COMMUNITY VOICE OHIO GAY JOURNAL?

Gentlemen:

High Gear is the first paper of its kind that I have ever read from cover to cover and finished looking forward to the next issue wishing it would come out more often than once a month.

High Gear is Ohio's Gay Journal: However, in reading your paper it seems to me that High Gear is Cleveland's Gay Journal sponsored by the Ohio Gays Why Cleveland, Cleveland, Cleveland? Why not a little on Toledo, Akron, Dayton and etc.?. It you are going to serve the Ohio community you should, but at the present you are serving very little of any area other than your fair city of Cleveland.

as other gay's enjoy traveling. Why not do a week end in a different city each month. An article and/or review with pictures of not only the gay area(s) but also those of places of interest and good places to eat along with hotels and/or motels.

May I suggest a weekend in a little historical town of Piqua. Fred and Lowell's "The Water

celebrate

summer

Main" which has to be the friendliest bar I have ever had the pleasure of patronizing. Lowell has more ideas and contests that make you feel like you are in his living room and he is the perfect host. If you should be tied up with business and miss a week you'll walk in expecting anything because you just know he's been painting, pounding nails, running new lighting or even adding another sound system... something new that the gay crowd wants and as he says they deserve. The Water Main was a year old April 13th but as far as the gay community is concerned it is THE bar in this area. Customers flock here from 150 miles away on Friday and Saturdays. A mid week visit just to get that friendly and sincere "Hi!" from Lowell and his personal introduction of you to everyone in the bar will tell you you've found the gay capital of Ohio. You just know that you can kick off your shoes and relax because you're home.

A newspaper from Hollywood, Calif. "Compass" has just

THE RAINBOW

Cleveland's Friendliest Club!

2211 E. 9th St. Cleveland

THE

1630 payne ave

(ONE BLOCK EAST of PARK CENTRE

Zanzibar

FREE Sunday Buffet

4PM-8PM

LOCKER ROOM

RUSH

$3.00

HIGH GEAR/MAY 1977

recently seen fit to do an article

on the Water Main. I am holding DEFENDING THE

this letter so that I might enclose it for you to read. Fred and Lowell do not advertise in this paper so it really had nothing to gain by this article. My question is... If California has heard of this place why can't High Gear do a similar article after all, they advertise with you which supports YOUR gay center and YOUR gay paper.

May I further suggest that you either change the heading on The High Gear's cover from Ohio's Gay Journal to Cleveland's Gay Journal or set out to be Ohio's Gay Journal by serving Ohio.

Most sincerley yours Earl Byrd Piqua, Ohio

EDITORS'

RESPONSE

Thanks for your comments Earl. It is indeed true that much of our focus is on Cleveland and Northeastern Ohio; but please understand High Gear is staffed by a minimal number of people all who have full time jobs during the day, and volunteer their services in the evening. Our resources and time are subsequently limited.

We distribute High Gear out of our immediate enviornment because of requests in other Ohio cities for an outreach to their communities. Our policy is to actively encourage other area individuals and organizations to send in written contributions about happenings in their towns, particularly gay oriented social and political groups, and print nearly all such correspondences.

High Gear is Ohio's Gay Journal in that we solicit involvement and information from every part of the state; but we can't do everything ourselves. Frankly, we would like to see other regions develop their own publications; but until that happens, we are willing to fill the void. But much depends on interested Ohioans outside of Cleveland.

So long as the current editors of High Gear are in charge, this journal will continue to be an all I volunteer effort, less concerned with making profits, than in stirring gay activism throughout the state.

We again make the plea. Anyone who wishes to write about any gay related subject about their home town that is non-sexist and non-sexploitative may send their copy to High Gear, P.O. Box 6177, Cleveland, Ohio 44101.

Columbus' input has increased dramatically in the last few months. Surely, there are Ohioans outside of Columbus and Cleveland who care about their communities. High Gear is here as a service to all Ohio. Use Us!

Page 6

"BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE"

In the February, 1977 issue, High Gear ran an article entitled "Gay America's No. 1 Psychological Killer," assailing the "beautiful people" and those who photograph and present the epitome of the beautiful gay man. On two different levels | have a vested interest in the comments made in that article.

First, I publish a San Francisco based magazine which features in its format a coverman/centerfold picture set, as well as blurbs scattered throughout, entitled "Wanna see a Hot Man?" I feel, then, a little as if we had been attacked in that editorial, though realizing that we were not specifically a target that it was the general issue of publishing pictures of "hot men" under attack. To that, I can only answer that while it may bother a number of gays, it shouldn't. It should be viewed only in light of the same thing that happens in the straight world the "hot man" held up as the epitome of the American male, for all other straight males to...what? Commit suicide because he isn't a model? Hardly.

My second interest is on a much more personal level, because the article carried the implication that being "beautiful people" was the be all and end all to life, without positing what happens to the "beautiful people."

The conclusion that "Most people are honest with themselves in evaluating their own looks. That is to say, most are aware that they are either 'stunning,' 'average,' 'ghastly'," is erroneous, for while it may be true that most people who are 'average' or 'ghastly' may be honest with themselves, those who are classified among the "beautiful people" rarely think of themselves as being so. Because of that disbelief in themselves, they operate in an insecurity syndrome that can be mentally castrating; forever unsure of themselves, they go through life highly strung and nervous.

By the time the realization finally begins to sink into one of the "beautiful people" that he is, indeed, one of the "beautiful people," it can have a crippling effect, rather than the euphoria that most seem to think comes with that self-realization. To watch the painful contortions that that realization so often brings is enough to tear your heart out. And, the "beautiful people" are far more receptive to the mental ravages of age than are others who have had a lifetime to adjust to their own level, while the beautiful people are suddenly older and, in their own minds, often washed up. In reality, that is not generally true, and a "hot man" will stay a hot man even with age -but try getting that through to him.

One of the reasons for the anger that comes from those who are not considered among the "beautiful people" stems from the fact that "hot men" have a tendency to stick together. With good reason. "Hot men" are hit on so often and from so many directions that the only way they can salvage their sanity is to stick with their own kind so that they avoid the continual hit that is often maddening enough to drive them indoors and away from the clawing crowds of admirers.

To make matters even worse, let two "beautiful people" get together, for an evening of an affair or a long-term lover relationship, and then sit and watch the numbers run. Like sitting in a rattlesnake den, "beautiful people" can only watch as so many of those around them make every effort to get one or the other away from the relationship. Every tactic that can be employed, is, from the overt proposition in front of the one in which the "outsider" is not interested, to the running down of the other half. That gays will congratulate the two and be supportive is rare; more often, destruction of the relationship is the keynote and the two "beautiful people" are forced to deal with what frequently becomes downright nasty and vicious.

I would have to disagree with the conclusion that "if gay citizens are taught to hunger for a type of physique which is scarce, they are sure to go hungry in large numbers for a long time." No one is "taught" to "hunger for a type of physique which is scarce," but rather it is a human trait, applicable to the straight world as well as the gay, to seek out the "beautiful people." It does not take publication of those "ideal nudes" for gay society to restrict its options. It needs nothing more than for a "hot man" to come through the door, and the restriction is there, with or without the publication of the ideal, if it is going to be there at all.

The "beautiful people" with whom I've been associated for the past fourteen years do not have life as a bed of roses. If you're average or something less than "beautiful people," you can count yourself lucky in many ways that the "beautiful people" cannot. Your life would be easier, and you shouldn't hunger after the problems that would come with your being a "beautiful people." Few, very damned few of the "beautiful people" can handle it and that generates some bizarre trips for them.

Be content with who you are, not what you are.

-Donald Cameron Scot San Francisco, California