Gay and The Pleasures and Pain of Being 30 and 70 [1961-2024]

 

Introduction by Mark Harris
Interviews by Nicole Acheampong, Max Berlinger, Jason Chen, Kate Guadagnino, Colleen Hamilton, Juan A. Ramírez, Coco Romack, Michael Snyder and John Wogan

A first starring role, a first gallery show, a first apartment, a first love, a first loss. In honor of Pride Month, 30 creative people, aged 34 to 93, share an indelible memory from an all-important year. Together, they offer a personal history of queer life as we know it today.

Introduction by Mark Harris

Interviews by Nicole Acheampong, Max Berlinger, Jason Chen, Kate Guadagnino, Colleen Hamilton, Juan A. Ramírez, Coco Romack, Michael Snyder, and John Wogan June 27, 2024

 

What’s it like to be 30 and queer and an artist? To try to put something meaningful into the world while simultaneously figuring out who you are? For many, it’s a pivotal year — a time when you start to know yourself more clearly and understand what you want and how you want to pursue it. But beyond that, there are as many answers as there are people to ask. So, this Pride Month, T asked 30 Americans to look back on that age, and the responses constitute both a chronology and a group portrait. This collection of memories — snapshots of a year in many lives — also serves as a multivalent gay history from almost a decade before Stonewall to the day before yesterday. Our oldest participant, the novelist and cultural outlaw John Rechy, turned 30 in 1961, before “gay pride” was a phrase, a concept or much of a possibility; our youngest, the nonbinary poet and performer Danez Smith, reached that threshold toward the end of the Trump administration. The years they bookend encompass the story of a movement, an identity, a people, a force — and a culture that grew from forbidden, banned, and encoded to ubiquitous, contentious, and constantly evolving.

 

 by Anthony Cotsifas

When I was on the national tour of [William F. Brown’s] “The Wiz” [playing the title role], this gentleman approached me after the San Francisco show. He said he was on assignment for Planned Parenthood: They were looking for someone to portray a pregnant man in an ad. I was hot, I was out — I was born out, I don’t have a coming-out story — and he wanted to photograph me. The idea was that men might be more responsible if they had to carry babies. I thought it was a smart idea: “Men, it’s called a condom.”

I thought of my nephews back in Baltimore who just wanted to have a good time; sometimes, the result of a good time is a new life. My youngest sister had a child at 14, so I wanted to help.

We stuffed a sleeping gown with rags, and the photographer taped it so it looked like a burden in the abdomen. I touched it there, how women do. Later, in 2017, I did an Off-Broadway play, [Robert O’Hara’s] “Mankind,” about a time in the future when there were no women and men evolved to have children. When we were rehearsing it, I said, “You know, some years ago I did this thing …” and they put the poster in the Playwrights Horizons lobby.

I have a formula when it comes to performing: I had it in “The Wiz,” and I had it in [Anaïs Mitchell’s] “Hadestown” [on Broadway, where De Shields originated the role of Hermes in 2019]. What I bring is my queerness. If you’re not willing to show that part of yourself, you’re missing the target. It’s that quality that scares everybody, that makes people go “Oh!” Bring that to a character? It changes everything. — Max Berlinger

Jenna Lyons, creative director and designer, 56, New York

It was 1998, and I couldn’t get over the beautiful women in “Antonio’s Girls.”

Clockwise from left: flipping through “Antonio’s Girls” (1982) by Antonio Lopez; Jenna Lyons’s first-edition copy of the book; Lopez’s “Personal Study, Grace Jones” (1983); Jenna Lyons (left) with a friend in 1998. Clockwise from left: Anthony Cotsifas (2); artwork © The Estate and Archive of Antonio Lopez and Juan Ramos (3); courtesy of Jenna Lyons

I thought I knew so much and I knew nothing. I had a 29-and-a-half party at the Odeon [restaurant in New York’s TriBeCa] because I was scared to have a 30th birthday. There was this feeling of “Am I ever going to get married and have kids like everybody else?”

I really had no idea [about being attracted to women]. But it’s not like I was hiding it. When I look back, there could’ve been signs. I came to New York City because of [the American photographer and illustrator] Antonio Lopez’s 1982 book, “Antonio’s Girls.” Flipping through, you see him admiring the beauty of Grace Jones, Tina Chow and Marisa Berenson. These women weren’t the kinds of beauties that I saw in magazines. They were interesting for their personality and their style. He made me want something other than my sun-bleached, “Baywatch” California upbringing. (I did, however — and still do — adore Pam Anderson.)

I think if I’d been exposed to [more gay women], it would’ve been different for me. I had no visible references, and certainly no one that looked like me. When I started dating a woman for the first time, at 43, it’s hard to say I had some sort of revelation. I think I was just open enough to try. But in the late ’90s, there were such stereotypes about gay women. A lot of them still exist: There is the [male] fantasy of two hot girls or the idea that gay women don’t take care of themselves — that they aren’t attractive, that they look like men. I spent so much time trying to be beautiful in the eyes of men. That’s not the thing I look for anymore. As soon as I stopped, it changed so much for me. — Jason Chen

Jayne County, actor and musician, 77, Atlanta

  

I got an offer to go to London, and then I toured Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Berlin, which I liked so much I stayed for two years. It was a boring city unless you knew where to go. But they loved trans people there. A girl could go and try out her footwork — how to act, her attitude. It was a good training ground. Drag shows and trans shows weren’t a big deal, like in America, where everyone would freak out about them. In Berlin, it was just another form of entertainment.

I had this successful tour where the Police and Billy Idol opened for [her band Wayne County & the Electric Chairs]. It gave me confidence in myself, the fact that people were willing to accept an angry old trans person — we used the word “transsexual” back then — fronting a rock ’n’ roll band. I transitioned in front of my audience.

I think I opened people’s minds. I believed in what I was doing and my messages: about gender, about what’s gay and straight, the [categories] that are made up [so we can be] comfortable. We overflow those labels. — M.B.

The New York Times

Those are my pics up there but Im not ready to write about it. Will let other compatriots and brother-in-arms tell their stories. If you would like their faces, there is a link to the New York Times. If you have problems getting let me. You don't need a subscription using that link.

Backup link to the NYTimes article