The Eastern Trail
by Lee Lynch
I left O re g o n to visit family in Boston and
went on to read, in the last few nights of my
trip, at three different stops.
O n m y way to the first reading I visited
Rhea Hirschm an of Golden Thread Book
sellers in New Haven, Connecticut She
hadn't expected me. but plunged into our
visit as if starved for lesbian culture. While
Valentine, the fluffy white cat from the attached
used clothing store, showed off, Rhea
escorted m e through her current passions in
lesbian literature. Carolyn Vance's
Pleasure
and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality.
Powers o f Desire: The Politics o f Sexuality
edited by Snitow, et al, the erotic poetry of
O lga Broum as, Ruth Geller's lesbian novel
by Camerin Grae and others.
Triangles. Paz
T H E
AMAZON
TRAIL
She also went on about the talk Deb Edel and
Jo a n Nestle, of the Lesbian History Archives,
did in the class she taught at Yale: lesbian
sexuality, butch-fem m e roles, our history.
Rhea said it was a powerful discussion which
blew away the young, newly gay students
who. after it had all sunk in. came back to her
with gratitude and new visions of themselves.
My next stop was the Bloodroot Feminist-
Vegetarian Restaurant and Bookstore in
Bridgeport. Connecticut. I was accompanied
by a transplanted Eugene resident. The
Bloodroot Collective was warm and welcom
ing, feeding me from recipes out of
and
their delicious recipe books,*
before I read. Th e audience was a mix of
brand new dykes, political dykes and a few
old gays, but they all seemed pleased and
excited by a reading from
m y new novel, which is the story of an old
gay stone butch in Greenwich Village in the
1960s. Th e collective, in thanks, pressed upon
m e a copy of Andrea Freud Loenstein’s
a highly readable, exciting new novel.
Th e n on to New York City where I briefly
visited W om anbooks in uptown Manhattan.
T h e salesperson was Lucy who once operated
La Papaya, a woman's restaurant in Brooklyn,
N .Y She gave me a message to deliver at m y
next stop on the Trail, Pandora Bookpeddlers
in Englewood, New Jersey. I delivered it to
Vivian Shineman, a straight woman who was
m ore interested and supportive of our culture
than m any dykes are. Her group wanted to
talk about lesbian publishing and writing.
There are a lot of dykes writing out there,
building and building lesbian culture til no
one will ever be able to hide us again.
Vivian graciously drove me back on the
controversial and rutted Westside Highway
and I treated myself to dinner in a West C o ¿t
style natural food restaurant where I planted
Political Palate
Political Palate,
ler.*
The
The Second Seasonal
The Swashbuck
Place,
This
myself across from two apparently former
lovers. They spent their meal catching up on
activities of nieces and nephews and old col
lege friends.
I spent the night at Th e Lesbian Herstory
Archives where I ran into Felice Newman
sleeping on the couch. She’s a publisher of
Cleis Press and was in town to sell books at
the W om en in Psychology Conference. Later,
Madeline Davis and Liz Kennedy of the Buf
falo Oral History Project arrived. We talked
into the night with Deb Edel of the Archives
about break-ups and non-m onogam y. That
seems to be a national topic.
T h e next morning was International W o
m a n ’s Day and before I left we celebrated.
Jan, a PhD candidate at Columbia who is
writing her thesis on a 16th century French
wom an poet sang a Cajun-style lesbian song.
She's from New Orleans. Then Madeline sang
two of
songs, one about the Stonewall
riots and the roots of gay liberation, the other
her "addict song" about being addicted to
falling in love with women who are addicts.
Leaving the Archives is always difficult as,
unlike any other place on earth, it’s for
and
filled with lesbian sculpture, paintings, photo
graphs, clothes, manuscripts, books and on
and on.
But I did manage to leave, braving the N YC
transportation system to stay for the night
with m y first lover, Sue Kenler and her 12 year
old daughter Kris, on Long Island in New
York. That evening while Kris took her cab
bage patch doll Maryellen next door to the
sitter’s, Susan took me to Alternative Comers,
a lesbian book and t-shirt shop in West
Hempstead. Th e theme of the night was
again our history. Three of us had com e out
in 1960 and another in 1942. Everyone else
was post-1970. Susan grum bled that the
her
us
younger wom en didn't appreciate what we'd
gone through, pointing out that one reason
so few old gays appeared at lesbian funtions
was that many had killed themselves because
they couldn't take "the life." Others, of course,
went straight for the same reason, and still
others are too painfully closeted to be seen in
a gay bookstore. But we also discussed the
exciting contributions of the newer "genera
tion.” These are the lesbians whose relative
freedom produces the energy to do the work
so m any of them have begun: on lesbian
alcoholism, for example, or lesbian geriatrics.
Their O ld Dyke Homes may well provide
shelter for us all.
Shelly Glick, whom I had never met in O re
gon, was there. W hen we repaired to the local
lesbian bar, which serves non-alcoholic
beverages and coffee, she showed me some
photographs that appeared in
a Southern Oregon feminist photography
magazine* She was part of the photography
Ovulars held at Rootworks in Sunny Valley
though she's a native New Yorker.
But Shelly is jum ping back on the Amazon
Trail to move to Florida. And I, the next m orn
ing, said goodbyes to our Eastern Branch
and write this now, across the aisle of a D C - 10
from two handsome dykes who won't meet
m y eye, on the great Amazon Trail in the sky.
G oing home.
Blatant Image,
*Political Palate,
etc. available from Blood
root, 85 Ferris S t, Bridgeport, C T 06605,
$10.95 plus $1.00 postage.
available from A
W o m a n’s Place Bookstore, 2349 S E Ankeny,
or Naiad Press, PO Box 10543, Tallahassee,
F L 32302.
available from 2000 King
Mountain Trail, Sunny Valley, O R 97497.
*The Swashbuckler,
*Blatant Image,
THE HEW BLOOD TEST
FOR AIDS ANTIBODY IS NOT
A TEST FOR AIDS
T h e physicians of the O regon A ID S Task Force would
advise you to think twice about requesting the AIDS
antibody test from your doctor or the health depart
ment. T h e test is meant to screen blood donors not to
diagnose or predict A ID S in an individual.
While we would all like to predict the risk of A ID S or
exposure to A ID S by means of a quick blood test, this
current test simply will not provide this information.
We would like to warn you that:
• T h e test is not diagnostic for A ID S or AIDS related
diseases.
• T h e test will not determine if you are healthy.
• T h e test will not determine if you have AIDS.
• T h e test will not determine if you are a carrier of AIDS.
• T h e test will not determine whether you are likely to
give A ID S to som eone else.
• If you have a positive test, you m ay experience co n
siderable anxiety from not knowing what it means for
your health status.
• If you have a negative test, it m ay falsely reassure you
that you have not been exposed to AIDS.
Take our advice. Don’t take the blood test for AIDS.
A message from the physicians o f the Oregon AIDS Task Force. ____________________
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Just Out, April 1985