RFD 194 Summer 2023

Number 194 Summer 2023 $11.95

RAINBOW FLAG RFD 194 Summer 2023

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Issue 195 / Fall 2023

QUEER MENTAL HEALTH Submission Deadline: August 15, 2023 www.rfdmag.org/upload

Our queer selves have always been weighed against the idea of being unstable, unwell, mad. Some of that has always been the projection of a heteronormative culture seeking to control our lives by medicalizing our lived experiences. But we also face the challenge of oppression, the difficulty of living in the “crazy world” and some of us in reality face mental health challenges not because of who we are but merely “because.”

unknowing and often unique to that person in a given moment, a period of one’s life or as part of one’s life journey.

Please consider sharing your stories and resources for helping our community be more out about their emotional and psychic health.

We’re asking our readers to consider the ways we face mental health issues in our GLBTQ community. We’ve come a long way from being oppressed because of mental health professionals labeling us as “sick” but now we make up a piece of the mental health and helping professions in a more holistic way. We have come to understand our mental health is actually important and that we at times need support—from friends and family, work places, and mostly deeply ourselves.

So we’re asking readers to consider sharing stories about yourselves as people facing mental health issues, people working to help people facing challenges as well as friends and partners who’ve dealth with someone in their lives facing mental health issues.

The language of mental health is couched in a lot of negative language and we’re also hoping to learn ways of speaking about issues like depression, emotional trauma, suicidal thought as way of being more gentle to ourselves in facing something that in often intangible, 2

RFD 194 Summer 2023 Image (cropped): David Bushnell, Ken Westover and Roger Kornberg, Stanford University via Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC 2.0).

Rainbow Flag Dirigible Vol 49 No 4 #194 Summer 2023

Between the Lines As we enter another summer, we welcome you to enjoy this issue celebrating the Rainbow Flag. With all of its overuse and commercialization the Rainbow Flag is still a powerful symbol of unity. The flag itself has seen many permutations but that reflects the shifts in the “rainbow” that we are. We hope you enjoy the stories and poetry in this issue which reflect the rainbow vibe.

As we enter Pride month in most of the world, we hope people are able to celebrate as well as organize to protect our rainbow rights as we face Right-Wing backlash. It urges us to see the collective power of organizing as we show our pride.

Speaking of pride, we’re still seeking folks help in celebrating RFD’s fifty year publishing year in 2024. If you are able to help out with reading and selecting prose, poetry and art from our fifty-year legacy for inclusion in a book, please be in touch with Rosie at houseofdelicious@gmail.com.

As always, we appreciate you, our dear readers, for your input, submissions of material and donations that come as part of your subscription or donating to support the online version of RFD, which appears on our website—www.rfdmag.org. We really do appreciate your ideas for upcoming themes as your ideas become a way of communicating to the rest of the community.

Send theme ideas to us at submissions@rfdmag.org.

Okay, take a sip of your lemonade and enjoy this issue!

With vigor and blue skies from New England —the RFD Collective

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Submission Deadlines Fall–August 15, 2023 Winter–November 15, 2023

Production

Managing Editor: Bambi Gauthier Production Editor: Matt Bucy

See inside covers for themes and specifics.

Visual Contributors Inside This Issue Artwork not directly associated with an article.

For advertising, subscriptions, back issues and other information visit www.rfdmag.org. To read online visit www.issuu.com/rfmag.

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# 0149709X) is published quarterly for $25 a year by RFD Press, PMB 329, 351 Pleasant St., Ste B, Northampton, MA 01060-3998. Postmaster: Send address changes to RFD Press, PMB 329, 351 Pleasant St., Ste B, Northampton, MA 01060-3998. Non-profit tax exempt #62-1723644, a function of RFD Press, Inc., with office of registration at 231 Ten Penny Rd., Woodbury, TN 37190. RFD Cover Price: $11.95.

A regular subscription is the least expensive way to receive RFD four times a year. First class mailed issues will be forwarded. Others will not. Send address changes to submissions@rfdmag.org or to our Northampton, MA address. Copyright © RFD Press, Inc. 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.

"Africa Loves Asia" by Artboydancing

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Artboydancing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Back Cover, 2, 6, 29 Michael Mitchell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Daydream.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19, 24 Patrick Hughes.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Richard Vyse.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20, 40, 44, 49 EGGMAN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Jonny on the Spot.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 David Carter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

CONTENTS Announcements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Rainbow Flag Origin Stories. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . August Bernadicou . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 How I Feel When I See the Flag . . . . . . . . . . . . Gordon Binder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 The First Rainbow Flag in U.N. Plaza for the Gay Pride Parade. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Toby Johnson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Holi Festival 2023 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Notre Dame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Our First Flag. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barry/Dynaton. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Rainbow Roads. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Raya Finkle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 On the Greyhound to Gallup. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . D. Scott Humphries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Refraction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Andre Le Mont Wilson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Rainbow, Rainbow, Rainbow. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Steven Cordova . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 The Big Bang. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . J.R. Kangas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Oz and Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Alan Sugar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 What Never Was One. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Todd H. C. Fischer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Shoplifting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Maytag Dishwasher. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Sebastian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michael Loren Butkovich. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Queer Archiving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bambi Gauthier. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 RFD Books for Sale. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

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Call for Submissions Children of Lazarus: Voices of the “Forgotten Generation” of Long-Term AIDS Survivors In 1996 the miracle the antiviral three-drug cocktail changed the diagnosis of AIDS from a guaranteed death sentence to a chronic manageable disease for those afflicted. Most people assumed there were no survivors. Others have preferred to treat the AIDS epidemic as a terrible chapter in history best forgotten.

In fact, some of us early PWA’s (persons with AIDS) have survived that death sentence. Over time we have been finding each other. Support groups have emerged. The consequences of long-term survivorship have impacted us physically, emotionally, socially, and spiritually. Professionals in the HIV healthcare system, in the legal system, and allies of people living with HIV are celebrated today, even as long-term survivors are rendered invisible. As a

consequence of our current invisibility, historians have labeled us the “forgotten generation” of AIDS survivors.

This is a call for submissions of personal stories of long-term AIDS survivors. For the purposes of this book, “long-term” is defined as those diagnosed before 1996, as “pre-highly active antiretroviral therapy” survivors. This book will be published by Bearskin Lodge Press (www.bearskinlodgepress.com). Minimum word count is 1500 words. There is no maximum word count. Original essays are encouraged. Previously published essays are also acceptable, provided the author secures reprint permission. Writers will receive a contributor’s copy of the book. Essays may be submitted in WORD or PDF format. Deadline for submissions is December 31, 2023. Email inquiries and submissions to the editor Les K. Wright at bearskinlodgepress@gmail.com.

Sex Magick Workshops 2023 www.faeriesexmagick.org open your sexuality beyond society's borders Consider these questions: How can I extend the limits of intimacy with my community? Does sex constrain or expand my relationships with men? How can I better integrate sexual play and my desires into my intimate relationships? Does recreational sex diminish my capacity for intimacy in

a committed relationship? How does the prevailing society’s prudishness dampen and undermine the intimacy in my relationships? How does my sexuality and my spirituality inter-relate? Are my sexual and my spiritual aspects one in the same?

September 9-16

September 30-October 7

Blue Heron Farm, Upstate New York

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Folleterre, France

Richard Price Fifty-Year Retrospective Richard Price is having an opening reception and art sale at The Story Garage, 1875 Niagara St., Buffalo, NY 14207 on Saturday, July 8, 2023,

12–4pm. The show runs until July 22, 2023.

Gallery hours Fridays 12–6 pm and Saturdays 12–4 pm.

From top-left: Self portrait, "Andy", "Scott and David", "John and John."

Photographs by Richard Price.

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"Hello" by Artboydancing.

Rainbow Flag Origin Stories

By August Bernadicou (with additional text and research by Chris Coats)

Many enduring symbols that establish an instant understanding and define a diverse community are intrinsically linked with controversy, confusion, and ill-informed backstories dictated by vested interests and those who told the story loudest. The LGBTQ rainbow flag is no different.

While it was the work of many, the people who deserve credit the most have been minimized if not erased. Gilbert Baker, the self-titled “Creator,” screamed the story and now has a powerful estate behind his legacy. Before his death in 2017, Baker established himself as the complete authority on the LGBTQ rainbow flag. It was his story which he lived and became.

While there are disputed accounts on the flag’s origins, one thing that is not disputed is that the LGBTQ rainbow flag was born in San Francisco and made for the Gay Freedom Day Parade on June 25, 1978.

For all of human history, rainbows have mystified and inspired. A greeting of light and serenity after the darkness and chaos of a storm. They have symbolized hope, peace, and the mysteries of existence.

For a moment, we can see the invisible structure, the “body” of light, made visible. A secret revealed, then hidden again.

Though it may seem like a modern phenomenon, rainbow flags have waved throughout history. Their origin can be traced to at least the 15th Century.

The German theologian, Thomas Müntzer, used a rainbow flag for his reformist preachings. In the 18th Century, the English-American revolutionary and author, Thomas Paine, advocated adopting the rainbow flag as a universal symbol for identifying neutral ships at sea.

Rainbow flags were flown by Buddhists in Sri Lanka in the late 19th Century as a unifying emblem of their faith. They also represent the Peruvian city of Cusco, are flown by Indians on January 31st to commemorate the passing of the spiritual leader Meher Baba, and since 1961, have represented members of international peace movements.

Now, the rainbow flag has become the symbol for the LGBTQ community, a community of different colors, backgrounds, and orientations united together, bringing light and joy to the world. A forever symbol of where they started, where they

have come, and where they need to go. When many LGBTQ people see a rainbow flag flowing in the wind, they know they are safe and free.

While the upper class and tech interests rule the city now, in the 1960s and 70s, San Francisco was a wonderland for low and no-income artists.

The counterculture’s mecca. By the mid-1970s, the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood that had once been a psychedelic playground of hippie art, culture, and music had fallen into disarray. Hard, dangerous drugs like heroin had replaced mind-expanding psychedelics. Young queers and artists needed a new home, and they found it in the Castro.

Lee Mentley (1948-2020) arrived in San Francisco in 1972 and quickly fell in with the oddball artist and performers in the Castro neighborhood, donning flamboyant, gender-fucked clothes, performing avant-garde theater, and creating their own clubhouses. He was on the Pride Planning Committee in 1978 and ran the Top Floor Gallery on the top floor of 330 Grove, which served as an early Gay Center in San Francisco.

Lynn Segerblom (Faerie Argyle Rainbow) was originally from the North Shore of Hawaii and moved to San Francisco where she attended art school at the Academy of Art. Her life changed when she found a new passion in tie-dye and rainbows in the early 1970s. Entrenched in the freeloving technicolor world of San Francisco, in 1976, Lynn legally changed her name to Faerie Argyle Rainbow. She joined the Angels of Light, a “free” performance art troupe where the members had to return to an alternative, hippie lifestyle and deny credit for their work.

Shortly after the original rainbow flags were flown for the last time, both Lynn and Lee moved out of San Francisco. Lee moved to Hawaii and Lynn moved to Japan. When they returned, they were shocked to see how their contribution to history was becoming a universal symbol. They remain passionate about defending their legacies and giving a voice to the mute.

LEE MENTLEY: One day in 1978, Lynn came to 330 Grove with a couple of her friends, James McNamara and Robert Guttman, and said we should make rainbow flags for Gay Day to brighten up San RFD 194 Summer 2023

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Francisco City Hall and Civic Center because it’s all gray and cold in June. We thought that it sounded like a great idea.

AUGUST BERNADICOU & CHRIS COATS: To get over the first hurdle, money, the young artists went to Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in the history of California, for help.

LEE: There was no actual funding for it. We contacted Harvey Milk and another supervisor, and they asked the city if we could get a little funding.

They found some leftover funds from the previous year’s hotel tax, and we got $1,000.

LYNN SEGERBLOM: I remember having a meeting where I presented the idea of making rainbow flags. I had some sketches. At that meeting, there was just a handful of us there, and I remember, and even my friend assured me, that Gilbert Baker was not at that meeting. I don’t know where he was, I didn’t keep track of him, but he was not at the meeting where I suggested rainbow flags. We decided, yes, rainbow flags sounded great.

AUGUST & CHRIS: The committee approved the rainbow imagery and made the decision to make two massive 40’ x 60’ foot rainbow flags to be flown at the Civic Center along with 18 smaller rainbow flags designed by different, local artists, to line the reflecting pool putting rainbows into the grey sky For the two large flags, one would be an eight-color rainbow starting with pink and including turquoise and indigo in place of blue, and the other a re-envisioning of the American flag with rainbow stripes which became known as Faerie’s flag.

AUGUST & CHRIS: Below Gilbert Baker’s name on his memoir, Rainbow Warrior, it says “CREATOR OF THE RAINBOW FLAG,” leaving little debate that Gilbert claimed full ownership for the concept and design of the legendary symbol. He never denied Lynn or James MacNamara’s involvement in the flags’ construction and speaks briefly and fondly of them and their talents in that same book.

LEE: We didn’t need one person saving our ass, and it certainly wouldn’t have been Gilbert Baker.

He was no Betsy Ross. He was a very good promoter, and I give him all the credit in the world for making the rainbow flag go international. He did a great service, and he was a very talented, creative man, but he could never have done all of the work by himself; no one could have. We never considered 10 RFD 194 Summer 2023

ownership. There was never this big ownership debate until Gilbert started it. Because AIDS hit us so fast after this, most of our leadership either went into HIV activism or died.

LYNN: The story is that a white gay man did all of this by himself, but, in fact, that is not true at all.

He just promoted it. For that, though, he should be given great love.

AUGUST & CHRIS: Making the two original rainbow flags was no easy feat. With a limited budget and limited resources, the group had to improvise and figure it out as they went along. While Lynn had dabbled in flags before, a project of this scope and importance was far beyond her comfort zone.

LEE: The community donated the sewing machines we used. We asked people at the Center if anyone would like to volunteer. All sorts of people from all over the country helped us with the flags, over 100 people, which, to me, is an amazing story.

That’s where it came from. It came from regular artists who wanted to have fun and make something pretty for gay people.

LYNN: The Rainbows Flags were hand-dyed cotton and eight colors. I made two different types.

The one with just the stripes and then the American flag one, which I designed myself. There was a group of us that made them, James McNamara, Gilbert Baker, and myself. Originally they were my designs.

I was a dyer by trade, and I had a dying studio at the Gay Community Center at 330 Grove Street.

LEE: People would come and help as long as they could. Then, somebody else would come and help as long as they could. We opened up the second floor of 330 Grove to people who came to be in the Parade and march. People came in and made posters, banners and did art stuff.

LYNN: We made the flags on the roof because there was a drain up there. There was a wooden ladder that led up to the roof. The hot water had to be carried up to the roof because we didn’t have hot water up there. We heated it up on the stove in pots.

We put the hot water in trash cans on the roof.

LEE: We had trash cans and two by fours, and we had to keep agitating the fabrics in the dye. Since they were in hot water, they had to be poked and agitated for hours.

LYNN: We had to constantly move the fabric in the dye, so the dye penetrated the fibers that weren’t clamped tight. We had to make sure there would be blue, and it wouldn’t just be white on white or white with a very murky, pale blue. After they were washed and dyed, they went through the washer and dryer. Then, we ironed them. If the fabric stays out too long, once you take it out of the water, if it sits on itself even for just a few minutes, it starts to make shapes.

LEE: Lynn’s flag, the new American flag, was a similar rainbow, but it had stars in the corner. I have photographs of that flag flying at gay events in San Francisco at City Hall and Oakland.

LYNN: I always liked the American flag. I thought, oh, wouldn’t that be nice? I knew with some luck I could make it.

LEE: I thought the one with the stars was more interesting because it symbolized a new flag for the United States.

LYNN: For my American flag, I decided to flip the order of the colors, so pink was at the bottom and purple was at the top in an eight-color spectrum. That was intentional. I wanted them to be different. I made the stars with wood blocks and clamps. I got the white fabric and washed it, and folded it a different way. When I was making it, it looked like a big sandwich. The bread would be the woodblocks, and the fabric was in between. We immersed the whole flag in dye and swished it around.

I wasn’t sure if it would come out right because it was the first time I did that fold. I was lucky. It worked. I sewed lamé stars into one stripe with leftover stars from my Angels of Light costumes. On one side of the blue stripe, there was a star with silver lamé, and on the other side, there was a star with gold lamé. I got all these ideas because I worked with these mediums on a daily basis: paint, dye, fabric, and glitter.

LEE: We worked for weeks dying fabric, shrinking fabric, and sewing fabric.

LYNN: We worked on them for seven weeks. I was worried that we weren’t going to finish on time.

We worked hard and long hours. Towards the end, we decided we didn’t have time to go to the laundromat, so we started rinsing them on the roof and wringing them dry. We also ran out of quarters. We draped them off of the Top Floor Gallery’s rafters,

and they drip-dried. They looked great. They were beautiful.

AUGUST & CHRIS: Until that day, the pink triangle, used by the Nazis to label homosexuals in their genocidal campaign, was the most commonly used symbol for the LGBTQ movement, a symbol in solidarity with our fallen ancestors. But the triangle came from a place of trauma, it was a reminder of the storm while the rainbow was the hope that came after. The promise of brighter days ahead. On that day in June 1978, it felt as if the rainbow had always been a symbol for the LGBTQ community, it just hadn’t revealed itself yet.

LEE: We went out, flew the flags, and blew everybody’s fucking minds. People were blown away. The flags were so beautiful. They were waving warriors.

The biggest ones were forty by sixty feet. The Parade marched through the flags to get to Civic Center.

We instantly proclaimed that this was our symbol. It wasn’t planned. It was organic.

LYNN: It was just what I wanted: a touch of magic, a touch of glitter, and a little bit of Angels of Light.

LEE: We weren’t creating this huge symbol. We were decorating Civic Center. We weren’t thinking of marketing our entire futures. It was an art project.

LYNN: We looked at the rainbow flags as a work of art, and we wanted them to be beautiful and unique. After the Gay Parade, the flags were a big hit. People loved them. Everybody loved them.

AUGUST & CHRIS: In the pre-technology world, people and property could just disappear.

There were no surveillance cameras. Lynn didn’t even have a phone. Even though no one could have known the flag would become an eternal symbol for a worldwide community, it was clear even then that they were a piece of history to be coveted. In his memoir, Baker hypothesizes that the Rainbow American flag was stolen shortly after it was hung up on the front of the Gay Community Center for Gay Freedom Day in 1979. He suggests it might have been a construction crew working on the new symphony across the street and in a homophobic act, stole the flag and buried it in cement.

LEE: Later in 1979 or 1980, you can find it somewhere in the minutes for a Pride Foundation RFD 194 Summer 2023

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meeting, Gilbert came to us and asked to borrow the two large flags, and we agreed. We never saw them again.

LYNN: I went to work one day at 330 Grove, and Gilbert came in and said that the two forty by sixty foot flags had been stolen.

AUGUST & CHRIS: Images published in the San Francisco Chronicle, videos of the march, and other widely distributed photographs only add to the mystery. They show both the classic rainbow flag of eight stripes and the American revision flying at the Civic Center on June 24, 1979 and not at the Gay Community Center. As for the original eight-stripe flag, there are even fewer answers. In his memoir, Baker says that while they were taking down the flags from Civic Center, he was hit on the head on knocked out. “When I came to on the muddy ground,” he says “I saw people all around me hitting each other and screaming obscenities. They were fighting over the rainbow flags, pulling on them like a game of tug-of-war, tearing them.”

LYNN: It would have taken more than one person to carry the flags. It took three people to carry one folded-up flag for the Parade, and we needed a van. They weighed a lot, and 330 Grove did not have an elevator. Whoever stole them had help—one person could not do it on their own.

LYNN: Before the rainbow flag went missing, Gilbert came to one of my workshops. He wanted to watch me dying fabric all day and see how I did everything. I was like, oh yeah, I’ll show you, come in. I said, here, put some gloves on and do it with me. He was like, oh, no, no, I don’t want to get my hands dirty. He was only trying to figure out how I did the dying.

LEE: Gilbert went to these places like MoMa and told them these outrageous stories about how he made the rainbow flag all by himself. He said this about the flag he donated. When you look at it, you can tell that it was bought at a craft fair. It flat out wasn’t one of our flags. It was polyester.

LYNN: It was polyester, it wasn’t the same size, and it wasn’t hand-dyed. My flags were different.

The rainbow flag at MoMa was a beautiful flag inside a frame, but it wasn’t an original, not from 1978, not even a piece from 1978. I was hoping, oh, my God, maybe this is a piece of it.

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LEE: It wasn’t even the original colors. MoMa said they were original flags, but they weren’t. It was a commercially produced rainbow flag with a primary color rainbow. The plaque cited Gilbert donating it as an original flag.

LYNN: I read online that Gilbert Baker said he named me “Faerie Argyle Rainbow,” a complete lie.

Bethany the Princess of Argyle named me. I chose the name Rainbow because I was known as a rainbow artist.

LEE: Even Lynn’s driver’s license said her name was “Faerie Argyle Rainbow.”

LYNN: In 1976, I filled out a form at the DMV, and my name became Faerie Argyle Rainbow. Back then, they didn’t ask you for a birth certificate. The employee just said, “This is your name now,” and gave me a driver’s license that said Faerie Argyle Rainbow. ​It all sounds crazy now, but back then, it wasn’t.

LEE: I had my arguments and fights with Gilbert Baker because he claims he came up with the rainbow flag. If you go through all of his different interviews, you see that his story changes over and over and over again. He even said Harvey Milk came to him and asked him to create a symbol for the movement. No—I read that, and no such thing happened.

LYNN: Just look at his interviews. His takes on what the colors in the rainbow flag mean are all in his head. The rainbow represents everyone, no matter what gender or race you are; that’s how I looked at it. Rainbows are in nature and beautiful. People love them, and I love them. I knew they would be great color healing. Gilbert assigning meaning to each color is ridiculous. I think anyone could make up what each color means. If I wanted to, I could do the same. It wasn’t what I was thinking. I was thinking that rainbows encompass everybody, the whole group, unity.

LEE: I have tried to convince people that the rainbow flags were made with tax-payer dollars. We made them as a non-profit. Not even Gilbert owns them. I have always thought that anyone who sells anything rainbow should give a portion of the profits to homeless gay youth. We need to take care of our own kind because no one does. The whole concept of taking care of gay people has disappeared.

How I Feel When I See the Flag

by Gordon Binder

When I see the Pride flag flying high in all its glory, I feel total comfort, the rainbow colors testimony both to the diversity among us and to our being an integral part of nature. I keep a number of small Pride flags in our apartment and my favorite bar, JRs in Washington's Dupont Circle neighborhood, hangs banners in the color alignment, red to violet. What's more, I see the Pride array on Drawings by the author.

badges, on jewelry, on posters in shop windows, on T-shirts, online, on TV, even as stripes on the road at 17th and P Streets NW DC. All conveying to me the truth: We're here, we're queer, we ain't going away. These drawings record some of my sightings - in the bar, on the street during the Pride Parade, and the flag at an entrance to Pilgrims Church at 22nd and P. RFD 194 Summer 2023

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"Pilgrims Church." Drawing by the author.

Clockwise from top-left: "Sunday Crew at JRs", "Hooking Up", "At JRs", "Under the Banner". Drawings by the author.

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"1957 Chevrolet Bel Aire Convertible" by Michael Mitchell.

The First Rainbow Flag in U.N. Plaza for the Gay Pride Parade

by Toby Johnson

In 1979, I signed up to be a parade monitor for the June 24th San Francisco Gay Pride Parade. That was the second year the original versions of the flags appeared for Gay Day, flying over the entrance to United Nations Plaza from Market Street.

I—so fortunately—was stationed right at the turn-off point from Market where the parade made a forty-five degree turn to enter United Nations Plaza and continue toward the impressive City Hall building in front of which the rally was to be held.

My job was to keep people from cutting across the sidewalk and to keep them marching into the Plaza. Thus I was standing just at the spot where the marchers turned and would see the huge flags for the first time that day. There were lots of oohs and ahhs and cameras clicking. Wonderful moment!

Such joy.

There were two very tall flag poles, flying huge rainbow flags, one with a field of blue with tieddyed, sort of randomly-arranged stars, like the American flag, the other with just the colored stripes. The display was very dramatic. The flags were huge and far more colorful than the rainbow flags of today. They hung on opposite sides of the plaza so the marchers walked between them. They were made of parachute silk and fluttered and rippled in the breeze.

The previous year I had attended the parade with my then-boyfriend Seth Stewart and my writer/ collaborator friend Toby Marotta, both of whom worked at Hospitality House, a downtown social service agency, across the street from the gay/lesbian community mental health Tenderloin Clinic where I’d interned and now worked as a staff counselor. We all convened at Hospitality House and

then walked over to the grounds around the reflecting pond in front of City Hall where the March was going to end in a street fair. We carried material and decorations for the Hospitality House booth, and arrived to set up the table just as the Rainbow Flags were being raised up the poles for the first time. We got to witness their inauguration—with our own oohs and ahhs.

After the parade and a shower back at home, I graduated with my PhD in Counseling (with a strong Jungian emphasis and interest in myth and symbol) from the California Institute of Integral Studies that afternoon, June 25, 1978. Quite a day. I took the symbolism of the Rainbow Flags to heart.

In Judeo-Christian iconography, the rainbow refers to God’s promise to Noah not to destroy the world by flood ever again. It’s a sign therefore of transformation and of salvation. As a symbol for gay consciousness, it reminds us that we must be “saviors of the world” — and in the issue of overpopulation (a different kind of flood—a flood of human flesh) we surely are on the side of reason and good sense. There are enough people. Somebody should be eschewing reproduction for the sake of the whole planet—and in order to free themselves to focus on consciousness change, not just blind biological imperative. For human beings in the 21st Century, the cutting edge of evolution is happening at the level of consciousness. LGBTQ people participate in the evolution of consciousness through art, idea, vision, beauty, compassion, prophecy. We must be wayshowers for a world that seems to be getting lost.

Maybe our good will and our queer gay goodness, exemplified in the beauty and boldness of those flags, can be the guide toward a better future.

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Holi Festival 2023

by Notre Dame

It is an auspicious day to start writing this- being born of an Indian (Bengali) father, Holi, The Festival of Colours is engrained into my cultural calendar. Being in France, not Kolkata the clouds are not ingrained to my skin! It is a kind of Mardi Gras, in the sense that the Lord of Misrule is unleashed.

All have a license to spray coloured water or throw gay pigments on perfect strangers…including “their elders and betters.” An unintentional great pleasure was afforded me once in Jabalpur, in the state of Madhya Pradesh. On Holi morning a bigwig cousin, high up in the Civil Service took station with me outside his house. All and sundry were allowed to approach the Great Man (who wielded something akin to absolute authority over the City) and daub gently with colours—but respectfully and symbolically as they knew their cards would be marked if over-enthusiastic with this liberty.

As a consequence of their politic restraint, I got absolutely pelted at his right. Ordeal over, my coz surveyed my pink, blue, yellow, red illustrated figure. Then counselled the only way to get the colour out before the many pre-luncheon gins were served was to get naked and scrubbed with mustard oil by a servant. By the end of the vigorous session the class and caste barrier had been transcended to a mutual satisfaction. We both emerged from the bathroom clean but with a red glow!

Rainbows had fascinated and thrilled me long before I became truly aware of any significance of inclusivity and brotherhood. I guess, raised as a Roman Catholic child, I had reflected on the meaning of Joseph’s coat of many colours as reflecting innocence and universal love. That darkness tends to try overpower light. That light expresses itself most fully in that incandescent prism that hints in a seeming-miraculous way of the very depth of reality.

The halo—or the aura—are not only Christian phenomena (or concepts, depending on one’s lack of belief, or perhaps perception). Even if one cannot accept that some can see others giving off radiant light, I believe most have had the experience of a powerful magnetic attraction when certain persons enter a room. We call this often charisma. It can of18 RFD 194 Summer 2023

ten speak of power rather than light, purity or love.

Then we remember that Lucifer, “the most beautiful of all the angels” whose name we give to light itself, became according to the myth darkness. The sun itself is the creator of shadow. Before this slips into talk of non-duality or advaita with my Indian heritage awareness, let us proceed to look at the rainbow and the word “flag.”

Firstly, we do well to remember that the rainbow is not exclusively our LGBTQI symbol. Before there was that cultural, political and social “us” it was deployed by others. And after us adopted by (not arrogated to) others also. I feel we should accept this happily in the same way it is mean-spirited to grumble and feel that great cancer activists adopted the red HIV/AIDS ribbon and turned it pink. Next Saturday as a steward of a march to raise money for breast cancer in Gray, a local town, about 120 kilometres from Folleterre, I will sport both red and pink ribbons happily side by side.

To flag, as a verb is to send a (strong) signal. We of queer communities have had to fight, be visible, to rally our members and allies—so the terminology of battle here is not amiss. If we think of but two masters of imagery in different media the power of the flag is well demonstrated. David’s post revolution paintings with the tricolour is one. The films of Kurosawa with the bright huge banners of conflicting warlords flying over the amassed hosts another. When we assemble together in Pride and other manifestations together under the Rainbow flag we demonstrate that we not only march into the light, but we actually carry the light with us.

The power and shared intention of our collected individuality is demonstrated by the unity of diverse elements (colours).

It’s not just me being an ex-British army officer using a martial metaphor. Many of us will have read or encountered John Stowe’s book, Gay Sprit Warrior. Many of you will consider yourselves both pacifists but also warriors. This aspect is neatly encapsulated in the Greenpeace yacht, “Rainbow Warrior”, famously sabotaged with the loss of a Greenpeace life in tranquil New Zealand, July 1985.

"Love Letter" by Patrick Hughes.

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It is not only the USA’s CIA that operates covert operations and takes out innocent lives without attribution and concealed authorisation. But as I live in France. I will not name any nation!

My memory of the Thatcher years in UK is fixed on one occasion where allies of the “gay movement” preceded us in a famous Pride March—those of Welsh striking miners who we had befriended and fund-raised for. The proud Welsh red of the unions preceding us in solidarity. Oppression is an effective unifying force.

Another memory—another marvel I witnessed was about ten years ago above Folleterre at the monument commemorating locals murdered by Nazis in WWII. It affords a magnificent panorama at most times. That afternoon, I and other Faeries saw at the same time in different sectors four different rainbows. It was impossible not to be filled with spontaneous awe and joy. We resonated with optimism (the legend of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is not accidental as with all mythic beliefs).

Such sightings may be rare, yet they are not exceptional. Gay mystic Andrew Harvey, writing in his book describing travels in Ladakh witnessed nine at once. Serendipity embraces “being in the right place at the right time.” To truly see when one looks (c.f.

Carlos Castaneda) is also being in the right space.

Mankind’s progression from Newtonian science to chaos theory surely owes much to the position of the observer. The panorama above Folleterre Sanctuary was a special lieu-dit before the faeries arrived, with its commemoration of those murdered in Nazi reprisals for resistance actions in WW2.

Ladakh is a land where light and colour interact that can elevate consciousness to the level of its magnificent snowy peaks. If I dare dispute the sacred Simon and Garfunkel, it is not the long-distance call that makes “the days of miracles and wonder” so much as Nature revealing itself in full glory as God as the ancients experienced.

A

lways present also in the rainbow pantheon of emotions is yearning—well represented in the song: “Somewhere over the rainbow…and the dreams that you dreamed of…”

It is no accident of nature that the “arc-au-ciel” touches or if one prefers, springs from grounded points on the earth. Not like lightning that so-called primitives feared were delivered from on high by 20 RFD 194 Summer 2023

an angry God. They are magical-seeing sudden signs that nevertheless appear rooted in the earth, grounded. Like those moments when we experience a fleeting sense of understanding the Universe and its meaning, they serve as gifts—reminders that there are more dimensions than we normally perceive. If we never dared to dream we would never dare to act or discover different ways of being.

Another personal connection. When in the mid 1980s, after turning thirty, the “settling” period of life, I had worked incredibly hard and with determined focus to earn money, buy a house and a home to share with the lover I’d left behind in Florida while I built our nest. Before my parents and elder brother died and I inherited many pictures, I needed to fill the walls of my little house. I bought a lot of bright, limited edition prints by good artists. Not as famous as the David Hockney or Henry Moore’s I bought, but Patrick Hughes (‘The Rainbow painter”) attracted me. Rainbows in all his images. One depicted a ‘bow entering the bars of a prison cell I gave to a young man I fell in love with who had felt trapped. I hope you still have it, Harry.

Another (previous page) with the ‘bow entering the classic British red “pillar’ postal box given to a Swiss lover turned closest friend of many years. In recognition of the voluminous correspondence between us by multiple means over now thirty-five years.

The Rolling Stones’ 1967 Song (“Their Satanic Majesties Request” album) “She’s A Rainbow” makes me think more of the Goddess, of Shakti, than the band’s Muse, (“It Girl,” Anita Pallenberg).

“She comes in colours everywhere…” The link to the album title is surely “Majesty.” It is different to what used to be termed “the Feminine Principle”— as cleverly embodied by Elizabeth I of England as Elizabeth “Gloriana,” the eternal Virgin who bent her gender at Tilbury in the face of the Spanish Armada, Nicholas Hilliard’s portraits of the great Queen depict her in an aura of scintillating jewels and gorgeously coloured fabrics.

A military alternative for “flag” is “colours.”

Single colours are powerfully connected to our psyche. While for surrender, Socialists and Communists sport red, conservatives often blue. Green is the colour of environmental activists. Colours gave Stendhal the title of one of his most famous books (le Rouge et le Noir). And gay men reclaimed pink as a symbol of gayness alongside the red of the AIDS ribbon to speak of death. Yet for me,

when we fly the rainbow flag with Pride—it signifies that we do not march, fight, love for our own corner, but for everyone, every cause, every oppression. When we cease to parade under it, I will feel we have become obsessed with our own selfinterests. “A People set apart” may best describe us. For if God exists, s/he/they created us deliberately and in full knowledge . Or rather it was Mother Nature who rolled the dice and threw us onto the table. Perhaps our most beautiful calling is to keep step with other people’s set apart. From the margins we can infiltrate, permeate, suffuse and bear witness. Our role is not to hide inside any

"UFO" by Daydream.

closet, but come out in full technicolour.

When I was a soldier I marched. Then it was to a different drummer after I came out in the Army.

The marching became more a dance. But under what flag? Despite being English born, a quarter Irish, half Bengali, I live in France. Outside my home flies neither the tricolour nor the Union Jack, but the stars of the European Union. Also are posted the butterflies of transformation and Faerie. Surmounting all, the Rainbow. I have put down my arms, but am ready to hitch up my skirts in a just cause.

Blessed be!”

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22 RFD 194 Summer 2023

"Look to the Rainbow" by Richard Vyse.

Our First Flag

by Barry/Dynaton

In February of 2022, my husband and I moved to a 55+ gated community in the Palm Springs area. It was run by an HOA, the very first we had lived under… uh-oh.

And each of the 3500 homes (!) was built with a flagpole holder on the garage.

When looking to buy a home there, we were at first turned off and very concerned by the 20-30% of homes flying an American flag.

Uh-oh.

Were we buying into a “Trump” community, where the possibility of making friendly neighbors would be very difficult, if not next to impossible? “Oh no, said the real estate agent. Those are just the homes of proud military veterans.”

Oh yeah, we’ll see.

When Pride Month came around in June 2022, it occurred to us that this was our chance to “come out” in a different way, and buy & fly a rainbow flag for the 1st time. And we specifically chose the rainbow flag design with American stars in the upper left corner. We were “proud gay Americans,” after all.

After we put it up, it instantly began fluttering in the wind, there for all to see.

The next morning, however, when I went out to my car, a small part of me expected the “worst.” A very small part, but it crossed my mind for sure. Would the flag be gone? Would it be defaced? Or worst of all, would the word “faggots” be spray painted on our garage doors?

Nothing. It was still proudly flying in the wind.

And months later, the only reaction we’ve had was the couple who drove by, slowed down, opened their car window and said, “We just wanted to tell you that that flag is terrific!”

So no matter design you pick to fly proudly, it is “terrific.”

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Rainbow Roads Rain drums on the roofs in Cape Cod, those long lascivious roads that wind their ways, always all ways to the beach.

Sand in your shoes, in between toes, the last grain always just out of reach of the soap and the scrubbing, sunburn peeling.

Doused in lotion and sank into bed for chopped-up hours of sleep,

easy to digest.

Back home, the party rages on without me, infinite roads flooded with currents of color.

The banners, the people, the lipstick smudged across cheekbones like warpaint.

Stoney eyes, muggy smiles, foggy red.

Sunburnt orange grapefruit peel, burnished gold of the sun hanging overhead.

Green beads, smoke screens and flags shoved in foliage.

Blue bonnets bet against Baltic skies, bruised purple knees, elbows, maybe eyes Because the pinkness of youth clashes with the gray of age, those circling peace-parceling parades can do nothing but scream and rage.

I long to march, to be one of the holders of the torch, to wrap my homemade flag around my shoulders.

Paint my face scream to the sky that I have kissed too many boys to be crucified And too many girls to slip through the bars into heaven.

That my body rolls between genders like a skiff managing the tide and when the time comes, the sky-smelted raindrops fall: open wide.

—Raya Finkle

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On the Greyhound to Gallup On the Greyhound to Gallup this kid sits down next to me, geeky with those I’ll-do-anything eyes, Rainbow Flag patch on the ass of his jeans— eyes I long ago gave Larry on a Girl Scout charter from Jersey to some museum in the City, one of two or three boys always invited along.

Larry, ruffled and flustered, hauled scruff of the neck out of his padded recliner—tight lipped old chaperone caught him not only necking but trying to cop a feel—thrown into the musty double-seat beside me, armrest ashtray full of sucked out butts, two rows up from the toilet and the bench seat in the rear.

I’m not saying anything happened rolling along Route 80 (when it only had two lanes eastbound) but imagine Larry’s strained restlessness— trousers suddenly stretched way too fucking tight, my I’ll-do-anything eyes, a Rainbow Flag already tattooed on my ass.

—D. Scott Humphries

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"Bleeding Color" by Daydream.

Refraction A rainbow smeared my rearview mirror as I outraced cloudbursts of sunrise rain on my commute through trafficked streets.

As a child, I wished upon the tie-dyed bands.

Now a man, I flee from arched sky serpents, devourer of dreams.

Found at the rainbow’s end, a man wearing a leprechaun mask and guarding a pot of gilded lies.

I covenant myself to work instead of wish.

My foot presses the accelerator.

I drive forward without a backward glance.

—Andre Le Mont Wilson

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Rainbow, Rainbow, Rainbow Mongay can be blue— blue as a bishop—but Tuesgay!

Tuesgay is indigo!

Wednesgay dons violet just as Thursgay skirts orange.

Frigay snap their fingers red but Saturgay fan dances yellow. Sungay is gaily green & the fish in the pot at the end of the rainbow is rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!

—Steven Cordova

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The Big Bang Hardly lightning and kettledrums, not the sort of start one dreams of-with a gangly, bumbling, argyle-socked salesman or dentist (should I recall?), a half hour’s strolling and stammering acquaintance. Still, there was something to be thankful for: I’d been weaned from self-rebuke after seeking out a Jesuit who leaned back in his chair to mull my gushed-out turmoil, stood...to bless the forthcoming son of Sodom. So it was quite without regret, that summer of my commencement, one sticky August night (just a stone’s hurl from the business strip, the ore docks, my old dorm itching for the jocks to return), I felt my life ignite, begin to spin toward the heavens in one fizgig sort of act, gaining first experience, on the grass, in the shadows, with a less than smashing stranger behind the venerable, welcoming bricks of the Chamber of Commerce.

—J.R. Kangas

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Oz and Effect It begins as a suggestion— a suspicion of the heart.

Soon it turns into a question, and a word pulls you apart.

You can’t quell it: “homosexual,” And it spells all that you hide.

Your feelings are ineffectual, and you conceal the word inside.

Unspoken, no one can hear it.

Subdued, it is unexpressed.

And, in turn, your very spirit is strangely, too, repressed.

It surfaces in discussions, but, in you, it is undisclosed.

And with its repercussions, you somehow feel exposed.

And there, with life around you, and all that lies ahead, the doubt and fear surround you, and they fill your soul with dread.

You work, you learn, and you succeed, but it feels unreal and wrong.

For you alone know what you need— to be loved and to belong.

One day, something inside you, which you hide within your core, becomes an arc that guides you, and you open wide the door.

And from a sepia sort of gloom that couldn’t be much duller, you step out of your lonely room into the brightest Technicolor.

Before you, there appears a sign— a rainbow bright and new.

What makes it glow and always shine?

It’s the sun inside of you.

—Alan Sugar

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"Don't Forget My Piece" by Artboydancing.

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What Never Was One

By Todd H. C. Fischer

Ted sat in the shade of an old oak tree, its limbs drooping with age, and stared at the folded letter in his hand. Around him on the quad students milled about; some standing in clumps talking, while others sat alone or in groups reading books, or working on term papers. Others caromed through the packed space at high speed. Ted expected them to bounce of the other people like a pinball in an arcade game but collisions were somehow rare.

He sat back and crossed his legs. He idly smoothed the crease in his trousers with his thumb.

In general Ted was a disheveled sort, and left to his own devices he would gladly teach his classes on Medieval Literature in a rumpled shirt and a pair of jeans. It was Suniya who had introduced him to an iron (ironing being a skill his father had refused to allow him to learn as it was not a ‘manly’ pursuit).

He had still never mastered its use, and had many burned shirts to attest to that fact. In the end it was Suniya who had ironed his clothes for him. She had ironed these very pants.

Suniya, who was gone.

They had met at an art gallery, the opening of a new, exciting young painter from Finland.

Surrounded by surreal landscapes and distorted portraits Ted had suddenly realized that someone was standing at his elbow. He raised his brows quizzically as he turned to regard the stranger, a woman wearing dark green, holding a plate in her hand.

“Bold use of brush strokes,” she had said, popping a piece of cheese in her mouth.

Ted had mumbled something in reply, he did not remember just now what it was he had said. Talking to women had always made him nervous.

Rather than float away into the crowd as he had expected her to, the woman—Suniya—had stayed by his side and over the course of the evening had somehow managed to draw a usually taciturn Ted into an actual conversation.

They had studied at length one particular painting, entitled ‘Grendel’s Mother.’ The painting depicted a large hunched form with bulbous breasts and straggly hair. The figure’s face was distorted due to the size of its mouth full of yellowed and crooked teeth. Ted was sure the monster was meant to look menacing, but he thought that her eyes actually looked sad rather than threatening.

32 RFD 194 Summer 2023

“I’ve always been bothered at some level by the depiction of Grendel’s mother,” Suniya had said.

“The idea of motherhood as grotesque. That the Geats so feared the feminine that the absence of a father had turned Grendel into something unfit to interact with normal society.”

Ted had surprised himself by saying, “The presence of a father is just as likely to create a monster as the absence.”

She had looked at him keenly but had said nothing, waited for him to speak again.

“My father left when I was twelve,” he had said.

“Left me and my mother. I don’t really know why.

But I’m thankful he did.”

He hadn’t said anymore, not then, and she had led the discussion in another direction. At the end of the evening she had given him her business card, asked him to call. For two days he had stared at that card, trying to draw up the nerve to phone her, one hand absentmindedly rubbing his right forearm.

When he finally did convince himself to call, Suniya had sounded happy to hear from him. He had been sure it was all an elaborate joke and she would laugh and hang up the phone. Instead she invited him out for dinner.

That dinner had gone well, as had the next and the next. Before Ted realized what was happening, they were dating.

Their romance had grown out of a mutual appreciation for the arts, especially for poetry. He would sit up in bed at night and read to her from the works of Chaucer, Dante, Machaut and Shirazi. Often, when they would lay together, she would bite at his neck, murmuring, calling him Wulf in honour of her favorite poem Wulf and Eadwacer.

When she had first seen the scars on his right arm she had been shocked. He had been reluctant to tell her their source: how his father, enraged at having a son who took no pleasure in sports, who delighted in ‘girlish’ things like poetry, how he would take his son’s arm, stretch it across his workbench and smash it with a hammer.

“Drive out the gay!” he’d scream, spittle flying from his lips. “No son of mine is gonna be a faggot!”

Each episode ended with a makeshift splint, his mother too terrified to take him to the hospital, another story about how he had fallen down the stairs.

The night his father had left had been one of joy for Ted. His father had packed a suitcase, yelling at his mother, shouting obscenities. Storming out the front door he had thrown the case into their car, gotten behind the wheel and driven away. Ted had never seen him again.

That night Ted had almost burned their house down, having gone into the garage and built a fire out of oily rags in a garbage can. When his mother had found him he was feeding his father’s hammers into the fire, one at a time, watching them be consumed by the flames.

When he had finally revealed to Suniya what his father had done she had been enraged. She had wept angry tears, clutched at him, held him to her breast.

“The horrors men do,” she had sobbed.

A young man sat down on the bench beside Ted. His head was shaved on one side and his hair was bright purple. His t-shirt was emblazoned with the picture of a cartoon teddy bear with a moustache; his pants were bright red plaid. He was flipping through some app on his cellphone.

Ted looked down at his own drab clothing: brown slacks, white collared shirt, gray jacket. No tie; no ties since Suniya left. The student stood up and disappeared as quickly as he had appeared, soon lost in the throng.

Over near the entrance to Lecture Hall F, Ted could hear voices raised in anger. Looking over she saw a couple engaged in what he took to be a lovers’ spat. He watched concerned for a moment; raised voices always made him edgy, expectant of violence.

He rubbed his arm. Eventually tempers cooled and the couple walked off together.

“Wulf is on one island, I on another,” he quoted, thinking again of Suniya. Thinking about her helped him not to dwell on the contents of the letter he still held in his hand. The ramifications. What he should do. Trying to figure out how he should feel.

He and Suniya had been living together for over six months when things began to sour. She had known upon entering the relationship that he was a bit of a slob. Perhaps she had thought she could teach him all the things his mother never had (like the ironing), or perhaps she thought she could life with his dishevelment. Whatever her plan had been to deal with the rumpled clothes, the unwashed dishes, the piles of unread magazines, Ted knew that it was not the mess alone that had driven her away. It had been him. His own reluctance to truly connect.

It was true he had told her about his father and

the monstrous acts of anger he had committed upon Ted’s body, and of his mother’s drinking, born out of guilt. Beyond this though he had refused to speak. When she wanted to talk about his dreams, he refused. When she tried to engage him with activities that were not art-related (such as going for a picnic, seeing a movie, or watching a ball game) he was a rock of protest. His betrayal at the hands of his parents, and art, these were the only two pieces of himself that he would share with her.

When he was honest with himself, truly honest, he wondered if there was even anything more to him and his character than those two things. He had felt adrift in life for as long as he could remember. A plot device in his own story.

More than that, though, he knew it was his own surety that the relationship would fail that caused it to fall apart. He had wondered why Suniya had ever deigned to talk to him at that art gallery, why she had put the time and effort into pulling him—however slightly—out of his shell. Why she would want to be with him; why she would love him. There were other men out there who would be better for her than him. Most of them. Perhaps all of them. Why would she choose him?

This self-doubt had poisoned their love making, making him hesitant and unsure. He rarely reached climax, leaving them both frustrated. Eventually his ennui bled into her and she would lie lifeless while he fumbled at her with his clumsy hands and tongue. Soon enough they both, as if in silent agreement, stopped seeking each other’s flesh.

From there it was an inevitable decline. Arguments, fighting, discord. In a reflection of his childhood memory, one day she had packed her things and left their apartment, never to return. He had worked up the courage to call her once, but she said she did not want to speak with him. He had taken her at her word. The last thing she had said to him, before hanging up, was, “For me, there was pleasure, but its end was loathsome.”

When the call had ended, and the phone’s screen had gone black, he had sat on the end of his bed and cried tears of not just loss, but also of shame, and regret, and fear. When he was finished he went into the bedroom, collected his various volumes of medieval poetry, and threw them out the window, down to the street below. He longed to set a match to them, but he remembered how the flames in the garage had almost escaped their confines of the metal garbage can, the look of horror in his mother’s eyes.

Once more his reverie was interrupted, this time RFD 194 Summer 2023

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by one of his teaching assistants. His name was Jeremy; he was bright, vital, smiling…everything Ted felt he was not. The TA had apparently been calling his name for a few moments, standing almost right in front of Ted’s eyes.

“Oh, Jeremy,” he said “Can I help you?”

“Professor, I was asking if you were sure you wanted Wulf and Eadwacer removed from the curriculum this semester. It’s an excellent example of the Old English…”

Ted cut him off with a wave of his hand. “Please, Jeremy. There are plenty of other Old English texts we’ll be looking at. This year we are going to be giving that particular one a pass.”

Jeremy looked unhappy with the answer, but nodded. He shuffled his feet for a second and then walked off.

Tapping the letter against his leg, he regarded the crease, once again ran a thumb along it, flattening it. He had resisted wearing this pair of trousers for a long time. They had been hanging in his closet, the last item of clothing he had not yet worn that Suniya had ironed. He had felt that once he had worn them, then she would be truly lost to him. This morning, having no other clean laundry, he had finally donned them.

His eyes glanced at the letter from his mother.

For several years he had not heard from his mom, then came this letter, preceded a month earlier by a phone call.

When the phone had rang his heart had surged in his chest; he had been sure it would be Suniya.

When he saw the number was not hers he had chided himself for thinking that she might have been calling. She had ended it, she was gone.

When he’d answered the phone (its ring tone some pop song or other that he’d chosen at random) he had been surprised to hear his mother’s voice.

“Teddy, its mom.”

A momentary hesitation, then, “Mom?” “I know we haven’t spoken in a while. I know that you blame me for what happened, at least in part.

And I am so sorry for that, Teddy. I’m so sorry.”

She had begun to sob. Ted had hung on the line, unsure of what to do, what to say.

Finally, she had sniffled, said, “He called me, Teddy.”

At first he had no idea who ‘he’ would be, but then he felt the floor drop out from beneath his feet.

He had fallen into a chair. “Dad?” “He’s sick, Teddy, down in Florida. Real sick, maybe dying. He wants to see me.”

“What about…what about me?”

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A pause. “He said he just wanted to see me, Teddy. Just me.”

A flurry of emotions flew through Teddy. He was not sure if he was relieved or angry. His hands had gripped the phone, his knuckles going white.

“I’m going to go down,” she had said, almost apologetically. “I hope you can understand.”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure, mom,” he had lied, his voice catching.

“I’ll talk to you again soon, Teddy.” She had hung up.

After that call Ted had wandered about as if in a daze. For two days he sleepwalked through his lectures, forgot to eat, slept too much. He had considered trying to track his father down now that he knew at least what state he was in, but something always stayed his hand. His right, scarred hand.

A month later a letter had arrived from his mother. It was postmarked from Florida. There was no return address.

He looked at the letter in his hand, that very letter. Read and reread dozens of times. He knew he should burn it, but as of yet he had not been able to bring himself to do so. Under the oak, sitting on a bench among the halls of academia, he unfolded it and read it over one more time.

Teddy, I never did right by you growing up. I never should have stood by and let your father do what he did to you. I wish there was a way I could turn back time, undo what I did, stand up for you, hit that bastard with his own hammer.

I’m sorry if I hurt you again when I told you I was going to see him in Florida. If it felt like another betrayal. But I had to come. I hope you’ll see that.

I had to come for you.

Your father was sick, very sick. He was living in a private little condo in a retirement facility but he needed daily visits from a nurse. I didn’t recognize him when I first saw him, not until he spoke. Teddy, his skin was gray, scaly, his face drawn. His beard was thin, the hair falling out. His hands were frail.

Whenever he moved I could see his bones straining against his skin.

I won’t tell you everything we talked about, but I will tell you that he had not changed. He did ask after you, asked if you were still “fucked up.” I told him I was proud of you; he said I had always babied you, made you what you were.

Suffice to say, they were not pleasant conversations.

Your father needed help walking, going to the

bathroom, bathing. This was usually something the nurse would do on her visits. As I was there I volunteered to assist. One day we were in the bathroom.

Your father was lying in the tub, his head resting on a folded towel. He looked like a corpse. His eyes had been closed, but they opened and he looked at me, and I remembered the rage that used to spill out of them.

So I pushed his head under the water.

He was weak. His frail hands clawed at my arms but there was no strength in them. They felt like butterflies bumping against my skin. Soon enough he went still, sunk to the bottom of the tub. I held him there for a long time, wanting to be sure.

Finally, I got up, dried my hands, called 911.

This was two weeks ago, Teddy. Your father is gone. I didn’t do anything for you then. I hope you can forgive me for what I’ve done now.

Love, Your mother.

Ted refolded the note, slid it into his coat pocket, this admission of murder. He tried to condemn her for her action, but he found himself unable to do so. He told himself that tonight, tonight he would destroy the letter, protect his mother who had apparently gotten away with matricide. He had checked online for news reports out of Florida, and there were several regarding murders, but none of them featured his mother. Somehow he knew he’d never talk to her again.

He rubbed his right arm, thought of Suniya, imagined a giant pyre burning in the centre of the quad, the students as lamenting Geats, milling about the fire, as on the breeze he heard the cries of a young pup, a whelp, howling for succor.

"USA, 2022" by EGGMAN. dyed/batiked eggshell on wood, 24"x40"x1", the red stripes are brown shells, the two tones are either side of the shell.

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36 RFD 194 Summer 2023

"The Flag Doesn't Know How To Be Honored By Piss" by Jonny on the Spot.

Shoplifting

by Maytag Dishwasher

For most of my life I had pretty negative self-talk.

My mind was an endless tape of “You loser,” “You can’t do it,” and “Why bother?”

The only time I gave myself any encouragement was when I shoplifted.

Suddenly, perusing the racks for something to steal, I’d think, “You got this! Yes you can! I believe in you!”

My first bold theft was a flannel shirt from Uniqlo. A limited edition by some severe Danish designer with a tiny pocket on the bicep. How’d I do it? I put it on in the middle of the store, buttoned it, and walked out the door, brazen as Al Capone.

See what happens when you believe in yourself?

As I walked into the street, I cursed the store for not having the shirt in my size, making me shoplift a shirt one size too big.

God I was an asshole.

At some point, I will have to go back to Uniqlo and make amends. It’s important to do so if one is, as I am, on a spiritual path. I went back to Uniqlo some years later to do just that, and ended up stealing a pair of pants.

I’m not proud of it. But I will say that they’re the most comfortable pair of pants I’ve ever owned.

They are also, this time, my size. ____ I once stole three George Foreman Grills from Target. Does one simply walk out the door with three grills under one’s jacket? Of course not. I paid for them. A few hours later I came back and explained that they’d charged me for three grills when I had only purchased one.

“I see,” said the clerk, studying my receipt. “I’ll have to call my manager.”

“It’s my mistake,” I told the manager. “I should’ve caught it at the register but I was talking to my mother on the phone. She was going into surgery–” I paused, as though I had, perhaps, shared too personally.

“Can you help me?” I asked.

Notice that I didn’t ask for a refund. I let them

suggest it.

“Yes, of course,” the manager said. “We’ll credit you for two grills on the card you used, is that OK?” “Oh yes,” I said, “if it isn’t too much trouble.” ____ My minor crime spree ended one afternoon at Trader Joe’s. I went in with no intention of stealing anything, just browsing for a quick snack as a lawabiding citizen does. But the notion, when it comes, is unbidden as a sneeze.

I slipped a white chocolate macadamia nut CLIF bar up my sleeve.

As I walked out the door a man in a gray coat approached me. I’d seen him looking at me amongst the aisles. For a split second, I thought he was going to ask for my number.

He lifted his coat and flashed a badge.

“Store security. Can I see what’s in your pocket?”

“Oh this,” I said. “You got me! You can have it back!”

Not so Al Capone after all.

“I’m afraid it’s not that simple,” the man said.

“I can go in and pay for it,” I offered.

“I’m going to need your identification,” he said.

I considered my options. Topple the crate of cantaloupes and run? Pretend I didn’t speak English?

Instead, I pulled out my driver’s license.

“Please follow me,” he said.

I followed him back into the store as if in a trance. At the Trader Joe’s Panopticon Counter, he handed my license to a woman in one of those TJ’s Hawaiian shirts and told me that if I ever stepped into one of their stores they’d call the police for trespassing.

“I’m disappointed in you,” he said.

The woman at the counter shook her head ever so slightly.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry I did this.” ____ I haven’t stolen anything since.

Maybe a few hearts.

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38 RFD 194 Summer 2023

Painting by David Carter.

Sebastian

by Michael Loren Butkovich

“So—what’s this guy’s name again?” I asked Diana. “Sebastian, for the tenth time,” irritation in her voice. Diana was never a patient person, especially regarding me. “Well, I couldn’t remember it. It’s not like it’s a typical good ol’boy name. Not one from Arkansas anyhow,” delivered in a slight comeback snap. “Especially from a back-wooded hole like Nowhere," I added. “Well, be nice to him. He’s gay, but as I said, I’ve known him since high school. We’ve even lived together for a while when I split-up from Donald. So don’t be grumpy, let’s have a good time," she went on to explain and request of me. “I know, I know," I replied in a bored tone having heard her damned request to be nice to this friend, yet again.

A broken record my wife was. It wasn’t the fact that she had known him longer than myself that bothered me, it was how excitement found its way into her voice whenever she spoke of him. She seemed, somehow, more excited about her past life with this Sebastian than she ever did in speaking of us. The drive took forever, it seemed, more than an hour to get back to her childhood stomping grounds. Once we reached Nowhere, we still had another thirty minutes or more to drive to find this guy’s place.

His being gay wasn’t an issue for me, nor hanging around with him on my weekend off. Christ, my boss at work was rumored to be a bisexual who was still in the closet. Still, I worked just fine with him.

No issues. He was an okay sort of guy to hang out with after work for a beer or two. What kept popping into my head though, what really bothered me, was how Diana went on about him. You’d think he was a celebrity. If he were Elvis, I could understand.

But he was only a country boy from the sticks who happened to be gay—a nobody from the backwoods of Nowhere, Arkansas. At least Elvis came out of Memphis. Nowhere, was…well, really, nowhere. I mean, for Christ sake, there were people in this area who still wallpapered their homes with old newspapers and used tree stumps as outdoor furniture. I shit you not.

We had been on a dark country road now for some time. Endless miles it felt like. It was the darkness and not knowing where I was going that made it feel like forever. At least the road was dry, but it was cold out. The car heater worked fine, but you only had to listen to the wind and see the autumn

leaves gusting up and swirled around to make you feel coldness in your bones. Finally, after a number of twists and turns, missing a couple of boulders in the dirt road, and an opossum or two, the house came into sight. It was a double-wide mobile home that sat on a hillside overlooking the bottoms of some pasture land. The moon offered very little to see, being too high and dim. There were a few cars in the front of the house. One had its hood up.

Obviously it was in a non-working state for a spell judging from the gathered leaves dripping out of it.

Once parked, Diana leaned over and wailed on the horn. “Why’d you do that?” “The dog.” She pointed towards it. It was silent in its charge. Once it felt we were near enough that we could not make an escape, he went crazy. The overly large shepherd alerted its master of our presence. His deep bellowing howls and barks were as fierce as he looked. We sat in wait with the car still running for heat. “How’d you know about the dog?” “I was here last week.

After I saw Carol I stopped in to see Sebastian.

Why? You jealous?” She giggled at me. “No. Not jealous. Just asking. It didn’t occur to me until now that you knew your way out here, and about the dog.” “Oh look! Here comes Sebastian,” she said in a schoolgirl giggly tone. Diana was like a teenybopper from our younger days at a Donny Osmond concert.

Sebastian called after the animal. No luck. The dog ignored him, continued its barking and encircling of the car. It was massive. On all fours he could peer into the car’s windows with ease. Its muzzle was huge, at least fourteen inches between its eyes to the end of its large black dripping nose. Sebastian continued calling after the monstrous thing. Standing in stocking feet, not wanting to move from the sidewalk, he stood there sighing aloud. “Oh God…help me!” he exclaimed, tossing his head about in frustration. His cries of anguish were loud enough for us to hear inside the car. Diana giggled and laughed aloud at his antics. “What the hell is he doing?” I asked. “He doesn’t want to get his socks dirty. He’s been drinking, too. I can tell from his voice. He’s so funny, I just love him," Diana stated with openness.

I knew she meant it in a non-sexual way, or at least I assumed she meant it in such a way. It didn’t really bother me. I just wanted to know where we stood in our marriage. Each time I asked her for a talk, she’d RFD 194 Summer 2023

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make excuses and become sullen. I thought for a Sebastian remarked, as he walked into the kitchen. minute that it was just me, being overly sensitive, “How’s that?” I asked him, not understanding if his as our relationship had grown cold over the past statement was a question, comment, or a joke. “You six or seven months. In all that time we hadn’t been married this one. This little slutty bitch of ours,” together at all. We had only fucked twice. And yes, pointing towards Diana with an empty glass. “Stop there is a world of difference between making love it! You're horrible, Sebastian. Johnny knows how and fucking. Another two minutes or so passed and lucky he is. Don’t you sweetie!” She kissed my cheek finally Sebastian subdued the wild animal by using as she walked by to join Sebastian in the kitchen. some meat or some kind of food he grabbed from This was the first sign of affection I had received inside the house. Once he had hold of the beast’s from Diana in seven months. “Drinks? What will collar, he dragged it inside somewhere to lock it up. you have?” The question was directed mainly to me, Diana and I got out of the car and made our way in as he surely knew Diana’s poison to be tequila, since the house. they lived together once. “Yes, thank you,” I anSebastian’s home was cozy. Simple in its decor swered, nodding yes to the beer he held in his hand. but cozy in being smallish in size. The dark color I was surprised it was a Heineken. I had assumed scheme of the living all gay men drank only room offered warmth.

Shirley Temples or Everything was dark. such flowery drinks. In The couch was a dark fact, I figured he would brown as was the have drunk only a lite Sebastian reappeared from one coffee table and end beer, if beer at all. Anof the back rooms. Echoes of tables on either side of other ill assumption of the couch. The walls mine, that all gay men the locked away monster-beast were a dark wood watch their waistlines trailed him. The discontented paneling, one found like a French model animal wanted all to hear in most dated mobile does. “Okay—tell me its unhappiness in being homes of the 1970s. everything! Where did The rug, a deep avoyou two meet-up? How shut away. The growls and cado green, was clean long have you been scratching at the door reminded looking but worn and married? And how me of a horror movie’s aged. Everything was did handsome Johnny, werewolf. “Never mind Pinky, cozy enough though, there, propose? Girl—I even the kitchen— want to know it all! he’s just wanting to be a part of green avocado appliCome on tell me,” he the fun is all.” ances from the same festively stated. I had era as the living room assumed they would paneling and rug, with have covered all this a golden wall design of already, if they indeed a light-paisley. It was met up last week. I safe to say this house, like the land, was a hand-medidn’t ask or say anything. As I pondered this, I down. Sebastian’s parents no doubt left it to him. started getting a bit self-conscious. I caught SebasDiana confirmed this to me later in the evening. tian looking me over as he and Diana spoke in the Sebastian reappeared from one of the back rooms. living room. They talked as if I wasn’t in ear shot.

Echoes of the locked away monster-beast trailed Me being the third person of conversation, I tried him. The discontented animal wanted all to hear not to take note of what they were saying. I sat there its unhappiness in being shut away. The growls and in the kitchen, at the table, adjacent, but at a disscratching at the door reminded in me of a hortance across from them. I casually sipped my beer, ror movie’s werewolf. “Never mind Pinky, he’s just and with nothing else to do, lit a cigarette. Diana wanting to be a part of the fun is all,” Sebastian took note of this and started rummaging through stated as he took my hand, saying hello. With Diana, her over-sized purse that could have seconded as an they shared a peck on the lips. Just a peck mind over-night bag. Once she located her menthol 120s, you, but still, on the lips. I questioned this. “Happy she lit two, handed one from her lips to Sebastian. to know you, Johnny. You’re an angel you know,” It took me back a bit—a very masculine suggestive 40 RFD 194 Summer 2023

move—though I wondered if she understood what it meant or suggested. Looking back on it, I don’t think she even asked him if he wanted one, she just gave it to him, as if it were expected.

W

e reached downtown in what seemed like no time at all. It felt like it took longer getting to Sebastian’s than it did getting back into town. Perhaps Diana and Sebastian’s endless chatting made the time, and the drive, fly by. Once in town we decided to park near the old-railroad station. It would be our compass, a landmark for later in the evening when finding the car—kind of a pre-planned insurance should we tackle more than we could handle with our drinking. The whole of the downtown area had become a free-for-all pub-crawl. It was the town’s annual event, in its third year now. It was to mirror that of Memphis and the New Orleans French Quarter pub-crawls, sort of a block party. It was one of the many ways the city council attempted to breathe life into the dying downtown area. It was meant to attract tourist dollars, but the locals seemed more drawn to it than outsiders. It was only a one weekend a year event, and beggars cannot be choosy. Besides, it was cheaper than traveling to New Orleans or Memphis. We decided on the main nightclub everyone always wanted to get into, Miss Belle’s Place. They had live bands from college circuits and other venues. The place was an authentic 1800s two-story house of ill-repute back in its heyday. Now turned into a nightclub, it still carried the atmosphere and decor reflecting its bygone era, though updated, reflecting a modern tone. It boasted a large dance floor with a stage for the featured bands, and even a dining area behind a set of French doors. The original handmade wooden saloon bar was still used. It was some twenty feet long with a five-foot-high mirror that hung on the back wall and was the full length of the bar. Glassware of every kind sat on the mirrored glass shelves in front of it, as did an array of bottled liquors more numerous than you could ever imagine. Four brands of vodka, five brands of rum, eight variations of bourbon, eight of tequila, seven of gin, five of whisky, and ten brands of imported Irish-whiskey—the town was mostly of Irish decent. There was scotch, cognac, port, and so on and so on. Beer, ale, and stouts all followed suit in variety. The iconic decor caught your attention each time you walked into the club, no matter how many times you had entered the place. Opposite the bar wall, an eight foot long by four-foot-high portrait hung of the lovely Miss Belle herself. She lays on top of a Victorian style daybed,

dressed only in the feathers placed in her hair. She welcomed each and every guest into her place during her lifetime, as she does to this day. Facing the viewer, Miss Belle wears a devilish grin on her face, and it was said to be a true portrait, her exact likeness. Legend had it that she commissioned the portrait from a passing patron who was originally only planning on a single night stop over on his way to San Francisco. Once it was discovered by Miss Belle that he was an artist, she contracted him for the painting. It took all of six weeks for him to finish the piece, working day and night, it was said. One part of the legend had it that he left without every receiving pay—that is, in coin. The story went that he took nightly advances from the staff, and even Miss Belle herself. In the end, he did this to the point of owing Miss Belle payment on top of his work on the painting. Another version of the legend was that Miss Belle herself saw to all the services provided to the artist herself. This legend said it was to ensure his work would be accurate in detail of her. What better way was there to gain first-hand detail than to see the real deal for yourself? Having seen the painting a number of times in the past myself, I have to say, he did a damned fine job.

M

iss Belle’s was packed, packed as it could be.

The line was two blocks long and three people wide. We decided we hadn't taken the trouble to get to town for nothing and joined the line. We chitchatted, or that is to say, Diana and Sebastian chitchatted. I just took in the crowd, people watched and listened to nearby talk, as I tried not to freeze. It was early October and generally we didn’t see cold nights like this until the first week of deer season in November. I buried my face into the back of Diana’s coat and long hair, trying to keep my face warm.

Thank God I talked her out of cutting it last summer. Being in public and in front of her old friend, she took to my light cuddling in good stride. Usually she’d bark at me: “Stop it. Don’t. No, hands off, we’re in public. Behave.” After a bit, I lit a cigarette and inhaled the warmth of it. It was better than trying to bury my face into my wife’s rough coat fabric.

Besides this, the scent of vanilla radiating from her hair was getting to me. I hated the heavy scent of vanilla. It made me nauseous. Yet, knowing this, Diana bought everything in vanilla. All the household candles were vanilla scented. Outlet plug-in room deodorizers were vanilla scented. Anti-bacterial bathroom sprays were vanilla. Dryer sheets were vanilla. Her favorite flavor of ice cream, cake, pudding, and so on…all vanilla. Even her car's little pine RFD 194 Summer 2023

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42 RFD 194 Summer 2023

"Pride Guy" by Richard Vyse.

tree shitty thing on the rearview mirror was vanilla.

Once she even came across some cigarettes—vanilla flavored. But even she couldn’t smoke those foul things for very long.

The line started to move now, and a rumor traveled through that a party room reservation had been canceled. The room was opened-up allowing some fifty or more people to get in. This made things look up for our getting in sooner. We were now only some twenty paces from the door. That was until Sebastian decided to speak to a small group of girls, maybe four of them, who stood in front of us.

Sebastian was buzzed from beers, and whatever the hell else he had taken before we picked him up earlier. He decided to start up a conversation with two of the girls, most innocently, really, asking them questions regarding the club’s prices or whatever— I never really found out. It was hard to hear, the streets where so full of rowdy loud people, and music blasted from Miss Sophia’s outdoor speakers, the club set for this weekend. Small talk I figured was all he was doing. I found out later the girls had been talking and stealing glances of Sebastian. He was a good-looking guy, I must admit, and the girls were a couple of typical young freshman college students. Sebastian was just speaking to them, calming his nerves down from their stares. They were obviously naïve to the fact Sebastian’s desires veered left in the bedroom. Not long after Sebastian started talking to the girls, one of the girls started yelling to a group of guys standing outside on the balcony just over the front doors. It was clear they all knew each other. However, one of the young guys was well beyond his limit for the night. He looked too young, in fact, to have been allowed in the club, and he was about to show how immature he was.

He had taken exception to Sebastian’s talking to one of the girls. “Hey! Hey yooou! Sheee’s my frrrend.

She my friend! Yooou can nooo to her. Taaa an I comiiiin,” he drunkenly forced out. It was unusual to see someone so drunk and still be allowed to stay in a club, but it was a super thick crowd of people tonight and he blended into it. The girl in question turned to Sebastian and started to apologize for her friend. She yelled up at the drunk kid, screaming for him to behave himself, telling him she was fine. Sebastian leaned into the girl’s ear, telling her something or other. It didn’t help matters.

“Okaaay…fuuuck…I’m dooon!” he splattered out.

He then disappeared into the crowd behind him.

This shook Sebastian, shook him enough that he wanted to leave. “That’s it, let’s go somewhere else,” he said, looking to Diana. “That’s what I hate about

straight places. Guys are always looking to prove themselves in a fight. Impress a girl. Or they can’t hold their liquor,” he exclaimed. Diana told him not to worry about it. She said the guy was so drunk he’d more than likely forget why he came down the stairs once he did. She went on to blurt out, “Johnny will protect you. Right honey—you’ll beat that little shit up and protect us—me and Sebastian?” She kissed me on the cheek. “Sure,” I quietly replied. In truth, I was thinking: wonderful! I’ll get into a fist fight with an idiot kid then be tossed in jail for the night. All for a wife who I don’t know if I still have a bond with, much less love anymore, and a gay guy whom I've only just met. What a wonderful night this was going to be. Sebastian was nervous as hell.

He kept fidgeting. It was clear he was scared. Turns out Sebastian had a right to be freaking out. Diana told me days later that Sebastian got the crap beat out of him all through high school, junior high, going all the way back to day care. He stood out, was different. He was a mommy’s boy, without a doubt.

Those who grew-up with him eventually got used to him, or got tired of beating his ass-in. Today he didn’t worry much about getting his ass kicked, unless he walked into a situation like tonight, going into a straight nightclub where Neanderthals and idiots hung out.

Sebastian begged Diana enough that we finally left Miss Belle’s, never having seen the drunk adolescent again. This made Sebastian feel all the better about leaving the harlot’s club. We next found ourselves at a country bar. Talk about jumping out of the pan and into the fire. Outlaw Floyds it was called—an oldschool country redneck bar named after the infamous, or famous, depending upon your view, 1930s gangster Pretty Boy Floyd who, it was said, lived here in town back in the bad ol’ days. He had grown-up just across the state line. Garth Brooks, Charlie Pride, and Loretta Lynn were the types of country classics played here. It was a jukebox setup, with a small bar and mismatched mini tables and chairs, and an average size dance floor. It was not big enough for a large group to line-dance or do a proper two-step if a good sized crowd joined in, but it would fit a number of couples for some cozy slow box-step dancing. The waitresses dressed in extra tight jeans and low-cut or loose tops. One had on a spaghetti string top, no bra.

Another had unbuttoned her top just low enough to show her goods. The younger waitresses and barkeep seemed at home in their painted jeans. It was the older gals who looked as if engineers assisted them in maneuvering their well-aged asses to their bulging denims. Both sets of waitresses however looked as RFD 194 Summer 2023

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though they were doing well on tips. It was an older crowd’s place, so it wasn’t too overly packed on normal weekends—a little more of a crowd this weekend, but a far cry from Miss Belle’s. It looked unlikely there’d be any trouble here for Sebastian—not too many out to make a scene or assert their manhood.

Yet, you never could be too sure where liquor was involved. Diana suggested she’d take Sebastian’s arm as we walked in. It’d offer the appearance of them being a couple, less likely for Sebastian to be questioned or messed with. As for me, I’d be the stag in this charade. It was funny, I got to thinking as we entered the bar, how some people, men mostly, could read Sebastian and tell how he took his coffee. He didn’t dress in bright colors. He didn’t act or express himself as feminine, and tonight he was wearing jeans with a button-down shirt, basic plain cowboy boots, and a very plain jacket. His hair was a little long, but I’d see many rednecks sporting ponytails and, even today, the odd mullet or two. In this, Sebastian was in good company. No, he didn’t even wear an earring, piercings, or tattoos—that I knew of. Yet, for some guys, they could just smell it on a fella. I wondered if I had ever put out that scent before.

We ordered up some beers from the bar. Diana had her usual tequila mixer. We took the only table open, right by the front door. Every time someone came or left, a gust of cold air hit us. The place was warm enough, yet being right at the entryway, it was noisy, bumpy, and cold. It didn’t take long after sitting down. I’d been the one to see it first, before Sebastian and Diana did. Sebastian caught the eye of a cowboy who was giving him the look. That up and down look, sizing him up, judging his character. I wasn’t sure, but it appeared to be what was happening. I just didn’t know if the cowboy was looking for a fight, or something else. I wasn’t naïve about the gay-community. I knew about there being cowboys, bikers, and other manly-man types who were gay. I had just never met any. At least, I never knew of it if I did. So, I wasn’t sure what this guy was after in eyeing Sebastian, as he did. He was speaking to a girl at his table, but that didn’t mean anything. There was another girl at the table, too, and another guy.

Each time this guy looked Sebastian over, his gaze locked on a little longer. Sebastian finally caught on and became nervous. It was clear to me that this cowboy was straight and sensed Sebastian was a daisy. I nudged Diana with my elbow and leaned into her, “Hey, I think it’s time to leave. Let’s finish up and go somewhere else.” She had seen what I was getting at, with a roll of my eye towards the guy’s table, seeing he was sizing up Sebastian. “All right…

44 RFD 194 Summer 2023

shit. Wish you would just kick someone’s ass so the whole of the bar will leave us alone.” Diana gulped down her full glass of tequila, as did Sebastian and I with our beers. We needed to find a less crowded place and one that offered a warmer setting for us three, well…more so for Sebastian. Some place not so overly masculine and homophobic. Diana was not too happy leaving. She wanted to stay for the music that she loved. Sebastian leaned into her just as we got up from the table and said something or other—I couldn’t hear. Diana turned to me nodding her head in an okay gesture to Sebastian, indicating whatever he said she was in agreement with. Once outside she told me Sebastian suggested we try a bar he knew of further down the street, where he would be more comfortable, and more importantly, guaranteed no one there would pick on him. Diana then told me it was a gay bar. I looked at her and thought, what the hell?

E

nd of the Rainbow it was called. It sat at the end of the main drag with only one small neighborhood type bar some five businesses away, which was closed for some reason. A few pub-crawlers like us, ventured towards the Rainbow. I gathered from their echoing discussion that they never had been there either. They were exchanging stories they'd heard of regarding its appeal and rumored behind closed door activities of revelry, even open orgies.

As we approached the end of the road, the illuminating sign barely lit the sidewalk. The streetlights seemed dim in this section of the street as well.

A single cloud sat on the upper left corner of the sign with a five-color rainbow stripe spilling out from it: red, yellow, blue, white, and pink. Under the rainbow appeared the club's name—End of the Rainbow—in mixed colored letters matching the rainbow itself. It looked like something found in a grade-school or on a child’s bedroom wall. Standing just outside of the doors, I asked aloud, “Why haven’t I heard of this place before?” “Only opened a couple of months ago. And it’s a word-of-mouth sort of place. You two are going to like it though. It’s not just for gay people, everyone’s welcomed here.

They even have stage shows every Saturday night.

I've only been here three or four times since they opened. If I ever get that fucking car of mine running, I’ll be here every night,” Sebastian exclaimed.

He was giddy. Excited as a kid on Christmas. You could tell he was relaxed now, about to be within his element. Diana smiled wildly, from ear to ear. Looking back now, I think she was too eager, and in some uncomfortable way, it made me cautious.

On first walking in, there was an old coat-check desk where you paid your cover charge, or if you had one, presented a pass. They sold annual passes that offered discounts and special drink offers. You could hear the music being played inside from the front desk, a secondary set of heavy bevel glass doors vibrated, and you could smell the hint of cigarette seeping out from the door’s edges. We paid the cover charge and checked our coats. We received the traditional hand stamp showing we paid, in pink ink mind you, and were given ticket stubs for each of our coats. As we passed through the glass doors that led into the club itself, we were checked once again for our stamped hands by a huge brute—in drag. I swear he was at least six four, not counting the three-inch spiked heels he wore.

He towered over everyone. He made everything near him look miniature. He reminded me of Tony Robbins in drag. His wig was a bright yellow, a neon yellow, really, and it hung just past his shoulders. He wore heavy false eyelashes, and bright pink blush with matching bright pink lipstick. His nails were two inch press-ons and polished in pink—just like his man size toenails—pink. The form fitting mini dress he wore just barely fit him, and if he had bent over I dare say he’d have been in trouble with a split up the back. But it was his fishnet stockings that caught my eye. I had always had a thing for fishnets.

I found myself taking a second look, then a third. I tried not being too obvious, but I was taking him in.

Up and down from his oversized knuckle toes to his muscular thighs that pressed through his tightened dress. I made sure, of course, not to let Diana catch me. She knew my fetishes very well. But I was more worried about myself being so curious.

The place was noisy and packed. Every table was taken except for two stools at the bar. We grabbed the stools and waited to put in our drink order. The two bartenders were jumping about filling orders like mad. The three waitresses I saw were on the move. They ran from table to table, traveling back and forth from the bar. There was a hostess, dressed in drag. She was an older gal, at least in her fifties, I’d say. She wore a little spaghetti strap of a fluffy prom-like dress. Her makeup was not as good as Tony Robbins. She looked sort of clownish and homely, in truth. It wasn’t hard not to stare at her.

The club was elongated, running front to back, at least some seventy yards, if not more. A huge stage sat at the end of the club’s large single room. It had a set of stairs off to one side that led up and over and back down again to where the back dressing rooms and restrooms were located. There was a second set

of stairs on the opposite side of the stage, only accessible from the stage. This set of stairs—Victorian grated iron—had a beautiful design pattern found only in that era of politeness and dapperness—as only the Victorian era could be. The iron staircase ran along the wall and climbed upwards towards the second floor where an aged closed wooden door had a posted sign that read PRIVATE, in large caps.

Behind the stage I could see various people half dressed in costumes and some completely undressed. They were running about, in and out of the dressing room and restrooms.

Sebastian explained the layout to us. The restrooms and dressing rooms for the performers were located behind the stage. In between them was a hallway that led to the back parking lot and alleyway. The stairs that led upstairs to the second floor was to the living quarters of the owner and manager of the place, who it turned out was the clownish hostess. Also, Sebastian made sure to let me know, as he had seen me eyeing everything, and everyone, not to be surprised when I used the restrooms later on. I may very well see everyone in either room regardless of it being the men’s or lady’s room. It was an unofficial understanding: there was no discrimination in the restrooms. You were free to use either room. No one gave a shit. The signs were only there for licensing and regulations, and city official’s peace of mind.

Finally, our turn came, and the bartender took our orders. I threw caution to the wind and ordered a double gin and tonic. Diana ordered her tequila sunrise and Sebastian ordered a house special, the Tin Man’s Orgasm. It basically was a Manhattan, just renamed. It was the drinks oily rust color that suggested what the character’s cum would look like.

Hence, the new name of the old drink.

The crowd was happy. Some were walking around mingling. Most others stayed stationary at tables. Everyone shared the same denominator, talking loudly and freely. Words such as fuck, shit, ass, queer, bitch, slut, asshole, dike, flooded and echoed in the air. Stagehands feverishly finished setting up, mic and light checks and so on. You could feel the electricity in the air. It was exciting and festive.

Everyone was smiling, laughing, and getting along.

Diana leaned in to my ear and asked me what I thought. “It’s alright. Still too early to tell, but it’s nice,” I cautiously replied. I didn’t want her to know how much I was relaxing into it all. Diana took hold of Sebastian’s ear, repeated what I said. This was confirmed by Sebastian leaning in to my ear and saying, “Better than those other places right! No one RFD 194 Summer 2023

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46 RFD 194 Summer 2023

"Rainbow Profile" by Richard Vyse.

fucks with you here…unless you want to be fucked!”

He giggled at his own joke. I smiled and nodded in agreement. “You see, gay people, transexuals, bisexuals, and so on, are all cool people to party with.

They don’t care if you’re gay or straight. Just as long as you’re accepting of them, they’re accepting of you!” he loudly stated. I figured Sebastian did this in order for others around us to hear and understand Diana and I were a straight couple in this charade.

The music was good. They played mostly 80’s stuff. It vibrated the walls. I was surprised you couldn’t hear a sound from outside. I pulled out a cigarette and, just when I was about to dig my lighter out of my jeans, a guy walked by, held out his lighter. I accepted the offer, he lit my cigarette, and I nodded a thank you to him. He just walked on, never missing a beat. Sebastian saw this and right off shook a “no” gesture to me. “Watch it. Don’t do that again unless you want—you know,” he said, smirking. “If you accept a light from a guy here it’s like a girl accepting a light from a guy. Get it?” “Shit, I didn’t think of that. Thanks. Well, maybe I wasn’t his type,” I joked. “Maybe he was just being friendly.

But most of these guys are out to get some action, just like in any other bar or club. And you are fresh meat, Johnny. They've never seen you before. So—be careful,” he said, grinning. Diana had leaned in to listen. She laughed at this, at me.

I was taken aback by this guy who gave me the light, though. He wasn’t great looking—kind of seedy, really. Yet, it somehow made me understand how a girl feels when a seedy guy hits on her.

Repelled, and, at the same time, tickled about it, in a weird way. It was the fact that you were found desirable that got to you. I sat there questioning myself again. I found that everything happening on this night was leading me towards something, some life changing thing. Something written in the cosmos zillion of years ago was happening tonight.

Or maybe, the real me was just emerging.

T

he show started. The hostess began making announcements and introduced the show in a rough, hoarse voice. He reminded me of the ringmaster from the Moulin Rouge movie, only slender.

“Hello everyone!” The crowd’s cheers and roars boomed off the walls and ceiling. It was deafening. You would have thought we were at a concert.

People took to the floor below the stage, squeezing in tightly, all excited, jumping up and down waving their hands in the air. “Okay kiddies, let’s see who’s in the house tonight. How many gay people do we have here? Raise your hands!” The roaring was loud-

er still, and just about everyone in the club had their hands in the air. “How many bisexuals are here?”

Only half or less of the club raised their hands, some were the same people who had just raised their hands acknowledging they were gay. “Wonderful!

How many crossdressers do we have?” The crowd again cheered with delight. A much smaller number raised their hands. One was in male dress. And, to be honest, the two or three cross-over women looked very pretty. I would never have guessed otherwise. “How many transsexuals?” A few hands went up. Then the hostess asked, “How many straight friends do we have here tonight?” Diana grabbed my hand quickly and raised both of ours together. I was taken back by this. I never thought she’d be so bold.

Still, I wasn’t too surprised that the other straight people in the club holding up their hands, too, were the pub-crawls from outside who entered the club just ahead of us. “How wonderful, give them an extra round of welcome!” Applause and roaring were offered. “Now how many of you out there just don’t know what the fuck you are? Raise your hands!” The audience hooted, laughed, and cheered at this. The stage area tightened more, with people leaving their tables to get into the fun. “Beautiful! Every one of you here tonight are indeed welcome! And, if you’re on the fence deciding on just who the hell you are, come see me later tonight! I’ll help you find yourself!” The place went wild. It was then that a group of six or more decked out performers came out from the back dressing rooms and onto the stage, all of them in feathered costumes, fluffy dresses, one in a balloon outfit, and one even dressed like Cary Grant, in black-tie, no less. They all made their way onto the stage, standing in a half circle behind the hostess. Meanwhile the hostess continued announcing drink specials for the night and upcoming special dates. As the announcing went on, I took note of the performers. They were all beyond tall.

Amazons they were. At least six foot each without heels. One had on six-inch spiked thigh high boots.

She looked like a cross between an evil witch in all black leather and a female dominatrix dressed like a Nazi. “And we have for you tonight, performing and singing, Ms. Skittles!” The audience cheered.

She was the one dressed in the reveling outfit made of balloons, a rainbow of balloons. She even had balloons clipped into her hair, just off to one-side.

I leaned in to hear Sebastian tell Diana that Ms. Skittles throws out mini bags of her namesake candy during the show.

“Ms. Elsa is here tonight! The sexiest witch of the North!” She was the all-leather Nazi girl. As the RFD 194 Summer 2023

47

performers names were called out, each girl took a step forward and bowed or curtsied. “Ms. Dot!” The crowed really went wild when her name was called out. She was the night club’s namesake, dressed as Dorothy, the main character of the beloved classic film. She had a checkered blue and white dress, white lace ankle socks, and she even had a picnic basket. The cream that topped off her outfit was the red ruby shoes. Wherever she got them, you know she paid dearly for them. Her long legs traveled up and up into the tailored mini dress. She was a marvel to look at. Her breasts boasted delightful full cleavage. Her dress was obviously redesigned to enhance them. Her pigtails framed her beautiful facial features. I mean, she was beyond cute, beautiful, in fact. I couldn’t stop looking at her. Her hair was her own. You could tell it was no wig. It was black—black as midnight. But everything about her worked. Everything about her screamed Sexy-Dot— those legs, thick yet slender, firm and long, shapely long. I was falling for her. I felt my cock harden, uncomfortable being caged in my tight jeans. I wanted her. I wanted her badly. Then I remembered where I was. More importantly, I remembered who she was. I had to remind myself: she was a guy, a guy with a cock under that skirt. I smiled as Diana and Sebastian looked back at me, gauging my enjoyment of the place and the show so far. I just smiled a crooked smile to them. I was afraid I’d show more than "okay" with everything on my face. I worried I was liking it all too much.

The cast of characters matched the namesake of the club. But the next set of performers broke the theme. Mr. Grant, the only "male" performer, was an obvious character to figure out, as were all the other characters that followed. My mind was locked in on Dot, though. I ordered another round of drinks and pulled out my lighter before placing a cigarette in my mouth, having learned my lesson.

I just then caught eye of Sebastian crossing the stage, on his way to the men’s room. The hostess stopped him. “Where are we off to sweetie?” The hostess asked Sebastian. “The little boy’s room, I need to take a piss,” he chuckled into the mic. “Well darling, we need to pay a toll first. Let me see what you’re packing and, if it suits me, I’ll let you go by.”

Sebastian didn’t even think about it. He unbuckled his jeans and stretched open his satin blue bikini briefs. She peered in. “Oh my! I think you need the big boy’s room instead!” she exclaimed. Laughter with oohs and ahhs echoed. Sebastian just smiled and continued on his way, not bothering to buckle up. “We’re all family here tonight! Soooo, offer out 48 RFD 194 Summer 2023

nothing but loooove, my babies!" screamed our hostess. Sister Sledge was cranked up and everyone started dancing. It was then that all the girls on stage passed Dot’s picnic basket around, pulling out what looked like mini red bags. It was candy, Ms. Skittles candy. Sebastian did say Skittles were the unofficial candy of the club. "Taste the rainbow" had never seen advertising like this before. The overhead house lights came down, dim, with rolling multicolored mini lights shining everywhere. All attention was on the dance floor and the stage. Sebastian, just arriving back, said something to Diana. Then they both looked at me. I didn’t have to hear what he said to her. I just nodded yes, and off they both went, hitting the dance floor. I stayed, sipping on my drink, taking slow drags of my cigarette. I allowed myself to freely focus on Ms. Dot. She and the other performers on stage danced underneath the twirling rainbow of lights. Ms. Dot was grooving it and I watched her with keen interest. Her face was captivating. As were those legs. Hell, all of her was captivating. I longed to take her into my arms and embrace her. I imagined feeling her soft skin, the tautness of her youthful body, and the smell of her perfume. Her pigtails I would untwine and slowly... (sigh). I had the ability, in my imagination, to project myself to another place in time, if I concentrated enough. Tonight’s drinking helped escalate this magic of mine, making it almost instantaneous. I had had a lot of practice of late, too. Diana and I were in the middle of a sexual drought. So much so, I would not be surprised if her pussy had gone dry and was cracking apart like a dried up riverbed. I had to rely on my imagination when I took matters into my own hands. Shit, the truth was I used this ability of mine to transport myself when I was with her too. Diana would have flipped out if she knew how many times I was mentally with someone else.

Selma Hayek, Emma Thompson, or one of Diana’s own coworkers. It was the only way of getting started and enjoying the whole process with her. I’d just make sure we were in the dark or I’d keep my eyes closed the whole time. In the end, that was all it was: a process, a process of a fix, fixing a need to get an itch scratched.

Diana and Sebastian had switched partners now.

She was dancing with some girl now, or at least she looked like a girl, and Sebastian was with some guy.

The guy was tall, taller than Sebastian and dressed in a cowboy straw hat, a black one, which made it look like it was made of plastic. It reminded me of that country singer Diana liked so much, Tom, Tommy, maybe Timmy, some crap like that. McGraw or

McGoon, I think was the last name. I don’t know.

It didn’t matter. I couldn’t stand him, much less his plastic hat. It made him look fake, a fake cowboy, as he was. It was the "Indian" song that really burned me up. It was insulting to my own heritage, being twenty-five percent Native American from northern Monterrey. And this plastic hat man had zero percent Native in him. But like with most things related to Native Americans, especially in this part of the country, everyone claimed Native blood. Some went out of their way to obtain a roll card for bragging rights. And when I say everyone, I mean everyone.

You’d think no white women had kids between the 1880s up through the 1970s. The roll card was the official mark of your being of Native blood. It traced your lineage back to whomever was documented as being a true Native-American. I think of it as more of a "role card," as most everyone who obtained one faked the paperwork when filing for it. And no DNA was required to obtain a roll card. I was also told by most of these wannabe natives that I wasn’t a true Native if my lineage came from north of the border—the only real Natives were within the fifty states. These Hollywood educated idiots made me sick.

The music now moved on to some 80s pop.

Flashdance was playing now and Diana was still with the same girl, plus two others now. They formed a nice little group all dancing and bumping into each other, pretending to be in scenes of Dirty Dancing with Patrick no doubt. Sebastian was still with the same guy, only they were dirty dancing against the wall, hand in hand, balancing themselves as they melted into each other, tonguing each other as if their lives depended upon it. I sat alone, catching glances of an older guy eyeing me now and then. He was with some young kid, who wore heavy eyeliner and mascara. The kid was young enough to have been his son, a pretty-boy, and this older guy appeared to be his meal ticket for the night, maybe even a sugar daddy in the making. That much I could read. I lit another cigarette and ordered another gin, a double. Diana shortly came back and was huffing and puffing. She smoked beyond two packs a day and never exercised. She had me order her a double tequila. Barbra Streisand just took the stage for a string of songs. She started off with “The Way We Were.” Diana was wide-eyed, telling me what she had seen when she slipped off the dance floor to visit the ladies room earlier. Two of the performers were in the restroom marked Ladies. Ms. Glenda, the Good Witch, and the Nazi gal. The Witch was getting a full mouth of leather.

She couldn’t believe they were doing it right there in the Ladies. I just chuckled and shook my head in disbelief. Talking about restrooms gave me the urge. I gulped my drink and told Diana that I’d be right back. As I stood up, I felt my head float off my shoulders. I knew I had hit my mark and made the decision when I got back to switch to Coke. I couldn’t really feel my feet as I reached the stairs and attempted maneuvering myself onto them. I had control of my legs, but it felt as if they were moving slower than I wanted them to. As I crossed the stage, Barbara—in mid song—looked my way. For a moment, I got petrified she was going to ask me to pay a toll, or even to join in and sing with her. To my relief, she did neither. I continued walking by and once, on the other side of the stage, I eagerly anticipated emptying with my cock the painful pressure of piss it had been holding back. The backstage dressing room door was open, as was the backdoor to the back parking lot and alleyway. All was just as Sebastian said. Both restroom doors were wide open. I wondered why they even bothered with any doors at all. I went into the least crowded one, the men’s, I think it was. I stood behind one guy and waited with my hands on my belt, ready to unbuckle. There was no one giving anyone head here, other than the urinal. In a moment’s time, I undid my jeans, pulling them down slightly, and took hold of my dick. It hurt as I started to pee, but it rushed out and went on for hours, it seemed.

On my way back, as I passed the dressing rooms, I peered in and saw half-dressed to nearly fully nude performers changing costumes. They were chattering on about whatever. I didn’t pay attention. But what stood out was the glimpse of Dot, standing there without any top on, hair wrapped in a headsock for a wig. Her skin was pale, white pale. A smooth marble look it was, maybe even alabaster.

She only had on a pair of lacey black panties that tightly hugged her perfectly shaped ass. I mean it was perfect. Not so much rounded as slightly pear shaped with slender hips. Not flat at all. It was curved just so, in all the right directions. If perfection of a woman’s ass could be, her's was it. It was better than what hung off behind Diana, I can tell you that. I got an instant boner seeing her. As I said, she was topless, and I mean topless. The cleavage that was busting out of her Kansas outfit earlier was not faked at all. She had tits. Real ones. Small, but they were tits. She had deliciously large pinkish nipples that were well matched to peachy colored areolas which bled down into her alabaster skin. She was at least a small B cup. She took note of my secRFD 194 Summer 2023

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ond or more stare, then continued getting her new Diana returning to her seat next to me. Sebastian costume together. On my way over the stairs and returned to his new friend against the wall. They stage, I feared Barbara would stop me. My cock was stood off across the room shutting out the world. bulging through my jeans more than ever. I lucked Only the two of them existed, deeply exploring each out though. Barbara was too busy, deeply invested other’s mouths with tongues. They somehow were in her “Evergreen” emotions. able to keep track of the waitress each time she I made it back to the safe haven of my stool. trolled by, coming up for a breath and placing an Diana was not there; she was across the room with order. Liza continued in all her beauty and wonder.

Sebastian talking to some guys, friends of hers and I fantasized and locked her into my memory for the his from high school. It amazed me how everywhere future to be called upon. It wouldn’t have mattered we went there was always someone she knew. It was if Diana joined in or not, I was already planning on a small community, transporting myself small towns all spread through the astral out. In gathering, or planes to Liza’s side. in doing anything It sounds bizarre, One girl made a grab for Liza’s major, everyone came I know, but ever ass in gently squeezing it. Liza into town, the only since I was a kid of true resemblance around ten years simply said, “Oooo sweetie be of modern civilizaof age, having seen patient, let mommy finish singing tion, especially where Cabaret, I’ve had a first.” Everyone laughed with watering holes were fetish for Liza and joyous smiles on their faces. concerned. I could musicals. It was the tell I was being talked outfit, I think. The Finally, she was nearing the about now. Diana, fishnets and the sexy back of the club. In crossing the Sebastian and friends way she sung her room from where Sebastian and were all looking my solo on stage under his friend were, Liza hesitated way. By the looks on the spotlight, weartheir faces—grins, ing that black derby. and asked Sebastian and his smirks, and smiles—I It all just grabbed friend –if they were lovers? was being sized up and me. Just like the real Sebastian whispered something measured. In looks, Liza, here was this into Liza’s ear. She relayed it to and more so, sexuLiza tugging and ally. It was unnerving, grabbing at me. I everyone- “Well, we’ve only just yet erotic at the same forgot this Liza had begun! Love is certainly in the time. I found it fed something extra air tonight! Two new lovers who my ego and I could though. only met tonight!” feel myself fill up with Soon the crowd pride. went wild dancBarbara finished ing and grew even up her set and just as louder, as if that she walked off stage, the next performer was on. were possible. Liza decided to come off the stage It was Liza. Minnelli that is. And who was playing and walk through the audience as she sung. A baby Liza? Dorothy. My Dorothy, my Dot. She came on spotlight followed her within the semi-darkened stage in a classy elongated blue dress that opened club. Mini-colored lights bounced off a disco ball wide on top, wrapping just past her shoulders and that was lowered in the middle of the stage. She streamlined down into the middle for a low frontal made her way through the crowd, stopping here and cut. It was a tailored costume, hugging her body there, singing directly to someone, kissing them beautifully. In every step she took, every muscle on the cheek now and then, offering a flirtation, and curve was accentuated. The dress split off her hand caressing a face, a shoulder, or backside. in the middle just mid-thigh, revealing her dark One girl made a grab for Liza’s ass, gently squeezstockings and black pumps. Her fingernails were a ing it. Liza simply said, “Oooo sweetie be patient, deep red, standing out. I watched every minute of let mommy finish singing first.” Everyone laughed her and took in every inch of her. I barely noticed with joyous smiles on their faces. Finally, she neared 50 RFD 194 Summer 2023

"Looking Back on Rainbow" by Richard Vyse.

RFD 194 Summer 2023

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the back of the club. Crossing the room from where Sebastian and his friend were, Liza hesitated and asked Sebastian and his friend if they were lovers?

Sebastian whispered something into Liza’s ear. She relayed it to everyone. “Well, we’ve only just begun!

Love is certainly in the air tonight! Two new lovers who only met tonight!” More shouting, applause, and roaring from the room. Liza then crossed the room and stood in front of me. I could only smirk at her. I didn’t know what to say or do. I had a deep desire to lunge at her, take her into my arms, passionately kiss her. I could smell her perfume and it made my head spin more than all the drinks I'd had.

Her eyes looked into mine and in this tiny moment, meeting face to face, I knew she felt how much I wanted her. It was my moment, my defining moment. What I did next I knew would change my life forever, for better or worse. It all came down to this very millisecond of a moment. I just needed to get my nerve up and do it. Then Liza took a glance at Diana, turned her eyes back to me, cupped my face with a hand, caressed my face and blew me a kiss with a wink of her eye. She went on from there back into the crowd, back onto the stage. I missed my moment, chicken shit that I was.

The moment was gone forever. I lost it. I could only sit there in awe of her like an awkward idiot teenager. Fear, fear of my wife, fear of being myself.

I sat, holding back my true inner desires from being shown. I should have leaned into Liza, taken her in my arms and melted into her. I should have violated all propriety and tasted her passionately. I should have…

S

ebastian was still sucking the face off his friend.

Diana and I were just finishing our Cokes. She followed my lead, to avoid a hangover the next day.

It was getting late. “Ready to leave, I’m about hammered. All that dancing did me in. I’m ready for bed,” she said, exasperated. “Yes—is Sebastian coming or what,” I asked pointing towards him and his friend. “Let me see,” Diana said as she made her way to them. I followed, in pain, my head pounding with each step I took, having sobered up. “Noooo, I’ll be fine. Yooou two, go home,” Sebastian humorously spit out in his limited incapacitated speech. “Sebastian, I think you need to come home with us,” Diana rebutted in a stern motherly voice. “I’ll take care of him. He’ll be alright with me. I live here in town,” the still strange new friend said to us. “Okay, but in the morning, you better call me, Sebastian. You let me know you’re okay. You hear?” “Yaas mooother,” Sebastian giggled drunkenly. “Let me see your 52 RFD 194 Summer 2023

license,” Diana said to the new friend. It took him a minute to grasp what she wanted, then he immediately caught on. Without hesitation he pulled out his license. “Sure, there you go,” he said, smiling. He was a happy sort of drunk, though he wasn’t really that drunk. Not like Sebastian. Diana copied down his name and license number. “Okay, Marty, if anything happens—you understand,” she said looking the friend in the eye for confirmation. “Yes ma’am,” he confidently replied. She kissed Sebastian on the cheek and said her goodnights to him. I nodded a gesture of a hello-goodbye to Marty, sticking out my hand to Sebastian, expecting him to shake goodbye.

He grabbed it and pulled me into him, planting a lip-lock on me, a most passionate kiss goodbye.

For a second, while our lips were locked, I almost didn’t pull back, embraced him. But after a second passed, I did pull back and he released me. I felt he knew, yet he only smiled his sheepish grin at me.

Diana shocked, laughingly said, “Sebastian! Get off Johnny, you have your own man now.” She smiled at Sebastian while still laughing. She took my arm and said good night again to Sebastian and Marty. She started us out of the club. Again, I found I did nothing. The awkward teenager I was was too scared. I denied myself. I kept telling myself, I was no fag. I was no queer. I was a man, all man. I kept saying it to myself, in my confused and pounding head. I was going to go home and fuck my wife. Well, maybe fuck my hand. I could only look in amazement at Sebastian after his kissed me. I was just barely able to follow Diana out of the club as the "YMCA" song started. It, and its meaning echoed in my mind.

On our way to the car, Diana broke the silence, explaining in a most apologetic manner for Sebastian. She said he was always unpredictable. He enjoyed shocking people. She then confessed that, earlier in the evening, Sebastian had told her he found me very attractive. But, she said, she told him I didn’t play that game, nor did she mix things up. Apparently, Sebastian, every blue moon or so, swung both ways in group sessions. I thought to myself, what games do I get to play?

O

nce home we ended up in bed—to sleep. We were both beyond any condition to do anything even if we desired it. Diana was still somewhat tipsy, and I was mending my headache with a handful of aspirin. The next day, we slept until late morning, eleven-ish. Nothing was said about the night before til late lunch. Diana mentioned in passing that Sebastian had called and left a message around one in the afternoon to say he was fine. But

she did add that he told her he was already moving into Marty’s. I looked at her in surprise, “Really?”

“Yes, Sebastian is like that. Can’t stand to be alone.

His roommate, or former lover, had apparently left him a month ago. Met someone else apparently. So Sebastian has been on the rebound ever since," she explained. “But they only met?” I stated in a very questioning tone. Again, Diana explained, it was just how Sebastian was. It’s his nature to live life moment to moment, on a whim.

All the next month I thought about that evening at the Rainbow. I questioned my emotions and mental state. Christ, I think I even passed up an easy kill of a ten-point that strolled by me, underneath my deer stand, on opening day. My mind was lost in thought 24/7 about that night. I told myself it was booze, that it raised my emotions and twisted my desires. I told myself that I was always a joiner, always seeking approval and acceptance.

Fuck, I even joined the local Masonic lodge just to feel I belonged to something. And I wasn’t even that religious. To think I was attracted to a man in drag—how could any man, any raised Pentecostal man, find another man desirable? I began questioning moments of my past, of my childhood. Was it possible I was born gay? Was it a thing built into your DNA and not learned? Desiring to be with another man was unnatural though, a sin. Yet, I loved and found women attractive, so what about that? I was lost and felt sick at times, thinking too long on it all. But maybe that was the problem, the problem between Diana and me. I remembered as a kid, watching an old black and white movie with my parents on a Saturday night, one of those movie of the week shows. There was a romantic scene where the girl sits with her back to the camera, then, just as she turns around to face the camera, she places her face against her own bare shoulder. She then starts gently rubbing her chin, face, and lips on it, holding a come-hither look in her eyes. I recalled it the next day, and how I liked it, how it made me feel inside, all nice and warm. While sitting on our living room couch, thinking on it, I pulled down my grey sweater, baring my own shoulder, then I rubbed my face on my it. I liked it. I thought it was nice. I was all of eight years old, not understanding why. I just knew it was a wonderful feeling. My stepfather had seen me do this from across the room and immediately attacked me. “Stop that! Don’t ever let me catch you doing that again!” My mother asked him what had happened. He told her I was acting like a girl, rubbing my shoulder and face like a woman.

My mother defended me, saying I was only looking

at my arm, as I had already started developing bad skin. I’d form small pimples every now and again on my arms. But my stepfather knew better. He knew, he could read me already. I buried such memories, feelings, and things deep in me after that. Any thoughts, notions, desires, attractions that could suggest I was a fairy, I blocked out. Fuck, I even avoided using the wrong words related to it all: fairy, fag, queer, funny boy, light in the loafers, bread buttered on the wrong side.

I couldn’t block it anymore. That night, looking into Liza’s eyes, feeling what I did, I felt my true self emerging, my wanting of her, man or not. Sebastian’s kiss: I found it erotic. My God, how I wanted to return such a kiss to him. I now felt my desires to be the real me. I was tired of running from it. Tired of trying to hide it. I, most of all, tired of denying myself to myself.

“Where are you going?” Diana asked as I grabbed my car keys and wallet. “Oh, just out. Thought I’d run by the store and pick up a pack of cigarettes.” I was lying, not just to Diana, but to myself as well.

My conscience, and doubts of my true self, still wouldn't let go of questioning myself. “Do you want to come?” “No, I want to watch this show.

Just get me a couple of packs, too, and maybe some chocolate,” she said as I left the bedroom. “Alright!”

I yelled from the front door. Once in the car, I thought about my mission, retrieving cigarettes and chocolates.

As I pulled up to a four-way stop, I sat for a second, even though no other cars were on the road. I thought, what the fuck am I doing? I then took note that if I turned to the right I’d be heading towards the store. But if I took a left turn I’d be heading downtown. I’ll tell you, I had a hell of a strong desire for some candy.

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Queer Archiving

by Bambi Gauthier

I started seriously saving things about my queer life after seeing a news story about a Nebraska farmer who saved every newspaper and he had kept a small diary of local goings on. Then a tornado struck the town center and the town hall and the library were destroyed. They turned to a humble farmer and in his barn was every newspaper from the town since 1960s and in his little diary, he had jotted down every person’s baby being born, a couple getting married and when he attended a funeral. It struck me that as a gay man few people were doing the same thing. So concerned about my own invisibility I started a journal and began saving aspects of my queer existence. Saving letters, handbills, matchbooks from gay bars, and the small gay guides that pointed me to other like-minded folk.

Jump ahead forty years and I have amassed nine hundred books, four thousand magazines and file cabinets of folders on gay groups I have been involved in.

Recently, a friend gifted me another hundred and fifty magazines – flushing out things I lacked and it reminded me of the importance of always being open to new donations of materials.

Most of what I have saved relates to a few major categories: Northeast GLBTQ groups and history, national queer publications, gay zines, and Radical Faerie material from everywhere. It has become a curious game for me to see how quickly I can relate one set of documents, magazines or books with something seemingly different and finding that things in a queer context are often easily linked.

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So as an example while pouring over the new donation of magazines and zines I saw several names which linked to me with people I missed – so I’ve been thinking recently about Walt Cessna, an amazing photographer, zine scenester and savant – I flip through a cool art zine called Spunk and see an image from Scooter Lafarge. The world is so small is some amazing ways. Scooter was friends with Walt.

I am taken with how easily our lives can be erased but how easily they can be retained, rebirthed and brought back. A cool example for me was during the 90’s in the midst of so much AIDS turmoil a number of my friends were hosting events and fundraisers in NYC. Hidden in the pages of HX or Next is a brief blurb about those very same events – a gallery show, a benefit, or even just a hosted event.

Just quaintly tucked away amongst lots of 900 phonesex ads (who remembers those phonesex lines?).

Another recent archival hobby of mine is trying to trace down RFD or Radical Faerie author’s books. I have a small bookcase of these books in my house and I am always in search of new finds. However, as with most things books were printed in short runs and are long out of print and many queer authors essentially self-published thus adding to the rarity of finding some of them.

I always have great pleasure finding an odd find lurking in the wonderful thrift stores here in Northampton and searching randomly on eBay for an elusive author. A great example for me was an interview that Franklin Abbott conducted with author Manil Suri about his trilogy of novels – The Death of Vishnu, The Age of Shiva and The Photographs courtesy of the author.

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City of Devi. I found most of them by scouring my local Goodwill and finding them on bookfinder.com. That I have also searched out Franklin’s own books is also worth noting.

Another aspect of my hoarding is I have managed to acquire gathering lists for most gatherings in the Northeast, when we bothered to keep such things. It amuses me to follow a person through these lists, as their name changes, as they take on a Faerie name, as they move to another city, as they become partnered to someone and they are merely listed on the same line. Once when friends of mine had a big anniversary, I poured through the old gathering lists and xeroxed out the lines they were on and made a cutout pasted up “anniversary card.”

Life lately has been slowed by another pandemic, recovering from the isolation of that and the flashes to the HIV era and its own small set of isolations. I am reminded that the progress is both an arc and circle, it speeds in either direction and often our lives are written in chalk, easily washed away.

The images of the Stonewall riot in 1969 that most interested me was the graffiti written in such an ephemeral way but someone snatched a photo of it for us to see into the future.

If folks are in Western Mass and want to visit my little collection be in touch. If you have materials you have been shepherding away, please consider donating them to a local queer archive. If you think you might have something I would be interested in be in touch with me via RFD. RFD Press, 351 Pleasant St, Ste B, PMB 329, Northampton MA 01060-3998 or visit my Facebook group listing: www.facebook.com/ groups/119002598168326 (Queer Archive Project).

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Photographs courtesy of the author.

RFD Books for Sale Through the years, RFD has published a number of books and we would like to introduce you to some of them as well as introduce you to recent books published and soon to be published by RFD. The first book RFD published was Winthrop Smith’s Ghetto from the First Five: Sixty-four Poems published in 1990 and our second book of poetry, Franklin Abbott’s Mortal Love: Selected Poems 1971–1998. Both of these lovely books of poetry are available directly from us at RFD. You can buy either one for $12 (postage included). Email Bambi: submissions@rfdmag.org.

Earlier this year we published Jim Jackson’s visual and commanding book, Harbinger Dreams: Creative Therapy with Pen and Ink. This work chronicles Jim’s dreams as he reflected on the HIV/AIDS crisis.

A beautiful work filled with Jackson’s amazing pen and ink drawings. This book is available directly through Amazon (https://a.co/d/2ePmYo6).

We are also excited to announce that we are working on the final touches of Michael Mason’s book, In the Blood of My Ink: The Selected Poetry of Michael Mason. This collection of Michael’s poetry was selected and edited by Charles Simpson and includes a short memoir by Michael’s partner, Billy Toth. We are excited to see this book published after many delays during the COVID pandemic. We expect this book will go to press by this fall. It will be available directly from Amazon.

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READ RFD ONLINE www.rfdmag.org/ back-issues.php Most Issues from the first to this one. Missing issues uploaded as we get to them. https://a.co/d/2ePmYo6

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.

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Back Issue Sale!

20% off for Five or More

www.rfdmag.org

Issue 196 / Winter 2023

QUEER ICONONOGRAPHY/ICONS Submission Deadline: November 15, 2023 www.rfdmag.org/upload

What symbols do we use to reference, reflect or find ourselves (and each other)? How do these change over time? When times are more open? When times are more secret?

In imagery, in dress, in voice, as coded (or LOUD and obvious) symbols in our artistic expressions….

We’ve had the red ribbons of AIDS, pink triangle reclaimed from Nazis, pink shoe laces on Doc Martins of queer punks. That aunt who only wore pressed black pants and white shirts and lived with another school teacher who wore flowery flowing clothing; the uncle who was always ‘fashionable’ and sported paisley cravats…From ‘friends of Dorothy’ to Queer Nation Kiss-ins…

This is an invitation to re-flect, re-call, and re-member; to dig into those shoe boxes of buttons & snapshots from high school (or perhaps do an impromptu dress up or story session with old friends). How does one use imagery to create and connect identities?

Going forward how do we create and celebrate our ever-evolving identities, alliances, and differentiations with symbols, be they TikTok videos, bracelets or Instagram posts? How do we dig deep into personal stories and go beyond words.

In these times where we have personal ‘brands’ and ‘create content’.

As to Queer Icons—many of whom weren’t particularly queer themselves how do/did they enrich our journeys? Some of the old— Sylvester, Liberace, Harry Hay, Madonna— are easy to identify; but who are the new ones? Or do they even matter any more?

The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian by Peter Paul Reubens, c. 1618.

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a reader-created gay quarterly celebrating queer diversity

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