ILLUSTRATION: E ANN HINOS
B Y
J A Y
B R O W N
ay Brown, co-publisher and editor of
Just Out, died at 2:22 am on Thurs­
day, March 22, 1990 in Providence
Hospital, Portland. Jay was diagnosed with
pneumocystis pneumonia on February 25,
and entered the hospital on March 5.
Friends came from as far away as San
Francisco to visit, and friends were with
him the night he died.
Jay is survived by his Just Out family,
many friends, and his estranged relatives
living in Fairfield, California.
A party celebrating Jay Brown’s life
will be held Friday, April 13 at Café
Mocha from 6-8 pm, 4108 NE Sandy
Blvd. Bring photos and memories to share.
J
■v-
L
ast month Jay and I announced our
departure from Just Out. This month
it saddens me to announce that Jay de­
parted forever.
Jay touched many lives, some
positively and some negatively. I valued
his friendship, and he was my family. It
was my honor to be by his side during the
past three weeks and to be near when he
died.
We first met in 1981, at a meeting for
the Cascade Voice, a fledgling gay paper.
He was there to sell photographs and I was
there to write. Within three months I was
editor and he was my assistant editor.
Eighteen months later, we started Just Out
together.
Those first months were horrendous.
We fought like a married couple. It took
three years to really settle in to publishing
Just Out, and we’ve spent the past four
years refining it
In September of last year, we began
toying with the idea of leaving Just Out.
Neither of us thought that his absence
would be so permanent.
I’m still inventorying everything I
learned from my association with Jay. I
guess mostly he taught me to live simply
and focus on living each moment as it
happens.
Renei LaChance
-----------v------------
ay and I had a talk a month or so ago
about our working relationship. Dur­
ing that conversation, he asked me why I
didn’t write for Just Out, when I did write
for the LCP newsletter. He wondered if I
didn’t like Just Out. I was a little shocked.
All along I had been pouting because he
didn’t think well enough of me to ask me
to write for the paper.
I am afraid that kind of miscommuni-
cation was pretty typical of the year anu a
half that I’ve known Jay.
But during that year I also grew to care
a lot about him, and toward the end we had
a few of those talks, clearing the air,
getting in touch a little with each other as
people. And I am immensely grateful for
that. He contributed a great deal to our
community — and not just the gay com­
munity, but Portland as a whole. My
greatest grief about his death is that he
died so very soon after we broke through
all the garbage and started to be friends.
While I was visiting him at the
hospital, about a week before he died, I
told him I was writing an article for the
paper, and doing some editing, too. I carry
the smile he gave me then in a very special
place.
Chris Maier
J
Co-publishers Renée LaChance and Jay
Brown.
In 1983 when Just Out came to be, there
was only one other gay paper; the great boom
of the gay community in Portland had already
begun to dwindle; people were leaving, some
had died. Just Out gave the community a
focus again, its ideals were alternative and
radical. It was about putting into the commu­
nity and not just taking away from it — it was
about taking responsibility, about being
politically active. And to this day Just Out
has remained an important mouthpiece for the
gay and lesbian community. With his partner.
Renée LaChance, they provided well for the
community and their work made a difference.
Now without Jay the world seems
different, sadder, smaller. Jay was one of my
last friends in the city and the emptiness that
his death leaves is overwhelming. What will
the community do without him? Just Out will
survive — it’s meant to — and it will go on
being the essential thing that it has been.
I’ll miss Jay, knowing that he was there,
even though I no longer live in Portland.
Goodbye, my friend, sleep well, until we
see you again. Somewhere, somehow.
Joel Redon
New York City
ay Brown was my friend for ten years. I
met him when I was 18 and he was 45.
He taught me about books and helped to spark
my interest in writing. A year after we met I
began writing articles for Fresh Weekly and
Jay took the photographs. At that time we
lived in the same neighborhood and I visited
him every day. Jay would be home always,
listening to music, smoking pot and reading
books from the library. He didn’t like to work
and knew how to live frugally and happily. It
was a good, simple life. But at a certain point
Jay wanted to do something. That’s when he
developed the idea of a gay newspaper for
Portland. In a short time he took that vision
and made it a reality. I helped him write
articles for the first issue.
J
had been in the hospital for a week
when I first poked my head into his
J ay Intensive
Care room. He was wearing his
glasses over a plastic oxygen mask; a
monitor let out a string of beeps when the
oxygen in his blood fell below a certain
level. When he coughed — and he
coughed often — his whole body seemed
to rattle.
He took one glance at me as I came in.
“What are you writing for next month?” he
asked.
That moment was consummate Jay
Brown.
As an editor, Jay was dedicated,
cynical, curmudgeon, stubborn, inquisi­
tive, unsentimental, encyclopedic in his
knowledge of the community. His death
leaves a strange, empty space in the Just
Out office, and in the city in which —
without ever trying for acclaim — he
played so critical a part.
We can’t fill the place Jay’s left. What
we can do is apply the best of his vision to
our own tasks as writers, ad salespeople,
artists, activists, human beings. We can
keep writing. We can keep the paper
coming out. Jay wouldn’t consider having
it any other way.
Anndee Hochman
Hieysi^pses
a provocative dark comedy
emotions explode, tears and laughter mingle.
The Portland Opera proudly presents the World Premiere of a
powerful new chamber opera by Christopher Drobny, composer, and
Laura Harrington, librettist. At the Dolores Winning's tad Theatre.
Portland Center for the Performing Arts. April 27* 28, 29, May 1-5
Festival Seating-$15.00. Tickets at Portland Opera, 241-1802
•Benefit performance for the Alzheimer's Association, Columbia-Willamette Chapter
Please call 229-7115 for inform ation and benefit tickets.
just out y 3 y April 1990