed missed it all?

And if so, what would happen now?

For a city that never sleeps, the only thing I could find open most nights was a Duane Reade or another Duane Reade two blocks away. Where was New York? How would I melt my little town blues away when this New York for the most part was just luke warm.

And what would happen if I had indeed missed it?

Would I just watch as New York, the once fabled beacon of culture and art, that hell of a town, slowly crumbled until it became nothing more than an outlet shopping center somewhere outside Paramus (may we always be somewhere outside Paramus).

For a while I thought I had. Yes of

course there were sparks of hope. Bobby Short was still living then. There was the first time I went to Florent. Or the time I met Rosemary Harris on the subway and she held my hand and talked to me all the way to 86th street. But for the most part, I thought I was alone in a city crumbling on its own past.

that I was instantly attuned with the understated genius of Kenny Mellman as the long suffering gay-jew-tard Herb. I would love to say that I was conscience to the socio-political satire, to the playful renegotiation of the mores of drag, or to the sinister sense of the unspoken that was emanating from that picture as a beacon calling to me across time and space.

But the truth.

The truth was I liked the pretty colors. And I thought at least if they were playing an aged Cabaret duo they would sing songs I know.

And then I saw a picture of two men, dressed as an aging cabaret duo, Kiki and Herb.

Iwouldlike to say that I responded to the sinister look in the eyes of Justin Bond as Kiki Durane; that I immediately understood the subversive message in that devilish grin; that I followed the drawn-in wrinkles on her face all the way to the tear drop rhinestone under the center of each eye with a knowing wink of recognition. I would love to say

Icouldrhapsodise about what that first night seeing Kiki and Herb was like for pages. But the truth is it was an awakening. It was nothing that I expected and everything that I dreamed of. Seeing Justin Bond on stage that first night, and all of the nights that followed, was like a clarion call to myself an artist and a queer. He was masterful; playing with the audience with equal parts of wild abandon and the precision of dogged craftsman. I sat there mesmerized. I did not recognize a single song, expect perhaps “Total Eclipse of The Heart” that ended up in a swirl of ecstasy and Yeats, but I was captivated. Not only for what was going on onstage but more so for what was happening in the room. I was watching two actualized visionaries unabashedly take on the world that was crowding in around on us. Nothing was pristine or manicured, nothing approved of or agreeable to; this was their domain and they were moving us past our safe and sterile world to something dangerous and real. To feel that rawness of expression was something that up until that point I had only dreamt of. And as a gay or queer artist to see both these entities enter the stage without compromise or apology, was a revelation. Having gone to acting school, I had learned early that my homosexuality was a diminishment, something to be overcome, or else caricatured in order

Photo: Carol Rosegg

to create a “niche.” To see open and unabashed gay people telling their truth so loudly, so proudly, so fearlessly shook me to my core and filled my mind with the dreams of swirling possibility. Yes Justin was in a dress, and playing a woman. But he was so much more, and in an almost Brechtian turn he was more capable of the truth in those moments than any heart felt one man show about the rigors of a Mormon upbringing ever could uptown could ever dream of.

I was instantly a fan, some would say fanatic, but I will stick with the abbreviated version. I went to see the show the next night and the next, and for the next several years Kiki and Herb were always on my schedule. I had some of the routines down verbatim; could at any moment summon up, “I always thought if you weren’t molested as a child, you must have been one ugly kid;” went night after night to see as routines and musical numbers were tweeked and perfected. I watched Justin’s calculated brilliance in the framing of a joke with the punctuation of extended sip of his Canadian club. And was moved to tears when he sang Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill,” after 9-11. Great artists awaken us to the world around us and ask us to dream of the future. I saw New York differently after Kiki and Herb. There was creation. There was vision. The wild things were still about, just hiding a bit. And New York was far from over, it was maybe a little drowsy on money and Ikea but that could change in an instant. There was brilliance all around and after a long awaited time I began to feel a part of it.

But the wild things could not hide their brilliance for too long. And when Kiki and Herb opened on Broadway, I of course attended, and instead of just hobbling into the theatre as a normal understated theatre-goer, I went in heels to show to the few people that even gave me a second look, a sense of solidarity with my visionaries and they brought their brilliance uptown. I felt that first night, as if, standing in those heels in the foyer of Helen Hayes Theatre, that I was holding some precious bit of truth that these unsuspecting rubes had no idea about. But they would see. They would see. The

Wild Things came home to Broadway.

And then it was over. Justin began to perform as himself and Kenny started Our Hit Parade. Kiki and Herb had always promised they would die for us and in a way they had. They opened our eyes and left us with the dazzling vision of possibility and the call to the lands still undiscovered. Both of which they themselves would venture into.

At first I thought I was afraid I wouldn’t like Justin without the mask of Kiki, as if the creation was more important than the creator. But in truth, Justin became more powerful to me without Kiki. I began to see Kiki as a means of his expression rather than his voice, a medium on which he created his art, rather than his art itself. After casting off the trappings of Kiki, of a character or a banter, Justin, in my eyes, became free to simply be. And in just being, he glowed. His brilliance that first night, clad in his particular mixture of masculine and feminine, was instantly intoxicating to me and once again asked me to expand my sense of the world. Here was this vision, so powerful, so brilliant, so completely her own creation, that she, Mx. Bond, became almost indescribable to me. She had become so completely her-

self that the only descriptor one could use for her was in fact, Justin Bond. I was challenged again, something I had become used to in seeing Justin perform by now, but more so, I was so utterly moved to see this gorgeous sleek creature exist, solely on their own terms that I began to question my own existence. Artists should be measured along these lines, not but the boundaries they overcome but by the dreams they inspire.

Seeing Justin Bond as Justin Bond, is still a thrill to me. I have by this point met Justin socially, though truth be told I find it hard to speak to her. All I really want to do is sing “To Sir With Love” to her, but that seems a little much. Over the years, Justin Bond has been a vision to me, almost a divination of what is possible and the lengths still to go. As an artist he has challenged me to push myself farther, and to ask more of myself and the world in which I live. For she has awakened me to my time; asked of me to see the world in the present, and revel in all its faults, foibles and fabulousness. For holding on to the past is just a way of negating the present. And the present is all we have.

I will say that I still at times long for an earlier time, for the repartee, for the music, for the clothes, for more than a small group of still coherent octogenarians to get my references. But the truth of the matter is I belong to this age. New York maybe in its decline but what a lovely way to burnand I am glad to be part of the ember. I have grown to love my time, and to see how precious it is. This age may not have a Gershwin score, but it has Justin Bond singing a Karen Carpenter tune and that for me is so much better.

The singer is on stage and this is her last song, at least for tonight. She plays, slowly and deliberately as she she sings the lyrics with eyes closed, as if it were a prayer.

“For who knows where the time goes, who knows where the time goes.” This is her time.”

And far in the back with eyes open and brimming with tears, a boy watches her and dares not close his eyes to miss an instant of this their time together.

Justin Bond with Faeries

Photo: Richard Mitchell

Itwas the mid 1980s, and Halloween was fast approaching. Three dear friends of mine decided that they would costume themselves as Diana Ross and the Supremes, and invited me to join them. We were all active leaders in the New York Healing Circle, an amazing community gathered together in the midst of the AIDS epidemic. I was delighted by the invitation to become their fourth member, but only hesitated for a moment before I said, “No thank you.”

“What do you mean, no thank you?”

“Come on. It will be fun.”

“You are so out of touch with your inner female,” the third friend snipped back at me, and I responded with words I’d never heard myself say before. “Listen, your female sides may be Diana Ross, or Cher, or Marilyn Monroe. But my inner female is Joan of Arc. And she’s not wearing a great big wig and a sequined evening gown. She’s mounted on a huge horse, encased in armor, carrying a gigantic battle ax,” I thundered back at them. “And,” I added, “she’s way more butch that I am.”

“Well, that’s no surpise,” the snippy one snapped back.

We did a lot of Inner Child work in the Healing Circle, and my Inner Child, a close friend of my Inner Female, had learned early on that there was something wrong with hearing voices other people don’t hear. It took a while to figure out that I could block out the voices by singing very loudly to myself. Feeling alone, different, strange, and possibly crazy, it was a painting of Joan of Arc in the Metropolitan Museum of Art which brought me comfort. In the large

Joan of Arc: My Diva

by Andrew Ramer

realistic work done by the 19th century French artist Jules Bastien-Lepage, we see a young unarmored Joan standing in front of her family’s cottage, surrounded by trees and staring out into the distance, clearly listening to the three shimmering, half-visible people who are floating in the air behind her. “That’s Joan of Arc,” my father said as we approached the painting, and for three days I was in a state of bliss, knowing for the first time that other people heard voices. But then I asked my father, “Daddy, who was Joan of Arc,” and after he told me the story of

diva you’d expect from a nice Jewish boy. (Well, maybe not so nice. But loyal.) The testimony from her trial preserves some of her words, and her legend has inspired others through the centuries. Recently on a trip to Los Angeles, I got lost and found myself outside the Church of Joan of Arc, right at noon, with church bells ringing. I went in and sat right in front of a statue of her, way more girlish than my Joan, a skirt hanging out from beneath her armor. Still, I felt at home in her house, with two others praying silently in the otherwise empty church.

her life – I was even more afraid than I’d been before.

But time, patience, a wise rabbi in Jerusalem who counseled me, and then lots of books on channeling and altered states, enabled me to open up to my voices again, without fear, and much of what they taught me I shared with my Healing Circle family. To this day I keep a copy of that painting in my study, sometimes on my meditation altar, always nearby. Joan is not your usual diva. She made no films or recordings. And she is not exactly the

Idid do drag for the first and last time a few years ago, to support a beloved friend who was leading a workshop in sacred drag at the annual fall Gay Spirit Visions Conference. The black cocktail dress and a broadbrimmed black hat made me look so much like my late mother. But when it came time for shoes and makeup, a very clear strong female voice rose up from the depths of me and said, “No.” My inner female is still more butch than I am, but twenty-five years later, my diva continues to inspire me with her passionate ability to bridge female and male, visible and invisible, what is and what could be. And when she talks to me, I’m not afraid to listen.

Andrew Ramer was interviewed in Mark Thompson’s Gay Soul, and is best known for his own book, Two Flutes Playing. His new book, Queering the Text: Biblical, Medieval, and Modern Jewish Stories, was recently published by White Crane Books.

Marie Falconetti as Jeanne d’Arc in the film by Carl Theodor Dreyer

Feyonce

Photos by Wayne Bund (Pan)

Untitled Feyonce #4 “Reaching” (above)

Untitled Feyonce #2 “Basement” (opposite, top)

Untitled Feyonce #3 “Escape” (opposite, bottom)

The Feyonce Poster

Dory Previn: A Diva to Inspire Overcoming

by Jay “Jaybird” Warren

BeforeI found Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Judy Collins and Laura Nyro, there was Dory Previn. Her talents were no match to the other four in terms of literate lyrics, soulful singing and wider popularity, but her life story was the stuff that divas are made from. A difficult childhood, relationship struggles in adulthood and, most impressionable to an awkward teenage queer kid, a determination to rise above life’s impediments and to engage others in the lessons she’d learned.

Dory Previn’s medium, as for the other four, was music -- songwriting and record albums. My first exposure to her music was through a course called “Human Relations” in my high school. I went to a progressive, experimental high school in South Florida in the 1970s, and one of my teachers brought Previn’s music in for us to hear and react to. The first song she played, “Twenty-Mile Zone,” was about the narrator of the story being pulled over by a motorcycle cop for “screaming at the top of (her) lungs.” Towards the end of the encounter, she is asked to follow him down to the station: “So he climbed aboard his cycle and his red-eyed headlight beamed and his motor started spinning and his siren screamed.”

Her social comment on the irony involved in the social context of behavior -- one screaming unlawful, the other screaming okay -- was not lost to my adolescent mind that was trying to make sense of social conventions and the fact that human beings are nothing if not inconsistent.

The other song my teacher played that day was “Michael Michael,” a song about a man who was “muscle-bound

and super-tan. ... When he walked and talked and moved, Michael proved and proved and proved, Michael is a hyperSuperman.” Toward the end of the story, we learn that:

“But late at night, he sometimes seems to hear his mother’s voice in dreams, calling to him clear and plain, but she calls him Mary Jane. And Michael answers plain and clear, ‘I am coming [cumming?] Mother Dear.’”

This was music to the ears of a sissy teen trying to find a way to accept his androgynous qualities. Michael’s exposure as a deeply insecure character whose overcompensation toward hypermasculinity was a defense against his softer side was a revelation to me.

I sought out Previn’s work over the next few years and continued to be inspired by it. She wrote often of her efforts to get relationships right, to point out inconsistencies in the world order and to speak up against the Viet Nam War, among other things.

My curiosity led me to learn more about her personal story. She had been married to conductor and composer André Previn, and the two of them had a hit with “(Theme Song from) The Valley of the Dolls,” which was recorded by Dionne Warwick. They composed numerous other songs together, including (diva alert!) “The Faraway Part of Town,” recorded by Judy Garland for the movie “Pepe” and nominated for an Academy Award in 1960. André went on to have an affair with Mia Farrow while still married to Dory. Farrow had a set of twins through André, which was a major scandal in the tabloid pages of

the day and resulted in the end of the Previn marriage.

I later learned that Dory had quite the serious “mental breakdown” after the incident, no doubt deepened by the public broadcasting of her private troubles. At one point she had a psychotic episode aboard a plane and had to be escorted off and hospitalized. She underwent electroconvulsive therapy and it took her some time to recover emotionally. Poetry and song-writing became a major vehicle for her recovery.

I eventually learned through her autobiography “Midnight Baby” that Previn had endured extreme emotional abuse at the hands of her father, who apparently was a quite disturbed man. Among other abuses, he locked her, her mother and her baby sister in their attic and held them at gunpoint for several months. No doubt the trauma of her adult life triggered unprocessed distress related to her childhood experiences that left her unable to cope with reality.

What I found and still find inspiring is how this woman, labeled “crazy” and “schizophrenic” as an adult, managed to work her way through the mire of her psychological troubles through writing and singing about it. It seemed to me that it worked for her; that she was not just a confessional songwriter but a wounded soul who used her art to do some real healing and went on to share that art with the world in hopes that others might heal. (It had that effect for me.) While I recognize Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe as true divas, I’m happy to add Dory Previn’s name to the pantheon as her story includes tragedy followed by recovery, not merely a downward spiral and self-destruction.

B’Elanna Torres, My Latina Diva

She was not “a good fit for the culture” of the Federation and for herself, B’Elanna Torres. Her tenacity started with anger and developed into confidence that she could make things work and always, always save the day. She loved problem-solving and learned to deactivate long-burning upset bombs. And she could rebuild robots and had compassion for difficult patients. I seriously want to refrain from this poem for my diva. I want to sprinkle this poem with words in Klingonii, such as adanji, petaQ or taHqeq, without using italics.

B’Elanna Torres found the language “too robust”, which might make her without honor or not brown enough. And, boy, years later, she almost had her baby fully humanized to avoid the harassment of identity politics football if not for the love of a hot white guy. As Sulu would say, oh my. Would the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers accept her as a member? I can only speculate. Only the Latina half of her made it back to the Alpha Quadrant; she had been divided and her Klingon half died and the surviving self integrated into her original impurity through artificial means. And even then there are many B’Elannas from multiple dimensions and timelines and imaginary recreations in worst-case security scenarios played out in serial narratives like a telenovela.

– Aldo Alvarez

Las Divas

Photographs by Luna Luis Ortiz Blonde Bombshell

Glamour Puss

Self-Portrait: Last Days of Marilyn

Silent Film Star

Franlkin Abbott

by Philip Gambone

Between the summers of 2007 and 2009, I traveled the length and breadth of our country interviewing a diverse group of prominent, interesting, and accomplished queer Americans. I talked with artists and musicians, filmmakers and writers, athletes and activists, politicians, playwrights, preservationists, and performance artists. In Vermont, I spent a delightful day with Wayne Winterrowd and Jow Eck, two extraordinary horticulturalists. In Chicago, I spoke to Tonda Hughes, an expert in lesbian health issues. In San Francisco, I interviewed Zoe Dunning, the only person to have successfully fought for and retained her military career under the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy. In Austin, I met Russell van Kraayenburg, a young man who started the first gay fraternity at the University of Texas. In all, I taped conversations with 102 wonderfully inspiring LGBTQ Americans.

Out of those interviews came a book, Travels in a Gay Nation: Portraits of LGBTQ Americans, which was published this spring by the University of Wisconsin Press. Unfortunately, because of budgetary restraints, the publisher had to cut several profiles from the final version of the book, a situation I hope to rectify with the future publication of a second volume of profiles. In particular, I was disappointed that Franklin Abbott was not included. I had known of Abbott from his association with the Atlanta Queer Literary Festival, but it was only when I finally got to interview him in person that I came to appreciate what a vibrant, indefatigable, witty and intelligent man he is, a pioneer in so many areas of queer liberation.

We met in Atlanta in 2008. It was a very rainy October afternoon, the only free hour that Abbott could spare all that day. As chairperson of the Atlanta Queer Literary Festival, he had been running around since early morning making sure that the multiple readings, panels, appearances and other events were on schedule. He arrived at my hotel soaking wet. But though it had already been a long day, and he had more activities to

attend to after our interview, he was upbeat and eager to talk.

“I have a friend from Burkina Faso,” he told me as he changed into the dry tee shirt that I offered him. “There, in the Dargara culture, gay people are called the gatekeepers. They mediate between the worlds: between men and women, between the ancestors and the living, between the elemental spirits and human beings. It always seems to me that that’s what we gay people here in America

low sexist or patriarchal models.

“I really value women’s voices and have always made it a point to listen a lot to what women say. Men tend to ‘talk over’—this thing about getting your point across—ruling the dialogue. I learn a lot just by listening.”

Franklin Abbott was born in Birmingham in 1950, “into the middle of the middle class.” His parents were the first in their respective families to receive a college education. “I was a little fairy—very theatrical and animated. There came a point at which I began to get disapproval from both of my parents: ‘Don’t act that way; don’t talk that way.’ My mother basically told me how not to be.” The young boy quickly learned that such behavior was not only displeasing to his parents but that, in the South, “it was dangerous not to be masculine.”

Abbott’s childhood experiences were often what he calls “homo-emotional,” but he kept his feelings largely bottled in. When he was eight, the family moved to Buffalo, a place where he found it “easier to be a strange kid.” He enjoyed a lot of child sex play, and by fourth grade had formed a crush on boy a few years older. Four years later, the family moved back to the South, this time to Nashville.

would be doing if we hadn’t been marginalized by patriarchal society.”

Abbott’s entire career—as a poet, essayist, anthologist, editor, and psychotherapist—has been about addressing the marginalization that gay men experience in a patriarchal society. He has been a leader in the gay men’s spirituality movement from its inception. For years, he was active in the Radical Faeries, the neo-pagan gay assembly. He has served as poetry editor for two publications loosely affiliated with the Faeries and put together three anthologies of essays about men and masculinity.

Abbott’s work has brought gay men to see that the roles and interpretations of masculinity that we inherit—what he calls “our basic training in the politics of pleasure and pain”—do not have to fol-

“That was just horrible, one of the worst things that ever happened to me. In Buffalo, I had regained some of my spontaneity. Now I couldn’t find any boys who were comfortable taking their clothes off. I got very rigid and very tight. I became camouflaged. I would not wear the color red. I would not do anything to call attention to myself. It wasn’t safe.”

In high school, life became “oppressive.” The school culture was all about football. Being clumsy and uncoordinated, Abbott found that “I couldn’t do anything that would redeem me athletically. That was the only way for a boy to have any kind of stature. I was also a bright kid, and that got you into trouble.” One teacher in particular was a “haven” for him. “I took every class with her I could get. She would teach Ovid, Aristophanes. All sorts of wonderful things.”

Photo: Philip Gambone

Franklin Abbot

Around this time, a feature article in Look magazine taught Abbott the word for what he was, a word he had never heard before. He read everything about homosexuality that he could find, which, he says, was “not much.” He had no boyfriends in high school. “It was a really, really repressed time. It was dangerous. “Boys who were obviously gay scared me because they could blow my cover.” Abbott had a girlfriend and recalls going on double dates with another boy and his girlfriend. When the other boy was discovered to be gay, he killed himself. “It was that bad. You couldn’t have that kind of identity and survive.”

In 1969, Abbott matriculated to Mercer College in Macon, Georgia, “as far away from my family as I could get. They wouldn’t let me go to college in the North because they said it was full of communists. That whole first year was the first time I lived with other boys my age. Everybody showered together. I would engage guys in long conversations to keep them in there.”

For a while, Abbott “prayed a lot” that he would not be gay. In a drugstore paperback, he read that LSD would cure homosexuality. The summer after his freshman year, he dropped acid. “When I woke up the next morning, I was still gay.” Chuckling heartily, he told me, “I gave up.”

Back at Mercer for his sophomore year, Abbott came out. Though it was a Southern Baptist university, he found many progressive people on the faculty. The civil rights and women’s liberation movements had made a significant impact on campus. “Since everyone else was getting liberated, I decided I could too.” As a gay man (one who now had a boyfriend), he wrote articles for the school newspaper, though the university insisted he publish them pseudonymously.

Abbott recalled that in the early seventies, Macon had a gay bar, the We Three Lounge, a “shot-gun place” that served both men and women. “It was rough. I had no business being there. The lesbians were all armed and dangerous. One night, there was shootin’ in the bar. I ran up on stage. There were two big fat drag queens up there. I hid behind one of them. I tried to escape out the bathroom window. The police found me in the alley and took me back inside! It was very colorful.”

After graduating with a degree in so-

ciology, Abbott ran a program for mentally retarded children and adults in Turner County, one of the most impoverished and segregated areas in the state. “I had no business doing that, but I had a sociology degree, which according to the State of Georgia qualified me. Not a gay bar in a hundred-mile radius. There was nothing.”

Abbott stuck it out for three years and then enrolled in a graduate program in the School of Social Work at the University of Georgia. In 1978, he moved to Atlanta to do the practicum component of his degree. There he became co-chair of the Third Southeastern Conference for Lesbians and Gay Men. At the end of the conference, the women decided they needed to have their own caucus. At the final session, they stood up and left. “The men were left by themselves. It was the first time we were ever in the position of just being gay men together.”

Abbott wholeheartedly embraced faerie culture. “I discovered my gay soul via the first faerie gatherings when I was intentionally in the company of other gay men for the first time.” He attended as many of the faerie gatherings as he could, delighting in, and learning from, their emphasis on outrageous dress, erotic playfulness, and new attitudes about masculinity.

“We had them as often as we could—a summer solstice gathering, a fall equinox gathering, a winter gathering. The faeries borrowed a fair amount from wicca. Creating that space, which is a safe space, a synergy comes about. In my own way of thinking about it, I call it the woo factor. The energy starts to get soupy. The boundaries between people—their personalities—start to loosen up. You end up in a place that is more purely spirit. In that, there is this marvelous connection.”

Other than feminist authors, there was very little to read in those days to inform Abbott’s thinking about living as an alternative gay male. Inspired by poets like Adrienne Rich and Audrey Lorde—and the women’s music movement, which was “balm to my soul”—he came to see that “homophobia and sexism were flip sides of the same coin, that you can’t really have one without the other.”

As the gay men talked, one of them, Mikel Wilson, invited the group to continue the conversation at his farm, Running Water, in North Carolina. “Mikel was living as a hippie on the land. He was a weaver, wore hand-made clothing, carried a big staff. He looked like an Old Testament prophet.” About thirty men from the Conference showed up. That meeting became the foundational gathering of the Radical Faeries on the East Coast.

According to Mark Thompson in “This Gay Tribe,” a brief history of the Faeries, which he included in his anthology Gay Spirit, “The need to create a new vision—and one not based on modern Western morality—was a vital issue for many gay people at this time. [Some] felt compelled to separate themselves physically from the dominant heterosexual culture and seek alternatives for body, as well as soul, in isolated rural areas.”

Drawn to its hippie-pagan idealism,

Abbott had begun writing poetry in college, sending anonymous poems to men he had crushes on. Now, as he began to attend more faerie gatherings and men’s conferences, he found a sympathetic forum to read his work. By the mideighties, he had become poetry editor for M: Gentle Men for Gender Justice, a quarterly publication, and for RFD. Those two journals, closely allied with the men’s liberation and spirituality movement, were ideal vehicles for Abbott’s poetic aesthetic.

“I think poetry was originally the shaman’s song, the way we tried to interact magically with the world. When it works, poetry does that—it alters reality.”

In 1978, Abbott opened a psychotherapy office. “I was one of the first openly out gay therapists in Atlanta. When I began my practice, there were only two or three other out gay men who were therapists. There were no openly gay doctors or openly gay lawyers.”

In the beginning, most of his work with gay men centered on homophobia. “It was a thick, toxic cloud that made it so difficult to love ourselves and love each other. The faeries and the gay men’s

When the other boy was discovered to be gay, he killed himself. “It was that bad. You couldn’t have that kind of identity and survive.”

spirituality movement were the antidote to that.”

As those lessons were beginning to bear fruit—“just as we began to feel like we could celebrate ourselves”—the AIDS epidemic struck. “None of the gay men I worked with were unaffected by it. If it takes a year to grieve a death, then most of us were in a constant state of grief for over a decade.”

At the height of the epidemic, between 1987 and 1993, Abbott edited three anthologies that grew out of his involvement with the men’s spirituality movement. The first, New Men, New Minds: Breaking Male Tradition (Crossing Press, 1987), celebrated how men were beginning to change the traditional roles of masculinity. Many of the pieces originated in the two magazines he was helping to edit. “I wanted to take some of the good stuff and put it together in an anthology.” In the introduction, Abbott said it was “a book about men finding themselves.”

He explained to me: “Men at that time were beginning to understand, in a way that they never had before, the cost of privilege. It was like in the old South, where the system fucked everybody. Certainly the slaves suffered horribly, but the slave owners were dehumanized by the institution as well. Men in the eighties were figuring that out: that sexism dehumanized them.”

Abbott worked hard at refusing to participate in the traditional rules of masculinity. “I try to work on the competitive. I mean, it’s still there, but it’s not something that I delight in or try to reinforce. I want to be a cooperative person. Competition—it turns me off.”

In his second anthology, Men & Intimacy: Personal Accounts Exploring the Dilemmas of Modern Male Sexuality (Crossing Press 1990), Abbott wrote about the “terrible pain that men feel about their sexuality and about intimacy.”

He elaborated on this for me: “More so with the straight men than with the gay men that I work with is a sense of being alienated from the rest of life, and not having a language for feelings. That is a terribly, terribly painful place to be in. When I sit with a male-female couple, so often it’s like the guy is emotionally retarded. He can’t identify his feelings, he can’t talk about them. The cover up is anger; but that’s an awful position to be in—not to

know your own heart—and have to rely on other people to interpret it for you.”

Abbott explored the experience of boyhood in his third anthology Boyhood: Growing Up Male (Crossing, 1993). There he wrote that “the road to manhood is fraught with endless initiations of violence.” Is that a cultural legacy that we can break, I asked him, or are men just natural aggressors, wired to be violent?

“That nature-versus-nurture argument is going to go on to the end of time. The more we find out about our brains, the more the nature argument tends to hold sway. At the same time, we are so culturally myopic. I’ve been lucky to travel all over the place. One of the things that happens when you leave Western civilization is that consciousness changes. People aren’t thinking the way we think. It’s very disconcerting to be in a place where the people don’t believe that reality is shaped in the way I believe it is. For example, if you go to a place like Java, which is densely populated, aggression is absolutely a taboo. They can’t live that close together and be as aggressive as we are. Cooperation and gentleness and finding the negotiated way is how they operate. So it’s hard to argue that men are just aggressive jerks.”

Each of Abbott’s three anthologies aims less at analysis than at experience and story-telling. “I didn’t want to take the role of expert. I didn’t want to generalize. I wanted to share the spotlight. Of course, when you do that you commit literary suicide. I could have taken the ideas and written a book and maybe garnered more acclaim, but it would not have been nearly as satisfying. The way I did those books goes along with my egalitarian notions.”

Since the last of the anthologies was published, Abbott has engaged in a number of other projects. For several years, he facilitated a healing circle sponsored by the First Existentialist Congregation of Atlanta. He also co-hosted a talk show on an alternative radio station in Atlanta, to which he invited many guests—among them, James Broughton, Quentin Crisp, Tim Miller—who were gay writers and performers.

When the Faeries left Running Water for a new sanctuary, Abbott helped inaugurate and guide a new series of conferences, Gay Spirit Visions, which

was open to gay and bisexual men of all spiritual paths. Along with Harry Hay, the founder of the Faerie movement, he delivered the keynote address at the first GSV gathering in 1990 and remained active with them for a decade. In the summer of 1995, Abbott facilitated the first Euro Faerie gathering, which took place on Terschelling Island off the coast of the Netherlands. As he has grown older, he has not participated as actively in the faerie gatherings. “Sleeping in a tent and eating faerie gruel—whatever creativity can be applied to oatmeal and vegetables—is not very appealing to me,” he told me with a twinkle in his eye.

In 1999, RFD Press brought out a volume of Abbott’s collected poems, Mortal Love. Of his work, gay writer Felice Picano has written, “Through some mysterious alchemy, Franklin Abbott has fashioned himself into the direct poetic heir of Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg.” Abbott’s latest book of poems and stories, Pink Zinnia (2009), was published by AuthorHouse.

A few years ago, at the suggestion of an Atlanta librarian, Abbott created the first Atlanta Queer Literary Festival, which was held in October 2007. Subsequent conferences—with more participation from non-Atlanta writers—have been held every year since. Abbott is proud of the fact that the conference is free and that there are programs for high school and college students as well as for the general public. In addition to readings and signings, which take place in several venues all over the city, he has included singer-songwriters and a theater component. On the day we spoke, he was working on plans for an international queer poetry conference.

As we wrapped up the interview and Abbott got ready to brave the rain on the way to his next appointment, he told me, “I like projects; they keep me connected to people. But I don’t have much left to prove. I’m not going to win a prize or get rich, but I have so much in life that I love and cherish. Being gay has been my passport to having a life I never would have imagined.”

Philip Gambone is a prize-winning writer of fiction and non-fiction. His most recent novel, Beijing, was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. Phil teaches at Boston University Academy and at the Harvard Extension School.

Aretha Franklin

by David Wright - Street Candy

Sister Ree, Her Majesty, The Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin. I’ve loved you since 1967, when I first heard your opening piano chords of “Dr. Feelgood”. And then you began to sing: “You’re no good, heartbreaker. You’re a liar and a cheat. And I don’t know why...I let you do these things to me”. Your almost conversational ease at the piano, your apparent first-hand knowledge of the subject ( a mother at 14), your sass and authority galvanized me... and the rest of the nation...from that very moment.

Of your second single, “Respect”, well, what is left to say? It’s been described as the best pop single of all time. It instantly had my sister and me doing the jerk on our picnic table. It had Otis Redding say, “That little girl just stole my song”, admiringly. To this day, I wouldn’t dream of throwing a dance party without playing it. Or of asking anything less from my men.

An icon? Simply be being herself in her time, Aretha has been the face of the Black Power movement, the Women’s Movement and the Gospel. Because of her talent and integrity, Aretha’s presence has been required at our country’s most historic events. What other singer could claim (or would you want) to have sung at Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral ( “Take my Hand, Precious Lord”) and at Barak Obama’s inauguration? “My Country Tis of Thee”, indeed: it’s been an amazing trip for us all.

A diva in the original, operatic, sense of the word ( a divine singer).....without question. Girl could sing Happy Birthday and make people scream and cry.

A diva in the sense of, “She thinks she’s all that?” Honey, she IS all that. Wouldn’t you like to blow Celine Dion off the stage without raising an eyebrow? That skinny girl will never dare sing “Natural Woman” in Ree Ree’s presence

again! Yes, there are the jewels, the furs and the pounds. Aretha comes from the black show biz tradition that believes you don’t step on the stage without giving people something to look at. That she’s a sensualist is obvious. I’ve heard her rhapsodize about fried clams. But she would never throw a telephone at an underling the way some divas do. If she demands the air conditioning be shut off during shows it’s not to make people uncomfortable, but to offer them the best voice she has. She is a lady.

Finally, I would venture to say that if one is the sort of person to bare her soul on a stage night after night, giving of herself in a way most people aren’t called to, it just may be necessary to have a little attitude and a little bling. Experience has shown me that a sequin jacket can make awfully good armor. Lady Soul, the one and only, “I Say a Little Prayer for You”.

In her book The Highest Apple: Sappho and The Lesbian Poetic Tradition, Judy Grahn asked, “What is the story we can tell ourselves of our doings that gives our lives meaning? What connects us back to the Roses of the Muses, and to the highest apple that is ourselves?” These questions—about the cultural presence of gays and lesbians in history—have occupied Grahn for her entire career. A lesbian feminist poet, cultural historian, anthropologist, and philosopher, Grahn has helped queer folk to recognize their life story as part of a rich tradition—of language, myths, and cultic behavior— that extends to the very beginnings of the Western tradition. In works like The Work of a Common Woman, Another Mother Tongue, and Blood, Bread, and Roses, she has taken on the role of “a modern ceremonial dyke,” intent on rescuing LGBT lives from anonymity, triviality and meaninglessness.

“Had I been born into a tribal society,” she once wrote, “I believe I would have been the European equivalent of a shaman: a hag, a wisewoman, a sorcerer, a dervish, a runic bard, a warrior/priest, a wiccan/woman.”

In her decision “to speak for women and to speak as a woman,” Grahn has spoken for all marginalized people. “It is the acknowledgement and then the inclusion of all our selves that leads us to the idea of life as consisting of many expanding, multicultural worlds in which everyone is ultimately included (as well as excluded),” she wrote in The Highest Apple. In the words of queer cultural theorist Gregory Gajus, Grahn “smashed the holy images of hetero-patriarchy.”

Grahn lives on a pleasant residential street in Palo Alto, California. Her basement apartment is a scholar’s nest, a clutter of books, papers, art work, CDs. Comfy chairs invite relaxed, intimate conversation. The day we meet, a large painting of a goddess, done by one of her friends, is leaning against a bookcase, waiting to be hung. Throughout the apartment, a sense of work still to be done, cheerfully impends.

Grahn’s parents were “modestly paid

Judy Grahn

by Philip Gambone

working-class people,” she tells me. Her mother, a photographer’s assistant, only completed the ninth grade. Her father, worked as a cook most of his life. Grahn calls them “very literary people, very articulate,” and credits them with getting her interested in literature. She started writing poetry at an early age. When she was eight, the family moved to a small town in southern New Mexico.

“It was a place where women were ranchers. It was not unusual to see women in pants, women on horses, women with rifles. The model of a woman as an action figure was really present. That was a good one for me.”

In Another Mother Tongue, her award-winning book that is part memoir, part gay cultural history, Grahn says that during her years in high school in the mid-fifties she banded with other “strange ones.” While she and her coterie had no genuine awareness of who they were, nevertheless she later recognized that they all were “basically quite queer.” It wasn’t until she was fifteen, when she saw a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, that she could “see a place for myself in the world. In the figure of Puck, I recognized myself. Something relaxed. That gave me a particular way to think about myself.”

Grahn kept this knowledge a secret. “I wasn’t going to tell anybody. By that time, I knew the social danger of it.” She struggled to comply with the kind of behavior expected of a high school girl, but fantasized about having a female lover. “My dreams told me things. They told me I wanted somebody who wasn’t wearing make-up. The closest thing to that were the women in fundamentalist churches, which didn’t allow make-up,” she laughs. “There weren’t a lot of images to go by. The fact that Doris Day cut her hair was a big excitement in my life. I cut my hair.”

At seventeen, Grahn left home for a college, three miles up the road. “Some spinster school teachers were looking after me. They made sure I had an American Academy of University Women

scholarship. That fifty dollars made the difference between being a waitress and going to college.”

During the Christmas break of her freshman year, she was invited to the home of a friend. As a group of them sat around playing poker, Grahn and another woman, Yvonne Robinson, who was a sophomore at another college, began coyly signaling that they were attracted to each other, “making jokes about a pair of Queens, an ace in the hole, a Joker in the deck.” The two fell in love and soon Grahn moved, quite illegally, into Yvonne’s dormitory. To help make ends meet, Grahn took a job as a motel maid. “It was a disaster. I was a terrible housekeeper. I was way too creative with the Windex!” Here she laughs again—a reaction I’ll hear a lot during our conversation—but when she resumes telling me the story, her tone is more somber.

“We were frightened all the time. Yvonne was terrified of her parents finding out about us or people telling on us. But people were so innocent in that time. All they knew was that lesbians were monsters and I wasn’t a monster.”

Grahn dropped out of college and became a waitress, one of the working poor. “I could put a roof over my head, but I couldn’t put any food on the table or lights or heat. I would drink the milk out of the little creamers and eat the crackers. They would give me one meal a day. That was my food. I got down to ninety-two pounds.”

Grahn joined the Air Force. “I went in for three meals a day. That was literally the reason.” While stationed in Washington, D.C. in 1960, she was arrested on suspicion of being a lesbian. Confined to her barracks for three months, she was interrogated, frightened into signing a confession admitting to sexual acts with another woman, and subsequently discharged.

“It was traumatic. There was no one advocating for me, certainly not as a lesbian. It was isolating, humiliating, baffling, and crazy-making. There is something about having the state fall on you

when you’re nineteen years old. The big solid granite buildings. You’re arrested, there are people in trench coats searching your belongings, telling your family and everyone you know that you’re not to be trusted, that there is something wrong with you, that you’re a villain. I imagine it as this wall of concrete coming down on my shoulders.”

Discharged with eighty dollars in her pocket and utterly demoralized, Grahn became a bar maid, “serving hard liquor to dying winos,” as she describes it in Another Mother Tongue. She went through a period of being lost and alienated, including a year of psychotherapy “to try to go straight.” Desperately missing Yvonne, who stayed away from her for two years, Grahn began to explore the underground gay bar scene.

“The one that I went to, called the Rendezvous, was mafia-owned. There was another bar called Snugs, in Baltimore, but it was segregated. As soon as I figured that out, I didn’t want anything to do with it. The lovely thing about the Rendezvous is that it was an integrated bar, very wonderful for just how mixed and workingclass it was.” She recalls that it was also dirty, dark, and dangerous, “because the sailors would catch people in the parking lot and wallop them. The police would come in and demand your ID.”

Ultimately, the effect that Grahn’s discharge had on her was “to wind me up to be angry for at least thirty years.” She was eventually to understand this period as an “initiation rite” into a different consciousness, one “not defined by American society.”

In 1964, under the pseudonym “Carol Silver,” she wrote an article for Sexology Magazine—“the first I had seen in print”—that argued that “not all lesbians are sick.” Grahn laughs again. “It was such a liberal piece. It would make you sick now to read it.”

By now, Grahn was thinking of herself as a poet and a leftist. She joined the Mattachine Society, and in 1965 picketed the White House in support of homosexual rights. (The date she gives in Another Mother Tongue is 1963, but this is incorrect.)

In 1968, with her new lover, Wendy Cadden—a “red diaper baby”—Grahn moved to San Francisco, because she had “heard it was gay-friendly. I wanted to be with Wendy as long as I could. It was totally romantic.” In San Francisco,

Grahn helped to found Gay Women’s Liberation, one of the growing number of lesbian-feminist organizations formed during the late sixties and seventies. She and Wendy also founded the Women’s Press Collective, in part to have a journal in which to publish her poetry, which the mainstream presses were not interested in.

Grahn’s first chapbook was The Common Woman, a twelve-page volume, mimeographed and stapled, with illustrations by Cadden, published by the Collective in 1969. The seven poems are portraits of women—a female boss, a waitress, a woman “raising 15 children, / half of them her own,” a lesbian, a hitchhiker, a woman who has had an abortion, and (the only one not a composite) Grahn’s mother.” In her preface to those poems as they were later reprinted, Grahn wrote, “I wanted, in 1969, to read something which described regular, everyday women without making us look either superhuman or pathetic.”

and enough time to start working on longer pieces.”

Grahn says that her life in a lesbian household and her work with the collective was “very, very exciting.” She recalls “how much effort it was, and how many different interactions we went through and how many fights we had. It was a hurricane experience—very bonding, and very alienating, and very energizing. I remember we sang a lot.”

I ask her about the value of separatism.

“It remains my question, too. I think separatism is a good tool. It’s bad when it becomes an identity. But as a tool—if you can keep it really clear that you’re only meeting for a time because you want to amplify voices in particular directions— then, once you’ve done that, you let go and take it all out and integrate into the world, until you get frustrated and need to separate off again. That’s really been the story of my life. I’m always weaving in and out, in and out, all the time. Trying not to get stuck anywhere.”

In1971, Grahn published Edward the Dyke and Other Poems, work that she had actually written before the Common Woman poems, but which, because of their overt lesbian content, she had kept hidden. A critique of the psychoanalytic treatment of women, the book was the first ever to use the word “dyke.” Lesbian terminology and experience were unabashedly at its core. She was declaring that women got to define what their poetry was.

The poems struck a responsive chord with thousands of women. They were turned into performance pieces, reprinted, set to music, “misquoted in a watered-down fashion for use on posters and T-shirts.”

“It was probably the only time in my life when I was exactly on time. They just took off. They were effortless. There was no holding them back, and they just swept through the culture. That was astonishing to me. It gave me the impetus to keep writing.”

Though quite modestly, Grahn was able to sustain herself through her writing. “I was making small amounts of money, but at that time you could live on small amounts of money. We had a collective mentality. People would bring food over; people would bring shoes over. The rents were really low then. I had enough space to have my own room

When I remark that she must have taken great pleasure in seeing these early volumes of lesbian-feminist work in print, Grahn corrects me.

“At that time in the movement, there was a very strong emphasis on not individuating. It was always a tightrope line: was I aggrandizing and getting ahead of everyone else, or was I advancing everybody’s purpose? That was a dialectical tension that was argued out on a weekly basis. For me it was a pain in the ass, really.” More laughter. “I know that was a necessary thing for us, too, but it meant that I wasn’t celebrative about anything that I was doing. I had to be celebrative of what everyone was doing. It was so much like the Cultural Revolution.” She laughs again. “It was great period. I can’t wait to write about it. And I’m going to write about it in lavish terms!”

Grahn’s work became more and more

“It remains my question, too. I think separatism is a good tool. It’s bad when it becomes an identity.”

communal in nature, resisting, what Alicia Ostriker in Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women’s Poetry later called, “the closure of artifact.” In the She Who poems (1971-1972), chantlike, incantatory rhythms (she calls some of the poems “plainsongs”) emphasize the communal nature of her aesthetic. “When you go to the rhythm,” she tells me, “it opens up a whole other tunnel of meaning. It’s visceral. It’s part of your heartbeat.”

The next year, in A Woman Is Talking to Death, Grahn described the brutality that is inflicted on various people—a black man who has been in a traffic accident, a lesbian, a rape victim—just because they are powerless, the casualties of a white, patriarchal system.

“It’s an attempt,” Grahn tells me, “to define a much more grounded loving in community, of loving humanity in a broad way, and yet being able to be sexual, so it’s not a sacrificial love.”

As a self-declared working-class poet, Grahn has noted that her method has often been to “pile up many events within a small amount of space, rather than detailing the many implications of one or two events.” Why is that, I ask.

“I think it’s the time factor: you know, the barking dogs of necessity are at your heels. I used to think, Here’s Jack Kerouac who is on the road to an adventure, and I’m, Please, somebody, help me get off this damn road so I can write down my adventures!”

By 1975, Grahn was teaching—in her own workshops, at the YWCA—and later at two schools in the East, Cazenovia and Ithaca College, who would invite her to speak and pay what she remembers as “fabulous money.”

Grahn finally received her bachelor’s degree in 1984. Her need to work in order to pay the bills kept her out of the classroom. “But another part of it, I found college unsatisfactory. I thought it was going to be warm groups of people who wanted to engage in intellectual discussions. I found myself really objectified as a working-class woman. I would show up at times in my white nurse’s uniform and simply being banished from the landscape.” She wanted to go on to a graduate program in anthropology, but her “terrible grades” kept her out of those programs.

All along, however, she was doing her own research, a new kind of gay and lesbian cultural anthropology that found expression in her 1984 book—Another Mother Tongue. In this book, perhaps Grahn’s most celebrated, she exploded the lie that says, “there are no homosexuals, no queers here, no history in the word Gay, no Lesbians on heaven or earth, nobody here by that name.” Grahn uncovered a homosexual tradition, with its language, rites, myths, and sacred power, that extends back to the dawn of civilization. Far from marginal, she argued, gay culture was central to society as a whole, with gay people functioning as the “mediators between worlds.” “You know,” Grahn tells me, “that book is really looking for lineages. My whole thing was, What is the power in being a lesbian or gay person?—where is it, what does it consist of?—and a refusal to believe that it had never existed before.” The book was dedicated to Yvonne, her first lover, who had died ten years before. “It seemed like

poignant, impassioned letters about what it meant to them. It appeared at a time when they really needed somebody to give some positive meaning about what this experience was.”

One year later, in 1985, Grahn came out with a book of essays, The Highest Apple: Sappho and the Lesbian Poetic Tradition. The guiding spirit in that book is the ancient Greek female poet Sappho, a poet who, according to Grahn, “spoke from a whole way of being, not an alienated, fragmented one.” Grahn suggested that female consciousness was informed as much by the womb as by the brain, an idea that reached its fruition in her 1993 book, Blood, Bread and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World. Here she articulated her theory of metaformic consciousness, the idea that all cultural forms, if traced back far enough, have their origin in menstruation and menstrual rites. For this book and the rest of her work, in 1994 Grahn was awarded The Publishing Triangle’s Lifetime Achievement Award in Lesbian Letters. Three years later, the Publishing Triangle created the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction. In recent years Grahn has gone on to publish her new and selected poems, Love Belongs to Those Who Do the Feeling (2008), and The Judy Grahn Reader (2009).

Formerly at New College of California, where she was co-director of the Women’s Spirituality MA program and Program Director of the MFA in Creative Inquiry, Grahn currently serves as Research Faculty for the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, California.

an appropriate tribute, not only to her personally but to everybody who didn’t know that there were peoples in the world who had different approaches to what it means to be a gay or lesbian person, or a transgendered person. For example, in India, there are old statues in sacred precincts that show explicitly lesbian and homosexual acts as just as sacred as heterosexual acts in the tantric tradition. To have tradition— what a big gift that was! Yvonne could never know that. She died very disappointedly. The church her lover belonged to had decided to purge all the lesbians and the lover had chosen the church over Yvonne. I know that broke her heart.”

By the time Another Mother Tongue was published, the AIDS epidemic was raging. Grahn says that gay men “were just devouring that book, and writing me

Of her long odyssey toward academic respectability, Grahn says, chuckling again, “It’s so ironic that schools that I couldn’t get into later invited me as guest of honor. I’ve been to Master’s Teas at Yale. It’s really funny!”

In the long run, Grahn says that “it’s white male supremacy that all of us are endeavoring to level. George W. Bush is an example of what happens when male domination is allowed to run amuck and have its own way: it’s that mentality that can demolish an entire country. We should be done with it. We should be tired of it. We should be saying, Isn’t there any way to live besides in the Roman Empire all over again? Why would we want to replicate this? I’m always surfacing on the side of those who are busy building a different kind of world. That’s how I want to position my life. That’s what gives my life joy.”

For example, in India, there are old statues in sacred precincts that show explicitly lesbian and homosexual acts as just as sacred as heterosexual acts in the tantric tradition. To have tradition—what a big gift that was!

Miss Hamblin Channels Her Holiness The Dolly Lama:

An Interpretation ofThe Hierarchy of a Faerie Self

by Christopher Hamblin

The Hierophant

At the top of this Hierarchy is the calling of each Faerie: to be a shower of the sacred. This is the ultimate representation of the Higher Faerie Self. This self looks graciously and lovingly upon all the struggles and obstacles that block a Faerie from entering its higher self. The ultimate blessing of the Hierophant is its simplistically intense lack of judgment of the “mistakes” and self-loathing that can accompany the Faerie’s endeavor to effect change and its sympathy for the isolation that can result from the blindness of others to its message. But no matter how trapped one might feel in the lower realms of the Hierarchy, the Hierophant is ever-present and available to guide us through the spirit and carnal worlds.

The Magician And The Fool

The delicate relationship of the Magician and the Fool is intimately related to one’s awareness of the Now. With each moment of its life, the Faerie has the opportunity to choose how it is to be reborn.

The Magician

Each Faerie possesses its own individual brand of Magick. It is imperative, however that the Faerie understand its ability to affect its environment. This card embodies many “masculine” and “feminine” traits; a celebration of drag that comes with a certain potentially damaging aggression. As the heel worn by the Magician makes a step forward, the environment shifts from white (or blank) to a pink. If this shift is made with-

out careful intention, one’s conscious intention may not result in the intended response in the environment affected. The Magician is a beautiful gift that can give birth to claws as easily as beauty.

The Fool

The Fool is faced with perhaps the ultimate Faerie dilemma that is particularly faced by “new” or “young” faeries. As the Faerie begins to explore the possibilities of gender modification and increased awareness of the necessity for a respect for the sacredness of the fruits of nature, priorities can become cloudy. “Do I use these melons to create a ‘look’ or do I use them to provide nutritional sustenance for the community?” The lesson of this card is that, in the innocence of the Fool, is the opportunity to understand that, when approached with care and intention, Mother Earth will honor all uses of its fruit. The Fool is at the brink of understanding the endless possibilities of its humanity and divinity, but must listen carefully to the Hierophant for guidance on its journey.

The Ten Of Swords, The One Of Swords, And Justice

Ten Of Swords

In Faerie World, there exist many healers and many in need of healing, and frequently these two qualities exist in the same Soul. The figure in this card is clearly reaching inward due to some external stimulus. While reaching inward can be an amazingly healing experience, the Faerie can sometimes be unaware of the swords that lie in its hands. When those hands reach inside the soul, as

much damage can be done as good if one is not aware of where internal wounds lie and the depth and sharpness of the nails extended from the hand. This struggle for healing is necessary but must be addressed with great clarity and caution.

One Of Swords

This card represents all the self-loathing that many Faeries spend much energy denying. This denial results not only in a deafening to the Higher Faerie Self, but an aggression toward onlookers to the Faerie’s life. When one senses this card manifesting in oneself, it is imperative that the Hierophant be called upon to extend permission and forgiveness unto the entire self. Only then can a higher truth be revealed.

Justice

The inherent Anarchy in the choice to manifest one’s Faerie Self frequently results in a chosen blindness to what the muggle world refers to as “justice.” With this also comes a precious apathy toward the rules imposed upon most humans by a governmental society. This apathy is frequently where our most brilliant forms of activism manifest. However, the pressure to conform to such “laws” can frequently result in a bitterness toward those who seem to be our oppressors. This card encourages the Faerie to pay close attention to the resentment that can result from feeling so intensely disagreed with by the “majority” and to find graceful, humane ways to express discontent. While a darkness can be found in this card, there is also an encouragement to dismiss feelings of being unheard without disregarding the humanity of the person or institution with which this disagreement exists.

Interview With Michael Thomas Ford, Author Of The Road Home

by Endora

THE ROAD HOME

By Michael Thomas Ford Kensington Books

Endora: Mike, congratulations on your new novel, THE ROAD HOME, and thanks for agreeing to this interview with RFD. The novel is about a professional photographer, Burke, who escaped his childhood in rural Vermont to live in Boston. Burke gets in an accident, breaks a bunch of bones and has to go home to Vermont for the summer to convalesce in his childhood home with his dad and his dad’s girlfriend. He would rather be anywhere else. Tell us a little bit about where you grew up, what it was like for you being a queer kid, and where that has taken you.

Mike Ford: I grew up all over the place. I was born in Africa (Liberia) and lived in Virginia and then Zaire. When I was 10, my father moved us to a small town in upstate New York, where I stayed until I went to college near New York City. Although my father and his entire family had grown up in the town we lived in, we were considered “newcomers,” and I never really fit in with the kids who had all grown up together. Also, because the school was so small (K12 in one building) I was stuck with these people from fifth grade on. It wasn’t pleasant. I was smart, I was strange, I was skinny and didn’t play sports. They didn’t know what to make of me. So I became the class queer and was that until I left.

Endora: I relate. I grew up in the Deep South, and I’ve always said that in public school there, being smart was as big a curse as being Jewish, short or sissy.

Mike Ford: College was no better, really. For a number of reasons I ended up at a Christian college, so I went through four more years of the same. Still, it was better.

Endora: For some reason I went to William and Mary, the most conserva-

tive school on my list, but at least there were enough outsiders to form some sort of social group. I think it helped me become comfortable being on the margins. Do you think being on the outside has helped you as writer?

Mike Ford : I do think it has helped. I spent a lot of time looking at the world from outside and trying to figure it out and figure people out. I always felt like

Mike Ford: I’ve never come out to my family in any official way. We’ve never been a close family and never talked about anything, so I never felt the need to do that. I didn’t really care what they thought about it. Some of them found out by reading my books, but there has never been a discussion about it with any of them. Having said that, when I first showed up for the holidays with a boyfriend in tow, no one said anything about it and they’ve always treated my partners well. As for my father, his sister was a lesbian (although nobody ever talked about that either) so perhaps that affected how he saw me. But in general I think I was such an odd kid from the get-go that nothing would surprise him.

Endora: I think perhaps we are toward the end of the generation that didn’t always feel the need to officially come out to family, even though everyone knew. My grandmother played the organ for 50 years at the First Baptist Church, and we never talked about my sexuality, but she always sent us holiday cards that sent her love to both me and my partner, Tim. It was odd, but also sweet, how many things in relationships are not spoken, but understood. Still, when we already feel distant from our families, the silence doesn’t help.

a different species, so I watched other people and tried to understand why they did what they did. I still do. And that’s what makes it easier for me to write about them.

Endora: The book explores Burke’s difficult relationship with his father and his father’s anger at having a gay son. Tell us a little about your relationship with your dad. How was coming out to your family? What called you to explore the father-son relationship now?

Mike Ford: In my case I had never asked my parents for help with anything. I didn’t go to them for advice or ask what they thought about anything. So I just didn’t see why they should know anything about my life. It sounds harsh, but there was never any anger behind that approach. I just felt that they didn’t have anything to say because they simply didn’t understand my way of seeing the world.

Endora: This is a bit off topic, but you said that you were such an “odd kid” that being gay was not always the issue. As you know, the Radical Faeries were founded on the idea that being gay is only part of

a different spirit, a difference that is more profound than simply sexual preference. Do you think that’s true, or is it just that some of us happen to be gay and odd?

Mike Ford: I definitely think it’s true. There are plenty of gay men who would never fit in with the Radical Faerie crowd. Being gay is a big part of it, but it’s more (I hate to use this word) transcendent than that. And it’s not really something that can be defined or explained. You just know it when you see it in someone else. And to people who don’t have it and don’t understand it, it can be very disturbing. Which of course we love.

Endora: Yes we do. The provocateur. The trickster. Back to the novel: Once in Vermont, Burke has to interact with “the love of his high school life,” the straight “best friend” with occasional benefits. I know I had one of those, though he eventually ended up coming out. We worked together in a furniture store moving furniture. Imagine me as a furniture mover, but the job came with excellent benefits in the store room. Was there someone like that for you in high school?

Mike Ford: I spent virtually every non-school moment of my life alone, either in my room or walking in the woods around our house. I had one or two friends, but no one really important to me. I did have sex of a sort with two guys from school, one of whom is gay and one of whom I suspect is closeted. In college there was a fellow I developed a huge crush on (we weren’t “allowed” to be gay at my school, so again I wasn’t out) but nothing came of it and I don’t think he was gay. But the character of Mars is sort of based on him.

Endora: It interested me that instead of exploring the relationship between Burke, the main character, and Mars, his best friend/love in high school, you chose to create a relationship between Burke and Mars’ son, who is just coming into full adulthood. What led you to make that choice? What, as a writer, drew you to explore that?

Mike Ford : I wanted Burke to in some way meet the person he was when he was in high school. Having to interact with that person forces him to understand some things about his adult self that are very important in his development as a man. The fact that Will is Mars’ son complicated things because of the physical attraction. But it also allows Burke to finally face that fantasy and realize that it

really never was what he needed.

Endora: Yes, and it also seems to push him toward some sort of more open embrace of his sexuality.

Mike Ford: Exactly. It makes him a little less uptight about it all. Also, it’s hot.

Endora: So mote it be! And yes, it was hot. It was fascinating that much of the novel centers on a great mystery/detective story that took place during and after the Civil War. We’ll get into the relationships later, but first, what inspired you? Are you a Civil War buff?

Mike Ford: This book came together in a very weird way. Usually I know exactly what’s going to happen. I hadn’t planned on the Civil War story at all. And no, I’m not even particularly interested in that era. But something told me Burke would be and that it would take him interesting places, so I went with it. I don’t remember if I read something that triggered the idea or how it first occurred to me. But after 20 years of writing novels I’m never really surprised when these things happen.

a while I thought that THAT should be the book. But in some ways leaving it as a bare-bones story within the larger story works better, as it provides a way for the modern-day characters to explore their own feelings. Again, that story didn’t pop up until I was already into the writing of the book. I’m very much interested in ideas about gender and variations in sexuality, but I think something bigger was going on with this particular story and this particular book. Things happened in unusual ways, and I can’t even tell you what they were. I hate, hate, hate when authors say things like this, but it’s true that there seemed to be something else at work here.

Endora: Well, as a pagan, you deal with the mysteries, even though as an intellectual and a skeptic, that sort of language is crazy-making. As Buddha pointed out millennia ago, language gets in the way.

Mike Ford : Indeed it does. There’s nothing more difficult than being a pagan at heart but a cynic in type.

Endora: Well, Starhawk said, and I paraphrase, “skeptics make the best magicians.” I think that’s true, if a paradox.

Mike Ford: I agree with that. I once remarked about a friend’s wife that she was the most cynical person I’d ever met. He was very offended. I explained, “Cynics are cynics because we see the way the would COULD be and are annoyed that it isn’t there yet.”

Endora: I don’t want to give too much away, because I hope RFD folks with buy the book and read it (support queer artists!), but the mystery involves the relationship of characters who today might call themselves transgendered. Of course, the construction of gender and sexuality back then was markedly different than it is today, but the book does a great job of acknowledging that while still exploring the way those relationships still resonate with queer folk today. It seemed to me that it was this story that really called to Michael Thomas Ford and was the foundation of the novel. Is that true? When did this idea first occur to you? What did you find most interesting about developing and writing it?

Mike Ford: Yes, that story is particularly compelling to me. In fact, for

Endora: That’s excellent. Let’s get it in Bartlett’s pronto! One little detail about the Civil War plot is that there are wedding rings with an inscription from one of my favorite Walt Whitman poems, “When I Heard at Close of Day.” I can’t read that poem publicly without choking up. Are you a Whitman fan?

Mike Ford: I was introduced to Whitman in my Intro to American Lit class in college, and I don’t think I’d read him again until I was writing this novel. I was looking for something that the two characters could share that would have deep meaning to them, and I started thinking about how as a young gay man with no community I would find those small things -- a book or a character in a movie, maybe -- that I knew were “for” me. Whitman seemed perfect, and when I read those lines I knew that was it. Again, something pointed me to them.

Endora says: The Radical Faeries, and specifically Faerie Camp Destiny, play a

I don’t remember if I read something that triggered the idea or how it first occurred to me. But after 20 years of writing novels I’m never really surprised when these things happen.

very significant role in the novel. Did you know that when Vermont finally got 911 addresses a decade back, we chose the name “Walt Whitman Lane” for the road up to Destiny? And that the first big gathering at Destiny each summer is our Walt Whitman Birthday Gathering where we read Whitman and do rituals that honor him?

Mike Ford: Ha! No, I didn’t know that. See, it’s more magic at work.

Endora: Hallelujah! You were tapping into the Faerie pod mind. We don’t share that with just anyone.

Mike Ford: Something interesting (to me) about this novel is that when it was done and I’d handed it in, I thought it was a disaster. I wrote it very quickly because it was late, and I thought it was a mess. I dreaded the reviews. And as it’s turned out, it’s received more reader mail than anything I’ve done. Something about it really speaks to people. I keep going back to the magic thing, but in this case it really does feel as if something else was behind this book.

Endora: Well, I thought it was a great novel that seemed to easily and fluidly weave together several great stories about Burke, the Civil War, and the Faeries. The novel features a gay librarian, Sam, who helps Burke with his research on the Civil War. It comes out that Sam is a pagan and a Radical Faerie. One could call you similar names! Tell us a little bit about your relationship with the Radical Faeries and Destiny.

Mike Ford: My introduction to the Faeries was at the Witch Camp where you and I met! I went home from that camp and immediately sought out the Boston Faeries. Being that it’s Boston, the Faeries there are slightly more subdued than some of the rest of the tribe. But we had some lovely circles, and it was out of those that the Green Men (the eclectic pagan group I formed with some friends) was born.

Endora: Did you know that in RFD Issue No. 137 on Reclaiming there is an article entitled, “Reclaiming Kicked Our Butt?” It’s all about a Faerie Green Man group you helped start in Boston in the late ‘90s. One line is, “As I look back at the events of 1998, I think of Reclaiming as a fabulous volcanic planet, shooting Mike Ford across the galaxy into the fertile primordial goop of the Boston Faeries.” What was being shot into that fertile primordial goop like for you?

Mike Ford: Ha! I haven’t read that. Being shot into that “primordial goop” was absolutely incredible. I had never had that kind of connection with a group of men before, and every moment we were together was incredibly precious to me. It opened up whole new avenues of thinking and questioning, and we created some truly wonderful rituals together. It was literally life-changing.

Endora: The novel includes a passage from “The Way of the Green Man,” a beautiful book that you wrote to encourage and frame a gay male paganism, one I felt was rooted in Reclaiming’s approach to sexuality, magic, and, well, the divine. Where would you say you are today in terms of your spirituality, practice, and specifically, the need among queer folks for a tradition that is queer?

Mike Ford: Oddly, given that San Francisco is something like Faerie heav-

while writing Endora: This interview will be in the RFD “Divas and Gurus” issue. So to close out our interview, let me ask you, in what ways is Mike Ford a “diva,” and who are your gurus?

Mike Ford: Am I a diva? I don’t know. I’m more of an observer, and actually tend to be fairly subdued in group situations. But I do like creating rituals, so I suppose that counts. My gurus. Well, my dogs are number one. I’ve learned more from them than I have from any other teachers. Especially the rescue dogs. I do foster work with a dog rescue. You can get the most abused, unloved dog and the minute you show her kindness she forgets it all and believes that the world is a good place. If we could all accept that kind of gift, imagine what the world would be like.

Endora : That’s really a lovely observation. I had a potbelly pig for about seventeen years, and while she was a pain in the butt around the house, just watching her get absolute delight in her food or in basking in the warmth of the wood stove always reminded me of what is really important.

Mike Ford: My other big guru is a writer named Tove Jansson. Her books were the ones that as a child made me love stories and want to write them. Many years later she and I began a correspondence, and although we never met I consider her a great friend and inspiration.

en, I haven’t been involved with the Faeries since moving here. I don’t know why. I think it’s one more example of the universe deciding to push me somewhere else for a while. But I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and refining over the past 10 years, and I have a suspicion that’s all going to result in something new, and soon. I think it’s very important for queer folk to have a tradition built by and for us. Our experience of being in this world is unique, and being able to express that in our spirituality is vital to keeping us going. Having that community -- that family -- around us goes a long way toward helping us become the people we need to be. And now we will all drum and sing “We All Come from the Goddess.”

Endora: You know, I still love that chant. It’s overused, but so am I!

Mike Ford: It’s my favorite chant as well. I have Serpentine’s version of it and sometimes play it in an endless loop

Endora: Is there anything you’d like to add about you or the novel before we close?

Mike Ford: Not that I can think of. I’d like to thank all the Faeries who one way or another waved their pixie dust over the book while I was writing it. I didn’t see any of you, but you’re all over the pages.

Endora: So thank you for taking the time to do this interview for RFD, and again, congratulations on the book. I would like to officially invite you to come to Destiny next season if you are in the area. We love to be read to. It’ll be like “Selected Shorts” in the woods.

Mike Ford: I hear the shorts tend to come off in the woods.

Endora: When we are very lucky! It’s cold in Vermont.

Mike Ford: This is true. Which is why it’s so important to share tents.

Endora: Amen, and again, thank you.

I think it’s very important for queer folk to have a tradition built by and for us. Our experience of being in this world is unique, and being able to express that in our spirituality is vital to keeping us going.

Jaguar Magician–An Appreciation

by Mountaine

In my long years of experiencing the eclectic cast of characters who make up the radical faerie tribe, I have been inspired and influenced by many who I might consider divas. Sure, there may be a few who fit the classic model - fabulous but flawed, way too full of herself to engage in two-way communication, way too focused on how much others are appreciating her. But the vast majority of faerie divas in my pantheon are one-of-akind visionary freaks who I love dearly.

I could wax eloquent about many, but this article is about one. He/she has many names, the most current being “c. huilo c.” The c’s derive from his familial name, and huilo evolved from willow –she self-describes as “sort of a willowy creature, thin and flowing, who loves to have her feet in water.”

On a visit to Mexico, he discovered that willow sounds like a slang word for whore, so he changed the sound to hui (from huichol), and later discovered volcanos with that name – Huilo in Chile, and Huila in Colombia, a mountain that erupts constantly). She sees this name as suggestive of constant erupting of creative juju. Finally, there’s the longer name – Huilo Marvavilla Mago Jaguar –and you can imagine her explanations for all that.

The Bay Area Reporter has described him as “a jester, mythmaker, an ancient bard in modern time”. She sees herself (in addition to the willow metaphor) as a gypsy circus, a wizard who arrives from far away and dazzles the eye and heart, living “mysteriously in multiple dimensions,” with “occasional visits to the 3rd dimension for chocolate cake.”

And oh man oh woman, has she got a multi-dimensional mission! It includes painting, writing, experimental video, and theatrical performance, as ways to

offer a “new queer mythology” to the world. The seeds of this work emerged from an epiphany at a San Francisco Pride festival – Huilo observed that the mainstays of modern gay culture such as “the cabaret drag shows, leather bars, sexual protocols, were really, to a degree, shamanic shapeshifting and rituals without a guided initiation or mythology.” Already working with the imagery contained in 21 paintings, portraying the story of a faerielike being named Lolaboy, Huilo began as early as 1995 to develop performance pieces using large-scale puppetry and pageantry. The current focus of his efforts is writing a series of books, the first of which was

mentors in a similar way. This is important stuff for young queer people who may feel stuck in lives that aren’t capable of providing fulfillment. I look forward to sharing this book with friends who are not yet aware of such “alternative” lifestyles as embodied by the radical faeries. And even among faeries, there are many who enjoy the gender-bending ambiance, but haven’t yet tuned into the spirit work that can make their lives soar more deeply and fully – for those, I recommend Huilo’s book with enthusiasm.

published in 2009, and is called “Flight of the Jaguar Magician”, available at www. jaguarlunart.com.

The book includes reproductions of the 21 paintings; they are lovely, and truly evocative of the ethereal realms in which the story takes place. The story chronicles a series of initiations and discoveries which lead Lolaboy to find his true nature as a powerful two-spirit being. It’s evident that the reader is encouraged to see herself as Lolaboy too, and to imagine being influenced and trained by

Huilo

cautions the reader that the book is “not necessarily a literary work”, and that the style might be closer to that of ancient bards, “inviting language as a manner of generating, initiating events through incantations and lyrical prose”. Personally, as a fan of the “oral tradition”, I’d rather see this story performed. (A search for “jaguarlunart” within youtube brings up some video from the wonderfully mind-bending performances which have been done so far.) Better still, I’d rather be part of a performance!

But the vision behind “Flight of the Jaguar Magician” is so expansive that it calls for being noticed, and supported. Huilo is currently working on the second book, “The Marriage of the Moon and Jaguar: The Mirrors”, which will contain 50 illustrations. He is also looking for grants to provide seed money for a full theatrical production, with dreams of international tours including performances at the Dublin Gay Theatre Festival. I hope it happens! May the inspiration and the works of c. huilo c. find success in furthering the emerging and evolving culture of Beauty, Balance, and Delight on planet Earth and beyond. Amen, Awomen, AHeShe.

Courtesy of c. huilo c.

c. huilo c.

Collages by David King

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On The Ferry

I peer over the aged wooden bow and press my ear ‘gainst its sealed oaken mouth; speak to me dear one you saw him last perhaps right here also eyes turned downward at the churning foam of dark New York water as cold and remote as it people (treading forward relentlessly only to to turn right around back and forth) endless monotony like his life must have seemed, racked with pain heartbroken from hurts long ago that no present lover or family kin nor kith with arms open wide smiles of pleasure at your presence your wit your self-deprecation a gift to us all could calm.

We sat in a cab together once upon a time my queries questioned your smile a mirror a told tall tale of the Group and its leader the lines between the theater and life. The audition you took me to went well anxiety anticipated: you got the part. I saw the movie silly but still work life art all rolled up in a nice pay check

and the knowledge of a job well done that you would be seen acknowledged heard yet never understood. You laid your life bare on stage at that table with a glass of water and a belly full of nerves and notes. I sat stunned in awe laughing crying taking your hand on your journey through the jungle of life art plays love the ache the ache so deep dark and dreadful like the disease, unnamed.

I can hear it now, in the deep white wake of the JFK, the call of a Brooklyn Lorelei a sensuous siren irresistible to the man with open ears and broken heart hip head plug in your ear phones so their deadly alluring song does not suck you down to a watery demise like yours dearest Spud my friend my mentor my muse.

–Jonathan Leiter

REMEMBRANCES From Root to Fruit: One Feather’s Radical Existence

By JoyBoy, aka Vinny Collazo

This past August, Heather Faraone, the faerie known as One Feather, died at the age of 47 of leukemia she contracted as a volunteer providing energy-bodywork for firefighters and clean-up workers following the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. One Feather was my Beloved, and while it is true that I brought her to the faeries, it is equally true that she brought me back to the Northeast Faes.

One Feather’s introduction to the faeries was at the 1997 Fall & 1998 Beltane Gatherings at Short Mountain, where she glowed in the midst of our regularly scheduled Temporary Autonomous Zones. “But aren’t there gatherings closer to New York?” she wanted to know. Yes, of course there were, but this was problematic. While Short Mountain had a policy of encouraging women to attend, I had stopped going to Northeast Gatherings as I’d wearied of the hours-long discussions over whether women ought to be “allowed” at gatherings. (In an article entitled “Gender Fucking” published in a mid1990’s Faeriegram, I represented the faction who wished to ban women, in part or in toto, as putting forth the proposition that “We all come from the Goddess, but she’s not welcome at the Gathering.”)

Knowing this history, but always allowing for the possibility of development, One Feather wished to give the Northeast faerie community a try, and we attended the 20th Anniversary Blue Heron gathering in 1999. On that beautiful land we experienced much that was sacred, and yet her mere presence was met with great resistance by a few

faeries. Though hosts Bryan and Gary and the great majority were more than hospitable, there is, in my opinion, a culture ingrained at Blue Heron which speaks mainly to the “male” faerie, and no proactive campaign exists there to include women, transgendered and beyond. After going to the 2000 Blue Heron gathering, and again encountering negative “feedback” on her gender, she no longer wished to expose herself to the abuse of those who believed they held a hierarchical advantage over her by dint of their maleness. One Feather

proclaimed “women welcome,” and that trust was, with rare exception, fully rewarded in the years that followed. Those few who wished to make One Feather feel uncomfortable about being at Destiny were operating against the culture Destiny was establishing, so she was empowered to channel Glynda and think, if not say, “Be gone, you have no power here.”

It should be said that One Feather would never publicly make the political statements I’m putting forth here—she preferred to express herself in commu -

sadly decided she could no longer return to that particular faerie space, but continued to go to Tennessee to do the faerie frolic.

In 2002 One Feather was willing to take on faith the Destiny call which

nity subject-to-subject, heart-to-heart, breath-to-breath. Nor do I wish to impart the impression that One Feather’s faerie life was one entirely of strife—it decidedly was not. A few images come to mind...her learning to fly and spin the “faerie wing” flags on the knoll

Photo: JoyBoy

One Feather, 2003

at Short Mountain...bringing to Blue Heron the mounds of paper from her year-long divorce following a 15-year abusive relationship and creating a burning ritual in which dozens of faeries spontaneously jumped in to help her set her painful past to fire, and by extension we who joined her incinerated whatever ailed us in our lives—the smile on her face as this great burden was lifted from her...a warm, bright day at Destiny during Lammas, she & I making love on the flat rock at the brook’s edge, while a gaggle of faeries laughed and played a few feet away in the water directly below without seeming to notice us at all...being inspired at Destiny to add flames to her baton-twirling and later to “breathe fire”...humorously telling the heart circle that at her first gathering she’d discovered her secret faerie name: “Who’s That Woman With Vinny?”...covering a picnic table at Blue Heron with padding and sheets to give Jin Shin Jyutsu (a Japanese healing art) sessions... singing “American Tune” as a duet with me, her shy, beautiful voice gracing the fire circle...planing the timber frame for the Destiny kitchen...chiseling a memorial stone at Sht Mtn for a faerie she’d never met...sharing the hybrid cumbia-salsa-classical-and-folk-Indian dance she’d choreographed during a talent show...at a gatherette she attended without me, discovering within herself a new faerie persona named Bianca Blast—at the next gathering I was told by one of those who experienced Heather as Bianca, “You know we love you JoyBoy, but Heather was a completely different person without you. She really blossomed”...at that same gatherette she was in a sweat lodge placed atop a mound of hickory wood chips, sufficiently heated only by the process of composting, and without knowing whether it was safe to breathe in the fumes exuding from the chips, One

Feather told the group that since she was so sensitive to environmental toxins she would be its canary. “If I start to get sick we have to get out”...the fantastically absurd pigtails she put my hair into so I could be an eight-year-old girl for a day at Short Mountain....

When One Feather came home for hospice care there were two things high on her agenda: first, a trip to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens,

the kitchen at Destiny. Four of her sisters completed the task, pasting onto a poster board the paintings of various faeries One Feather had compiled. “This is my unfinished business,” she said seriously.

“If this is your unfinished business,” I laughed, “you’ve lived a pretty good life.”

Her faerie poster board now hangs in the Destiny kitchen, against the wonderfully painted wall just outside the indoor shower. It may not survive the Vermont winter, but still it will serve its purpose. The preponderance of faeries chosen for the board are female, as she intended the board to act as a totem, a call for more women to come to Destiny.

In addition to hanging the poster after her death, I came to Destiny, by One Feather’s request, to spread a portion of her ashes, and to help in the planting of a cherry tree, donated by my sister and brother-in-law as a living memorial to Heather. We had a beautifully simple ritual in the lower meadow where the tree has taken root, and then processed to the brook, where One Feather & I spent so much incredibly rapturous time.

which we accomplished with the aid of six people manipulating Heather in a wheel chair, with oxygen tank and catheter attached, and secondly she wanted to finish a faerie art project she’d begun before her leukemia got out of control, which she wished to be hung in or near

Afterwards I was told that the Bing cherry tree would need a pollenizer plant for it to bear fruit. I am not terribly conversant with the gender of trees, but I do think it fitting that One Feather’s tree should put an exclamation point on the lesson that we need a variety of genders if we are to bear queer fruit. That we are all gender-valid is, I think, at least part of the point of the Stonewall uprising, as well as the message of Radical Faerie as I understand it, and that One Feather—a bi-identified, queer-manloving woman—embodied in her short but inspirational life.

Photo: Hummingbird

Prison Pages

Edited by Myrlin (Harry Vedder)

Thismorning while contemplating this column, I was laying in bed an listening to Morning Edition on NPR and was greeted by a report entitled “Prison Economics Help Drive Arizona Immigration Law” by Laura Sullivan. My ears pricked up and I thought back to my reaction to the start of that whole conflict and was reminded of my feelings about the War on Drugs and then of the push on “so called” Sex Offenders” {FROM JS: I WORRY ABOUT MINIMIZING “SEX OFFENDERS”. I GET THE GAY POLITICS, BUT...} when the War on Drugs seemed to be peaking. “What, the prisons need more inmates to produce widgets,” I thought! “Follow the Money.” It was as if Deep Throat was whispering in my ear. Follow the Money, indeed.

This NPR report now confirms the involvement of Corrections Corporations of America, the campaign coffers of politicians, and an eagerness to make money on the backs of the poor and less fortunate. Greed seems to make the world go round these days. How many people are locked up just to produce widgets? Oh, yes there are those that need to be protected from themselves and who need to be away from those whom they might hurt. But now many others languish simply as a way of generating income for others? In addition “Tough on Crime” sentences have created an additional financial boon to those involved in creating and implementing the prison industrial complex.

Before moving on I would encourage any who are interested to go to the link, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/ story.php?storyId=130833741 to listen to the NPR report.

OK Myrlin, enough of the political stuff, you rant enough.

At the time I finished my article for the Fall Issue of RFD Magazine I was waiting to hear what would happen with the Motion that had been filed in Superior Court in Connecticut as it related to your {FROM JS: WHOSE PARTNER???] partner, Trixi, who was being held in prison on an outstanding warrant from 1988 relating to $5.00 worth of Marijuana and

having left the state at that time. The motion stated that research had determined that your {AGAIN: PRONOUN?} initial Charges in Connecticut had been met in 1992 while in prison in Oregon and that the Warrant had expired in 1996. To bring the story to a conclusion, on Friday, August 6th, I got the call from Trixi’s attorneys from the Habeas Corpus Unit of the Public Defender’s Office telling me that the judge would be signing the release order on Monday the 9th and that Trixi would be released that day. So the story ends with me driving to Connecticut and retrieving Trixi and bringing her home.

I think the important thing to note is that those of us on the outside can make a difference in the lives of those who are locked away behind bars. Trixi has told me over and over that if I hadn’t been there with him, {HER?] providing emotional and secretarial support, she {HE?] would not have survived. She had to hide her trans feelings and appearance in order to survive while I provided an outlet for those feelings. We can make a difference.

Nowa plug for Brothers Behind Bars, the gay/bi/trans male inmate list sponsored by and supported by RFD Magazine: This list has been part of RFD for over 30 years and consists of ads, poetry and art from our Brothers Behind Bars. Donations for the list are accepted at BBB, PO Box 68, Liberty, TN 37095. We ask for donations of $3.00 to $10.00 per issue to help with postage and printing costs. You can play a big role in one of these people’s lives and know that you will be appreciated.

Iwantto share parts of two letters I have received that make your importance very clear.

First, Tim Seefeldt in Dixon, IL, writes: “I wanted to drop you a line and express my appreciation for placing my most recent ad in Issue #143. I’ve already received two replies and I couldn’t be happier! A big thanks and a bear hug to you. (Smiley Face).

Second, Michael Gutherez in Monticello, FL writes: “I just wanted to write you this short note saying “thank you very much” for your prompt response to my ad submission for Issue #143. I realize as editor of BBB you must be very busy , and your wishing me well was very sweet of you! I just wanted to let you know that your efforts have not gone unnoticed. It was hard enough growing up gay in a small town in Indiana, only to spread my wings and fly the coup to Florida and wind up in prison from the tender age of 21 on. I’m not trying to gather sympathy. I think of myself as a Big Girl. I will continue to do the best I can to make it. It’s just so nice to know that I, and those like me are not alone, that we have Brothers and Sisters that are with us in spirit urging us onward. Take care Harry and keep up the good work! XOXOXOXO”

In the limited space I have to share with you, the RFD reader, let me bring to your attention to a book prepared and edited by one of our advertisers, Eugene Linwood, Jr. who resides at USP – Lee County, PO Box 305, Janesville, VA 24263. His book is entitled “Young, Gifted, and Incarcerated.” It is a book of personal narrative and encouragement and guidance for at risk youth and those who care for them. You may find more information about Mr. Linwood and his book at: www.EugeneLinwoodJr.com for more information. His website will also give details of his organization ROBB (Reaching out Beyond Bars).

I just read a passage from his book entitled “Confronting Mom,” a story related by a young inmate concerning another young inmate, that left me in tears. The young man had told him about being given alcohol, being raped and left bleeding in a park and then getting home late and being yelled at by him mom for not showing up to baby sit. The narrator helped the young man tell his mom and “...she grabbed him and told him how sorry she was for him.” The narrator continues, “He left the jail after a couple of months and he seemed like he was going to be alright. I had the opportunity to

write his mother while I was inside the federal prison and what she wrote me back hurt me to my core. She said that he was doing well for a while and then he just up and disappeared on her. After the police searched for him they found him in an abandoned building dead. He had slit his own wrists. She told me that he had left a note on the floor saying that he just could not take the pressure anymore. He was only 19.” There are many more stories and a nice selection of poetry in the book. I am enjoying reading it and recommend it to all RFD readers.

Finally, some of the exciting people you will meet in the Winter 2010 issue of BBB are Jacob Baice (TX), Jerico Jones (IL), Josh Williams (FL), Luis Rivera (TX), and David Drake(WA).

Continued from Page 3

Albion Faerie Gathering

Northumberland, UK Jan 28-Feb 7, 2011

FeBRuARY

Breitenbush Gathering Oregon, Feb 17-21, 2011

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

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!

Jacob Baice (TX), Jerico Jones (IL)

Josh Williams (FL) Luis Rivera (TX)

David Drake(WA)

Artwork by Jamal Redwing from RFD Issue #12, Summer 1977

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 three 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 we will contact you with pricing and shipping costs: RFD, P.O. Box 302, Hadley MA 01035-0302, or email the same information to: submissions@rfdmag. org.

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.

DUE DATES

Advertising Rates

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.

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.

Submissions: submissions@rfdmag.org

Advertising: advertising@rfdmag.org

NEXT GEN

RFDis often a place to be retrospective, reflective of the past and considering our experiences but the Summer issue is all about exploring “what’s next” in our movement. As the modern gay movement pushed well into it’s forties (looking fine by the way!), how are we looking to the future generation of gay people. How are we handling issues of young people within the GLBT community and how is the gay movement viewed by the queer youth of today?

If you’d like to focus your submission on how this related to the Radical Faerie movement that’s fine but we’re hoping for the larger view. But of course the personal is always political so speak from the “community” which most reflects on your experience.

We’d especially like to hear how Generation Q reflects the diversity of the queer community -- so reach into topics beyond just “gay men” like leather, the bear culture, the lesbian community, people living with HIV, the gay drug culture, gay literati, transfolk, porn–you name it but focus on the positive and think in terms of community building.

And lastly how does a vibrant community and culture made up of young and old, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people create a lasting impact on our immediate community but also look beyond it.

As always we’d love to see your artwork and photographs gracing the pages of RFD. So please consider sending in work which reflects on this theme.

Submissions can be sent to submissions@rfdmag. org with Summer 2011 in the subject line. Please include within your document or email the title of your piece, your name as you would like it to appear in RFD as well as your mailing address so we can send you a contributor copy of the issue. The deadline for this issue is April 21.

Artwork & photos should be scanned at least 300 dpi. Color is great! Art and photos should be emailed to submissions@rfdmag.org.

“Rinkle Free Darlings” : Summer 2011 Teaser / Call for Submissions

a reader created quarterly celebrating queer diversity