Audio Interview, Fred, November 28, 1973

  • BRUCE JEWELL: (Static) If you could describe something
  • of the structure of the commune, and how it was conceived.
  • FRED: The commune was set up on a political basis,
  • originally, by people who were mainly, though
  • not all, students at State University at Stony Brook,
  • and people working on such projects as day care center
  • and on a newspaper, which is an ongoing phenomenon
  • and is still going on, and other projects.
  • We were straight people, gay people.
  • The gay people had previously been
  • involved in gay consciousness raising sessions,
  • and the straight people mainly not involved in that.
  • As it turned out later, well, everyone
  • was to be involved in that.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: What kind of a political viewpoint
  • dominated or was predominant?
  • FRED: If you had to classify it, you
  • would call it an anarchist perspective with just
  • very definite radical political terms
  • and terminology and beliefs and ideas,
  • and with an activist ideology.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: Did this type of overall political framework
  • help bring the commune together and give it a sense of
  • FRED: Yes, it did.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: --communality?
  • FRED: Yes.
  • The need for a commune was felt after about six or seven months
  • of the group's functioning together as a collective.
  • And what we meant at the time by a collective
  • was that whoever wanted to work on the projects
  • that we did did so and brought their perspectives
  • and their analyses and their ability
  • to raise our and their own consciousness with them to us.
  • And hopefully, it would be a give and take.
  • But often as not, we found some people were tending to dominate
  • and some people were tending to accept the domination rather
  • passively.
  • We were also into breaking down sex roles, which
  • somehow never got done.
  • And it wasn't a question of well, here it
  • is and we're going to break it down, chop,
  • and there's the ax, and--
  • but how the commune came about is
  • people felt it was necessary for other people to share skills,
  • amongst other things.
  • There was one person who did most of our typesetting
  • and was really rather authoritarian and possessive
  • in the use and distribution of his skills.
  • And he was also a very--
  • well, a person prone to sexism.
  • Like a good deal of it-- when this was dismissed pointed out,
  • he would say, "Yes I, agree.
  • OK.
  • Let's go on."
  • Except we felt that that wasn't sufficient.
  • So we decided to, well, form a living commune
  • which would put out the paper and basically would--
  • I suppose it was, in a sense, a coup, because a lot of people
  • just weren't into it.
  • And as it ended up, around six or seven of us
  • ended up as the Red Balloon Commune,
  • and the collective remained peripheral.
  • We kind of took control of the newspaper and of our own lives
  • together.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: From what you've said,
  • I gather you decided that such issues as sexism
  • could be more readily handled within a communal setting.
  • Is that it?
  • FRED: We felt that in a non-communal setting,
  • issues such as sexism and commitments
  • to, well, anti-sexism were not being made.
  • And they should have been made.
  • But people felt that well, we can
  • get that done when we don't have a newspaper to put out.
  • But unfortunately, it's a part of all our lives,
  • twenty-four hours a day.
  • We were doing organizing a little later on with Eastern
  • Farmworkers Association on Long Island,
  • organizing migrants into a union wherein they had previously
  • been living under totally substandard conditions.
  • And people in the collective were just really feeling
  • kind of liberally to the migrants-- like,
  • OK, we'll strike support and we'll do this and that.
  • But don't expect us to join you or feel your consciousness
  • or have your consciousness expressed to us
  • or try to talk about ours to you.
  • And in the commune, like, we talked about that a hell
  • of a lot and related to the work we were doing and each other,
  • consequently-- well, I don't know which was a consequence
  • of which--
  • but related to one another totally differently.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: Was the newspaper that you put out
  • a communal effort?
  • FRED: Yes, it was.
  • The way the newspaper got put out--
  • well, even when we were in the collective--
  • was that everyone who was identified as part
  • of the collective-- it was called the Red Balloon
  • Collective--
  • everyone had a say in what went into it.
  • And everyone had an equal say.
  • And we operated on a consensus and consensus minus one
  • or two principle, such that-- well, I
  • would go and write a paper.
  • And then I'd bring it to the group.
  • And I knew that that was no longer my paper.
  • And I didn't conceive of it as my paper,
  • so that possession was broken down there.
  • People, they just tore it apart and put it back together
  • in a way that was suitable and fitting.
  • And the criticisms were delivered,
  • and the criticisms were meant to be-- weren't always,
  • but were meant to be-- constructive.
  • And I think it helped both the content
  • and the form of the paper.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: Who was the newspaper for?
  • What was your audience?
  • To whom were you trying to distribute it?
  • FRED: Well, the audience kind of varied, because at one point,
  • we put out a paper calling for a national conference
  • to recreate SDS.
  • And we put out 150,000 copies.
  • And then we took two weeks off from school.
  • And well, we got together bread.
  • And the way we got together bread was we
  • sold advertisements and we, each of us,
  • worked and gave a percentage of what we made for our sustenance
  • to our political sustenance.
  • And also, we had, well, some support from--
  • that bread, we could rip off from the student government,
  • which wasn't much.
  • But we sent people out all over the country
  • distributing the paper and getting people
  • to come to the conference.
  • As it turned out, the conference was a flop.
  • But it was a flop only because we
  • had conceived of the structures that we were
  • putting together too rigidly.
  • Usually, our audience, however--
  • the audience that came to the conference
  • came from all over the world, frankly.
  • We had people from North Korea.
  • And we had people from Japan.
  • And we had a Provo contingent-- well,
  • what was left of the Provos from Amsterdam.
  • And--
  • BRUCE JEWELL: I'm not familiar with that group.
  • What are the Provos?
  • FRED: The Provos are kind of like the Diggers
  • who functioned around the late and mid '60s in California
  • and Arizona, New Mexico.
  • The Provos set up the government in Amsterdam.
  • They had at one point gained control of the city council,
  • and instituted projects like, well, free transportation.
  • Like they bought or got or put together about 1,000 bicycles,
  • painted them white.
  • And you could use a white bicycle and leave it there.
  • And someone else would come around
  • and go to where they had to go.
  • And this worked fine for three years,
  • until well, the conservative branch
  • of the government there--
  • I don't know the name, I didn't speak Dutch that well--
  • gained control again.
  • Their projects were mainly towards well,
  • implementing the power of the imagination.
  • Like they adopted the 1920s Situationists' cry
  • of "L'imagination Pouvoir," which means
  • all power to the imagination.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: (Laughs)
  • FRED: And they were really a fantastic group.
  • They eventually, well, were just repressed politically
  • from the powers that be--
  • BRUCE JEWELL: I can imagine.
  • FRED: --in Amsterdam and in the Netherlands.
  • And they turned into a movement called the Kabouters, which
  • is still very much alive in Amsterdam and in the Hague.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: OK.
  • Now, the type of communal setting
  • that you had there-- you had a clearly political action,
  • anarchist political action.
  • You worked together, pooled money together in order
  • to facilitate newspaper distribution,
  • and I assume the publishing of the newspaper.
  • You also wrote the newspaper.
  • FRED: I personally did writing and photography and poetry.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: Mmhm.
  • And I assume you also rented or bought
  • a house to live in together?
  • FRED: Well, when we were a collective, most of the people
  • were living on the campus of the University at Stony Brook.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: Could you define a collective?
  • What is a collective?
  • FRED: A collective is a non-working--
  • well, it's a non-living unit which is held together
  • by certain common aims and common goals,
  • and usually a common personal or social or political background.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: A group people who share common goals--
  • you define it thusly?
  • Or--
  • FRED: Yeah, but it's more a political definition.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: Mmhm.
  • FRED: It's a definition wherein people say to one another,
  • "Hey, we're not only a group of people or a mass of people
  • or a social club or a partying group.
  • We're a collective."
  • It's kind of a way to identify a kind of way
  • to get reinforcement from people, when people identify
  • as just individuals, that reinforce or not reinforce you,
  • or at their leisure.
  • But when you've defined yourself and are functioning
  • as a collective, what you tend to do
  • is have people make a certain amount of commitment, which
  • is a very important word, in the running of their lives
  • and the running of yours.
  • And it's kind of a responsibility term
  • more than anything else.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: OK.
  • You got the collective together.
  • FRED: Yeah.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: And you turned that
  • into a commune, which means that you would
  • have a particular location where you
  • live and out of which you work.
  • FRED: I suppose I should explain the differences more fully.
  • The way it changed our lives was that we
  • had to make an economic commitment to a group of people
  • who we knew previously and to whom we were--
  • well, with whom we were very personally involved,
  • and in some cases sexually.
  • And well, what we were trying to do
  • is create a unit wherein not only some people were sexually
  • involved in little monogamous units,
  • but where people related sensually to all the people,
  • and sexually if possible.
  • And we kind of knew that that was going to be impossible,
  • due to the varying personalities in the commune.
  • That's one way that we changed.
  • Another was the fact that this was a total living unit.
  • You ate here.
  • You slept here.
  • You related to people here.
  • This, in a sense, was your family,
  • except it was a family by choice, not a family by birth.
  • And there was a very conscious effort and very conscious need
  • from each person and for each person
  • to perpetuate that family.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: Did you live off the land at all?
  • Or were you completely dependent upon outside jobs or money
  • to buy things with?
  • FRED: The money came totally from our working
  • and from selling ads in the newspaper
  • and from previous savings of people.
  • It didn't come from, as many communes have depended upon,
  • welfare checks and parental stipends and things like this.
  • We were self-sufficient insofar as that is concerned.
  • We did not farm.
  • And we could not farm, having no knowledge
  • of farming and having, well--
  • BRUCE JEWELL: Were you able to settle
  • disputes that arose between people
  • who had different incomes?
  • Let's say one person has an income of $10,000 a year
  • and one person has an income of $2,400 a year.
  • How do you decide who donates how much?
  • FRED: Well, it was based on people's needs, basically.
  • And we had talked about this and planned this out
  • before we started the commune.
  • The commune was a consequence of our years
  • of working with one another and personally
  • relating to one another or not relating
  • and three months of intensive planning for the commune.
  • And one of the things that we did was, at one point,
  • one of our commune's members, Stephen,
  • had been, for some time, expressing a desire
  • to go to Europe.
  • And one of the things we did was about for six months,
  • we just worked and put aside a portion of the bread
  • that we made that wasn't vital elsewhere
  • to send Stephen to Europe.
  • And I mean, it kind of operated like that.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: What happened when you sent Steve to Europe?
  • FRED: He didn't come back.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: He didn't come back.
  • FRED: And we didn't really mind that at all.
  • And it wasn't a question of (audio cuts out).
  • It was just a thing that, wow, he's
  • finally gotten into something.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: Okay, good.
  • So it sounds like, as far as finances went,
  • you had evened out problems.
  • They weren't a great many problems about money.
  • FRED: No, this is not at all a frequent phenomenon
  • with communes.
  • I've lived at and researched at and done a lot of things
  • with many communes over a period of about four or five years.
  • And most of those which I've been at or read about or heard
  • about or spoken to people about, bread and sex
  • and specifically monogamous sexual relations
  • and gay-straight conflicts have been the main problems
  • hardest to work out and hardest to get people even
  • to talk about.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: What kinds of--
  • since your commune was both gay and straight,
  • what types of problems did you run
  • into in sexual relationships or any kind of relationships
  • that mattered?
  • FRED: Well, one person, male, who was gay,
  • didn't want to relate to the males in the house,
  • most of whom-- well, all except for one--
  • were heterosexual in a way which, well, he felt
  • would be aggrandizing to his personality,
  • rather than have him repress himself.
  • And I mean, at one point, he just exploded over this.
  • And people generally didn't know what to do.
  • And we just sat down and talked it out.
  • And we talked for about a thirty-six hour period
  • straight.
  • And people fell out and rewoke and got
  • back into the conversation.
  • It was really a very strange trip.
  • But he just expressed what he was feeling
  • toward some of the people.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: And what was he feeling?
  • What was going here?
  • FRED: He was feeling as though he wanted
  • to have sex with some of the men in the house,
  • and that some of the men in the house--
  • and they weren't just saying, "Well, no, I'm heterosexual.
  • Go away."
  • They were, however, putting up defenses and playing
  • little games that did indicate that to him,
  • and did indicate that when we analyzed it to us as well.
  • And well, the way we finally broke it down
  • was to just set up sensitivity sessions.
  • And they were based on the work we were doing, but mainly
  • on the people that we were in the house,
  • mainly based on what everyone was feeling
  • and how people related to one another
  • and to the socializations that we had been subject to.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: What would lead anyone
  • to believe it would be otherwise?
  • That always surprises me.
  • FRED: Nothing, of course.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: Yes.
  • FRED: Nothing.
  • I mean, the thing is that I, as a heterosexual male,
  • have been subject to an incredible amount
  • of cultural brain damage.
  • And the socialization that I've been subject to
  • has been gearing me in such a way.
  • Fortunately, for me, at one point, while I was growing up,
  • I came in contact with and was very dear friends
  • with a woman who was gay.
  • And I mean, we talked extensively about this.
  • So I wasn't coming from nowhere about it,
  • and had thought a great deal about it previously.
  • But other people in the house, to a large extent,
  • and most noticeable amongst the women in the house, weren't--
  • hadn't thought about the--
  • well, yeah, alright we've been sexually
  • socialized and culturally.
  • And we relate in a certain way.
  • And our brains function in a certain way.
  • And we feel it's just an absolute block,
  • a threatening type of thing when we're approached by someone
  • who's gay and who says, "I want to bed with you,
  • and I really love you."
  • And the people didn't know how to relate.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: What conclusions or what kind of arrangements
  • were worked out?
  • I'm interested to know how thirty-six hours or a hundred
  • hours of talking can change that?
  • FRED: It was changed in that people finally
  • began to see how--
  • well, straight people began to see
  • how the gay people in the house were feeling
  • and began to feel what they were feeling.
  • And--
  • BRUCE JEWELL: In what sense?
  • FRED: In the sense that these straight people had
  • been oppressing the gay people in the house.
  • And that, I mean, there were just
  • some really heavy crying scenes and some really heavy things--
  • I don't do that, but you say I do that, so I must do that.
  • The thing that was set up was not a--
  • we tended not to deal with these things structurally.
  • We tended to deal with them personally.
  • People just talked.
  • And it's really hard to explain.
  • But suddenly, at one point, during that thirty-six hour
  • period, the straight people--
  • the straight men in the house--
  • began to understand what the gay men were saying
  • and began to question in themselves their homophobia.
  • And it took a lot of time to break down.
  • And there were many such sessions that followed.
  • But we set up a study group just to deal
  • with what differences and problems there
  • were between gay and straight people in the house,
  • and in society in general.
  • And we invited-- since there was this tyranny of numbers
  • involved, we did invite several gay people who were not
  • political and weren't involved in anything
  • that we were doing into the house
  • to get a fresh perspective.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: Well, I'm interested in hearing what kind
  • of conclusions did you come to?
  • People talk about homophobia.
  • It's a new and increasingly stylish term.
  • But what is it in day to day behavior?
  • FRED: What it was to us, essentially,
  • Bruce, was that it was something which
  • prevented us from feeling.
  • It was something which said, you have to feel this way,
  • because the society is such, and it's morally or socially wrong.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: But the way you just described it, it also
  • had other types of behavior.
  • It wasn't just prevention of a certain type of behavior.
  • There was actually another kind of behavior associated with.
  • Now what were people doing?
  • FRED: Well--
  • BRUCE JEWELL: How were their day to day actions?
  • How did they-- did it involve how people touched one another?
  • Was it the tone of voice?
  • Was it who was assigned what types of tasks?
  • FRED: There were many manifestations.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: How did it manifest itself?
  • FRED: Yeah.
  • Well, it wasn't the tasks so much,
  • because everyone shared that equally.
  • And that was a problem we had previously worked out and come
  • to understand in terms of male-female roles,
  • but not in terms of gay-straight roles.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: You were still working along the traditional
  • male-female--
  • FRED: No, we were not.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: No, you were not.
  • FRED: We were not.
  • And how the gay-straight problem breaking down manifested
  • itself was that the gay men no longer had
  • to draw out, to evoke reactions from the straight men.
  • The straight men no longer felt threatened by the gay men.
  • And the straight women also no longer
  • felt threatened by the gay men's presence there.
  • There were no gay women in the house, unfortunately.
  • In terms of actions, how did this manifest itself?
  • For me, it meant that I was going--
  • I was really fearful as to, well,
  • just expressing any sentiment for a long while.
  • And I really didn't know how to relate
  • to the gay men in the house.
  • And I did not relate sexually to them.
  • I didn't feel turned on by them.
  • And I did, however, feel very closely emotionally
  • attached to them.
  • Now, the difference to me at the time,
  • and still now, was that I could act sensually
  • with the gay men in the house up to a point.
  • And they knew this.
  • And they were trying to break it down and--
  • BRUCE JEWELL: That's called seduction, it seems to me.
  • FRED: I don't think it was seduction.
  • I think it was not a domination type of thing,
  • which seduction implies.
  • It wasn't a possession.
  • It wasn't a rape.
  • It wasn't a denial of feelings either way.
  • But all the time that we hadn't been talking about this,
  • it was a denial of feelings for the gay men.
  • And--
  • BRUCE JEWELL: Well, what I'm trying to get at,
  • my own experiences have been that when I tell people
  • that I'm gay, generally, there are subtle changes
  • in the relationship.
  • Most people I know are not aggressively anti-gay.
  • But the relationships change.
  • Men who would normally like to touch other people
  • stop touching me.
  • FRED: What is said and what is done
  • is just completely far afield from one another.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: Yeah.
  • There is situations in which they
  • don't want to be seen with me, or other situations
  • in which some straight men have behaved
  • towards me as if it was just--
  • if they wanted to get their thrills for the evening,
  • I was available, like some kind of prostitute, quite frankly.
  • FRED: Mmhm.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: Now, these are real behaviors.
  • And I'm interested in real behaviors.
  • How would you describe the real behavior of the straight men?
  • And how did it change?
  • I think this is very fundamental.
  • I can't say I really believe--
  • we like to talk about emotional states
  • as if they were contained inside something.
  • FRED: Yeah.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: I don't really believe
  • in an inside and an outside.
  • I think that in the organism, an emotional state
  • is a behavior, the organism doing something.
  • And that, in turn, affects the entire milieu in which
  • the organism find itself.
  • That's what I'm trying to--
  • FRED: That's a sentiment which was brought up by one
  • of the gay men in the house.
  • And I suppose it's not an odd thing.
  • But it's just very good to hear the thing again.
  • And how it affected my behavior, how
  • being told that I was being extremely sexist
  • and being oppressive to the gay men in the house
  • made me try to relate more openly to them.
  • And this meant that I would not try
  • to conceal the fact that I was heterosexual
  • and not try to conceal the fact that--
  • BRUCE JEWELL: Out of your closet, huh?
  • (Laughs)
  • FRED: Well, in a sense, I suppose
  • you might put it that way.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: OK.
  • FRED: But I never conceived of myself in a closet.
  • I suppose that's from experience outside of my own.
  • The way I related to the gay men changed insofar as I
  • was able to touch and be touched by them.
  • I was able not to continually qualify what I said.
  • I would make a statement to the one of the gay men,
  • and then realize an implication which might be misconstrued.
  • And well, that was bullshit.
  • I just stopped that completely.
  • And I tried to relate to each of the people there
  • as a total comrade, basically.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: I've found that men in general--
  • particularly clear about yourself--
  • are interested in intellectual matters.
  • And if one states he's gay, one's intellect
  • is immediately suspect somehow.
  • That is, gay men are not--
  • straight men do not want to be challenged
  • on an intellectual level [INAUDIBLE]..
  • FRED: I know what you're saying.
  • I know what you're saying.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: I'll give you an example
  • of a survey that was taken.
  • Recently, a national survey was done
  • and it was found out that, oh, 78% or 80% of the population
  • did not mind homosexuals being in hairdressing or floristry
  • or something like that.
  • FRED: (Laughs)
  • BRUCE JEWELL: And the clearest and most obvious thing
  • is that straight, competitive men are generally not
  • in those fields.
  • But in areas such as law, medicine,
  • the professions, and so on and so forth,
  • they didn't want to see gay men there.
  • FRED: Yeah.
  • It's like blacks during the Second World War.
  • There was a real need for manpower,
  • but when blacks volunteered for wartime defenses,
  • the southern rednecks would sometimes kill them.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: So it strikes me as a matter
  • of competitiveness-- that straight men are not
  • really prepared.
  • They don't want to compete with gay men.
  • And when they have to, they tend to put you down in their area.
  • What I'm saying is how were the gay men treated?
  • Were they treated as intellectual equals?
  • Or were their views regarded as somewhat less than sound
  • as those of straight men?
  • FRED: Well, for a long, long, long while,
  • they were treated as intellectual superiors.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: Oh, really?
  • FRED: Because they were able to see things
  • that we weren't able to see, and that they could express it
  • and could justify it and could give examples of it
  • and could put it down.
  • Whereas we had no idea where they were coming from.
  • And we constantly went to them to ask
  • them questions about this, that, and the other thing.
  • And I mean, there were two gay men and two straight men
  • and two straight women in the house.
  • And especially the straight women went to the gay men
  • and were asking all sorts of questions involving sexism,
  • like well, if I relate to you in such and such a fashion,
  • I mean, how do you feel?
  • I don't know how you feel.
  • I can't begin to see how you feel or feel how you feel.
  • And the gay men were mainly considered as-- if anything,
  • they were mentors of the house.