Fond memories from a threeway Skype video chat with @lynseymoon, Nez, and me in 2011, where he played “Harmony Constant” for us. This is who Michael Nesmith is.
The Persistent Desire, edited by Joan Nestle, Alyson Publications, inc, 1992:
[“The next morning I went down to the drugstore (the same one where I had found The Well of Loneliness) to get a cup of coffee and bought the newspaper and started looking for the police reports, where most arrests were reported in the paper. My father religiously read the police reports, so I knew he was going to find out about it if it was in the police report. It wasn’t there, and I was so relieved. Then I turned to see what the news of the day was and the headline said, “64 Women, 1 Man Arrested.” There were all kinds of remarks about what kind of bar it was, about the sign saying “no males allowed.”
That night we had to go to court and I discovered then that they had raided every gay bar in New Orleans. It was like a big cleanup. I had never seen so many gay people in my whole life; I had no idea that there were so many gay people. It was really exciting! I almost forgot to be scared about whether I would be convicted or not. My case was dismissed, but I think that set me free in some way.
EB: Were the other cases dismissed?
DL: I think they were. There may have been instances where people were found guilty of something: usually the charges were things like “wearing the clothes of the opposite sex” for drag queens and for butch lesbians, or “no honest, visible means of support.” It was true; most of us didn’t have any honest, visible means of support. If you chose to dress in such a way that clearly identified you as gay, it was impossible to get any kind of straight job, assuming you would want one. Most often all of these charges were dismissed when you came before a judge; I don’t know why particularly, except that I believe the arresting was intended as a kind of harassment— when it was intense enough it drove people away.
Some of us didn’t have any other place to go. We were just caught every time they happened to walk in when we were there. Whereas for other people, just being there in that bar was one of the riskiest things they’d ever done in their lives. If they even witnessed an arrest, even if they didn’t get taken in, it was usually sufficient to scare them away for years to come. You see how this kind of stuff works to limit what kinds of risks people take. When I look back at that now, I am really amazed that people were persistent; I really wonder why I was unconscious that I was part of a resistance.
You can guess what happened to the lives of all those women as a result of that raid. Most of them were closeted, were from New Orleans, many of them living with their families and with jobs. I think they thought they were pretty safe there in that bar. It was probably shocking to them to get included in that sweep.
Back at home, I was just dismissing it by saying “Well, I just went to see what kind of bar it was and it happened to be that night.” My father didn’t pursue it, but my brother, who was a year younger than I, was really freaked out by this. When I had gotten out of reform school, he had this girlfriend whom he was really crazy about and could hardly wait to have me meet her. I did meet her, and gradually she began to follow me around and to take my side in the arguments we had and stopped seeing him. What I discovered later was that everybody in the neighborhood was speculating that I was a lesbian and they literally did follow us around and peek in windows to see if we were kissing. I think he was angry about this kind of stuff when here I got arrested in this bar and it’s real clear that I was a lesbian. He became hostile and we had a really bad fight in which I was hurt and that’s when I left home.
I was hurt real bad and I called up this woman whom I had been seeing from the Goldenrod and told her what was happened and she said, “Take a cab and come over.” I wound up living with her for a while. Actually I wound up living with her off and on for a year and a half.
But then I was free. The cat was out of the bag. I didn’t have anybody that I had to worry about anymore and I could go ahead and explore whatever it was I wanted to do. I didn’t have any idea what I was going to do to make a living; I didn’t even think about it. I had lived in a family or in a number of families where nobody was really in a profession. I guess my godfather, who was a merchant seaman, was the most in a profession of anyone that I knew. The only person that I knew that went to college was my mother— somebody famous from her hometown had put her through college. So I didn’t have too many notions about what I was going to do. I always knew I wasn’t going to get married, but I didn’t have any plans about what I was going to do to take care of myself.
Then I began dressing up and wearing these clothes that were taboo before. I had already had short hair, but now I really began to go at it, and I got a crew cut and blue suede shoes like Elvis Presley was singing about.“]
feel like breeding your own “unique” pet? here’s how to play:
you have information on a stud, and three potential mates. each combination will result in a creature from European mythology, with colour/markings being predictable if you understand the genetics involved.
temperament also plays a role – will you pair the aloof Salem with vicious Gertrude, curious Cuddles, or sweet Sly?
to make a selection, head here! In roughly one month (gotta give time for gestation!), the offspring will be sent your way in the form of a limited edition enamel pin.
“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast….a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here….Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.”
