Queer Elder?! Me?!

I must be a queer elder, mustn’t I? I’m definitely a lesbian: my experiences with boyfriends never got beyond kissing. Once I enjoyed my first lesbian lover, I never looked back. And most folks would consider me an elder, since I qualify for Medicare and senior discounts.

So, what does it mean to be an elder, and how is being a queer elder any different?

I like to think that living into my seventh decade has given me some gifts to compensate for the sheer wear and tear. For every decrease in pain-free range of motion or clarity of eyesight, I hope that I gain whatever tenacity, wisdom, or acceptance comes with having survived more challenges, wrangles, and people who are every bit as weird as I am. At worst, my experiences show me which approaches don’t work. The more mistakes I have made, the more things I know better than to do again. I don’t waste the time and effort of repeating old mistakes; I have the opportunity to make new ones.

Most kinds of physical or emotional discomfort are familiar to me. Thus, when I experience them again, I have the means to comfort myself with the knowledge that I got past them before and will probably survive them again.

Being a queer elder suggests having wisdom gained from my queer experiences, personal relationships, and lifestyle. Living in San Francisco, I have some experience with gay rights activism, especially in religious communities and politics. I can tell youngsters who grew up in more accepting times what it was like marching in the early Pride parades, what it was like standing outside City Hall after the Milk-Moscone murders, and what it was like having my civil rights determined by mayors, governors, courts, and elections.

Openhouse provides many ways to share our experiences with others—in writing, on video, in person. Being fond of the sound of my own voice, I take advantage of most of these opportunities. I tame any unrealistic expectations and my own perfectionism by remembering that I can only speak for myself and my experiences. Everyone’s life is unique, and we all have something special to share.

Let’s take on the mantle of queer elderhood with grace or at least resignation. We stand on the shoulders of our own elders. Let’s pay it forward to nurture the next queer generation and to preserve our history for the ages.

Cat and Dragon

Cat and Dragon; responses to two prompts

As to a prompt about what animal I identify with, I must have been a cat in an earlier incarnation. I dislike getting wet, especially in the rain, but also in a swimming pool. I can tolerate a bath for hygiene’s sake, as long as it includes floral-scented bubbles.

I luxuriate in textures like my cat does. She will lie on, knead, or choose to vomit on the softest surface she can find. I love to pet her wonderfully soft fur, and seek to wear my own fur coat in the form of corduroy, flannel, and suede. I’d wear cashmere every day if I could afford it.

My cat finds the warmest surfaces for sleep, including the cable box and my lap, and follows the sunshine. My emotions are solar-powered—I get gloomy when it’s dark and days are short, and I smile when I finally step out into sunshine.

Cats love to be on elevated surfaces, to look down on the world from a high perspective. My cat likes window sills and the back of the couch, but will also perch on the platform of my balance-beam scale, which is all of three inches above the floor. At less than five feet tall, I used to climb ladders to reach high places. Nowadays, I use a reaching tool a lot, and look other people in the eye only if they sit while I stand, or I stand a step higher than them.

Like my cat weaving between my legs or climbing up my chest, I enjoy contact with people I like, such as a touch to the shoulder or a good long hug.

My cat is a maniac for climbing into cardboard boxes and paper bags. When I was younger, I took pride in fitting myself into very small places like a skeleton cabinet or a clothesdrier. More recently, I settle for being enclosed in my home, what with my gently increasing levels of agoraphobia.

My cat can be emotionally effusive, in her own imperious way. She showers me with gifts of rats and mice. Sometimes she greets me by flopping on her side, showing her belly. But when I’ve disturbed her by moving too much in bed, she’ll stalk to the farthest corner and plump herself down, giving me her back.

Cats are known for elegance, independence, and curiosity. I identify with the independence and curiosity; two out of three ain’t bad.

Another prompt had me writing something with the following ten words: dragon, delicious, dangerous, dearly, driver, downright, depth, deliver, drown, and decision. So I made this foray into fiction:

A little brown dragon lived in a cave on the side of a hill. A vegetarian, she ate mostly delicious tender fronds of the fennel bushes that filled her territory.

She was a homebody. She felt it would be dangerous to roam far from her cave, where she could be attacked by bigger dragons or targeted by trophy hunters.

She dearly loved her little dell, which had a happy gurgling stream and all the plants she would ever need to eat. She would nap in the warm sun, and curl up in her cave when it rained.

One day her eye was caught by a bright gleam of light bouncing off something in the depths of the stream. She was a strong swimmer, so she did not worry that she might drown if she dove into the stream to retrieve the object.

Her decision made, she took a deep breath, plunged underwater, and picked up … something. She was downright baffled by the object in her claw.

It was metal, sure enough. Its surface was very hard and smooth. She struggled to find a way to describe its shape.

It had an inside and an outside, and seemed solid enough to hold water. She rinsed it clean in the stream and found that it did indeed hold water. She used it to deliver water to some fennel seedlings she was growing to replace what she had eaten. She had seen how the plants in her dell prospered after the rains, deducing that the water was a driver of growth.

She still didn’t know who had made the shiny thing or how they had used it, but she was happy with her new watering can.

Who is My Community?

Today's buzzword is community. What is community? How is it created? What circumstances foster it? How is it revealed?

The word "community" comes from a Latin root that means "common." A community is a group of people with something in common. More specifically, it is "a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics and which either is perceived or perceives itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists."

I these questions as a member of the so-called LGBT community. Outsiders may see the LGBT community as a monolith, but it contains many sub-groups who see themselves as communities: political activists, artists, the leather community, etc. And any one person can be a member of several overlapping communities depending on her neighborhood, gender presentation, occupation, activities, religion or lack thereof, and so on.

I find it helpful to separate two kinds of community: communities by identity and communities of caring. By identity, I am a retired older lesbian living in San Francisco, and my affiliations include a synagogue, a brunch group, and two support groups.

How is a community of caring formed? Good question. Some communities of identity include caring for each other as an element of their identity, such as religious congregations and extended families.

In my experience, a community of caring develops when members of a community by identity allow themselves to depend on each other. When they explicitly or implicitly agree to come to each other for support, and have a reasonable expectation of getting help.

I saw this happen when members of my brunch group had surgery, and the others visited them, sent and brought food, helped them with chores, and encouraged them. We take each other to medical procedures and the emergency room. We call each other to listen when we just need to vent.

Pretty much any community of identity has the potential to develop into a community of caring. As I see it, the key is for members to express openness to supporting each other. For as many of the group as are willing to explicitly agree to help each other to the extent of our ability. And to express this agreement not just once, but regularly.

And then, in any group needs will develop. If the members are in contact with each other, and believe that they have a mutual aid agreement, they will ask each other for help and receive it, and the group will grow stronger and closer with each need met.

The Roller Coaster

The Roller Coaster

At a family occasion in Santa Monica, a friend of the family told a story about a roller coaster in France. I’m not sure who the teller was, but my guess would be Nancy Nimitz, as she was the most consistent non-family presence in Santa Monica. She was the daughter of Admiral Chester Nimitz, a hero of World War II complete with an aircraft carrier named after him. Since she, like my uncle Malcolm, worked for the Rand Corporation (he in economics and she as an expert on Russia), I imagine they met at work. I liked her a lot; she was smart and witty and irreverent. The story seems like one she would tell.

I don't know if the story was true, but we kids loved it. She said that the builders had tried to make the scariest, most exciting roller coaster ever. They were very pleased with their creation, and had tested it thoroughly with sandbags standing in for passengers. Came the dedication day and the honor of the first ride was accorded to the mayor and other city officials. However, at the end of the ride, they all were dead, their necks snapped.

Not long afterwards, my mother took me, my brother, and a cousin to Disneyland. We went on the Matterhorn Bobsleds ride, a type of roller coaster. After a little conference at the top of the ride, we had our plan. As the car neared the bottom of the mountain, we all keeled over bonelessly, as if our necks had been snapped. Mother had been watching us and knew exactly what we were doing. She stepped away from the fence and pretended that she didn't know us. When the attendants came running up to the car, we smiled sweetly up at them.

Lo these many years later, I wonder why we kids loved the story so much that we decided to re-enact it. Why we felt no horror or sorrow at the meaningless deaths of the officials, but only macabre glee. Maybe it’s because kids don’t believe in death; the only deaths we have seen so far in our lives have been fictions on a screen or in writing. At any rate, the story really impressed us at the time, and it lingers in my mind still.

Council on Religion and the Homosexual

The Council on Religion and the Homosexual was formed in 1964, about ten years before I arrived in San Francisco. In the mid-1970s, I became its co-chair, and participated in its fight against the Briggs Initiative. Founding members of the Council were still on board when I arrived, and they told me the stories of its founding.

The group was formed to connect homosexual activists with religious leaders for mutual dialogue and education. Its founders included clergymen (and they all were men) from various Christian churches. They were joined by leaders of the gay rights groups of the time: the Mattachine Society, the Society for Individual Rights, and Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, the founding mothers of the Daughters of Bilitis lesbian organization. When they incorporated as the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, they may have been the first corporation in the U.S. to use the word “homosexual” in its name.

No story of CRH is complete without the tale of the New Year’s Eve Ball. The clergy and activists decided to fund-raise by holding a ball at California Hall on Polk Street. The ministers feared that the police would try to break up the party, so they told them their plans. The police response was to pressure the hall’s owners to cancel the event. After that didn’t work, some of the police may have agreed not to interfere with the dance.

Nevertheless, on the night of the ball, the police pointed floodlights at the hall’s entrance and photographed everyone who entered the hall. Taking their pictures was what the police did to intimidate gay men; publishing their pictures in newspapers often ended their jobs and destroyed their family lives.

The five hundred or so attendees were joined by about fifty police officers, whose very presence was threatening. The straight religious folk experienced police harassment for themselves, as peaceful partygoers confronted by so many officers and paddy wagons.

Then several officers demanded to go inside. CRH had hired three lawyers, foreseeing such a request. They told the officers that the party was a private one, and that they had to buy tickets to enter. The police promptly arrested not only the three lawyers but also a ticket taker standing nearby.

Randy Shilts described these events in his book on Harvey Milk, The Mayor of Castro Street. He wrote: “The ministers held an angry press conference the next morning, likening the SFPD to the Gestapo and demanding an investigation. Even the Catholic archbishop was reportedly up in arms. For this, if no other reason, City Hall had to respond.”

The arrested lawyers were defended at trial by ACLU attorneys, who got the charges dropped. City Hall assigned police officers to “smooth relations with the city’s gays.”

           Not only did police harassment decrease, but incumbents and aspiring politicians recognized the size of the gay community and began to seek their vote. In exchange for gay support, San Francisco assemblymen Willie Brown and John Burton introduced a bill to repeal the statute forbidding gay sex. Dianne Feinstein credited the gay vote for making her president of the Board of Supervisors. This led to her becoming the mayor of San Francisco, and now she’s the senior Senator from California.

So the New Year’s Ball was a seminal step in turning gays from an oppressed minority into a powerful political constituency.

My Favorite Books

Formed by My Favorite Books

Having inhaled books all my life, having retreated into print when my feelings were in an uproar, having relied on reading to keep panic at bay, I cannot choose a single book as having been my consolation and refuge.

Nevertheless, when I thought about the first books I remember reading, books that I have continued to reread, books whose characters live in my mind because they are part of me, one series glittered with light as if it were covered in diamonds: the Peanuts comics by Charles Schulz.

I remember Uncle Paul telling my brother and me about the Great Pumpkin, a godlike figure who comes from the most sincere pumpkin patch to bring toys to good children. He or it was an acceptable and useful divinity for Jewish kids like us.

My father had a vast library of paperback books, shelved at least three layers deep. Among the spy novels, science fiction, and medical treatises, I found a 1952 edition of the first collection of Peanuts cartoons, entitled simply Peanuts. My father wrote his last name on the inside cover, and Charles Schulz autographed it on the first page. I claimed the book after his death and have it on my shelves to this day.

As I said, I identify with several of the major characters in the script. First, of course, Charlie Brown. He’s something of an underdog, getting picked on by neighborhood kids, but they like him enough to keep on playing with him, and he teases them from time to time. I felt like Charlie Brown when I was teased or mocked by my contemporaries. I identified with Charlie Brown’s eternal struggle to fly a kite that didn’t get eaten by the tree, both literally (having my own kite munched on) and metaphorically (by attempting some new sport or other endeavor, and having it immediately come crashing down in failure, injury, or both).

Schroeder is the little kid who plays classical masterpieces on his toy piano. I shared his love of music, if not his piano skills. I can’t think of Peanuts without hearing in my mind the jazzy music of Vince Guaraldi. Dad loved that kind of music, and I even tried to play his sheet music for Dave Brubeck’s jazz piece, Take Five. Dad was a very capable piano player, and he supported my musical efforts of singing and playing folk guitar.

Linus joined the strip in later years, sucking his thumb while surgically attached to his security blanket. I could really relate to him, since books were my security blanket. He could use his blanket for comfort, and also as a weapon. I could use books for comfort, and studying schoolbooks gave me good grades and skills to earn my living.

The character initially named Violet became Lucy later on. Even as Violet, she would offer to hold a football for Charlie Brown to kick but would jerk it away at the last minute and send him flying. This became a symbol to me of the unreliability of the universe. I did identify with her proud self-identification as a “fussbudget.” When she set herself up as a psychiatrist offering brusque advice for 5 cents, I felt tenderly possessive of my mental blocks; I would never entrust any of them to her.

Getting back to Linus, books and music have been my lifelong security blankets, and I thank Charles Schulz for showing me how they could support me on my way through life.

Reading as LGBTQIA

Alphabet Reading

                                                        

Loving to read as far back as I can remember.

Getting books for my class from the bookmobile, I gather treasures with glee.

Bumped up a grade because I could already read.

Tearing through Nancy Drew mysteries like potato chips.

Quietly sitting in a corner, always entertained.

In a noisy school bus, just me and my book.

Attempting to write my own stories.

Leave the house without a book? Never.

Gotta have a way to corral my thoughts.

Being without a focus can lead to panic.

Technology to the rescue; Kindle has me covered.

Quickly digitizes every book I might want to read.

I seldom buy dead tree books any more.

Amazon saves my sanity; I am loyal to it.

Leisure means freedom to read as long as I want.

Good books last longer when part of a series.

Boring books I quickly close; I have many others.

To write my own books is a current focus.

Queer Elders Writing Workshop supports me.

I like to encourage other writers.

As addictions go, reading is not so bad.