a sobering snippet of gay american history

You gotta fight..... for your right.... to (not) party.....

Happy New Year

Authenticity through Anonymity
John W.
Gay and Lesbian Times
April 16, 2009

It’s Saturday night and Reba S., a 6-foot-6-inch drag queen is dressed to the nines. But Reba’s not dressed for a performance, and she’s not going to a party.
Reba and the dozen or so of her “sisters” mingling in the crowd of about 100 are attending a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous at the Live & Let Live Alano Club (LLLAC).
LLLAC sees approximately 1,000 people cross its threshold every week, during which time it hosts 41 meetings – a great many of which are attended by GLBT community members like Reba, who find LLLAC a welcome and a safe place to become free of their addictions from alcohol, sex, narcotics, food and other substances or addictive issues at LLLAC.
But that hasn’t always been the case. “Gay people were [once] shunned in the AA community,” says Gordon W., the first manager of Stepping Stone, a recovery home with an emphasis on serving the GLBT community. “We were not allowed to talk about our personal problems if they pertained to a gay lifestyle.”
If you ask any of the GLBT “old timers” (as long-term recovering addicts are affectionately dubbed in 12-step communities) how it was when they got sober, you’ll hear the same story. Because in the 1930s, when AA was born,12-step communities considered being gay to be a “character defect” – an attitude that remained unchanged until the early ’70s. As a result, countless GLBT alcoholics and addicts perished.
With the 26th anniversary of the Live & Let Live Alano Club pending, preparations are under way to celebrate that times have changed. LLLAC will once again hold its Annual Benefit Event on Friday, May 1, at The San Diego LGBT Community Center to recognize the GLBT community’s trials, tribulations and successes in recovery.
To commemorate the continuing progress of our community in recovery, The Gay & Lesbian Times spoke with Arlene J., the aforementioned Gordon W. and John C., all of whom were paramount in establishing a foundation for GLBT recovery here in San Diego, home to one of the strongest GLBT recovery communities in the country.
Gay & Lesbian Times: How were GLBT people helped and treated with substance abuse here in San Diego in the ’70s?
Gordon W: If you [talked about personal gay life], you were shut down and discouraged not to share. The only way you got help if you were a gay alcoholic was by word of mouth, and even that was hard to do!
Many people were once shunned in the [recovery] community.
GLT: How did that change?
GW: The head of the Coordinating Counsel’s (San Diego AA’s Service Board) son was gay. The son committed suicide because when he told his father he was gay, his father rejected him. That opened the door for us to be recognized in Alcoholics Anonymous. It was shortly after that when San Diego AA Central Office started including us as legitimate members of AA.”
Arlene J. was the first lesbian woman to attend the “gay meetings” when they started. Unfortunately, she experienced discrimination from the men within gay
AA, as they would only let her attend that meeting once a month as opposed to every week.
GLT: Why did the gay men in AA only let you come to the meeting once a month?
Arlene J: We met on Friday nights at St. Paul’s Church on Sixth Avenue. They had a guard at the door. He was there to keep troublemakers out of the meetings. And there were troublemakers! I think they thought I might be a troublemaker! (She laughs)
GLT: Did that bother you?
AJ: Not really, because it was not uncommon for me to sit in a straight AA meeting and hear the word ‘fag’ being referenced to me by the other members. I would get up and leave that meeting and go to another one, and the same thing would happen there. At least I could go to the gay meeting and not worry about that. I just made up my mind I was going to stay no matter what! (She laughs again)
I think the best thing about GLBT recovery today is you can go practically anywhere in the world now and find a gay meeting.
And so it began. Shortly afterwards, small bands of gay and lesbian meetings started to pop up around the city.
Stepping Stone opened its door for sober residential living and began hosting a men’s meeting called “At Home Men’s,” which is now the oldest gay men’s meeting in the county.
The lesbians started Sober Sisters, a women’s meeting designed to help lesbians with issues in recovery, which is now the longest-running meeting for lesbians in San Diego.
As the meetings began to grow, the members realized that they needed a community meeting both men and women could attend. As a result, The 2 Bit Speaker Meeting was formed for all groups to attend every Saturday night At 2 Bit, two speakers tell their story about being gay or lesbian and about their recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction.
Tonight, as Reba S. tells hers story at 2 Bit, she is in good company. There are literally thousands of GLBT people who have found a new way to live happy, productive, clean and sober lives through the recovery services available at LLLAC and other programs in San Diego.
John C. (one of the first LLLAC board members) summarizes the process well.
GLT: “What role do you feel the LLLAC has had on shaping the GLBT sober experience these past 26 years?”
John C: “As one of LLLAC’s founders, I can hardly be negative about it, but there is nothing negative to say. When first we opened on Fourth Avenue, it became a haven. If you were struggling to remain sober, it wasn’t necessary to hide in bed or sit on your hands; you had a place to go. And when you got there, other sober people would be willing to talk, listen, ignore you if that was what you wanted, or ask you to get involved in some task.
I’m amazed that it has lasted for 26 years. We did it on a wing and a prayer and never, in the time of my close involvement, had any certainty of financial security. Perhaps the most meaningful thing you can say about LLLAC and the sober gay community of San Diego is that it has endured and even flourished. If it and the people it serves had no meaning, no place in the context that is San Diego, then we, and it would be gone.”
With nothing more than sheer determination and need, these pioneers, a small group of a dozen or so men and one woman, bravely stood up and risked criticism, ridicule and discrimination to meet the dire need of the GLBT community’s substance abuse problems.
They helped bring meaning and dignity to the countless GLBT men and woman who lost their lives to untreated alcoholism and drug addiction because they were not accepted for who and what they were.
Most importantly, they continue to bring hope and encouragement to the countless others who will look to the GLBT recovery community for help in future.

Editor’s note: It is general AA policy that, in order to assure anonymity to all its members, no member should be identified by full name in printed or broadcasted media. The Gay Lesbian Times followed this policy out of respect to A.A. and its members.

this story was found at the online home of FAVOR

kiss kiss in the rearview....





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not just monkeying around

terry oldes is a chicagoan whose path has had some identifiable similarities with many people i interface with as well as my own. he found himelf being sucked under the whirlpool of addiction and meth abuse and has made it back to the surface. his ability to ariculate his adventures and tales puts him in a very lucky category. it becomes easy to say "there's another horror story on meth". this may have true elements, but it does not make the reading or the telling of that story worthwhile. the mere fact that another person has made it through the hell of methamphetamine with the stamina and the cognition to produce a book may give others hope that ceasing their current dalliances with the drug may be worthwhile.

Interview with SX News-Sydney, Australia



Dancing With Tina: A Memoir of Co-dependency is the true story of Terry Oldes's struggle with sexual identity, co-dependency and Crystal Meth. This very personal and sometimes graphic account traces the diverse relationships impacted by a drug that is horrifically affecting the gay community in both the United States and abroad.



The forthright and humorous manner with which Terry Oldes tell his story will hopefully discourage those who have never used Crystal Meth against the drug and inspire those who are currently using to find hope at a time when it is difficult to see.


We spoke with Terry about what motivated him to put his story down on paper, his aim in writing about such a topical issue, his road to recovery, and the media frenzy surrounding the use of Crystal Meth in the gay community.


Tell us about yourself?


Well, I'm 42 years old, was adopted as an infant in a rural Iowa community in the U.S. , and went to college in New York City to study music and acting. I came out at the age of 21, was a Mr. Gay Iowa, lived in Nashville , TN for a number of years as a singer/songwriter then moved to Chicago in 1994.


"Dancing With Tina" takes place in Oct. 2003-Oct. 2005, a period when I used Crystal Meth and had one of the most intense roller coaster rides of my life. After I walked away from the drug I started writing. By putting my meth adventures down on paper, I knew I could go back to it time and again to remind myself why I needed to stay away from Meth. Two months into the writing my therapist suggested I try to get it published since he thought I could possibly help other gay men with my experiences. By November, 2005, I had a 700 page manuscript, found a publisher within three months, began editing it down to 300 pages…and here we are….



What was the response of loved ones and friends to the writing and release of this book?



My friends were extremely open-minded and supportive. Perhaps they all viewed this as some "phase" but nobody ever judged me amongst my friends. I credit them with helping me walk away from Meth as easily as I did.


My family, however, was another matter. There is really just my father, my brother and myself and I haven't been emotionally close to my family since I was 14. There was plenty of bigotry and close mindedness throughout much of my childhood and from an early age I knew there was nothing wrong with my being gay. My brother and nephew both read my book, to my surprise, and they impressed me with how supportive they were. It wasn't exactly their can of worms, of course, but they were respectful of the piece and said they were proud of what I was trying to accomplish.


My father and I are, unfortunately, estranged. One Christmas Eve I called to wish him a happy holiday and my step-mother said, "He doesn't want to talk to you anymore". While it was certainly a shock, I can't say it was too big of a surprise, and after about a minute of feeling lost it was as if a huge rock had rolled off my back. Drug abuse is never about the drug itself, it's almost always about something deeply emotional and psychological within the user. With me it was co-dependency, which was a product of the abandonment issues I had as a child, coupled with my own natural need to pull away if someone wouldn't let me be who I wanted to be. Although I'm not necessarily happy about the scenario, having a close family just wasn't in the cards for me. This may sound a bit Pollyannaish, but I truly do feel it's a waste of time to cry over what I don't have and that I need to celebrate what I do have, which is actually quite a lot.

you can read the rest of the interview at terry's blog. a barrel full of monkeys



today's sound choice is a relatively newer single by the gossip. they have a definitive sound established and it resonates with the alternative side of my nature. their first big single "standing in the way of control" had a very similar quality to this song, i think. i like their sound and i like the tongue-in-cheek homage in the video. here is "heavy cross" by the gossip.








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maestro

larry levan and two turntables- well before "and a microphone" even reared its head.

"We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it."
"We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves."

yesterday, i happened to catch a rerun of the documentary "maestro" on logo, which is about the underground origin of bouse music. it really highlights several new york (and chicago) clubs from the late 70's and features an homage to paradise garage. and no piece on this snapshot of american lgbt history (monumental if you are black and gay) could be without a bio on larry levan. he was the genius at the turntables at the garage, very much the heart and soul of the parties that happened there every weekend.

there are interviews with new york natives that talk about the underground and subsequent "club" feel the garage provided. several talked about how it helped them move from beyond their provincial and neighborhood attitudes and took them into a more metropolitan and more cosmopolitan sensibility. today we would no doubt call that global or multi-cultural. a few interviewed spoke of how having access to the garage, and spending so much time there, kept them from drifting into more dangerous and likely criminal lifestyles.

this is not to say that those days were not filled with rule breaking. drugs and public sex were very much a part of the scene. these particulars were interwoven into the fabric of those dance hall days. young persons experimenting with their minds, their freedoms , their bodies and their hearts, but all corralling themselves into dance halls to listen to beats and breaks, incidentally forming a movement and drinking in new ideas about acceptance, tolerance, and the value of personal expression.

larry was no doubt a genius. one can only listen to any of the hundreds of remix recordings available almost everywhere to get a hint of this. he understood and captained the direction of a subculture and helped careen it through one of the most catastrophic times in lgbt history. this was, of course, the onset of aids.

the themes in the documentary are very much the early years of gay liberation. stonewall happened in '69, and the beginnings of underground house-y music appeared at the loft and the paradise garage (and the warehouse in chicago) in the mid-70's. any of us around at that time can also remember vividly the stark difference in that decade's predominant attitude about drug use - especially cocaine that pervailed. the underground scene enveloped this popular attitude and sexual liberation just like a kangaroo. and these set the perfect stage for the wildfire of aids that shook the cities (and now the world) by storm. and i will probably never think of aids (in my own mind) without thinking of the dance hall culture that first became infected in america.

sadly, larry became engulfed in his drug use (as did many of us) and his own life cracked and crumbled as a fortune cookie does. as so many of his contemporaries died from aids around him, he began a far slower and perhaps more painful death from drug abuse.

there was so much that was bittersweet about our dance hall days. they held so much promise, gave so much supreme joy, and heralded so much terror. that generation definitely had a lasting effect on our culture at large in so many ways, but the fires of social change we conjured up in those dance halls is still burning wildly today. i can't go back and make the outcomes different and wouldn't really anyway. but i do believe that what was percolating in those mirror-balled testubes that we called our second home, has altered our modern world. i'm not sure if it's made it better, but i'll probably go to my next destination believing that indeed it has.

i definitely recommend giving "maestro" a once-over. the interviews are candid and very understated. the film seemed in black and white, although i was multi-tasking and unable to be sure. the interview with frankie knuckles is quite enlightening, capturing some aspects of him that don't always make it public, as he and larry were very good friends for many years.

today's sound choice is a larry levan remix of tracy weber's "sure shot"
sure shot baby- ain't no way we can lose...