14 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE PRIDE GUIDE 1995

Look back, and see how far we've really come

by Brynna Fish

The first time I kissed a woman, I was 15 years old and the year was 1972. You couldn't even get wheat bread in a restaurant then, but oh, what a surreal romatic time it was for us. Nancy and I were bold in our self-discovery of a life different than what was expected of us. We were dreamers, and took great care to create and maintain a safe world for our love. We took such great care that, being a year younger than I, Nancy advanced her high school studies in order to graduate in 1975, the same year as I. We went to college together. We thought we would build our own little lesbian utopia. But as college courses and life swept

by, Nancy and I grew to have different strategies about how to maintain our utopia, and we went our separate ways.

There, in the late '70s, my destiny was laid out for me, little did I know. As I look back, I wonder how differently many significant life events might unfurl if they were to happen today in the mid '90s. Let's try a few.

It's Thanksgiving 1975. My family is coming home to Youngstown from various cities around the northeastern U.S. My stepmother nonchalantly asks if Nancy wants to join us for a Thanksgiving dinner because Cousin Bob is bringing "a friend." When "Cousin Bob's friend" walked through the door, wearing an earring in one year, I got it.

Doing it for fun and emotion

Big Mama, a fixture in Cleveland since 1965, to appear at Pride

by Charlie Dale

When I volunteered to write a Pride profile, I immediately thought of Big Mama, a legend and someone I admire immensely. If anyone would know about Pride and being gay, I thought, it would be Big Mama, who has been active in the Cleveland drag community since 1965. She is one of the scheduled performers at Cleveland Pride '95 on Saturday, June 17.

Big Mama was born James David Anthony Ronald McDowell on August 4, 1938, just outside of Pittsburgh. He is one of three boys and many "adopted

sisters." His mother had given him the tongue-in-cheek

nickname "Big

Mama" even though he only weighed four pounds and eight ounces when

CD: Can I get your opinion or some background on drag/illusion and some of the changes?

BM: Now, the new kids seem to feel they can do a song, but a lot of them lack emotion while doing it. It seems that the main concern is, "How much will I get paid?" Twiggy, Julie Jordan, Lacrecha and myself have always tried to do it for fun and emotion. It seems to be so glamorous now, with the expensive dresses and the pageant circuit. Many people make this a career now. When I started doing drag, we bought our dresses from Goodwill and

'When I started doing drag, we bought our dresses from Goodwill and a group of us would get together and remake them.'

he was born, since she still considered him to be Mama's big doll. By 1961 he started his stage presence on a dare made during Halloween, and his first Cleveland appearance was in 1965, when he moved here.

Charlie Dale: What was it like for you coming out when you did?

Big Mama: Being black and gay was very hard, because in our neighborhood you had to watch the way you talked or what you said. It really wasn't open in the Pittsburgh area, and when I first started coming to Cleveland to visit I thought everyone here was gay. Once you hit the door to a bar you could be out, but when you ran into someone you knew on the street, you usually had to act like you didn't know them. My mother would question it all the time and ask, "Aren't they one of the children?"

"Yes," I'd say, "but their parents are in denial."

CD: Do you feel there has been a difference being black and gay versus white and gay?

BM: When I first came to town, the black kids wanted to know why I hung out with the white kids and vice versa. So I had to get in the middle of the road and look straight ahead. There is enough fighting between us; what we need is unity. We have enough problems with acceptance as gay and lesbian people, and I don't understand why we have to fight each other. Things have changed as far as the race issue-it is a lot more intermingled now.

a group of us would get together and remake them.

There seems

or

to be no more working together unity. But there is a small group of us who still get together and help each other. If we stick together, we can win. CD: What about AIDS?

BM: I have lost so many friends to AIDS, so when a friend says "I need you", I am there. AIDS is a very bad disease. We need a lot of help and we need to keep fighting because we can never tell when it will be knocking at our own door. I am going to say some people are concious about it and some are not. Just be careful and know who you are with.

CD: Could I get you to talk about some of the loss, and what that has been like for you?

BM: When I lost Jasmine Baker that was the hardest thing I have ever gone through. She was my daughter and I her Mama. That's why I am known as "The Mother of Them All."

CD: Are you thinking about retirement?

BM: Every time I do, everbody says no. I thought when I had part of my leg amputed they would let me go. But this is not going to be my downfall, I seem to be an inspiration for a lot a people.

Big Mama is also the founder of Mr. Groovy Guy, Ms. Gay Black Ohio and involved in A Day To Remember, which last year raised $2,000 for the Hillard Smith Foundation and Kamana House. The event was started after drag performers Jasmine Baker and Brittany Fox died within a short time of each other, as a way to remember them and all the others we have lost. Big Mama's favorite saying is, "I live the life I love, and I love the life I live."

♡

Totally cool, I thought. Years later, I learned that my stepmother and father had fought viciously over "allowing" Cousin Bob and his friend David to come for dinner. Cousin Bob didn't know it but he was doing some important family work for me. He reinforced his role when a few years later he sent out invitations to the entire family to come to Boston for his and David's 10th anniversery. Way cool!

It's the summer of 1978. I work at a camp in the Ozark Mountains in the middle of Missouri. I meet a nice Jewish girl. We fall in love. We carefully, painstakingly nurture our blossoming romance within all camp rules and regulations; we were perfect angels. Especially considering the whole camp knew that the assistant director and the head ski instructor (a man and a woman) were sleeping together in the executive staff house-those darn

double standards! On

active in the synagogue movement, wanted to organize a campaign to save my job. I asked him not to, since I had a feeling it wasn't just budget cuts.

In 1982 I was working as a community services director for a local Jewish organization, and I was getting more involved in the gay and lesbian community. I started attending women's music festivals and concerts, slowly testing the water more and more. And, I wasn't drowning. One day my boss's daughter came lumbering into my office to ecstatically tell me she was doing research at Miami University, had just come across my senior thesis project, and loved it. By 1982 it had become so easy for me to be me at my job, and not fell threatened or oppressed; it was in the family.

I think of these life experiences often. Especially with the way our society is today. Things have changed.

the last day of camp, II started attending

was ushered into the

camp

director's office

and told "You're invited back next year but your friend isn't."

I decided not to go back either.

It's 1979 now. I'm about to graduate from college and move to Boulder, Colorado

women's music festivals and concerts, slowly testing the water more and more. And, I wasn't drowning

with my lover, Jodi. I created my own major at Western College of Miami University in Oxford combining photography and writing. For my senior thesis I created an exhibit which described, among other things, a woman's relationship with her female lover. I was so excited for my artist's reception; Jodi was flying in from Boulder, and my profs, friends, and family would be there.

My stepmother and I had talked once or twice about my "lifestyle." Basically she did the "It's okay with me but don't tell your father-it will kill him" routine. Now, we were faced with a challenge. She decided it would be best not to say anything and maybe he wouldn't notice. We made it through the exhibit's opening reception, the naked breast photos and erotic love poems. But a few weeks later, while Jodi and I were packing to move to our new home at 908 Pleasant Street, an address I will always remember, it was Jodi's father who found out we were lovers. In a phone call which changed both our lives, he told Jodi he was flying out to Boulder to bring her home for the summer to see a shrink to get "cured." End of discussion.

The night I took Jodi's call, I went to my stepmother. She was compassionate and insisted that now, I should tell my father. I did. He didn't die. He said it was hard for him but that he still loved me. We never really talked about it much after that.

The year is 1980, and I live and work in Cleveland. I have a job as the regional director of a synagogue youth group movement that takes me to six states. At a weekend convention in Louisville, Kentucky, rumors were flying about two gay kids from Cincinnati. I did my best to diffuse the situation, and think I handled it well. That same weekend I met a rabbinical student who I started dating long distance. A short time later I received a call from my supervisor, a rabbi from the New York office, asking if I was a lesbian. A what? I was shocked! Where in the world was that coming from? I thought I was going to lose my job, although the conversation with the rabbi was civil and I didn't "admit” anything. The rabbinical student and I continued to date and she moved to Cleveland to be with me. That actually helped open up the issue in my family. My father joked at Jewish holidays that as least his daughter was involved with a rabbi-so what that it was a she and not a he. But the next spring I abruptly lost my job. They gave me a month's notice and the excuse of budget cutbacks. My father,

The other night I watched a Bar-

bara Streisand concert on television, and as an introduction to her third encore, "There's a Place For Us," she talked about how boring the world would be if everyone were the same.

She went on to say that to fully enjoy life we need to celebrate and respect our culture's incredible diversity, and I quote, "young and old, white and black, gay and straight." It was the "gay and straight" that got the most applause. Imagine a comment like that on prime-time television in 1978.

The Quality Paperback Book of the Month Club has a gay and lesbian literature section in their monthly catalogue.

You can hardly pick up the New York Times without some, usually very positive, articles about gay and lesbian issues. A February 4 editorial, for instance, which described the "Barney Fag" slur by U.S. Rep. Dick Armey, was entitled, "The Man Who Talked Too Much." I'll say! And in another recent Times article, a book review had the subheading, "Heterosexuality, a historian says, wasn't discovered until the 1860s" Yes!

Although there's still plenty of violence, oppression, hate crime, and discrimination, I'm looking back just a little here and thinking we haven't done so bad. If the climate we enjoy today existed in the late 1970s and throughout the '80s, my life would be quite a different story. I'd have the PRYSM youth group as an option. My parents could go to P-FLAG. I could call the ACLU to explore possible recourses for discrimination on the job.

I think we have a lot to be proud of today, and I'm proudly anticipating the future. I imagine future grandchildren asking me, "Grandma, what was life like when you were young?" I'd tell them about 908 Pleasant Street and about my cousin Bob. And that I took their father, my son Shiah, to the March on Washington in 1987 and there were over 750,000 people there. And that I took him to Pride festivals in Cleveland where over the years we saw the community come out in growing numbers.

Imagine it. In 1994, at the sixth annual Pride event, there were about 2,500 people in Cleveland's Public Square and by the year 2000 we grew to a Pride festival of over 10,000!

What would you tell your grandchildren? Or your nieces and nephews? Tell them you were at Pride in 1995.

For more information about this year's Pride March and Festival call me at 216371-9714. ♡

Brynna Fish is coordinator of the Cleveland Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual Pride Festival.