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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 1, 1990)
Coming out as the lesbian c ommunity goes underground Which of our resources will go next? BY D A K O T A M STONE aneuvering the 26-foot U-Haul truck into the narrow driveway of what was to be my new home, I failed to notice the flowering quince bush flanking the concrete slab. Oh, well, I thought, tossing the ragged, sheared limbs into a comer where I hoped my new landlady wouldn’t find them. It will grow back, in time. It must have been my eagerness to make it official — this move to Portland. Once the truck was safely parked and its ramp extended, I vaulted to the rear bumper and shielded my eyes from the bright April sun. “Are they here yet?” I wondered aloud, scanning the brief horizon that my new neighborhood afforded. “Are who here yet?” demanded a puzzled Berdell, one of four women friends coerced into helping with the unloading. “The dykes, of course,” I answered, still looking for signs of arrival. “I thought they’d be here by now. Surely they heard I was coming.” It was a fantasy I’d savored often in Bend, during the several months I’d anticipated moving day. There they’d come, sauntering down the street by ones and twos and dozens. Or maybe hundreds. A welcoming committee of beautiful women: tall and short, tanned and muscled, in Birkenstocks and sundresses and hiking boots, with cute little butchy haircuts and great smiles. This is, after all, the big city. I don’t care what the transplants from Boston and San Francisco think: When you’ve spent eight years in a het wasteland, moving to Portland is hitting the big time. I’ve done the calculations. They say there are roughly a million people in the Portland metro area. Applying the conservative 10 percent formula, that means a gay population of at least 100,000. Word has it the ratio here isn’t your typical fifty-fifty split, either. More like 60 percent lesbians and 40 percent gay men. If that’s true, then you can bank on 60,000 dykes within reasonable range. And doesn’t that just send chills down your spine. Back home in central Oregon, where all the queers are underground, I’d always be chomping at the bit the several days before my Just Out arrived in the mail. Every month. I’d feel fervent gratitude to the friend in Portland who’d saved my sanity by giving me a sub scription for my birthday. When a new issue arrived. I’d spend hours poring over the articles, the photos, the business ads, the classifieds, drinking it all in like a heady wine. OfterC the best part was the list of groups and organizations supporting the gay and lesbian population. I’d get lightheaded daydreaming about the ones I was qualified to join: the single lesbian potluck, the L-9 Club for lesbians and their dogs, the Lesbian Garden Club, Radical Women, lezcom.grp. Downtown Dykes, the Rosetown Ramblers, Women with Women with Please Children. The possibilities seemed unlimited. Why, here was a city where I could probably even find a group dedicated to vegetarian, ex- Catholic lesbians with pre-schoolers bom in September. So when a job opened in Portland and I traversed the Cascades with the contents of my household five months ago, I had great expecta tions. The first item to burst my bubble was the newsletter from Women with Women with Children that appeared in my mailbox short weeks after my arrival. The group would be dismantled, it said, if no one stepped forward to take the reins from the woman who’d kept it going almost singlehandedly for much too long. I felt selfish annoyance at the news. What lousy timing, I groused. Why now, just as I am able to take advantage of this resource? The second piece of disappointing news arrived not long after. I remember I hadn’t even rescued my softball glove or my welding goggles from the remaining mound of un packed boxes in the garage. A Woman’s Place, the bookstore I had visited a few times during my rare weekend treks to Portland, was closing. I read somewhere that it had been in business for a decade, but the next time I drove down Northeast Broadway, the building was deserted. It was like an old lover had left town without so much as saying goodbye. And again I reflected selfishly on the crummy timing. They say bad news always travels in threes, so I should have expected it, but did it have to happen before I even scheduled my post- moving garage sale? Last month. Club 927 shut its doors, leavin^Portland without a lesbian bar. Don’t get me wrong: I am not the type to carouse every Friday and Saturday night, and getting drunk isn’t my idea of a good time, but I enjoy a Corona and a game of pool now and then, and Club 927 had played some special magic in my life. It was there that I first slow-danced with a woman, my heart beating wildly over who would lead and who would follow. And it was the only dyke bar left when Primary Domain/Slabtown expired, pulling the cord to that jukebox with all the wonderful old Patsy Cline tunes. Chances arc. Cafe Mocha will fill the void, and there’ll be more dykes at what were primarily gay men’s bars. And Powell’s has a tolerable selection of women’s books, and the WWWC subgroup, Women with Women with Infants and Toddlers, meets almost monthly for brunch. But I can’t help wondering what’s happen ing here, and which of our limited resources is due to disappear next. Will the Gay Pride Parade be called off next year for lack of organizers? Will Just Out go quarterly? Will city planners announce an urban renewal project in the Hawthorne District, spelling doom for the lesbo ghetto? I’m not paranoid. Just nervous. So please, Portland. Have mercy on us newcomers. No more bad news — at least until I pay off the moving bills on my VISA card. Si thank you aren’t; the only magic words: When supporting our advertisers mention Just; Out;. ▼ Lonsdale for U.S. Senate Each generation of humankind is faced with new challenges in the long, timeless struggle to secure full civil and human rights for all people. Today, the fight to ensure justice and equality for gays and lesbians is on the frontier of this struggle. -H arry Lonsdale Mark Hatfield: • Voted to ban gays from the District of Columbia Big Brother program. • Voted for gay-bashing amendments to AIDS funding legislation. • Voted for the Armstrong Amendment to try to force dilution of the D.C. Human Rights Law. • Supported Ballot Measure 8 in 1988. Harry Lonsdale: • Supports adding a prohibition against discrimination based on sexual orientation to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. • Supports ending discrimination against lesb.ans and gays in the armed forces, our immigration laws, and our federal entitlement programs. • Supports "hate crimes" legislation. • Endorsed by the Right to Privacy PAC. P tfd tor and a u tn rlza d by tia Lonadato tar U S Sanato Cam paign, m ti hatp from toa lolto«Mng in d iv id u a l. Joa Marino. Chart». HmWa. Hedy Pm a«. Cadry Siam an». Tarry Baan K aattan Lowary. Lanny Sardtow Tom Norton. Grag S m tfi. JoZm Bafcar. Nancy O alag ar. Tha Stall of Ladd's E d Boofcatara. Anita Floyd . Don Powad. Nancy Vanbardurgh. C h a r* . Fraaiar. Sandy Oractor. Tracy Bltaiaalaa. Warran Qatar , Lawaon. and t>a S ta f Jual Otak »on at Out just out V ì i V October ¡990
