E.mail from Rick S.
"In Chicago Whispers that ran in Windy City Times Sept. 11, 2002, you share e-mail from Doris Shane who mentioned the 1981 pride party, with the theme "You Have Nothing to Hide, You Have Nothing to Lose." That reminded me ...
"I was in Madison, Wisc., from mid-1980 to mid-1982. During that time, I went to a conference in Chicago at a downtown hotel ( 20 years ago, I can't remember the hotel or the conference name ) .
"Trish Alexander and Lori Noelle provided musical entertainment. I remember two songs: 'Grandma's Hands,' an a cappella duet, and 'When You've Nothing to Hide, You've Got Nothing to Lose.' They told us that the bar in the song referred to His 'n' Hers ( run by Marge Summit, as you well know ) .
"Imperfect memory: verse 1:
'Well, I walked into that bar like it was poison / Afraid of all the evil I might find. / Well, imagine my surprise when I looked into people's eyes / And didn't find a single soul that was out of their mind.refrain:
"When you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to lose / You can do anything and be anything you choose / Don't let society give you the blues / When you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to lose.
"The song has at least one more verse, because I remember fragments of more lines:
'Well like every story this one has a moral ... Why by our shells are we defined, when inside we're all just ... '
"Let's assume that this conference happened in 1981; that would mean that I'd been out for about three years, still hungry for gay company and very, very serious about the politics of it all ( not that I've ever become any kind of successful political agitator ) .
"Gay Community News ( in Boston ) had run an article quoting Alix Dobkin as saying 'I feel comfortable knowing that my man-hating is politically correct,' recently enough that it still stung. During the question-and-answer period following some presentation at this conference, the woman speaking told me that Alix Dobkin was wrong-headed in this—a shock to hear, after all the new politics I'd been exposed to."
For the last two or three weeks in Chicago Whispers, people have been talking about Trish Alexander. I interviewed Trish about three years ago. Here's an excerpt:
My first gay bar ...
"It was His 'n' Hers, and it was probably the end of '79 or the top of '80. It was under the Addison El stop, that's when I was hanging there. I went there as a musician for the open mic, it was on Sunday nights. It was back at the beginnings of me being a performer, and I was beginning to work out at clubs, and it came through the musical grapevine that this was a great place to go and perform. So I went there first as a performer and that was pretty much my whole association with the bar. It was wonderful, people were so attentive. One of the things that made it such a magical place was that it had the feeling of being a neighborhood bar, or like a pub, and there was this really amazing sense of community there. There were gay people, there were lesbians, there were straight people ... it was like this community in and of itself. And people would go there on Sunday nights to listen to the music, and that was unheard of for an open mic. His n' Hers became one of 'the' places to do concerts in the city in the early '80s. Lori Noelle was someone I partnered with in the music scene, also performers like Big Ed; he was a comedian, he was a huge piano-playing comedic guy, he was just hysterical."
Man's Country ...
"I did several midnight shows at Man's Country in the '80s. It was just a hoot, and I honestly don't remember how we got the booking there. My guess is that whoever was doing the bookings heard us at His 'n' Hers or on the radio or something like that. In those days we were pretty high profile performers here in the city of Chicago and we were playing the festivals and I'm sure that somebody heard us and recommended us, and we got the date. And we had a wonderful time and they brought us back several times. It was a little unnerving going in with our equipment in the afternoon. I remember looking at the floor a lot. We used to make jokes about what wonderful carpeting and great woodwork they had at Man's Country, wonderful, beautiful baseboards. But the guys were a great audience and it was in a huge room so it was pretty dark and they had us under stage lights, so we really couldn't see the audience, but they were really responsive and they'd whoop and holler and dance and cheer and laugh. It was a really wonderful place to do a concert.
"They were wearing towels and nothing ... ( laughs ) ... sometimes when people would be dancing, you'd see a light flash off a towel. It was usually the most you could see from the stage. But that's the story of our lives as performers, we make our living that way. These days I go from Dixon State Correctional Center, the prison, to a church basement, to a theater space. It's the nature of the business."
Send your stories to Sukie de la Croix at Windy City Times. You can leave a message on his voicemail at ( 773 ) 871-7610. He interviews over the phone, in person, or via e-mail sukiedelacroix@ozhasspoken.com
