From Pioneer to Elder – Squeezing it all into one speech

Last year I was in my exquisite local Robbins Library where a staff member had put up historical information about Pride. I found that person, whose name is Rob, and introduced myself. I told him that I lived in Arlington and that I had been in on the ground floor of the women’s and gay liberation movements. Perhaps our library should consult its own members about the history they made and participated in. Moreover, perhaps the library should stock my books.

Rob agreed. So this year I wrapped up Robbins Library’s Pride month events with a presentation on June 28 called From Pioneer to Elder. The problem was located in the subtitle: “One Arlington Woman's Journey from the Birth of Boston's Gay Liberation to LGBTQ Elder Activism Today.” How could I possibly fit in the birth of the movement, the present concerns of us aging pioneers, and my writing all in about 75 minutes?

Accompanying the public speaking of most writers is a desire to read from their work and to sell books. Combined with the demands of a double-sided topic, I found myself raveling and unraveling the complex threads for two weeks in an attempt to construct a presentation that met the plethora of promises in that subtitle. I did it by cutting out almost entirely the history of the establishment of Boston’s women’s liberation movement – which had prepared us for all things gender and sexuality related – and which was by far the most earthshaking revelation of my life.

Since it was a Pride event, I stuck to the founding of gay liberation – actually mostly lesbian liberation about which I can speak with authority – and jumped to the particular needs and issues of LGBTQ elders. I read relevant paragraphs from both Lillian’s Last Affair and Lillian in Love and sold a lot of books. I even snuck in a couple of my funnier 100-word stories.

But to begin, I had to thank the rainbow assortment of attendees. Rob had told me that these events usually drew between 6 and 15 people. That seemed miniscule to me so I did my own publicity and the folks I know really responded – 49 of them arrived! Here are the broad categories of what was a very mixed crowd – from ages 21 to 82, from life-long activists to people for whom this was their first political talk:

• Good friends, a few of whom have heard me speak and talk repeatedly, turned up nonetheless, one driving from across the State.
• A half-dozen dancers from my West Coast Swing community – which is mostly young and straight and white – came as well. The WCS scene is doggedly apolitical. There are no consequences, for example, for the dickhead who turns up in tRump t-shirts – people seem to dance with him quite contentedly. And I’m sure he’s not alone in his right-wing stance – although he is the most demonstrative. The dancers who came to my event, though, are the sweetest and most generous on the scene.
• Several members of the queer country and ballroom dance community arrived, some of whom I’ve known since the early 90s.
• People from my chiropractor’s office, Chirocare, were there, which was a treat. They are the folks who keep me dancing.
• Lots of other lesbian and gay elder activists cheered me on, even though a number of them have heard me speak and read before. They get my jokes and react with good-natured empathy to my take on aging.
• Several other pioneers represented, including Mark Heumann, from the group of Radical Faeries that joined with my Stick-it-in-the-Wall Collective in 1970 to put out one of the very first gay publications – Lavender Vision; and Marsha Gerstein, a self-defense student of mine back in the 60s. Both of them are active today in the LGBTQ elder community, running the Rainbow Lifelong Learning Institute.
• And there were a number strangers who came because they support events at Robbins Library. Funny enough, I randomly sat next to one of them on the subway two days later on the way back from the downtown demonstration against tRump’s immigration policy.

Because it was such a talk-heavy event, I decided to do a PowerPoint showing my changing hairstyles (not changed very much) and fashion (not changed very much) over the decades. I’ve included some of those images here. And I learned something after about 25 years away from PowerPoint: PowerPoint today is a gazillion times easier than it was when it first came out.

It was exhilarating to have a break from the news, from the growing fascism, from the cesspool that our country has become. It was only part of one evening, but I felt surrounded by “fellow travelers” and that was a balm. I had warned the audience at the very beginning that I do “a shitload of swearing,” and now that Pride Month is over and soon our democracy will be as well, I can only mourn and organize.