AUTOBIOGRAPHY: WSDG
DIARY 2752
PERRY-GRAHAM TAPE AT WSDG
2/22/72
Jerry and some unknown fairly cute gay and Marc are behind the beer counter and Henry is busy setting up the system, sorry that John Hood couldn't make it. Peter Ogren and Randy Wicker soaked up the praise without doing any of the work except furnishing the videotapes, and after a few introductory remarks by Henry, including a pitch for me for the member profiles, they put on the tape. The audience was so rude, hooty, campy, and laughed so hard at everything that I couldn't hear anything, so I went to the front and sat right under the set. Virginia Graham was unbelievably middle class, and not even the amazement of her psychological co-panelists could shake her, and everyone later said that her audience would still be all for her stand of "no churches should be needed for THEM, why do they always talk about what they do in bed, some of my best friends are gays, etc." Troy Perry came across rather well, but still couldn't quite stand up to her and her refusal to believe no one knew the cause or cure of homosexuality. Then they showed another tape of punishment of gays in Cook County, Chicago, including intramuscular injections while being strapped to a bed for 77 hours, and another, the first tape they made, of a gay-in at the marriage license bureau, where I was thoroughly turned off by the activism and the pointedly harassing tactics they used: just BEGGING to be hit so they could hit back, and not even treating the other person as HUMAN. It was a disgusting performance, REGARDLESS of the fact that they had been called "fags" by the office. Their reaction was far more reprehensible than the original action, and I felt put off the whole gay movement while viewing it, particularly coupled with the faggoty comments during the Perry-Graham tape. Absolutely no one filled out the form, though two took them "for a look." Some awful hairy fellow from Chicago cornered me to talk endless politics, and Alan Henderson did a very good job communicating the progress from Chicago, and my opinion of him continues to rise. Dick and Marc and Don (THEY, not Charles Mountain, told me the Times meeting is on SATURDAY) and I left together, thereby entering a clique, as per Dick's conversation on the following Monday, and we chatted about operas and gay matters until I got off.
DIARY 3455
MATTACHINE BREAKFAST WITH WSDG
12/5/72
Henry and Don both kiss me good morning, and Carl looks handsome in a blue blazer with an ornate silver shipping pin. John enters and crows to Mrs. Messer about how long it's been since Mrs. Zolnerzak's had a chance to dine out on her husband's fame, and I make it known to everyone that I'm glad that John doesn't do things like this OFTEN. There are some old fogies from WSDG around, and I chat with them, but decide I'm hungrier than that, so I'm the first one to the again-good sausages and pancakes. The fuses have blown, and Barnes had to go back to Jersey for some friends, but Bill Broberg and Hank Moscicki do very well with the cooking and the mixing of the bloody marys with sprigs of tasty watercress. Then George and his lover come in, and I talk to the gray-haired sadly-large-nosed lover about their collection of books from authors like Symonds whose works were burned after the fuss from the Wilde trial in 1895, and then Marie Milo comes in and I talk to her lover Yvonne, and we chat about women's things, happy about their success with their every-other-Tuesday woman's nights, and they say they might help out with some speaking engagements if we call them, though Bobby and Sandy have to be careful, since one of them's a teacher. We all sit down to transact our business, and some of the people tell about why the groups separated, mainly because of people like Julian Hodges, Frank Kameny, and Arthur Warner and Dick Leitsch (naturally no one from WSDG was to blame, and no one from the PRESENT Mattachine board could be blamed). So we planned to have some of them at the Sixth Precinct, that brochures would be exchanged, that we were invited to their Christmas dinner, that some of the gals might speak with us, and that we'd be more friendly in the future, even Marie admitting that their's could be considered a halfway house between the closet and activism. So we left at three (they all had another meeting on 14th Street), and everyone seemed to agree that it was a good meeting, except when the wind knocked a painting to the floor, scattering glass all over the place, and Don Goodwin said "Dick Leitsch has just made himself known." Everyone laughed, but it WAS apposite. THEY have an even uglier group than Mattachine does. Nice to know we don't take ALL the cakes in that.
DIARY 8674
WSDG 1
6/13/74
Get Fred to introduce me to Arthur Maule, and he says I may call him for an interview anytime, and he seems pleasant enough, and he can lead me to Tony Segura, who "supported it" in the beginning, one of the most brilliant chemists in the country, who now lives in Richmond, Virginia. Then the meeting is topics from the floor, chaired by Sandy, who forthrightly describes rimming to everyone's delight, but most of the questions were hashed and re-hashed. Group is quite hideous looking, one of the reasons why I stopped going before. Fred told me that he didn't like the idea of the travel group, but that I could talk to Bobbi, which I did at 9:30, and she told me to write it up and give it to her, which I did. Then Ed Trust was there pumping his plays for the next two weekends, and I talked to him, and he said he was in the phonebook and I could call him after Gay Pride Week when things slowed down. Talked to the bald leader for a bit, and drank some hot coffee after they'd run out of milk, burning my tongue, and wolfed three pieces of cake since I hadn't had dinner yet. Talked to Bobbie about the travel-cruising other countries on July 3, she said talk to Fred, and Fred said that he'd already GOTTEN a panel of 10 volunteers, but I was welcome to come and discuss it from the floor. Fred told me about his fulltime job checking references in various nursing journals, and it sounds like awful work. Couple old men patted me under the chin and said that they hoped I'd find another lover "just as cute and young as you are," and I SUPPOSE I could have taken that two ways, but they were so much older I could only take it as a compliment. Then started talking to Richard, his first time there, said I should come to see the BEST part of the show in the baths (that comes right out of the screen in 3-D), and he talked about all the traveling he and Eddie were doing, to Corfu and to India and all around, and I put the bug in his ear that I am a travel agent, and when he started talking about all the gay hotels in Athens and Nice, I asked if I could call HIM, too, and we left together at 11, chatting on the way to our separate subways, and it surely was an evening for CONTACTS, but WSDG is STILL a rather dismal PLACE!
DIARY 8687
WSDG 2
6/20/74
Looks like a pitifully small group at 8, but forgotten that the discussions actually start at 8:30. Nothing to do but read the bulletin board, and they seem to have a fairly complete list of articles, some of which, even by Pete Hamil, are pretty good, though some are the awful stereotypes. So many of the columnists were for Intro 2 (except good old Buckley), one wonders why it didn't pass. Talked to a cutie with mustache reading the board, but he didn't seem interested in continuing. Then Eddie and Richard and three of their friends are there, so we start talking, and then the meeting starts late at 8:40. Announcements, then David, the balding guy who always nods to me, starts very slowly talking about Sex in Perspective, and the first dozen or so discussers utter total platitudes, but then some of the speakers begin talking about gut feelings and worries, and the group gets animated, though there's too much emphasis on the long tirade which is greeted with applause at the end. The discussion just seems like such a SILLY thing to hold a group together for so long, but it's indisputably true. Then the meeting stops at 9:45 for the committee chairmen to get up and give their talks, and the Topic Committee has to meet every two weeks to hammer out what the topic of discussion will be, and that seemed even MORE ludicrous. Talk to Bobbi who said she could understand my proposal and that SHE thought it was good. When I found that "ways and means" meant "fundraising" I asked if I shouldn't come to Tuesday's meeting, and she seemed annoyed and said that if I was only interested in MY plan I shouldn't come, so I figured I shouldn't. But I guess I don't give the plan much chance of success. Chat with Dominick who hasn't been back to Mattachine for ages, and talk with Eddie about Azak's wanting me to give him his phone number, and then have some cold beverage and some tea with thankfully remaining milk with a crumby piece of cake which goes very quickly, and then it's time to leave. However, there WERE a number of humpy people here, with shorts and tank tops with the warm weather, and there could POSSIBLY be some nice cruising, I see for the first time. Richard says he'll bring a list of hotels and bars and restaurants next time, so there's that time and then the travel time, so I guess I can stick THAT out.
DIARY 8702
WSDG 3
7/1/74
Eddie and Richard sit next to me in the nonsmoking section on the side, which means they can't see the speakers. Richard gives me a list of gay hotels and bars in Greece, for which I thank him, and Fred Pattison is a VERY nervous moderator for the NGTF people, Nath the most pleasant of all, Tom Smith the best spoken, and Greg Dawson the one who said how many kinds of fundraising they'd tried doing, and I figure to talk to him after the meeting about tying in as a travel agent. Their $10,000 ad in the Times on June 6 was a real knockout, and they'd gotten back only about $8,000 so far, but the mail was still coming in. An anonymous donor had "loaned the money" saying he wanted it back if it got that much back, but that he'd pay for the difference. It looked like it just might break even. But they said that a number of the letters were real heart-breakers: "I'm afraid to sign my name," "I love my wife but oh you Beacon Baths," and so forth. They have very little money, but the six seem to be paid. Started in October, 1973, by Nath Rockhill (National Coordinator), Gregory Dawson (program development and fundraising), Tom Smith (community services---getting the drug groups to stop being anti-gay, talking about gay foster parents on July 17th), Rod Gold (Communications Director: press agent for the movement), Bruce Voeller, Executive Director, and Howard Brown, Chairperson. It filled the needs for a coordinator of news and events, a handler for national government on things like anti-gay immigration regulations, and a need for a permanent fulltime staff, getting paid $125 a week, which is $89.75 take-home pay, only barely subsistence. Talk to Greg, give him an Africa flier, he says that he'd been contacted by travel agents, but none of them followed up, so I'm to call him in the office tomorrow to set up an appointment to talk to him. Nath talks about the newsletter, which I don't recall receiving, but which I actually did but left in the envelope. Nath is very pleasant, giving me some proofreader's names for when I get called (I probably won't from now on), and I leave at 10:30 after chatting for a bit, but it's impossible for that to take up LESS than a totally full evening.
DIARY 8715
WSDG 4
7/4/74
One had lived in Germany for a couple years a couple of years ago, the second had lived (with a boy body-servant) during WWII in Japan for a few years (and I helped out the Tokyo-scene with Paul's letter of May 9, telling about the baths and bars and orgy hotels), the third lived in Puerto Rico for 9 years, and Elliot traveled all through Asia. I threw in my remarks about Rio, Japan, Ceylon, and Bobbi had the marvelous idea to say that I was a travel agent, without my even ALLUDING to it, and after the meeting I went up to a number of people to tell them to give me their addresses for travel hotels and bars, and a number of people came up to me to ask if I could set up some itinerary for them to follow for THEIR gay trips. Elliot and I talked for a long time about the dancing in India, the travel in out-of-the-way places, though he didn't get to Tirupati (though he made it to Cheruthuruthi) and Manali, and others wanted to travel by themselves but spend lots of money in Europe, and I was only too happy to give them my address and phone number. Then Elliot came up with the brilliant idea that a part of the meeting should be given over to having people think of the questions THEY wanted to ask and have answered on the gay-travel questionnaire, and I thought that was great, but when we looked around for Bobbi, she had left, having been fairly pissed that none of the WOMEN volunteered anything at all, and it was only ME who said that the women did the dancing in the MALE roles in the Indian dances of Orissi, Bharat Natyam, and Kuchipudi. She liked that. Have lots of iced tea with sugar, talked to others about places to go, chatted with some marvelous bores about how Austria and other places were good to travel in, someone talked about going to bed with a Viennese policeman whithin two hours of getting into town, others talked against the gay life in Belgium and France, and built it up in England and Amsterdam, where I told about the gay hotels, and some of the people asked about them, too, and I'll have to start typing up an official list of gay places, and I'll have to get a copy of the Spartacus Guide that the traveler in the group recommended so highly.
DIARY 8738
WSDG 5
7/12/74
Find the balding fellow is the gatherer of questions, so I tell him my problem and he suggests how to phrase it, and then I see Elliot and sit next to him---actually next to a drunk Erminio who kisses me on the cheek for the greeting and stands up four times to apologize lengthily for what he's about to say at great length. EVERYONE says "I don't want to keep you in the heat," thereby keeping everyone longer in the heat! Most of the questions are not very enthusiastically received, and there are a FEW new ideas on the questionnaire for travel which I jot down. But the meeting isn't over any too soon because I'm DISGUSTED with the old-timers who seem there only to toot their own horns (like me). Meeting's over and I still chat with Elliot, who tells me that the friend in New Jersey who's a gay travel agent doesn't want to give me any names of places, but he'd like to go to bed with me, so obviously Elliot described me in a very positive way (one of the questions that really COULDN'T be answered was "How can I, at 60, get an attractive younger person?"), and he wanted to talk with a skinny unpleasant, scrawny-faced tour guide who actually confessed that he'd never worked for the same company for more than two tours: how good a guide could he BE if this is true? Obviously he has a beautiful habit of alienating everyone, even WITH his PhD degree and his speaking of many languages. Arnie's ALREADY outstripped him with his ONE company. But Elliot is still pleasant, I suggest they come to the movie with me, and the guide says sullenly that he'd be willing to go anywhere ELSE with me, but not there, and I wondered what they'd all think if they knew how OLD I was. I saw Bobbi there but didn't want to push myself in front of her to ask about my plans, but will have to next time. Looked over the second-hand table and found "The Wild Boys" by Burroughs, that I hadn't even HEARD of, and "This Day's Death," the one that came out in 1969 by Rechy that I'd never found in paperback. So I lugged them around the rest of the evening, and read them BOTH through the next day, so I had ANOTHER way of wasting time, which I hope will STOP!
DIARY 8775
WSDG 6
7/18/74
Tom Smith is a marvelous speaker and answers questions absolutely perfectly, and it's probably the best performance I've seen there, but so many of the OTHER things just turn me off completely: the exasperation of Fred Pattison as he sees people wander away without folding up their chairs; the insistence of the two old men in front of me to think they're more important than what's being said on the stage, not even listening to my saying "Quiet," and the same applies to the garrulous Marie; the "ownership" that the Bill I said hello to seems to feel in me once I've said hello to him; and the beautiful chest of black Jim turns me on so much that I want very badly to talk to him but am just too DAMN SHY, and that makes me feel so awful that I chalk the entire evening up to being a waste and leave as soon as I get some fruit (disgusted at the rush for the table for the best goodies) and a glass of iced tea and some cake. Neither Bobbie nor Sandy are there, so I can't find what they've decided about the travel thing. Eddie and Richard haven't been there for the past two weeks, and there's no one I WANT to talk to, though some of the uglier ones want to talk to me; I don't want to talk to them, and when Vernon from NGTF comes in, I'm glad he doesn't sit next to me. I'm totally turned off when I see that many people ARE there for cruising, and when Erminio stands up to take everyone's time by giving a platitudinous opinion, someone ELSE stands up wanting to know what makes a child of 4 different from a child of 2, and others stand to toot their own horns in a stupid way, just TURNS ME OFF, and I sit there asking myself if I think it's REALLY WORTH it, not to mention the fact that if you came to EVERY meeting for a year, you'd have spent over $100 for a club that "has no membership fees." That's REALLY a bit much, and I even stayed away from the thrift shop for fear of finding MORE books to get. And the same old faces were depressingly there, and the new ones I had NO idea how to talk with, so I just left, hoping to be called back by the most beautiful of the bunch, but of course I wasn't, and I'll go ONE MORE WEEK and that'll be the end of that, as well as freeing up my Wednesday nights again for BETTER things.
DIARY 8793
WSDG 7
7/30/74
We're in just as the meeting's been called to order, so we don't have to talk to anyone beforehand or shake hands with the people around us. D.D. Griffo is RATHER funny as the speaker about his putting an ad in the sex paper "The Advocate" but Paul's offended by his incessant femininity, and I think this is ONE of the biggest changes through the new gay generation: they don't feel that they HAVE to be women, and it's MARVELOUS. Since Paul dozes during some of the questions and says that he can't see anyone, and since I don't see Bobbi anywhere, either, which is quite frustrating, he just wants to leave, so the only thing to do is talk about the speech DD gave, insisting that his name is NOT Deedee. He said that it was too bad that these people actually had to RESORT to putting ads in papers in order to get some action, and I told Paul about the guy that I regularly jerked off over the telephone. Out of 600 calls in the past few months, not the minority were from "phone freaks" who spend their entire evenings on the telephone getting their jollies, until DD finally said he'd run out of imagination to say anything to these demanding people. But he also talked about the sadness and the loneliness of these people, about the distance from which the calls came in, and how he tried to persuade people to get out and DO something rather than just sit by their phone and wishfully think. There were lots of personal contributions from the audience, saying that they'd responded to some of the calls and had gotten some really humpy numbers, and even DD said that he'd gone out to about two dozen places for a good time. He talked about making the ad as "widely appealing as possible," and then urged anyone using the ads for personal purposes to make them as SPECIFIC as possible, even though there would STILL be people who called who'd say they were 29 and were actually 50+. But he said that a number of people insisted on calling at 3 and 4 am, that he'd be out of town for the summer and wouldn't be bothered, and noted that most of the letter writers to the newspapers were putting in only addresses and not phone numbers, and said that from a PRACTICAL point of view, that was probably the best idea.
DIARY 12193
TRIPP AT WSDG
8/4/77
He talks from 8:30 to 9:30, a heavyset, pleasant-faced guy who looks like one of the doctors on the Greek trip, like some movie screen father-doctor. He draws the O=totally heterosexual; 1=only occasional homosexuality; 2=appreciable homosexuality; 3=50-50 bisexual; 4=appreciable heterosexuality; 5=only occasional heterosexuality; 6=totally homosexual graph and says that the usual length of time in areas 0-6 is a lifetime; 1-5 is 10-20 years; the usual time in areas 2-4 is 5 years; the usual time in area 3 is 3 weeks! This is due to SIDE DRIFT. 13 years and 3 months the AVERAGE age of first sexual contact. By the age of 19, the upper levels (college grads) have LOTS of inhibitions and have had 3 contacts, but the lower levels (grade school dropouts) have NO inhibitions and have 220 contacts (figures for males). Homosexuals are the ONLY males who masturbate BEFORE they can have an orgasm, and they're the ONLY males who look at their genitals: heterosexual males think that male attributes are a turn-off. Frank Beach at Yale is the most prominent sex researcher. Lower social level: drift comes with OPPORTUNITY (if it's there, do it). The upper levels CARE about partners, so sex comes with a PREFERENCE. Central tendency tends to PURIFY and go to extremes: a little is fun, a lot is MORE fun: chubby chasers need mates over 350 pounds; size queens want it as BIG as they can get. Average male has 20-30 characteristic fetishes (tall, slender, light, clean, etc) that they look for in everyone. Over 70s fit MOSTLY into either 0 or 6. 4-year-olds are at 3; 5-year-olds are DIRECTED already, usually a 4 or 2. NEW Kinsey due next year: age of puberty is down, age of first sex is down; the percentage of homosexuals is STABLE, and has been for last 120 years. Kinsey checked three generations back, so it's been stable for 5 generations (depending on sample, I insist). S/M HIGHLY correlated with TOUGH religion: "By 1982, S/M will "peter out" "pardon pun" because 60s generation had all EASY religiousness. GUESSES sexuality will tend toward animalism. NO female parafilias (S/M). S/M, reaching a certain THRESHOLD (below which a person is content at same level), will ESCALATE. 2% of males masturbate with URETHRAL insertion, he said, such as starting with the end of a feather, going to a soft pipe cleaner, to a toothbrush handle, to the tooth brush BRUSH twirled between hands!), as an example of escalation, and of side movement. 85% of people FIRMLY set by 14, but 78% by age 5. No hereditary factor, because social groups vary from 0-100% REQUIRED homosexuality. Lower socials don't deep kiss, "Pasteur made kissing worthwhile." Side drift starts at age 20. Lots of TALK of broadening experience, but it doesn't WORK that way. The NARROWER the interest the more VALUE, so a guy who has dozens of ejaculations a month may have as much area under his curve as a FETISHIST who builds to ONE: Kinsey could 90% predict college grades from age 6 sexuality: from DELAY factor: get it NOW, will get OUT of school; DELAY, graduate from college. 98% of exhibitionists were Roman Catholic, most of rest orthodox Jews. Para (extra) filia (love, affection, attraction). MIRACULOUS male comes 3 times in 2 minutes, though Kinsey found ONE man who could come off 40 times in 4 minutes. Allan Bell and Gebhard will be MAJOR homosexual-book authors for Kinsey. Blacks in Kinsey sample go to EXTREME in almost everything. Hoffman hated "Homosexual Matrix." Chicago police make arrests in gay baths, proving that the MORE RIGHTS gays have the MORE TIGHTNESS is produced. Britain and Switzerland are ROUGHER on gays NOW than before (Rolf: Britisher jailed 10 years for BLASPHEMY when he described Christ having sex with a Centurion; gay rights leader). It's just a fact of backlash. Tripp's new article/interview in Playboy will tell lots about J. Edgar Hoover! And Pope said he's heard him on lots of talk shows, and he behaves intelligently and VERY sardonically and wittily. STATISTICS: 4% are totally homosexual for a lifetime at 6; 11.2% at 6+5+4 for at least 3 years; while 13% is at 6+5+4+(half of 3s) for at least 3 years. So ANY of those figures is right, depending on who uses them. Next book will be on the SCREEN phenomenon: the difference between what people feel and think versus what they actually DO; he calls it half-sexuality. Rolf stays and talks with a group with him until about 11, getting more poop about how HARD it is to publish, so they perish, or publish overseas, or pay for their own publishing. Announcement of August 20 march on US for OUR civil rights NOW: Coalition for Gay Men and Lesbians.