OISTL Fall 2020

FALL 2020 I VOLUME 4 I ISSUE 1

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Ride Out

A look at 70 years of LGBTQ biking

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR:

Publisher Chris Keating Editor in Chief Chris Andoe E D I T O R I A L Associate Editor Melissa Meinzer Director of Social Media Elizabeth Van Winkle Contributing Writers Joss Barton, Patrick Collins, Joshua Phelps, Elizabeth Van Winkle Editor at Large Doyle Murphy

A R T Art Director Evan Sult Contributing Photographers Steven Duong, Monica Mileur, Matt Seidel, Theo Welling

P R O D U C T I O N Production Manager Haimanti Germain M U LT I M E D I A A D V E R T I S I N G Advertising Director Colin Bell Senior Account Executive Cathleen Criswell Account Managers Emily Fear, Jennifer Samuel Multimedia Account Executive Jackie Mundy C I R C U L A T I O N Circulation Manager Kevin G. Powers E U C L I D M E D I A G R O U P Chief Executive Officer Andrew Zelman Chief Operating Officers Chris Keating, Michael Wagner Human Resources Director Lisa Beilstein VP of Digital Services Stacy Volhein www.euclidmediagroup.com N A T I O N A L A D V E R T I S I N G VMG Advertising 1-888-278-9866, www.voicemediagroup.com

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he roar is seared in her memory. Writer Elizabeth Van Winkle recalls waiting for her first Pride Parade to start and not knowing what to expect — and then the Dykes on Bikes revved their engines. Van Winkle digs all the way back to the 1940s while researching the history of motorcyclists in our community, beginning with the legendary Betty D. Neeley.

Missie Tyson and her daughter Gigi Johnson of Ghost Doggs Motorcycle Club rock our cover, and the badass Triumphs are courtesy of Moto Europa, with staging by Steven Washington of the MOTO Museum.

Just John made the most of its downtime with a dazzling six-figure makeover. Patrick Collins talks to co-owner Jeromy Ruot about the big bet on one of our community’s favorite gathering places.

Associate Editor Melissa Meinzer introduces us to public health guru Dr. LJ Punch. Punch believes everyone can be empowered to help in scary situations.

They’re taking on the monumental challenges of homelessness, opiate addiction, violence and the pandemic and lifting up everyone in their path.

Fall is the season of the witch, so we chat with Brother Zeeke, a gay witch who discusses everything from card reading to curses.

Finally, I’d like to remind you that October 7 is the deadline to register to vote in Missouri. In addition to the presidential election there are many local races which are critical to our quality of life. Please register, and if you’re registered, make the effort to get someone close to you registered.

On election night, the St. Louis votes are the last to be reported, therefore many times, including with this summer’s Medicaid expansion vote, it appears we’re losing for most of the evening, but then everyone hears it: the roar. That’s the sound of St. Louis revving our engines.

Ride or die.

Chris Andoe Editor in chief

Out in STL is available free of charge, limited to one copy per reader. Additional copies of the current issue may be purchased for $1.00 plus postage, payable in advance at the Out in STL office. Out in STL may be distributed only by Out in STL authorized distributors. No person may, without prior written permission of Out in STL, take more than one copy of each Out in STL weekly issue.

The entire contents of Out in STL are copyright 2018 by Out in STL, LLC. No portion may be reproduced in whole or in part by any means, including electronic retrieval systems, without the expressed written permission of the Publisher, Out in STL, 308 N. 21st Street, Suite 300, St. Louis, MO 63103. Please call the Out in STL office for back-issue information, 314-754-5966.

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COVER PHOTO OF THEO WELLING , WITH ASSISTANCE FROM STEPHEN WELLING

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REFLEX PHOTOGRAPHY

A magazine exploring and celebrating the LGBTQ community in St. Louis

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Saint of the streets DR. PUNCH SAVES ST. LOUIS

BY MEL I SSA M E I NZ E R

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t’s basically impossible to talk about public health in St. Louis right now without mentioning Dr. LJ Punch. The genderqueer genius has their hands in all the region’s most pressing issues, slicing through red tape and getting it done with brilliance, warmth, humor and grace.

After years as a trauma surgeon in Baltimore and St. Louis as well as a stint as a professor of medicine at the Institute for Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis, Dr. Punch is now focused on The T, a health education and resource center in the East Loop that they founded in January 2019.

“The T has been working with a volunteer group of health professionals to bring resources and training into the community to reduce the impact of violence,” says Punch.

The T has always provided trauma first aid training, as well as kits with materials like tourniquets. Punch’s time in trauma bays, which included delivering a lot of horrible news to a lot of mamas, made that a priority for them.

Dr. LJ Punch established But the T takes on other The T to stem the impact of pressing issues facing vulneraviolence in St. Louis. ble populations in St. Louis, COURTESY OF DR. LJ PUNCH such as homelessness and opiate addiction. And of course, since spring, COVID-19 has had to become a priority.

“You can say to yourself, ‘What does a trauma surgeon have to do with public health? That’s not my expertise,’” says Punch, 45. “The truth is, violence and viruses spread

very similarly.”

The doc has always had a laser-sharp focus on violence as a public health issue with deep rooted and systemic causes and has long seen harm-reduction strategies as something everyone can help with. And now they’re bringing that focus and that expertise onto a wider and more holistic view for St. Louis’s most vulnerable.

The T has four main areas of focus: coronavirus protection, homelessness, opiate abuse, and violence-based trauma first aid and recovery. The factors are linked through structural and systemic disadvantages serving as transmission vectors, and as desperate problems that feed into each other.

With the right training, tools and resources, everyday people can empower themselves against all four factors. And Dr. Punch aims to provide those tools.

“It’s not a ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ message,” they say. We’re talking via Zoom and the doc is masked in a room full of staff and volunteers abuzz with preparing 100,000 kits — hand sanitizer, disposable masks and other supplies for The T’s late August reopening and the months ahead after a COVID closure. “That would seem to blame you for your risk. We say you have power — we amplify

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that power by giving them knowledge and resources.”

The T amplifies power in many ways: Take a 90-minute class on how to help someone who is badly hurt and bleeding or buy a trauma first aid kit with tools to help you carry out what you learn. Punch and The T provide training and instruction based on Stop the Bleed, the national organization formed by the American College of Surgeons in response to the Sandy Hook shooting.

The graphics on T materials are race and gender neutral, “so we can always have everyone’s face,” says Punch. “Things can have the foundations of humanity, which have hints of masculinity and femininity which are universally engaging.”

The organization’s mission depends on paying it forward.

“We always invite people to contribute in three ways,” Punch says. “Take one of our classes, get some of our gear, commit to your own self-care. Two, after you have done that, share it with somebody else. Three, give us a resource that you have — time, money, influence.”

Punch was among the first to sound the alarm about COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on Black St. Louisans, telling local media in April that it was mostly Black people dying and that this fact was not remotely surprising.

“I went into Christian Hospital, and very early on in the pandemic it just blew me away,” they say today. “I had never seen an ICU where door after door after door had behind it a Black patient.”

To Punch, it’s all about understanding that life for Black people in St. Louis comes with a certain level of inescapable risk. And their work with The T aims to fly in the face of that — or at least keep certain outcomes from being inevitable.

“You don’t have to die because of your inescapable risk,” they say.

If you want to know Dr. Punch’s origin story (and no, the superhero allusion is not accidental), check out a TEDxGatewayArchSalon talk they did in May 2019. With slam poet cadence, they explained growing up in smalltown Ohio, “where the river is wide and the money is short,” spending $2 on piano lessons (and a snack) with Miss Elizabeth Pope Carter, a school crossing guard and gospel musician.

Miss Carter, they said, made them believe they could be great. She was defined by “radical generosity — of her time, of her talents, of herself.”

Those $2 lessons (and snacks) came with a boost in confidence that saw Punch through Yale University and medical

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school at the University of Connecticut. What they saw after that forged them into the powerhouse they are today.

“I’m used to working just a little too much — my point of reference is the life of a trauma center,” they say.

They’re also raising their eight-year-old son, so ‘busy’ doesn’t quite cover it. But the pandemic actually forced them to slow down a little bit, to realize that they have to keep themselves healthy in order to be of any use.

So how do Punch’s own intersecting identities as a Black queer person come into play in reaching populations with intersecting risk factors?

“I think it’s a profound access,” Punch says. “From the beginning, the work has had this guiding philosophy: If we make our experiences, our resources, everything we do accessible and safe for the most vulnerable person in the room, everyone else will adjust, everyone else will be fine,” they say.

They spoke in the TED “I don’t want to see another young talk about the legacy of Black man die in a trauma center bullets themselves, physicovered with too much blood,” cal objects slicing through says Dr. Punch.

MARK SEIDEL organs and families and societies. They talked about the half-inch pieces of metal creating lifetimes of suffering. They talked about deciding to find and root out bullets, instead of just fixing the holes in human flesh.

“I don’t want to see another young Black man die in a trauma center covered with too much blood, to tell his mama that he’s not coming home,” says Punch. “I’m driven because I just have seen too much. I want things to be different.”

Miles Hoffman, Street Outreach Coordinator with MO Network, is pretty much an unabashed Punch fan — we can stipulate to that right off.

“Punch is just cool,” he says.

He met them last year while taking a Stop the Bleed training to help with situations he encounters doing outreach work with people who use drugs. The two got to know each other and their respective missions, and it became clear the pair had similar goals. Nowadays, Punch accompanies Hoffman on his trips into addiction hotspots in and around the city once a week.

“So many of the things that Punch offers, and that The T offers, are intersectional to drug use and trauma that comes from homelessness and violence and gunshot wounds and

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the criminalization of poverty,” says Hoffman.

Punch, Hoffman says, has incredible perception for meeting people where they are, for seeing what their needs are and responding. And Punch’s multiplicity of identities is definitely an asset.

“That’s where the intersection of being queer comes in,” Hoffman says. “As queer people, we are often forgot about.

While there’s not much that comes into play with day-to-day identity work, I think it definitely drives the mission behind it.”

He says that Punch has an innate ability to know where to be and how to respond — sending eye wash kits to Minneapolis when protesting began for George Floyd, for instance, and providing training and materials to street medics in Florissant.

The charismatic Punch, says Hoffman, tends to own whatever space they’re in. When they took the stage at the Florissant training, the eruption of applause was fit for a celebrity.

But Punch is also a keen and close listener, creatively intuiting and finding ways to meet peoples’ very real needs.

Hoffman describes the simple dignity Punch was able to afford unhoused people on a recent mission with a boring little piece of metal: nail clippers.

“That isn’t something you think about, but people need to clip their nails,” he says.

Cathy ‘Mama Cat’ Daniels is the founder of PotBangerz, a nonprofit dedicated to feeding the unhoused, as well as helping them find their way to permanent housing — and advocating as long and loud as possible.

Daniels first heard about Punch in the context of Stop the Bleed.

“I had heard about this Dr. Punch and what an amazing human they are, and I’m like, ‘I need to meet this person,” Daniels says. “We have a lot of violence that’s in our underserved communities, and we can attribute that to poverty.”

So she reached out to Punch and invited them to PotBangerz’s annual block party focused on unhoused people, and Punch came through with resources and knowledge to share at the party.

“That’s what I think is so dope about them — they let St. Louis know, ‘I am here and I am here to help, whatever that looks like,’” Daniels says. “You get to know Dr. Punch, that’s who they are.”

Daniels says Punch’s versatility is an amazing asset. She watched them pivot fast in response to the virus and figures they’ve saved plenty of lives that way. Punch leapt at the chance to help PotBangerz set up services for a recently acquired house providing transitional housing for cisgender, queer and transgender women.

“When I think about Dr. Punch, it’s all about love, for real,” says Daniels. “Dr. Punch understands, as a Black person, how race plays into this whole thing. Knowing who they are, the good works are not really a surprise. You know who you’re dealing with. It makes sense — that’s just how Dr. Punch rocks.”

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Lifestyle

STORIES OF REBEL QUEERS IN ST. LOUIS

BY EL IZ ABE T H VAN W INKLE

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icture it: St. Louis, 2003. You’re a young queer person from southern Illinois, in the big city for your first-ever Pride parade. You’re scared shitless, horny as hell and trying to look cool. You’ve managed to score prime real estate on the parade route because in your nervousness you accidentally showed up two hours early. Eventually other LGBTQIA people start trudging up next to you, complaining that the parade always starts way too early and that they and everyone they’re there with are totally hungover and that they might throw up. This is the most thrilling conversation you’ve ever heard in your life. The parade is about to start and You. Are. Pumped.

Suddenly you hear a noise that is getting the crowd excited, but you can’t make it out. Whatever it is, it’s really loud, and it ain’t no marching band. The noise starts to reverberate in your chest as it gets closer, and the women around you start to go wild. And that’s when you see a dozen or more of the leather-clad, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, femme, butch, genderqueer, nonbinary bois and gurls that make up the Dykes On Bikes.

Like drag queens, transgender people and leather folks, the Dykes On Bikes have often been denounced for not representing a more palatable image of LGBTQIA culture. Advocates, however, argue that they are profoundly visible icons of our community who refuse to assimilate to America’s arbitrarily proscribed behaviors and gender roles, and they actually remind us of the queer folks who kicked off the Stonewall riots in the first place.

LGBTQIA bikers have represented what the straight world historically and still often can’t comprehend: queer men not as dainty stereotypes but as masculine, rugged guys celebrating their sexuality and queer women, not as sexless old maids, but as tough, in charge of their own lives and narratives, and challenging conventional ideas of what it is to be women.

As tough as LGBTQIA bikers may seem, they have a long history of community support, from their local queer orga-

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nizations to people suffering during the AIDS epidemic. In recent years, exclusively transgender bike clubs have been popping up on the coasts, protecting folks from the alt-right and from Nazis harassing Black Lives Matter protesters.

Though American motorcycle culture began in the late 1940s and early 1950s, homosexuality was criminalized in many places at the time, making gay motorcycle clubs unique organizations seen as outlaws on two counts — their motorcycling and their sexuality. By the 1960s many LGBTQIA folks no longer felt the need for secretive underground organizations, and many activists started to reject the patriarchal hierarchy and militarized style of the early clubs.

While St. Louis’ chapter of DOB disbanded years ago, and there doesn’t seem to be any local queer bike clubs here these days, there are still a few local LGBTQIA bikers around.

Missie Tyson is very proud of her 1998 Honda Shadow 750 that she rides Betty Neeley with with The Ghost Doggs, a service-oricousin, 1961.. ented motorcycle club based in St. COURTESY BETTY D. NEELEY Louis. At 49 years old, Tyson has been riding for five years but has always known she wanted to ride motorcycles. She knows of very few women who ride in town besides her daughter, Gigi, who is also in The Ghost Doggs. In FA L L 2 0 1 8

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fact, she and Gigi, who above: Betty Neeley, cooler both identify as bisexual, than you. right: The city’s gay are some of the only motorcycle clubs flourished LGBTQIA people she mostly out of view. knows who ride. Tyson’s COURTESY BETTY D. NEELEY dad and cousins rode, and when one of her cousins passed away after a bike accident, Tyson saw an unbelievable outpouring of love and support for her family from the motorcycle community.

“I knew that’s what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

I wanted to be a part of them. The gay community is the same,” Tyson says. “Well, the drag community is the same.”

The parallels Tyson makes with motorcycle clubs and LGBTQIA and drag communities are interesting, and I’d be lying if I said I weren’t envious when I hear how the bikers support each other.

“When I first started doing drag back in 2006, I was one of the first black drag kings here,” Tyson says. “And now I look around, and all these years later, I’m still one of the only ones. My wife was Ryder Long. She was the first black king in St. Louis that we know of.”

Though Tyson, who performed with the Bent Boys as Mr. Meanor, retired from drag in 2011, she still does special-occasion shows to raise money for the community a few times a year, including Tips for Tatas, an annual fundraiser for those suffering from breast cancer. Tyson says she would perform more if there were venues accepting of kings and performers who were assigned female at birth, as well as accessible venues.

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Though American motorcycle culture began in the late ’40s and early ’50s, homosexuality was criminalized in many places at the time, making gay motorcycle clubs unique organizations seen as outlaws on two counts — their motorcycling and their sexuality.

“My knees are bad these days and every venue you have to go up or down flights of stairs to the greenrooms. If you’re disabled, it’s very difficult to just be at LGBTQ events. I don’t see any wheelchair accessibility here,” Tyson says. “And it’s hard for the drag kings to have community. We don’t get paid nearly as much as the queens. We rock our performances, we bring out crowds and we raise money for the community, but we don’t get the recognition, which means we don’t get the gigs.”

It’s easy to see how to motorcycle community fills in the gaps the queer community leaves for Tyson.

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Mother Gigi Johnson (right) and Missie Tyson both ride with The Ghost Doggs.

to be with,” she says. “And then I watched what they did for the community. We feed the homeless on Thanksgiving, we have a big Thanksgiving following. We feed the homeTHEO WELLING less on Father’s Day. Our club always tries to do something for the community, and if we know of someone who needs something, we’ll try to get together and do a chili cook or spaghetti dinner or something and try to get together and help the people in our community.”

Betty D. Neeley, 84, doesn’t recall ever riding with other women or seeing many other LGBTQIA riders. Her days of riding were before the Dykes on Bikes were around, and the

only women who rode at all were a male rider’s “old lady” or considered “property-of,” chauvinist designations for wives or girlfriends still in use in some motorcycle clubs to this day.

“I rode with a whole group of guys, 29 of ’em,” says Neeley. “What happened was, there was this place on Vandeventer called the Polar Bar, and all these motorcycles guys hung out there, and I talked this guy into letting me ride his bike. He said ‘Have you ever rode before?’ and I said, ‘No, but I know I can do it. If you just let me, I know I can do it.’

So I rode with 29 guys. But I was only fifteen. So I rode through the back alleys of St. Louis for a year because I didn’t have a license yet. Yeah, I was one of those kids.”

Betty Neeley is blowing my mind.

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Her history really predates the LGBTQIA clubs in St. Louis, given that she started in 1949. Her career as a rider was ending just as the queer motorcycle clubs in St. Louis were starting to pop up.

“The last time I remember having a bike was around ’74. There was a Betty Neeley cut a men’s motorcycle group around memorable figure for then, I remember, but when I’d go to decades in St. Louis’ meet up with them at their hangout, gay biker community. there were never any bikes lined up COURTESY BETTY D. NEELEY out front. Everybody just looked like they were bikers,” Neeley explains.

The idea of a bunch of Levi’s- and leather-clad gay men carpooling to the biker bar is peak St. Louis, and I laugh way too hard.

“I do have a claim to fame that I’m really really proud of,” says Neeley. “I was volunteering at the [LGBT] center on Manchester, and they had what they called the search for artifacts. And I saw right away that they had shit for women. So I took care of that.

At Pridefest, I wanna say in 2014, I had a 60-foot-long table called ‘Herstory,’ and it was all women. A few of us put that together, and it was awesome. Things happened like, this woman came up with her son and grandkids, and I said ‘So you got that turkey baster kid with you?!’ He’s the first one in the city that we know of. And I got to say to this young man, ‘Hey, I’ve got a picture of the woman who brought you into town in the cooler on her bike in this book! This is you in the cooler on her bike!’”

In the beginning, gay motorcycle clubs gave us an opportunity to socialize with our people, often for sex. The first biker scenes were closely affiliated with what we now know as the “Old Guard” leather/SM culture, and the clubhouses, or “runs,” became our first leather bars.

Tyson and Neeley, separated by generations, race and socio-

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economic differences have one very interesting thing in common: They didn’t have any examples of LGBTQIA people like themselves to look up to before deciding to live their lives the way they wanted to live them. Unfortunately, with groups like Dykes on Bikes not around in St. Louis anymore and most of its members gone, future generations may have to grow up the same way. With our last leather bar, JJ’s, up for sale, who knows the future of biker/leather culture in St Louis.

Neeley laments, “I think the young people have no connection to any community much. That’s what I see. I feel so bad that they will never know the camaraderie that older generations have had with each other.”

When asked about her future in biking, Tyson says “I will ride until my health tells me I can’t anymore. I see people riding in their 60s and 70s. I’d really like to turn my bike into a trike. If I’m not working or biking, I’ll still be doing something for breast cancer survivors.”

In the middle of our conversation, Tyson dramatically turns her head toward a different direction of the park, and I become worried. We’re a bunch of queer women in a park at night, and she’s clearly hearing something that has grabbed her attention. I ask if she’s heard something and her daughter, Gigi, immediately chimes in.

“She hears a bike!” Gigi says. “She always does that.” The two start to giggle. Tyson turns back with a huge grin on her face.

“Have you ever seen that cartoon movie Up? Every time that dog sees a squirrel?” she says. “That’s me and motorcycles. I hear it and I tune everything else out to hear where the bike is and where it’s going. I used to be able to tell what kind of bike it is by the sound but I can’t anymore because people modify their bikes so much.”

I realize it’s silly to be nervous around these two. I’m hanging out with biker chicks.

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spirituality spirituality

From seminary to coven THE THE JOURNEY JOURNEY OF OF BROTHER BROTHER ZEEKE ZEEKE

BY C H RIS AND OE

BY C H RIS AND OE

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like these crackers,” said my roommate Zeeke Harris, 36, while like these crackers,” said my roommate Zeeke Harris, 36, while happily munching on a multigrain wafer in the kitchen. “I give happily munching on a multigrain wafer in the kitchen. “I give them as an offering to the spirits I work with. Ancient Greeks them as an offering to the spirits I work with. Ancient Greeks used to offer the first grains of the harvest.” used to offer the first grains of the harvest.”

Living with a witch is interesting.

Living with a witch is interesting. ated in Haitian Voodoo in a wild three-day ritual. “Both At 25, Zeeke left Dallas Theological Seminary and his posi-

Atas25, Zeeke left Dallas Theological position youth pastor to come out of theSeminary closet as and a gayhis witch. tion as youth pastor to come out of the closet as a gay witch.

“Either I was going to be happy or my family was going to wassaid going to be or my family was going to be“Either happy,”I he when we happy sat down to discuss his journey. be happy,” he said when we sat down to discuss his journey.

“I always had a strong spiritual side, and I was looking for a “I always had a strongme spiritual side, and I was responsibility.” looking for a faith that empowered and taught personal faith that empowered me and taught personal responsibility.”

“But how did witchcraft even get on the buffet of op“But how did“How witchcraft get on the buffet tions?”

I asked. wereeven you introduced to it?”of options?”

I asked.

“How were you introduced “The Bible!” he replied. “The Bible is fullto ofit?” witches and “The Bible!” he replied.

“The Bible is full of witches witchcraft, prophets and seers. My birth name, Kiel, is aand witchcraft,ofprophets seers. the Myprophet birth name, is avivariation the nameand Ezekiel, who Kiel, had the variation of the name Ezekiel, the prophet who had the vision of the valley of dry bones. Zeeke is a variation of that sion of the valley of dry bones.

Zeeke is a variation of that name too.” name too.”reader, Zeeke immersed himself in Wiccan literaAn avid An avid immersed himself Practitioner in Wiccan literature. “The reader, first wasZeeke Wicca for the Solitary by ture.

“The first was Wicca for the Solitary Practitioner Scott Cunningham. “In it I found peace and substance.”by Scott Cunningham.

“IntoitNew I found peacehe and substance.”

During a pilgrimage Orleans, also became initiDuring a pilgrimage to New Orleans, he also became initi-

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ated in and Haitian Voodoo in a wildsystems three-day Wicca Voodoo are cultural of ritual. magic,”“Both he said, Wicca and Voodoo are cultural systems of magic,” he said, “but Wicca is where I found my own power.” “but Wicca is where I found own power.”

I asked him to explain thatmy power.

I“Confidence asked him toinexplain that power. my own decisions and spiritual abilities.

“Confidence in my own decisions andcan’t spiritual Witches are survivors.

Can’t drown us, burnabilities. us, can’t Witches are survivors.

Can’t drown us, can’t can’t crush us! The only way to heal the world is toburn heal us, ourselves crush us! The only way tofor heal world is to people heal ourselves first. Take responsibility thethe way you treat and first.

Take responsibility for the way you treat people the planet. Consistently working to love everybody.” and the planet. Consistently working to love everybody.”

House of Cards House Beneath of theCards dimmed crystal chandelier as shamanic music Beneath the dimmed chandelier music wafts through the air, crystal Zeeke prepared forasashamanic card reading in wafts through the“I air,doZeeke prepared card reading in a the dining room. a banishing of for theareading area with the dining room.

“I do a banishing of the reading area with a silver bell, incense and a white candle,” he said. silver bell, incense and a white candle,” he said.

Zeeke reads oracle cards as opposed to tarWICC ARTS oracle cards as opposedwith to tarot.Zeeke “Youreads have to build a relationship WICC ARTS ot. “You have to build a relationship with FA L L 2 0 1 8

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the cards. Cards are like binoculars, they open the door to the event horizon. They connect to the underworld.”

I asked for examples of what he’s been able to reveal during the readings.

“I told a woman her daughter-in-law was pregnant when nobody had been told. I told someone their spouse was being emotionally unfaithful. I’ve told people they were in abusive situations. The cards lay everything bare.”

When asked if he’s ever read for someone who was the abuser in their dynamic he replied, “People with guilty consciences tend to avoid me.”

CURSES “Cursing is when the universe calls you to be God’s left hand. Sometimes you’re called to tip the cosmic scale, but magic has a cost. When you curse others you also curse yourself. You must decide if the cost is worth the action.”

In 2018, Zeeke was at a psychic fair in Alton when he met a woman who needed help with an abusive ex-husband.

“She had me work over an abusive ex who was causing problems with their children and who would harass her at home. He’d just walk in uninvited. I gave her red brick dust to put across the front and back doors. Red brick dust protects from evil intent. After that, he wouldn’t even get out of the car when dropping off the kids. I later lit a seven-day candle and said a prayer to Saintisma Muerta, the patron saint of death, to make him think about what he had done.

By the third day, he fell into a deep depression and became sick. I panicked and blew out the candle.”

As far as the blowback from the curse, Zeeke said he had a few nights of restlessness and disturbing dreams.

THE COVEN AND THE AFTERLIFE Zeeke explained that a central purpose of a coven is to serve and protect the community.

“A coven is a gathering of witches, normally thirteen, who gather during the full moon and sometimes during the new moon. They work on spells for the community to bring peace and bring healing. Bringing protection to those who need it.”

Knowing witches don’t have typical western beliefs on heaven and hell, I asked what he believes will happen when he dies.

“I believe when you die you go to an area to review your life and relax, decompress and then come back” he said.

And he believes you come back as many times as it takes to learn what you need to learn. “Once you’ve learned all the lessons you become the Mighty Dead. Ancestors of the Craft. The protectors and guides of the people walking the path.”

And speaking of the dead, Zeeke’s eagerly awaiting Halloween.

“That’s our New Year, and there will be a full moon on Halloween this year,” he said. “It will be a busy night for me I think.”

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nightlife nightlife

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makeover session JUST JOHN ROLLS THE DICE WITH A $100K RENOVATION

BY PAT R I CK C O LLI NS

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ven before the coronavirus pandemic rewrote the rules governing public gatherings, many believed online dating apps and the general mainstreaming of queer culture had made gay bars a lot less important than they once were.

Jeromy Ruot, co-owner of Just John, disagrees. “As long as there are Republicans in charge of Missouri who are trying to take our rights away, we need a place to gather,” says Ruot, who, along with co-owner John Arnold, has operated the popular night spot since shortly after Barack Obama’s first inauguration in early 2009.

Ruot is backing his words up with a $100,000 renovaBold bet: Just John makes a tion to the 3,000-square-foot six-figure investment in the space at 4112 Manchester future.

Ave. in The Grove. “We’ve STEVEN DUONG been threatening to do a renovation for years, because we’ve always needed more restrooms,” he says. “But with the emphasis on social distancing, we decided it also needs to be more airy and open.”

There’s also a time capsule …

Although the pandemic has had a devastating impact on many businesses, Ruot says the money he and Arnold had

set aside for an eventual remodel made it possible for them to take advantage of the shutdown orders issued in midMarch. While the renovation prevented opening the interior when the orders were loosened in May, the patio at Just John is open daily.

Pre-Just John, Ruot worked for years in commercial real estate, so renovations are not completely foreign territory for him. Drawing on that experience, he had renderings drawn up and then hired GC Wright Building Systems to bring them to life. Gary Long is the project manager.

“We realized we were going to need a lot more space between tables, so we started demolishing a few weeks after we shut down in March,” Ruot says.

In addition to upgrading and expanding the bathrooms, which will be mostly touchless, the bar has been moved out of the middle of the main room, and new flooring and lighting is being installed throughout. According to Ruot, industry trends put the timing of the renovation right on sched-

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OUT AND ABOUT

Just John’s JOE HEDLEY is there for it — all of it IF JOE HEDLEY IS any indication, seventy-five doesn’t look like it used to. The day after his big birthday, which was July 26, Hedley was surprised when he went to work and was greeted by flowers, cake, friends and co-workers. “It was great fun,” Hedley says. But he’s not one to sit still for long, even when the occasion is momentous. That Monday afternoon was no exception: Hedley didn’t waste any time getting busy serving drinks from the patio bar at Just John in the Grove, where he’s worked for the past eight years. “It’s my retirement job,” he says.

After a business career and a stint in the military that included Vietnam, Hedley failed miserably at kicking back and winding down.

Eighteen months in, in May 2012, he was talking with a friend who worked at Just John. “I told him, ‘This retirement thing is killing me,’” Hedley recalls, “and he asked if I’d be interested in working with him.”

He says the job, in addition to being a lot of fun, provides him much-needed structure and routine.

It also marks, in a sense, a return to his gay roots. After high school in University City and college in Kansas, Hedley shipped off to Vietnam and then returned to St. Louis. A friend from college who had come to St. Louis for law school introduced him to a woman who was in the process of opening a restaurant on Lindell and was looking for investors.

Acting on a hunch the aspiring restaurateur had about him, after the two had dinner she took Hedley to Potpourri, a tiny, lower-level gay bar in the Central West End. Hedley remembers that evening — which ended in East St. Louis at the Red

Bull, widely considered the predecessor of the legendary establishment Faces — as the beginning of an enormous weight being lifted off his shoulders. “I simply had no idea there was a gay community here,” he says.

That night was a beginning, but it would be a long time before Hedley was fully out, at least according to today’s standards. “Coming out was such a different experience,” Hedley says. “There were still so many restrictions in the workplace and families that you didn’t just sit at the table and announce you were gay. In many ways, coming out meant coming out to your gay friends.”

For many years after that night, in fact, Hedley arranged and organized his life in ways that are barely recognizable today. As he remembers it, coming out in one’s professional life was something done only by those in professions where being gay was expected, artistic fields such as theater or design. Hedley bought and sold stocks and worked in banking.

He eventually owned a commercial painting company.

Being closeted in one part of his life, however, did not prevent him from being out in others. He was one of five owners of Bijou, a 5,000-square-foot bar (3,000 square feet of it was dance floor) housed in a building at Boyle and McPherson Avenue that burned to the ground under mysterious circumstances. It was the mid 1970s, the music, was played on reel-to-reel tapes by real DJs, and Barry White was ascendant. To this day, Hedley

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“When I moved here, all the [gay] bars were entered off the alley and had blacked-out windows.

I remember when Clementine’s opened the window by the pool table. It was awesome and terrifying.” ule. “Successful bars and nightclubs renovate every eight to ten years,” he says. “We’ve expanded over the years, but we’ve never done a major overhaul. Our attitude was: Let’s roll the dice!”

That is not entirely unlike the approach they took eleven years ago when they bought the bar. Arnold and Ruot, who were in a relationship at the time, were, as Ruot recalls, watching their retirement savings evaporate thanks to the great recession. Arnold, who at the time was bartending at Just John, was told by the owner that the business had been sold. Arnold told the owner he wished he’d known she was planning to sell because he was interested in buying, and the stars aligned shortly thereafter: The sale fell through, and Arnold and Ruot drew up an agreement with the owner and took over in early 2009. “It worked out fine until COVID-19,” Ruot says.

Aside from the pandemic, Ruot, who turns fifty in early October, says running a bar is a good fit for him. “I like being my own boss for the most part,” he says. “I liked what I was doing before, but selling corporate real estate felt like selling my soul.”

He also likes the way Just John has evolved to the point that it’s many things to many people. “We’re very fortunate to have been very well received not just by the gay community but by the entire city,” he says. “Just John is a great starter bar for parents. I think it’s nice to have a gay bar you can take your parents to.” Up until this year, Ruot’s parents have attended Just John’s annual Kentucky Derby party; his grandparents also visited the bar.

Like all jobs, Ruot says owning a bar can be stressful, and that there are days he’d be grateful for the opportunity to embark on another career. But it’s gratifying to be able to provide a safe gathering space for the area’s many queer communities, one where people can connect with each other and also be energized occasionally by a sense of political progress. “This is a place to hold hands with your boyfriend, but we also support all liberal causes and candidates,” he says. “There are politicians and community leaders who come here. We have the space to accommodate large groups

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of people, and it looks good on camera. We hardly ever say no if someone wants to have a fundraiser or a function to get out the vote. We believe in the process.”

While he believes the pace has slowed since the 2016 election, Ruot says the changes he’s seen since moving to St. Louis in 1994 offer evidence of progress, even if it’s gradual, and often painfully so. “When I moved here, all the [gay] bars were entered off the alley and had blacked-out windows,” he says. “I remember when Clementine’s opened the window by the pool table. It was awesome and terrifying.”

Since they’re already pulling sections of the bar apart during the remodel, Ruot decided to assemble a time capsule, to be tucked into a spot that’s hard to find but not impossible, which he hopes will give those who find it a sense of 2020. The capsule will include a Just John face mask and other pandemic-related items, as well as a Bud Light and a bottle of Pearl Vodka, the top sellers at this point. Ruot is mulling over numerous ideas for what else to include in the capsule.

The internet is also a game changer, of course, but Ruot doesn’t think online is ever going to replace in-person. “Apps aren’t replacing bars,” he says. Ruot grew up in the 1970s and 1980s in Vandalia, Illinois, population 7,000, about 70 miles northeast of St. Louis, believing he was the only gay kid on the planet. “I think those kids are still out there,” he says.

“Seeing something online is kind of like seeing something on television — it doesn’t become real until you’re there.”

believes there is no better cure for a bad mood than Motown.

Hedley may not have been entirely out, but he still associates the experience with the emergence of a gay identity in St. Louis. “The Bijou was one of the first big gay bars in St. Louis owned openly by gay people,” he says. “It was an exciting time from that perspective.”

It was also a time when news traveled much more slowly. Hedley was in basic training when the Stonewall uprising took place. After Vietnam, Hedley returned to St. Louis, where he lived for the duration of the 1970s. It was not until the early 1980s, more than a decade later, that he learned about the event that’s acknowledged as the dawn of the modern queer rights movement. He’d transferred to his employer’s San Francisco branch and noticed that his doctor was a member of the Stonewall Medical Group. “I’d

never heard of Stonewall,” he says. “So I started researching. I went to the library.”

In addition to learning at the library, Hedley was for the first time in his life part of a network of people who were very knowledgeable about the gay community and its history, and he learned from them as well. He lived in Twin Peaks and visited the Castro neighborhood daily, and when the AIDS pandemic hit, it hit hard.

Like many, even four decades later, he considers it the defining event, the ultimate dividing line between then and now. “I lost a lot of friends, like we all did, but it didn’t drive us back into the catacombs,” he says.

Instead, Hedley believes the crisis propelled us into a new era, one that is different in nearly every way. “As a community I think AIDS was our baptism by fire, and I think it empowered us ultimately,” he says. “Today, kids

What Just John offers that the internet does not, at least for now, is a sense of camaraderie. There are events like the derby party and a lot of teams sponsored by the bar, including volleyball, softball and darts. “People do drink, but you no longer have to drink when you go to the bar,” Ruot says. “It seems like there are more sober people here now than there were ten years ago. Also, the smoking ban was awesome.”

Thanks to the conservative backlash that’s especially pronounced in Missouri, he says it’s important for bars to step up and go beyond providing a space for socializing and entertainment. “Republicans are out there spreading so much misinformation about us that we need gay bars as a place to organize,” he says. “In a state like Missouri where the government is so backwards, I don’t think gay bars in our major cities are going to die out any time soon.”

Closely linked to organizing, he says, is education. Just John is a place where the generations mingle, from ascendant politicians to celebrating the life of a fellow bar owner who would be written off as a rival in most other towns to a bartender celebrating his 75th birthday (see sidebar), the space oozes a sense of living history that Ruot thinks is critical.

“Stonewall was only 51 years ago,” he says. “I don’t know if younger people realize how many people are out there trying to take our rights away. I think it’s important for us all to know our history. It’s an important part of protecting what has been fought so hard for.”

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come out to their families when they’re in grade school, and their families, thank God, have become more accepting.” Hedley himself has also become more accepting of a broader range of people — AIDS activists, for example. “I didn’t think very highly of ACT UP back then, but I do now,” he says. “They were right and I was wrong, and whenever I meet someone who was a part of it, I say thank you.”

While the world appears to be a radically different place than it was

when he came out, Hedley believes bars still play an important role. He doesn’t believe the hook-up apps — which he says he doesn’t use — will ever replace real-life watering holes.

“I guess they’re easier because you don’t have to get dressed and go out,” he says. “And from what I’ve heard you definitely don’t have to use your own picture.”

On a more serious note, Hedley believes the reason bars endure is simple. “It’s always been very interesting to me that you’d go out to spend money to have a drink made that you could have much cheaper at home,” he says. “But at home you don’t get the camaraderie.”

And, according to Hedley, there’s no amount of technology, acceptance, or assimilation that will that will ever mean we don’t need gay bars. “I say to that: Yes we will,” he says.

— Patrick Collins

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