Oscar Raymundo Archives — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

What to Read: ‘The World of Normal Boys’ by K.M. Soehnlein

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 14, 2012

What to Read: ‘The World of Normal Boys’ by K.M. Soehnlein

Gay coming out novels are a dime a dozen. But The World of Normal Boys is something else. It’s a detailed, play-by-play exploration into the consciousness of a 13-year-old boy as he struggles to figure out who he is meant to be.

K.M. Soehnlein‘s book encapsulates all the pain and pleasure of growing up a little different, in a society still unsure of the benefits of diversity. Richard Labonte appreciated Soehnlein’s Lambda Award-winning literary effort for opening up the gate for a new type of coming out book – one that even though it’s set in a 1970s New Jersey suburb, it strikes a chord beyond its time and place.

Local author K.M. Soehlein is the third author invited to participate in the Magnet Book Club (we’re posting interviews with the featured authors before their appearances). This month the discussion will take place at the GLBT History Museum across the street from Magnet. The GLBT History Museum will host Soehnlein on Monday, March 26 at 7:30pm for an intimate discussion of The World of Normal Boys. To lead up to that event, we spoke to the author.

SFBG Have older gay men reacted differently to the book than younger generations?

KS Definitely. Older readers like the book for capturing the era they grew up in, younger readers find it universal. We’ve all had a crush on the wrong guy who teases you by playing with your body but still treats you like shit. Recently a younger friend said that he just didn’t understand how the parents in the book could be so upset at having a gay son. That right there proves there has been a change in our culture too. We still see hateful news on TV but there’s been progress in certain bubbles, and those bubbles are what push us forward. Though family structures are still where most homophobia exists.

SFBG Did you have any reservations about writing a coming-of-age or coming out novel?

KS I don’t really consider it a coming of age story. Robin (the protagonist) goes from 13 to 14. That’s not really of age. And he never verbalizes that he is gay at the end. It’s more universal. We all have that moment of self-awareness, discovery, that moment of “I get how the world works.”

SFBG Do you consider yourself a gay author?

KS Yes. I’ve never shied away from that. Not to say it’s not a limiting label. But it’s like saying Obama is a black President. He is, but that’s not all that he is. I’m particularly drawn to telling gay stories, I’m not sure if I can write a thriller about an arms dealer.

SFBG What do you make of this post-gay mentality, the thought that we don’t need gay books or any gay culture for that matter?

KS I had another agent – a gay agent – tell me not to write another gay book. And that was just last year. But I think the publishing industry underestimates how loyal gay readers are.

SFBG What would you say to a twenty-year-old who is not interested in reading “gay books”?

KS I would ask how many gay books have you read? People who love to read, love to read broadly. Sure, now with gay characters on TV and the internet, they may not need a gay book like some people did thirty years ago. But books get inside the consciousness of individual characters. That’s one thing that books can do artistically that will never be obsolete.

SFBG Gay teens are coming out at a younger age now and with that has come more bullying. Is this a sign of the times – that with more visibility comes more backlash?

KS Back in the 70s, there wasn’t this type of awareness. Maybe gay teen suicides were underreported back then or maybe, in some ways, it’s the cost of visibility. When I lived in the East Village in the 1990’s, I was a member of ACT UP and founded Queer Nation. Then all of the sudden there was a wave of gay bashings. That was the definition of a backlash to our activism. There’s this symbiotic relationship between visibility and sacrifice.

SFBG As an author do you feel any moral responsibility?

KS The thing the author can do best is tell a character’s story. It’s hard to go into writing a novel with a political agenda, but you can have a political and cultural effect if you do your job very well. My next book is about being in ACT UP but it’s more about the characters. The political will come out of the historical and how these characters related to one another.

SFBG The World of Normal Boys is very sexual. Have you faced criticism to this explicit depiction of gay teen sexuality?

KS That was my intent, to talk honestly about sex among young adolescent guys. Just this week, a friend emailed me saying that she had loved the book but wondered if I ever thought about toning down the sexuality. To what? The PG version? It’s come to the point where we have internalized these cultural taboos around sexuality. I did a reading in New York and my whole family was there, so I started by saying all the dirty words that were in the excerpt I wanted to read (like “rimjob”). At the end I overheard my aunt shout, “I’ve heard them all before, I’ve been to the Village!” She’s this conservative, Republican, churchgoing, 70-year-old Italian lady who now likes me on Facebook. We really need to give readers more credit.

SFBG Though considered works of fiction, previous Magnet Book Club selections We the Animals and SoMa had some semi-autobiographical aspects. I’m wondering as to how much you drew from your own experience when writing The World of Normal Boys.

KS In the 80s I read queer books by Edmund White and Andrew Holleran, and I wanted to update what they were doing. My coming out happened more in college, but I had friends that came out at a young age, and no one had written about that. The time and place are autobiographical; I grew up in a suburb in Northern New Jersey. As a novelist it’s great how you can take things in your life and twist them around but still keep the essential truth.

K.M. Soehnlein will be Magnet Book Club’s guest of honor on Monday, March 26 at 7:30pm. Book club is open to the public and copies of The World of Normal Boys are available at Books, Inc. in the Castro for 15% off. Also available, a sequel titled Robin and Ruby. The GLBT History Museum is located at 4127 18th Street (between Castro and Collingwood) in San Francisco.

Mr. Black in SF: The Reckoning

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 13, 2012

3

Or, Rebel without a Cause

Groucho Marx once said, “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.” For you contemporary types, a similar sentiment was expressed by Blair Waldorf in the first season of Gossip Girl. “Watch and learn, ladies. The most important parties to attend are the ones you’re not invited to.”

I was originally invited to venue Rebel for the launch of much-hyped “branded” monthly NYC-LA-SF gay party Mr. Black on March 1. After interviewing promoters Joshua J and Luke Nero for this SFBG story, I got placed on the guest list. Without resorting to being totally tacky and asking, of course.

So imagine my utter horror and humiliation after glancing over said list last Thursday night and not seeing my name.

The only Oscar listed was Mr. Pineda (a.k.a. scruffy and lovely DJ Taco Tuesday) but I couldn’t go so far as to impersonate him, could I? What about if he showed up? He didn’t show up. Besides it had taken me almost all day to plan my outfit. Well, not really. I just grabbed my Normandy & Monroe sweater from my bottom drawer because a) you’re not supposed to hang sweaters and b) I “hadn’t worn it in a while.” But still.

At Rebel’s door with nothing to argue but a broken promise in the form of week-old text message from Joshua J, I paid $8 to go in. And I’ve never felt so… common.

Besides Cockfight and Dial Up and Pop Brownie and Honey Soundsystem and I Just Wanna Fucking Dance, San Francisco’s Mr. Black was the best gay party I have been to all year. So the cover charge, though steep, was worth it. Maybe it was because I had been uninvited and felt the rush from intruding into some secret underworld no one but me and 200 Facebook acquaintances knew about. Maybe it was the memories it brought back from the original underground Mr. Black in NYC. Maybe it was that I had shit tons of cocaine with me. Who knows?

In our conversation, Joshua J mentioned that Mr. Black’s notorious edge would be all up to the crowd. Which is accurate because Joshua wouldn’t know edgy if it farted in his face. Thankfully co-hostess Terry Tsipouras managed to snatch the club Some Thing crowd away from Alexander McQueen’s funeral and had them come by and give dirty looks to everyone.

The dance floor got packed once one of the Aarons from DJs Aaron & Aaron (I don’t know, the cute one who kept winking at the crowd as if he was in some real-life iteration of Grindr?) got on the Macbook. I vividly recall the utter euphoria that overtook the club when he infused ABBA’s “Gimme Gimme” with Madonna’s “Hung Up.” Brilliant, if not because it’s actually the same song. And who could forget co-hostess Lady Bear’s lower lip trembling in utter forlornness, as she mouthed “I have one thing to say… sashay, shante.” There was also a thin, chic boy eating a banana off to the side, and Heklina sent one of her clones.

Seeing all the young, beautiful things strutting about in homemade Chanel, I had one thing to say: I need a retail job at Neiman Marcus. If only for the great discounts and the flexibility to black out on a weekday.

At one point, I thought I had caught a glimpse of the real Chloe Sevigny walking in our mortal midst, but it turned out it was just this girl.

Towards the end of the night, not one but two drunken J. Crew gays I have never seen before tumbled over me and onto the floor. Of course, they wouldn’t have made it that far had they just relinquished the drinks in their hands and used them to break their fall. But on these dark, blurry, self-important nights, a cold glass full of ice and one’s own saliva is the only thing we have left to hold on to.

MR. BLACK

First Thursdays of the month, 10 p.m., $8

Rebel

1760 Market, SF.

Mr. Black Nation on Facebook

Mourning the death of an underground gay party: Mr. Black in SF

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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February 29, 2012

6

Mourning the death of an underground gay party: Mr. Black in SF

Once upon a time in New York City, on the intersection of Broadway and Bleecker, there used to be a club where the lights never shone. In the cavernous dark, Marc Jacobs’ Black Book of desperate, disposable, beautiful boys could blindly bump into one of club goddess Amanda Lepore’s naked body parts. But when you’re in one of the steamiest, most-crowded gay hotspots in the world with candlelit backrooms, a scandalous vibe, and servers in top hats and backless aprons, such concepts as personal space become fantasy.

This week, gay partygoers in San Francisco will get to experience the iconic Mr. Black nightclub thanks to a likely alliance between Mr. Black founder Luke Nero and SF party promoter Joshua J. Cook. On Thursday, motorcycle-themed club Rebel will host the launch of the monthly Mr. Black SF night with Stanley Frank of Viennetta Discotheque opening up for DJs Aaron & Aaron, Mr. Black’s original, signature DJs. The party will recur the first Thursday of each month.

“I’ve never worked on a party that so effortlessly promoted itself,” said Cook, promoter and creator of Big Top and Stallion Saturdays. “Everyone I’ve told about it wants to be involved.” (Representing the party with stereotypical-looking, half-naked go-go boys on the cover of the advertorial Gloss gay party magazine, however, may belie his statement.)

Not surprisingly. Mr. Black, the NYC version, was the well-kept secret everyone was talking about. A twisted funhouse for eccentric socialites and underground club kids, it was too perfect to last. In 2007, the brick-walled club was forced to shut down after NYPD conducted an undercover, in-drag drug raid and arrested two employees (including Nero) and 15 patrons. The club relocated shortly after to Hell’s Kitchen but failed to recapture much of its relevance. Recently the party started once again, this time in Webster Hall.

“When Stuart Black and I started it in New York there was nothing like it,” said Nero. “It’s as if we had created our own Studio 54.”

Proving that a great ass can take you places, Nero went from the infamously bare-bottomed bartender in New York to creative director of all things Black.

After the raid, Mr. Black, the brand, followed Nero to Hollywood, where he is currently the promoter of the LA version at Bardot. The cross-country relocation has kept the party “fresh” for Nero who enjoys seeing each city’s reinterpretation.

“In L.A. it’s more youthful fashion. It’s where the cool hipster kids go,” he said.

And as for San Francisco’s reinterpretation? Cook expects a crowd of “art people, fashion people, those who want to be seen. The crowd will be the main attraction.”

The promoter has already enlisted a circus of characters to liven-up his version, including Los Angeles-based Andres Rigal, Lenora Claire and William Cullen and from San Francisco, Lady Bear and Miss Terry T. Earlier this month, Rebel held a contest looking for a slew of bare asses to prance around for Mr. Black SF.

With such noted scenester talent, the Mr. Black allure, and Cook’s own connections, the party is sure to be a huge hit, although perhaps for a less cutting-edge gay crowd. The original Mr. Black club had a capacity of 162. For the SF launch, there are already more people RSVPs on Facebook.

The move out of New York, however, has smeared Mr. Black in some edgier eyes. The party once held in an unassuming basement in NoHo is now at a V.I.P. lounge in Hollywood. The party that once took great pride in not having bottle service and hosting the likes of Naomi Campbell, Chloe Sevigny and Boy George without much fuss now has a photo blog, a Facebook page, and hundreds of fans, including every contestant on RuPaul’s Drag Race.

“Those are my greatest memories, says Nero of the original Mr. Black. “Sneaking in all those people into the party and no photographic proof that they were there.”

Now, with the expansion to SF, some bristle at the idea of outside promoters coming into the city when there are already many native parties that appeal to art and fashion crowds, utilizing much of the same local talent.

Ultimately, though, and however fun this iteration may prove to be, Mr. Black itself is not really a brand, but a memory. For even if all the lights are turned off at legal venue Rebel on Thursday night, the camera flashes will probably reveal none of the spontaneous scandal or Marc Jacobs exes the original could brew up. Despite all the name-dropping, no party will ever be Mr. Black at its underground, unpretentious, dirty prime.

Perhaps it is the Internet, that word of mouth now travels faster than the click of a mouse. Perhaps it is the promoters, who realized that there is more money to be made when there’s a line out the door. Perhaps it is the crowd, who wants to not only be seen but also immortalized via a mobile device. Perhaps it is our fault, that we now confuse reality show contestants for true stars.

Perhaps it is fate, that all great underground parties reach their capacity, die, and come back, bigger and sleeker. But not as Black.

Oscar Raymundo is a freelance writer and fabulous book club leader who blacked out plenty of times at the original Mr. Black.

MR. BLACK SF
Thu/1 and first Thursdays, 9 p.m.-3 a.m.
$5 before 10:30 p.m., $8 after
Rebel
1760 Market, SF.
Facebook invite

What to Read: ‘SoMa’ by Kemble Scott

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February 15, 2012

3

“Everyone you meet here in San Francisco has some anecdote about ‘the wild night I ended up in SoMa,’” author Kemble Scott said back in 2007. Sure, the neighborhood has experienced a gentrified taming since then. The outdoor orgies of yesteryear have been replaced by outdoor patio furniture stores, but luckily the gritty South of Market spirit – a cornucopia of illicit drugs and sexcapades – has been cleverly captured by Scott, pen name of journalist provocateur Scott James, who now writes a local column for The New York Times.

SoMa follows the intertwined path of three young people struggling in San Francisco immediately after the first dot com bust. Unemployed and desensitized, they push their limits and their luck to try to regain a sense of fulfillment. SoMa is now an artifact of the oftentimes-surreal turn-of-the-century subcultures that were embedded in the neighborhood.

Kemble Scott is the second author invited to participate in the Magnet Book Club (We’ll be running a series of interviews with authors appearing at the nonprofit space.) The gay men’s health center in the Castro will host Scott on Feb. 28 at 7:30pm for an intimate, wine-induced discussion of SoMa. To lead up to that event, we spoke to the author.

SFBG What are some of the reactions the book has gotten since publication?

KS When the book first came out, we had a book club at the LGBT Center. The crowd was a mix of older gay men and younger guys, and it turned into a debate about “post-gay.” One older man said he was sickened when he read about straight people in SoMa. He thought that because I was gay and I wrote a novel that I should write exclusively about the gay experience. When I wrote it I didn’t envision it solely for gay readers.

SFBG I don’t think there’s one character in SoMa who is either completely gay or completely straight.

KS The characters fall all over the rainbow of sexuality, it’s more complicated and similar to what we really have here in San Francisco. But I understand where he was coming from. We have this older generation who literally had to fight for their rights. It was a very polarizing conversation. When you open a book for interpretation, you’re also opening it up to misinterpretation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ez_yfnuQ-0

SFBG SoMa started as a short story. Why did you decide to turn it into a full-fledged novel?

KS At that time I was writing the SoMa Literary Review, a kind of new Tales of the City, and an editor at Alyson Books approached me and asked me if I had ever thought about turning it into a book. I said, sure! So I printed out several stories, stapled them together and sent them. But they didn’t want just a print out of the website. So I had to work to tie them all together.

SFBG How did you go about connecting all the stories?

KS That’s where my journalism background came in. Reading about all these separate instances and digging to find that there are commonalities. In SoMa it’s this desensitizing, this information overload, everyone always on their phones, playing video games nonstop and applying it to sexual exploration. You hear about a 22-year-old who is into fisting and wonder, how did this happen at such a young age? This extreme push to feel anything at all.

SFBG How has SoMa changed since the time in which the book takes place?

KS I moved there in 1997. There was no ballpark then. It’s become more expensive, more residential. It was such a free-for-all, I’m talking whole alleys devoted to outdoor orgies, because there were no lights, no one cared, no one lived there. The Powerhouse [since moved to the Tenderloin] was an all-out orgy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VenXQHZsL-g

SFBG Isn’t it still?

KS I’m not saying they don’t have their racy moments, but back then it was the one reason you’d go there. Now, you’re lucky if it happens. All that stuff is now happening online. There are whole websites dedicated to setting-up an orgy.

SFBG My friend set up an orgy on Facebook. But that’s not as cool as trekking down to SoMa.

KS Some say SoMa has lost its flavor. A part of it is that it’s no longer a feasible neighborhood for young people. That was its adolescence, now SoMa is closer to middle age. We are still exporting that fantasy. They were playing hardcore porn at a bear bar I went to in Madrid, and it was set in San Francisco! One of the guys I recognized. He goes to my gym.

SFBG Why did you agree to do this book club?

Kemble Scott Book clubs bring that relationship that usually happens in the reader’s lap. You’re not there when they’re reading it, you can’t hear what they’re thinking or experience their reaction. It’s great hearing what readers have to say, and not in an anonymous way, which is what you get on Amazon.

Kemble Scott will be Magnet Book Club’s guest of honor on Tuesday, February 28 at 7:30pm. Book club is open to the public and copies of SoMa are available at Books, Inc. in the Castro for 15% off. Magnet is located at 4122 18th Street (between Castro and Collingwood) in San Francisco.

What to Read: ‘We the Animals’ by Justin Torres

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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January 13, 2012

0

What to Read: ‘We the Animals’ by Justin Torres

It’s difficult to find anything negatively written about Justin Torres’ debut fiction novel, We the Animals — and that’s probably because nothing negative has yet been written. Dorothy Allison called it, “a miracle in concentrated pages,” and Michael Cunningham said it was, “a dark jewel of a book.” So Torres is a literary wunderkind of sorts, but despite the buzzy accolades, the current Stegner fellow and queer scribe is still humbly bewildered by the success of a book by a gay brown author – especially his very own.

We the Animals tells the story of a Puerto Rican father and his Caucasian wife raising a family of sons: the narrator and his two brothers. At the beginning, the boys are joined at the hips — hungry and eager for life. But as the brothers age, the narrator becomes dislodged from the family unit and struggles to form his own identity and find a new form of emotional stability for himself.

Torres is the first author invited to participate in the Magnet Book Club. (We’ll be running a series of interviews with authors appearing at the nonprofit space.) The gay men’s health center in the Castro will host Torres on Jan. 31 at 7:30pm for an intimate, wine-induced discussion of We the Animals. To lead up to that event, we spoke Torres sober.

SFBG You used to work at Modern Times. What role do you think independent bookstores play in an author’s career?

JT Even before Modern Times, I used to work at a bookstore in New York, so I’ve been an avid supporter of indie bookshops for a while. There is nothing like that face-to-face interaction with readers. I don’t think this much word-of-mouth would have been generated through Facebook, or whatever. I’m old-fashioned, but it’s a very tricky industry.

SFBG Jumping off on that, you’re a first time author. What was your biggest misconception about the publishing process?

JT This whole entire experience has been unexpected. This is not a conventional novel, it’s short and not chronological, and so I had no expectations. I never thought I’d get written about in The New York Times, let alone have it be something positive. I never thought I’d be dealing with “buzz.” I hate that word, but that’s what they call it.

SFBG So what were your expectations?

JT I just wanted to write something that I felt was right. Now that I’m starting to work on a second book, it’s actually harder. I read a lot of reviews, so now I have a lot of different voices in my head. But even though I’m contractually obligated to turn something in by a certain deadline, I’d rather break that and have my publishing house get mad at me than turn something I can’t stand by.

SFBG Michael Cunningham, who blurbed We the Animals, once said he doesn’t want to be referred to as a “gay author” but just an author who happens to be gay. How do you feel about those types of labels?

JT I think they’re unnecessary. Yes, there are major gay tropes – coming out, AIDS – or stories with a certain queer sensibility. But now there are more straight authors writing about gay characters. I refer to myself as a “queer author.” It makes sense for me.

SFBG Plus it sounds more literary.

JT Exactly [laughs]. It empowers my writing, and it’s important, but it’s also incidental.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY2hfaWaLUM

SFBG Major publishing houses have a bad rep of shying away from queer narratives. What’s been your experience with your publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt?

JT My sexual orientation has never been an issue with my publishing house. They’ve never tried to de-gay me, or whatever.

SFBG Do you think there is a more embracing shift happening in publishing?

JT Well, I had no idea exactly how few queer pieces have been published in The New Yorker. After I was published, I received so many notes saying it was the first queer story in a decade. I want to say change is happening, but I’m skeptical. You read the best of lists every year and ten out of ten, maybe nine out of ten, are straight white male authors. Publishing still has that East Coast, Ivy League sensibility. Why can’t we broaden that?

SFBG You’re kind of the living testament against that though.

JT I guess. I didn’t grow up in a literary household. I grew up with this wild hunger for mixes race and queer stories. When I finally got my hands on a copy of Bastard Out of Carolina, it was like oxygen.

SFBG What interested you about showing up to this book club?

JUSTIN TORRES As an author, you mostly get two types of feedback. Your friends get a certain kind of reading and book critics have their take on things. But to meet real people who see it through a true reader’s eyes – that’s a wonderful experience. It’s a shock to see what they focused on while reading it, what caught their attention, what they found parallel in their own lives.

SFBG You were on the list of Salon’s sexiest men of 2011, so what we all really want to know is, are you single?

JT I’m actually engaged. My man proposed right before the book came out. But I want that to be the first line in my bio.

Justin Torres will be Magnet Book Club’s guest of honor on Tuesday, January 31 at 7:30pm. Book club is open to the public and copies of We the Animals are available at Books, Inc. in the Castro for 15% off. Magnet is located at 4122 18th Street (between Castro and Collingwood).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skx0nCLvMxs

Yearbook of heartbreak and outrage

Andrew Lam

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June 21, 2011

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news@sfbg.com

The giant commemorative AIDS ribbon that was up on Twin Peaks during the first half of June has been taken down, but the 30th anniversary of the epidemic, and how it changed San Francisco, is still reverberating throughout the city.

“It was like paradise,” Mark Ottman said as he guided me through the high-ceiling lobby, quiet as a library, of Union Bank on 400 California St. “For a few years. Then things got really scary.”

Ottman, the vice president of personal trust and estate services at the bank, recalled arriving in the city in 1981 as a 22-year-old Montana transplant. That year, the gay newspaper the Bay Area Reporter published the word AIDS for the very first time.

Although the paper has been at the forefront of reporting gay news for its 40 years — from White Night Riots of the 1970s through the Lavender Sweep of the 1990s, the Bowers vs. Hardwick decision through the “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal — the way it straightforwardly handled the heartbreak of AIDS and the outrage that followed has become its lasting legacy.

“This was not stuff that was shown on the nightly news,” Ottman continued. “The B.A.R. was three or four months ahead in covering AIDS. In that sense, it was really the leader.”

This month, those with a thirst for history will need to look no further than newsprint. Union Bank’s LGBT Alliance has commissioned a retrospective exhibit highlighting the Bay Area Reporter’s coverage of the gay and lesbian community.

When the B.A.R. started in 1971, founders and friends Paul Bentley and Bob Ross had the intention of making it more than just a gossipy guide to bars and bathhouses. The newspaper focused on serious local news — even recruiting Harvey Milk as a political columnist.

“The founders weren’t journalists,” said Rick Gerharter, the longtime freelance photographer who curated the photo- and front page-filled exhibit at Union Bank. “But as the paper grew, it certainly became more professional.”

In 1981, when AIDS first appeared, the B.A.R. had no choice but to undergo a journalistic coming of age as it struggled to be first and be fair covering the mysterious disease that had begun to mow down gay men.

UNEASY EARLY AIDS COVERAGE

Yet the newspaper was not immune to the confusion and uneasiness that enveloped the community during the early days of the “gay cancer.”

“Me and my boyfriend both laughed — it must be another Anita Bryant plot against homosexuals,” said Robert Julian, recalling his first response to talk of the “gay-related immunodeficiency” or GRID.

“Gay people are united by sexual orientation, not genetics,” said Julian. Initially, the former B.A.R. entertainment editor and author of But the Show Went On: San Francisco 1987-1988 had his suspicions, thinking that a “physical ailment confined solely to gay people was a practical impossibility.”

It didn’t take long before the B.A.R. began reporting on the latest research, medical resources, and information about financial services available to the hundreds of gay men in San Francisco who had contracted the HIV virus.

Once researchers discovered that AIDS was being transmitted sexually, public opinion divided. Then-Mayor Diane Feinstein and Director of Public Health Mervyn Silverman wanted to close the bathhouses, but some members of the gay community considered this a violation of personal rights.

“There was this repression around gay people and sex, this hysteria around bathhouses,” said Gerharter. And the B.A.R. was hesitant to feed into that frenzy at first. “When it was clear what was really happening, how this thing was being spread around, then it clicked — and the paper really jumped to the forefront of covering what had tuned into an epidemic.”

STEAMY BATHHOUSE DEBATE

The paper not only began to cover the AIDS crisis extensively, but did it with an editorial slant that fostered debate in the community. Paul Lorch, then-managing editor, became a prominent voice arguing to keep the bathhouses open. Bathhouses don’t give you AIDS; unprotected sex gives you AIDS, Lorch expressed in strongly-penned editorials. Sometimes he even answered back to Letters to the Editor.

“Lorch and the publishers didn’t believe closing the bathhouses would solve it,” said Wayne Friday, who took over the paper’s political column after Harvey Milk was assassinated and continued it for 27 years. “But no one had an alternative. Diane [Feinstein] would call me at 5 a.m. asking me what we should do about this thing.”

The community was split. Some, including Friday, believed that the bathhouses were a public health hazard while others accused Feinstein of scapegoating. “Those people were being selfish and foolish,” Friday said. “Closing the bathhouses saved lives.”

In 1984 the San Francisco Health Department asked for a court order forbidding renting out private rooms in bathhouses. Without the luxury of privacy, most closed within months. “San Francisco became a blueprint of how to handle AIDS on the city level for the rest of the country,” Friday said.

OBITUARIES KEPT SAD TALLY

During this time, the B.A.R. was also keeping a more morbid type of tally: the obituaries. Each week the paper published two pages — 30 to 50 obituaries — until 1998.

“When you picked it up, it was the first thing you turned to,” Gerharter said. “It was just a name and a face. Maybe you recognized the person. Maybe someone you tricked with.”

In 1989, art director Richard Burt became so overwhelmed by the number of obituaries that had been turned in to the B.A.R. within the first 10 months that he wanted to convey the sinking feeling in the pages of the paper. The Nov. 16 issue included a four-page collage of everyone who had passed away due to AIDS that year. Just a name and a face.

“It was heartbreaking,” Julian said, “to see my friends and lovers pictured there.”

Through the efforts of Tom Burtch and the San Francisco GLBT Historical Society, a massive searchable online database of B.A.R. obituaries since 1979 was launched in 2009 (www.leifkerdesigns.com/olo/index.jsp).

During his tenure at the paper, Julian chose not to cover AIDS, feeling that the point of entertainment news was to distract away “from the soul-crushing presence of the grim reaper stalking our neighborhoods.”

Though AIDS was a heavily political newsbeat, Friday removed himself from covering it for different reasons. “I knew every elected official. I sat in on all the City Hall meetings about the bathhouses,” Friday said. “But I just couldn’t do it every week. It was too damned personal.”

“Thinking about turning the page to those obituaries even now is making me shiver,” Ottman said. “It’s like a high school reunion, except you don’t know which half made it.”

COVERING THE RISE OF ACTIVISM

The B.A.R. was also instrumental in covering the various political and protest actions that accompanied the disease, including the bloody police sweep of ACT-UP protesters the Castro and the Stop AIDS Now or Else blockade of the Golden Gate Bridge, both in 1989.

Gerharter remembers the blockade. “They arranged it for the morning commute. And thank God it was foggy or else the surveillance cameras would have stopped us.”

Gerharter would often be trusted with information about an upcoming demonstration and be the only photographer allowed to tag along. “You can document history better when you become a part of it. You get closer to the people — they’re not posing,” he said. “It was our job to be advocates and watchdogs.”

After consistently seeing the tragedy of AIDS on the front page for almost a decade, the B.A.R. became more active itself, inciting its readers to action. “We’d read the B.A.R. to find out about the rallies were happening so we could skip work and take a road trip to Sacramento,” Ottman said. “The Chronicle would never cover that.”

When the fight against AIDS became a war, the B.A.R.’s writers often felt like they had become war correspondents, complete with all the outsize personality conflict and drama of the classic stereotype.

“[Bob] Ross was a nightmare boss, a pain in the ass, and complete rageaholic,” Julian said of B.A.R.’s often conservative cofounder, who died in 2003. “But he was committed to keeping the paper and us running.”

THE BAY AREA REPORTER 40TH ANNIVERSARY EXHIBIT

Through June 30, 9 a.m.–5 p.m.

Union Bank Main Branch

400 California, SF

Dan Savage turns anti-gay-bullying “It Gets Better” YouTube phenom into book

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 24, 2011

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Dan Savage turns anti-gay-bullying “It Gets Better” YouTube phenom into book

In a mission to take the It Gets Better Project — his groundbreaking video collaboration series that seeks to help victims of gay bullying by spreading stories of survival — directly from YouTube to the shelves of school libraries, sex columnist and author Dan Savage has compiled a collection of “It Gets Better” testimonials into a new book, It Gets Better: Coming Out, Overcoming Bullying, and Creating a Life Worth Living. Contributors range from Barack Obama and Ellen Degeneres to Chaz Bono and SF’s very own Lynne Breedlove, and represent a wide and diverse range of older voices hoping their stories of getting through rough youthful periods will inspire youth to take heart and hold on. All the profits from the book, which came out this week, will benefit LGBT charities.

Savage will stop at the SFSU bookstore Friday, March 25, at noon in his cross-country college tour to promote it. He took some time to talk to us about how a book can add a special magic to the project, why LGBT adults have been frightened to reach out to queer teens, and where he sees his project in 10 years.

SFBG: The It Gets Better campaign that you and your partner Terry started has gotten over 35 million views on YouTube. Why a book? What can a book do for the campaign that a video hasn’t done so far?

Dan Savage: Having written a couple of them, books are kind of magic. They wind up places that no one can predict and no one expects. People have a way of happening upon a book at just the moment in their lives when they need to read that particular book. So it was a way to make more magic happen for the It Gets Better project. Also, it is a way for schools to demonstrate their support for LGBT students by shelving this book in their libraries, in addition to having anti-bullying programs and GSA’s. Not all students have internet access or allowed internet access. It’s a way for schools to get involved without having their students be on YouTube all day long.

SFBG: How does the book get into school libraries? Is there something the publisher or the campaign is doing to bring these books in?

DS: We are asking people to donate copies to libraries and schools, and we’re also asking school districts to purchase them.

SFBG: At the beginning of the campaign, Google expanded the It Gets Better YouTube channel to allow for 5,000 videos instead of the usual 650. Did you ask them to do that or did they reach out to you?

DS: They reached out to us. Originally, when Terry and I were working on it, we reached the limit after four days. When that happened we posted a note on the site asking people to keep making the videos, that we couldn’t post them for now, we’re going to have to create a second account. Then we heard from a Google engineer. If you go to the It Gets Better YouTube channel, it says that it got started in 2004, but that’s not true. It allowed us to post up to 5,000 videos because the longer you have the account, the more videos you are allowed to post. Now there’s a stand-alone website, ItGetsBetter.org, and that’s where the 10,000 plus videos live.

SFBG: You have a regular column, write books on the side, and then this project came along, posting the videos, reaching out to organizations and now the book. How do you have time for all of that?

DS: [Laughs] Well, a whole bunch of people came in and got involved. My friends Jake and Justin, Scott Zumwalt, Blue State Digital put together the website. It’s not just me and Terry anymore. The first couple of weeks it was really crushing. Also my boss at The Stranger where I’m the editor-in-chief, Tim Keck, has allowed me to take some time off to work on this over the last six months.

SFBG: Why did you choose to work with The Trevor Project, GLSEN and ACLU as the beneficiary organizations?

DS: What happened was that Charles at The Trevor Project gave us some good advice gave us some good advice when we were first getting started. When we first launched it, people started saying, “I don’t want to make a video, I want to send a check. I want to make a donation.” And the It Gets Better project was a YouTube account and an e-mail address, and that’s free. We didn’t need any money, so we redirected everyone who wanted to give us money to Trevor. Now, we’ve raised tens of thousands of dollars for Trevor, to GLSEN and to ACLU’s LGBT project. We are actively fundraising now but we are not keeping very much of the money we raise, just enough to host our server and run the site. Those three organizations together really represent the spirit of the project, they are things that we support that are an extension of the project, we don’t need to replicate what they do. Trevor is there for kids in crisis. GLSEN is there making junior and high school environments more accepting so there are fewer kids in crisis. And the ACLU is really there for queer kids who are being discriminated against by administrators in schools. ACLU is there to kick some ass. Those three groups working together can really change things.

SFBG: When you were putting together the book, what type of stories were you looking to include? What was it about a particular video that made you say, “this needs to be in there”?

DS: The book is drawn from the first couple thousand videos. We started working on the book very shortly after the project exploded. We looked for stories that were heartfelt and moving and really showed the diversity of the LGBT experience. That was what the project was about from the start. We wanted kids who came to the site to see videos from all different kinds of LGBT adults, all races, all religious traditions, different classes, because not all LGBT kids look like me and Terry or have our backgrounds. There have been so many tremendous videos that have come in after we had gone to press that we weren’t able to include in the book, but those that we did include we wanted to resonate with LGBT kids from all walks of life.

SFBG: You mentioned you started working on the book soon after the project exploded. When was the moment when you realized, “oh shit, it’s exploded!” Was it the response from celebrities? From the White House?

DS: It was way before that. Really the most important videos in the project are by unknown LGBT adults, in my opinion. We got an indication that this was going to be big in about 24 hours. The emails started pouring in to the account. And YouTube likes and e-mail forwarding, exploding on Twitter and Facebook. And after four days when we reached 650 videos, it became clear we had touched a nerve. LGBT adults never really felt like we could talk to LGBT kids without being accused of attempting to recruit. We were sort of inhibited. And this was a way to reach out without waiting for an invitation.

SFBG: What has been preventing LGBT adults from reaching out to LGBT kids?

DS: The message to LGBT adults since Stonewall has been this: you are ours to torture until you’re 18. Then you can leave home, you can come out. You don’t have to go to church anymore. You can get out of this goddamn high school. If we haven’t destroyed you, and you can manage to survive the hell we’ve put you through, maybe you can build an adult life for yourself. The one thing you cannot do is talk to the kids we are still torturing in the same schools and small towns. And if you try to, you’re going to be accused of being a pedophile or of recruiting. That’s the charge that’s been leveled since the early 70s with Jerry Falwell. So adults gays and lesbians felt bad whenever we would hear what teenage queers were going through cause we had been through it ourselves and helpless. And even if we wanted to reach out to gay youth, where could we do it? Well we found a way.

SFBG: So we’ve been told, deal with it until you’re 18, then you can leave your shitty small town and move to a big city and be happy. Isn’t that also at the root of It Gets Better message? Isn’t it also deeply reliant on the future?

DS: Yes, we have to recognize that for some queer kids that is the best we can offer. There are kids in situations of extreme isolation, where all we can do is put the message in a bottle and throw it to the sea and give them hope for the future. And I think that’s legitimate. In the book, there are tons of essay from people who are sharing how they made it better for themselves – some people got their GED and left school early, some kids started a GSA. Not all the videos say you have to wait. In some cases, you can make it better for yourself right now. But for a kid, 15-years-old, with fundamental evangelical parents in the deep South dragged to a mega-church every Sunday, that kid can’t come out right now without risking his future. Forty percent of homeless teenagers are LGBT kids who were thrown out of the house when they were outted or came out to their families. It’s insensitive of us to suggest that all kids are in a place where they can make it better by snapping their fingers, or starting a GSA or coming out. Some kids have to go into deep cover and tough it out. And they need our love and support and advice, too.

SFBG: Most of the times, the bullies themselves are the ones in more of a crisis. Who’s reaching out to those kids?

DS: [Laughs] I don’t know and I don’t care, quite frankly. If someone wants to start a project to help with bullies’ inner torments they’re free to do so.

SFBG: Did you start the campaign in response to all the gay teen suicides?

DS: We started it after Billy Lucas’s suicide in Indiana and Justin Aaberg. Those were the two that inspired us to act. The campaign was up and running before Tyler Clementi, before Asher Brown, before Seth Walsh, before Raymond Chase, before Cody Barker. But it started with those two, and those two were too many, too heartbreaking.

SFBG: Isn’t suicide a mental health issue not necessarily a bullying issue?

DS: Of course suicide is a mental health issue, but we do know that bullying can be a trigger, an it has to be addressed. We are putting up suicide barriers on the Golden Gate bridge. The bridges don’t necessarily cause suicides. We do know that Seth Walsh, the kid in California who killed himself, his suicide note talked about the bullying he experienced in his school.

SFBG: Is the Internet making things worse, with cyberbullying possible 24/7?

DS: People have said, bullying doesn’t follow you home, home is your refuge. But for queer kids, all too often, home wasn’t a refuge. LGBT kids are often bullied by their parents, and that quadruples the rate of suicide for queer kids. I do think cyberbullying is a problem, but I don’t think that around-the-clock bullying is anything new when you’re talking about the experiences of queer kids.

SFBG: So what’s next for It Gets Better?

DS: Our goal is to preserve the website, preserve the videos. We know for a fact that the videos and the outreach have saved lives. And in ten years, kids who are four years old now, know about the website and can find their way there.