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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (July 1, 1986)
Moving on butter; ; salt and pepper. Turn on burner and s m ooch. oo sm If still unthawed when checked, re- J M ^ 'S jt u r n tc to sm ooching. Discuss whether to turn Part 1 open. Try and recall whether our chickens had ever been red inside. — Nice fumish$vrs t^ row out and eat Cheerios able July 2 9 t h r o u ^ s,y -some lesbians when I suppose I should be tiable. Call SKE at 2 9 4 ^ nt on refusing to learn posed to any ghetto, to sage at 2 8 4 -5 2 9 2 . future husbands, qay ghetto like the Ca^l rtners will have lage But when I hear bedroom nef r ves! hood” like Portland’s, or carpe , rStreet, in the heart m oving in up the road from m ^ ! ,. „ ON /as magical to us. I'm more com fortable right here irv' Fow sideyard we affec- gas station town of mine because I knov. LESBIAN FOR( rGarden of Eden. Week- there two gay guys up the road, twc preters for the hearii ir drunken man would sit dykes, two more men, and the women >nt (about 2 h o ^ s the street and sing loud com ing and going up on the mountain. We re SpV>-4386 dof. O ur friend Walter lived across probably well over our 10* quota, but the the h a li. ^ ^ is ite d frequently with us. He rednecks haven’t caught on because we re particularly enjoyed my naked manikin Myra spread o u t I only have to endure suspicious Breckinridge whom I'd wheeled home from the Goodwill across town. In broad daylight. We also had Marty and his girlfriend up the alleyway to visit — if we were in the m ood for perpetual Rolling Stones, hallucinogenics and black light posters. Wow, man. Aside from the toilet and shower in the hallway the apartment's main drawback was a no-pet policy. We thought to elude this by referring to our cats only in code. We called them — no, I do n’t remember why — Christ mas Trees. When we were certain the land lord was at work we'd sneak out to walk the Christm as Trees in the Garden of Eden. It was while we lived in that apartment that we m et ou r first gay compatriots. I'd begun driving lessons, hoping the $6500 a year fro m m y new state job would allow me to buy the VW o f m y dreams. (How would I ever meet the payments on the price of a brand looks down at the General Store, even though I new Bug: $2300 including tax and dealer wear a shirt and a smile. Could it be prep!) My first driving instructor was male m y tweed cap that tips them off? and by ou r second lesson he'd asked me out. Not that hostile stares are new to me. If I m ust have looked at him like he'd asked me New Yorkers do i t could I expect less of rural to cook a chicken dinner, because Jane Oregonians and transplanted Californians? showed up for m y third lesson. It’s my im pending move onto m y lover’s land Jane Dow. I was in love at first sight. I mean, that has me thinking about lesbian and gay she was good-lookin', a gay grown-up, and geography, and rem em bering my own m ulti sm ooth as instant chocolate pudding (C’s tude o f moves. W hy have I wandered so and m y favorite gourm et dessert). I was so much? Does a search for a place of our own crushed out on her I almost flunked my driv move us on? ing test not because I couldn’t parallel park, My First Apartm ent was pink. Not the in but because she was in the back seat. She'd side walls, but the three-story house itself. explained alm ost immediately that the other Not only that, but the house next door was driving teacher was gay. had been sounding pink too. Both were owned by Mrs. Lanni- me out, and passed me on to Jane when he man, a majestic boat of a middle-aged wo was sure I was a dyke. man from the West Indies. Every Saturday It wasn't long afterwards that we moved m orning Mrs. Lanniman would unlock our fro m the Garden o f Eden to a four-story older door and sail in to collect the re n t Which was apartm ent building around the corner from quite okay before C. and I became lovers. Jane’s. N ot that we saw her much, but the Afterwards . . . Well, nothing could undo the charm of that First Apartment. The home to which I brought my First Cats. I m ight even have stayed, but C. had to return to the dorm for her senior year. I cou ldn't afford Mrs. Lannim an’s prices, anyway, or such invasion of m y privacy; nor had it occurred to me to take in a roommate. As far as / knew m y lover and me were the only queers in Bridgeport, Connecticut — there was no way I could have shared my ♦ closet with a straight in those days. So I moved on into the back half of an already meager first floor owned by Nick the grocer. Nick did not appear every Saturday morning. As a matter o f fact, he’d been tolerating my bounced checks at his store for years. But THE BROADWAY COFFEE MERCHANT there was a problem. This little palace with a 1637 N.E. Broadway • 284-9209 view of a gas station, and a barking German ♦ Shepherd guard dog for a neighbor, cost me $ 110 a month. Cheap? Not on m y secretary- THE HAWTHORNE COFFEE MERCHANT 3562 S.E. Hawthorne • 230-1222 salary o f $65 per week! I pooled food money with C. and our unenlightened straight friend Dorothy. The arrangement saved me in two ways: not only couldn’t I afford to eat, but I cou ldn't cook and Dorothy could! When C. finally left the dorm to join me, we moved into m y all-time favorite apartment, but lost Dorothy. C. couldn't cook either. We still have giggling fits when we remember our gourm et chicken recipe: place chicken breasts in frying pan; smear with lumps of by Lee Lynch I are and F HELP W> and AMAZON TRAIL always The A Coffee Merchant neighborhood glowed with romance because she was near. We learned, then, that like at tracts like, even when the likes don't kn o w ... A classmate of C's moved in downstairs with another woman. Were they? O f course they were. O ur excitement was high. We now knew three lesbians. Then a gay man from ou r school took another apartment in our building. It seemed I couldn't go out in my new blue VW (which used $3.50 in gas a week) without bum ping into a gay. But we had a hard lesson to learn. The presence of queers did not make a co m m u n ity. Though we were separated only by stair ways and walls, we remained isolated but for those casual encounters. O ur boxlike d o m i ciles were too full of fear. We'd learned to cook a chicken by then, but not to reach out to other people. We'd learned so well to pro tect ourselves from exposure, and internalized so deeply fear and disdain of ourselves and ou r kind, that while we sought safety in num bers, it wasn't a feeling of safety we found. We even feared people would notice that we lived in a building full of gays. Soon after this I moved with C. to the ou t skirts of New Haven, a city that boasted a gay restaurant and bar. Perhaps here, we thought, we could find friends. Surely where there were m ore gays we'd have less trouble connect ing. Fascintaed. m oths drawn to the flame, we’d fled one isolation for another. We lived in that last apartm ent together still alone, still lonely for our own, still helpless to give ourselves what we so badly needed. I c o u ld n ’t figure out why it felt so m uch better to always watch for signs o f gay neighbors, gay co-workers, than to actually get to know them . I d id n ’t understand m y ambivalent feel ings and continued to listen, for a while, to my fear o f running with a telltale crowd. W hat a tale o f love and fear! O f approach and withdrawal. O f hope and failure. I left the last apartm ent and m y post graduation m ar riage then. Surely it had been the relationship which kept me wanting, kept me feeling un whole? I, with thousands of other women and gay m en in the early seventies, moved on to explore whole new concepts of shelter and com m unity. And kept on m oving from place to place in search of a whole healthy self I needed to see. to reflect, to accept. O U T I N C . The finest imported coffee beans, teas, chocolates, and beverage brewing accessories. Just Out. July, 1986 P □ inner Mon-Sat Sunday Brunch 2913 SE STARK 2 3 0 -7 9 8 0 Copyright Lee Lynch 1986 M E D I A , CELEBRATES LESBIAN & GAY PRIDE EVERY MONTH RINT MEDIA BUYING Based on your annual advertising schedule, w e ’ll work directly with the right publications to insure you get in before deadline. PRODUCTION •L We’ll execute your artwork and copy to fit your tastes, not ours. Business cards, brochures, flyers, logos, etc., at affordable prices; camera work, typesetting, layout or original art and photography. pROMOTION/PUBLICITY ^ We know who to contact to give you the most effective exposure. Press releases, letters, photos, flyers — m any times hand delivered in Portland — follow-up. 236-1252 17