Musical Strangers

It must have been about 1985 when I started attending the recorder workshop at Dominican College in San Rafael. I learned about the early music workshops from my voice teacher, but was more interested in playing recorders with other people than singing. Getting a group of recorders to sound fairly good is a lot easier than tuning up a group of singers. If you put your fingers on the right holes and don’t wildly underblow or overblow, the right notes will come out.

I had come roaring out of the closet after the Milk/Moscone murders. I was out to everyone except for relatives of my grandparents’ generation, and they probably suspected.

So when I decided to spend a musical week with a group of strangers, my question was not whether I would come out to them, but rather how and when. The workshop was run by the San Francisco Early Music Society, so I didn’t expect to meet much homophobia. After all, San Francisco is the city where the love that dare not speak its name never shuts up. Had I known how many of the workshoppers came from other states and other countries, I might have been less optimistic. In retrospect, though, it seems to me that they had chosen to come to our turf, so they were in no position to complain about local mores.

I don’t remember my deliberations, but I decided to make a bold statement on arrival and let the chips fall where they may. I was the proud possessor of one T-shirt advertising my membership in the Pacific Lesbian and Gay Singers, and another one for the (imaginary) Lesbian National Forest. I would wear one of these explicit T-shirts the first day of the session, and let them do my speaking for me.

Which is how I found other lesbians in the group, including the workshop director, Frances. We looked familiar to each other and finally figured out that we had been classmates in the music program at U.C.L.A. a decade or so earlier. Later in the week, an older couple quietly made themselves known to me. Turns out, we are everywhere! I got no negative comments, and never noticed any unfriendly expressions. If you knew your fingerings and could keep up with the other players, you were in. Period.