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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 1, 1986)
The West Coast Women's Music and Comedy Festival by Lee Lynch I d id n 't recognize Robin Tyler with nothing but a walkie-talkie on. Consequently. I never go t to thank the com edienne-producer for inviting me to read at her brainchild, the West Coast W om en’s Music and Comedy Festival, this Labor Day Weekend. My lack of fam iliar ity with mass nudity aside (Girlfriend says I’m the knd of person who doesn't even see naked w om en), I found this festival to be carefully organized, sm oothly administered, even — an unexpected bonus — mellow. N orm a Jean (see Amazon Trail, November T H E AMAZON TRAIL 1985) had agreed to make the trip with me several m onths ago, before she bought the tw enty-four foot RV that Akia, a day-stage perform er from ou r neck of the woods, called a Hotel. And which another wom an enviously referred to as bourgeois. Could this wheeled culprit have contributed to the mellowness of the festival for me? Katherine Forrest, author o f Curious Wine, Daughters of a Coral Dawn, etc., and her sweetie, seemed to think so when they arrived h o t harried, hungry at the multi-acred sum m er cam p turned lesbian nation. Katherine organized her presentation while we all exchanged notes on the state of o u r literature and our com m on culture shock. I’d at least been to the New England W om en’s Music Retreat its first two years. Katherine, an L A city woman, was even newer to the scene. Getting N orm a’s m obile oasis to the ou t skirts o f Yosemite where the Festival was held was another sort o f adventure. I'd never dri v- en anyth i ng larger than a Ford Econo Van — back in 1971.1 was less nervous about my presentation than I was about learning to drive a piece o f equipm ent whose dashboard re sem bled a c o c k p it Norma took the gargan tuan wheel first while I learned lesson number one before we'd even topped Mt. Ashland: stum bling around inside a m oving RV can produce car sickness. I sat and felt the green pallor drain from my dank face. Lesson num ber two was simpler: RVs are bigger than subcompacts. If you're going to drive one, you’d better realize that some vin dictive soul will have moved every dot from every line on the freeway to someplace you're not expecting them to be. And in case you d o n ’t notice, the other cars on the Amazon Trail will set up such a cacaphony of honking you'll think you're a m igrating duck. B ut it was lesson num ber three I learned b e st D o n o t under any circumstances, hap pen to be driving the first tim e you've ever piloted such an enorm ous vehicle when you begin the clim b toward Yosemite. And if you’re d u m b enough to find yourself squeezed into one of those too-small, sinu ous steep avenues, with the Bekins moving tru ck that just dropped the piano off at the Main Stage plum etting downhill toward you — do not look to the rig h t over the cliff, to be Just Out, October 1986 certain you have enough room. You don't. At Groveland I pulled into a parking lot and let Norm a pry me, stiff, trembly-kneed, breathless, out of the driver's seat She'd been grand for someone about to lose her vaca tion home. Every tim e I'd lost nerve she'd growled out the com m and. "Give it hell!” Our ascent to hell was all her achievement. But the Festival, you ask, what about the Festival? Please understand I was a writer encouraged to make this pilgrimage by a publisher who promised I'd meet lots of fans. I did make it to the Day Stage twice. Once for Pat Bond doing Gertrude Stein, as usual a m oving and totally convincing appearance. I always cry at the end and want to rush into her arms sobbing, "Miss Stein, Miss Stein!" and I went back for SDiane Bogus, Bay area poet. I've been a fan of hers ever since I read Lesbian Hands in Common Lives/Lesbian Lives. I also visited the Main Stage twice. Theresa Trull's throbbing music lured me briefly to the sidelines where I watched her small figure mesmerize an audience of countless women. The next night I walked over again, this time with Bobbi Weinstock, a gay activist from Virginia whose cruising-femme stories 1 could have listened to all night. I caught some of Kate Clinton with her and really liked her new routines. Kate, that is, not Bobbi. Though if I hadn’t been a married woman, out there un der the glittery mountain sky, wrapped inside the energy of those cheering w om an-m ulti tudes, I suppose I m ight have found some of B o b b i’s routines as appealing. . . “ You’re a married woman now,” my ex-cruising buddy Norm a would chastise me. N orm a was Best Butch at m y wedding to Girlfriend June 7 and donned a burgundy tux to earn the title. For this trip I'd had a sweatshirt made for Norma, black, sleeveless, butchy as hell, with big red letters that read: ROAD MANAGER. She proudly displayed it to the packed tent at m y performance and did a fine jo b of managing me, if not that unruly precipitous road through the sky. O ther than these forays to the stages 1 was m ore likely to be found in the Festival Sponsored Speakers’ te n t I heard Katherine Forrest speak o f the current trends in lesbian lit. Jud y Grahn of the proud gay history she sets forth in Another Mother Tongue — did you know there was once a whole tribe of Fairy People, both women and men? O r that the term gay, rather than being a male appe- lation, goes back to the goddesses? Later that day Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon spoke of becom ing older lesbians and talked good sense about rights and strategies in the heterosexist world. I was resting in the RV after m y talk when I heard gales of laughter from the tent. I checked the schedule to see which com edienne was on, but it was JoAnn Loulan, author o f Lesbian Sex. I also hung around the craft area a while, signing books, getting to talk to the festival goers, to Susan and fellow New Yorker Alice Malloy of Mama Bears Bookstore in Oakland. And to Jeffner Allen, author of Lesbian [ fw RealtvUroui J> S Philosophy. Probably most im portant to me of all my experiences at WCWM&CF was the time I spent in my own backyard. RV parking has an added attraction. The crowd seemed a little older, a little quieter, a little less festival- attuned, a little more like me. We, it turned out, had parked in a military zone. Behind us were two Korean vets, one from Chicago and still em ployed by the army, the other also a civilian, but still in charge of an enormous num ber of military vehicles. The transporta tion expert, a Captain when on active duty, was full of Arm y stories. She had been on the front lines in Korea and seemed both fasci nated and repelled by her experiences there. Over and over in her stories I heard a deep warm caring for her sister soldiers and for the Korean women. She lives in the Castro now, surrounded by her Grandm a’s furniture in an overpriced apartm ent We had a sailor neighbor too, turned dental technician, and she and Norma, also ex-Navy, hung out together. All four servicewomen as sured me th a t despite the isolation and fear (described eloquently by Pat Bond in the film Word Is Out) endured by lesbians in the arm ed forces, there is no lack of us there. O ur little encam pm ent in the decidedly friendly territory o f Yosemite — tents, pickups, cam pertops, field kitchen — got real homey, with an everyone-pitch-in atmosphere that made the W CWM&CF truly a festival for me. A festival of dykes, a celebration of us in our RVs and m ountain tents, in our clothes and out, in our love o f music or o f literature — or just o f women, women, women! M otivated Seller $3 9 ,9 0 0 Reduced to sell. 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