authors, anthologists, activists

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hour from their last books-"Maybe. If we're lucky." as fiscals at

we reached people that were sort of closeted in suburbia somewhere, and really don't get out-1 'don't know how we reached some.. of these people, they've been married for 25, 30 years, they told us things that of course they hadn't told their spouses. We got replies from Africa and Micronesia, and I've since met people from Sweden and Denmark and all over Europe who have seen the questionnaire; and one thing we must always remember that's one of our blessings as gay people is that the grapevine lives, and word of mouth just spreads miraculously, not only all over this country, but all over the world. It's an incredible phenomenon among gay people. And part of that is because we have been denied access to the media, and we have developed these alternative forms of communication-they really do work."

NASCAR (2) ME

ther he's gay or straight, is not going to be able to fill out a questionnaire like this."

Nevertheless, over five thousand responses to the questionnaire came in, and the writers set about the task of turning them into a book. They collected responses from March of 1977 to January of 1978, and wrote the 815-page book itself in a four-month period from January to May of 1978. "Writing this book was a brutal job which, I think, took its toll on both of us in terms of pains in the back and the neck and...other parts of the body," sighs Jay. "I think I literally sat down and wrote 10 to 20 pages a day for four months without ever taking a day off. And I think that we worked 15 hours a day from probably about March of '77 through May of '79, and it was a brutal process and I hope I never have to undertake a project like this again with such a deadline."

In addition, Jay and Young were proofreading Lavender Culture while working on The Gay Report. What happened to their outside lives? "What outside lives?" asks Jay wryly..

"On the negative side," Young points out, "we did not print the questionnaire in Spanish, which left out the many Spanish-speaking people in the United States, and French, which left out the many French-speaking people in Canada, or in Braille, leaving out. The writing of the book was blind people. And the questiondraining not only personally, but naire is a difficult verbal exercise. financially as well. Although SumYou have to have a reasonable edmit Books provided Jay and Young ucation level, and there are signifiwith a limited expense account and cant numbers of people in the Unian advance on royalties, the two ted States who are semi-literate, writers were forced to pay some of and a semi-literate person, whethe expenses for printing, distribu-

GAY NEWS-Sept. 21, 1979

ting, and

collecting the questionnaires themselves. And the book's high list price ($14.95 in hardback) limits the number of gay men and lesbians who will be able to purchase it, thus limiting in turn the royalties Young and Jay can earn. "I would say without question our earnings on the book so far are considerably less than minimum wage," says Young. "Yeah, we probably got about 50 cents an hour for this book," adds Jay. "Maybe. If we're lucky.".

In order to make enough money to live while The Gay Report and Lavender Culture were being prepared, both Young and Jay continued to work pari-time. Since Young lives in a "semi-communal household," he was helped and supported by his housemates; but Jay found the working conditions a bit more difficult. She was forced to continue working as a teacher. "I quit one of my jobs, but I couldn't afford, literally, to give up the other one, so here I was teaching all the time I was writing this, and marking a lot of papers, because I teach writing so I was looking at writing day and night."

Jay and Young divided the labor on The Gay Report between them, as they do while working on all of their books, Jay working mostly with women and preparing chapters on lesbian experience, and Young doing the same for men. Other work is divided by convenience. Since Jay is a New York City resident, she handles most business with publishers and agents, while Young takes care of clerical work which he can do at his home in rural Massachusetts. How do they deal with conflicts between them? "Well, she has a black belt," laughs Young, "and I don't have anything, so she wins!" "Yeah," grins Jay. "He's a sissy; he's not going to fight with a tough dyke. Not if he's smart." "Next question?" Young asks impishly..

"No," says Jay seriously, "generally, we have a smooth relationship; also, we're poor, and we live in different cities, we live 200 miles apart. And we don't have the time or money to have long fights over the phone. And generally, by the time you get to sit and write a nasty letter, and by the time you send it out, you already don't feel angry. And I think living 200 miles apart is the best way to keep a partnership together." st

The two writers share what they feel are important perspectives on the topics around which they organize their books. They compiled Lavender Culture, according to. Jay, because "we felt that culture was the most important contribution of gay people-what we had done in terms of culture was the most important thing to come out of Stonewall. If we look at our legislative gains, they have been few and far between. Some of them have even been pulled right out from under our feet after we thought we had them. But the cultural thing cannot be taken away from us. And that means that culture is our strongest contribution to ourselves. Because even if all the laws turn back and being gay is legal nowhere, they can't take some

of those songs out of my mind. And I know some books by heart, and I love them. And I have my history, which I didn't have before-I have my lesbian herstory. And they can't take that away from me.

"Culture has given us a soul. It's given us a lesbian soul, and a gay male soul; and many of us didn't have that before Stonewall, and I think that we began to see that this is a very important aspect of life for gay people-but one which no one had talked about, in a book."

Adds Young, "I think, especially for gay men, when you bring up the word 'culture,' there are certain stereotypes that come to mind. On the one hand, there's the 'camp,' the old campy gay male culture; on the other hand, there's the sort of idea which is constantly being. popularized in the straight media, of the sort of gay men as trendsetters; you know-they're the first ones to wear Adidas, or they're the ones who design the high-fashion clothes, and et cetera. And I think that in our examination of Lavender Culture, we point to an area of gay male culture that is neither the old campy thing nor the trendsetting thing, although those are recognized in the book, in passing, but rather some of the deeper sort of historical roots of the type that Karia just mentioned-the exploratory things in sexuality, in a criticism of the mainstream culture."

Both admit an initial reluctance to deal with "exploratory things in sexuality" as required for The Gay Report. "Sex is dirty in America," says Young. "It's not a legitimate thing to write about sex. People who write about sex are either slightly weird doctors or pornographers, and I didn't think that I was either. Then the more I thought about it, the more I realized that nobody would think that somebody who wrote only about Latin American politics, which in fact is a subject which has interested me for several years, was obsessed with Latin American politics, or nobody would think that they were weird. So I realized that the reluctant feelings that I had about this project were part of my oppression-as a sexual being, much less a homosexual."

"The more we thought about it, explains Jay, "the more we realized that communication among gay people about sex is not very great. I have been in many CR (consciousness-raising) groups, and I have sat down with a lot of lesbians, and we have talked about everything from coming out and telling your mother, and what do you do when your lover goes off with somebody else, and where do you want to live -but never sat down, never sat down and talked about the nittygritty of sex. And so we live in ignorance of the one thing which, when push comes to shove, really separates us from heterosexual people, and which, if the chips ever fall the wrong way, they're really gonna shove us in the ovens over. And we really need to understand, crucially, our sexuality. Because if we don't understand our sexuality, we're going to be at a very great disadvantage if the right wing gets more powerful, and they seem to

be getting more powerful every day."

What can gays learn from The Gay Report? "I think it's for the gay person who wants to meet other gay people," says Young. "I think that most of us go in a circle of friends who think and feel more or less like ourselves; obviously, everybody's somewhat different. I think this will remind gay people of the variety of the gay experience and the gay lifestyle and gay attitudes; I think it will help gay men learn about lesbians, and vice ver-

Sa,"

"I think that the book will show lesbians and gay men that in some ways, we're sort of a false group to be put together as a group," muses Jay. "It's sort of like society saying, 'Oh, Puerto Ricans are oppressed, and black people are oppressed, and therefore Puerto Ricans and blacks are the same.' I think that one of the things that we've tried to push under the rug in our struggle to work against a common source of oppression was the fact that we're really two different groups of people, and I think that people will have to see that lesbians and gay men socialize in very different ways, and have different views of relationships; and the sexual experiences the attitude is very different. There are vast differencesand yet there are similarities. (In the chapter) when gay people talk about love, if we removed the symbols which tell you whether (the response is written by) a man or a woman, you really would not be able to tell the difference. And politically, we do have a common source of oppression. But I think it's really going to make some gay people aware of how different we

really are of how differ

Jay and Young themselves feel that they have learned a great deal from the project. "We really felt that we really got to know a lot of these people as people," says Jay. "Of course, we saw the questionnaire as whole, and we'd read through somebody's whole life, and it was a very warm feeling-1 sort of laughed with these people, and cried with these people, and I felt like I knew them-and they're people I probably will never meet. It was an extraordinary experience. I mean, it was difficult, but it certainly was extraordinary, and I'd do it all again, if I had to."

The two authors are now working on separate projects, Young as "a free-lance journalist in the rural area-I would like to be able to concentrate a lot of my energy in the rural area where I live."

Jay has been working on a novel. "If I can sell my idea," she says, "I will have the money to go ahead and write it. Otherwise, I'll have to throw it in the scrap pile." She has also been giving talks on her research in Paris into the life of lesbian poet Natalie Clifford Barney.

"If The Gay Report is financially successful, and we hope gay people will support our efforts by buying the books," Jay adds, "then there's a possibility that we will do a sequel (to The Gay Report). We have used only 10 per cent of our material, or less-we still have oodles and. oodles of material."

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