An Out of the Closet Experience

July, 1989

GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE Page 9

More than 1000 people attended the Pride '89 street fair onJune 18, the first gay pride celebration in Cleveland in over a decade. Organizers say it will be an annual event.

Rita Del Ray introduces Dan Davis, Mr. Leather, to the crowd.

LEVELAND

Photos by Brian DeWitt

Craig Davidson, director of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, spoke about media abuses of lesbians and gays, and how to stop them.

Members of PRYSM, the Center's lesbian-gay youth group, present a skit depicting life in a world where straight people are the "abnormal" ones.

HEALING OURSELVES

by Fern Levy

June Weddings

Another June has passed. We have watched countless caravans of white cars bedecked with flowers. We have heard the blaring horns as the cars moved independently down the street. We have caught backseat glimpses of women in white lace huddled next to men in white suits looking relieved and agitated. This too, we say, is heterosexual privilege. The June Wedding with all its publicity, the blatancy of heterosexual relationships in a heterosexual world remind us once again that we do not belong, that we are not a part of that world, and it is not a part of us.

But we do not long to become a part of that world. We wish only to build two-

REVIEW

Earth Girls are Easy

by Danno P.

OK, dudes and dudettes, "Earth Girls are Easy" is supposed to be totally "camp and trashy" ("camp," that's what the press release says), so we're all supposed to do our part to make it the next "cult movie."

I mean, like, don't we just love the Divine movies oh so super much? And drop mouth-foam at the very thought of seeing "Return of the Killer Tomatoes" return again?

At the start, our heroine Valerie (Geena Davis) agrees to a complete makeover from Betty Valley Boop brunette to Betty Valley Boop blond, sending the entire staff at her friend Julie Brown's Curl Up & Dye Shoppe into such complete and I mean total ecstasy that they burst into song and dance.

There's this cute hairdresser (Steve Lundquist) who has a featured dance

way bridges. Our heart's desire is to adapt, to modify, to take what works for us and leave the rest.

The privilege of marriage and the public acknowledgment of the relationship that goes along with it are not for straights only. We have come to know this better over the last few years. We' have begun to acknowledge the sacredness of our lives and the sacredness of our relationships.

The world we live in does not love us-we must learn to love ourselves. It does not affirn: us-we must learn to affirm ourselves. It does not validate our relationships we must learn to do this ourselves.

More important, we need to acknowledge our own too-long history of selfnegation. We have not always believed we have the right to love; we have not

spot. Honey, he's got several featured spots!

They sing, "The natural look is nowhere," and what follows for 92 more minutes is about as natural as Ewell Gibbons stalking the wild 'shrooms. Preem cult stuff here, dudos.

Her makeover doesn't last, though, because her doctor-lover with no tan line but lotsa tan (Charles Rocket) tries to make it with some other chick and she catches him, and then she throws him out of his house, and then she trashes the place while she sings another song.

And like the dude said outside after the movie, "This second song's gonna be a big hit but not as big as the first one." Next day, this space ship (from "Dune" but repainted?) with two horny teen-age aliens and one captain, who looks a lot like the "Fly II" with fur (played by Jeff Goldblum), plops down into her swimming pool and takes her mind off her heavy grief over finding out her dude is such a dud.

always believed we even have the right to live.

And so, now we create rituals for ourselves in the face of nothing. We acknowledge our relationships as spiritual path; we now acknowledge life itself as spiritual path. We create our own churches, our own synagogues, our own worship, our own spiritual base in the face of nothing. As our own self-recognition grows, so does our ability to create anew our own lives. As we nurture our commitment to the possibilities of our own lives, we are able to make authentic commitment to one another.

We now do this at our conferences, at our marches and during our pride days. We now celebrate publicly our commitment to each other as family and as life partners. We do this in tens, hundreds and thousands. We call these celebra-

Everybodyand I mean everybodysays Davis looks fantastic in her bikini, and if you agree with the Duchess' comment that you can't be too thin, then she looks absolutely super. If your taste runs more to watermelons and soccer balls, wait for Angelyne, the real person of dubious origin whose breasts and face and pink Corvette are billboarded around the western environs of L.A. She's in the movie, too.

They sing some more and dance some more. The dance they do by the Santa Monica pier truly looks like the same one Frankie and Annette did in "Beach Blanket" land, but now it has some heavy MTV cut-techs included. Toe-tully trashy!

Then the aliens leave and Valerie goes with them. She's really strung-out on this love trip with Captain Marvel/The Fly/Jeff Goldblum (her real-life husband) because he gives such great sex, which we see a little of in the movie.

tions commitment ceremonies or weddings or celebrations of holy union or whatever.

It does not matter what we call it or how we do it. It is only important that we do it and continue to do it. We must so love and honor ourselves that we are able to affirm, announce, and acknowledge our partnerships-on West 29th Street, in Washington, D.C., at Harkness Chapel, on the Case Western Reserve campus, at home, in the woods, in the back yard or anywhere we choose.

We celebrate partnership with commitment, knowing that the greater the risk, the greater the possibility. We now know that life without commitment is the real nothingness. We are healing our lives through commitment to ourselves and each other. So be it.▼

So she happily waves bye-bye to her doctor, who's not seeing her anyway because he's lying in the bottom of her now-dry swimming pool having multiple orgasms by himself, not singing or dancing, fully clothed, without touching himself. Like, oh, I'm so sure, but how does he do that?

Then the movie is over.

There's not much skin, but there's lotsa cool makeup (especially on fingernails). The music is wild. There's no battle of wits (nobody's armed), and there's a lot of single entendre.

The movie took a dive in L.A. and New York, and a few dozen of you left during the preview the other night in Cleveland Heights, but that's cool because all of you were old people at least 30. But that's okay.

If here's what it is, bro, it's cult city anyway. Awesome.