Boston Spirit May | Jun 2015

MAY|JUN 2015

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Let Us

INTRODUCE You...

Our annual profiles on little-knowns you should know

Ungendered Fashion Spring into style in androgynous form

Collins and Kennedy

How a friendship with a politician changed national sports

A Friend of Dorothy’s

Local boutique’s clients: Donna Summer, Val Kilmer, and Adam West

Columbus Hospitality Group

Proudly Supports

Happy Pride!

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publisher@bostonspiritmagazine.com

From The Publisher Happy Pride everyone.

I know we are a little early but that’s OK. Let’s just say we’re trendsetters.

What a great few months we’ve got ahead. There’s Boston Spirit’s LGBT Executive Networking Night on May 21—with an amazing keynote presentation including a talk from the incredible Julian Edelman of the Super Bowl Champion New England Patriots—Pride parades and festivals all over New England, and our annual Summer Sunset Cruise (on June 17 … see page 44).

So much to do!

In between all of this fun it is going to be a potentially historic month of June as the Supreme Court is set to take up cases that could legalize marriage equality across the entire country.

GLAD’s own (and Boston Spirit Top 25 LGBT Power Player) Mary Bonauto will be front and center for that battle, and we can think of NO ONE better to represent us. It is stunning to think that just 11 short years ago Mary was leading the way for marriage equality in Massachusetts, and now she is fighting for the entire country.

I also want to take a moment to those of you who were able to join Boston Spirit for our first ever Boston Red Sox happy hour at Cathedral Station in Boston’s Sound End. We had a full house

on hand and a great time was had by all. The same is true for our Designers event at Dover Rug. As long as you promise to keep attending our events we promise to keep coming up with new and exciting ideas.

That said, if you have never been to our Summer Sunset Cruise (to benefit Fenway Health) we hope you will give it a try. It is one of the best nights of the year. We’ve got incredible food from Summer Shack restaurants, great music from DJ Mocha, about 700 friends on board, and the best views of the sunset behind Boston’s skyline. And all of this for only $35! We hope to see you there.

Finally, I want to apologize to my friends at The Rainbow Times for an editorial error in Boston Spirit’s January/February issue.

In that issue (with our Top 25 Power Players) we mentioned that Bay Windows was the only surviving LGBT newspaper in New England. That is simply not true and it is an error we should have spotted prior to publication. The Rainbow Times, also based in New England, is both surviving and doing great work for the community. To Nicole and Gricel, and everyone at The Rainbow Times, my apologies.

Happy Pride,

David Zimmerman Publisher

Boston Spirit Magazine supporters 5 Star Travel Services Boston Symphony Orchestra Broadway in Boston Burns & Levinson, LLP Carpe Diem Circle Furniture Club Café Cranwell Resort Destination Salem DJ Mocha Dover Rug Eastern Bank Fenway Health Gardner Mattress Harbor Hotel Provincetown Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare

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OUR MISSION IS CLEAR WE INVITE YOU TO JOIN OUR QUEST TO MAKE THE WORLD A M O R E CO M F O RTA B L E P L AC E : F O R E V E RYO N E .

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Contribute your opinion: editor@bostonspiritmagazine.com

As We Go To Press …

Pride Quiz: What do the following have in common?

a DJ, promoter and nightclub impresario; an out GOP politician and the youngest person elected mayor of Attleboro, Massachusetts; the Bisexual Resource Center activist and founder; a director of marketing services for PayPal, aka “the Ellen of PayPal”; New England’s premier photojournalist for the LGBT community; a straight regional director for the Mainers United for Marriage, campaign manager for Hoosiers Unite for Marriage, and now program manager for Greater Boston PFLAG; French-native MIT doctorate-holding human systems engineer and president of Boston Pride; a couple of upscale boutique hotel owners; a Lama from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, currently a teacher at Natural Dharma Fellowship and former program director for Kaguy DC, a CD Tibetan meditation center; founder of the AIDS Walk Boston and special events producer extraordinaire; an undefeated lesbian, Boxing Federation World Champion; a local drag entertainer gone Broadway and beyond; and a Chinese-American Harvard Law grad and new executive director of GLAD.

They all have strong New England affiliations.

They are all people you should know.

And, most importantly, they are all in this year’s Let Us Introduce You feature for the Pride issue of Boston Spirit. (You’ll need to read the feature to put names to the descriptions!)

Chances are you don’t know many of these names. And that’s a good thing. There’s a time and a place for power lists—Mary Bonauto, Maura Healey, Stan Rosenberg, Steve Buckley, Rev. Irene Monroe, and more—like we featured in our January/February issue this year. It’s just as important to celebrate those who don’t occupy the spotlight. It can be easy to look up at a Mary Bonauto, arguing for civil marriage rights at the Supreme Court, and say to ourselves, “Well, golly, I could never be as amazing as she is, so I won’t even bother trying.”

It’s equally important to find those who, while still easy to stand in awe of, may provide inspiration that may be more attainable.

The truth of is that our community contains multitudes of inspiring people whom we should all be introduced to and be inspired by. Tens of thousands of them will be attending Boston Pride and countless other Pride celebrations across the region in the next couple of months.

My hope is that the little-known people profiled in these pages will prompt each of us to introduce ourselves to at least one person we don’t know at Pride. Tell them they are a hero. Anyone marching in Pride is a hero. Being visible is what has made our rights and lives possible. Be inspired. Inspire. Celebrate.

Let us introduce you to your community!

Very pleased to meet you!

Happy Pride!

James Lopata Editor

Corrections

In the March/April 2015 issue story about Fenway Health’s Jerry Feuer, the headline and photo captions mistakenly identified him as Dr. Jerry Feuer. Mr. Feuer is a physician assistant and not a doctor. Our apologies for the error.

In the January/February 2015 issue of Boston Spirit, Bay Windows was mentioned as “the largest and only surviving LGBT newspaper in New England, today.” That is not true. The Rainbow Times is also a newspaper that serves New England’s LGBT community and claims to be the largest.

Unfortunately we are not able to verify either newspaper’s claims of being the largest. We are certain that together, they serve a whole lot of LGBT readers throughout New England and beyond.

4 | BOSTON SPIRIT

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Hit List

Contents

A Friend Of Dorothy’s

Theatrical performers in need of props. College students seeking Halloween costumes. Strippers on the hunt for killer heels. Drag queens searching for a fabulous ensemble.

On the Cusp of Liberation

MAY|JUN 2015 | VOLUME 11 | ISSUE 3

20

A Friend Of Dorothy’s

Voices from the 1960s

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40

Scene Let Us Introduce You

Spotlight Hit List Follow The Leaders Celebrating the American Bard Through Song Community Cliffnotes From the Blogs Ungendered Species

8 10 12 14 16 20

Feature Proud Pals

Jason Collins and Joseph Kennedy share their rare bond with Greater Boston PFLAG—and the world

45

Let Us Introduce You

28

45

Culture Visionary Jester

74

Bringing Bechdel to Broadway

77

Lights, Camera ... PIFF!

79

Multimedia artist, activist, and Swim for Life founder Jay Critchley gets major retrospective Fun Home delivers the first out lesbian in a mainstream musical

One of the best regional film festivals, the PIFF, is ready for its second act

View from the Hill Song and Dance Man

Performance artist Taylor Mac returns to Boston as one-half of a vaudeville act

77

Bringing Bechdel to Broadway

Ungendered Species

Scene The Men’s Event Theater Offensive Point Foundation’s Boston Cornerstone Event GLBTQ DVP Winter Plunge BGBL Awards Banquet Boston Spirit Red Sox Event Designers of Boston

84 85 86 87 87 88 89

Calendar New England Events

90

Coda Wanda! Psych!

Fave funny woman comes to Boston

80 82

96

Wanda Sykes

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Dana Hoare-Travaglini, Patient Financial Services

WE EMPOWER THE WHOLE PERSON. WHETHER IT’S OUR PATIENTS OR STAFF. Everyday Dana helps counsel families facing decisions they never could have imagined.

He does this with kindness and skill providing a calm voice to guide them through.

That same distinctive bass voice is what Dana shares with audiences as part of the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus. Often he gets to bring his musical talents to work whether it’s singing holiday standards at a hospital event or “Bear Necessities” for a group of children recovering in the Spaulding Pediatric Unit.

At Spaulding and Partners HealthCare at Home we encourage our staff to share all of their diverse talents. Because we know inclusion is so much more than a catch phrase.

It’s what makes us all thrive together.

Learn more about empowering careers at: spauldingrehab.org or partnersathome.org

MAY|JUN 2015 | 7

SPOTLIGHT Trending STORY Scott Kearnan

Hit List NEWS, NOTES AND TO-DOS

TAKE A BITE OUT OF INTOLERANCE by

From “Provincetown Drawings,”

by Dermot Meagher

PENCIL IN SOME TIME to pick

up a copy of “Provincetown Drawings,” a just-released art book by Dermot Meagher.

The former judge (the first openly gay person appointed to the bench in Massachusetts) has become a prolific author and artist in retirement. He’s represented by P-Town’s The Schoolhouse Gallery, where you can find his latest tome, a collection of breezy yet evocative depictions of Cape Cod’s picturesque gay enclave rendered in everything from ink to charcoal to tea.

Also available at: Calamus Bookstore in Boston, Provincetown Bookshop, and Provincetown Art Association and Museum.

supporting #BLgTUSA, billed as “The First 50 State Food Tour For Equality.”

Launched by friends Taryn Miller-Stevens and Peter Stolarski, #BLgTUSA is a cross-country campaign to raise support for LGBT equality using a food truck that dispenses delicious BLT sandwiches. (Yes, seriously.)

The truck will visit every state over four months, partnering at each stop with a local chef and donating proceeds to a nearby LGBT community center. Best of all, it’ll educate about LGBT issues and inequalities in a hilarious, headline-grabbing way. The #BLgTUSA tour launches in Provincetown on May 23. Additional New England dates: Burlington, VT on May 25; Portsmouth, NH on May 27; Portland, ME on May 28; New Haven, CT on June 1; Avon, CT on June 2; Providence, RI on June 4; and Boston, MA on June 6. For details and more info: blgt.us

TIP YOUR HAT to Brims4U, a

Boston-based, gay-founded sports apparel startup that just struck a major deal to create a more inclusive playing field. The company recently received approval from ‘47 Brands—a licensing partner of Major League Baseball—to reproduce team logos in rainbow patterns. What does that mean? You can now wear your team pride and gay pride simultaneously. Brims4U soft-launched the rainbow line with Red Sox caps at last year’s “Pride Night at Fenway.”

In time for spring training, the series expanded to 12 teams, including the San Francisco Giants, New York Yankees, and Los Angeles Dodgers. For scoring a pro-LGBT embrace from the MLB, we declare: Homerun! Shop at: 47brand. com and mlb.com

Michael Downing

VISIT “THE CHAPEL,” the latest book from gay Cambridge author Michael Downing, who teaches creative writing at Tufts University. One of Downing’s earlier novels,

PUBLISHER David Zimmerman EDITOR IN CHIEF James A. Lopata MANAGING EDITOR Robert Phelps [rob@bostonspiritmagazine.com] ART DIRECTOR Dean Burchell CONTRIBUTING LIFESTYLE EDITOR Scott Kearnan [lifestyle@bostonspiritmagazine.com] CONTRIBUTING ARTS EDITOR Loren King CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Sam Baltrusis, Tony Giampetruzzi, Mark Krone CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Joel Benjamin, Marilyn Humphries COVER IMAGE Joel Benjmain ON THE WEB [bostonspiritmagazine.com] TALK TO US [feedback@bostonspiritmagazine.com] EDITORIAL CONTACT [editor@bostonspiritmagazine.com] PUBLISHING AND SALES CONTACT [publisher@bostonspiritmagazine.com or 781-223-8538] THE FINE PRINT

MAR|APR 2015 | VOLUME 11 | ISSUE 2

Boston Spirit magazine. A Division of Jake Publishing, LLC Published by Jake Publishing, LLC. Copyright 2004 by Jake Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this periodical may be reproduced without the written permission of Boston Spirit magazine. Neither the publishers nor the advertisers will be held responsible for any errors found in the magazine. The publishers accept no liability for the accuracy of statements made by advertisers.

Publication of the name or photograph of any person, organization or business in this magazine does not reflect upon one’s sexual orientation in any way.

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8 | BOSTON SPIRIT

FOR EVERY GAY AGENDA “Breakfast with Scot,” about a gay couple who suddenly become dads, was adapted into a 2007 movie. We’ll see if a similar cinematic fate is in store for “The Chapel,” which follows a recent widow on an art tour of Italy. She discovers a historic painting of a teardrop—and becomes immersed in a mystery that yields a poignant, funny, and aching exploration of love and grief. More: michaeldowningbooks.com

to Fenway Health.) Since launching last year, St. Laurent has sent his shirts down runways at Boston Fashion Week—but keep an eye on ABC, because he’s set to appear with his collection on the next Tiffani Faison

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season of the hit show “Shark Tank.” To shop: ssltee.com

ROAR WITH DELIGHT when out “Top Chef” star Tiffani Faison opens Tiger Mama, her new restaurant near Fenway Park. It’s slated to debut in July at 1363 Boylston Street in Boston, just a few doors down from her existing barbecue restaurant Sweet Cheeks Q. Tiger Mama will be a sexier type of spot serving Southeast Asian cuisines (think Thai, Vietnamese, and more), in honor of the first vacation she took with now-wife Kelly Walsh. Also on the agenda: two bars, including a tiki bar.

Cheers to that! On Twitter: @TiffaniFaison [x]

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SPOTLIGHT Social Media STORY Scott Kearnan

Follow The Leaders Given this year’s Pride theme, #WickedProud, we thought we’d take a moment to note some local social media stars that Bostonians will want to follow to stay in the know on everything from politics to pop culture.

(Plus, some of them are just really damn funny.) Fire up your smartphone, because here are a few of our faves.

@katya_zamo

@JonathanRKnight Why: Particularly compared to his pinup-pretty brother Jordan and swagger-fueled bandmate Donnie Wahlberg, Jonathan Knight is the New Kids on the Block member who most seems to shy from the spotlight. So his Twitter account is a fun glimpse into the world of the North Shore native and Boston boy (man?) band crooner, currently on a worldwide tour.

@TiffaniFaison Why: The three-time “Top Chef” series alum uses her culinary powers for good; you’ll often spot her serving some of her signature eats at a benefit for a local LGBT org. But you’ll also want to follow her social media to stay up to date on Tiger Mama, a new Southeast Asianinspired restaurant slated to open soon near Fenway, just a few doors away from her existing barbecue spot Sweet Cheeks Q.

Why: It remains to be seen how far the Boston-based queen (aka Brian McCook) will advance on the current season of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” But there’s no doubt that she’s been a cast standout, and her social media reminds us why. It’s a constant feed of hilarious, irreverent non sequitur, weird memes, and links to her weekly YouTube videos that feature some of the most colorful drag comedy happening right now. If you can’t make it to Jacques, this will do.

@samisblond

@BostonMo Why: Sam Donovan, a selfdescribed “mo on the go” flits between social events—restaurant openings, fundraisers, and the like—at breakneck pace, dropping witty bon mots along the way. If you want to stay updated on the city’s hottest spots to eat, exercise, and cap a day of shopping for preppy duds with a strong nightcap, this mo knows.

10 | BOSTON SPIRIT

Why: The 20-something Newton native placed runner-up in the inaugural season of “Project Runway: Under the Gunn.” Now the young, talented designer—a grad of the esteemed Parsons The New School for Design—is on his own and werqing the runways, creating fabulous fashions that will have us watching him well after any TV cameras stop rolling.

@sue_oconnell1 Why: The editor of longstanding LGBT newspaper Bay Windows is a one-woman source of all the news you need to know, punched up with a certain amount of straight-shooting (no pun intended) commentary that is always bound to be a conversation starter. We’ve also caught her on the small screen, hosting episodes of “Broadside” on NECN. With all due respect to Rachel Maddow, we’re satisfied with a certain other pundit in our midst.

@GayJim108 Why: If it’s breaking music or pop culture news you seek, tune in to the Twitter account of KISS 108 music producer and honorary “Matty in the Morning” cohost Jim Clerkin. Not only will you know exactly when the new [insert favorite diva here] single drops, but he tends to fill his feed with, well, some very tasty eye candy that always hits the sweet spot. [x]

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SPOTLIGHT Opera STORY Scott Kearnan

Celebrating the American Bard Through Song OPERA COMPOSER INSPIRED

BY WHITMAN’S CIVIL WARTIME SERVICE Matt Aucoin is consumed with a mid-life crisis. And he’s only 25 years old.

Don’t worry, though. The crisis is not his own. Aucoin is a conductor, composer, and pianist. An acclaimed one, in fact: a wunderkind that the Wall Street Journal dubbed “the next Leonard Bernstein.”

(That’s just scratching the surface of accolades.) And in May, the gay Harvard ’12 grad, now based mainly in NYC, returns to the Hub for the world premiere of Crossing, his new opera inspired by the Civil War-era journals of Walt

Whitman. Among the inquiries of Crossing: What kind of personal reckoning would inspire the famed American poet to drop everything and become a war nurse, tending to young, muscled soldiers shedding their sweat on battlefields far from home?

Ahem. Maybe the motives aren’t quite so mysterious.

“If you read between the lines, it kind of looks like he had a mid-life crisis,” says Aucoin of Whitman’s decision to step away from his writing for several years to become a volunteer nurse for Union

Matt Aucoin soldiers. That decision is the thrust of the opera, which uses Whitman’s diary entries as an entry point to focus on his affectionate relationship with a patient named John, a Confederate soldier in Union garb.

Whitman, whose now-revered poetry collection Leaves of Grass courted controversy in his lifetime for its overtly sensual allegory, is widely considered to have been gay or

bisexual by modern biographers. And Aucoin doesn’t shy from the subtext inherent in Whitman’s life and work.

“It [Whitman’s sexuality] figures into the opera in a very deep way,” says Aucoin.

“His behavior seems totally selfless: just tending people’s wounds with no pay. But he was also a middle-aged gay man surrounded by thousands of 18-year olds in the hospital,

P E A B O DY ESSEX MUSEUM

Storyteller

American Epics

THROUGH JUNE 21, 2015

JUNE 6–SEPTEMBER 7, 2015

The Photographs of Duane Michals Duane Michals, Sal Mineo (detail), about 1970. The Henry L. Hillman Fund. Courtesy of Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, organized Storyteller: The Photographs of Duane Michals. The Henry L. Hillman Fund provided major funding. The East India Marine Associates of the Peabody Essex Museum provided support.

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Thomas Hart Benton and Hollywood Thomas Hart Benton, Self-Portrait with Rita (detail), about 1924. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Jack H. Mooney. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution/Art Resource, NY. Art © T.H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. The Peabody Essex Museum organized American Epics: Thomas Hart Benton and Hollywood in collaboration with the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. The exhibition was made possible in part

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many of them fairly helpless.

And if you read his diaries, he’s kissing people on every page.”

“It’s an opera about Whitman’s identity crisis,” continues Aucoin. “And I think that precisely because those terms [gay and bisexual] didn’t exist at the time, he had to create an identity for himself. His poetic persona lives out a form of universal love that ignores conventional sexual relationships and is more about universal brotherhood—which has an erotic aspect for him. I think there’s an implied question: Is this enough for his life?

He has a crisis about it.”

“There’s something very touching and a little bit sad about that.”

Aucoin had no such struggles with self-identification—just the “least dramatic comingout story ever.” The Medfield, Mass. native was out and dating in high school, fully

supported by friends and family—including his father, Boston Globe theater critic Don Aucoin. By then the teen was already well on his way to an arts career. After all, he was taking piano lessons by age 6, writing arias when other kids were scribbling in coloring books, and immersing himself in jazz and classical music (though he also played in a high school rock band). During his Harvard years, when he wasn’t nabbing literary prizes for his poetry, he wrote two operas: including Hart Crane, a tragedy about the gay poet. It impressed Diane Paulus, the Tony-winning artistic director of Cambridge’s American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.), who later commissioned Aucoin to write a Civil War opera. Crossing was born. (Paulus herself directs the A.R.T. production, which opens in May.)

Being gay hasn’t been a problem. But there have been preconceptions related to his age, admits Aucoin, particularly in his conducting work.

“When you meet an orchestra where the median age is 50, you’re facing a group of people who have assumptions about how much you know,” he says.

But his approach—all business, no showboating—has converted any skeptics. Aucoin has conducted orchestras around the world: in particular, he is the youngest assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera and currently holds an apprenticeship with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He is the first composer-in-residence at the Peabody-Essex Museum, and his works have been commissioned by leading organizations like the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

He may be a prodigy— but he’s not precious. Aucoin

hopes that he can contribute to a larger movement that makes classical work more accessible to his generation. Some of his favorite shows are the kind he catches in Brooklyn: say, pop-up operas in art galleries, where craft beer-tippling young patrons offer the energy “of a rock audience.” Culture doesn’t have to be high or low, says Aucoin—just good or bad.

“I don’t think of any pleasure as a guilty one,” he responds when asked to choose a cheesy joy. “I mean, I think Shakira’s ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ is a fucking masterpiece. Maybe one day I’ll write the orchestral arrangement of it.”

Two tickets, please. [x] Crossing

American Repertory Theater May 29–June 6 Citi Shubert Theatre, Boston americanrepertorytheater.org

SPOTLIGHT Community STORY Scott Kearnan

Community Cliffnotes GAYLA

Come as you are, or as you want to be.

That’s the spirit of GAYLA, an annual summer conference of gay men at Maine’s Ferry Beach. “Conference,” though, is a term best applied loosely. What you won’t find: PowerPoint presentations, briefcases, and a persnickety HR department. What you may find: sharing circles, hatboxes (for drag wigs!), and an environment that fosters spiritual and sexual growth.

Intrigued? This year’s 34th GAYLA will happen July 11-18. Sign up at gaylagroup. org, or read on if you require just a bit more convincing.

WHAT IS GAYLA? GAYLA was founded in 1979 at Ferry Beach Conference Center in Saco, Maine as a gay men’s retreat that combines the convenience of an all-inclusive vacation and the charm of a grown-up summer camp with the spirit of gay brotherhood and bonding. It owes to its creation in part, says coordinator Tim Fitzgerald, to the free-spirited sensibility of the ’70s, where it functioned as reprieve from the more hypersexual social outlets available to gay men. “It was a place,” says Fitzgerald, “that invited discussion about authenticity and mindfulness.”

It’s also a lot of fun. Each year about 100 men—old friends and new faces, from every corner of the world—return for the experience: for sunning on the beach and spiking volleyballs, learning new skills in workshops or strutting their stuff in a talent show, noshing at potluck dinners or mingling at tea dance (an old tradition that returns this year, says Fitzgerald).

14 | BOSTON SPIRIT

But what most separates GAYLA from other men’s getaways is its general sensibility that focuses on gay “brotherhood,” and cultivates a community of men who share and care about each other’s life experiences in real, meaningful ways. Shared sexuality becomes a medium to foster spiritual bonds.

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT? “It’s an amazing thing to be in small groups with people who share from the heart—not through the apps on their phone,” says Fitzgerald. The Boston resident started attending GAYLA several years ago. His life was going through some changes, and he was becoming more involved with gay men’s groups—like Living Soulfully—that emphasize “mindfulness.” “I was trying to get involved in things behind the gay bars and clubbing,” says Fitzgerald, echoing plenty of men who tire of the scene for any number of reasons: growing older, becoming wiser, or maybe getting sober. (And in fact, GAYLA is an organization that attracts, embraces, and accommodates those in the recovery community.)

GAYLA also offers a spiritual component that can be very important to gay men who have felt alienated by the dogma of traditional religions, or are still actively working to heal the emotional wounds that accompany coming-out, family trauma, or the quiet pain of marginalization. In fact, each morning begins with a Sunrise Circle, where participants can—if they feel so inclined, of course—practice Easterninspired slow movements to align themselves for the day. A daily chapel is available.

(Ferry Beach is Unitarian Universalist

Spotlighting New England LGBT organizations and the work they do.

Helping you to discover some new neighbors—and fresh facts—about our diverse community.

affiliated, but men come from all faiths—and many from none at all.) There are also daily workshops that focus on any number of activities—from art to sport to massage— but are all anchored in a sense of sharing.

“I’ve had some of the most cathartic personal moments on those porches,” says Fitzgerald. He’s had some of his most liberating too. Come talent show time, you may have a hard time spotting him—but his tall, leggy “alter ego,” Chiclet? She might be dragging herself about for the fun of it.

WHAT DOES IT DO? Although GAYLA workshops vary every day, there are certain traditions that have been in place from the earliest years. Some are simple, like the talent show, bonfire, volleyball tournament, and lobster fest. Others are particularly poignant, like the Remembrance Service, held since 1987, when the names of GAYLA brothers who have passed from the AIDS epidemic are read aloud by the seaside. And still others are sensual.

GAYLA is also a sex-positive environment that hosts workshops surrounding intimacy and touch, has a clothing-optional dorm, and a small theater and intimacy room for erotic exploration. But the person you’ll become closest to, promises GAYLA, is yourself.

JUST THE FACTS, MA’AM: The 34th annual GAYLA will be held from July 11-18. To learn more and sign up, visit gaylagroup.org. [x]

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From the Blogs

Here’s a quick roundup of some of the pieces from BostonSpiritMagazine.com’s blog. Check there regularly for new stories!

Pride and a tireless ally of the LGBT community, ensuring that our city was both a safe and inclusive place to live and work.

Boston Pride will always be grateful for his friendship and proven leadership.”

The late Boston Mayor, Thomas Menino

MENINO NAMED HONORARY MARSHAL FOR 2015 BOSTON PRIDE Boston’s late Mayor Thomas M. Menino has been named honorary marshall for the city’s 45th annual Boston Pride Parade, which will be held on Saturday, June 13.

In a March 26 press release, Boston Pride’s President Sylvain Bruni said, “Mayor Menino was a longtime friend of Boston

Boston Pride also announced the lineup of its 2015 grand marshalls—Erica Kay-Webster of Marstons Mills, Mass., the celebrated transgender human rights advocate and veteran of the 1960 Stonewall Rebellion; David V. Bermudez of Cape Cod, the first Stonewall Rebellion veteran to be legally married in a same-sex marriage; and Samuel Brinton of Washington, D.C., A recent MIT graduate who has given talks to Google and the United Nations as part of the #BornPerfect campaign.

The parade marshalls were also announced—Ellyn Ruthstrom, of Melrose, Mass., a writer, editor, and spokesperson for the Bisexual Resource Center, and Woody Glenn of Somerville, Mass., whose leadership helped establish the Boston Bisexual Men’s Network and made Boston one of the

most supportive and vibrant bisexual cities in the country.

GOPS LINE UP TO SUPPORT GAY MARRIAGE AT THE SUPREME COURT Several top-ranking Massachusetts Republicans came out in favor of gay marriage.

Governor Charlie Baker and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, along with former Governors William Weld and Jane Swift are among a host of prominent New England GOP names who added their names to a letter to the U.S. Supreme Court in support of the potentially landmark case that could make marriage equality the law of the land.

Spearheaded by Ken Mehlman, former chairman of the Republican National Committee and campaign manager for President George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election, who came out himself as a gay man in 2010, the letter was also signed by more than 300 fellow high-profile GOP leaders. And not

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Senate President Stanley Rosenberg without some pushback from their party.

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LT. GOV. POLITO TO OFFICIATE AT MASS. SENATE PRESIDENT ROSENBERG’S WEDDING Mass. Lt. Governor Karyn Polito has accepted an invitation to officiate the wedding of Senate President Stanley Rosenberg to his longtime partner Bryon Hefner. According to a March 31 Boston Globe article, “a decade ago [Polito] was one of the leading Republican lawmakers seeking to ban gay marriage.

Although she’d avowed to support civil unions, the Globe went on to say, “Polito’s role in the ceremony marks a further

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statement by her that she has cut her ties to the socially conservative wing of the Republican Party, a base she used to win elections as a state representative from her Shrewsbury-area district and for her campaign for state treasurer in 2010.”

The wedding date has yet to be set.

Department of Justice, and, like Bonauto, has provided pro bono representation in many other LGBT rights cases.

TWO BOSTON-BASED ATTORNEYS—BONAUTO AND HALLWARD-DRIEMEIER— TO ARGUE MARRIAGE AT US SUPREME COURT

Boston Pride, which commemorates its 45th anniversary as an organization celebrating the LGBT community in June, was accepted by the South Boston Allied War Veteran’s Council to march in the 114th annual South Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parade. The parade took place on Sunday, March 15.

Two Boston-based lawyers have been chosen to stand before the U.S. Supreme Court and defend the rights of same-sex couples to marry in every state in America.

For the landmark cases facing the Court on April 28, the plaintiff’s counsel named Mary L. Bonauto, GLAD’s civil rights project director, and Doug HallwardDriemeier, a partner in the firm Ropes and Gray, to represent their clients.

Bonauto famously argued Goodridge vs. DPH, which made Massachusetts the first state where same-sex couples could legally marry in 2004. HallwardDriemeier has argued more than 14 cases before the Court, served as assistant to the solicitor general in the U.S.

BOSTON PRIDE MARCHES IN SOUTH BOSTON ST. PATRICK’S DAY PARADE

“We are looking forward to celebrating Boston’s diversity, our veterans, and the Irish heritage of so many members of our community by marching in the St. Patrick’s Day parade,” said Sylvain Bruni, president of Boston Pride. “While we recognize there is still much work to be done to protect the rights of the LGBT community both here and around the world, and to ensure everyone’s rights to express themselves and to celebrate, we are aware of how symbolically important it is for members of our community to be proudly out among their friends and neighbors as a part of this historic parade.” [x]

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Ungendered Species

Adrian] Beatle necklace, Miriam Haskell for PATCH NYC, available at Patch NYC.

FEATURE Fashion CREATIVE DIRECTOR Ricardo Rodriguez PHOTOGRAPHY Joel Benjamin

On Amy-Beth: Harlem jeans, R13 Denim, available at Barneys; White leather boots, Rick Owens, available at Bodega; Vintage yellow belt and sleeveless zipper shirt, 3.1 Phillip Lim, stylist’s own. [FHI] Multi-patterned jersey, Bodega, and Neon animal pattern sneakers, Nike, available at Bodega; Distressed hooded jacket, R13 Denim, available at Barneys.

beaded necklace, Patch NYC, available at Patch NYC; Zippered peplum belt, Daniela Corte, available at Daniela Corte; Distressed denim shorts, Re/Done, available at Barneys; Black strap boot sneakers, Adidas, available at Bodega

[FHI] White burnt-out t-shirt, available at H&M; Pleated peplum belt, Daniela Corte, available at Daniela Corte; Dark wash jeans, available at Gustin; White python sneakers, Nike, available at Bodega. [DENNIS] Beaded fringe necklace and Double

[DENNIS] Vintage jean jacket, Levis, available at Levis; Gun brooch, Chanel; Vintage stripped pin, Daniela Corte; Vintage dragonfly brooch, Patch NYC; Vintage eagle brooch, Alexis Bittar; Wooden red tassel necklace, available at Observatory Boutique; Beaded necklace, Patch NYC, available at Patch NYC; Red hand brooch, Giorgio Armani; Multi-colored chocker, available at Nordstrom Rack; Vintage square clip-on earring, stylist’s own.

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[DENNIS] Toy soldier necklace, Knight & Hammer; Leggings, Givenchy; Rafe skirt, Daniela Corte, available at Daniela Corte; Reflective high tops, Nike Jordan, available at Bodega. [ADRIAN] Chain and tassel necklace, Patch NYC, available at Patch NYC; Floral jeans, Givenchy, available at Barneys; Black strap boot sneakers, Adidas, available at Bodega.

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[AMY-BETH] Leather pant, Helmut Lang, available at Nordstrom Rack; Multi-color sandal, Adidas Y3, available at Bodega; Vintage satin tux jacket and multi-color sequin belt, Stylist’s own. [ADRIAN] Bowler

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FEATURE Role Models STORY Scott Kearnan

Proud Pals Jason Collins and Joseph Kennedy share their rare bond with Greater Boston PFLAG—and the world Massachusetts Congressman Joseph Kennedy III is on the phone. The 34-year old U.S. Representative is a member of what is arguably America’s most famous and studied political dynasty. But today the subject at hand is Jason Collins, his former college roommate—and the man who would later become the first openly

gay player in major American sports.

Kennedy is about to spill Collins’ dirtiest secret.

“He has,” says the congressman, “terrible taste in TV.” Sorry, gossipmongers—that’s about as dirty as it gets. (Okay, one more tidbit: In college, Collins drank cranberry-grape juice “by the gallon,” says

28 | BOSTON SPIRIT

Collins and Kennedy at Boston Pride Kennedy. Scandal!) Life may have taken them in very different professional directions (whether politics or basketball is the rougher sport is up for debate), but Kennedy and Collins have remained friends ever since sharing a frat house during their undergrad days at Stanford University. And if there’s one thing that is obvious about Kennedy, whose support of LGBT rights was the catalyst for Collins’ 2013 coming-out, it’s that he knows how to stand by a friend.

“I was so proud of him, and so honored that he would share it with me first,” says Kennedy, referring to the phone call that Collins made to him

shortly before he publicly announced he was gay. A few months later, the congressman and the former Celtics player would march side by side in the annual Boston Pride parade, with the still-fresh impact of Collins’ historic coming-out reverberating throughout the sports world.

“It didn’t surprise me that he would take it upon himself to be the first,” continues Kennedy. “Not because he looks for the spotlight, but because he has a profound sense of responsibility.”

It’s a sense both men share.

For that, and for their friendship, Collins and Kennedy will be honored at Pride & Passion,

Greater Boston PFLAG’s annual benefit and gala held this year on Monday, May 11, at the Seaport World Trade Center. They will be presented with their awards by UMass Minutemen shooting guard Derrick Gordon, who has cited Collins as inspiration for his own coming out last year. By doing so, Gordon became the first openly gay men’s basketball player in Division 1.

The on-stage trio is a perfect symbol of everything Greater Boston PFLAG represents, says the chapter’s president Tom Bourdon. “It’s a great example of what our organization stands for: straight and queer people coming together to create a positive change,” says Bourdon, who praises the “humility” of Collins and Kennedy when they learned that they would be this year’s honorees.

As an organization, the largely volunteer-led PFLAG has long stressed its support groups that build bridges between LGBT people and their families. But Boston’s chapter is somewhat unique, says Bourdon, with full-time staff and a particularly robust network that allows it to incorporate other initiatives: from in-school education to policy-related advocacy. All its work, though, is ultimately about building allies.

And to Collins, Kennedy has always been the kind of guy you could count on. “He was one of those kids who was always too mature for his age,” laughs Collins of his longtime buddy. They had adjacent rooms in the fraternity, and Collins had to pass through Kennedy’s to access his own.

He remembers Kennedy as scholarly, “always at his desk or reading in bed,” and never drinking anything besides “water or milk.” (The congressman’s reputation as a teetotaler indeed began in

college—where he earned the nickname “milkman,” according to one Boston Globe report.)

At the time, Collins wasn’t out even to himself. “I was in denial. I kept telling myself I would find the right girl and she would make these feelings go away,” admits Collins.

Flash forward many years, and Collins was still closeted to the sports industry (though he had already told close friends and family, including his gay married uncle). Until, that is, the now-retired NBA star saw photos of his pal Kennedy marching in Boston Pride. The images filled Collins with emotion—and a resolve to go big or go home.

He had to go public.

“I saw these photos of him walking and I was so proud— and envious,” says Collins, who knew his uncle had marched in Pride, but found it a “different experience” to behold his friend, a straight peer. So Collins called Kennedy, came out to him on the phone, and accepted the congressman’s invitation to walk in Boston Pride together. The rest, as they say, is history.

Actually, Collins enjoyed another historic moment that weekend. The night he returned to Los Angeles from Boston, he met a friend at the nightclub The Abbey and experienced his first night at a gay bar. “None of the gay guys knew who I was. But the lesbians did,” he laughs.

Collins has come a long way since those first hesitant steps out of the closet. He has appeared on the cover of “TIME” magazine’s “Most Influential People” issue and gone on to become a widely sought after speaker and LGBT activist. But Collins says he is particularly grateful to be honored by PFLAG, an organization with a purpose he truly appreciates.

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“Greater Boston PFLAG is all about creating an environment of understanding and inclusion,” says Collins. “In coming out to certain members of my own family, the first and sometimes hardest part was just getting to that environment of understanding.” Now, says Collins, not only has he become a private sounding board for other closeted pro athletes, but his mother has also made herself available to talk to their families. “She’s made herself available as a resource,” says Collins. “And that’s why we need to have organizations like PFLAG. Sometimes parents need to talk through things together, and know that they’re not the only ones with questions.”

Indeed, it’s one thing to harbor prejudice toward the abstract concept of gay people.

It’s a lot harder when a gay person is your family member, your friend, or your roommate.

Kennedy says he is “very proud” of his family’s history as staunch allies, but adds that his politics are rooted in personal experience. “One of my dad’s closest friends is gay and I grew up with him around. We were just brought up in an accepting family,” says Kennedy. “Jason isn’t my first friend who is gay, and he won’t be my last.

“What sets apart any important friendship or relationship is getting to know someone for who they are,” says Kennedy, "not what they are.”

And not even what they watch on TV. Pride & Passion to benefit Greater Boston PFLAG will take place on Monday, May 11, at the Seaport World Trade Center. For tickets to the event, which includes a live auction and celebrity chef taste-around hosted by out “Top Chef” alum Tiffani Faison, visit gbpflag.org. [x]

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CULTURE Fashion STORY Scott Kearnan PHOTOS Joel Benjamin

A Friend Of Dorothy’s Theatrical performers in need of props.

College students seeking Halloween costumes.

Strippers on the hunt for killer heels. Drag queens searching for a fabulous ensemble.

Dorothy’s Boutique serves them all and then some. The store at 190 Massachusetts Avenue has been around for decades, and its stock of bright wigs, funky makeup, themed costumes, and ostentatious accessories have become semi-infamous. And it has a special place in the heart of the gay community, where it has outfitted plenty of folks for one-time Halloween revelry or regular drag shows. Photographer Joel Benjamin took some time to capture the store in all its colorful glory, and we took a moment to uncover some of its storied history.

Here’s To The Ladies. The story of Dorothy’s Boutique starts in 1947, when then-newlyweds Dorothy and Harold Diamond opened a series of hat shops in Boston and surrounding towns. In 1960 they opened their Dorothy’s location on Mass. Ave., in front of the Christian Scientist Mother Church; in 1972, it moved up the block to its current location at 190 Mass Ave. In those early days it was a traditional women’s clothing store focused on hats, jewelry, shoes, and other accessories.

Trying On A New Look.

In 1985, Dorothy and Harold passed the business on to their sons Richard and Jon. And in the years that followed, Dorothy’s began its slow transition into a funkier and more costume-filled direction.

“It was a response to competition,” explains Jon Diamond, now the sole owner. “A lot of chains like T.J. Maxx and Marshalls started coming in. We felt like we needed a stronger niche, so we evolved.”

Queen Sized. As Dorothy’s transitioned from a more conventional women’s store to wilder fashions and costumes, its customers evolved too. The shop’s drag following started to develop in the mid-’80s, says Diamond. At first, it was men who only did drag on Halloween, dropping by for a wig or bracelet. But over the years, “it really blossomed into a fullblown drag store in a sense,” says Diamond, who is happy that Dorothy’s has carved a niche as a friendly boutique where everyone is welcome to take a walk on the wild side.

Leading Showgirl. Most gay New Englanders are pretty

MAY|JUN 2015 | 33

“ It really blossomed into a full‑blown drag store in a sense.”

OU

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Jon Diamond

E N I SH

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familiar with Kris Knievil, one of the region’s most popular drag queens and show director at Jacques Cabaret. But out of drag, you’ll also find Christopher Fijal working as a manager at Dorothy’s.

“I probably spend more money here than I wind up taking home,” laughs Fijal.

Fijal moved to Boston in 1996, and was soon introduced to Dorothy’s by another employee, Brian McCook (aka current RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant Katya Zamolodchikova). He’s been working at store for the past four years—and it’s helped keep him stocked with fabulous

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accessories too. His favorite find? Probably the #301 false eyelashes that keep his peepers pretty.

Trend Spotting. Fijal does some of the ordering for the store, and says that the drag queens help Diamond stay on trend with what to buy.

“Sometimes you have to say, ‘Jon, this jewelry isn’t working. It’s too small and dainty for drag queens!’” laughs Fijal. On trend right now: lace front wigs, likely due to the uptick in newbie drag queens inspired by Drag Race, and masquerade masks, which have made a comeback as a popular theme for parties.

Scaring Up Business. “We kind of invented Halloween for adults in Boston,” says Diamond.

Today the holiday is a major business boon to the store, with lines sometimes stretching out the door when days draw close to October 31.

Dorothy’s also has a built-in customer base of college students, says Diamond. “Every four years, a new group comes into the city. And when they move up here, they don’t bring Halloween costumes!”

She Worked Hard For The Money. Considering Dorothy’s strong following among drag queens, it is sort of appropriate that the store is

36 | BOSTON SPIRIT

“Sometimes you have to say, ‘Jon, this jewelry isn’t working. It’s too small and dainty for drag queens!’”

Kris Knievil (Christopher Fijal) Dorothy’s Manager

THANK YOU

Thank you to all of our Table Captains and Event Team, our corporate sponsors, Dr. Susan M. Love Award recipient Dr. Judith B. Bradford, Congressman Gerry E. Studds Award recipient James M. Morgrage, and the nearly 2,400 LGBT people, friends, supporters and volunteers who attended the 2015 Women’s Dinner Party & Men’s Event for helping to make both events such a huge success! A special thanks goes out to our Event Chairs, M. Jane Powers, Lori Griffiths, Angela L. Rappoli, Justin T. Isaac, Brian Ramos, and Joblin C. Younger, Esq., whose hard work made the night possible. With your help, we raised over $1 million in cash, pledges and in-kind donations to support the life-saving services and programs at Fenway Health.

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Donna Summer held a high school job at the shop, says owner John Diamond the former stomping grounds for a legendary gay icon.

Dorchester-born disco diva Donna Summer held a high school job at the shop, says owner Jon Diamond. At the time, he says, it sold mainly wigs and church hats to the neighborhood’s predominantly African-American community.

.

Famous Faces. Summer was certainly the shop’s

38 | BOSTON SPIRIT

155498_BOSCO_SpiritMagazineArtwork2015(MayJune)_3.556x9.875_F.indd 1

4/9/15 5:30 PM

most famed employee. But other notable names have passed through its doors as customers. Musicians like the Pointer Sisters, Lalah Hathaway, actors like Val Kilmer and Adam West, and pro athletes like former New England Patriots player Junior Seau have all passed through its doors. (The athletes lured mainly by barber supplies, says Diamond.) [x]

Thursday May 21, 2014

Boston Marriott Copley Place 6:00–9:00 p.m. $10 admission fee LGBT corporate professionals from Greater Boston (and beyond) will gather at the Boston Marriott Copley Place for an unprecedented evening of networking and business conversation.

We are so excited to have Super Bowl Champion and New England Patriot Julian Edelman and his branding/ marketing team from SuperDigital joining us for a very special keynote presentation ... you do not want to miss this.

In addition to this presentation we will also have informative sessions on;

Best Practices for Starting and Operating an LGBT Employee Resource Group Beyond Equality?

The Future of the LGBT Movement Moderated by Janson Wu, Executive Director of GLAD) Let’s Get Social! Leveraging Social Media and Collaboration in the Workplace We also have many companies on hand who are hiring so if you are looking for a job (or to change jobs) bring your resume! For everyone else, bring your business cards as the networking will be in full force.

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More than 1,000 people attended this event in 2014, don’t miss out!

MAY|JUN 2015 | 39

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BostonSpiritMagazine.com

FEATURE History STORY Mark Krone

Partying at Playland, 1960s

On the Cusp of Liberation Voices from the 1960s In memory, each decade has its own gallery of pictures.

Think 1960s: long-haired protesters on Boston Common, young women dancing with flowers in their hair, and across the river, the sound of drums and the sweet scent of reefer on Sunday afternoons on Cambridge Common. These images flash like news footage that gets a little grainier with each passing year.

The fragile blend of euphoria, idealism, drugs and death, which defined the hippy period, was not very long. By the time the flower children arrived in San Francisco’s Haight–Ashbury

neighborhood in the Summer of Love, the decade was more than half over. Much of what we associate with the 1960s occurred in the following decade.

For the first three years— until November 22, 1963—the prevailing ethos was still button-down and conformist.

The disillusion that had boiled beneath mainstream notice for years was unleashed on that afternoon when President Kennedy was assassinated.

The nation mourned its president. But if the majority white, heterosexual culture had known what was coming, it might have mourned its unquestioned dominance, too.

Imagine: an entire era ended in one day and nobody knew it.

40 | BOSTON SPIRIT

For some, this new moment meant unwanted turmoil; for others, including queer people, it was a chance for liberation.

Like other members of their generation, Bill Conrad and Helaine Zimmerman took tentative steps out of the closet early on, but by the end of the decade, they had found a community. In 1969, the Stonewall Uprising was the seed that fell on a ground made fertile by people like them.

Freshly discharged from the Navy in 1961, Bill Conrad returned to a welcome-home party in Somerville thrown by his family. At 22, lean, with dark Irish looks, Conrad should have been excited about entering gay life in Boston.

But he knew no gay people in his hometown and felt lost. In

Berlin, Conrad had come out, dating “a beautiful German boy.” He had also made a lifelong friend of another gay soldier, Carl Banks, who had more experience in the gay world.

When Conrad was about to be discharged, he asked Banks how he could break into gay life when he got back home to Boston. “There were no [gay] newspapers back then. No list of gay bars. I knew nothing of gay life in Boston. Carl told me to just go downtown where the department stores were and find a gay man. I was to follow him because sooner or later, he would go to a gay bar and I would be there to see where it was.”

The morning came, and Conrad headed downtown.

Sure enough, he found his

Bill Conrad PHOTO Courtesy of Bill Conrad

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“ They’d come in and line everyone up against the wall.

The youngest cop would question us, ask for ID and call us ‘faggot’ and other names. It was scary. If you didn’t have ID, they’d arrest you and put your name in the paper. ”

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was home. A few years later, White hired Conrad and he worked at Sporters for many years. Over the next 30 years, Conrad was a fixture in the Boston bar scene working and managing at Sporters, 1270, Buddies, and Bobby’s.

In the early 1960s, Sporters was subject to police raids every couple of months.

“They’d come in and line everyone up against the wall.

The youngest cop would question us, ask for ID and call us ‘faggot’ and other names. It was scary. If you didn’t have ID,

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With amazing skyline views of downtown, man. “This queen must have hit every department store in town. I was following him in and out of stores. He was walking with all these shopping bags down Cambridge Street and entered what looked like another store, but when I got up close, it had no name.” It took Conrad a few minutes to get up the nerve to walk through the nameless door.

Once inside, he knew it was a gay bar. “It was Sporters and the bartender was Bill White,” who went on to run and own several bars in town. Conrad

The late Helaine Zimmerman [RIGHT] with her wife Thalia Verros PHOTO Courtesy David Zimmermanv

they’d arrest you and put your name in the paper.” For many men, this meant being fired from their jobs and even evicted from their homes.

Helaine Zimmerman, a social worker in the Boston area for 50 years, spoke to the History Project in 1995 about living in Boston as a lesbian in the early 1960s.

(Zimmerman was the aunt of Boston Spirit Magazine publisher, David Zimmerman. She passed away in 2013.) In 1959, Zimmerman spent a year in Greenwich Village, where she danced, made out with girls, and partied all night. But intimacy with women never went further. There was a line that she was reluctant to cross.

“I figured that if I could keep it contained, I was safe. Everybody that I knew who was out, was saying ‘if you’re straight, try to be straight.’ In those days, even some out lesbians, according to Zimmerman, saw being gay as “a terrible lifestyle. They just didn’t see any future in it at all.”

In 1960, Zimmerman moved back to Boston to get serious about her career and life. “I decided I would get back on the right track. I was on the wrong track in the Village, hanging out with women, going to the bars until five o’clock in the morning.

I got a job at Newton-Wellesley Hospital.”

42 | BOSTON SPIRIT

“ ‘I’m having a party with all the fags and the dykes …’ and we’d just dance and it was hilarious. There was a real camaraderie … there wasn’t a separation between the men and the women. I loved it. ” Elaine Zimmerman On house parties in the 1960s in a 1995 interview with the History Project

Since she didn’t know any gay people in Boston, Zimmerman figured the “lesbian stage” of her life was over. For a few months, things went as planned; Zimmerman settled in at her job and began dating some men she knew in high school.

“One night, I went to the Charles Playhouse with a friend and we were upstairs in a lounge and I saw people walking downstairs and they were gay. And I [thought] this is interesting, so I excused

myself and said I was going to the ladies room. I went downstairs and opened the door and there were all these ‘Mafia’ guys standing there. I said I just wanted to take a peek. Well, that was the Midtown. There were hundreds of gay people in there and I thought, now I am really sunk. I knew I’d go back. I went back the next night.”

The Midtown welcomed men and women. Zimmerman described the lesbian scene as “very defined, either you were a butch or a fem.” She did not really identify with either, but when she was confronted by a “butch” who asked what she was, Zimmerman said, “Well, since I have shorter hair than my friend, I guess I am butch.” According to Zimmerman, working class and poor women were more likely to classify as butch or fem than middle or upper class women. Since Helaine and her friends did not fit into either category, “the butches called us ‘the Beacon Hill crowd’ because they didn’t understand us.”

Like Sporters, police sometimes paid a visit to the Midtown. “They used to flash the lights in the bar when the police came in. You had to switch partners [on the dance floor] in one second, woman to man.

It was always touch and go about the cops coming in and raiding the place.”

By the late 1960s, the sheer number of Baby Boom queer people made them more visible on Boston’s streets and clubs.

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The exterior of Sporters PHOTO Courtesy The History Project At Sporters, the police raids stopped and it became the place to be. Recalls Conrad, “Sporters was perfectly positioned to attract the gay college crowd. MIT and Harvard were a few stops away on the Red Line. It was packed seven nights a week. It was really my home during those years …

For me 1965-’75, were the best years at Sporters.”

By 1964, Helaine Zimmerman had moved away from her family in Newton to an apartment on Beacon Street.

It was at this time that she had her first romantic relationship with a woman. It lasted five years. “I still didn’t tell most people. I never told my parents [that I was gay].” Zimmerman did not come out at work until 1987. “People don’t realize it was a very different time.”

In the mid to late 1960s, Zimmerman and her friends went to Vicki’s and Cavana’s, two lesbian bars on Tremont Street with tough reputations. “Vicki would sit on a high stool and survey the crowd for troublemakers. The customers could get out of hand in a hurry. At

the drop of a hat, they’d throw a beer bottle.”

In looking back, Zimmerman wondered what ever happened to the “butches” she met in the bars. “When Somewhere opened, I thought I’d see them.

But I never saw them in there and never saw them in the Saint.

“House parties were an important place for socializing in the 1960s, especially for lesbians. They offered fun without the scrutiny and potential danger of the bars.” Zimmerman attended parties hosted by women in Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, and Cambridge. “My friend Alice would say, ‘I’m having a party with all the fags and the dykes …’ and we’d just dance, and it was hilarious. There was a real camaraderie … there wasn’t a separation between the men and the women. I loved it.”

Zimmerman missed the uninhibited old days when people danced instead of dined and talked. “The world got more serious, don’t you think?” [x]

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SEASONAL Profiles STORY Scott Kearnan PHOTOGRAPHY Joel Benjamin

Let Us Introduce You From unsung heroes to emerging leaders of organizations we’ve come to rely on as cornerstones of our New England LGBT community—let us introduce you to a group of inspiring individuals who fill us with a stirring sense of pride. Their efforts and achievements make us want to bring out the best in ourselves and look to the future with a greater spirit of hope.

We trust they’ll do the same for you.

MAY|JUN 2015 | 45

David Bowd & Kevin O’Shea Owners, Salt Hotels

Say hello to the power couple hosting your next vacation.

David Bowd is a hotel biz veteran who held toplevel positions with groups like Andre Balazs Properties and Morgans Hotel Group, overseeing portfolios of ultra-luxe destinations like Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont and Miami’s Delano.

His husband, Kevin O’Shea, is a former lead designer for Morgans. Now they’ve built a new business together: Salt Hotels, their burgeoning collection of chic properties that bring the cosmopolitan style, sophistication, and service of upscale hotels to the intimate environs of boutique bed & breakfasts. In 2013 they opened their debut property, Provincetown’s sparkling Salt House Inn. And in May they open their second venture in Provincetown, Eben House, which transforms a historic sea captain’s estate into a highend hideaway: three buildings surrounding a sunny courtyard, with each accommodation— including airy suites with private terraces—offering contemporized spins on Colonial-era lodgings.

A third concept, The Chequit on New York’s Shelter Island, also opens this season—and additional Salt Hotels properties are slated for upstate New York and Palm Springs, California within the next year. This P-Town born, gay-friendly brand is coming out strong. Get ready to check in.

46 | BOSTON SPIRIT

Why did you decide to buy a home and launch Salt Hotels in Provincetown?

David: It’s just so beautiful. I’ll never forget being on the ferry from Boston, coming around the harbor and seeing it for the first time. It was a sunny day and everyone on the ferry was in a great mood.

When you dock, you’re filled with this sense that “anything goes.” There are very few places in the world where it really doesn’t matter who you are or what you are. There’s also a great sense of history. Being British, I find a lot of places in America very new and modern. I come from a very historic, 1600s village that has the second oldest pub in the UK. It reminds me of P-Town—apart from the weather, of course!

What differentiates Salt Hotels from other brands?

David: With bed and breakfasts, often you sacrifice the great design and comfort of a hotel for the wonderful level of personal service. The idea was to combine the two—the best of both worlds—to create something new and different.

Kevin: It’s a perfect recipe, and nobody is really doing this in the bed and breakfast sector. We also take different, wonderful old buildings and breathe new life into them in an authentic way. It’s not about just trying to do something modern in an old building. These are very thoughtful renovations that give guests a sense of place in their surroundings.

How important is LGBTfriendliness to the brand?

David: I think it’s a very important component. … A charity our brand supports and fundraises for is Camp Lightbulb, which provides summer camp for gay, lesbian, and transgender children here on the Cape. Growing up is the hardest thing to do anyway, and growing up gay or transgender can be really confusing and tough. We both have very supportive parents, but some people aren’t that fortunate.

What does it mean for a property to be gay-friendly in 2015?

Kevin: There’s a constant conversation in Provincetown about how the need for gay-specific destinations is not as great anymore now that the community is more widely accepted. How does a place like Provincetown evolve with that? Our hotels are interesting in that we’ve never gone out and said, “We’re a gay hotel company.” But the product that we’re offering tends to attract that clientele.

There’s an interesting mix here. In the morning I’ll see an older straight couple talking with a young lesbian couple. It’s about a larger sense of values and inclusiveness. That’s the way forward, I think.

It can be hard for couples to work together. How do you manage?

Kevin: Respect is a huge part of it. Respecting the fact that when we’re working together, we’re working—and we take our relationship out of it.

We’ve seen other couples who work together and don’t do so well, but I think a lot of it is that those lines get blurred.

David: I think my father summed it up well at our wedding. In his speech he said, “The magic they create together is so much more than anything they can create separately.”

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Lili Whiteass (aka Todd Lattimore) Entertainer

As a little boy in upstate New York, Todd Lattimore would don his mother’s old clothes and choreograph routines to his favorite Olivia Newton-John records.

Years later, the born performer took his drag alter ego Lili Whiteass all the way to the Great White Way. A dance prodigy at an early age, Lattimore studied at the Boston Conservatory and has landed a number of impressive, non-drag theatrical roles during the course of his career. But the most notable on his lengthy resume may be “La Cage Aux Folles.” Lili Whiteass—a character he began developing in the Boston club scene—served as a spotlight-stealing pre-show emcee for the show’s Tony Award-winning 2010 Broadway revival. She was so memorable that she was given an even stronger presence on the show’s city-hopping national tour. Today Lattimore pours even more of his talent into Lili, who hosts “All-Star Mondays” at Boston’s Machine nightclub and “RuPlay Thursdays” at EGO in Providence.

The stage star has accomplished big goal—but the next one, ironically, is to conquer the small screen.

48 | BOSTON SPIRIT

How’d you catch the bug for performing?

My mother put me in dance class when I was 4. She saw I had talent. In the late ‘70s in upstate New York, it wasn’t popular for boys to be dancing. It’s still not popular for boys to be dancing in a small town.

So I really have to give her credit. She’s a Miss West Virginia; she went to Miss America. She’s 64 years old and still super gorgeous.

What were some of your earliest inspirations?

I’ve always loved fashion. I was the kid who went to school in bright yellow, head to toe: from the sneakers to the hat I made. Bitch, you were asking to be called a faggot with what I wore! [Laughs] I knew what labels where when I was a kid.

I’d go to NYC for dance competitions and say to my mom, “We’re going to Saks. We’re going to Bloomingdales.

We’re finding the little boy labels.

I need some different shit. I can’t be wearing JC Penney and Sears!”

Fashion was a big thing in the ‘90s. I worshiped all the supermodels—and RuPaul. When I was in high school, it was amazing to see RuPaul with a huge show on MTV. I loved the Solid Gold dancers, the Muppets, anything that was a kind of variety show.

How was Lili Whiteass born?

The whole drag world has changed from when I started doing it in 1995. There were all these buildings on Lansdowne Street, and it was all about getting famous people in the clubs. My friend [nightlife guru] John DellaRocco realized we didn’t have famous people, so he decided to create famous people: all these big personalities. Pre-“Drag Race”, I was a door girl at Avalon. On Friday night we were turning away people because we were at capacity. We had an unlimited budget. Every weekend the entire club had a different theme. It was crazy.

How did Lili’s stint with “Le Cage” come about?

I created this whole pre-show where I’d walk through the audience and mingle, talking. I realized everyone in the audience would shut up—they wanted to hear what I was saying. I was like “Oh my god, I have their attention.” So I’d sit on the stairs down at the front of the house and did this whole show to warm up the crowd. … By the time we were on tour, I realized my value to the show. So I said, I want my own wigs, a spotlight, and a microphone. That’s what happened.

Originally I sat on the stairs, but one night in Palm Beach I stood up on the stage.

I never sat down again.

What does your mom think of your drag?

She’s hysterical. She wants me to do shows. She doesn’t really want me to drag—she just wants me to perform because she knows I should be performing. She said to me the other night, “I liked your picture on Facebook. Most of the others I don’t like.

They’re all the same, just you dressed up as a woman.” What a bitch! That’s my mother. She’s a critic.

What’s your dream gig right now?

“RuPaul’s Drag Race,” because that’s the steppingstone to do all the things I want to do. When I went on tour across the country, I met thousands of people. But when you’re on TV, that’s millions of people. It gives you the opportunity and platform to do other things. I love and respect all drag queens. Anyone who does it is amazing because it’s so much work and dedication. It’s so tough, it takes so much time and money—you have to have a passion for it.

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Brent Covington DJ and promoter

Reports of the death of the gay club have been greatly exaggerated.

Sure, there are fewer venues catering to LGBT crowds nowadays. (Sigh. The price of progress.) Boston’s scene has splintered—but if you know where to look, plenty of niche nights are thriving, eschewing the homogenized landscape of ’90s circuit parties in favor of more distinctive, targeted sounds and styles. And Brent Covington hits the bull’s-eye. Since 2010 he’s pumped up crowds at Fur & Gold, a monthly (second Fridays) party that gained bear bar The Alley cool cred with a new crowd of young, scruffy hipster dudes. (In March, following Fur & Gold founder Sean Johnson’s departure, Covington and fellow DJ Taffy renamed the night Fuzz.) Covington also created Boyfriends at the Milky Way in Jamaica Plain, a thirdFridays fete that draws a diverse alt-gay scene, and he spins plenty of other parties—like The Theater Offensive’s ribald annual blowout, climACTS! With sets that cull from pop and underground, nostalgiatinted classics and cutting-edge sounds, Covington breathes new life into the nightlife.

50 | BOSTON SPIRIT

Do you remember your first gay club experience?

It was the night I turned 21.

I went at midnight to this gay club called Discovery in Little Rock, Arkansas. I was in college and had a really bad cold, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me!

The first song I heard when I got there was “Pride (A Deeper Love).” I remember that song was huge!

How has gay nightlife most changed over the years?

Gay people used to have to meet other gay people in the clubs. They don’t anymore, especially in a city like Boston where we’re so integrated into the community. So there’s not that same unifying aspect to gay clubs. The smaller ones died off, and I think things became more specialized. You have more special interest nights that play certain music or cater to a certain crowds. There was a time when I got really bored with a lot of the club scene. It was too generic—trying to appeal to too many people.

One of the first special interest nights that I knew of was Gross Anatomy, this indie queer night in JP. It was such a fun group of people, very diverse, with music that was all over the map. It inspired me to start going out again.

How did Fur & Gold become so big?

And why rename it now?

Sean [Johnson, its founder] is a photographer, so there was a big visual component to Fur & Gold. Each month we’d interview and feature a different model from the community on the website. That helped set it apart. I don’t think we set out to create this enclave for younger bearded guys, but that’s what happened. It grew and grew and became the one place you could always find this crowd. Sean moved to Portland, Oregon, and we felt part of Fur & Gold moved with him. We’ve continued doing everything the same, but a name change seemed right.

It seems like that bearded scene is hot right now. Once upon a time, many younger guys wouldn’t want to be associated with a bear bar.

It’s so true. When Fur & Gold started it was very much a fringe thing. We brought in our regulars, importing our own crowd. I’d tell people where I DJ and most gay guys would cringe at the thought of going there and being around older, big bear men. They didn’t feel connected to it. In the meantime the whole male culture has become more about facial hair.

It has more broad appeal, less of a fringe aesthetic. Now the night is almost too crowded at times! It’s an embarrassment of riches.

Musically, what artist do you really love right now?

And what artist never goes out of style?

I love Le Youth. He samples a lot of ‘90s R&B, and I love playing him. As for those that never go out of style: probably Robyn or Madonna. Madonna is really important to me. She was one of the first artists who showed up and interacted with gay people and presented them as they were. It wasn’t packaged. It wasn’t “look at the gays!” It was just acceptance. She was part of the community.

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Do you think that, as gay culture becomes mainstream, younger crowds are seeking scenes that feel a bit more unique to the community, or reclaim an outsider status?

I’m curious about that myself.

Do they kind of long for that experience? I wonder if that’s why some of these smaller nights are really strong: we can go out and do our own thing, integrate into the larger culture, but we also want to go and have this curated experience: different nights with different flavors.

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PRIDE & PROGRESS In honor of Gay Pride Month and Boston Spirit’s 10th anniversary, we decided to highlight some of the changes that have taken place over the years that have affected members of the LGBT community in a Q&A with members of our LGBT practice.

BURNS & LEVINSON’S LGBT GROUP

Massachusetts has been the most progressive state in regards to same-sex marriage. How were you affected by Goodridge v. Dept. Public Health, the Nov. 18, 2003 landmark decision that gave samesex couples in Massachusetts the right to marry?

LAURA STUDEN: Beyond the affirmation that so many felt, including mere acquaintances who were aware of my own

One decade after Massachusetts forged the path in Goodridge, the Supreme Court found Article 3 of DOMA unconstitutional and overturned California’s Proposition 8. Today, 38 states have lifted the prohibition on marriage. Do your foresee a day when all 50 states will recognize same-sex marriage and eradicate state sanctioned prohibitions on the right to marry on the basis of sexual orientation?

decades long relationship (now married), it made me realize how important it is to pick the right state to call your home! It

LISA CUKIER: I do believe that all states will come to recognize

will matter which state you live in for many decades to come,

same-sex marriage and that all states will eventually issue

and the choice is not just tolerance and acceptance of same-

marriage licenses to same-sex couples. I believe a time will

sex marriage but tolerance along a spectrum of other “civil”

come when we will no longer use distinguishing words like

rights reflected in the culture of the population. There are

“same-sex marriage” because marriage will mean marriage no

some states where I would not elect to live. Future work and

matter the sexual orientation of the spouses. As Mary Bonauto

residence choices by members of the LGBT community are

argued to the SJC in November 2003, “Creating a separate

likely to include consideration of geography and state culture

system just for gay people simply perpetuates the stigma of

more than ever before.

exclusion that we now face because it would essentially be branding gay people and our relationships as unworthy of this civil institution of marriage.” In the past 10 years I think most

Ellen, you were directly involved in the fight for marriage equality in Massachusetts. Can you share some thoughts about that campaign for equality here?

ELLEN ZUCKER: It took us 17 years to get legislative approval

people have realized that “nothing has been taken away from them, nothing has been taken away from their marriages.”

Through the extension of the marital right to all couples, families whether gay or straight “have been strengthened and that’s good for the community as a whole.”

to add “sexual orientation” to the state’s non-discrimination laws. When advocates began talking about marriage equality, support was hard to find. The idea was unsettling, even to some of our allies in other fights for equality. And then, an almost magical mix came together: brilliant legal advocacy, passionate

grassroots

organizing

and

clever

lobbying

combined with the simple courage of individuals who told their own stories and the stories of their children, their parents, their loved ones. Hearts and minds changed. The legal landscape opened up and painted a picture of samesex marriage that was respectful, poignant and powerful.

Now, as we hope and anticipate that this may be the year when marriage equality becomes the law of the land, I am overwhelmed by the change I have witnessed and in which I have had the good luck to participate.

Boston Spirit launched in 2005. How is life in the business community different for members of the LGBT community today than in was 10 years ago?

DONALD VAUGHAN: Over the past 10 years, there has been a more relaxed, natural inclusion of our community in the larger business world. Frankly, I think the change has come a bit on both sides—I know I’m more comfortable talking about my husband Lee in social settings with clients and potential clients, and those I’m speaking with seem more comfortable being part of that conversation, too. More and more of my clients and business colleagues have met Lee. Goodridge

certainly played a role in lowering barriers that existed—it’s

to the coming “post sexual orientation” world where who we

hard for a straight person to attend a same sex marriage

love and sleep with becomes utterly irrelevant again.

ceremony and not at some level become a supporter of equal rights for gays and lesbians. Another major change is how valued and sought after business from our community is—I haven’t gone back to look, but I suspect there were a lot fewer ads in the early issues of Spirit from large mainstream companies than in this or recent issues. I view that mainly as a good thing, since it shows acceptance and some degree of economic clout. But I’m not sure I could be or would want to be totally assimilated – being a bit outside the norm has given me strengths and insights I don’t think I would have if I were a white hetero married lawyer. And when it comes time to relax with friends, the ones I choose still are largely part of the LGBT community.

TIMOTHY FAMULARE: In the late 1990s, I worked for the N.H. Fish & Game Department after graduating from UNH with a degree in marine biology. At that time, following Ellen Degeneres’s coming out and the murder of Matthew Shepard, public awareness of LGBT discrimination and the devastating repercussions of homophobia were gradually coming to the fore. This was especially true in New Hampshire, as the state added sexual orientation to its employment discrimination law in late 1998, and gay-straight youth alliances were being organized in public schools throughout the state. The Manchester Union-Leader, New Hampshire’s conservative daily newspaper, frequently editorialized against these progressive developments. A senior scientist at Fish & Game

Since 1989, Massachusetts has prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation in public and private employment. Do you have any stories to share about coming out to your colleagues?

would share the morning paper in our lunchroom after having written homophobic remarks on the columns and stories in agreement with the paper’s bias, and several older rangers shared his views. At the time, I was slowly coming out to my close friends, and although some of my coworkers and

DEB PECKHAM: I entered the profession in 1993 and was

supervisors subtly let me know that they were allies and did

extremely fortunate to have role models ahead of me who

not condone the bigotry of our older colleagues, I did not feel

had already blazed the “out at work” trail, so coming out at

comfortable coming out to anyone at work. In 1999, I moved

work in generally liberal New England was not too taxing for

to Boston to work for the city’s Environment Department.

me, personally. That said, I still trip on the question “What

Surrounded by like-minded colleagues, some of whom were

did you do this past weekend?” with a handful of colleagues

also gay, and working in the supportive administration of

who I know are not comfortable with my lifestyle or listening

Mayor Thomas Menino, a trailblazer in the advocacy of LGBT

to stories about my wife. Of course, younger colleagues are

rights, I slowly came out to my colleagues, and since then I

mystified that anyone still thinks about it at all. I look forward

have not hesitated to be out in the workplace.

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Sarah Hodkinson

Director of Marketing Services, PayPal

Hodkinson says she’s been called “the Ellen of PayPal”—and she doesn’t mind that one bit.

As the marketing guru behind the online payment giant’s North American campaigns and technologies, Hodkinson knows a thing or two about branding, after all.

By celebrating what sets her apart, she has built a rep as a woman to watch in the innovation sphere— and become an in-demand speaker at industry summits like Lesbians Who Tech. But Hodkinson is also dedicated to fostering the development of new LGBT entrepreneurs. She has served on the board of directors for StartOut.org, which fosters growth for LGBT entrepreneurs, and she is an active angel investor. This PayPal bigwig never forgets to pay it forward.

54 | BOSTON SPIRIT

What was your comingout experience like?

I grew up in a small village in the southwest of England. It’s not a diverse community—very homogenous, very white, and very heterosexual.

Consequently I was not exposed to any LGBT folks until I left for university. I came out after my first semester. My parents are very conservative and religious, and I’m the only child. So it was not particularly well-received 23 years ago. Since then, they’ve come a long way and regularly visit myself and my girlfriend. Things are much better.

Society is more accepting and my parents have grown in tandem with that.

Has being out been a hindrance in your career?

Maybe it’s because I take a glass half-full approach to most things in life, but I feel that, if anything, it’s been to my advantage for a couple reasons. I think male bosses have treated me more as a peer because I like women—and they typically do, too. I’ve been able to bond with “the guys.” There’s also a misconception among male bosses that, potentially, if you hire a lesbian she’s not going to go out on maternity leave like these heterosexual girls.

That’s not actually the case, of course. But they think, “You’ll get more work out of her. You wont have the family balancing issues.”

You’ve been called the “Ellen of PayPal.” How important is personal branding in a career?

It’s important to brand yourself. On a professional level, by being different you stand out. I don’t look like my peers and everyone know I’m an out gay woman. That makes me memorable. It gives me a unique brand identity.

Secondly, and particularly in technology and innovation, where you’re talking about pushing envelopes, the only way to push envelopes is by challenging the status quo.

And the only way to do that is by having a diverse workforce.

Tell me about the work you’ve done with StartOut. Why is it important to support LGBT entrepreneurs?

I’m still on the steering committee for the Boston chapter [of StartOut] to advocate for gay entrepreneurs.

Like all entrepreneurs, they’ve concerned with access to capital—access to funding. We’re encouraging LGBT entrepreneurs to find others like them that can help with resources, help them network for talent, and give them mentorship. It’s important in this industry that we encourage visibility of LGBT leaders.

Morgan Stanley is proud to support the

Have you invested in any LGBTrelated startups yourself?

There’s one I recently invested in through a syndicate called Gaingels, a group of LGBT angel investors that makes investments in LGBT companies. I made an investment in a startup called Emovia that is an LGBT-run organization. They’re analyze data about someone’s mental state when they’re viewing content or advertising. It’s a great tool within market research.

What do you think of Boston’s startup scene right now?

I think as a whole Boston is exploding with startups, with a large number of opportunities for investing in early stage tech companies. Aside from San Fran it’s hard to beat right now. Traditionally Boston has been a very B2B city but you’re seeing more consumeroriented companies coming up here. I think as a whole it’s an exciting place to be right now.

When I first came out I went on a job interview dressed in what would kind of be considered a male suit. I remember after the interview they said, we think you’re awesome, we just don’t think you’re going to fit in here. That was code for you’re gay.

We’re not going to hire you. But ultimately, I didn’t want a job selling ads for “Farmer’s Weekly” anyway.

Boston Spirit’s LGBT Executive Networking Night May 21, 2015 at the Boston Marriott Copley Place

© 2015 Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC. Member SIPC.

Shelito Vincent

Universal Boxing Federation World Champion

Shelito Vincent is undefeated in more ways than one.

Yes, the left hook-throwing pro boxer is top in her weight class, with a 14-0 record of wins. But to get there, she’s also knocked out every life obstacle that stood in her way.

Vincent survived a childhood of physical and sexual abuse, experiences that first led to drug and alcohol problems— and stints in correctional facilities. Then she discovered boxing, and everything changed. It became an outlet for channeling her emotions, and launched a rapidly rising career that makes her a rare thing: a successful, openly gay pro female boxer. She continues to fight against adversity—in the ring, of course, but also in a male-dominated sports industry that values babes over butches. And this New London, Connecticut-native brings her success story to young people who need inspiration, touring schools to speak about overcoming life’s worst blows with an indomitable fighting spirit.

56 | BOSTON SPIRIT

How did boxing become your outlet?

For a while I was all messed up. I tried to kill myself. I was suicidal. I was in and out of jail for fighting, because every time I felt threatened I’d try to defend myself so no one would hurt me again. The last time I was in jail I said, “I’m going to try this boxing thing.” The only time I wasn’t depressed or drinking was when I was hitting the bag. I felt like I was fighting back for once. I started using boxing to channel that anger and hurt—like therapy. On my mother’s deathbed, she made me promise that I’d never stop boxing—because that’s what was going to save my life.

Tell me about your first fight.

My mother died two weeks before my first time in the ring [as an amateur]. She never got to see me fight. It was nerve-racking and stressful. I lost by two points against a girl with 15 fights. I’d only been training about a month. So I knew that I was going to be pretty good if I stuck to it, since I lost by only two points to a girl with such experience, through all that stress. I lost that one fight—and I’ve won every fight after that.

What kind of challenges did you face as an out female boxer?

In the boxing world they told me I wouldn’t be marketable.

They wanted me to grow my hair back and wear a bikini.

But I broke boundaries. Now I’m the most marketable boxer in the area. I sell out arenas. I’m on magazines and television. They told me I couldn’t do that, that I’d never be able sell out a venue. I’m shattering stereotypes and giving kids hope.

It’s crazy to think that even boxing would put such high value on appearance.

But thing is, boxing is a business. If people don’t want to see you, they don’t put you on. They have to make their money. I had this female boxer say to me, “You won’t get to do TV because you look like a boy.” I was like, “Well you look like a girl and they’re not putting you on TV either.” [Laughs] When I was an amateur one trainer told me, about turning pro, “They’re not going to sign you unless you look like a girl.” So I got rid of him and went with somebody else. I shot that barrier down. The minute you tell me I can’t do something, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

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What’s your greatest skill as a fighter? And how do you train?

My greatest skill is that I know how to fight through pain. I know how to fight through the chaos. When I’m in there boxing, I feel at home.

Besides that—my left hook, and I have great headwork. I work out two to three times a day.

I strength condition for two hours, come home, and eat—following a strict diet supervised by my manager—rest up, go for two hours in the ring, and then run on top of that. People think you can just go in there and throw your hands around, but there’s a science to it. It’s really intense.

Do you have any pre-fight rituals?

I have prayer beads I wear. I have a picture of my mother that I carry with me everywhere I go, and I bring her into the ring. Before a fight I sit with my team in the back, cracking jokes. We keep it light, so I’m not too stressed. You always have those nerves. If you don’t, something’s wrong—it’s good to have them. But my team is there to keep me calm and help me remember what I’m fighting for.

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Liz Page

Special events producer and founder of AIDS Walk Boston

When Liz Page launched Boston’s first AIDS Walk in 1986, it was an act of “penance” that followed the death of a close friend.

“I felt that I had let my friend die alone,” says Page, who started volunteering with AIDS Committee of Massachusetts at its inception. (She remains on the board of directors for both AAC and Fenway Health.)

Soon her savvy launched an annual walk that has raised millions for AIDS research, treatment, and education, and her longstanding events planning firm, Liz Page Associates, continues to create compelling fundraisers for nonprofit clients like MassEquality, The Theater Offensive, and Victory Programs, among others. Page has now raised incalculable sums and touched countless lives—but she remains as motivated as ever. “I don’t think you ever get over losing a friend,” says Page, her voice catching, when asked if she feels like she’s paid her penance. “But I feel proud of what I’ve done so far.”

58 | BOSTON SPIRIT

What was your coming-out like?

Growing up, the image of a gay person or a lesbian was so unappealing, so lonely and isolated. It never occurred to me, although I loved and identified with women growing up. I didn’t come out until I was 27, after I’d been married for many years.

The ‘70s were a time of great sexual exploration. Closet doors started opening and I walked boldly through. When I kissed a woman for the first time, it was a revolution to me. It was like, “that’s what this is all about. I’m a lesbian. I love women.” It was amazing.

Tell me about your friend who inspired the AIDS Walk.

Esther was a fabulous drag queen in San Francisco—and one of my dearest friends. Just after I moved to Boston, he got sick. I didn’t realize the level of sickness. He’d call and say, “I can hardly walk up the stairs.” I’d say, “Quit staying up so late. Stop partying.” He’d say, “I can hardly breathe.” I’d say, “What are you doing? Take care of yourself.” Then my friend Bill called. He was taking care of him. He said, “There are all these black sores inside his mouth. We don’t know what this is.” It was 1982. There was this hot panic of an unknown epidemic. Then, he died.

What were some challenges facing that first AIDS Walk?

We wanted to get a shoe company to underwrite it as a presenting sponsor. We went to a shoe company and showed them a presentation. We said, “We’re launching this new walk, you’re launching a new walking shoe, and we’d like to use the tread as the logo. Would you give us $50k?” They thought about it and said no. So we said, “How about this: Would you give us product to use as incentive for walkers?” They came back and said, “Not only will we not give you product, but you can’t buy product from us in association with this event.” We were stunned. That’s how afraid corporate America was of the epidemic.

How did you begin as an AIDS Action volunteer?

I said to AIDS Action, “What do you need?” They said, “We need help.” So I started to speak to open houses of volunteers at Emmanuel Church. A couple hundred people would show up every month. I’d tell them my story and say, “I’m here because I let a friend die alone, and I’m sorry for that. But I can be here for everyone else now. What motivates you? Join our family and face this.”

What were the crowds like?

We were afraid of being picketed. We had a police detail along the walk route. We wanted to go right down Commonwealth Avenue in the heart of the city. We didn’t want to be marginalized in the suburbs. We didn’t want to be invisible. As much as it was about raising money, it was about raising visibility. It was about people dying. It was about being gay and lesbian. We were exposing ourselves in so many ways. I remember at the Hatch Shell an entire crowd sang along to Dionne Warwick’s “That’s What Friends Are For.” That was a great moment, everyone with arms around each other. It was transformative. If you had AIDS, you didn’t feel alone.

Your original background is in theater.

How does that affect your events work?

I love to put my theatrical skills to use on behalf of the issues. I love the idea of transformation: moving people to action. It’s one thing to be moved by a special event or a piece of art. But that next step of taking action—for me, that’s the key. Become a volunteer. Write a check to the best of your ability. Get involved. That’s what we hope our events do: motivate people to get involved.

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Janson Wu Executive Director, GLAD

Janson Wu dreams big.

As a gay Chinese teenager growing up in a mostly white, rural town in upstate New York (“the kind of place where I passed Chappy’s Gun shop on the way home!”), he didn’t even feel comfortable coming out until his school days at Harvard College. Today, the Harvard Law grad is the new executive director at one of the country’s leading organizations advocating for equal rights— and equal justice—for LGBT people. After eight years as a staff attorney, where he worked on some of GLAD’s most highprofile cases, Wu was formally appointed in December to the helm, and he continues to steer GLAD’s legacy as a legal trailblazer and watchdog.

But for the relatively young Wu, honored in 2011 as one of the Best LGBT Lawyers under 40 by the National LGBT Bar Association, GLAD’s work isn’t simply about attaining legal parity. He envisions a world where LGBT people aren’t just tolerated, but celebrated.

We say: Dream on.

60 | BOSTON SPIRIT

What was your coming-out like?

The first time I felt comfortable telling people was when I came to Boston. I’m young, but old enough to remember a time when people grew up not knowing other LGBT people and had very few LGBT role models.

But my mother had her thoughts.

I remember the way she asked me was by saying, “So—what do you think of gays in the military?”

That was the big issue at the time. The second question she asked was, “Do you like Michael Jackson?” [Laughs]

When did you realize that legal advocacy was your passion?

When I heard [GLAD civil rights project director] Mary Bonauto speak for the first time. It was 1999 and I was a senior in college. She was from this organization I had never heard of before—GLAD!—talking about the Vermont civil unions case. I was involved in activism in college, but mostly surrounding feminist issues like sexual and domestic violence, not so much LGBT politics. For me, that was an awakening: Wow, there is this whole world of LGBT lawyers who are fighting for these amazing, radical goals.

Mary Bonauto is about to argue one of the historic equal marriage cases before the Supreme Court. Thoughts?

GLAD laid the groundwork for where are with the Goodridge case in 2003. That has been the case with GLAD: we lay the foundation for progress that is seen 10 years from now.

Back in 2003, people thought we were crazy. When we took on marriage it seemed unimaginable. Now it seems inevitable. In terms of the Supreme Court, we think it’s time to decide in favor of loving, committed couples to be able to marry. It’s well past due.

Any words of advice you’ve gleaned from your predecessor, former exec director Lee Swislow?

I get lunch with Lee every month, and she’s shared so many words of wisdom as a leader. But I think what I’ve learned most—I don’t know if she would articulate it this way—but the idea that you lead by example, and the first example to lead with is to listen. That’s probably at the core of her strength as a leader, and one I hope to model.

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In a GLAD blog post, you described a desire to “dream big.” What does that mean to you?

We’re at a pivotal moment in our movement. We can take two different paths. One celebrates the amazing successes that we’ve had already, and is content with formal legal equality. The other path builds on the momentum of our successes and imagines how much more we can achieve for our community if we really put our hearts and minds into it. For example: think about students at school. One path is content with passing anti-bullying laws and making sure that all students are protected. That should be the bare minimum! What if we also imagined a world where all students learned about LGBT history, the movement, and the heroes like Mary Bonauto? How affirming would it be for a struggling kid in middle school to learn you can achieve great things by being LGBT? That’s my vision: to think more expansively.

Where does GLAD go from here?

Here’s my dream, if you want to put GLAD out of business: Let’s get to the point where there’s not only equal opportunity for every person, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, or HIV status—but also equal outcomes. We need to make sure that the huge amount of progress we’ve made is felt across the board through every member of our LGBT family, including trans people, economically disadvantaged communities, and communities of color.

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Kyle Megrath

Program manager, Greater Boston PFLAG

Meet Kyle Megrath, a powerhouse ambassador among allies.

Megrath may not identify as LGBT, but the fight for equality is a personal one for him.

His uncle is gay, and Megrath has dedicated much of his career to social justice and LGBT rights. He has organized and managed equal marriage campaigns in Rhode Island, his native Maine (where as regional field director for Mainers United for Marriage he helped The Pine Tree State become one of the first to approve equal marriage by popular vote), and most recently in Indiana.

Last year, as campaign manager for Hoosiers Unite for Marriage, Megrath successfully defeated what may (pending the Supreme Court’s imminent judgments) go down as one of the final attempts by a state to introduce a constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage.

In December Megrath joined the team at PFLAG, where he’ll continue to build alliances: in schools, in healthcare facilities, in legislatures (PFLAG will work toward a formal ban of so-called “reparative” therapies in Massachusetts), and anywhere else the fight for his family—fated and chosen—takes him.

62 | BOSTON SPIRIT

How did your uncle impact your work for LGBT rights?

I was already gravitating toward social justice work. But there was a period where my family went through some tough times, and me and my mom moved in with my uncle and his partner.

It was an experience I’ll never forget. My mother’s door was always open to everyone. She was very welcoming, so it was never a big deal. But I learned a lot about my grandfather and how he struggled with my uncle’s identity as a gay man.

And then in 2009, Maine voters struck down my uncle’s rights to get married.

How does your work in equal marriage campaigns enhance your work with Greater Boston PFLAG? Both experiences are about changing hearts and minds. It all comes down to growing relationships and bringing people into a movement: finding people who care, bringing them in and keeping them inspired, then giving them the opportunity to be leaders in their community and do more organizing on their own. Whether you’re trying to win a campaign, create safer schools or help healthcare professionals understand why pronouns are important, the point is that you’re bringing people into a movement, building relationships, understanding why people care and telling them why you care.

You actually began your career as a family therapist. How does that help?

Working with folks who had a queer parent, or who themselves identified as LGBT, was always a good reminder that it is one part of identity that can be either a place of a lot of growth and celebration or a place of great depression and anxiety. It depends on the culture they’re around. There was a particular process for alreadydisenfranchised folks struggling with identity—say, people of color living in very low-income situations, with families who aren’t very supportive.

I noticed the real cycles of struggle that people get into, and how gender identity played a role.

Are there certain challenges unique to working with allies?

When I work with allies my focus is on making sure we’re aware when we are taking oxygen out of the room. We want to make sure we’re not the only ones doing the work or speaking the loudest in the room.

Sometimes with allies it’s just about making people aware of dynamics, and educating on how to make a lot of space for people of all identities to have oxygen in the room.

Are you noticing a greater willingness in younger generations to become allies?

Anecdotally, what I’ve seen in the schools is that [LGBT issues] aren’t as big a deal. I have a friend who talks about when he came out as female and some guy friends were like, in their bro voice, “That’s awesome! Can you tell me what women think?” It’s almost as if the stigma is starting to go away but the curiosity remains.

That’s what we’re noticing a lot as it relates to trans and gender identity. People’s minds are open to understanding gender differently, but there still isn’t a lot of awareness.

What are some of your priorities right now?

A big place of growth that we’re focused on is healthcare: trying to talk to providers so that they understand gender identity and expression.

Studies show that as many as 55 percent of trans people have to educate their providers on everything from surgery to what gender identity even is. We know that this is an underserved place and, anecdotally, I can tell you that providers are really working with us and making proactive steps to better engage the trans people they serve. So there is change happening, but the need is still high.

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Marilyn Humphries Professional photographer and photojournalist

If you’ve spent any amount of time ensconced in New England’s LGBT community—on the sidelines at Pride, in the midst of political rallies, or partying at fancy fundraisers— you’ve probably wound up in an evocative image taken by this photojournalist.

But it’s the woman behind the camera who may be the most compelling subject of all. For decades, Marilyn Humphries has captured the landscape-altering waves of social movements—particularly as they relate to LGBT rights—for countless local and national newspapers and magazines.

From heartbreaking AIDS vigils to the first gay marriage celebrations, Humphries has been there—documenting with precision and passion the moments that make up our collective history—and preserving them for future generations. (For a small glimpse, check out her 2009 book “Courting Equality: A Documentary History of America’s First Legal Same-Sex Marriages.”)

It’s hard work, sometimes dangerous, and—especially as traditional media outlets crumble—often thankless. We owe a debt of gratitude to someone who eschews the spotlight to train it on the rest of us.

64 | BOSTON SPIRIT

When did you come out?

In college in the early ‘70s I realized I was a lesbian. Me and a couple other people formed a gay group, but it’s funny—though there were only three of us, it seemed like everyone in school knew who we are. [Laughs] I was really tapped into feminist things. I remember when Robin Morgan came to speak all these lesbians came from the surrounding communities. I was like: god damn, all these women like women!

It’s interesting that you studied history, and wound up making a career out of it—but in an unexpected way!

I couldn’t make myself fit in to more traditional career paths for that. I saw these incredibly brave people standing up for what they believed in and really making a statement. A lot of times that gets pushed away and people are maligned for that behavior, but it’s what really sets the tone and allows the mainstream to push forward.

What were some of the standout moments where you really felt like you were witnessing history?

Many points around marriage, especially during the [Massachusetts] constitutional convention. I was so aware of the import of the huge history that was happening.

I remember going with Mary Bonauto to pick up the decision, just standing there watching her read it, knowing I shouldn’t say a word because she was immersed in it.

Finally I said, “What does it say?” [Laughs] That will be forever with me. Sometimes when I walk through the State House I feel all these ghosts there. I’m transported back to all those people who turned out by the hundreds, chanting and singing.

Were there ever times when you felt in danger?

Sometimes it felt like things would turn into riots. The Ku Klux Klan came to Boston in the early ’80s, got a permit to march in Government Center, and was provided with enormous police protection because so many people were outraged. The police wound up turning on the protestors and beating some of them. It was really scary. I remember jumping onto the roof of a car to get away from swinging billy clubs, seeing people whacked around me. I was a lot younger then, I don’t know if I could jump on the roof now.

Do you think about what you’ll do with your treasure trove of photos?

Being a fairly obsessive person, I learned immediately that you have to keep things really well organized. When I look at all the material I think, “This is going to be some archivist’s nightmare!” I’ve kept it orderly. I keep all the flyers from events to match the contact sheets and negatives. When digital came along, that made things so much easier. I’ve had a couple brief conversations with university libraries about their archives. I hope I’ll be able to hand them something cohesive and coherent one day, so people can use it when I’m no longer around.

Are any displayed in your home?

One is from a big AIDS vigil in Washington D.C. in the ’80s, a crowd of mostly gay men—their candlelight surrounding the reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial. There’s something I love about light at night. On the other end of the spectrum, there’s one from a Klan rally in Connecticut in the ’80s.

It was a very dark night with all the burning crosses. It was so hair-raising.

I took one shot of the Klansmen in their full regalia, and in the center of them is this small boy with his hands behind his back. That photo really signified to me what we do to children in terms of their education and values—how people get molded.

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Kevin Dumas Mayor of Attleboro, Massachusetts

Mayor Kevin Dumas has a way of making people see things in a new light.

“We’ve had an image problem,” admits Dumas of the city he grew up in and now leads with resounding popularity, thanks to invigorating the public schools, leading major downtown revitalization and arts initiative projects, and righting Attleboro’s once-precarious finances.

(Elected in 2003, Dumas assumed office right after his predecessor discovered a budgetary error that almost completely depleted the city’s reserve funds.) Along the way, he’s also offered his community the rosy representation of a gay, married mayor. He ran as an out candidate from the beginning, yet still scored a whopping 57 percent of the vote to oust a sixterm incumbent—making Dumas, then 27, the youngest mayor elected in Attleboro’s history. And though Dumas is a Republican, an affiliation that hasn’t always been friction-free, he believes that he can offer an illuminating perspective to both his political party and his LGBT community—maybe one day through a higher office.

In politics, full of phonies, Dumas’s authenticity is a bipartisan value that deserves to light the way.

66 | BOSTON SPIRIT

When did you realize you wanted to go into politics?

Since kindergarten. They’d ask, “What do you want to be? And I’d say, “the mayor!”

I became very active in my neighborhood through school, student government and Boy Scouts. By the time I wanted to run I was well-known in the community. I come from a middle-class family, four generations in this city. They’ve always told me, “You can do anything you set your mind to. But I never thought you’d really do it.” [Laughs]

What was a bigger hurdle in your first campaign: sexuality or age?

My age, hands down. There was a 40-year age span between us, and overcoming that was not an easy thing to accomplish.

Being gay wasn’t an issue for me. My involvement in the community dates back, so most people close to me already knew I was gay. I talked very openly about it, and when those who didn’t know found out, they were like, “It’s Kevin. We love Kevin. It doesn’t matter.” It was very heartwarming.

But I know the acceptance that I felt would not have been possible if others hadn’t fought to make these strides toward equality.

Was it as easy when you first came out to your family?

No, it wasn’t. There was a learning process for all of us. It was difficult. Being from a family that never had exposure to gay issues, feeling comfortable to talk about it was not something that was viable to me.

I came out my first year of college and we worked on it as a family. Over the next few years it turned into a beautiful experience.

Today I’m blessed that my mom and dad are very loving, accepting people who embrace me and [my husband] John.

Was there any resistance when you took office?

There was a little bit of “How do I take him? How does he fit in?” coming into office. Government is very structured. It wasn’t part of the fabric or the structure here, and as people were exposed to it things started to change.

It’s very heartwarming to be part of something that is very different from when I first started. We’re always thinking about respect for LGBT issues or issues related to culture, especially in the realm of public safety.

In 2007, when the legislature blocked a statewide vote on a gay marriage ban, there was a small demonstration outside your house. What was that about?

There was a very religious man who decided that because I was married he was going to protest my house by praying the rosary and putting Jesus Christ’s face on a stand at my driveway. I was shocked.

But people came up to him and said, “You’re being disrespectful. This isn’t right.” Someone even drove up on the sidewalk and ran his sign down. People were pulling over. It was bothersome when I first saw it, but what transpired was wonderful. People I didn’t even know showed their support.

What have been your experiences as a gay Republican?

It’s been a long haul. But my fundamental fiscal conservatism wasn’t going to change because my party wouldn’t accept me. I said, “I’m going to stand up for myself and what I believe in. I won’t be ignored.” Piece by piece it’s started to change. Today we have a Republican governor that’s made a space for us. We’re where we are because of those who refused to back away. This was a very lonely path to walk. Some [LGBT] people didn’t understand it, but there are certain core values in my life I won’t back away from. If we don’t fight, we won’t be represented in this party.

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Lama Rod Owens Teacher at Natural Dharma Fellowship

“It was an extremely difficult time. I was making a choice a lot people who knew me didn’t agree with,” says Rod Owens.

No, he’s not talking about life as a gay man. (Although in his early twenties the Georgia native did leave behind the United Methodist Church in which he was raised, unable to “reconcile” his sexuality with its teachings.) Rather, he refers to the decision he made to deepen his Buddhist practice with a three-year monastery retreat of study, meditation, daily silence, and remove from the outside world. Though not everyone understood his decision at the time, the process was exhilarating, says Owens.

Today he is a lama, the former program director of Kagyu DC, a Washington, D.C. Tibetan meditation center, and a current resident teacher with the Natural Dharma Fellowship in Cambridge, where he also pursues his graduate studies in Buddhism at Harvard Divinity School.

He’s particularly interested in using meditation and Buddhist teachings to help practitioners integrate spiritual and sexual lives, and heal from shame and struggle related to self-identity. That’s a mantra worth respecting.

68 | BOSTON SPIRIT

How did you experience sexuality within United Methodist church you grew up in?

What was most wounding was the silence around sexuality. In general the black churches are reluctant to explore sexuality.

My mother actually became a local minister for the church. I consider her one of my role models and she embodied a kind of spiritual leadership that was really empowering.

I never experienced her reproducing levels of discrimination or prejudice. I think my mother’s biggest aspiration was for me to become minister.

Looking back, I think she should have been more specific. [Laughs]

How did you discover Buddhism, and why did it connect with you?

I was struggling with severe depression. I wanted to find a solution, but didn’t want to go straight to medication.

Something told me to keep looking. I found a spiritual healer who introduced me to meditation, which brought me to a community of people practicing Buddhism. I realized early on that Buddhism was the path I had been on my whole life. It lined up strongly with how I feel about the world. It was liberating. I could bring my whole life into this practice and see sexuality as something to celebrate and be proud about—not a source of shame.

How difficult was that three-year retreat?

Extremely difficult! It was like detoxing from the world, from media, from the freedom to do what you wanted. It’s being willing to sit with the parts of yourself that you habitually run away from: sit through moments of terror, despair, sadness, and longing. We spend our time trying to distance ourselves from that kind of void, filling it with addictions to sex or drugs.

I had to sit with it. That definitely changed the way I’m able to be in my life and be in my body. I understand love is the key to filling that void.

You mention that you’re interested in integrating spirituality and sexuality. Can you elaborate?

I’m trying to model an integrated life. I’m a Buddhist. I’m also a queer male who enjoys sexual expression. There’s no difference. Something I work directly with is the level of shame that is schooled upon us. For so long, our practice is to run to shame. Instead, see the loving. That’s what we’re taught within the Buddhist teaching: to love, to be compassionate, to be kind, and to understand that ultimately everything is an illusion anyway.

How can spirituality work with LGBT people who have been burned by the faith they grew up in?

Engaged spirituality is not about hiding or avoiding things, but going into really difficult things and being with it, practicing with it. That’s difficult for queer people.

We’re damaged and repressed in so many ways. For gay men especially who grew up during the AIDS epidemic, expressions of sexuality happened within the context of disease, and that has a taken a brutal impact on how we express ourselves sexually—how we create communities and establish relationships with ourselves and the world around us. I want to create ways to address and liberate us from those fears.

What is the Buddhist perspective on gayness?

In Buddhist scripture we don’t see anything against homosexuality—except in the monastic community, where any sexual relationship is not in accordance with the vow of celibacy. Some great scholars in the tradition of Buddhism have written negatively about same-sex love. But Buddha never taught that. Buddhism encourages us to embrace who and what we are. What we focus on is intention: Why are we doing certain things? Why are we engaging in the relationships we’re in? Are we trying to help people be happy? That’s what our focus is on: creating change.

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Sylvain Bruni President, Boston Pride

It’s been a long road for Boston Pride This year marks the 45th anniversary of one of the country’s largest LGBT celebrations—and it continues marching resolutely toward the future with new president Sylvain Bruni. The France-native and human systems engineer became an integral part of Pride’s volunteer team shortly after moving to Boston in 2004 to earn his doctorate at MIT. Co-chair of the 2012 InterPride conference, Bruni became Boston Pride’s president in 2014, after his predecessor, Linda DeMarco, stepped down following 11 years in the role. His first steps: to embrace and recognize the LGBT community’s great diversity, introduce new programming (this year launches the Boston Pride Gala, a semi-formal soiree), and encourage philanthropic giving (a new “Friends of Boston Pride” program offers unique benefits to donors). 2015 also marked the first time that Boston Pride marched in the city’s historically anti-gay St. Patrick’s Day parade.

Bruni has big shoes to fill, but he’s striding confidently forward in new directions.

70 | BOSTON SPIRIT

How do you think Pride has most changed since you got involved?

Number one, there’s more family involvement and participation in parades—gay and straight families alike. I don’t remember seeing that many parents with kids in strollers on Tremont Street. They see Boston Pride as a safe space for their family, whether LGBT or allies. Also, our diversity: The festival is probably the most diverse crowd I see in Boston.

In front of the stage are people of every age, color, shape, and background. A lot of the feedback I get from city officials is that Pride is the only time they see everyone out there celebrating together.

Where do you want to take Pride from here?

I think enhancing diversity with regard to ethnicity, age, and background is very key to making Pride sustainable over the long term.

We try to reinforce it with our programs.

Black and Latino Pride used to be separately organized bodies. When they folded, there was still a need in those communities to celebrate.

So volunteers from those communities helped us figure out how to introduce them, and use our institutional base and logistical resources to ensure we still have them. We’re building a portfolio of events and programs that build safe and welcoming spaces for everyone in the community.

It seems that we’re really seeing LGBT organizations make a stronger effort to embrace intersectional identities.

Absolutely. We’re seeing a swell of people who don’t just identify as gay, lesbian, or trans, but within a series of intersections with a lot of different components that make up their uniqueness. We want to make sure that no matter what combination, there is always a space for that person.

How did you select “#WickedProud” as this year’s theme?

It’s our 45th anniversary and we wanted that dual approach: looking at the historic aspect of it alongside the immediateness of the hashtag, which is anchored in social media. We tested the Wicked Proud concept at World Pride in Toronto, wearing t-shirts and marching with the banner. The response was amazing. They know in Boston that we say “wicked.” [Laughs] We want people to use the hashtag during Pride. We know people will be posting photos and comments and it will show the visibility of the whole community.

Linda DeMarco remains involved as VP, but any specific help she’s shared as you took the helm?

It’s great to be able to rely on someone who is an invaluable resource.

Boston is a very political city and Massachusetts a very political state.

We have a lot of elected officials marching in our parade and at our festival, and a lot of political organizations who work on behalf of our community.

She’s been very helpful in how to organize and navigate all of that.

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Are there any ideas we can glean from other Prides?

In the U.S. and Canada, Prides do pretty much the same kind of events. There are variations. NYC still calls their parade a march, and internationally, the biggest difference is also that you might see more of that march concept: political demonstrations asking for rights, new laws, better treatment from the government or media. But we get as many people complaining that it’s too political as people complaining it’s too party-oriented! We want it to be the community’s parade. People can make it what they want it to be.

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(ROUTE 28) (G R E E N T W E E T E R B L D G )

Woody Glenn

Activist and founder, Bisexual Resource Center

Lesbian and gay rights were the first to advance; trans issues are moving to the forefront of discussion. But the bisexual community has often been the overlooked middle child in the LGBT family’s acronym, unjustifiably maligned not only by the straight world, but also by more conservative gays who casually smear and stigmatize the very bisexual identity.

In Boston, Woody Glenn has been at the forefront of enhancing bisexual visibility and engaging public education: from his first radio interview with the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1972 to co-founding (alongside his life partner Alan Hamilton) in the mid-’80s what is now the Bisexual Resource Center, the nation’s oldest bi organization of its kind. Along the way Glenn, a now-retired longtime social worker, has been a powerful change agent through work that included organizing trainings and support groups for Fenway Health’s BiHealth program. And in June, Glenn and fellow bi leader Ellyn Ruthstrom (a former 10-year BRC board president) will be the first out bi marshals in the history of Boston Pride. It’s an overdue honor for someone who has consistently stepped out for equality.

72 | BOSTON SPIRIT

When did you first identify as bisexual?

When I went through my own coming-out process I didn’t know whether I was gay or straight. And for many young people there is indeed a real and important phase of experimentation. Sexual orientation is not a static identity. People move on the scale. I went through a second coming-out, as it where, when I discovered there was even a word for this. Now consider that we don’t even have men and women anymore, we have multiple genders, and the word bisexual has been usurped by other words and terms: like queer, pansexual, and sexual fluidity.

What was the climate like for bi people when you started the BRC? Going back two or three decades, a lot of people in the gay community saw us as people who weren’t really coming out—that we were somehow taking advantage of heterosexual privilege without coming out as being gay.

There was an assumption that everyone who identified as bisexual was going through a phase. We wanted to do education around that, and deal with some of the oppression that bisexual people encounter not only from the mainstream but also, ironically, from the gay community as well.

Can you describe the void of resources?

When I was getting my social work degree in the late ’70s at U-Mass Boston, I was involved with the university’s health education center doing peer sexuality counseling and support groups on human sexuality. Back then there was no bisexual community to speak of; I couldn’t refer anyone to a bisexual support group. Then at the BRC someone would call me up from someplace in, say, the rural Midwest.

They’d be living in an extraordinarily isolated environment. If I thought I had a problem in Boston, imagine what they were going through. All I could do was let them talk and be supportive.

How have things changed—or not?

The BRC has grown and thrived, fostered and supported programs for bisexual communities everywhere. We have a richer, more vibrant bisexual community than we had coming out when I did. With passing generations tides have turned, but I had no idea that I would be facing the kind of discrimination and hurdles that I did. I thought I had to worry about the heterosexual population, and it turned out I had to worry about the gay community too.

It’s ironic that there would be such prejudice within a community that purports to celebrate sexand gender-related fluidity.

In the ‘80s and ‘90s, even health care providers had little understanding of trans or bisexual people. We really tried to do a lot of education. I had a friend, a doctor at Fenway Health, who felt he couldn’t come out to his colleagues. Ironic!

A lot of gay men would come to me in private to confess that they had a sexual encounter with a friend—a lesbian friend, perhaps—and they were terrified they’d be ostracized from the gay community. If I had a nickel for every time that happened, it would have funded our organization.

How does it feel to be a marshal in 2015’s Boston Pride parade?

I’m very excited. There has often been little or no representation of the larger LGBT community, or bisexuals more specifically, if you look back at the many years of development of what was first known as the gay and lesbian community.

Slowly there has been a wider recognition for someone like me, for whom this is mainly about civil liberties. I want as many people to be included in an event like this as can be, including bisexuals and polyamorous people.

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CULTURE Art STORY Loren King

Visionary Jester Multimedia artist, activist, and Swim for Life founder Jay Critchley gets major retrospective Jay Critchley arrived in Provincetown in 1975, when the Cape Tip was an inexpensive, funky outpost where transplanted artists and nonconformists lived among the natives. Over the decades, he has become internationally-recognized for his conceptual installations that blend visual panache with an irreverent wit.

A satirist with an impresario’s vision, Critchley’s career is a reflection of the town he’s called home for so many years and the dramatic changes it’s undergone.

From his choice of materials—sand, fish skins, plastic tampon applicators washed onto the shore—to his playful but prescient approach to issues ranging from AIDS to affordable housing to climate change, Critchley and Provincetown are inseparable.

74 | BOSTON SPIRIT

“Jay Critchley, Incorporated” is the first-ever museum survey of Critchley’s 30-year career. It kicks off the summer season at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM). Curated by artist Bailey Bob Bailey, the show runs May 1 through June 21 with a free public reception on May 8 at 7 p.m.

The show is the product of an intense collaboration between Critchley and Bailey over two years since “installations and conceptual art are not easy to show in a gallery,” Critchley admits. Fifteen of Critchley’s projects will be featured at PAAM accompanied by photographs and some of the hundreds of film and video documentation he’s made through the years. The installations include one of Critchley’s earliest pieces, his “sand

car series” on Provincetown’s MacMillan Wharf in the early 1980s. These were automobiles encrusted with dune sand, occupied with sand-covered people, filled with sand, and sand blasted.

Also represented is the multi-artist 2007 installation “The Beige Motel,” for which Critchley completely encrusted a North Truro motel in sand and invited artists to create installations in the rooms. One of his best known creations, “Miss Tampon Liberty,” featured a robe, torch, and crown made of 3,000 plastic tampon applicators that washed up on Cape Cod beaches.

Mixing his art with theatricality and activism. Critchley recalls wearing the gown to hearings at the State House when he testified in favor of banning the sale and manufacture of the plastic applicators.

His “Theater in the Ground@ Septic Space” in his backyard septic tank was a sly commentary on the lack of affordable housing in town.

“A lot of my installations have directly come from issues and events in the town.”

Jay Critchley

“A lot of my installations have directly come from issues and events in the town,” he says, citing Provincetown’s transformation during the real estate bubble of the mid ’80s to the housing shortage the 1990s as Provincetown rapidly became too expensive for most working artists, native fishermen, and blue collar year-rounders. His project “Provincetown Inc., a Theme Park” (complete with a restaurant placemat that high“Deep Bones” installation lighted attractions) satirized the town as an exclusive, upscale resort for wealthy gays and lesbians. Some charged him with homophobia; son. He bought property (“If I hadn’t then, as usual, Critchley had the last laugh as his I wouldn’t be here today,” he says). Within humor proved prophetic. a year, he had come out; the result of a A Connecticut native, Critchley arrived long process that had started several years in Provincetown in 1975 with his wife and earlier. “I’m a very private person and I

had a supportive family but also a lot of shit from an Irish Catholic upbringing,” he says.

Still, coming out at 33 wasn’t as scary as admitting he was a “born again artist.”

“The artist was more deeply buried than the gay. I think that was the deeper personal core of myself that was harder to face,” he says. “My sister once gave me a subscription to Art in America and my reaction was, ‘Why?’ I knew I was artistic but that’s not the same as being an artist.”

Living in Provincetown exposed him to artists who were managing to eke out a living within a community in which such a life was the norm. One of the first things Critchley did was volunteer at community radio station WOMR

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where he interviewed artists, visited their studios, and learned what their process was and how they thought.

“That was my education,” says Critchley who graduated from Fairfield University but has had no formal art training.

“From the time I was three years-old, I was making things, collecting, and creating my own little world. It’s now trendy for people to do socially engaged art but it’s not something you can From the project “Provincetown Inc., a Theme Park” teach. It’s all about how you look at the world. It’s not gallerybased,” he says. adding that he Life and Paddler Flotilla benefit, a major still doesn’t make a living from his art fundraiser that has to date raised close to because there are no objects to sell. $4 million for AIDS, women’s health, and Critchley is the founder and director of the Provincetown community. Now in its the Provincetown Community Compact 28th year, the event (which takes place and the annual Provincetown Swim for on Sept. 12 this year) is a Provincetown

tradition with Critchley as its master of ceremonies. It attracts people from all over the world to swim or kayak across Provincetown Harbor.

The Swim for Life is yet another of Critchley’s environment-based projects that blends imagination, visuals (all those bobbing neon bathing caps), theater, and civic engagement.

“It became part of my life and grew organically,” he says of the Swim. “It represents the quintessential feeling I have about Provincetown. Even though so much has changed, there is a sense of community, a real passion for Provincetown as a spiritual hometown, and a showcase for the magnificent spectacle of the harbor.” [x]

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CULTURE Theater STORY Loren King

Bringing Bechdel to Broadway ‘Fun Home’ delivers the first out lesbian in a mainstream musical LGBT theater-goers have always made up a significant chunk of the audience for Broadway musicals but have been way under-represented in the shows themselves. That all changed this season when Fun Home, the much-buzzed-about musical, opened at Broadway’s Circle in the Square Theatre and is poised to reap a host of Tony nominations. Based on the acclaimed graphic memoir by Alison Bechdel, Fun Home is a coming of age/ coming out story centered on a young lesbian wrestling with her own identity, a closeted gay father, Bruce Bechdel (Michael Cerveris) who runs a funeral home and has secret affairs, and a mother, Helen Bechdel (Judy Kuhn) who prefers denial to confronting reality.

Bechdel, a Vermont resident and author of the celebrated comic strip “Dykes to

Watch Out For,” earned accolades and new fans with her graphic memoir Fun Home (2006) and its 2012 follow-up Are You My Mother? In the musical, three different actresses play Alison at various ages; one even gets a showstopper, “Changing My Major”—safe to say the only Broadway show tune ever penned about the thrill of a first lesbian sexual encounter. Two other numbers, “Al For Short” and “Ring of Keys,” comically and poignantly reveal Alison’s burgeoning queer identity.

The songs come courtesy of veteran Broadway composer and four-time Tony nominee Jeanine Tesori and book and lyrics writer Lisa Kron, the Tony-nominated actress and former member of the stage troupe The Five Lesbian Brothers. Tesori and Kron share Bechdel’s sensibility and

Beth Malone and Emily Skeggs in “Fun Home” PHOTO Jenny Anderson

life experience of growing up in the ’60 and ‘70s.

“Alison and Lisa and I [were born] all within a year of one another,” says Tesori.

Like Bechdel, she also had a complicated relationship with a disgruntled father and a mother who stayed with him because she thought she had no other options.

“When I was nine years old, I asked my mother ‘why do you stay? Why don’t you leave?’ She said, ‘Where would I go?’

I remember saying to myself, ‘I’ll never be like this’ even at nine years old,” says Tesori. “Fun Home is about not living the life you were born to live. It isn’t just about sexual orientation. My dad never wanted the life he had. Any desire you repress comes back to hurt you or hurts other people. Women of that generation had no agency, no voice. But that whole generation [produced] daughters with loud voices because they saw their mothers staying mute.”

MAY|JUN 2015 | 77

“Fun Home”: Judy Kuhn, Oscar Williams, Zell Steele Marrow, Sydney Lucas, Michael Cerveris PHOTO Joan_Marcus

Tesori has had success with the hit Broadway shows Thoroughly Modern Millie and Shrek the Musical but her voice is perhaps best heard in her smaller musicals about outsiders including her friend and frequent collaborator Tony Kushner’s Caroline, or Change. Tesori’s Violet, about a disfigured young woman’s journey across the South, premiered off-Broadway in 1997 and won the a host of awards but didn’t make the leap to Broadway until some 17 years later when Sutton Foster starred in a new production.

That experience taught Tesori “never to design any future for anything anymore. I did with Violet and it was great —17 years later. It’s like raising kids: you do your best and just hope for the best.”

Tesori says Fun Home was the hardest and most challenging show she’s ever done because of the memoir’s tone—the book, after all, is subtitled “A Family Tragicomic.” Since Fun Home is set in the ’60s and ’70s, Tesori drew on an eclectic mix of influences for the score ranging from the singer/songwriter genre to TV themes from shows like “The Brady Bunch” and “The Partridge Family. “ In the number “Raincoat of Love,” small Alison

78 | BOSTON SPIRIT

Fun Home’s Lisa Kron, Sam Gold and Jeanine Tesori PHOTO Joan Marcus

“ Women of that generation had no agency, no voice. But that whole generation [produced] daughters with loud voices because they saw their mothers staying mute. ” Jeanine Tesori fantasizes about the idealized happy family like the one she watches on TV. Kron is known to Boston audiences, appearing with the troupe The Five Lesbian Brothers at Theater Offensive in the ’90s. In 2007, she starred in her Tony-nominated, autobiographical play Well at Boston’s Huntington Theatre. Her one-woman play 2.5 Minute Ride ran at the American Repertory Theatre in 1998, and in 2009 Boston actress Adrianne

Krstansky starred in a production at the New Rep Theater.

Tesori says it was Kron who came to her with the idea to adapt Fun Home. “We knew each other’s work and knew many of same people. We just started writing.

The material is golden and rich; it was just a question of what to do with it, how to make it the theatrical equivalent of sitting with the book where reader can control the time and [have] an intimate experience.”

Fun Home opened off-Broadway in 2013 at The Public Theater. The New York Times called it a “beautiful heartbreaker of a musical” and it was nominated for the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, the Lucille Lortel Award, and the Obie Award for Best Musical, in addition to being a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Fun Home transferred to Broadway with the same creative team and much of the same cast.

“I wanted to do this for Alison and her family,” says Tesori. “They came to one of the performances and were really moved.

That was the most important thing for me.

It was a huge, huge relief.” [x]

CULTURE Film STORY Loren King

Christine Walker, independent film producer, and CEO of the PIFF/PFS

Filmmaker Jennie Livingston (“Paris Is Burning”)

Lights, Camera ... PIFF! One of the best regional film festivals, the PIFF, is ready for its second act At 17, the Provincetown International Film Festival (PIFF) continues to redefine itself as both a destination event and an important player in the indie film world as a time the industry itself is undergoing changes in how films are made, distributed, and viewed.

Running June 17-21, PIFF again will offer a slate of top new films including a strong LGBT lineup, great parties, and the chance to hear from A-list filmmakers and actors. But the leadership of PIFF and its parent organization the Provincetown Film Society (PFS) have made changes in the seaside town’s off-season that will result in a better-organized festival with ongoing relevance. (This year’s schedule wasn’t released by Boston Spirit’s deadline but will be posted on www.ptownfilmfest.org) Christine Walker, an independent film producer, in October was named the permanent CEO of the PIFF/PFS after serving in an interim capacity. One of her first first achievements has been to attract industry players to serve on the PIFF advisory board such as Rob Epstein, the Oscar-winning filmmaker whose

documentaries have regularly examined gay history. Also on board is Will Scheffer, creator (with Mark V. Olsen) of the acclaimed HBO series “Getting On” and “Big Love”; and Janet Pierson,head of SXSW Film and a champion of independent films and filmmakers for more than 30 years.

In April, the PIFF’s Gabrielle A. Hanna Provincetown Film Institute welcomed the inaugural class of three for its first residency program for women filmmakers, the only one like it in the county.

“We concluded that a residency program for women would serve as a catalyst for change in an industry where an abysmal 16 percent of the directors, writers, producers, executive producers, cinematographers, and editors are women,” Walker explained. “Thanks to the overwhelming support of our community and our sponsors, we are pleased to be able to launch the program this spring.”

The Institute welcomed Shelli Ainsworth (Stay Then Go), and two filmmakers who have created prominent LGBT works: Jennie Livingston (Paris Is

Burning) and Stacie Passon (Concussion).

All three filmmakers have had their work previously screened the festival, which is operated by PFS. Livingston is a groundbreaking filmmaker best known for the iconic 1990 LGBT documentary Paris Is Burning, about New York’s drag balls in the ’80s. In 2015, the film received the Cinema Eye Honors Legacy Award and was honored during the Sundance Collection screening at the Sundance Film Festival.

Passon is an American film director and screenwriter, whose debut film Concussion, about a young woman whose life is altered following a blow to the head, premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, and later won a Teddy Award Jury Prize as an outstanding film about LBGT themes at the 2013 Berlin International Film Festival.

Writer/director Ainsworth is a Minneapolis-based artist whose work in experimental theater and film has earned her national recognition. Her first feature, Stay Then Go, played at film festivals across the country. Ainsworth was the recent recipient of the Pioneering Women in Screenwriting award from the Los Angeles Diversity Film Festival. [x]

MAY|JUN 2015 | 79

CULTURE Literature STORY Loren King

View from the Hill

Frank: A Life in Politics From the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage

BY BARNEY FRANK

Barney Frank doesn’t appear enough on the news chat circuit for me to get my fill of his particular brand of eloquence, acerbic humor, and common sense, particularly during a depressing election season.

Reading his new autobiography, Frank: A Life in Politics From the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage, offers at least a moderate dose of his gifts. Written with neither pretension nor superficial self-congratulation, Frank may not be quite the same as hearing the man’s words, but it’s still one satisfying read.

A 16-term member of the House (until retiring two years ago), Frank is a public servant cut from entirely different cloth than the fools on the Hill; a man whose political makeup is equal parts idealism and pragmatism. As someone who’s lived in Frank’s fourth district most of my life, I can also say from personal experience that no one worked harder for the well-being of his constituents; he was the embodiment of his friend and political mentor Tip

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O’Neill’s famous adage that all politics is local.

Political junkies, particularly those interested in the Boston politics of the ’60s and ’70s, when Frank worked for Mayor Kevin White and then served in the state house along with Elaine Noble, the first openly gay rep in the country, will enjoy Frank’s behind-thescenes commentary on those years. His observations are through the prism of a gay man who came of political age in a very different climate.

Frank, now 74, doesn’t dwell much on his Bayonne, New Jersey childhood but does reveal that he understood early on that he attraction to men was incongruous with his plans for a career in public service. That message hits home with poignancy when, as an undergrad at Harvard, Frank describes the chilling effect reading Allen Drury’s 1960 Pulitzer Prize winning novel Advise and Consent had on him. The book (and the subsequent film) is about U.S. senator who kills himself when he’s blackmailed for homosexuality. “The contrast between the ... manly ethos of public service and the shame of homosexuality was clear,” Frank writes.

That was the beginning of the duality that came to define his life: Frank accepted his homosexuality and discreetly dated but kept it hidden so that he could do the work he loved and was good at. Although not out publicly, Frank filed the first gay-rights bill in the history of Massachusetts back in 1972 when he represented the Back Bay and Beacon Hill in the State House. After he won election to Congress, he thought many times about coming out, he writes, but always stepped

May back for justified concern over the loss of his hard-won political clout. He acknowledges that he paid a personal price for remaining closeted, not just his own happiness but because it led him to make poor decisions.

In 1985, while still closeted, Frank met hustler Stephen Gobie through an ad in the Washington Blade. A scandal erupted in 1989 when Gobie, in a story in the conservative Washington Times, alleged several improprieties including the most salacious: that Frank was running a prostitution ring out of his D.C. apartment. Even though Frank had come out voluntarily in 1987, the scandal was embarrassing, he writes.

Frank himself demanded an ethics investigation. He admitted to fixing parking tickets for Gobie but the ethics committee cleared Frank of the most serious charges. Far from torpedoing his career, as many feared or hoped, Frank was reelected decisively.

No American politician has personally experienced the odyssey that Frank describes as “two seismic shifts in American life: the sharp drop in prejudice against L.G.B.T. people and the equally sharp increase in antigovernment opinion.” He balances both in Frank. It’s fitting that as the Financial Services Committee Chairman from 2007-’11 and co-author of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the most significant Wall Street regulations since the Great Depression, he would spend many pages explaining his role in the effort to pass that legislation. He also describes the sweeping changes in policy affecting gay Americans, from “don’t ask, don’t tell” to the Defense of Marriage Act to the rise in same-sex marriage battles in the legislature and in the courts. Through all this, Frank was becoming more comfortable with his own sexuality; enough to emerge

Mid May – ferry service begins 15 – 17 Monumental Yard Sale Weekend Ptown.org 16 All You Need is Love Spring Show ptown.org 22 – 25 Single Women’s Weekend ProvincetownForWomen.com 22 – 25 Memorial Day Weekend

June as an eloquent and passionate voice in the Congress against the bigotry and ignorance of right wingnuts and enough to make one more bit of history.

In 2012, six months before Frank retired, he married Jim Ready, to whom he dedicates the book. The union gave Frank the distinction of being the first member of Congress to marry a partner of the same sex while in office. That journey from the closet to his own marriage makes Frank an important chronicle of LGBT political history and a moving personal one.

4 – 7 Women of Color Weekend ProvincetownForWomen.com 4 – 7 The Art of Cabaret CabaretFest2015.com 6 Carnival of Dogs ProvincetownDogPark.com 17 – 21 Provincetown International Film Festival PtownFilmFest.org

July 4th of July Independence Week, Parade and fireworks 11 – 19 Bear Week 21 – 25 Girls Splash

The Comfortable Shoe Diaries

25 – 8/1 Family Week

Massachusetts author Renee Lukas’ debut novel is a breezy tale of a 40-something lesbian Sydney Gray, reeling from the break up of a 12-year relationship and the loss of a job in marketing. As Sydney tries to pull her life back together, navigating the twin humiliations of employment interviews and internet dating, a cadre of well-meaning friends, both gay and not, try to offer advice. Sydney’s adventures penning the blog of the book’s title and trying to find Ms. Right will no doubt resonate with many readers who’ve looked for love on sites similar to Venus Meet. Maybe the outcome isn’t as predictably sweet, but at least it might be more entertaining. [x]

15-21 Carnival Week

BY RENEE J. LUKAS

August 20 37th Annual Carnival Parade Day – Theme Candland

Provincetown, America’s First Destination Ptowntourism.com

iPtown

CULTURE Theater STORY Loren King

[ABOVE] Taylor Mac in “The Last Two People on Earth: An Apocalyptic Vaudeville” [AT RIGHT] with Mandy Patinkin

Song and Dance Man Performance artist Taylor Mac returns to Boston as one-half of a vaudeville act Taylor Mac made his mark on the venerable American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) at Harvard University in 2012 with The Lily’s Revenge, a 32-character, five-act extravaganza about a flower named Lily (played by Mac) determined to overcome history, cultural attitudes, and social convention in order to marry a human. Sure, it was a clever commentary on marriage equality but the show was much more: a

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vaudeville of music, dance, comedy, film, fable, and verse—in day-glo color.

“I love Boston for that show,” says Mac over the phone from his New York home, even though, he says, Boston audiences are more “thinking” and “have to be invited to loosen up.” But Mac likes us enough to come back. From May 12 to 31 he’ll star at A.R.T. with stage (Evita) and screen (Yentl) legend Mandy Patinkin in the new musical The Last Two People

on Earth: An Apocalyptic Vaudeville, directed and choreographed by Tony Award winner Susan Stroman. In what sounds delightfully like Waiting for Godot meets The Sunshine Boys, sole survivors Patinkin and Mac discover their common language is song and dance. They chronicle the rise and fall (and hopeful rise again) of humankind through music that runs the gamut from Rodgers and Hammerstein to Sondheim, and R.E.M. to Queen.

“We’re working off the tradition of vaudeville and early musical theater which take popular songs and create a story,” Mac says. The two performers met through mutual friend and New York stage director Rachel Chavkin. “Mandy and I are on an advisory board [for Chavkin’s theater] and we were asked to perform at a benefit. We didn’t really know one

another but [Patinkin] said he’d do it if we did it together. We worked up a 30-minute show for the benefit and I guess we saw some magic. I love him to death; he is the greatest.” Mac credits Stroman for taking a show with little dialogue, much like her Contact, and “whipping us into shape” until a show was born. “It was a treat for me to work with someone at her level of craft,” Mac adds.

His affection for Boston notwithstanding, Mac says he wasn’t charmed by his time in Harvard Square. “It’s sad; it’s one big chain store,” he says. “New York is the same. I didn’t move to the city to feel like I live in the suburbs.”

Mac calls himself gender queer and says the use of neither “he” nor “she” felt right in his art or his life. He asks journalists to use his invention/affectation “judy” in place of a pronoun but isn’t a stickler when to do so, despite the best intentions, seems to compromise clarity. “It’s a way to have fun with the whole gender pronoun thing,” Mac says, “which is so serious to some and, at the same time, as a cultural critic and fool, my role is to poke fun.”

“ We’re working off the tradition of vaudeville and early musical theater which take popular songs and create a story. ” Taylor Mac Mac is always “juggling lots of things because you never know,” including regular performances of his avant-garde cabaret A 24-Hour History of Popular Music, described as “24 decades of songs that can be performed as individual decade concerts or over the course of 24 days all together.” Hilton Als of The New Yorker wrote that in “A 24-Hour History of Popular Music,” “[T]he artist traces changes in the national attitude through a variety of songs, such as “Shine On, Harvest Moon” and “K-K-K-Katy.” With sets and

costumes by the brilliant Machine Dazzle, Mac’s musical survey of the country that made him and others like him is offered in the spirit Whitman had in mind when he said that he heard America singing.”

He’s also current working on four plays, each one in a different genre but all about “the polarization of America.” Most will be performed in New York; quite possible a couple will find stages in Boston or Provincetown.

Mac has performed at Provincetown’s Afterglow Festival (“I lived there for two summers and fell in love for the first time there”). But right now he’s looking forward to a return engagement at the A.R.T. but says audiences shouldn’t expect—for better or worse—another version of The Lily’s Revenge.

The Last Two People on Earth: An Apocalyptic Vaudeville is “a completely different show,” he says. “It’s way more traditional; it’s the most commercial thing I’ve done. It’s not performance art; it is more vaudeville. [x]

americanrepertorytheater.org

Join Victory Programs for our 3rd annual Drive for Victory Golf Tournament at the beautiful, members-only Wollaston Golf Club!

Golfers will enjoy a continental breakfast, lunch, 18 holes of golf, on-course contests, live and silent auctions and more!

Proceeds benefit Victory Programs, a nonprofit serving men, women and families struggling with homelessness, addiction and chronic illnesses like HIV/AIDS.

Mo Shotgun Star Wollaston Golf Club 2015

Monday, June 29 Shotgun Start – 8:30 am Wollaston Golf Club, Milton

Register today at www.vpi.org

Register today at www.vpi.org

SCENE Benefit PHOTOS Marilyn Humphries

The Men’s Event Copley Marriott | Boston | February 28

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SCENE Benefit PHOTOS Courtesy The Theater Offensive

climACTS! WET Royale Nightclub | Boston | March 26

The Theater Offensive raised more than $160,000 their annual, outrageously fun performance and fundraiser. Boston’s most fabulous arts, theater and LGBT community supporters celebrated a night of edgy and exciting performances, mingled with Transparent actress Alexandra Billings, and raised funds through a live Fantasy Auction and Fund-a-Future campaign with auctioneer and emcee David Brown.

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SCENE Benefit PHOTOS Courtesy Point Foundation

Point Foundation’s Boston Cornerstone Event Boston Mandarin Oriental | Boston | March 5

At the 8th Annual Cornerstone Event, Point Foundation’s major donor program, approximately 130 guests raised about $100,000. Funds go to Point’s scholarship, leadership, and mentorship programs for promising LGBTQ students.

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SCENE Benefit PHOTOS courtesy GLBTQ DVP

GLBTQ DVP Winter Plunge

A lively group of costumed fundraisers braved the 4 foot snow banks and plunged into the icy cold waters of Boston Harbor in order to raise over $17,000 for the GLBTQ Domestic Violence Project.

Boston Harbor | Boston | February 22

SCENE Sports PHOTOS Courtesy BGBL

BGBL Awards Banquet

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Club Café | Boston | March 29

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The Boston Gay Basketball League (BGBL) recently completed its 21st season. Fourteen teams across two divisions participated. On Saturday, March 28, two winning teams were crowned: the Trophy Room Champions in Division 1 and Melman Chiropractic Whiplash in Division 2. On Sunday, March 29, the league held its annual Awards Banquet, along with its second annual Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony. During the league’s 20th season, the Hall of Fame was created with 15 league members (players, coaches, sponsors, volunteers, officials and officers are eligible) being inducted. This year, six league members, recognized for their extraordinary contributions on and off the courts, made up the second Hall of Fame induction class.

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Trophy Room Champions— Division 1 Champions Melman Chiropractic Whiplash— Division 2 Champions Bankhead & Groipen, long-time league sponsors, inducted into the Hall of Fame Joe Antoun (right) receives the Buck Bachman Sportsmanship Award from Commissioner Kevin St. Gelais 2015 Hall of Fame Inductees: Kevin Quincy, Dan Shovak, Derek Martin, Paul Groipen, Rick Bankhead (three Bankhead & Groipen dentists), Peter Stacey, Mitch Finnegan, and Kevin St. Gelais Kevin Quincy, Hall of Fame inductee, with his parents

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SCENE Sports PHOTOS Boston Spirit

Boston Spirit Red Sox Event The Trophy Room | Boston | March 28

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SCENE Designers Event PHOTOS Courtesy Dover Rug

Designers of Boston Dover Rug | Boston | March 11

To celebrate Boston Spirit’s recent Design Issue we held an event at Dover Rug on Stuart Street in Boston. The event was to honor the five designers we highlighted in the issue.

Thanks to all of our designers who were there as well as our great hosts Mahmud and Hasan Jafri from Dover Rug.

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PHOTO Nancy Clover

CALENDAR Herstory Happening!

What was the Women’s Peace Encampment? The short version: an all-women’s community of protest to militarism housed on 52 acres bordering the Seneca Army Depot in upstate New York in 1983, one that blossomed into a larger, decades-spanning movement of womencentric social activism. (And an important piece of both feminist and lesbian history.) For the longer version, familiarize yourself with the digital archives compiled for the Schlesinger Library for the History of Women in America at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute. To meet some of the volunteers behind this important archiving initiative (and former Peace Encampment participants), join a weekend of project launch events: from a Mother’s Day Walk for Peace to a “Rebel Wimmin VideoFest” featuring fascinating documentary footage. But the main highlight is the unveiling of the “Fires of Freedom Artifact Exhibit and Multimedia Streaming Gallery,” an illuminating audiovisual exploration of video, photography, and oral herstory about the Encampment.

Boston Pride What makes you “#WICKEDPROUD”? Get your smartphones at the ready, because that hashtag slogan is the theme of the 45th annual Boston Pride celebrations. The centerpiece of the weeklong fete, of course, is the Pride Parade—this year recognizing the late Mayor Menino as honorary marshal.

But there’s a large lineup of must-see, must-do, and must-hear happenings.

Highlights include the inaugural Boston Pride Gala, a swanky-skewing party, on June 5; the eclectic entertainment of Pride Day @ Faneuil Hall on June 7; Pride Night at Fenway Park on June 12; the live music-filled Pride Festival and “Neon Sensation”-themed Youth Dance on June 13; the thumping Back Bay and JP Block Parties on June 14; plus plenty more, from a Human Rights Forum to “Queeraoke” parties. (And as soon as you’ve recovered, make a point to hit the Ocean State for RI Pride on June 21.)

WHEN

June 4—15

WHERE

HOW

Throughout Boston!

For a full lineup of events and info, visit bostonpride. org

WHEN

WHERE

HOW

May 8—10

Various locations in Boston and Cambridge.

Visit peacecampherstory. blogspot.com; RSVP by emailing peacecampherstoryproject@ gmail.com

‘Mothers & Sons’ In 1994’s Tony-winning “Love! Valour! Compassion!”, prolific playwright Terrence McNally explored issues like aging, AIDS, intimacy and identity as they related to a generation of gay men. In a similar vein comes his 2014 Tony-nominated play “Mothers & Sons,” which considers the tectonic cultural shifts that have since transpired. Katharine, a mother who lost her son Andre to AIDS 20 years ago, visits New York to meet with Andre’s former partner—now married to another man and raising a son. Through Katharine’s eyes, which grapple with the image of a life her son never lived to see, we consider the large chasm that exists between the gay experiences of “then” and “now.” The result holds humor, heart, and intense emotional resonance.

WHEN

WHERE

HOW

May 8— June 6

SpeakEasy Stage Company, Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, Boston

For tickets and more info, visit speakeasystage.com

Herb Ritts

Bette Midler— “Divine Intervention”

When he died from AIDSrelated complications in 2002, gay artist Herb Ritts left behind quite a legacy.

The influential photographer was responsible for some of the most indelible images of fashion models and international entertainers to dominate the 1980s and ’90s. (He worked particularly often with gay icon Madonna, shooting the now-famous cover of her “True Blue” album.) The 1996 retrospective “Herb Ritts: WORK” remains one of the most popular exhibitions in the history of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Now the MFA, which has the largest holding of Ritts’ photographs in the world, is revisiting the artist with a new exhibition that explores his dramatic imagery—including music videos—that captured a moment in time when celebrity, art, and commerce collided.

It’s been a long, strange trip for “Bathhouse Betty.” 45 years after Midler launched her music career in NYC’s underground gay clubs and cabarets, the iconic entertainer visits New England with a tour of classic hits—plus selections from “It’s the Girls!”, her new album that covers songs by history’s greatest girl groups: from the swinging WWII-era Andrews Sisters to ‘90s R&B trio TLC. WHEN

WHERE

HOW

June 12; June 13

TD Garden, Boston; Mohegan Sun Arena, Uncasville CT

Tickets start at $55 at ticketmaster.com

AIDS Walk & 5K Run Boston

WHEN

June 7

WHERE

HOW

Boston Common

Sign up, donate, and learn more at aac.org

WHEN

Ongoing through November 8 WHERE PHOTOS Marilyn Humphries

In its 30th year, AIDS Action Committee’s annual fundraiser returns to its original starting point on Boston Common—where thousands of supporters will lace up their sneakers and strut city streets to raise awareness and vital, program-supporting monies. Whether walking, running, or simply perusing vendors at the healthy lifestyle-focused Wellness Festival, it’s a way to put your foot down to end the epidemic.

Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Avenue, Boston HOW

More info available at MFA.org

Break The Chains Boundaries blur at this inclusivity-minded, semi-monthly live music and dance party founded by singer/songwriter and community activist Evan Greer. If you’re tired of the homogenous scenes at other LGBT-related nightlife events, you’ll appreciate Break the Chains’ diverse cross-section of queer and trans performers and partygoers that fuse celebration with social activism. Among the half-dozen genre-spanning entertainers rocking the house on May 9 are Downtown Boys, a Providence-based queer dance punk group, and BlackOUT, an all black queer performance troupe that is a project of The Theater Offensive.

WHEN

WHERE

HOW

May 9

Make Shift Boston, 549 Columbus Avenue

For more info, visit breakthechainsboston.wordpress.com

Together Boston

Tig Notaro After years working standup comedy stages, lesbian funny-woman Tig Notaro is enjoying a particularly radiant moment in the spotlight. The dry comedian hosted March’s GLAAD Media Awards in Los Angeles, a documentary about her life, “Tig,” is hot on the film festival circuit, and she’s earning legions of new fans for shows that bring humor and heart to personal topics—like her recent battle with breast cancer. Bust some belly laughs during Notaro’s New England tour. (The Boston show will be filmed for her upcoming HBO special.)

WHEN

WHERE

HOW

May 30; May 31

College Street Music Hall, New Haven CT; The Wilbur Theatre, Boston

For tickets visit tignation.com

If you’re seeking a circuit party, look elsewhere.

But for a smarter take on traditional electronic music festivals, join the fun of Together Boston, a major annual lineup of DJ-driven concerts and club nights, art and technology-related events, and music biz panel discussions that are designed to stir up the city’s culture and innovation sector. This year’s lineup includes global acts—from superstar UK producer Sasha to Boston-born wunderkinds Soul Clap—plus much more worth raving about.

WHEN

May 10—17

WHERE

HOW

Various venues

For more info, a list of events and passes, visit togetherboston.com

Kiesza—“The Sound Of A Woman Tour” The era of mega-clubs like Avalon may be over—but in music, the throbbing melodies of ‘90s house are back in a big way. Leading the charge is Calgary-born dancing queen Kiesza with her new album “Sound of a Woman,” which includes the viral video hit “Hideaway.” Joining the Boston stop of her tour is Betty Who, another current purveyor of the kind of euphoric, synthpop ear candy that would have made a perfect soundtrack to your coming-out club days. Both women are Berklee College of Music alums, too. Welcome home, house mothers.

WHEN

WHERE

HOW

May 6

House of Blues, 15 Lansdowne Street, Boston

For tickets, visit ticketmaster.com

Creating and Supporting your Healthy, Beautiful Smile

Your Source for Equalityminded People, Places, Services and Adventures in New England and beyond.

Where personalized care & healthy, beautiful smiles meet.

For information on including your business, e-mail sales@BostonSpiritMagazine.com

 BEAUTY | BODY

Beauty Medicine Boston

Botox®, Dermal Fillers & Skin Therapies Rejuvenate yourself with state of the art cosmetic injections and advanced skin therapies and treatments, including: Botox®. Juvederm®, Radiesse®, Belotero® and Ultherapy. Personalized, artistic and compassionate skin care administered by Advanced Practice Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist, Nelson Aquino. Two convenient locations: Office of Joseph Russo, MD, FACS: 575 Boylston Street Newton Centre, MA 02459 and 1318 Beacon Street, Ste. 7 (2nd floor) Brookline, MA 617-953-6261 www.beautymedicineboston.com

Elizabeth Grady

Because the world sees your face first Elizabeth Grady provides an innovative approach to beauty and skin health through our products, services, schools and franchises. The expertly trained estheticians, massage therapists and make-up artists at our many locations will prescribe the worlds best face care products and treatments that are right for you. At the Elizabeth Grady Schools, we also educate and nurture the next generation of highly-qualified professionals.

1-800-FACIALS www.elizabethgrady.com www.elizabethgrady.edu

Osorio Dental Group

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We offer exceptional dentistry in a caring, non-judgmental environment.

Our LGBTQ supportive dentists and staff will ensure your comfort. www.osoriodentalboston.com

Seligman Dental Designs

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Personalized dental care; healthy, beautiful smiles; comfortable, caring service in our state-of-the-art dental facility in the heart of the South End. It’s no secret that healthy teeth and a radiant smile can improve your appearance, your self-esteem and your overall health. Whether your goal is to restore your smile or maintain good oral health, you can benefit from Dr. James R. Seligman’s comprehensive approach to dental care.

617-451-0011 SouthEndDental.com

Friendly, personalized dental care

State of the Art Technology

James R. Seligman, DMD

“Best of the South End” — SOUTH END NEWS

SouthEndDental.com

1180 Washington Street Boston, MA 02118 617.451.0011

Wellspring Weight Loss

Your Weight. Your Life. Take Control.

The country’s largest and most respected network of weight loss programs, includes an adults-only residential facility with upscale amenities, state-of-the art facilities, and chef prepared meals. or call us at 1-866-364-0808 wellspringweightloss.com

 COMMUNITY | NONPROFIT Planned Giving at DanaFarber Cancer Institute

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Invest in a future without cancer Include Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Jimmy Fund in your estate plans to reach your financial goals and help fight cancer.

800-535-5577 Dana-Farber.org/spirit

 HOME | GARDEN Circle Furniture

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Furniture ... Made for Real Life Circle Furniture offers an eclectic selection of furniture for traditional and contemporary homes, fast delivery times for made-to-order items, corporate philanthropy, support of the regional economy, and most of all, fun.

31 St. James Ave. Boston, MA 617-778-0887 www.circlefurniture.com

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Seasons Four

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The Outdoor Living Store For over 40 years, Seasons Four has been a destination for everyone in New England that values outdoor spaces. We are a trusted source for quality, heirloom furniture for your sunroom, porch, patio, deck, and garden. We also provide unique plant material, statuary, fountains and garden accessories to complete your outdoor room.

The Perfect

1265 Massachusetts Avenue Lexington, MA 781-861-1200 seasonsfour.com

Place for a Perfect Day

Full service on-site catering | Experienced event coordination Pre and post wedding events | Customizable menus | Wedding room blocks

336 Commercial Street | Provincetown 508.487.6424 | SageInnPtown.com | Open Year-round

Portside at East Pier

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Looking for a beautiful apartment with stunning views of the Boston Harbor, a building full of first-class amenities and a vibrant community to live in? Get it all at Portside at East Pier. Whether you want to relax in comfort at home, walk the waterfront, explore the outdoors or find some of the best food in Boston, there’s plenty of action to be had here.

Plus, with convenient access to the T at Maverick Station, the rest of the city is just a short train ride away. Come experience a place where discovery lies around every corner. It’s East Boston. But when you live at Portside at East Pier, you’ll just call it home.

GoEastPier.com

Dover Rug

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New Showroom Now Open Dover Rug & Home Dover Rug & Home offers the largest selection of fine floor coverings and window treatments in New England. Visit their BRAND NEW location at 721 Worcester Street in Natick (RT-9) As the “Best of Boston Home 2011” recipient, their larger showroom has something for every budget. Dover Rug & Home is headquartered at 721 Worcester Road (Route 9), Natick, MA 508-651-3500. Dover-Boston is located at 390 Stuart Street in the Back Bay, Boston 617-266-3600.

721 Worcester Street (Route 9) Natick, MA 508-651-3500 www.doverrug.com

Gardner Mattress

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Gardner Mattress Corporation A New England favorite for generations, Gardner Mattress has been manufacturing quality custom-sized, odd-sized and handmade mattresses in their Salem factory for over 70 years! Though their landmark location is North of Boston in Salem, they also service satisfied customers throughout New England. At Gardner Mattress, you’ll find mattresses including lace-tufted, layered latex, pocketed coil, quilted cotton and ivory plush, all handmade with natural materials. Located in Salem, Woburn and Newton, MA and Rye, NH. www.GardnerMattress.com

Lucia Lighting

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bright ideas begin at lucia Lucia Lighting & Design Our unique lighting store features 12 showrooms in 8,000 square feet of a lovingly restored mansion staffed with certified lighting specialists who are both educated and customer focused. Whether you want to visit our showroom or have one of our team visit you at your location in the Boston area, lucía lighting & design is the answer.

311 Western Ave. (RT-107 Lynn, MA 781-595-0026 www.lucialighting.com

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 PROFESSIONAL | SERVICES Burns & Levinson, LLP

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Burns & Levinson LLP, a leading mid-size law firm with a client-centric culture, has over 125 attorneys in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia. We work with entrepreneurs, emerging businesses, private and public companies and individuals in sophisticated business transactions, litigation and private client services—family law, trusts & estates, marriage and divorce law.

617-345-3000 www.burnslev.com

Harvard University

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Harvard University Careers If you can work, you can work at Harvard! We are so much more than just students and professors. We are the 5th largest private employer in Massachusetts, with over 16,000 employees. Almost any job you can think of exists at the University. employment.harvard.edu

UBS Financial Services, Inc.

Peter Hamilton Nee and Robert S. Edmunds UBS is proud to support Boston Spirit magazine, and salutes Fenway Health for their faithful service to our community. Please contact us any time. Peter Hamilton Nee, AIF, CRPC, VP, Investments and Robert S. Edmunds, CFP, CRPC ubs.com/team/neeedmunds.

Wellesley, MA 781-446-8918 or 800-828-0717 ubs.com/team/neeedmunds

 TRAVEL | ADVENTURE Marriott Copley Place

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Great Location. Great Amenities.

Boston Marriott Copley Place Located in the Back Bay and a few blocks from the South End, the Boston Marriott Copley Place is perfect for business or leisure travel.

The hotel features deluxe rooms, Champions, Connexion Lounge, Starbucks, indoor pool, fitness center, 70,000 sq. ft. of meeting space and is minutes from top attractions.

110 Huntington Avenue (Boston) , MA 617-236-5800 goo.gl/soiy38

Royal Sonesta Hotel Boston

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Spectacular city views, luxury accommodations, regional cuisine, and contemporary art All of our 400 well-appointed guest rooms and suites offer guests the comforts of home with first-class amenities and overlook the Charles River, Cambridge or Boston's stunning skyline. The Royal Sonesta Hotel Boston features both casual and elegant dining and delicious inspired cuisine in two highly acclaimed riverfront restaurants with seasonal patios, ArtBar and Restaurant Dante.

40 Edwin H. Land Boulevard Cambridge, MA 617-806-4200 www.sonesta.com/Boston/

 WEDDING | EVENTS Accent Limousine

LGBT Owned & Operated Accent Limousine & Car Service We provide professional transportation services throughout Greater Boston and the Metro-West. We grow our client base every year because we care for our clients as only a ‘Family’ business can. Our chauffeurs are professionally attired, knowledgeable, reliable, and friendly, and their professionalism and driving abilities will immediately earn your trust and confidence. We look forward to driving you on your next special occasion.

ha c o M DJ

www.accentlimo.com/spirit

DJ Mocha

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Affordable great music for your party!

Boston Spirit’s official Cruise DJ for four years. Bringing, Great Music and Fun to your Events! All genres: pop, jazz, techno, world beat, swing, disco & more!

617-784-1663 MochaDJ.com

Gourmet Caterers

Peace of mind. Now that’s a wedding vow.

This is a day when only perfection will do. GourmetCaterers’ attention to detail means peace of mind, so you can enjoy your wedding along with your guests. Whether your dream wedding is a large event or intimate affair, Gourmet’s team of innovative planners, chefs, stylists and servers will be by your side to ensure that everything is perfectly, uniquely, your own.

GourmetCaterers.com

www.mochadj.com

Konditor Meister

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Lombardo’s

HAPPY PRIDE!

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Lombardo’s has been providing the highest quality of hospitality and cuisine for over 50 years. From innovative menus to an upscale atmosphere, Lombardo’s ensures every wedding will exceed their client’s expectations.

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Long's Jewelers

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Your Source for Diamonds, Wedding Rings, Fine Jewelry & Watches Long's Jewelers has been in the business of happy moments since 1878. We're honored to help our customers celebrate milestones like engagements, weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, and retirements and not to mention "just because" moments! Whether you're looking for diamonds, wedding rings, fine jewelry, Swiss watches, awards, or corporate gifts, Long's has you covered.

Boston, Braintree, Burlington, Natick, and Peabody, MA 877-845-6647 www.longsjewelers.com

Ptown Parties

Catering | Events The premier caterer on the lower cape, Ptown Parties is a full service catering and event planning company. Let them cater your next cocktail party, clambake or wedding, in your home, inn, rental condo or yacht.

Let Ptown Parties take care of all the hassles, so you can enjoy a carefree day in Provincetown, and a great party that night!

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14 Johnson Street, Provincetown | 800.487.0132

www.carpediemguesthouse.com MAY|JUN 2015 | 95

CODA Comedy STORY Scott Kearnan

Wanda! Psych! records that you have to explain yourself.

It takes the joy out of what we do. We’re in a room and expect it to be intimate. We’re letting you in, and giving you a good time.

Fave funny woman comes to Boston With so many film, TV, and standup comedy show credits to her name, we’ve known for a long time that Wanda Sykes is one of the funniest women in the entertainment business. But when she came out in 2008 at a marriage equality rally in Las Vegas, we learned she was one of the bravest too. Since then the GLAAD award winner has become one of the gay community’s most prominent comedians. In fact, when she was the featured entertainer for the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in 2009, she became both the first African American woman and the first openly LGBT person to fill that role.

She’s never shy about speaking her mind. And on Saturday, May 16, Sykes

brings her latest standup comedy tour to Boston’s Wilbur Theatre. (For tickets, visit ticketmaster.com) But first, she took a few minutes to speak her brilliantly funny mind about hot topics like Dolce & Gabbana, Madonna—and why you won’t see her on stage in Indiana any time soon.

[SPIRIT] What will you be talking about on this tour? What’s on your mind?

[WANDA] My life. How’d I get here? I’m this black

girl from Virginia who went to a historically black college, pledged a black sorority, and now I’m married to this white lady with two little white kids. How the hell did I become a minority in my own home? [Laughs] Obviously there’s no prejudice going on, but there are things I have to be mindful of now. Things I just didn’t think about. There’s music I can’t listen to unless I’m by myself, because some of it drops the n-word. Or when racial issues happen in this country—ooh, it gets tense in my house. [Laughs] I’m looking at my wife like, “You better say the right thing!”

[SPIRIT] I typed the word “gay” into Google news, and picked the first three topics to come up, to get your take. Number One: Indiana’s religious freedom law.

[WANDA] The LGBT movement has seen

such tremendous progress. It’s so sad that there are these states hanging in there, trying to fight. It’s so sad. You just want to give them a hug and say, “Come on now—let it go. There are bigger fish to fry.” … These businesses don’t want to serve us? Well we don’t want to go where we’re not welcome. Just put a sticker of an asshole on the door of your establishment, and we’ll know not to come in. Or maybe a jackass. That’s probably more PC.

[SPIRIT] Will you bring it up when you tour there?

[WANDA] Honestly, I probably won’t be

booking anything in Indiana. No thank you, I don’t want to go where I’m not wanted.

[SPIRIT] You often tackle hot topics. Any controversial issues right now where you say, “I want to stay away from that”?

[SPIRIT] Number two: Dolce & Gabbana. (The fashion designers were recently quoted saying “We oppose gay adoptions. The only family is the traditional one.” They also referred to [WANDA] It’s not that I’m staying away from it; it’s more that I’m still trying to find a way children conceived through IVF as “synthetic.”) to make it funny. But probably how they’re [WANDA] These guys! I’m pissed because all piling it on women these days. Not that I have like four Dolce & Gabbana suits. we haven’t always been in the crosshairs.

Now what do I do? I’m pissed! I guess I But it really feels like you see all these laws could tear the labels out and write Gucci and crazy men who are trying to control on them or something. I love Italian suits. women and coming after a women’s right So Dolce and Gabbana, shut the fuck to choose. It’s pretty scary. That’s an issue up. Oh well, thank god for Rag & Bone.

I want to go after. But you have to find a way to make it humorous. I’ve talked about [SPIRIT] Number three: Madonna. She has a it before, so you have to find a fresh look. new album out. I suppose that is gay news.

In the social media age, comedians find every joke dissected—and many deemed offensive. It’s like a roomful of hecklers at your fingertips.

[SPIRIT] What do you think about social media and comedy?

[WANDA] I’m like any comic who really built

their career before social media: I hate it! You want to go on stage and say what you want to say. Sometimes the joke isn’t ready. Sometimes you have to test the joke.

Sometimes on our way to the joke it gets clumsy—there’s a slip. And if someone

[WANDA] Sometimes I want to say,

“Check your ID, Madonna.” Don’t get me wrong. I’m a fan. I love Madonna.

Maybe I’m just jealous because she’s in such better shape than I am. But she’s still a 56-year old woman with her ass out. I’m excited about her new album, though. It’s good. She was on Ellen and she seemed like she checked her ID. I think she’s right in her lane now. [x]

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