Video Interview, R.J. Alcala, October 20, 2012

KEVIN INDOVINO: This conversation

is just between you and I, OK?

Ignore the camera.

Pretend it's not here.

Keep in mind that the audience is not going

to hear my question to you, OK?

So try and set up each of your answers in context

so that the audience will know what you're talking about.

You rolling?

CREW: I am rolling.

KEVIN INDOVINO: OK, so the first and hardest question is I

need the correct spelling of your first

and last name of how you want it on-screen.

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: Oh, just RJ--

just the initials are fine.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Is it R-period-J-period?

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: Yeah, you don't even need the periods.

You can just do it RJ, no space, no periods.

KEVIN INDOVINO: OK.

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: And my last name is spelled

A-L-C-A-L-A. And if you have the ability to put accent marks

on it, it has this kind of an accent mark over the last A.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Over the last A. All right.

So let's start out just in general terms

here before we get to the GLF stuff on campus.

You know, talking about the late 60s, early 70s, what

was it like being a gay man?

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: Well, in the early 60s, I was still in--

God, in 1960, I was still in elementary school.

And I was in, what I considered, a fairly

remote part of the country.

And so it's about growing up gay.

And I sort of figured out really early on,

I think, that, even though people weren't letting on,

it was really OK to be gay.

You know, and sort of like you had

to pick your audience and sort of your safe spots

and your safe people sort of.

I mean, I wasn't actively antagonized.

But in many ways, I felt very much like an outsider.

And I know that probably sometime around maybe 1965,

by which point I was in high school, there was already,

I believe, a GLF in New York City.

And the way that people across the country

found out about that is there was

some sort of an article in Life Magazine, which I haven't

seen in a really long time.

It's '65, let's say.

And it was about gay lib and gay people

and gay life in a really sort of general way.

I remember being glad that it was in print

and not being surprised by any of the information in it.

So it wasn't really groundbreaking

as for its content, just the fact that gay people were

surfacing as a subject and that there

was a political consciousness that was developing, you know,

and that you could see in places like New York.

I mean, that's all I knew.

And that was how a teenager in a backwater learned the word gay.

And I don't think, in my particular upbringing,

that there was anything exceptional about it

because like you know I wasn't physically

or verbally harassed, you know, much, other than, I guess,

the obvious--

let's call it the obvious name calling that happens,

which may or may not have meant anything anyway.

I was aware that there were other gay people, which

I think a lot of people seem not to come to that realization

until later on.

KEVIN INDOVINO: But still, even seeing yourself in print,

you know, gay people in print in 1965 or whenever it was.

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: Yeah.

KEVIN INDOVINO: I can only imagine you probably

still has a sense that this is something

that you don't go public with, that you kind of got to hide.

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: Oh, well, yeah,

but that file drawer was very full.

So it was just something else in there that, for a change,

wasn't entirely negative.

And it's sort of like, if you already

feel like it's OK to be gay, here

are some people that have gone past that

and are OK with being open about it.

And so, in a very subtle way, I think

that was sort of inspiring.

I mean, like I said, there are some people that

go, oh, I'm not the only one.

There was something of that--

I mean, obviously, I didn't think

I was the only gay person on the planet.

But knowing that there were other people that

were feeling positive about themselves, I think,

was important.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So let's move forward a little bit--

later '60s, '69 to be exact--

Stonewall.

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: Exactly.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Talk to me about you're

remembrance of Stonewall.

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: Well, I was at school in Rochester

then, and I remembered hearing about it.

And I just thought that--

KEVIN INDOVINO: OK, put it in context for me

because remember they're not going to hear my question.

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: Right, I'm sorry.

In 1969, when Stonewall happened,

I was a student here in Rochester.

And I remember hearing about it.

And I had sort of mixed feelings because I was just sort

of horrified that people were exposing themselves

to that kind of potential police violence

and risking arrest or getting arrested,

and, on the other hand, just pleased

that people were standing up and fighting back.

By 1969, there was just socially,

in what was going on across the country and even the world,

the African-American Civil Rights Movement was a very big

eye opener for a lot of people, not only of the way that things

needed to change socially but what people can do--

people who were younger, who didn't know

about civil disobedience and passive resistance

and that sort of thing.

And also the Women's Movement was developing.

And it was really energetic and really

making people question a lot of things and just

sort of demanding recognition.

And one thing that I think was really important

was people being accepted on their own terms

and not defined either by what they're not

or by contrast to other people.

That was one really important sort of broad side.

It wasn't an article in something, I don't believe.

But it was at all the rallies and demonstrations and things.

There was an article--

I forget by whom--

called The Woman-Identified Woman, which really, I think,

opened certainly my eyes that you can identify yourself

on your own terms and that that was

applicable to gay people and the gay life.

Well, it just has so many implications.

You don't have to accept the name calling,

and you can go through life with greater dignity.

And it allows you also to be specially tended

people-- or whatever to be more self-assertive in terms of that

and not apologetic for the ways that you don't fit in

with mainstream or with expectations.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So move a couple of years forward then

from Stonewall--

the formation of the Gay Liberation

Front here in Rochester.

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: Right.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Please tell me that story.

Tell me about the idea that came about to form

this group and its initial mission behind it.

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: When gay lib

started at the University of Rochester,

I was not involved in the very, very first like plannings

and stirrings of this.

It did not happen here in Rochester in a complete vacuum.

I know that people like Bob Osborn, who was, I think,

really the person who started it all,

was in contact with, I believe, Cornell already

had a gay society.

And I believe Columbia University did also.

And Bob was a very interesting person because, aside

from being very, very brilliant, he

had had experience, I believe, in the Civil Rights Movement.

And I don't know how.

All I know is that people said he was involved.

And what he either had learned or had been trained a lot

to know and be very good at a lot of things

like organizing, mobilizing, and encouraging people.

And he was actually very rather quiet

and sort of self-effacing.

He had a very quiet sense of humor, which was very sharp.

I believe he was a physicist.

So he sort of had the scientist's approach

to dealing almost exclusively with facts.

And so that made him very effective.

But he also was not very much of a self-promoter

in terms of wanting to be in the center of things

and have all the attention.

He was really very strong on helping

people do what they wanted to do and organize or do whatever

in concert with other people.

And I think that got people who might not ordinarily

have gotten involved in a whole lot of things to do one thing.

And at the very beginning, getting

one thing done is very important whether it's

something like starting a Speakers Bureau

or just getting the organization started,

getting it recognized as a student campus organization,

getting office space, having meeting rooms, having a meeting

schedule--

like I said, things like the Speakers Bureau,

organizing little actions, which eventually

came to borrow the term from the Gay

Activists Alliance, which was in New York.

A political action was called a zap.

So we were not really belligerently

political like that.

But we did a few very rather lower key social things

like when gay couples went dancing

at a restaurant that had dancing that

was otherwise heterosexual.

KEVIN INDOVINO: OK, I'm going to pull you back a little bit.

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: Yes.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Let me talk about first the first time

you got involved with the Gay Liberation Front.

Talking about that first day, that first meeting.

Talk to me about that first experience of being--

not only making the choice of coming about.

I wanted to know why you decided to become involved--

but that first experience of really going to that meeting.

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: OK, that's several levels.

I became aware that there either were already meetings going on

or they were about to happen.

Somehow, and I suspect it was at a gay bar,

I got a handful of flyers.

So my first involvement was actually putting up flyers

for a meeting of something that I hadn't even

been to yet, which was Gay Liberation Front meeting

at the University of Rochester.

And so I put those up around Eastman,

which is where I went to school, and it was my world.

And the first meeting was very interesting

because it was what, in retrospect,

you could pretty much come to expect,

which is not a particularly large crowd at the beginning

of the meeting.

People started wandering in eventually.

I think a lot of people went back and forth outside,

steeling themselves to enter and seeing people

showing up and being there.

Everybody was really afraid that you could get arrested, even

for just being out like that.

And people, A, realized that that wasn't happening

and, maybe not at the first meeting

but at some of the subsequent meetings,

I know that when the meeting was sort of begun--

it wasn't really even called to order--

there was a statement made, if you are in law enforcement,

if you're a cop, whatever, if you're not gay

and you're not here to be part of this group, please leave.

Of course, nobody ever left.

I don't know that we were not infiltrated,

but it would not have been exceptional if we

had been monitored in some way.

I also should add that one of the things that

gave a tone to this organization was that this was also

the period of the Vietnam War, which really divided sentiments

and opinions and politics.

And in keeping with people's growing awareness of gay people

as being oppressed and being a group, being called

a Liberation Front was barring, I

think, from Marxist parlance of the day

and certainly from the awareness of Southeast Asia

that the Vietnam War caused.

So those first meetings sort of felt,

not clandestine, but maybe slightly subversive.

I mean being gay was considered a subculture.

So it was a little bit rebellious just showing up.

And the meetings themselves were not

big heated political discussions or anything.

There was maybe almost a sense of relief of just people

getting together.

I think one awareness was, we're not in the bar.

We're gay people that are not hanging out in bars

and that it was at the U of R, of course.

The organization may not have been very significant

at that point, but the U of R was a significant entity.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Talk to me about the things

that were being talked about.

I mean, why would this group come together?

What was driving this?

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: I can't really

speak to why this group started or why people were ready.

I think people were ready to do it

for many different reasons, as I said,

societal, social things that were going on,

movements and political persuasions.

Up to then, the only organization

that I was aware of that was nationwide

in scope for gay people was the Mattachine Society.

And I don't think there was much crossover or people going

from the Mattachine to Gay Lib.

Mattachine had been very much, I think, a little reticent,

staying among themselves, gay people

not so much confronting things as being more supportive.

And I don't think that there was a direct stream, a direct line,

from that into the gay liberation.

People were ready to do it.

People came to it for many different reasons.

And if I can digress a little bit,

I think that we saw that, when we did speaking engagements,

because you would sometimes see people in the audience--

I believe a speaking engagement at Brockport or in Geneseo--

there were a couple of people in the audience

that I knew their faces from the gay bars.

And they were just sitting in the back just

being sort of observers not really involved in the meeting.

But I know that one person came up later and said

he thought that it had been very good, that he thought

it was going to be a bunch of screaming queens camping it up

and doing all this.

So I think people's expectations were different,

and the visibility was really important, I think.

Because I think that people were just ready to come out

or just felt that something had to change,

that you can't just--

that people were no longer so willing to be second class.

KEVIN INDOVINO: I want to talk a little bit more--

now that you brought it up-- about the Speakers Bureaus.

Talk to me about participating in those Speakers Bureaus.

Again, what kind of reaction we're

getting from the people that attended,

the importance of being out there

and speaking about who you were?

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: I think that the Speakers Bureau

depended on people who were comfortable enough

to go out and identify themselves

without a brown paper bag over their heads or something.

And we really didn't know what to expect.

I know that the first speaking engagement

that I was involved with I remember that my friend, Karen

Hagberg, and I sat up the night before figuring

we've got to make some sort of an opening statement.

So we sat there sort of writing.

We ended up each making a small statement to start with.

The people that were in the Speakers Bureau,

the ones who did the appearances,

were just people who felt that they could do it,

that they had something to say.

And I sort of thought like, well, maybe somebody

can do this better, but nobody else is stepping up to bat,

and we've got this date coming up.

And so it wasn't really intimidating.

That first one was at a psychology class,

which met at the professor's house, which means

it was not during school hours.

It was not necessarily, I think, even part of the course.

But it was very interesting--

KEVIN INDOVINO: Hold that thought for a second.

Did you hear the cart go by?

CREW: No, I didn't.

KEVIN INDOVINO: OK.

I'm going to just take you back a little bit

and start off with the first one being at the psychologist's

home because I wasn't sure if the cart was

going to make noise or not.

So, yeah, let's pick it up there.

The first--

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: The first speaking engagement

that I did was for a psychology class.

And the speaking engagement itself was an evening meeting

at the house of the professor.

It was not held on campus.

It may not have been a required part of whatever course

it was a part of.

I don't even remember how--

we were all maybe in the living room, something like that.

We were at his house.

It wasn't a huge crowd.

I believe there were four of us speaking.

And I'm pretty sure the professor played a big role

in moderating the evening.

And I don't even remember the discussion.

But it was very respectful.

I didn't think that the questions and what we discussed

were negative or like we were being looked down on

or anything like that, which was really sort of a breakthrough

because, well, we didn't know what to expect.

But one had certainly never really spoken

that candidly or ever really had intelligent questions posed.

And even the professor, when the whole thing was over,

said that something amazing and groundbreaking

had happened that night.

And so that meant that, for the content of the class

and for the students, it had accomplished whatever

amount of making people think of new ideas it was meant to do

or exposing the students to a slice of society and of life

that they might not otherwise know about.

And for us, of course, because the sky didn't fall,

and we didn't end up in jail, it was a positive experience.

And I think it was important because it was so encouraging.

KEVIN INDOVINO: I just want to expand on

that a little bit, not even so much with the first meeting

but just the Speakers Bureaus in general about the significance

of going out in the community putting a face on gay people,

saying, this is who we are.

This what we look like.

In talking to people, it's still a climate that's not really

readily accepting gay people.

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: Right.

It was a time when gay people really weren't, well, hardly

visible.

Visibility became a big issue in the whole Gay Movement

and continues to be.

I just lost my train of thought.

KEVIN INDOVINO: That's OK.

I'm just trying to get a sense of--

actually, I want to a sense of the courage that it took.

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: OK, yes.

The issue of courage to come out to be involved

in an organization, to do a speaking engagement, which

the speaking engagements eventually branched out

into broadcast.

We did radio shows.

We did television shows and things like that.

And in my particular case, it didn't

feel like it took a great deal of courage.

As I said, I was a student at the Eastman School, which

in those days was a maximum student population, including

grad students, of 450 people, something like that.

And it was a very small cosmos and, of course,

it being a music school, even though it

was entirely homophobic from the officialdom,

from the attitude of the administration

toward the students, I anyway came to realize you can't hide.

You can't pretend.

You can't even try to have a double life in such

a small microcosm of a society.

And so you may as well just be who you are.

And whoever is going to talk is going to talk.

And whoever is going to be your friend, whoever

is going to be your supporter, whoever is going to love you,

that's going to happen.

And you can't change the outcome of that from hiding.

And as I said, I think that that was very much in tune

with what was happening socially worldwide of people,

shall we call it, standing their ground.

I mean, that's a charge term for now.

But people not backing down, refusing to hide,

refusing to lie.

I think refusing to lie was a really important thing.

I suspect that, at first, I thought

I don't have to go out and do a bunch of publicity.

I don't have to advertise myself.

I don't have to advertise being gay.

But I'm not going to shrink from it.

And anybody who wants to know can certainly ask.

So I think that by the time that we started the speakers

bureau, which again is something I suspect

that the kernel of that came from or through Bob Osborn

to the organization, and sure enough

the speakers materialized.

The dates materialized.

The audiences materialized.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Were you one of the ones

that went on the Speakers Bureau to the school with Tim Mains?

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: Yeah, yeah.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Talk me through that story.

Talk to me about going to Tim Mains' class.

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: Well, that was really interesting.

There were four of us who went-- two men and two women.

I think it was more than that.

Anyway, it was a classroom.

And it was a high school class that he

was teaching about the future.

And, of course, we didn't know anything

about this curriculum at all.

We just knew-- a class called The Future.

Let's go do this.

It was very interesting.

He was a very energetic young teacher

because I remember going like, I'm in grad school,

and he's already teaching.

I wonder how old he is.

He looks much too young to me to be doing what he's doing.

And it felt nice because it sort of felt like a little bit

subversive because we were getting our toe in the door

in a high school, which was, of course, a big no-no because--

I shouldn't say it was a no-no.

It was a very delicate subject because dealing with minors

and so on and so forth.

I don't remember the exact format of it,

whether we made opening statements or just walked in.

Or maybe Tim sort of maybe steered things in the direction

that they needed to go for the class.

And some of the students were really OK,

and the answers were straightforward

and not stupid or insulting or anything like that.

You never know what you're letting yourself in for.

And I remember that one of the people on this engagement

was Danny Scipione who is no longer with us.

And I think it was one of the girls in the class said,

"You're too cute to be gay."

So we were getting a spectrum of all sorts of things.

That's one thing that things like the Speakers Bureau

really brought home was that you can go in there with whatever

your intentions may be, no matter how well-prepared

you may be, what you may think is important to say,

it's where people are coming from and what they think,

not even what they want to know.

But what they think and just blurt out

is always really entertaining and enlightening and--

KEVIN INDOVINO: I want to touch a little bit more

on the students' response to you guys

there because as some of the other people

explained it, at some point, you had like throngs of students

following you through the hallways.

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: Yes, Tim remembers that more than I do.

I've heard him mention that the crowd sort of swelled.

I believe that was when the class was over--

I don't want to say the class run over time.

I don't remember if it did that.

But yeah, it goes hand-in-hand with what

I was saying about being a gay person in a small school.

Word spreads, and people are going to know.

And certainly word spread that day

when we were doing that speaking engagement.

KEVIN INDOVINO: At the end of the day,

when you guys were leaving, what was the sentiment?

What did you feel you guys accomplished or walked away

with?

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: It's very funny

because I think feeling better about people

to whom we were speaking.

We were not that long out of high school ourselves.

And one of the first things that we, I think,

all felt really strongly about that we were doing gay lib

so that kids coming after us wouldn't

go through the hard times that kids can have,

whether it's from isolation or a lack of acceptance or whatever.

And I think that, after a speaking engagement like that,

having spoken to really that was our youngest audience,

it was encouraging sort of to go on

in terms of what we felt we had accomplished

that particular day other than just opening

a door for people's minds to consider things.

And again, it's putting a face even to the names

that you're called.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Speaking of names,

I'm going to throw some names at you.

And I just want some short little comments

about these people and about what it was

like working with these people.

We already talked about Bob Osborn.

So let's talk about Larry Fine.

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: Larry Fine--

see I was at the Eastman School, and Larry

was a student on the U of R campus, on the river campus.

And Larry Fine was very--

he felt very strongly about the importance of gay lib.

And I think you can see that in the articles that

were in the closet and things-- not only just reporting events.

You know, we did this, we did that.

I know that there was one article in the newsletter

after, I think, the first gay lib dance on the river

campus, which was another positive experience

with a big turnout.

It was almost as good as the throngs of students following

us around the high school.

And he was as I say very involved and very committed.

And he can be very articulate because our interactions were

always physical and in the present

and never really in writing.

And I remember there was one article

that he wrote the Empty Closet something about-- the title

was Feeling Gay.

And it was very nice from a positive and personal viewpoint

just about things that were going on,

about how gay lib was happening, and being gay and being

a student at the U of R and things like that.

KEVIN INDOVINO: How about Marshall Goldman?

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: Marshall Goldman was really interesting

and sort of a lot of fun.

He was very tall, or at least he seemed tall to me.

And I always thought of him as the kid in the group

because I suspect he got involved in gay lib

when he was a freshman or a sophomore.

Very enthusiastic, very willing to show up and do things.

And every once in a while, what made

me think of him as the kid was he would say

stuff that I thought was just sort of off the wall.

Not that I did a speaking engagement with him ever,

but things like, you really want us to say

that at a speaking engagement?

Is that really the sort of thing you want us to all get

involved in?

And I went on from Rochester.

I moved out of town really after that first full year

of a gay lib organization.

And Marshall continued to be involved and all

that until he moved away.

KEVIN INDOVINO: You mentioned something here

I want to ask you about is the first gay dance.

Do you remember that?

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: Mm-hm.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Tell me the story about that

and the experience of that.

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: Well, It's funny.

I don't know if it's the way my mind has always worked,

or maybe it's just with the distance of time

now because there were several dances.

And I have them sort of all run together in my head.

It was held in one of the buildings at the U of R,

one of the student commons buildings.

And it was sort of like a beer blast with dancing.

I had so little to do with it, I don't remember.

I know that there was a DJ.

I know that there was beer.

And the room was full-- it was one of the rooms in Douglas--

of people just having a really good time.

I think what was important to people was you looked

around the room and you couldn't tell who was gay,

and you couldn't tell who was straight.

It was just a bunch of people having a good time.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah, I was going to ask--

looking back at now, forty-plus years

later, the significance of that, the significance

of having a gay dance on a university campus.

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: Right, and also one

of the things that's really important that I hadn't really

thought about until now is that, even at a gay bar,

you weren't allowed to dance.

So maybe it was illegal.

Who knows?

Maybe because it was on university property,

it was private, and therefore allowable or whatever.

Can I say a little bit about gay bars and things in Rochester

there was one bar that we used to go to that I

know it was never raided.

I have heard stories of bars being raided.

I was never involved in a raid in a bar in Rochester.

But it was sort of like the owners of the bar

wanted to keep people a little intimidated.

And there was dancing going on.

It was a small place too.

But every once in a while, somebody from behind the bar

would yell, "No dancing!"

And people would go, oh, no dancing.

I guess maybe they think it's going

to be a raid or something.

And I'm sure people thought about, should we leave,

should we stay or whatever.

And then nothing would happen.

And people would start dancing some more.

And then a little later, in the same evening--

this would happen several times in the evening--

they would go, "No dancing!"

So having a dance at the University of Rochester

out in the open was a big deal.

And also another thing was that it really

was a gay and straight integrated crowd.

KEVIN INDOVINO: I've got a note here

from Evelyn about the Empty Closet

and coming up with the name--

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: Oh, yeah.

OK, but I wanted to back up a little bit when

we're talking about--

oh, yeah, one of the things that I wanted to say, and this is in

regard to Bob Osborne--

there were two important political things

that happened that first year.

During that first year, there was a gay march on Albany,

and I don't really remember.

I know that it's covered in the early issues of the Closet.

There was a rally held on the steps of the Capitol building.

Or is it called the State House in New York?

I don't even know.

KEVIN INDOVINO: State capitol.

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: Yeah, on a Sunday afternoon,

and I remember one of the speakers

opened his statement by saying he'd never

seen this many gay people in broad daylight in one place.

That was in support of--

I don't remember what, but it was about gay visibility

in terms of confronting laws.

And then the other thing was that--

I believe it's this New York state representative--

his name was Solarz, Stephen Solarz--

was on some committee or subcommittee

that was dealing with revamping the penal code of New York

state.

And so gay groups from across the state

showed up and made statements in support

of decriminalizing being gay.

And Bob, with his methodical scientific mind,

had actually gone to the library and gone through the penal code

and, I believe, typed it up.

And then in our statement, our presentation,

with handouts and everything, we just

went through all the different categories,

which, of course, involved solicitation, cross-dressing.

Nudity was very specifically outlined,

like what's acceptable in the theatrical performance

and really how big pasties have to be

or how effective they have to be.

And so several of us got together

and worked on that project of making that presentation.

But Bob Osborn had gone through and dug up

the really material stuff.

It's like, start with the facts.

And I think that was really--

it made us feel good that we were so prepared because some

of the people from the other groups

just got up and made very emotional statements that

weren't necessarily constructive.

They were important in that they were

being said by a real live person who had bothered to show up,

who was the person affected by the laws, affected negatively

by the laws.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Do you remember what year that was?

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: There's a picture in the Empty Closet,

one of the one-page old ones.

I don't remember.

I can look that up sometime if you wanted me

to because I know exactly what it looks like.

If you think you need that information,

I'll be glad to do that.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah, I'll find it.

We've got all of those issues downstairs.

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: There's a picture of four of us

on the street, including Marshall,

I think, Larry, Bob, me-- maybe five of us.

But there's a picture in the Closet.

KEVIN INDOVINO: OK, good.

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: I think, unless I'm totally

making up where it appears.

But I know the picture exists.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So back to the Empty Closet.

Out of the Gay Liberation Front, which eventually became the Gay

Alliance, there came this what started out

as like a little one sheet--

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: Really, it was.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Talk to me about that.

Talk to me about, again, the formation and the idea

of putting out a gay newspaper.

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: The version

of how the Empty Closet came into existence

is, I think, something that I've maybe partially made up myself

in retrospect.

I suspect that Bob was behind it.

I'm pretty sure that he announced the meeting

and set the agenda.

And I remember several of us showed up.

There were maybe six or eight of us,

and we sat in one of the student lounges

at the University of Rochester and talked

about it and rough ideas about content and stuff.

Judging from the finished product,

Bob pretty much had an idea of the essential elements.

But one of the things that we were talking about--

OK, this is where I get a little bit confused.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah, and you know what?

I need you to set it up for me somehow,

like, out of the Gay Liberation Front and our meetings,

came the idea of putting forth a newspaper.

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: After we'd had a few meetings

and we knew that we wanted the organization

to seem maybe more formidable, certainly more viable,

than it might otherwise have been,

having a print organ like a newsletter or something

like that was important.

And I believe the meeting was called to discuss it.

And also we were told to think about names.

My friend, Karen, says that we were

sitting around her kitchen, as we did almost constantly

in those days, talking about things.

And we were thinking of what would be a good name that

would be all inclusive, maybe even durable, and that

wouldn't be offending this group or that.

And one thing, I suggested maybe the Empty Closet,

but I thought it that's too hokey.

Nobody's going to go for that.

It's not cool.

It's not catchy.

It's not taking a really a firm political, combative stance.

But when we had the meeting, it was a small group

of people who did show up.

And, as I say, Bob Osborn was behind the formation

of the whole thing and so on.

We sat around talking.

We threw around a few names.

We talked about what the names were

of other newsletters of other organizations or just even

slogans.

Everybody was going to demonstrations all the time,

so we're big on slogans and borrowing slogans

and varying them.

And I did mention the Empty Closet,

and it was batted around.

And I suspect at that same meeting, that first one,

we came up with the name.

And then in true Bob Osborn fashion,

he didn't physically pull out a list from his pocket,

but he had a list of what the next step should be,

what the content should be, what it was going to require.

And when you look at the old issues

it's sort of impressive because there is what we would now

call a mission statement.

There's a schedule of meetings with topics

which must have just been made up on the spur of the moment.

We probably reserved a room for every Sunday in the month

and had to come up with things.

And there were people that came from

different gay organizations.

I remember, from Cornell, some people came up.

Some people from Gay Activists Alliance in Rochester

came up and were sort of the featured speakers,

which often involved just sitting around and talking

about the movement and what people

were doing what they wanted to do and just sort of almost

gossiping.

That was the only forum for that sort of discussion.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So looking back in retrospect,

did you have any idea of the significance of what

you were starting?

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: Absolutely no idea.

Absolutely no idea.

It seems to me that we could not have started

it had we not all been involved in protest

movements of some kind or aware of other protest movements.

And there was a big current in the youth culture

of confronting authority.

And this was our own little niche that--

who better to do it about homosexuality than gay people,

taking things into your own hands.

And I realize now, of course, that especially those of us who

were students, because some people from the community who

were interested or involved in the organization

were no longer students, we had no real job to lose

or so we thought--

I'll tell you about that--

living far away from parents and parental authority.

So it was sort of easy.

And the time was ripe and ready for it.

And we hoped that it would change things.

We always said we don't want kids

to grow up with the same kind of negativity

that we grew up with.

But we had no idea how it would go on.

And I think it's just amazing that the Empty Closet has

survived as a name this long as a concept.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Well, you touched upon something,

so let me ask you about this--

job loss.

Is there a story there?

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: It's connected.

The story of losing a job for being gay

is connected to the Speakers Bureau because somehow,

and I was not instrumental of this,

I had an organ job at a synagogue here in Rochester.

And I had been there for maybe a year and a half, two years

or something.

And suddenly this congregation has requested a speaking

engagement.

So I thought, well, I'm the organist.

I'll go.

And within a week of that speaking engagement,

I had been fired from the job.

And this very elderly, very sweet lady

in the choir who could barely sing but was

a steadfast member and all that, she did she did

say to me, as an aside, that she had spoken to the rabbi.

And she thought that it was a terrible idea

to let a student go in the middle of the school year.

But that was my only-- to my knowledge--

loss of a job for being gay.

KEVIN INDOVINO: That's interesting

that they would invite the Speakers

Bureau to come in but then--

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: Right.

KEVIN INDOVINO: --get you fired.

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: Right.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Can you tell me which synagogue it was?

ROBERT (R.J.) ALCALA: Oh, yeah.

It was Temple Emanu-El in Irondequoit.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So my next thought

was in kind of wrapping up this whole thing

is what do you want people now-- well, no I've got two.

I've got two more questions here.

So let me ask you this one first.

Here we are forty-plus years later.