Audio Interview, Don, undated
- BRUCE JEWELL: I'm in Buffalo, New York,
- and I'm testing the Sony TC 126 to see that the recording
- quality is still intact.
- (humming)
- (pause in recording)
- DON: And I made the first big step forward
- by going into then the only gay bar in Rochester.
- And it was a catastrophic event for me.
- BRUCE JEWELL: In what way was it I gather it was frightening.
- What frightened you?
- DON: Well I had my doubts about myself.
- And although I'd heard about this bar,
- I walked around, and around, and around the block
- probably for almost an hour.
- And I finally got up enough courage
- and I said I'm going in.
- And I stood there just with a cold sweat and these people
- staring at me.
- And that proved to me that they were
- at least what I thought they were, they were gay people.
- I didn't even know the word gay at that time.
- They were just homosexuals or queers, whatever
- you wanted to call them.
- And, fortunately, one of the men that I went to college with
- saw me in there and came over and talked
- to me, which sort of eased a little bit a familiar face.
- Little did I know at the time that he
- was going to be my social director for the next year
- and helping me through my gay life.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Were you surprised to see a college buddy there?
- DON: Well, yes because I had asked,
- when I was in my freshman year in college,
- I had asked a couple of people, suggested to them
- that maybe I was a homosexual.
- And they shoved this all into the background
- and said, "No, definitely not.
- You're strictly OK.
- It's just, you know, you're away from home for the first time."
- And then this friend Richard, who is still a friend,
- guided me.
- He had been in my church group and he had sort of had his
- suspicions that I might be, but didn't want to make any
- foreplay to confuse me if I wasn't.
- And we are still friends nineteen years later.
- BRUCE JEWELL: You came out and went to a bar.
- But now you're a little further out than when you first
- were walking in circles around this bar.
- Could you tell me something about the process,
- the transformation, the change you went through
- between that first bar experience
- at the age of twenty-one and the way you feel today?
- DON: Well, the few blocks around this bar
- were probably the smallest circles I walked in
- for the next fifteen years.
- My circles took me about three-quarters
- of the way around the world, still in doubt,
- still wondering, still reaching for something
- and not knowing what.
- And I was looking for a person.
- And instead of looking for this person within myself
- and finding myself first and I find
- it so much easier now to be with people, to be with myself.
- And finding myself was probably the hardest thing.
- And I found it in probably the most unlikely place
- in the world which is San Francisco,
- our notorious gay capital of the country.
- And I found real people there who would accept me
- and who expected the same from me,
- to accept them for what they were.
- And it helped me to put my mind in order.
- And now of course I'm trying to get very active in helping
- other people to find themselves, to find this peace of mind
- so that they can be gay, but they
- have to have their own minds liberated.
- BRUCE JEWELL: It took me a good seven, eight, nine, ten years
- at least to come to terms with being gay.
- And I don't know if even now how that came about exactly.
- What do you think changed your mind?
- What kind of things brought you to terms with your own gayness
- and your own desire to relate to people in a gay manner?
- DON: Well, it's going to be kind of hard to believe,
- but probably the greatest thing that happened to me
- was a straight person.
- It started out just a chance meeting.
- And we've ended up now spending ten years
- of being probably the closest of friends that anyone would want.
- And his total acceptance of me and any way my life
- would take, any shape it would take, he was willing to accept.
- And he insists that I accept him in the same way,
- and anyone else.
- And it's a very hard thing to do is to accept someone else
- when you can't accept yourself.
- And by having his example around and his total awareness
- of his own person, it was a good guide for me.
- But then when I left for San Francisco
- and was cut off from this guide, I
- found that there were other people that were just like him.
- And when I came back a year later, my relationship with him
- was much, much closer, much more pure, and much deeper
- feelings between us.
- BRUCE JEWELL: I think I went through a similar thing.
- That is finding out that it was the way I related to anyone
- that was really the important thing, not the fact
- that I was gay.
- Now what we're saying then is that this self-acceptance
- through having somebody else accept you,
- or at least discovering that you're
- of value to somebody else as a person, is very important.
- How do you think you, or myself, or anyone for that matter,
- can go about helping other people accept themselves?
- DON: Of course the best thing in the world
- is to be a good example.
- And the only way you can be a good example
- is to believe what you are.
- You have to be honest with yourself
- before you can be honest with other people.
- You have to be able to accept advice
- before you can give advice.
- I'm not saying that you should be perfect,
- but you should believe you are the best person that you
- can possibly be.
- And that doesn't go for gay life or straight life
- or any ethnic group.
- It goes for the individual person.
- You've got to help yourself.
- You've got to work toward this goal of liberating
- your mind to accept the fact that you are what you are.
- And you must be the best person you can be,
- no matter what your sexual choices are,
- what your work choices are, what your social choices are
- in life, but strive to be yourself.
- BRUCE JEWELL: When we were talking earlier,
- you mentioned that you thought that there
- were certain factors in gay life which made meeting
- other gay people on a personal, in a kind of real way,
- more difficult. For example, the lack of places to meet,
- the fact that people are not out at work.
- We live, in short, in a heterosexual world
- where even gay people at least usually
- pretend to be heterosexual.
- This leaves us with a very narrow range of meeting places.
- Could you go into what your feelings
- are on this a bit more?
- DON: Well, if a man wants to bowl,
- he can go to a bowling alley.
- If a woman likes to sew, she can go to the church social.
- She can go where she wants.
- But when it comes to gay life, in particular,
- you may have particular standards
- that you enjoy yourself.
- But there are so few places that you can go to express yourself
- and to be with people who also feel this way.
- If you're an intellectual, you can't
- be in a group that discusses fine books
- and you can't discuss theater with theater people
- in social clubs.
- You have to go to bars.
- I'm hoping sometime in the very near future
- that we will be free enough, liberated
- if you want to use the word, to be able to have our own groups,
- to meet and be.
- Not on a gay level completely, but the fact
- that I like good books, I want to be
- able to discuss them with straight people as well
- as gay people and not have the idea that I am a homosexual
- so I can't sit down and discuss it
- with one of the social leaders of the city,
- although she's read the same books.
- I would like to see more bars opened up
- if we must, for the time being, meet in our own particular bars
- and not be accepted as ourselves in the so-called straight bars.
- I would like to see us just be able to be ourselves out
- in public without flaunting ourselves
- any more than straight people flaunt their straightness.
- They go and they can relax and they can be themselves.
- And this is the way we should be able to be too.
- BRUCE JEWELL: You've come out at work I know.
- And I'm interested, since you're among the few,
- I'm interested in the process that you went through
- in coming out at work and what some of the results have been,
- what some of the experiences that you've
- had as an open gay person have been?
- DON: Well I've fortunately, up until recently,
- have been in a profession where gay life
- was accepted completely.
- I was a hairdresser.
- And of course that's a profession
- that has been so long associated with being gay, which is fine.
- I could 90 percent of the time be
- myself, which is neither here nor there as being gay.
- I am myself.
- And the fact that I'm gay is only of importance
- to those who are inquisitive.
- But four months ago I switched professions
- and I got tired of taking care of women's hair
- and I wanted to go into something where I could put
- my total body and mind to work.
- And I went to work for a foundry.
- And I'm now doing welding.
- I think probably the biggest disappointment to me
- was my own friends, my gay friends saying,
- "My God, what are you doing there working in this factory?
- It's got to be a complete disaster for you."
- And it's just the lack of faith in my friends
- and my being able to do whatever I want to do.
- But at work, it started out as complete rejection.
- I was a homosexual working among the so-called he-men.
- The steel workers of America unite against one gay person.
- I sat alone every lunch hour, every coffee break,
- knowing full well that all the eyes in the place were on me.
- And finally a couple of men that I worked with
- began to loosen up, who worked close to me and found out
- that I could laugh at their straight jokes
- and I could give them just as many straight jokes.
- And I could discuss weeding the garden same as they did.
- And I could discuss drinking in bars same as they did.
- And one by one I built myself up to like six people who had guts
- enough to come and sit with me and be a little bit
- ostracized themselves from their group.
- And so it slowly became tolerance.
- And the fact that I proved that I could do the work my work
- was up to par.
- And now after four months I'm generally accepted there.
- There are still a few from the old school
- that this is a complete no-no in their life.
- They cannot accept the fact that there is anything other than
- normal and they cannot breach this bridge, this gap at all.
- But the majority of them there have accepted me.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Are there any other gay people there?
- DON: Oh yes, definitely.
- I think a lot of them that would be totally wiped out
- if they were to realize that some of their best friends
- are gay.
- In fact we are in a union and we have
- a number of people on the union that,
- as we call them, closet cases.
- I hate the word because I've been in that closet
- for a long time and I hate to see anyone there.
- And I purposely tried not to become too friendly with them
- because I didn't want to, until I was accepted by the others,
- to put any additional strain on their minds.
- But I hope I'm setting an example for them
- that they can feel a little freer to discuss their selves
- with their friends.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Have any of the gay people
- there reacted in any way?
- Have you met any at the bars and have they said anything?
- Or what's happened in that kind of situation?
- DON: Oh there are a couple that are totally out in bars,
- but totally in at work.
- And I'm not spoken to.
- The looks go in the other direction
- very quickly when I walk by.
- And I respect their privacy of wanting their mind where it is.
- I feel sorry for them in a way.
- But this is their life.
- But they have come up to me in the bar
- and they give me the gossip.
- And I know where I stand through the grapevine
- because their friends will tell them about me.
- And this is how I know that I'm being accepted
- other than the fact that people are talking to me and so on.
- The whole furor is dying down there now.
- And I'm becoming Don.
- I'm not just the weird one in the group.
- BRUCE JEWELL: The people that work with you who are gay
- must see that you're out and that nothing dreadful
- has happened.
- You've suffered some social ostracism,
- which can be painful I know.
- I'm out at work too.
- And yet, it doesn't seem to cross their minds
- that they might do the same thing, that is come out.
- What do you think is keeping them
- from making some kind of step in this direction?
- DON: I think the big problem is the fact
- that they can't be themselves.
- They possibly envy me because I am able to be myself.
- I've had a couple of problems of people
- that I work with who ignore me completely at work,
- and yet will come up to me in a bar and just fall all over me
- and try and be friendly.
- And I finally just had to put a couple of them down, just say,
- "I'm sorry, but if you cannot speak to me at work,
- don't bother speaking to me in a bar.
- I'm not asking you to be like me at work,
- but you could be yourself.
- And you speak to other people at work.
- So why not speak to me?
- And let me be me with you.
- I don't like being cut off no matter where I am.
- I want to be me.
- And if you must be this way, be it, but let me be me."
- I think being able to start a new job makes it possibly
- a little easier to be a whole new person.
- If you are working with people and have worked with them
- for a long period of time, you have established
- this lie, this hidden life.
- And all of a sudden you have to tear down that whole wall.
- And if you're tearing this down, where does the wall stop?
- How much of your life has been a lie?
- If you've lied about your sexual life,
- have you lied about things that you're doing at work?
- It's this total, unbelievable thing
- that a friend of everyone's could
- be a complete lie to them.
- It's a very uncomfortable situation
- not only for the person who is finally liberating themselves,
- but also for the people who are being exposed to this.
- Granted, I don't think I would be
- able to handle it quite as well if I
- hadn't switched professions completely,
- or switched jobs completely.
- But I had spent so many years being
- able to be semi-liberated by being a hairdresser
- that the one step further to being
- into a completely straight world was not that hard.
- And I appreciate those straight people
- who are willing to cross the line and say, well, so what?
- BRUCE JEWELL: You mentioned that keeping yourself in the closet
- means that you are going to be lying
- a good deal about your life.
- This in itself, telling lies and covering them up
- and keeping everything consistent,
- takes a lot of energy.
- Now I've heard it stated that men who are out of the closet
- seem to have a great deal more energy
- to put into things once they're out of the closet.
- I've also heard people kind of go overboard
- as if they'd been--
- when they came out, they were practically
- washed in the blood of the lamb kind of thing, which
- I think is an exaggeration.
- But do you feel different since you've come out?
- Do you see things differently?
- Do you feel differently about some things?
- DON: I definitely feel much lighter.
- My mind is much lighter.
- I am able to look at people at face value now
- much more so than I was before because my own mind was boggled
- with these stories.
- And is the story that I tell you going
- to get to someone else who I've told another story to?
- And why don't I go out bowling with the boys tonight?
- Well, I've got a date with Suzie Wong.
- And I might have told someone else
- that I was going out with Betty Britt.
- Your whole mind is just completely confused
- and weighted down.
- And when you can be free and say, as I've told them at work,
- I'm going out with my lover tonight.
- And the word lover of course is becoming a very popular word
- in the world today.
- And it doesn't really list you as being a boy or girl
- that you're going out with.
- You're being with your lover, which
- I think is a good word to use if you don't want to put a girl's
- name or a boy's name, if it happens to be a girl who's
- working at a job.
- I feel that I genuinely do have more energy because I
- can do, I can say, I can be what I am all the time
- and not have to burn up all of this energy creating two lives.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Do you find yourself
- taking more responsibility for what you're doing?
- That is insofar as you're open that you really
- do have to be responsible for what you do and say
- and so on in a way that was not the case before?
- DON: Well I feel I have a responsibility not so much
- to my work, because I've always had almost boundless energy
- when it comes to work.
- I like doing what I do.
- I will not work at a job I don't like,
- because you spend too many hours doing it not
- to be able to like it.
- But I find I have an obligation not only to myself,
- but I have an obligation to the gay community
- because the image that I present must be an open image.
- It must be a respectable image.
- Not particularly at the beginning
- because no one is going to respect you
- if it's a total bomb to their way of life, if all of a sudden
- they're confronted with someone who's
- completely different in their so-called world.
- I've worked with steelworkers that are
- right off the boat from Italy.
- You know, they've been here twenty-eight years
- and they've worked for this company for twenty-seven years
- and nine months.
- And they're not used to this type of thing.
- They're the hardcore hardhats.
- And now all of a sudden someone who has always been lesser
- in their eyes, or something that they talked
- about among the boys when they bowled, but they didn't ever
- know a homosexual, now all of a sudden
- they're confronted with one that's
- working with them, turning out work on a par with them.
- I must present an image that they can respect not only
- workwise, but the fact that the next time homosexual who
- comes into this job and there will be other homosexuals
- won't have to go through what I've gone through.
- BRUCE JEWELL: As a movement, gay liberation
- has only gotten rolling in the last three years.
- Of course groups that predated GAA or our own Gay Alliance
- here in Rochester, or GROW or any of the other groups.
- But in the last three years things have really just become
- very active, very public, and there's
- been a real effort on almost every front, legal and social
- as well as psychological, to make changes.
- Just kind of inside and outside changes.
- What kind of changes would you like to see for gay people?
- What kind of changes would you like
- to see gay people make for themselves?
- DON: Of course the total picture of gay life
- I'd like to see put out in the open
- and taken out of its so-called cloth.
- I would like to see gay people be able to,
- like straight people, be themselves.
- I don't believe in the liberation of a group
- until the individual themselves have liberated themselves.
- You cannot go out in a group, I feel, and say, accept us,
- until you can go out in a group and say, accept me.
- I must be me.
- This is not gay.
- This is not straight.
- This is not black.
- This is not white.
- This is any individual.
- And you will find that there are homosexuals.
- There are blacks.
- There are Caucasians.
- There are all walks of people who are exceptions to the rule.
- They are accepted no matter what they are.
- And it's because they can be themselves.
- And how can you accept someone who is lying to you constantly?
- I would like to see honesty, I think, for gay people,
- for straight people.
- If you don't like me, say you don't like me.
- But know why you don't like me.
- Don't just say it because everybody hates you
- and so I must hate you also.
- Know why you do it.
- Have a good reason.
- Know me and then hate me, or like me.
- I would like to see just openness.
- BRUCE JEWELL: What about in relations between gay people?
- What kinds of changes would you like to see here, if any?
- DON: I would like to see a great deal more
- openness among gay people than there
- is between gays and straights.
- I think this world of impressing each other
- has just gone completely out of hand.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Could you explain what you mean by that a bit?
- DON: Well, this dressing an image
- that you are not because it happens to be a fad.
- This dishonesty between people because you're
- trying to impress them so that they will like you more.
- And find out liking you less because you have not
- been honest with them and they find out that you are not
- what they met.
- You are not what they grew to like or love.
- I feel unfortunately that a great number of gay people
- are exceedingly dishonest, not only to other people,
- but to themselves, because they're not
- doing themselves the justice and they're not
- doing the group the justice by being false.
- BRUCE JEWELL: I know what you're talking about.
- And I happen to feel that it's in part this great emphasis
- on projecting a particular image, which may well turn out
- not to be the case, is due to what we mentioned earlier,
- a lack of places to meet, a lack of places where we feel
- comfortable, which means you have to put out
- a great deal in a very short time in terms of image of one's
- self.
- This of course leads from the individual and the image
- he projects to the kind of environment that causes
- him to project that image.
- How do you think we can go about providing environments
- for ourselves which are more favorable to openness?
- To sincerity if you wish?
- DON: Well I would like to see more groups
- or meeting places like the alliance
- has where you can go and talk.
- Most of the places that we have to go to now
- are bars where there's jukeboxes or bands or loud music
- that you have to talk over.
- And so, unfortunately, after a while, your voice gets tired
- and your mind gets tired of trying
- to project over this din.
- And so you just revert back to the physicalness of everything
- and, well, I will just meet whoever looks best
- to my eye, whatever my favorite visual concept of humanity is.
- And unfortunately you're not meeting anything other
- than a physical being.
- And eventually if you consider yourself fortunate,
- like most people do, and they make out in the bar
- and they get home, they find out this
- is not a person that they're with,
- it's a physical expression.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Are there any few words
- that you'd like to say before we end this interview, anything
- in particular that we haven't covered?
- DON: No, I guess I sound like I've
- been preaching all evening.
- I have been at the bottom of the heap and I'm not at the top yet
- but I'm working my way up.
- But I think the only thing I can say to people
- is, just try harder to be honest not only with other people
- but be honest with yourself.
- Let yourself go and other people will accept you a lot faster
- if you can be open and sincere.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Thanks Don.