(“Pride” Continued from Page 1)
(“All’s Fair” Continued from Page 1)
FROM THE LOWER LEFT CORNER
each other and had a hell of a good time. They
decided to do it again. I have vague memories of that
second Fair. I recall that the lovely Redwing and her
brothers were set up in a Tipi across the Long Tom
creek, and they would walk across a log regularly to
supply the booth that was illegally selling beer, at the
unheard of price of $5 a six pack Pot was cheaper.
Well, time passed and stuff happened and the Fair kept
being the Fair, and pretty soon the folks ‘in charge’
figured if this was going to keep happening, maybe we
should try to get organized and buy the land, and try
to restore the Long Tom, and really use all of this
creative talent, and not to mention money being made
for stuff we really care about And strangely enough
they did. The Oregon Country Fair is probably the
best functioning community on this planet for a week
or two in July. Oh, yes, it is a non-profit corporation,
with a board, and it’s no longer ‘free’; you get your
tickets at Ticketmaster; it, like the rest of us, is now
part of the ‘system’. We own the land. Paid off in
full, we are buying more. That is part of why the Fair
is now ‘drug and alcohol free.’ Seems there was this
DA in Eugene who wants to make a name for hi’self
and threatened to confiscate the land because the Fair
‘facilitated drug use’ or some such shit. After that
happened I went one year, and it was good and ugly at
the same time. The good part was there weren’t any
allegedly 21 year olds with a case of beer on each
shoulder crashing through the crowds, or throwing up
in the bushes. People being escorted out by
undercover cops, on the other hand was chilling. I
skipped the next Fair.
But, this was the Thirtieth, and the sun was hot, and
the music was wonderful, and things seemed close to
normal, if that word can be used to describe the Fair.
When you get your ticket from Ticketmaster, and
take the bus from Eugene, and spend the day looking
at three generations of naked hippies, amazing arts,
crafts, music, theater, juggling, circuses, food, saunas,
more music, fudge, blacksmiths, potters, the drum
tower, massages, more naked hippies, candles, blintzes,
more music, parades, alternative energy, alternative
philosophy, alternatives galore, you ain’t seen nothin’.
The Fair is open to the public from 11AM until 7PM
for three days, yet, the Fair functions year round.
There are folks who live on the site to make sure no
one comes in and plants a field of pot or poppies.
Each spring work crews volunteer to clean things up
prior to the Fair, because most winters the Long Tom
river floods some of the land. Over the years water
and sewage systems have been built, permanent
structures house the staff and equipment. The sauna
(The Ritz) is permanent. It has a wood heated sauna
that seats probably a hundred, and private and not so
private showers, and a large fire pit for folks to sit
around and dry off while they listen to someone play
the baby grand piano. A favorite place of the
musicians.
Have no doubt, the Oregon Country Fair was, from
day one, bankrolled by dope dealers. Dope dealing is
in fact one of the purest forms of capitalism. Ask the
tobacco, alcohol, gasoline, television and money
dealers. I would imagine a certain percentage of them
got their start in the sixties selling lids. Outlaws?, yes,
criminals?, no. They did in fact manage to make
things a little better for a lot of folks eventually, and
not just that they got a lot of folks high, they also got
a lot of folks fed, and housed, and schooled, and
healed. Yes, they did a bit of damage as well.
Nowadays most of the old-timers might toke, but few
smoke tobacco, and a lot don’t drink at all, and no
one uses ‘white powders’ or ‘drugstore dope’.
Yes, the Fair is a contradiction. After thirty years,
what they like to call the ‘Fair Family’ has dealt with
the same stuff a lot of us have since 1969. Watching
the dreams of the Sixties triumph at the end of the
War, after the pain of the King and Kennedy deaths,
and going through Watergate and discovering that
your worst dreams were not as bad as it really was.
Through all of it the Fair was still there. Once a year
you could go somewhere safe, where people really
tried to do the right thing.
Is it magic? yep. If one is blessed and allowed to
actually be at one with the family, as in having a
camping pass so one can stay overnight at the fair, one
will maybe begin to understand things better and
might begin to see why I think this is important.
using an expansive definition of youth. Gays
and lesbians don't mature socially until after
they come out; someone can be a very young
45-year-old fag, or a very old 22-year-old
dyke.) Being gay or lesbian is not — repeat,
not — an accomplishment, and it's nothing
anyone really has a right to take pride in.
What matters is how a person is gay, not that a
person is gay — a distinction absent from the
banal, smug "Gay is Good" rhetoric emanating
from gay pride pimps and gay pride parades.
Struggling through shame, that poison still in
their bodies, young queers have to indulge in
some prideful posturing. While they do, older
and wiser queers should do w hat we can to
protect them from the naive certainties that
pride rhetoric often inspires. All gays and
lesbians do not agree with each other, do not
like each other, and do not look out for each
other. We shouldn't allow baby queers to assume
gay people are their allies and straight people
their enemies because, as older queers know,
the opposite is often the case. Gay isn’t good
— and it isn't bad. Gay just is.
Presenting a false picture of community to
just-out gays and lesbians, allowing them to
fall for the "brothers and sisters in pride"
rhetoric 1 heard at my first pride rally, is
dangerous. Is there a more wounded expression
than that of a baby dyke who's just realized
she's been viciously fucked over by one of her
"own"? Or an out & proud dyke whose out & proud
junkie roommate took off with her TV and VCR?
Or a gay boy whose scumbag boyfriend swore he
was negative and told him they didn't need to
use a condom because they were in love? Or the
customer who realizes that immediately after
hanging up the rainbow flags, the business
owners jacked up the prices?
Patriotism, they say, is the last refuge of a
scoundrel. In the 30 years since the Stonewall
riots, pride has become a sort of gay
patriotism; yet it seems to have become the
first refuge of gay scoundrels (and the first
marketing ploy of beer and vodka companies).
Perhaps it is just my experience, but I've
found that the harder someone waves the rainbow
flag, the likelier they are to be a user. The
more someone believes that gay is good, the
ruder the shock when they discover they've been
manipulated or exploited by one of their
"brothers and sisters." The sudden realization
that gay pride is a line of crap — that a
shared sexual orientation tells you next to
nothing about another person — can result in a
disillusionment every bit as poisonous as the
shame Gay Pride is supposed to cure. To prevent
disillusionment, we must prevent illusions from
taking root in the first place. Ultimately,
we'll never be truly whole until gay people are
neither crippled by shame nor addicted to
pride. Only when our homosexuality means
absolutely nothing, to others and to ourselves,
will we be free.
Until then, pride flags and rainbow windsocks
should come with little Mr. Yuck stickers and a
copy of St. Thomas Aquinas' thoughts on pride.
That way, unsuspecting baby dykes and fags
would know that pride carries some risk. Like
shame, it can be poisonous, and overdone, pride
is still the queen of sin.
The Stranger's 1999 Queer Issue
(This article was printed by permission of the author,
who writes a regular column, called ‘Savage Love’
in The Stranger newspaper in Seattle. He declined
our generous offer of $5 with the gentle words,
“keep your stinking money.” Ya gotta love the guy.)
I Like M ik e ’f b /k e '• »
The Medium Is Part Of The Message
Victoria Stoppiello
The perfume-scented love letter cannot
be transmitted by E -m ail. 1 have tw o old letters
from m y husband, and every few years 1 take
them out, reread them and notice the now -fading
fragrance.
A letter can be both a treasure and a
weapon. The anger that fuels an electronic
spamming can erupt in a rapid gush at the
keyboard and be transmitted instantly, but w ith a
handw ritten letter, that same anger must move
more s lo w ly from the m ind through the body to
the page, in to an envelope, and then must be
posted. There are many opportunities to turn
back, change your m ind, temper the destructive
power o f the message. The slow ness o f the pen
in hand— that slowness allow s thought to emerge
ahead o f the technology . A word can be
suggested, then amended by the m ind before the
pen in hand can w rite it.
E-m ail can be like the surgical strikes o f
our desert wars. The enemy is a concept, hardly a
material reality. Y o u can send your missile, o r
m issive, and o n ly rem otely experience its impact
on the m o n ito r o f a scanning device, o r the
screen o f your mind's eye. True pain, to be
experienced at the level o f empathy, is not par, o f
the experience.
The same dynam ic that motivates me to
keep old fragrant love letters, is the m otive fo r
old soldiers to keep captured bayonets, the
enemies' regalia, o ld helmets. The physical,
three-dimensional object is more than molecules.
It captures memory w ith o ld odors, the patina o f
age and threadbare edges. H o ld in g this object in
our hands, we know its previous life — no, as an
artifact w hich it is n o w , but as an active
participant in a momentous part o f life , w hether
a love a ffa ir o r a battlefield victory.
We are s till animals that smell, touch,
hear, and taste as w ell as see. For most o f us,
except fo r sight, these senses slip away, begin to
atrophy. W hat we see on the screen and read in
the paper takes precedence over messages revealed
by our other senses. Perhaps that is the subtle
reason both d rivin g and sex can be dangerously
obsessive: they both em ploy a ll the senses.
D riv in g down the road, our a b ility to synthesize
all the stim u li that flo w past us is nearly
overwhelm ed; our apc/animal w alking pace o f six
m iles per hour has programmed us to
accommodate o n ly a portion o f what we
experience. G ripping the steering wheel, o r our
lover's hand, view ing the scenery as it flashes by,
o r gazing in to our sweetheart's eyes, hearing the
a ir move past our car or, more correctly, hearing
the rush o f a ir as we m ove through it, o r the
murmurs in our ear o f the loved one's voice, the
"new car" smell o r musty exhaust, the certain
undefinable scent o f a now fa m ilia r partner— the
o nly thing driv ing lacks is the taste o f a kiss and
it w ould be able to compete, perhaps exceed, the
sensual power o f sexuality.
E -m ail has a cold regularity about it.
The font doesn't falter during a particularly
poignant moment. The page shows no stains
from tears. The indiv id u a lity of each person's
particular handw riting is submerged in a
homogenized mechanical system. The baleful eye
that delivers the m ail never sees the delight in
your eyes— nor receives the holiday fruitcake
that thanks fo r a year o l prom pt and frie n d ly
service. N o one licks a stamp. N o one notices
the stamp is upside dow n, sending a kiss. N o one
rips open the envelope, breathlessly expecting
good o r bad news from alar.
In the old days w hen someone died, the
message was delivered to loved ones in person.
A n eycball-to-eyeball contact. Then it moved to
telegrams, now telephones. A t least in the tone
o f voice you can hear regret o r relief. Now w ill
we change to E-m ail? Can you imagine receiving
an E-m ail from headquarters that your son has
died on the front? A n im material message to
match an im m aterial death. Isn't a concrete
rem inder part o f what we seek— a token, an
artifact, that commands our memory to
acknowledge what w ill become ephemeral,
weightless, abstract, soon enough? H ow w ill any
o f us endure after we're gone except in the minds
o f those w ho knew and, hopefully, loved us. The
letter, the real hand-w ritten physical letter, is a
token o f our lives that cannot be ignored or
denied. And that is a great power.
(Next Month, The Midnight Show)
Ip
■
Victoria Stoppiello is a writer living in Ilwaco,
at the lower left corner o f Washington stale.
Mike's Bike Shop
Rentals • Repairs • Sales
24 years downtown, on Spruce Street
436-1266
(Out o f state inquiries, H00-4Q2-12bb)
L ‘ F or À l l V our R ial ¡E state . N eeds • j
Northwest by Northwest Gallery
A R T IS T :
DîSLaneJa Avenue
rtanzanita.Oreqoiv
503-368-5316
M E D IU M :
P R IC E :
The fear of capitalism has compelled socialism
to widen freedom, and the fear of socialism has
compelled capitalism to increase equality
Will and Ariel Durant
2 3 9 N o r t h H e m lo c k
P .O . B o x 1 0 2 1
C ann o n Beach
5 0 3 /4 3 6 -0 7 4 1
O re g o n 9 7 1 1 0
J O Y C E L IN C O L N . D ir e c t o r
Pacific Northwest Contemporary Art & Craft
Celebrating IOth Year in Cannon Beach
UPPER. LEFT EDGE. AUGUST M l
I
5
V