The holiday season, which I regard as basically secular, is a stimulating time for someone like me who is an isolated curmudgeon for most of the year. From Halloween ( and Dias de los Muertos ) until the Lunar New Year, I take on an accelerated round of venturing-forth into the real world that peaks in the week after Christmas, fizzles out after the firecrackers/dragon dances of Chinatown ( and Bryn Mawr Avenue ) , then falls flat by Valentine's Day. My exposure to new viruses and new people parallels the re-visiting of old friends and old rituals. Tea at Marshall Field's long ago gave way to cocktails under the mustard-and-onions refurbishment of the Palmer House lobby or hot chocolate at Ghiardelli's watching horse-drawn carriages walk history past the Water Tower.
A seasonal respiratory infection usually follows travel or a round of parties ( now crowned more often with gaggles of knee-high offshoots of turkey basters, sperm banks, or close male friends ) . The younger party-goers invariably manage to spend half the time on the floor and the other half in a mad carousel around the buffet table sampling each dish, occasionally returning those they find distasteful. I admit to holding the opinion that whatever the powers are "that be," they had good reasons for making me a non-parent dyke. The popular TV commercial for a floral delivery that has an obviously gay uncle concluding he would decline a holiday invitation, sending an appropriate gift rather than pulling GI Joe out of his mashed potatoes, echoes my sympathies precisely.
This abrasive bristling at the antics of the young ( who will, after all, inherit the earth ) is at odds with my life's work. Seeing to it that in some way a new generation of kids who are queer will not have to go through what I went through to find the answers to their questions and a place in "society." A number of things happened this year to make me question the efficacy of my efforts and those of my activist peers. A nagging need is surfacing that I am having a hard time getting my mind around. But it has something to do with inclusion, attitude, and love.
It started at the memorial service last summer for an old Mattachine friend Ed Louzao—I met men, now aging with thinning hair, who had been mentored as youngsters by Ed. He had shown them in the risky days of their youth how to navigate safely in the sub culture, how to say no, what their legal rights were—a myriad of survival techniques. Later I was a guest of a group of gay 18-25 year olds. They were met at the door of their suburban sponsor organization with racks of pamphlets on STDs and AIDS. Halfway through their pizza and ice cream a worker from Howard Brown showed up with test kits and/or results for those that wanted them. One beautiful young man asked me almost plaintively, what had happened to change things from the way the ancient Greeks would take a young man "under their wing," so to speak, like characters in a Mary Renault book. Then, at one of those recent holiday parties I found I had old friends in common with a woman I just met. She had come out through the outgrowth of a telephone hotline for lesbians I had set up in the 1970s. A chain of couples would answer forwarded calls each on a different night. Penny and Irene found this too impersonal and prolonged; they started suggesting callers meet them at their table at ( I think it was the old Bradbury's on Clark ) a bar on a given night each week. The callers would come, retain their anonymity if they wished, meet others, get their questions answered, and fears quelled by an established couple—instant loving friends, no strings attached. Where are today's mentors to be found? Twenty and 30 years later books tell us kids are still having a hard time coming to terms with their sexuality—-whether fiction like Nancy Garden's Annie On My Mind, the prize-winning anthology Am I Blue, or the autobiographical play The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me.
It's difficult for me to grasp. It should be easier now, this coming out business. There are gay/lesbian/bi/intersexed/transvestite /transexual images and icons blasted at us from every conceivable media source. Albeit, many images are cloaked in persistent stereotypes; but, we have been moved from murderers to laugh-track on the small screen. Libraries and bookstores have hundreds of titles to ease the passage. Lesbian and gay historians and academics have accumulated myriad lists of role models in all fields of endeavor. For those that make it to college, classes abound. The 50 years since I came out as a teenager have made a different world for coming-out queers—or has it?
The world, our world, is still not a welcoming place. Since Stonewall, established professional organizations have ruled we are not sick per se and are entitled to our caucuses. The legal system has grudgingly admitted we, as citizens, are guaranteed rights though we still often have to fight through the courts to get them enforced. Most religions with their emphasis on propagation and tithing reluctantly allow us to be queer as long as we don't do anything queer, pointing out passages in "sacred" books written by misogynists or pedagogues as evidence of their superiority. The persistence of our existence counts for naught. No matter what persecution, and there have been many documented throughout history, we persist. Revisionists have looked at Kinsey and discredited many of his statistics due to bias. But even the most ardent questioners have yielded to his bottom line of an exclusively homosexual population of 3-5% for men and 4% for women. These figures persisted in studies made 40 and 50 years after he first published them, despite stringent efforts to discredit his methods and interpretation.
Somewhere along the line it seems to me "we" have done a disservice to the generations of young folks born in the USA since Stonewall whose numbers now exceed a million. The bulk of the organizational mail I receive seems to be about men and money. Certainly "our" magazines and newspapers across the country reflect this as well. The women's agenda whatever that may be seems largely to have been swallowed up or ignored by the mainline queer groups. Minorities within our minority, gender or racial, seem to have token representation or have gone off to work in their own individual sphere. Politics and AIDS command the big bucks and attention. Youth groups within organizations like Horizons locally and GLSEN nationally struggle minimally to make inroads in an area of critical importance. Even they seem to be terrorized by the threats of those who see any efforts at activism on this level to be aimed solely at corrupting youth.
When you are a kid you start falling in love as you enter your teens. By then you should have a framework in place to help you know where to hang your heart. You should have learned in your classrooms about the accomplishments of those like you who have gone before. You should know your options for a lifetime union-;have the support of your family and peers in your choice of who you love. Diseases linked to sexual activity have been the reality of every period in history—sure kids need to be aware of all STDs. They can legally drink, smoke, vote and serve in the military at certain ages, but all are aware to some degree or another much earlier on, of the consequences of these choices. Romance and falling in love happen at an early age. Shakespeare knew this about kids 400 years ago. It seems to me we have let the beauty and excitement of first love and its ensuing pain, terror, healing and rebirth ( the source of human literature and art ) be co-opted from our kids virtually without a struggle. Disease and politics will always be with us—the real struggle, the real fight that should command our attention and resources—should be for our/their right to love.
Copyright 2001 by Marie J. Kuda. e-mail: kudoschgo@aol.com
