RFD 151 Fall 2012

Kawashaway’s 25th Year

Issue 152 / Winter 2012

TRANSGENDER FAERIES

Submission Deadline: October 21, 2012 • Submissions upload: www.rfdmag.org/upload

What do you think of when you hear the word "transgender"? Are there transgender faeries in your community? Stop and think about it.

In this issue of RFD, we focus on transgender voices, bodies, sexualities, magick, experiences, perspectives, communities, playfulness, seriousness, exclusion, integration, resistance, and art. We encourage writings on culture-specific gender identities from people who have roots in those cultures.

Suggested formats include: images of transgender peoples' bodies, first person expositions on navigating transgender experiences in community, erotica, poetry, visual artwork, stream of consciousness, personal histories, interviews, essays, spells, recipes, and comics.

Transgender faeries and elders, this is your issue. What do you want to contribute? Unless you are transgender, we ask that you step back and listen through this issue and support the transgender faeries in your community as we bare our truths and share our stories and perspectives.

To submit articles & artwork: www.rfdmag.org/upload

Ritual, Feasting &Dragonflies

Vol 39 No 1 #151 Fall 2012

Between the Lines

In the distance, we see a horizon. In this issue we delve into Kawashaway Sanctuary and the Northwoods tribe. The RFD Collective is thankful to Phoenix, White Ash and the Kawashaway community for their stories, art and visions. Documenting our lives is our story to tell and it is always moving to hear others tell their truths.

We also share a number of short stories and reviews—something we hope to provide more of in future issues. And as always we try to represent our community through its art and imagination with images and words.

In the close to four years since RFD has moved to New England, the Collective has felt a rejuvenated interest in people contributing to our pages. We have folk who want to push us into going “on-line,” but we are online, we’re here in your hands—a virtual horizon of hands reaching for and reading the same pages. It seems more sacred, more honest to continue as a print journal. We’ve been inspired by the positive feedback to our issues and we hope you’ll consider ways of supporting RFD’s goals with your financial support, your creative interest in making these pages appear in hands across the horizon.

Some say RFD is expensive. At $25 a year for US subscriptions, it basically covers the cost of printing and mailing. No one in the Collective is a millionaire and as always RFD is a labor of love, gratitude and laughter as we celebrate another wrap to another issue. Our only indulgence is a wrap party at the Mexican restaurant—a burrito amongst brothers. Tomar en los amigos horizonte como ordenar una margarita.

—The RFD Collective

Photo by Gregory Todd Wilkins

Submission Deadlines

Winter–October 21, 2012 Spring–January 21, 2013

See inside covers for themes and specifics.

For advertising, subscriptions, back issues and other information visit www.rfdmag.org

RFD is a reader-written journal for gay people which focuses on country living and encourages alternative lifestyles. We foster community building and networking, explore the diverse expressions of our sexuality, care for the environment, Radical Faerie consciousness, and nature-centered spirituality, and share experiences of our lives. RFD is produced by volunteers. We welcome your participation. The business and general production are coordinated by a collective. Features and entire issues are prepared by different groups in various places. RFD (ISSN# 0149-709X) is published quarterly for $25 a year by RFD Press, P.O. Box 302, Hadley MA 01035-0302.

Postmaster: Send address changes to RFD, P.O. Box 302, Hadley MA 01035-0302 Non-profit tax exempt #621723644, a function of RFD Press with office of registration at 231 Ten Penny Rd., Woodbury, TN 37190. RFD

Cover Price: $9.95. A regular subscription is the least expensive way to receive it four times a year. Copyright © 2012 RFD Press. The records required by Title 18 U.S.D. Section 2257 and associated with respect to this magazine (and all graphic material associated therewith on which this label appears) are kept by the custodian of records at the following location: RFD Press, 85 N Main St, Ste 200, White River Junction, VT 05001. Mail for our Brothers Behind Bars project should be sent to P.O. Box 68, Liberty TN 37095.

On the Covers

Front & Back: Painting by Keri Pickett

Inside Back: Marcia Rubin

Production

Bambi Gauthier, Managing Editor

Guest Editors: Phoenix, White Ash and the Kawashaway Circle

Matt Bucy, Art Director

Paul Wirhun, Editor

Eric Linton, Editor

Jason Schneider, Editor Myrlin, Prison Pages Editor

LETTERS & ANNOUNCEMENTS

dedicated to the proposition that “Fiction is the lie that tells the truth truer.”

The 23rd Annual GSV Fall Conference

September 27-30, 2012

THE MOUNTAIN, Highlands, NC

“Storytelling as Spiritual Practice”

Keynote-Facilitators for 2012

Tom Spanbauer & Sage Ricci

Tom Spanbauer is a critically acclaimed author and the founder of Dangerous Writing. As a writer he has explored issues of race, of sexual identity, of how we make a family for ourselves in order to surmount the limitations of the families into which we are born.

His four published novels Faraway Places, The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon, In The City Of Shy Hunters, and Now Is The Hour, are notable for their combination of a fresh and lyrical prose style with solid storytelling.

As a teacher his innovative approach combines close attention to language with a large-hearted openness to what he calls ‘the sore place’—that place within each of us that is the source for stories that no one else can tell. His introductory workshop is an underground legend among emerging writers in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. The community of writers that has formed around him is

Tom lives, writes, and teaches in Portland Oregon.

Michael Sage Ricci is a writer, teacher, and artist living in Portland Oregon. He has been tattooing for the last 16 years and runs a private tattoo studio specializing in ritual tattooing. He has taught with Portland’s Writers in the Schools, the School of Urban and Wilderness Survival, and has been with Tom Spanbauer’s Dangerous Writers since 2006. His short stories, poems, essays and interviews have appeared in The Frozen Moment anthology, Portland Queer, Death Magazine, White Crane Journal, Radical Faeire Digest, Ellipses: Literary Serial and Narrative Culture, and Under A Silver Sky, an anthology of Northwest Poets. He is currently finishing his first novel Where the Jersey Devil Lives.

RadFaeLA

A CALL TO ALL MEN: RadFaeLA announces its plan to hold the 1st LA Gathering in many years on September 21-23, 2012, in celebration of the Fall Equinox at the beautiful Gindling Hilltop Camp, above the crashing Pacific Ocean on the cliffs of Malibu. The cost is estimated at only about $200 for two nights accomodations with three meals a day (plus snacks). Will you be there? Please indicate YOUR intention now, so we have an idea how many to expect! Any questions?

—Barry <b123s@aol.com>

After a year’s hiatus, the cauldron is brewing again. This November 2012 in Portland, Oregon, FAEposium returns to inspire our community towards a higher vision of itself. The four-day event,

November 8th - 11th, 2012

www.faeposium.org

based on the classical Greek Symposium, is our opportunity to come together to share, learn, muse, discuss and create. See page 52.

“Will at Temperance River” by Dragon

From Gordon, WI to Mother Kawashaway: The Early Years of the Northwoods Radical Faerie Tribe

by Husk

“It’s my other home; it is of my making, my community, we did this.” —Rocky

“We don’t live where our home is. Kawashaway is our home…Because we don’t live there, it has this nebulous or loose identity. It’s an ideal.”—Scooter

In 1988, around one hundred people, including Harry Hay and John Burnside, gathered at Phil Wilke’s property in Gordon, Wisconsin. This was one of the first populous Radical Faerie events in the area. While Wilke’s property only hosted this event for two years, its impact was lasting. It initiated the creation of the Northwoods Radical Faerie Tribe and its corresponding sanctuary Kawashaway, which means “no place between”.

The 1988 gathering was unique in that threefourths of attendants had never been to any other Radical Faerie event. Rocky, a Northwoods Radical Faerie living in Minneapolis, arrived at the event only knowing that his friend had found out about the gathering in RFD and that it was in the woods. Upon arriving the first thing he saw was Sister Missionary Position going through the woods in full habit. The second was a mostly naked man in a harness washing dishes in a kiddie pool. He thought, “Hmmm this is going to be a little different.” This difference was not a cause of anxiety, but a relief; he was not the only weirdo around. For him, the place felt open, inviting, and also sexually free, which was mildly shocking for the person he is and was, “a shy Midwesterner.”

The gatherers’ ignorance in Radical Faerie traditions and structures (debate-able as they may be) led to bliss and outstanding tenacity. They invented and created new traditions. One such tradition was the Kitchen Bureau with numerous officers. The idea being that people might be more willing to volunteer to help in the kitchen if they got a position with a rather attractive and official sounding title. While the tradition in that form is not around, the naming of kitchen leaders is. Currently the person who orders the food is called ‘the Pantry Diva” (you better register because she will either flip out or you

won’t eat!) and the person heading a meal receives the amazing honor of being “Mom.” Rocky also recalls less drumming around the fire, but fondly remembers singing show tunes and television show theme songs (local favorite being The Mary Tyler Moore Show). Lately, more traditional pagan songs like “We All Come From the Goddess” and “Hoof and Horn” usually are more prominent around the fire. In Rocky’s opinion, the original emphasis on popular culture lowered the point of entry for potential singers; people easily joined in never worrying about the correct wording or sounding awful. This specific gathering occurred on the land only for one more year partly due to the drama (and hilarity) of the second gathering. Gathering on private property is not necessarily a bad idea, as other gatherings prove annually, but in this case it led many people to feel as if they could not create their gathering as actively as they would have liked. Wilke, who owned the land, exhausted himself by attempting to play host and please everyone at the gathering. This polite gesture led to people feeling alienated from the creative practice of creating a gathering. And then there was the eating of the turkey, which Rocky never actually saw, but this is not surprising since meals were not very well organized. Anyhow, eating meat sometimes happens at gatherings and sanctuaries (including one turkey meal at Kawashaway’s Lammas every year), but it can cause controversy. And it did. One faerie, who will remain nameless, was furious that Radical Faeries were eating animals. A circle formed to process the issue. After hours and hours of processing, one thing became clear…this was not about the turkey. Rocky explains that it was more about who controlled the gathering. The only solution to the issue of control was to purchase land together and own it communally. Rocky states, “it seemed so far fetched because we were so early in our existence, but we felt pressure because we knew we weren’t going to have another gathering at Phil Wilke’s because of the drama of…ownership.”

(Two asides: First, Rocky told me “years later the person who instigated the turkey wars and all the

“The Lovers” by Dragon

drama around it, showed up at Kawashaway and did not speak to anyone; he came on the land, went down to the kitchen and started cooking sausages. He came around with them on a tray and said “that was a former incarnation, I am a different person now.” The apology was accepted. Second, Phil Wilke brought out a pig, dressed it up, and attempted to march it around the circle in a defiant act to demonstrate that Radical Faeries do eat meat. The pig got away and ran around the circle, eventually getting away. Those at the gathering would see the pig running out of the corner of their eye once and awhile.)

At the same second gathering, Dolly Bear and Wildflower told some Radical Faeries about land for sale in Northern Minnesota that was adjacent to their property. A small group, including Salamander, went up to assess the property. They came back to the gathering and gave an informational session. Salamander, who was at the first Gordon gathering, remembers, “I immediately bought into the idea of buying the land because I knew this was a family I wanted to be a part of.” Although hesitant at first, Rocky also signed on because there was enough buy-in from other Radical Faeries. The trip north to this perspective sanctuary occurred in the beginning of summer, and by September there was an informal handshake to buy the land. That fall they cleared a tiny amount of brush about 10 feet square around and in front of the cabin. Besides this spot there was no outside space to easily move through; the land was full of brush, bramble, marshland, and woods.

This smaller group that formerly only knew each other because of gathering twice at Wilke’s changed quickly. Purchasing land not only created responsibly, but it created a focus and a structure. They organized, hammered out bylaws through several meetings, while Daisy wrote the main mission statement, all in order to become a 501c4, a not-for-profit organization. It is often said that Radical Faeries and money do not mix well, but the need to pay for the land brought this group closer. There were times when the group was not sure they could make their payments, since every one was of “modest means.” Rocky reflects that “there was one office worker and one janitor and those were the two people who had the best jobs.” To help alleviate this financial stress, people who desired to be stewards of the land made monetary contributions; it was a way to create a sense and path of commitment.

Scooter, who attended the second Gordon gathering after discovering the faeries through Harry Hay’s texts and meeting Faeries at a confer-

ence in 1989, recalls, “There was an excitement about the land. Most of us were in our twenties and early thirties so we thought, why not?” He spent many weekends traveling between Kawashaway and Mankato, the southern Minnesotan town where Scooter went to college. Minneapolitans Daisy, Burly Bones, and Rocky did not have nineto-five jobs and usually worked weekends. This left weekdays open to spend at Kawashaway. Rocky explained, “It became a church or school.” This new institution impacted his employment choices; jobs that would interfere with his ability to go to the land were turned down. The newly formed group devoted itself wholeheartedly to this land. The first couple of years were spent cleaning up the perpetually sinking cabin, which was once a hunting destination and this year will have its roof tore off at Lammas in the first steps to dismantle it. Next the group built the screen house with the cooking facility in it and the scullery attached, and the bog walk, which bridges the marshland between the parking area and Kawashaway. There was an earlier bog walk, which eventually rotted away to nothing. This was temporarily replaced with a series of wooden planks. To get across the marshland, you placed your camping gear, drag, and other necessities into plastic bags, loaded those bags into a wheel barrow and pushed it over the 2”x 6” planks. This was time-consuming and people fell in often enough that the new bog walk became a necessity. Besides the shower in the woods, the three accompanying fifty barrel drums that hold shower water (named Lola (hot), Trixie (hot) and Blanche(cold)), StoreHouse 69 (formerly The Tea-House), the Chateau (or Shack-Toe or Daisy Shack—-depending on who you ask) and the water pump, little has been added to the land. Kawashaway remains running-waterfree and electricity-free. Salamander explains that the rustic and undeveloped nature of the land is part of the Northwoods tribe’s mission. The Northwoods Radical Faeries attempt to leave the smallest impact on Mother Kawashaway as possible.

All that work/play created a really strong core group of Radical Faeries who grew and remain extremely close. They altered each other’s lives. Through the next decade they became a family, celebrated numerous major holidays in the cabin (reachable only through snowshoeing in the winter), helped each other during the ongoing AIDS crisis, and invaded shopping centers and runways in Faerie Drag. This foundation created an easier landing of us newer Radical Faeries to land home. And with that acknowledgement I say, “What fierce kweens

(intentionally spelled this way) they grow up North!” (Translated into Hetero this roughly means “Thank you!”). w

This article is based on information from interviews conducted by Husk with Rocky, Salamander, and Scooter in the summer of 2011. These interviews are part of my dissertation on early Radical Faerie

Faerie Names

by

Snake of the Northwoods Tribe

history and the Radical Faerie communities in Minneapolis, Philadelphia and Portland. I thank Rocky, Salamander, Scooter and the numerous other Faeries whom I have interviewed for their time and effort. If you have any interest in or questions about this project, in being interviewed, or have related materials, please feel free to contact me at mlecker@masonlive. gmu.edu.

What’s in a faerie name? Identity, wishes, the deep recognition that your soul is connected to the earth, playfulness and desire. The Kawashaway faeries have found, attracted or taken marvelous names. This is only a sampling of a few of their handles, brands, designations, appellations, tags and labels. Flowery names: Bloomin’ Lilacs, Lilly of the Valley of the Dolls, Daisy, Princess Buttercup, Sunflower. Animal names: Salamander, Panther, Otterly, Monkey, Wolf, Zebra, Clydesdale, Snake, Two Bears. Bird names: Lark, Crazy Crow, Hummingbird, redwing. Insect names: Bug, Fire-Fly, Mantis. Nature names: wEtDiRt, White Ash, Thunder, Topsoil, Tallgrassss, Peat Moss. Names that connect with the great myths and spiritualities: Augury, Centaur, Chakra, Dragon, Phoenix, Kiva, MecCa. Names with color: Pink and Braeburn Blue. Names that speak of discovery and playfulness: Eureka, Polyester Plutonium, Scooter, Swarm, Teddy Bear. Names that defy categories: Oni, Rocky, Miracle, Drummer, TLeaf, Such, Ehsea, Klick, Vi… Maybe, that’s the point. Every name defies categorization. Every name, every faerie stands unique, and yet connected to the community of radical uniqueness and oneness. My own faerie name was given more than chosen. As MecCa drove me to the land my first time, we stopped as we left the paved road to appreciate the landscape and the air. I looked up to the sky and saw three eagles circling above me; and so I am three eagles in the Sky.

Photographs by Keri Pickett

Visions, Voices & Pretty Dresses

by Keri Pickett

Kawashaway. Recharge refresh recall remain relay rely release respite repeat relive revive re formulation reformation recognition remember Kawashaway.

It’s time time time…Kawashaway time time time it’s fairy time it’s healing time it’s a fine time to be on Kawashawy time.

The Faerie book published by Aperture books, 2000, was a dream come true for me. Michael Hoffman and Melissa Harris brought me into the Aperture family and it was the brilliance of Michael Hoffman to ask James Broughton for a forward for the book. Mark Thompson’s quote on the back of the book helped tie the Northwoods community to the national scene.

Phil Wilke introduced me to Harry Hay and John Burnside and I was lucky enough to witness Pistol Pete and Popgun Paul singing to the pair as they held hands in their golden years. I wept it was so beautiful. Then the instigators of the Radical Faeries signed my book linking Kawashaway, my photos and me to the movement.

I have been fortunate enough to be a part of Christian ceremonies, Native American ceremonies, a Sufi ceremony, Tibtan Buddhist ceremonies and I have been fortunate enough to find the Faeries as all have informed my understanding of the world and have helped me flourish.

Perhaps the sanctuary is more ideal because it is a temporary community…all come together in the Northwoods to be explore to examine to exclaim the best that we can be and to share that journey with one another.

I attend the gathering with the intention to honor the earth, honor the ancestors and to honor our spirit. The spirit of the faerie being inside of us who wants to live in harmony with the land and each other. Other groups feel that too…live that too…need that too. So how are faeries different?

With photographs and edited interviews my book Faeries explored that question of what is a radical faerie, what is Kawashaway and how does gathering at Kawashaway inform your life?

The reward for the effort is the sanctuary and the times people gather there.

Over the years the dynamics of community ebb and flow like the depth of Our Lady of Artlip Lake. The circle of people changes. Some people come once and some stay to become stewards of the land and take on responsibilities to help care for the land

and the business of owning land as a non-profit organization. It all takes work.

These photos are from the yearly gathering known as Lammas. Ten days is the perfect amount of time in our busy culture to both loose yourself and find your new and improved self. It is a rare year I take all ten days but the rewards are worth the risk of losing clients, time with family, everything, as I emerge greater because of my involvement, my photos, my cooking, my singing while washing dishes, my trail-building.

The gathering has nurtured me by helping provide a safe space for exploration. I wanted to be a drummer and the fire circle gave me the opportunity to make some noise and to find my rhythm. Now I trust in my ability to keep the beat going, the dancers dancing, the singers singing. It has been an evolution. The beginning was fraught with self-flagellation that I was not good enough. Now the drum is my friend and I feel there are beats which live inside me and those beats came from Kawashaway.

Sowhat now? As I went through my negatives, in preparation for the RFD issue, I found magic moments I had never even taken the time to enjoy sitting waiting for me in my archival boxes. The pictures transported me to all the good things that Kawashaway has given me…space to be me…fully, unapologetically me, artfully me, loud me and needy me and helpful me. We all get to be there together to see who we are and who we are becoming.

Drawing

and painting is a passion I’ve had since I was as a child and a college student, but photography took over and the need to make a living took over and the painting never happened. Yet under the watchful eye of a heart circle I started to bring out my old art supply box and put some marks on the paper.

Kawashawy is a safe spot for me to teach others what has helped me. I have shared the yogic moves known as the Five Tibetans with the community and others share their daily practice. We sing. Kawashay has a song book that sits at the dish washing station and we belt out old songs at the top of our lungs while doing the dishes. The chorus of well-fed Faeries in the scullery overwhelms the chatter in the screen house and all is alive.

Looking over the photos from the years since Faeries was published I see the missing years and I know I missed out being in a sacred space. Without a church community, a cultural community or a large family how would you have a space like this? Where would I go to recharge? It is hard to give oneself the permission to take the time to reflect and to DIVINE the prospects of the present.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama says, if you aren’t happy you aren’t giving enough. Kawashawy works like that too. Giving creates merit and happiness. Some days you give and give and then other days you get to just play all day long because someone else is doing the work. On those days, you can just arrive to a fabulous meal with the only stress being what am I going to wear to dinner?

When Beebalm and Bummble Bee went to Europe, they carried with them Faerie books to plant the seed and to help provide seed money to start a gathering in Europe. Eventually land was found and there is a Euro-faerie gathering.

That means the dream of the book has been fulfilled. It has happened. We planted our wish to spread Faerie dreams and schemes and it happened and the book has helped individual and community alike.

Each and every year someone in the community dies. It is like this in every community and each person’s life is unique as is their death. In the spirit of faerie energy going out and transforming the world I want get the faeries out of the boxes and into the world so I am proposing an art show in hospice care homes. I think the faeries have a unique perspective on end of life care and I want to explore that at the gathering this year as I look at Kawashaway at 25. w

The Red Dragon Dinner

by Donald L. Engstrom-Reese

The Red Dragon first made Itself know while the Mosquito Spell, a spell to heal AIDS, was taking shape in the mid 1990s. It first came to us (the Earth Conclave community) to let the human peoples know that there is a cure for AIDS already here on planet earth. All we had to do was to recognize it.

The Red Dragon stirred the cauldron of Earth Conclave’s heart, bringing forth new understandings of healing and health. These are some of the those understandings.

The Red Dragon is essential to the cures for all blood disorders. It holds all living red blood sacred. It delights in the pure clean flow of healthy blood. The Red Dragon celebrates all aspects of Life as It swims throughout our veins and vessels. It celebrates the sprouting, the blossoming, the fruiting, and the rotting, the never ending spiral of life, death and rebirth. The Red Dragon has come to awaken us to certain portions of the Blood Mysteries that are necessary to the healing of AIDS, hepatitis, leukemia, diabetes and all other blood related diseases.

One of our first understandings was that the Red Dragon’s touch can restore a broken heart.

Another basic tool It gave to us to share with all who are interested, is the Red Dragon Dinner. This is a feast in celebration of our living red blood. It is a time to sing the praises of our lives, to wonder aloud about the mysteries of existence, to embrace the goodness of life. It is a time to honor all who are thriving even though they have an HIV infection, have been touched by cancer, live with diabetes or any other blood disorder.

There are many ways in which this dinner works. One is that it brings the cures closer to a usable human reality each time the feast occurs, for it reminds us that the cures are already on Earth and that Life is sweet indeed. Another way that it works is that it empowers the Red Dragon to do what It needs to do. And for some reason, it also empowers the ancestors in this healing work on the many levels in which they are involved.

This is my communities’ basic setup for a Red Dragon Dinner in celebration of the cures for AIDS and all other blood related diseases. It is also a time for all folk to joyfully celebrate our own red living blood.

We start by decorating the dining area in all shades of reds.

We set up a main altar/shrine to the Red Dragon and our red living blood some where in the space. The altar is composed of red images of the dragon, red altar cloths, red candles, red vases filled with red flowers, etc.

We cover the tables with red cloths. We set the tables with red dishes, napkins, flowers, dinosaurs, dragons and whatever other decorations that call to be a part of our feast.

We aim to serve delicious red food and drink. We serve anything red and delightful such as; borsch, lasagna, chili, beet pickles, salmon, shrimp, radishes, tomatoes, red raspberries pie, cherry pie, red devils food cake, etc. But, believe me, we are not shy about adding other foods, no matter what the color, to round out our sacred feast. As for red drink, we include both spirited drinks and drinks with no alcohol. We almost always include a good red wine and a wonderful punch of pomegranate, raspberry, and cranberry juices mixed liberally with sparkling water.

We encourage all participants to come wearing something red. Some folks come dressed all in reds. Some come with just red jewels, red scarves, red hats, red tennis shoes or even red underwear. The Red Dragon seems to be happy as long as each participant has something red somewhere on their body.

We ask folks to think about the beauty of healthy red blood throughout at least the day before the dinner, thanking the Red Dragon for our health and vitality. And as folks dwell upon these amazing gifts, they are asked to create toasts and blessings to share through out the dinner.

On the day of the feast, after all of the participants have arrived, the altar and table candles are lit while folks find their places at the table. When all are sitting in their chairs, a hostess stands and raises their glass to offer this first toast, the basic toast used through out the dinner.

Hail to the Red Dragon!

Hail to our red living blood!

A second hostess then stands and prays, call and response:

I am a traditional human being person of the Earth, recognizing this as a Period of Great Change and praying.

I pray

“Red Dragon” by Donald Engstrom-Reese

Let the Born of Flesh grow healthy and thrive.

I pray

Help us be in a World of Beauty Balance and Delight.

I pray

Let Blessing be to All the Earth. In the Names I hold Sacred, I pray. A third hostess stands and prays, call and response, the Red Dragon prayer. Red Dragon, You who dance in our living blood, You who love the mouth, and the food, and the shit, and the asshole, You who eat and are eaten, You whose wings sparkle with ten thousand suns, Come, Come into me, Enter my flesh, Run in my blood, Work in my hands, Dance in my soul, Live in me.

After the prayer, a fourth hostess raises their glass and declares,

Hail to the Red Dragon!

Hail to our red living blood!

Another of the hostesses then stands up and leads the gathering in singing the Beauty Song to stir the energies and deepen the work. Sing the song until the time is ripe.

Beauty before us.

Beauty behind us.

Beauty to our left sides.

Beauty to our right sides.

Beauty above us.

Beauty below us.

We have beauty surrounding our lives.

The hostess ends the song by toasting:

Hail to the Red Dragon!

Hail to our red living blood!

The feasting then begins in earnest, becoming a time to truly enjoy each other’s company. It is a time to relax into the magic, a time to imagine what it will be like when the AIDS epidemic is a distant memory. It is a time to tell jokes and stories about our lives. It is a time to sing songs and to read poetry about the wonders of simply being alive. It is a time to share our dreams of the emerging sustain-

able cultures of beauty, balance and delight. This is a victory dinner. Name your victories out loud. Rejoice in love. Rejoice in health. Honor those whom you love in loud joyful voices. This is a harvest festival. What healing have you brought to fruition? What treasures have brought to our communities? What healing miracles have flowed through our own blood? This is a celebration of Life! Raise your glasses and salute all of these wonders, interspersing throughout the dinner, the toast to the Red Dragon and the red living blood.

When the final piece of pie has been eaten and the final toast has been spoken, it is time to end the feast by asking folks to stand and salute the Red Dragon one last time;

Hail to the Red Dragon!

Hail to our red living blood!

After this final toast, it is time to say good bye and thank you to the Red Dragon and all of the other guests, human and otherwise, wishing Her and everyone a good night’s sleep and deep healing dreams.

Lastly, here is an important point that is very good to remember. It is always a good thing for all who have been a part of the gathering to help clean up after the dinner. This is not only polite and very helpful to the hostesses, it also helps to set the spell, grounding the prayer in acts of everyday magic.

May we all dare to fully taste the Feasts of Life!

Blessed Be. w

For Faeries Battling Clouds

Faeries fly, flutter, but, too, fall or Flounder in fog. The great city heaves steel In our paths, navigation lost, hopeless! Sometimes I feel there is little left to sing, Or steal, and want to sleep, and dream Of a peace of lovers askin in creeks, or

Old ones boating slowly back home. The Mouths of our caves are licked with black Soot of hearths stoked for life, bones. We burned what we could, took sustenance, Lifted language to the back of the sky And purged shame which seamed us in.

A briefer tale would tell of the woody lover, Fallen sobbing on leaves. I want the claw And dung of skin, something I can’t wash off.

Poetry by Beebalm

Beebalm was a member of the Kawashaway tribe before moving to France, where he helped found the first European radical faerie sanctuary Folleterre in the Vosges mountains in eastern France. “For Faeries Battling Clouds” was the winner of the Lavender Magazine award for poetry in 2001.

Methodist Church Sadness for Will

A San Francisco morning alone, cool, bright,     I pass a corner church and feel separate     islands floating inside the hall of love. What is the sanctuary we have built? And     where are its temples? We, who feel     intensely into apartments, coffee, the     way one couple walks leaning on one     another at 8:00 a.m.? These things around Us rise, and if we look at each other, then     we are free to look up. The lack of touch     is sister to the lack of faith. Go now, if Haltingly, in hunger, to the face of the     one who loves you, and be willing to fall     far enough to be seen. Disrobe your shame!     Have impossible chrysanthemum conversations.     Will you carry the house inside you before                     you die?

GIVEN NAME

Three eagles in the sky name him a name pulled from the long book of names published by the planet. Eagle wings brush his body, his eyes echo cloudless blue and the vast thrumming light enters his bones.

Three eagles in the sky lift and circle in their naming rite, his bones are hollowed by their dance, empty of everything but wind and the scent it carries, his mouth closes upon all its imperfect words and their secret slavery.

Three eagles trace a circle of silence inside him everywhere the center nowhere the reaching circumference, the wings take him.

He kisses his love in that music of wings in that pure light under the circling eagles in the soft blue silence.

three eagles in the Sky

Photographs by White Ash (of Lily and Scooter)

Inside I am Orange Orange like my best sundress Accessorized with a Parasol I drag around with my not-men friends

Garish, playful, we are freeing ourselves From the safety of daily life

Mine is a revolutionary color A citrus fruit may claim it, But nature shares her hot, juicy hue

I drape it like a safety vest, Warning all around That my Orange inside is coming outside.

—Eureka

Photographs by White Ash (of Lily and Scooter)

“Lovers” (from Spiral Dance oracle card set) by Dragon

Watercolor by Teddy Bear

“Peat at Temperance River” by Dragon

Wander fair faerie

Into the dark wood

May grass be forgotten

Where tall trees stood

Wander gentle spirit

By lake and stream

The luscious waterways

Are my only stream

Wander crazy creature

But the seam do not break

Welcome my gift to you

Ocean and lake

And when your journey is over

Go back to your life

Gas and water meet you

So do fork and knife

Forget not fair faerie

Again we shall meet

I rest here below

Your gentle fairy feet!

—Anon. Fairy. Kawashaway

And Still . . . We Keep On Loving

by Two Bears

There is no one who threatens you less, that you are afraid of more.

You lock us up in prisons, bind our hands, manacle our feet, gag our mouths, blindfold our eyes, cut off our ears, put us away and tell us the world no longer knows us… And still… we keep on loving.

You smile behind our backs and flick your wrists, and mince, and swear you don’t know a single one of us. Yet we quaff your hair, we arrange your flowers, we paint your art, we perform your plays, we say your Masses, we wait your tables, we clean your homes, we tailor your suits, we play your sports, we catalog your books, we design your dresses, we massage your bodies, we write your songs, we prepare your cuisine, we trade your commodities, we build your cities, we record your history, we teach your children, we create your culture… Yes, it’s true, you don’t know a single one of us. And still… we keep on loving.

You ask us why we can’t keep to ourselves, and then you hunt us down in our neighborhoods to bash our heads in.

You ostracize our public displays of affection, and then you go tonsil-bobbing at crosswalks

while you wait for the lights to change.

You think our sissy caricatures in films, and plays, and TV are SO funny, and then you haven’t a clue why Stonewall was such a riot. You deny us the right to adopt, and then you envy our disposable income. You tell us to act more like a man, and then you wonder, “Which one’s the woman?”

You endlessly obsess about our sex lives, and then you blame us for your dysfunction. You condemn us at every turn, and fill our lives with misery, and then you can’t figure out why so many of our young ones commit suicide. And still… we keep on loving.

It will not matter, you know. No matter what you do, no matter what you say, no matter what you think, feel, or scheme… we will continue. After all, we were the first quirks of the first quarks in the first bang of the universe, blazing our own divergent path –dancing, dancing, dancing our “different” dance. We were the first free radicals in the ethereal plasma, luring the cosmos to change, change, twisting homo-gen-e-ous, with our “homo-genius.”

Did you really, really, think we would simply… go away? No dears… we will continue. And we will still… Keep on loving.

The Flogging

by Snake of the Northwoods Tribe

Thereis a man who has more than anyone helped relieve me of the bondage of self—through the gentle pain of his loving whip and embrace. How to describe absolute trust: A rack, shackles, nakedness, and only the trees to hear and absorb my release of sighs, moans and screams through his loving touch, his expert use of the flog with which he increased and embraced my pain.

Surrender came, not through an act of sheer will, but through the gentleness of submission; of surrender: being loved and cared for through my first flogging: only once did his touch miss the mark—a red welt across my forehead, when I gasped for air and the leather landed at a place not intended.

The whipping began in a forceful way—the smell of the flog coming to my nose with a musk that was mine—the crack of my ass to mouth completed the circle…

I embraced the hard leather handle in my teeth, feeling the supple hardness with my tongue, welcoming it to me as a rough kiss between lovers. The transformation was not complete though—some force deep within needed to go further; experience the warm embrace of complete and utter powerlessness. I gently asked to be cuffed to the rack, spreadeagle as some sacrifice to my soul, my journey down this dark but necessary path. The leather wrapped in wool cuffs were removed from the lower sling and re-attached to the highest chains of the rack. First the left wrist: Not tight enough…my hand easily slipped through. Assistance from my brother/sisters was needed and freely given to tie me to this metal rack, which was to become a sacrifice of love.

I stared in wonder as my right arm was gently but firmly lifted to the embrace of the rack…I turned my left hand—feeling the tightness, the rigidity which would hold me until the time was right. A secondary grip on the support chain of the sling would be further support if I needed it. The only unfortunate fact of the matter was that the rack was not tall enough. Space limitations made it possible to sink almost to my knees, allowing a measure of movement in an otherwise powerless struggle towards the inevitable. My right hand thus thoroughly secured, I tested my bonds…small twists of my wrist were possible, but not large enough to hinder my progress into the unknown.

I glanced around the well-lit room, wondering what my brother/sisters thought of the sight. A small bit of embarrassment about my skinny body; my soft uncut dick flashed through my consciousness—I was setting myself up to perform for these men in black, these men naked even as much as I.

Then the man, the beautiful silver stud who was to be the means of my deliverance decided I had too much time to think; the flog landed squarely on my ass, waking me to a new sensation and blocking out all other thought. Again the whip landed, this time across my right shoulder - a sudden and involuntary pull on my body tightened the pull of the shackles; became instant knowledge of my willing plight—I wasn’t going anywhere for a while.

The dance began slowly, almost softly, working from my shoulders to ass, legs to the bottom of my feet, in no apparent order that I could defend against. Round the shoulders, across the ass through the small of my back—stinging pleasure racked my body with each stroke. I could not escape the incessant slap of each stroke, each individual piece of the whip landing deliberately—delivering its sweet touch of pain.

His touch became more deliberate, more forceful and more loving. As the beating continued, my body bending and writing from the blows, gasps began to escape my lips. I began to float above the pain; to experience an ‘other-consciousness’ outside my body, only to be yanked back in—violently in the warm embraces he rushes in to give me—grabbing my balls and my attention full in the same moment. Embraced by his loving hand and touch, my skin crawled with the pain, screamed its acceptance for more.

Surprise upon surprise overtook me even as he tenderly held me. My breathing slowed; I thought my ordeal through—when the full force of the whip would land on my exposed ass cheek, drawing a loud gasp from me and a grin from my lover/tormenter. Who else had joined in I wondered…but it was only my lover’s expert use of the whip—embracing me and striking at the same moment. What a rush! Again and again he landed sure blows upon me—striking harder still; the gasps for air becoming low screams of pleasure wrapped in pain.

My breakthrough was beginning: flashpoints of memory would engulf me and leave with the next series of blows. My dad, a former lover; and then

myself: the pain, the pains and again the pain. All that I had held inside could now have a catalyst in my burning flesh. Never before in my life had I been this freely alive; this present in my stinging flesh, crawling with the sweet sensation of pain. All thoughts of selfconsciousness and embarrassment had disappeared in the moan of surrender to be replaced with sheer existence in this very moment. I began to feel lightheaded as the blows continued to fall—my knees buckle unwillingly and I replant each foot slowly below my weight.

We’ve long since passed the realm of sex, having gone to a greater void of clarity than I’ve ever known. My cock is as energized as the rest of my body, but still hangs from my sweating crotch, even as he grabs, twists and pulls at my cock and balls from behind. “Thank you Sir” Ah! I gasp again, as the whip lashes, again and again, drawing screams from me. Once again my knees fail, yet this time I cannot regain my feet. My nerves are pulsating through my entire body, from head to toe, and I succumb to one more lash across my shoulders.

He stepped up behind me and asked if I had enough. I looked into his deep blue eyes—the intensity was incredible. He reached around and held my cheek, giving me a grin. I asked to be released… and it happened. All of the earlier flash-points came together in a single knot in my gut, and summarily popped: as if the whipping had loosed their tightness in myself, and they were very close to coming undone. I breathed deeply, feeling the welling subside by a sheer act of will. As I stood, shakily waiting for the second shackle to be removed, another stronger wave of emotion flooded my body, as if the dam inside me was breaking and I could do nothing to stop the wave overpowering me.

As the second shackle was removed, my knees gave way, and he held me to him, supporting almost all of my weight with his love. I whispered thanks in his ear for his loving touch, and then the dam exploded, taking me straight to the ground in a pile of flesh and tears. The sobs began wracking me, and gasps for air were followed by more and more waves of emotion landing at the feet of my soul. He held me, caressed my velvet skin and embraced me harder as each wave overtook me. At some point he forced me to drink water, and poured some out onto my tortured skin. Surprised gasps for air were followed by his gentle massage and then my groans of past hurt began to surface.

The pain that was being released from within had nothing to do with the physical pain I was experiencing—my skin did not hurt: I did. I was engulfed in a

world of hurt, of loss, of shame and it was all coming out in one giant energetic pulse. The energy was incredible. He took my waves of pain, accepted then and handed me back only love—allowing more doors and wells of emotion to come to the surface. I don’t know how long I was held in his arms…it felt like moments, and at the same time felt like eons. When I could regain my breath, and feel that I was coming back to a state of calm, he would hold me: kiss me gently and tell me it was all right. More pain would come bubbling to the surface, and he would hold me tight as I cried onto his naked shoulder. Great sobs would take my knees out from underneath me, and he would support me to the ground, never letting me go; never releasing the bond we shared—the energy exchange which was my transformation to a renewed life, a freedom from the bondage of me.

The sobs became less severe as my body was drained of the excesses stored for so long. He would hold me and tell me that I’ve never been loved that real before, and through a veil of tears I would agree; that would begin yet another wave of tears, sobs and wracks of pain.

Eventually, these waves subsided and self-consciousness returned: What were my brother/sisters thinking of what they just witnessed? Telling him I was alright, and I further quipped that now all I had to do was not be embarrassed. He caressed my cheek and told me to look around. I was greeted with looks of care, concern and happiness. Then he told me to go to each one and thank them for sharing their energy with me—and mine with them. As I went to each, thanking them and embracing them, I began to cry again—not as painfully as before, but more out of gratitude that each were accepting me in this moment: not judging; just willing to be there for me.

Once I had thanked them, he took me to the shower and gently washed me. I glanced in the mirror, and where I thought there would be terrible welts and the beginnings of black and blue marks, was only a warm, red-velvet skin to greet me. The only welt was on my forehead, and also a small scratch on my right hand where entanglement in the sling’s chain occurred. He tenderly caressed me with warm water, soap and a gentle touch. I thanked him by doing the same for him as we tenderly bathed then dried each other. A deep look into my eyes was all I needed: I had done well. w

Drawing by Braeburn Blue (Perry Ingli)

“Sage at Temperance River” by Dragon

The First Angel of the Apocalypse

by Alan Yount

Hogie Gaskins bookended my time at Carolina. He was my first date and one of the last people I saw before graduating. I didn’t see him in between, and I have regretted it all my life.

I arrived at UNC in the fall of 1979 already knowing that I was gay. I had begun having sex with men during my senior year of high school in Hickory, North Carolina. I had even come out to a couple of people close to me, including an older cousin, Peggy, who suggested that I try to date women when I got to Carolina, which I was determined to do. Needless to say, I became depressed.

Eventually, I landed in Student Health to talk with a counselor. I was surprised by his advice: “You need to go to a CGA meeting.” Of course, the Carolina Gay Association. Sensing my shyness, he asked if I would like to meet someone from the CGA to talk to—Hogie Gaskins.

Hogie and I planned to meet on campus before a CGA meeting so that he could take me. I was nervous— after all, I was a freshman from the “sticks.” Yes, I had already been initiated to gay sex, but this was different. I was on my own. This seemed more like life than just sex. This was for real.

I arrived early at the agreed upon meeting place and waited. Anxiously. Hogie arrived and introduced himself—at least, that’s what I assume he did; I was enamored. Hogie was a handsome man— strawberry blonde hair that he wore in a shaggy cut that fell over his eyes; he wore small, round, wire-rimmed glasses that gave him a sexy-but-smart look; he was slightly shorter than I was, but nicely built. The hyper-masculinity of the 1980s hadn’t hit

yet, so Hogie wasn’t “buff” by today’s standards, but he had a nice body, visible under his polo shirt and tight jeans. He was a boyishly handsome man, and I was immediately attracted to him.

We never made it to the CGA meeting, opting to go back to his place and have sex. Hogie lived with several other gay men in a house in the middle of Sorority Square that they called Friendly Castle. It was their gay sorority house. We made a second date, with no plans of going to a CGA meeting—we were going to go on a date.

He took me to see La Cage aux Folles, the movie, which had been released the year before and was showing at the Varsity in downtown Chapel Hill. I knew nothing about the movie—it hadn’t made it to HICKory; it probably never did. We went back to Friendly Castle after the movie and had sex. We saw each other a few more times that first year, mostly for sex without the pretense of dating, but it didn’t last. He was a senior, and I was a freshman; both of us were desperately horny; and we moved on to other men.

I don’t recall running into Hogie after that first year. I don’t know if he graduated and moved on, or if we just moved in different circles. However, five years later, during my final senior year at Carolina, I found myself back at Friendly Castle. I had picked up—or been picked up by—someone who lived there. Amazingly, it was still a gay sorority house. After sex, I asked my trick if he knew Hogie.

“Sure. He was one of the original ‘house mothers’ here!”

“Do you know where he is? What’s happened to

Photo courtesy of the author

him?”

There was an uncomfortable hesitation. “I’ve heard . . . I think . . . he’s in the hospital. I think . . . he’s dying. I’ve heard that he has AIDS.”

AIDS! It was 1983, and AIDS had just been christened with that ominous title—Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome—having previously been known as GRID—Gay Related Immune Deficiency—and before that simply the “gay cancer.”

I knew as much about AIDS as anyone in gay Chapel Hill. I was a nursing student, and I had done a paper on gay men’s illnesses, all of them venereal in nature, for a class in 1982. While researching that paper, I had found the 1981 New York Times article, “Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals,” that heralded the beginning of the Age of AIDS. I noted it in my paper, in a short paragraph without much concern, concluded the paper, and handed it in. But no one we knew in North Carolina had actually gotten it. Yet. Hogie had the distinction of being our first known AIDS patient.

I used my nursing student’s uniform and knowledge of North Carolina Memorial Hospital to find out where Hogie was and visit him. I wasn’t prepared for what I saw when I slipped into his room, still in my uniform. Hogie—handsome, vital, funny, boyishly sexy Hogie—lay in a coma in an isolation room, alone, emaciated, and near death. I had never seen such devastation in a patient so young; I had never seen such devastation in someone I knew, let alone slept with.

The room was dark, and it felt close, suffocating. It was obvious that he would soon die. Indeed, Hogie became North Carolina’s first documented AIDS patient to die. My feelings moved from shock to horror to fear—was this a vision of my future lying in this bed? Would I contract AIDS—did I already have it—suffer and die, alone? Would my name be whispered, “He’s got it; don’t go near him”? I backed out of the door and left, unnoticed by the staff, unknown to Hogie. Seeing Hogie like that scared me and became my first step in escaping the crisis. As the crisis grew and there was no way to tell if you were already infected, I decided to flee. I joined the Peace Corps in 1984, an AIDS refugee.

I never heard anyone speak of Hogie after he died. He disappeared, wiped out of Chapel Hill’s gay collective mind. It wasn’t until the AIDS Quilt came to Washington, DC, where I was living, in 1992 that Hogie came back to me. I wondered if anyone had created a quilt panel for Hogie. I didn’t know anything about his family, and I don’t remember meeting any of his friends—we had been too busy having sex to go out with his friends. I searched my memory for his name, and I searched the Quilt for him. I found him.

Now,all these years have gone by, and I think of Hogie often. I still see him striding across campus to meet me and initiate me into Carolina’s gay scene; to put me on the path of living a wonderful gay life. A life that Hogie never got to live. w

“Ethereal Game”

by Jim Jackson

From “Nine Threads: A Self-Portrait in Past Lives”

by Heron Saline

Chapter 5: Wildcat 1961

It is Christmas morning. My family is all a-bustle in the livingroom around the fireplace where six red and white felt stockings are hung in a row from small brass hooks. They have our names on them in white letters although I can’t read. I remember where in the line up my parents told me my stocking is. I am the youngest of four children, almost three years old. We are each in our flannel pajamas with the built in feet, and holiday excitement is thick in the large colonial house where we live this year in Bethesda, Maryland. The large stockings are packed with things like toys and combs, and strange treats, chocolate and candy, and little red boxes of raisins with the dark-haired lady on them who looks like my Mom.

On the floor directly beneath each stocking is a small pile of other little gifts. At the moment, I don’t recall that this stuff is from anyone in particular (Santa Claus), I recall that it is for someone—me. I kneel on the floor and gingerly pick up off my pile, with both of my small hands, the curved, soft, stuffed, cloth body of the lion with its pale pink nose and dark tufted, blond mane and tail. Its eyes are clear and open wide.

“This is for me”, I think. I covet it and roll my head as though drunk in the awareness that I have it! I feel a shift of delicious power rumble and pour into my toddler body.

In happiness, my eyes open back to seeing, and my left hand reaches with hunger and grasps the stuffed giraffe in another of the piles on the cold hearth. I decide that it, too, is mine and move back, trance-stricken, humble, and happy beyond words with my treasures. My mouth is wet with pleasure. My mother looks over and says that the giraffe is for Sue, my sister, who is older than me by three years. I say no, Santa left it for me, my fingernails digging into it. Mom repeats that Santa left it for Sue, it was by her pile, and I feel my hunger becomes larger, with a dryness added to it as I hand it over. There is disbelief. Mom is now talking about how these are “Steiff” toys, and shows us the little round metal tag in the ear of each animal. My belly tightens as I imagine the tag hurting and scaring the lion. Mom says his name is Leo the Lion. The relaxation

of his posture and alert gaze carry me forward for decades.

1966

We move almost every year because of my dad’s job and the autumn when I am in second grade we get a kitten and a puppy as a pet. We live in upstate New York in a house that backs up to woods and a field. The dog is a beagle mix that someone names “Snoopy”. He doesn’t seem to belong somehow, but I like him well enough and every Saturday morning the dog and I watch cartoons on the couch in the basement while the other kids are at some sort of class at our church. He doesn’t care what we watch so I pick the cartoons, and on every commercial we run back and forth the length of the rec room, him chasing me, and then get back on the couch where he sleeps next to me while I watch the show. He runs away a lot, almost every time he goes outside and puts his nose to the ground. This requires my parents to go pick him up when someone calls having found him so a few months later we get rid of him and stick to cats.

But only one at a time—my Dad doesn’t like animals and this is his compromise. We can have a cat if he doesn’t have to have anything to do with it. No one else that I notice seems to care, besides my Mom who, like me, interacts with our cats, talks with them, snuggles with them, sees them. They are my closest companions in the household, more real to me in some ways than the humans I am living with. I grow up playing with them and sleeping with them, learning about what kind of touch relaxes them and what kind of eye contact and body movements they trust, their language of distance, posture, and breath. I know the greetings, I know the limits and warnings. By the time I’m a teenager both of my arms up to the elbows are covered with scratch and bite marks from playing with my feline buddy so much. I don’t even feel these as pain. It makes me laugh to instigate and respond in the rough and tumble of our attacks, followed by sweet, warm naps next to one another.

When our neighbors go on vacations they ask me to care for their pets. Over the better part of a year I slowly make friends with Salita, a jet black dog two houses down in our rural neighborhood who growls and barks and snarls at anyone approaching

her home. She eventually allows me to sit with her by the road and pet her, part of her pack. Though I would have been embarrassed to admit it consciously, I feel myself more animal than human in terms of comfort and sense of home even in those days. The ways of humans rarely make sense to me; the ways of animals and the wild, do.

1994

I am in my mid-thirties, living in Minneapolis, and my boyfriend Kent and I take a trip down to the Ozarks to mine quartz crystals and visit caves. The spring days are hot. At the wooded mine where the exposed earth smells like a high toned spice, we spend a couple of them whacking open a boulder the size of a Volkswagon Beetle for $10 each per day. Our hammers and chisels expose a vein of opticalclarity quartz points the size of apples.

We stop in Missouri on our return trip and take a tour of a deep cavern that has been known by modern humans for only a couple of hundred years. The guide tells us that when the cave was first explored, two complete skeletons were found. One was a young boy about twelve years old, who must have gone in and died a couple of thousand years ago. In a different lower region of the cavern, dark as only such caverns can be dark, he was preceded by a Smilodon, a saber-toothed cat of the kind that inhabited the Americas until 12,000 years ago, whose entire skeleton still lay like a huge cat taking a nap of millennial proportions. Beetles living in the cave had completely cleaned the soft parts from its bones. I can suddenly hear the drips of water in the underground pools in the last hours that each of these kindred spirits spent after wandering in and losing their ways—or not—and feel them eventually laying down on the cool, damp, unseen floors of their respective mausoleums to settle into their deaths. The peace, solemnity, stillness, and finality of their solitude consume me with familiarity and pride. A quiet sadness lives on, touching my heart.

At some point in these years, when I am entering into connection to past lives, I dream one that is on my lion thread. It is a night after I have had potent, athletic sex in which my lover pinned me and bit my arching neck, spreading me open. My body goes electric in the muscular, flailing ecstasy of strong, cooperative resistance. That night I dream myself before: a zebra on the savannah, in last breaths as a full grown male lion pins me, my neck ripped open as he pants on me and begins to eat me while I live, the life force spilling from me like a salty, thick liquid, perfectly and fully and exquisitely alive for a last few minutes. It is fabulously rich to be taken

and consumed. In my swimmy cortisone rush, I feel only pleasure and give myself over to the dream of becoming the lion’s food, and soon, his tissue. To stay or to die: each, always, with its singular price and reward.

August 2000

I was in professional Hypnotherapy training and in one class we practiced a somatic form of trance induction called Holotropic Breathing. I have previously studied several kinds of intentional breathwork in which oxygen supersaturates the body, taking the person to deep and wonderful, sometimes terrifying, places of knowledge and reality.

Hypnotherapy students were scattered around the floor of the large room, many on mats or blankets, like fall leaves scattered on a lawn. Each student had a partner for the exercise, which lasted several hours per student. This morning I had facilitated a session for my good friend who was also in the training program and this afternoon she was facilitatingmy exploration and adventure. My entry into the work was easy, almost too easy. I dropped down pleasantly and strongly without expecting too much from the work: often initial forays of experience are the most powerful as one enters new ways of knowing, a new technical approach. This was not that new to me, so I would be content with a good solid clearing and energizing of my body and mind today. Anything else would be gravy. Or so I then thought. Gravy indeed.

As we get into the session, I have been deepbreathing, intentionally focusing on the inhales and on completing my exhales, for twenty to thirty minutes. I keep having my attention pulled out of trance by the sounds of the many others in the room, some of which are having hefty emotional releases. One in particular sounds like she is being tortured, screaming, whimpering and crying for the last 15 minutes. I feel irritated by the drama but after she finally settles down, I drop eagerly into the rhythm of deeper breath, and feel the wonderful recorded music in the room take me, like the current of a strong stream. The beautiful and intricate doumbek drum rhythm with some other instruments leads me right into a world of Middle Eastern musical tradition, one with which I am somewhat familiar from my drumming practice and teaching.

Suddenly my dream takes form, as the desert music swirls me around, and there before me—and I mean right in front of me, looking into my face—is a short, old man with missing and discolored teeth that form a crazy-looking grin. His wild expression alarms me as he looks right at me from perhaps

three feet away. I’m also the dream—we are, together. The bright hot sun of the desert pervades me and he is cackling maniacally, hysterically, delighted with life and with me, his eyes wide and his matted and uncombed, long gray hair wild and huge about his tanned face.

This unnerving desert-dweller holds up at me in both hands an enormous and filthy dried lion pelt that looks like a humongous moth-feast, spread open now but uncleaned or aired for decades. Its mane and tail are mangy and compressed. Its stale smell disgusts me. He is chattering and gigglingas he pretends to throw the smelly, dank piece of tanned skin over my head, a game I do not like. With each jesting lunge and burst of laughter a gust of his hot, spicy breath hits my face. This all happens so fast I can’t remember the breathwork session, I am simply there with him and feelingannoyed and alarmed at his closeness and wanting to get away from this crazyman. I suddenly am aware that this is Rumi: Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, the thirteenth century Persian poet and mystic, whose translated words speak drunkness-with-God to me when I read them centuries later. I am amazed and confused, my mouth hanging open in the hot day within the dream, and he becomes more animated and louder with his teasing, which abruptly comes to a pungent head as, shrieking and howling with laughter, he throws the fusty lion pelt over my head as I try to bat it away.

Instantly—less than instantly, as his dingy jabbering dissolves right away to silence—the dusky, surprisingly heavy dry skin settles on me, and I feel a fresh body take form with a puissantly commanding awareness that I am, fully and irrevocably, a living, adult male lion on the savannah. This is no longer dreamed imagination, this is somatic reality, present experience. There is a sense of a different time within me, like noticing the random turning of a page.

The heat of the day is all on me like some sultry but motionless downpour. There is no sound in particular but it is not silent either, more like an immense and constant vibration in the hot, open space. I shake out my heavy mane, which follows the movements of my weighty head and neck by a fraction of a second on its thick, loose skin. My dense body, spread prone on the prickly yellow-gold grass near some trees, feels liquidly supple and strong. My vision has a crystalline clarity as though the world, there on the open plain, is shown on some techno-enhanced screen through a visual field of

pure rain droplets. I can pinpoint visual details at far range. Everything is exquisitely clear and lovely, as though freshly washed, despite the dryness and extreme heat. I feel only my massively thickset form, dense with heavy muscle. My consciousness lives exclusively in my tissue and its pulling contact to the bare, hardpacked earth.

This is another me. I return through the pull of the music, different now, to the floor of the practice room, surrounded by my fellow Hypnotherapy classmates, somehow simultaneously dazed, confused, and clear. My curious mind wants to know when in time and where in space these other-lives-lived existed, wonders whether and how they overlap. I lay breathing and cuddling myself for nearly an hour.

1998

It is summer and I have flown from California back to Minnesota to visit family, friends, and the Great Northern Forest. This has become an annual trip. Its spiritual focus is a visit to a river on the North Shore of Lake Superior in whose pools I annually baptize myself into the coming year, asking the Elements for gifts.

It’s a sweet, complicated, and private piece of inner work that I won’t go into here, but while in trance, curled in the humming vault of rock behind an eight foot waterfall, I receive knowledge that this year my request for blessing is being met with “shapeshifting”. As I come back out of trance, I think to myself that I’ve heard that word, that it’s something to do with shamanism, and imagine myself getting a book to learn about it next winter when the San Francisco rains come again.

A little disappointed, I accept the gift’s form and head up the river to play in the heavy, iron-laden water as it pours down the slope toward the big sapphire lake below.

A friend is there with me doing her own magic along the stone banks of the stream. I intend to play. This spot is above all others my playground, where I love to come and get behind the falling sheets of water, jump off the ledges, feel under the rapid flow for big rocks on which to pull myself up through the current, and plunge down to the bottom where I pull up handfuls of glistening stones in pale greens, shiny blacks, and brick reds. This year the water runs high. Lots of rain has fallen in storms of skycracking thunder and drenching downpours. The spongy floor of the forest drains constantly into streams such as this one.

I stand at the place where we play, my friends

and I, my feet on a rounded rock outcropping at water level, about two feet across, facing the other bank. I am at the foot of a twelve foot cliff and the opposite wall rises higher still, but not as steeply. I want to swim across but the flow is so swift passing through this walled chasm, 25 feet below the first waterfall, that I gauge that it will only carry me downstream before I would be able to reach my long arm out to get a hold on the far rock wall. I try twice and am swept both times downstream, laughing at the cold, fresh ride. But my desire shapes space for a creative impulse to take form— suddenly I imagine diving across the very surface only, letting my long, slender body ride like a skipping stone on the plain of where air rides on water, so that the deeper run of coursing water will not get a hold on me. Something in me knows I can do it.

I drop down into focused concentration and feel my bare feet on the wet stone. The river is a roar around me. I want that opposite bank. My breathing settles in and I soften my knees and hips feeling the push against the stone I’m standing on. My wet, naked body synchronizes breath with the slight swinging of my front limbs as I time and envision my leap and suddenly it is the moment and I s-p-r-i-n-g off the rock in full extension, a moment so unrushed and full that it seems outside of time, and my frame glisses off the surface and I am on the other side, one hand reaching out of the foamy brown torrent and clasping a knob of stone wall which anchors me.

Immediately as my body slows into arrival and sinks, the current carries me to the right but I am all strength and power now and something has happened in that leap. I feel the water on my body through a thick, loose skin of tawny fur, feel the angle of my head and neck different now from the uprightness that characterizes my human posture. The spirit of play and of engagement with beauty that I brought here remains and finds form in a huge cat body—swimming—luxuriating in the cool dip in this mad-pouring river. I spring up to climb the far wall, laughing inside and beaming outwardly, a playmate of the river. I scramble easily up the face of the rock on all fours and turn to face outward, then leap off from eight or ten feet above the water into the deep of the coursing current.

Under the water there is a song playing, millions of bubbles moving white up through the root beerlooking water. Always up they go, gurgle-speaking their wisdom and information to those who will listen. I surface about ten feet above where the strong pull next curves left to dive over the second waterfall, and paddle my way over to the outside of

the curve where I can easily climb onto the rock.

The Canadian Shield, a horizontal layer of smooth hard graceful stone which covers this whole part of the continent under the forest soils, is exposed here and at every other river in the area, by thousands of years of this water’s rise and fall, gravity pulling it ever down, and further down, to the lake where it can perhaps rest. I lay on the warm stone at the river’s side under gray overcast sky. I feel my shortened legs and the broadness of paws that are warm and padded, at once soft and tough, and the power of my back legs wants to spring again. My vision is clear without over-focus, feeling rather than seeing what it takes in. I get up and go back to play in the river despite its cold for almost an hour, exhilarating in the fun of each exultant leap and dive and climb.

The rock and the water and the air through which I pass are friends, calling up this cougar form I have taken. My friend who sits at the bottom end of the chute where I’m playing later says that several times she sees me, then doesn’t see me, and that I appear instantly in a different place than where I was. She holds space for this mystery and for her own, and the afternoon unfolds. We go out to eat after our time at the river and I order a 16 ounce steak that just sounds so good to me as I read the menu! I eat the whole thing in one sitting, more red meat than I’ve eaten in the last six months. In the next years, my appetite for animal protein remains consistently high and my body fills out in ways showing strength and athleticism, come to me with these new ways I am learning to move in the world.

The multiple experience of shapes for my bodymind stays on. I sometimes notice my posture drop down into lion, low to the earth and springing on easy, muscular haunches, especially at times when I am in a focus of body awareness—sex, giving massage, physical activities like climbing or hiking or running, even riding my bicycle. Every now and then I get hungry to go out and “crawl the night” and I dress in comfortable clothes and move through my neighborhood, staying to the dark places and climbing trees in the parks nearby to watch people and their dogs, who are unaware of me. I slip silent through open spaces and move across the city, shifting in and out in my consciousness, feeling the asphalt covered land beneath me and making my way up to the woods in Buena Vista Park to feel the soft earth and meet other men out on prowls of their own.

I notice more and more often, in increased groundedness and centering, the ridiculous stereo-

type I hear people put forth of pet cats as lazy creatures who “sleep” all the time. I begin checking in telepathically with the cats and find them to be busy in the Dreamtime, often holding space for the wellbeing of their human companion, or for some other project in the developing world. I meet cats who are accompanying their owners through trauma and illness. I meet others who are shaping energies for the preservation of the natural world’s health in the face of pollution and overconsumption of resources. I meet one who “reads” the history of objects through their energy fields—all this under the outward appearance of their simple nap, perhaps in the afternoon sun. I tune in with clarity to the silliness and unsustainability of much human behavior and culture, give thanks for the reasonableness of other, truer perspectives.

On a trip to LA several years later, I visit the LaBrea Tar Pits where I look at excavated, bony remains of hundreds and hundreds of saber-toothed cats who got stuck in the stinking, caustic black swamp there, thinking they had an easy meal from

the sinking beasts who were trapped in the tar pits.

I am aware that there is no easy meal, no free ride, no pain-free existence, no guarantee of anything. Those things aren’t being alive. Insulation and insurance are not part of the deal for anyone. There is a price to pay for the blessing of every— any—incarnation. And there is a unique joy, a rare shaking and trembling of the spirit, that comes with every life, which no one else gets to live through in full embodiment: Except as we reach toward one another with our hearts and imaginations and so remember and know one another, and thus our current selves, our interconnection becomes impossible, and our unity, preposterous. w

Heron Saline (aka Sofar Sogood or SoSo), lives in San Francisco, CA, and specializes in writing true bodymind experiences into story. Self-identifying as both transchronological and Interspecies, he can be reached through his website www.guidedmindtour. com.

When I Am With My Tribe

by Heron Saline

When I Am With My Tribe

When I am with my tribe

When I am with my tribe

We are the only ones in the world

And when we dress as we dress—

When we undress as we like—

We dance at night before the fire

We look into each others’ eyes

We set our rhythms on the airwaves

We are foolish—we are foolish and we are wise

When I am with my tribe

When I am with my tribe

We are the only ones in the world

My people are a circle, the talisman travels ‘round

My voice and my heart can bring an end or cause to start

A chance to be when I am with my tribe…

When I am with my tribe

When I am with my tribe

We are the only ones in the world

…Men reaching out to men—being held by men

Dancing, singing men—drumming, laughing men

Kissing, hugging men—holding hands with men

Cultivating men—vibration of men

Looking into men—making love with men

Going down on men—penetrating men

Celebrating men—men pleasuring men…

When I am with my tribe

When I am with my tribe

We are the only ones in the world

We are the only ones in the world….

“Big Red” by Marc DeBauch

Nomenus—(Re)Defining Ourselves

by Jodi Bon Jodi

Ioftenget bogged down with the day to day grind of life in the country. The July heat is brutal, Garden House seems to be having a bit of a fly problem, and there are countless tasks to be accomplished. Admittedly, sometimes I lose sight of the forest for the trees. I forget why I am here. I forget that when I clean the barn, it is that much cleaner for the next faerie who comes along. I forget that by watering the garden, that translates into sustainable food for the community here on the land. I forget that digging out a shitter is actually sacred, although stinky, work. I have to remind myself to take a step back, look at the big picture and recognize the importance of each and every person who walks across the bridge onto this land, myself included. We all fit into the puzzle that is this community and this life, regardless of the body we were born into. We all count. We might all have differing needs, but there is room on this approximately 90 acre parcel of land to meet so many of those needs. We all have a common thread which is the history of Radical Faeries. I feel blessed to be able to share in this history and live in better relation because of it.

I have spent the last few weeks reading as much about the history of Nomenus as I can. I dug out the old books Nomenus and the Radical Fairies, Nomenus Speaks about Women, and Nomenus Talks To The IRS. Reading these primary texts of the development of the organization that I find myself so intimately tied to has been fascinating. I am noticing themes that still present themselves to this day.

Specifically, I am noticing a theme about gender.

As many people who may be reading this know, the organization of Nomenus has had a long and sometimes challenging history when it comes to its relationship with women. The reality is this, gay men started this organization. For various personal reasons, some women, or folks born and assigned female at birth, were attracted to the magic happening within Nomenus, or at least at the Wolf Creek

Sanctuary. Over the years, more and more women became involved, and some of the gay men in the tribe found the strength and courage to express their true identity as women. Women became involved in the organization, despite the fact that their voices were not always heard. They became involved because they cared so deeply about the community and identified so strongly with faerie magic.

Faerie Magic. My mind takes me to the Nomenus mission statement. It reads, “Nomenus exists to create, preserve, and manage places of cultural and spiritual sanctuary for Radical Faeries and their friends to gather in harmony with nature, for renewal, growth, and shared learning.” This is faerie magic.

For me, the questions then arise, What is a Radical Faerie? Who are we? What are we becoming? Does a faerie have to be a gay man? Can a faerie be born into a female body?

Mitch Walker and friends wrote in Visionary Love in 1979, “...Faerie is see-ing through polarity. In straight consciousness Bi-Polar Thought is king: male and female are opposites, win-or-lose is the game, reality and dream are separate, immutable and contradictory. But there are Fairies, who look in on gentle mocking laughter at such childishness, for they know that everyone is now ‘female’, now ‘male’, that no one ever wins when anybody loses, that reality and dream flick into each other at the flick of a glittering wand.”

If we as faeries are working towards dismantling the systems and binaries that have boxed us in for so many generations, then why would we as faeries create more boxes and systems? Why would we try to define faerie in terms of the boxes and categories that society has placed on us?

This leads me to now. These questions are still being asked, talked out, danced around.

Over 30 years later, I find myself as a steward of Wolf Creek Radical Faerie Sanctuary. I was born into a body assigned female at birth. I am not the

If we as faeries are working towards dismantling the systems and binaries that have boxed us in for so many generations, then why would we as faeries create more boxes and systems?

first person in such a body to live on this land and I have massive amounts of respect and gratitude to those who came before me. As it turns out, I am the first person born into this kind of body who is sanctioned by the community to live here and given the same duties and responsibilities as those born into “male” bodies. I identify as a Radical Faerie. I respect this faggot-centric land. I serve the community by caretaking this land and a lot of work went into my being here.

Inthe last year or so, a lot has gone on here in the west coast faerie community. Through a series of meetings and Great Circles (our quarterly meeting of the membership and friends of Nomenus), we are on the precipice of a new time. Our March Great Circle created a document called The Great ThreeWay. This document includes three agreements and suggestions. In a nutshell, The Great Three-Way sets up a system wherein Nomenus will exist as a series of independent circles setting their own membership policies under a minimal umbrella. The document also supports the development of Wolf Creek as one of those circles, provided that gatherings can still take place at the sanctuary and that time is set aside each year for male only space. The document further states that the umbrella organization of Nomenus would open its membership to Radical Faeries and their friends regardless of sex or gender. This document is an appetizer, a starter plate. It does not include any policy change, but exists more as a framework to shape future changes.

When I read this document in March, I was blown away. Honestly, I didn’t believe it. It seemed to me like a concrete step in an amazing direction. What this looks like to me is an organization’s infrastructure finally catching up to its reality. Many different people of many different genders are involved, active and important within the organization. This will now be recognized in a fundamentally different way.

Our June Great Circle took the Three-Way a step farther. We drafted a change to the membership section of the Nomenus bylaws stating that membership would be offered to “any self-identified Radical Faery or their friend” (wording to be tweaked) as opposed to “any self-identified gay male”. This change still needs to be ratified by the September Great Circle. I am hopeful that, although there are still some discussions that need to be had,

we can pass this bylaw change through our consensus process in a good and gentle way. (You might be reading this after our September Great Circle, give us a call and find out how it went!)

Again, I am amazed. These agreements and proposals have generated a ton of support within the community. People who didn’t feel empowered in the past to participate in meetings, are now showing up. Faeries who left the organization years ago, frustrated with the membership policy, are now slowly making their way back into the process. Even folks who are tentative about the changes are remaining engaged. That engagement looks like meeting participation, stepping up our facilitation skills and improving our consensus process. I am delighted. And yet, as we define our membership based on this one concept, the question still remains, “what is a Radical Faerie?”

The compiled volume of Nomenus Talks to the IRS works to define faerie for the federal government. The book consists of the paperwork filed with the IRS so that Nomenus could be recognized as a non-profit church and be afforded the tax exemption status that we now enjoy. This, some 250 pages of information, lays out a lot of the practices of the church, ideas and tenets that we believe in, and ways in which we practice through circles and gatherings. But these documents were created over 20 decades ago. They are a place to start, however we have evolved as a tribe over the decades. How do we define faerie for us now?

Another amazing document came out of this June’s Great Circle. We are calling it The Seeds of Unity. It is a living document work in progress and yet already makes me cry when I read it. The Seeds of Unity attempts to describe what we as a community hold as common values of Radical Faerie. It has nine points; Radical Faerie, Radical Queer Empowerment, Radical Relationship, Radical Sex, Radical Spirit, Radical Sanctuary, Radical Healing, Radical Vision, and Radical Change. This document celebrates the diversity that exists within Radical Faerie while honoring the faggot roots of the movement. It brings in the important concepts of subjectSUBJECT consciousness, sex magic, and healing. The Seeds of Unity reminds us why we do what we do, to live in better relation, to honor Spirit, and to create a better world for our descendants, the young fae of the future.

Link to Seeds of Unity: nomenus.wikispaces.com/ Seeds+of+Unity. w

FAEposium 3 Our Next Frontier

Interview by Levi King

Levi King sat down with Evie Erdmann to discuss the upcoming FAEposium.

LK: What was the genesis of FAEposium, and what’s your connection to it?

EE: It was originally conceived by Ganesh, Lapis Luxury, and Jimmy Rose as the final meeting of the Quest of the Radical Crosspollinators (QRC). It was the intention of the QRC to travel the states attending as many gatherings as possible and to then have a meeting at the end of the year to present their experiences. It morphed into the FAEposium to allow others to speak their stories and have a more diverse event with music, performance and workshops. The first FAEposium was held at Million Fishes Gallery in San Francisco in November 2008. It was organized by Ganesh and produced with a lot of help from Sister Soami, 3, Sister Bambi, and other faeries. At first it was such a new concept for the faeries and they were short on people. I was passing through San Francisco and ran into Ganesh. He got me excited about the project and I offered to help. Initially I was just helping in the kitchen, and running food-related errands. But, by the end of the event, I was helping with some of the workshops, door, and cleanup.

LK: How is FAEposium different from other Gatherings?

EE: FAEposium is primarily focused on workshops which are just a small part of gatherings. In a regular gathering we do so much—we cook together, we sleep together, we love, we communicate, and we have heart circles. But because we’re spending so much time in the joy of being together I feel that real sharing of life experiences in groups gets missed.

FAEposium is the place for that. It’s a more structured, scheduled, even professional, event. It sounds strange to say faerie gathering and structured in the same sentence, but we did just that.

One thing we learned from FAEposium 2 was that people didn’t want a set way to have a workshop, which is something I pushed for. Some people wanted it to be more fluid. So Ganesh proposed we have one room available every hour for people to “just create.” They could create music, touch, or something inspired from another workshop. In addition the unscheduled space allowed someone

to show up and put on a workshop without having submitted a proposal. So yes, there’s structure but it’s also free-form. We really want to ensure we honor that.

Another difference is that gathering space is 24/7. FAEposium happens in rented space, which imposes time structure, capacity limits, and other restrictions.

I guess I see the FAEposium as being an umbrella for everybody to come under and share their experiences.

LK: Are there any workshops that you’d personally like to see?

EE: As an organizer, I’d like to remain neutral. Having said that, two workshops on faerie history were well received. Ganesh did the early years of the Radical Faeries, “The Emergence,” and Don Kilhefner did a workshop called “The Vision” about the first Radical Faerie gathering. I attended “The Vision,” and it was amazing. Don is well spoken, and I enjoyed listening about our history. These presentations had lots of positive feedback. Speaking of which, feedback forms will be available to presenters to hand out if they wish.

The theme this year is “Our Next Frontier.” It’s a broad outline. And just like all gatherings, FAEposium is what you make it. All we do is find the location, do some scheduling, and encourage people to be creative. This allows people to step up with their passions, to teach, and to share, whatever it may be. Whether it’s gender and the faeries, what it’s like to be on the fringes of society, or the Zen of Queer Automotive Maintenance!

LK: Anything else you’d like to add?

EE: I would love to thank everyone who has helped make FAEposium a recurring success. There are so many people deserving recognition that it’s difficult to name them all. I do really want to thank Ganesh for working so hard manifesting this event for the community. He took something he was passionate about and gifted it to the community. I, for one, honor that gift.

To volunteer or submit workshop proposals contact Evie at everdmann@cox.net or go to Faeposium.org. See you November 8th-11th in Portland, Oregon! w

Christopher Bram

Interview by Franklin Abbott

After reading Christopher Bram’s Eminent Outlaws, I became curious about how he was doing with the criticism of the book. Eminent Outlaws is a literary social history of how gayness came into print and on to the stage through the late forties until now. Chris gives us the dish on the grand dames of gaylit from Vidal and Capote, Baldwin and Isherwood to Maupin and White, Kramer and Kushner. He connects lots of dots. He also reviews the reviews, many full of venom. Before queer was legal, authors who wrote on the subject were subject to vicious attacks. Eminent Outlaws has received mixed reviews. Alas, we can be just as awful with each other as the homophobic pundits of the fifties and sixties.

Lucky for me Frank

Pizzoli interviewed Chris in person and his excellent interview is available online in the Lambda Literary Review: www. lambdaliterary.org/ features/07/11/christopher-bram-charting-the-outlaws/. The heavy lifting being so aptly done, I could ply Chris with some whimsical questions. Born and raised in Virginia, Chris has made New York City his home since 1978. Before he wrote Eminent Outlaws he wrote nine novels. He is most famous for his novel Father of Frankenstein which was made into a movie he co-wrote the screenplay for Gods and Monsters, starring Sir Ian McKellen, Brendan Fraser and Lynn Redgrave. His favorite character, however, resides in his novel The Notorious Dr. August. For more on Chris visit his website: www. christopherbram.com .

Urgent Enqueeries to Christopher Bram

How did you come to know yourself as a queer

person/a faery child/a gay man?

Oh, probably just from wanting to see other boys naked in the locker room in high school or on camping trips with the Boy Scouts. There was something magical and electric about them, long before I knew that I could touch or hug those bodies. Otherwise I lacked most of the alleged gay “markers.” I wasn’t interested in women’s clothes or men’s clothes or pop music or good grooming. I was a nerdy, bookish science geek who loved to read about military history. Or no, there was one giveaway sign, only I didn’t understand it until long after the fact: I loved Broadway show tunes. I was probably the only morning paperboy in Virginia who could be heard singing Rodgers and Hammerstein while he delivered the paper at five o’clock in the morning. (I’m lucky nobody called the police. I was a terrible singer as a kid. I still am terrible.)

Which of your fictional characters have you been most in love with?

That’s easy: Augustus Fitzwilliam Boyd, aka Dr. August, the spiritualist piano player who narrates The Notorious Doctor August: His Real Life And Crimes. He has many different sides, and many different experiences, living from the Civil War to the 1920s. And he has so much love in him. He loves his close friend Isaac, an ex-slave, first as a friend, then sexually, then as a friend again. He unwisely loves a sad teenager with disastrous results. He selflessly loves Isaac’s family in the end, especially his nephew Tristan. He’s a character I enjoyed living with from his adolescence to his old age. I miss writing about him.

Historical?

There are so many figures from history, big and small, that I fall in love with. It’s hard to choose one. But this month I’ll say Christopher Isherwood, who is easily my favorite eminent outlaw. He was smart, open, curious, and intensely sexual. He is wonderfully frank in his diaries and memoirs, sharing everything from his religious doubts to his political intuitions to the taste of an ex-boyfriend’s anus. He always tells himself (and us) the truth: when he’s fighting with his lover Don Bachardy and says at one point he hates him, he adds, “But that’s just on the surface. Underneath I love as much as ever.”

Have you slept with Sir Ian, Brendon, or Lynn Redgrave and if so how was it?

Alas, no. It would’ve been fun to sleep with all three, although I confess Lynn would be my first choice. That’s because my favorite part about sex is talking afterwards, and I think Lynn would have the best stories: about her sister Vanessa, their father, Michael Redgrave, and her various co-stars, including Alan Bates and Geoffrey Rush. (I regret that I’ve never seen Ian McKellen naked, although I have seen him in grey flannel pajamas.)

You write about the poison pen, have you discovered an antidote?

Oh yes, those mysterious mean notes from anonymous strangers. Luckily there aren’t very many poison pen writers in the world and I’ve been able to identify mine. That makes it easier to handle. There’s no antidote except to make jokes about them. I trust—I hope—that my reputation as a nice guy protects me, that anyone told by strangers that I’m badmouthing them behind their backs will know it’s a lie. (The gay literary world is so small that we all eventually know each other. Lord knows how somebody famous, like Stephen King, handles this.)

What is it about being a writer that brings you big joy?

I enjoy seeing my name in print, of course, and I love meeting readers and hearing that I’ve connected with them. But I confess that my biggest joy is the selfish one of simply putting things down on paper, on creating or recreating private experiences in words. It’s an exciting to invent something out of nothing as it is to recapture a real scene or image or memory. It doesn’t hurt that I’m almost always smarter on the page than I am in real life.

What is your favorite James Broughton film?*

I confess that the only Broughton film I know is

his most famous, The Bed, which I love. I stumbled upon it in college at a program of short films (I think at the Biograph in Richmond). It was great to see so many attractive naked men and women, but better still that the lovers included a gay couple with all the straight ones. He was so matter-of-fact about it. I didn’t learn about his own sexuality until years later.

Which voices do you know so well you can play them on the jukebox in your imagination?

Hmm. Interesting question. I love music and I love singers, but I don’t have a precise audio memory. I suppose Oliver Sacks has an explanation or phrase for this, but my audio memory tends to be more abstract. Okay, I can hear some of Bille Holliday’s phrasing in my head or the phrasing of Julie Andrews, but I can’t replay their songs in my head, which I understand some people can do. My boyfriend, who’s a gifted mimic, reports that he can sometimes hear favorite voices in his head, but it’s

a gift that I lack. I’m a poor mimic as well. I like to think I can compensate in my use of words. I can’t record but I can create. w

Excerpt from The Notorious Dr. August:

“Life is eternal, but lives are short. Immortality is my rock as well as my bread and butter. Yet I still love the mortal, the temporal, the physical—the luxuriant overcoat of the Oversoul. My own coat is in tatters, but I remain inordinately fond of it. As my sojourn here approaches its end, my Metaphysicals suggest that I record a few scenes from my time among naifs and knaves, gods and ghosts. And with the friend whom I loved for sixty years. Loved yet never understood. Perhaps I can begin to understand him now that he is dead. A message from the other side assures us that he has departed the world, this time for good. Very well, then. I was born. In 1850 in New York. I end my days in the city where I began, a fine irony for someone who has been out in the world and beyond. But we’re in another part of that city, and a whole new century. When I was a boy, this was a mere village north of town, a handful of steeples and rooftops visible across the meadows from the promenade atop the high walls of the old reservoir at Forty-Second Street. Now Harlem is a city within the city, a realm of squealing children and fussing mothers by day, laughing men, braying autos, and raucous new music by night. I like this music, loose, humorous grab bags of mood and melody performed by self-made royalties: King Oliver, Duke Ellington, Prince Jazz. It pours from the clubs when you walk me through the raccoonfurred crowds of Lennox Avenue on snowy evenings, a bald white crow on your tolerant, guiding arm, or insinuates itself through the ether into a radio cabinet in our snug little room outside time.”

And here’s one on Isherwood from Eminent Outlaws:

“Isherwood and Bachardy could both be terribly jealous. ‘When I suffer, I suffer like a dumb animal,’ Isherwood wrote in his diary. But extramarital sex was also an expression of larger dissatisfactions in their life. Bachardy’s painting was going badly—he was confident about his drawing but not his painting; he blamed his partner when he couldn’t work. And Isherwood’s writing was going badly, too. After the disappointment of Down There On A Visit, he decided to disguise his gay experience in his next

book, The Englishwoman, the story of an English war bride living unhappily in California and wanting to return to England. But the bit of secret autobiography—he didn’t know if he and Bachardy would stay together—wasn’t enough to bring the book to life. He felt himself floundering again. Like many quarreling couples, they remained each other’s best confidante, even when the problem being discussed was the listener. One day at the beach Isherwood complained to Bachardy that the new book was slipping away. Bachardy asked what he really wanted it to be about. Isherwood told him. ‘And in no time at all the blindingly simple truth was revealed that the book isn’t about the Englishwoman but about the Englishman—me,’ Isherwood recorded in his diary. Bachardy suggested he give this woman’s problems to someone more like himself, a middle-aged gay man. Isherwood did not hesitate, despite the bad reception of Down There. He immediately went back to his manuscript, retitled it The Englishman, and began again. Indirection hadn’t protected him on the last book: he might as well go all the way. He must tell the truth or be silent. Bachardy would later suggest a new title: A Single Man.”

Telling Stories by the Fire (in Moonlight)

by Dharma

The Fire in Moonlight: Stories from the Radical Faeries

. Edited by Mark Thompson. Associate Editors Richard Neely, and Bo Young. Foreward by Will Roscoe. White Crane Books, 2011. 309pp, $25

Here’show bad this book could’ve been: It could have been by one person. It could have been filled with dates, facts, and figures, all academically crosschecked and footnoted. It could have been cynical—or, at the other extreme, hopelessly idealistic, with extremely irritating paeans to all that is wonderful, good, and revolutionary about the Radical Faeries. It could have pretended that there is only one story to tell.

Sometimes it’s better to see what isn’t there, rather than merely what is.

Now, what is there, in The Fire in Moonlight: Stories from the Radical Faeries, is also pretty good, sometimes really good. Spotty, sometimes repetitive, and definitely too heavy on white, cisgender men like me. But often revelatory, and multivocal, and with just enough juicy gossip historical detail to teach faeries a thing or two about their history.

Or histories. Like Rashomon (or, as I recall, a certain episode of Diff’rent Strokes), The Fire in Moonlight doesn’t try to tell the Authoritative Story about how the Radical Faeries came to be, instead letting its multiple authors tell the tale from different perspectives. The broad strokes are all there: Harry Hay, 1979, mud. But the different emphases and angles, some seen with rose-colored glasses and some with rings under their eyes, remind us that there is no canonical story of the faeries, only different currents which came together, didn’t jell, then sort of jelled, then spread and diffused and congealed.

There are also, thank goddess, no heroes here. Can we just say it clearly? Harry Hay often seems like a jerk. A visionary, to be sure, but also someone who was really difficult to work with. Of course, we say that about all our leaders, it’s one of the risks of trying to accomplish anything in a community made up of anti-authoritarian freaks who don’t want to be told what to do. But I’ve also noticed, in some fae circles, a kind of hushed reverence toward Hay and his cohort, especially as we have recently celebrated what would have been his hundredth birthday. Some of the origin myths in The Fire in Moon-

light are helpful reminders of the far messier reality. Personally, as someone who’s done a fair share of queer organizing (oxymoron alert?) over the years, The Fire in Moonlight is also inspiring. I loved reading that Harry Hay’s “Circle of Loving Companions” at one time consisted of exactly two people, i.e. Hay and his partner, John Burnside. And how, prior to that iconic 1979 gathering, there were many cross-currents of faerie and proto-faerie circles—just as today, there’s Short Mountain, and then there’s IDA, and then there’s this other place and that other group. It’s really important, I think, for us to know our history—but not so that we can idolize it and compare ourselves unfavorably with those who have gone before. Quite the contrary. We honor our ancestors by humanizing them, and empower ourselves by recognizing that their circumstances were not so different from our own.

But The Fire in Moonlight is not only communal history; it’s also personal. Many faes well known to our community, and many more who are not, share their personal tales of awakening (spiritual, sexual, or hopefully a combination of the two) at gatherings, rituals, or parties. Many bitch and moan. And while reading too many of these personal narratives tended to flatten them out—ugh, yet another transformative blowjob? really?—reading just one or two at a time can be quite moving. The magic one hears about sometimes…it does transform us, and slowly, over time, ripples outward, into the many faerie-inspired artworks and actions that would not have happened were it not for the crucible of faerie space. Some of what we do is—let’s be honest—selfserving. But much of it creates much-needed change in the world.

Now, for a tribe persecuted for hundreds of years, let me not judge those who focus on self-care and self-love. If all radical faeries did was gather, fuck and celebrate, that, in itself, would be an important middle finger flipped at the forces of oppression. But for those interested in deepening and strengthening their experiences in faerie space, resources like The Fire in Moonlight are immensely valuable. This book tells you who has gone before, how we got here, and where this magic might take us in the future. Borrow it, lend it, read it for yourself. w

Fukt 2 Start With: Short Stories and Broken Werd

Review by Tyler Malone

Ina world where transsexuals are as common as streetlights, Walt Cessna makes William S. Burroughs look like Pat Robertson’s 1992 speech at the Republican National Convention. In the sixteen stories that comprise Fukt 2 Start With: Short Stories & Broken Werd a reader slums it through a world rotten with people poisoned by their own debauchery and excess, straight into their very bones and blood. The collection’s characters are only responsible for themselves, but the world they have submerged themselves into will cradle their addictions and habits, and we, as readers, are captivated by their suicides spelled out on white pages.

The Fukt stories are about what we do in our cities and to ourselves, not what they do to us or what’s done to us. If Holden Caulfield had starting dropping MDMA, he and his observations would fit right into the book’s literary world, which is the most perverse picaresque tale I have read in a long, long time. To the book’s credit, as well as to a chaste reader’s chagrin, it delves and dwells in delinquent psychology. From kid to a Special K. fiend, to total

queer to questioning one’s own sexuality, such as in “Fukt 2 Start With,” where a narrator is visually lured to a woman, against his own instincts, who is the “walking embodiment of semen depletion.” (321) Even the excess is unsure of itself, especially when compared to “The Is Not A Love Story” where incest is as normal as any other relation any of these characters are capable of having.

“Guilty by Admission” is a story which sets the AIDS epidemic as a backdrop for Cessna’s collection, which is actually a contribution to those who didn’t see the virus take the shape of a “plague” as it’s called later in the book. A boy named Levi puts a pimply face to those afflicted, as well as the vile ways the disease spread through prostituted sex—all for his love of music. For his love of the song. For a collection falling under the critical banner of “queer theory” and written by a man writing about his own experiences, the stories in the collection feature numerous female characters, as well; each is a beautifully destroyed and hood rattish as the world around them will allow them to be, such as in “Head

Photograph courtesy of Walt Cessna

in a Hello Kitty Bag,” which is where I learned what happens to a man when they give their special lady friend strawberry-flavored douche for Valentine’s Day.

Although the cast of characters are unethical and immoral beasts out of cages, there are no villains in the stories, each person is a victim of themselves— the users and the used make up Cessna’s world. The closer to villainy they get, the campier they are, even a pissing-drinking pedophile named Michael who was “Smiling like Cheshire Cat and wearing a pair of Power Ranger pajamas with the feet attached and the ass cut out. Silver sequins were plastered over his shaved eyebrows and a demented, clown-like mouth was painted on in bright red lipstick. He clutched a worn-looking, stuffed Smurf doll and held a rubber novelty axe which he kept hitting people over the head with.”

His story, “Dinner with Michael,” is a PG Wodehouse story, with names like club Slimelight and a transvestite named Olestra Lucille Stools, as well as a man named Spam Goodwin. But the whimsy

stops there. The title character also keeps a posse of twelve-year-olds tweaked on ketamine so they’re always willing and accessible. Still, through all his criminal activity he is nothing but a product and not a prophet of future kings of the streets and rave scenes.

Years of photography have given Walt Cessna great, observant eyes, and he uses them well in his stories. There’s no light at the end of any tunnel, but it’s a colorful trip along the way. Since I began with a sentence of pure but honest hyperbole, I’ll end with one. Walt Cessna keeps the bleakness of Cormac McCarthy, sets it on concrete, sprinkles it with Angel dust, and gives life to it with blood the color of bar light neon.

To order the print version of FUKT http://www. desperanto.com/fukt.html. Also available in Kindle, Nook & Ipad version. On sale @ Amazon for $12.99 with free wireless delivery http://www.amazon.com/ Fukt-Start-With-Stories-ebook/dp/B007Z3QMQG/ ref=tmm_kin_title_popover. w

Sisters Attend a Prayer Vigil at St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco

by Sister Soami

My most memorable outing with Sr. Rose (aka Boom Boom) was a solidarity march and vigil for the people of El Salvador and our martyred sisters held at St. Mary’s. I think it was in December 1980, shortly after Srs Ita, Maura, Dorothy and Jean had been raped and murdered. As we walked to the Cathedral in our habits, Jack spied an antlered deer head just tossed in the bushes of an apartment building nearby…so of course he carried it in procession. A traditional nine day Novena Votive candle held on its head between the horns.

Some of the organizers were alarmed and did not know who we two nuns were; and it took the affirming protection of other lesbian and gay progressives—I remember Hank Wilson, Ben Gardiner and Hal Offen—there to keep us from being isolated out of the march. Jack cracked no jokes that night and we stayed prayerful and sat in the pews surrounded by so many other RC sisters and exchanged greetings of peace at the appropriate juncture in the service.

In the blush of my newly discovered radical faerie nature, I felt that taxidermied buck head gave potent and symbolic presence to our pagan nun roots and we heard Fag Nun Assunta Femia whisper in our ears, “...two, four, six, eight/ there is no catholic priest who’s strait/ three, five, seven, nine/ protestant preacher, fascist mind...”

Just a week or two before on the first anniversary of Harvey Milk and George Moscone’s assassinations we Sisters delivered a Litany of Empowerment and Justice for All at the remembrance rally at City Hall after a moving candle light procession from the Castro.

This week I have been moved by those late life interviews Jack gave on The Drag Show in ‘09 and in the just published article of the Gay Buddhist Fellowship. Both so convey Jack’s ability to impart enlightenment and humor in the causes of social justice and spiritual liberation. Rest in Peace, My Dear SisterBrother. w

Sister Boom Boom

(February 21, 1955 - August 5, 2012)

Sr. Rose of the Bloody Stains of the Sacred Robes of Jesus (Jack Fertig)

OnAugust 5, 2012 at 9:30 PM, Sister Boom Boom (Jack Fertig) succumbed to liver cancer in the loving presence of his partner Elias Trevino and dogs, Chloe and Perry. Jack was also known to many as teacher, astrologer, artist, and a devout and faithful scholar of Islam.

Sister Boom Boom was a key Queer pioneer who took Queer Consciousness to the mainstream. In 1982, Sister Boom Boom nearly won a Board of Supervisors seat by running a uniquely San Francisco campaign of radical politics and nun drag. She won 23,124 votes with her occupation listed as “Nun of the Above.” A year later, Boom Boom ran for the 1983 mayoral race against incumbent Dianne Feinstein and, as a result, San Francisco passed a law that requires candidates to only use their legal names on the ballot. This law is often referred to as the “Sister Boom Boom” law.

Due to internal disputes, Jack Fertig broke from the Sisters in 1985. Jack Fertig went on to pursue his Divine calling and became an award-winning astrologer and respected Queer Muslim activist. He was also an avid organizer in the leather and sober communities. Cleve Jones, AIDS activist and creator

of the NAMES Project AIDS Quilt, remembers Sister Boom Boom as a “dear friend” and a “fierce advocate for the poor and immigrant communities.”

In 2009, a mysterious figure in a burqa appeared at the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence 30th Anniversary Exhibition at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The black silhouette revealed herself as “Sister Boom Boom XXX.” When asked about the name change in a 2010 interview, Sister explained, “Sister Boom Boom is my slave name. Now that I’m Muslim, I’m Boom Boom XXX!” Since the 30th anniversary, Sister Boom Boom XXX had started to reconnect with the Sisters at socials and select public events. Earlier this year, Sister Boom Boom spoke on a “Sister Spirituality” panel for San Francisco’s Gay Buddhist Fellowship. This would be her last event in habit.

Sister Boom Boom XXX, legendary change maker and hot ginger, joins our Nuns of the Above. We honor the amazing Queer power that manifested as Sister Boom Boom and we will ensure our Sister’s legacy is not forgotten. In lieu of gifts or flowers, please donate to Grateful Dogs Rescue or LYRIC for LGBTQ Youth. w

Photograph by Jean-Baptiste Carhaix, “Boom Boom against the red wall, 1984”

Prison Pages

Edited by Myrlin

Andif I could find it I would include a picture of Sherriff Joe Arpajo’s Tent Prison. The longer I work with the Brothers Behind Bars Program the more disgusted I become. As the quote in the picture at the right states: A majority of all those incarcerated have committed nonviolent offenses. Some are held for as little as possession of $5.00 of marijuana. It makes no sense at all. From almost the outset, RFD Magazine has held space for our brothers behind bars, first printing inmate ads in the magazine and now helping support the publication of the Brothers Behind Bars (BBB) list coming out at the same time as the magazine issues. Each list has approximately 300 ads plus samples of art, poetry and prose. We request a donation of $3.00 to $10.00 per issue with requests being sent to BBB, PO Box 68, Liberty, TN 37095. Take a chance and order a list and get to meet some very wonderful and talented people who could use your support.

Since the release of the Summer Issue, I have received on average ten letters a day from inmates, many expressing their thanks for the service afforded them by RFD Magazine and BBB. I am pleased to include parts of several letters I have received indicating their gratitude.

—From: Steven Sanders #231951, ASPC-Eyman, Meadows 9-C-25, PO Box 3300, Florence, AZ 85132-3300

Dear Harry and all of you at BBB. Thank you for your lovely Pen-Pal Book. I have spent up to $40.00 on other pen pal services and not gotten the number of responses I get from your free or low cost ads. I tell all my friends and pen-pals about you guys. I appreciate your many acts of kindness. You guys are so cool. Some other services don’t respond at all.

—From: Michael Orr #13778-058, USP ABX, PO Box 8500, Florence, CO 81226

I received the print out of the ads, thank you. I truly do appreciate it. This is the first service I’ve found that not only responds to inmates but also provides a guidance for those of us who have a desire to seek something beyond these walls.

—From: Steven Martin #256601, 8607 S.E. Flower Mound Road, Lawton, OK 73501

Thank you for your cooperation with us inmates who are indigent and can’t afford stuff because of our financial situations. Myrlin, you don’t know how grateful I am (personally) for your services allowing a free ad placement and copy of the list. It’s a huge help to me and others like me. So thank you!!

Some of the men you will meet in BBB.

David Cushman (TX)

Charles Holmes (FL) Timothy Bell (TX) Michael Orr (CO)

Overcrowding (who needs the gym) Group counseling session Privatization for profit

—From: Bucky Eddy Jones E-38291, B1-5-005, CSATF/State Prison at Corcoran, PO Box 5248, Corcoran, CA 93212

Dear Sister Myrlin, Well, I don’t know if you remember ME, but I certainly think of you all the time!! Through you I found a small circle of friends who share thoughts, ideas, goals, dreams, wishes and wants. We also share our fears, phobias, pains, troubles, trials and tribulations. Myrlin if it weren’t for you and Brothers Behind Bars I’d still be sitting here being by myself (alone by myself). Thank you, thank you, thank you Sister Myrlin. You saved my life! Really

It’s one thing doing time, it’s a learned skill. But usually one can pick who they’d do that time with. Prior to these idiots putting me BACK in a dorm (where I was brutally and repeatedly raped; both ass and mouth). I have nothing in common with 100% of the guys here. THEY ALL are career criminals.

If I’m not at work, I’m seated on my bunk, but now, I’m seated on my bunk WRITING LETTERS!!! Yea! Thank you Sis!

—From: Jeremy D Craft, #1626852, William P. Clements Unit, 9601 Spur 591, Amarillo, TX 791079601

Harry, I want to say thanks for giving me the opportunity to meet new people through your publication. Also, I want to say thanks for your condolences in regards to my mother’s death. It seems like everything has been moving at a slow pace. I never knew that being alone would hurt this bad. I’ve cried more since I’ve been in here than I have in my whole life. I pray and pray for God to brings someone special into my life, but it seems as if my prayers are being ignored. Maybe I’m being punished for the bad things that I did in my past. I don’t know. I guess I’m just an

emotional wreck right now. I may spend the rest of my life in this place for a crime that I honestly didn’t commit, and on top of that I’m still alone.

See I believe that life is a journey that sometimes leads us through rough places. But the walk becomes so much easier when we travel beside one another. That way we can reach out and find help when we need someone to lean on. It doesn’t matter whose turn it may be, or, how much time it will take until the path becomes smooth again. All that does matter is that we keep walking side by side wherever the road may lead us. . .

—From: Mark Alocheny, HD 6200, SCi Cresson, PO Box A, Cresson, PA 16699-0001

Hi, this is Mark. I want to first express my thanks for including me on your Summer 2012 pen-pal list. I also want to say that as a person you have been outstanding in contacting me back with the questions about your service I had. For people/organizations like yourself to take the time to respond so fast and accurately to men like myself is far and few between. So I want to say thank you again! Now I was really hoping you could help me with something. I am having a problem in that I feel that my prison library is somewhat discriminative against having any gay or homosexual literature. So I was wondering if there is an up to day list of such literature you could recommend.

INMATE ART: Imagine opening a piece of mail to find a beautiful drawing in pencil or color ink. Then imagine receiving not just one piece but many. The talent wasted is just too much to contemplate. I am happy that RFD now has color ink so you can enjoy a bit of the beauty. Most are in original 8X11 format. w

Michael Jensen (FL) James Stewart (OK)

What

Find out in POET WRANGLER. “Marvin R. Hiemstra is our 21st Century Whitman, blowing ‘tenderly in the ear of the Universe.’ ” —David Alpaugh $15.95 www.TwoHarborsPress.com or www.drollmarv.com

Advertise in RFD It really helps keep this magazine in production! We offer affordable rates and a growing subscriber base. If you have questions about advertising, please contact Bambi at submissions@rfdmag.org or visit our website at www.rfdmag.org/advertise.php.

kind of socks does a gay poet wear?

The Destiny Faeries are raising $25,000 for a solar system to pump the well and light the dining hall.

Keep your eyes open for Faerie Home Companion: A Ribald Radio Revelry, a fund-raiser stage show presenting over the next 6 months.

Donations accepted via PayPal, Network for Good, and checks to Destiny. Visit www.faeriecampdestiny.org for more information and to follow Faerie Home Companion.

Issue 153 / Spring 2013 GIVING

Submission Deadline: January 21, 2013 • Submissions upload: www.rfdmag.org/upload

The Spring 2013 issue of RFD will focus on ways which we give as a community. We have a legacy of providing for each other and we’ve all benefited from the bounty of the gifts of others. Help us celebrate this ideal within our culture which has it’s roots in the tradition of “more if you can, less if you can’t no one turned away for lack of funds”. The roots of which go back to the Faggots and Class Struggle Conference in 1976 and probably before.

And we also ask people to explore ways in which giving has given way to the expectation of receiving without a lot of exploration into ways of reciprocating. We’re all aware of how we give, we get, it all comes around again. But we’ve also experienced feeling less than appreciated by people receiving our gifts and we’ve usually been aware that

sometimes, you can’t expect anything in return. But it’s led to a moral question: can someone use the maxim of “less if you can’t” to mean “give nothing?” It’s a challenge to our community to look at what some folks candidly call the “vulture culture” or in more polite ways we ask ourselves “Give As You Are Able But Always Give Something”.

In that vein we’re also looking for listings and updates from the Faerie tribes about upcoming events and news about their community. We also welcome other communities to share their upcoming events and news.

Upload articles and artwork at www.rfdmag.org/upload—as always we welcome artwork, photos and poetry in addition to articles and stories. The deadline for this issue is January 21, 2013.

*From Webster’s Dictionary, 1877

Photo: Marcia Rubin

a reader created gay quarterly celebrating queer diversity