Cleo Creech and Collin Kelley

00:09 My name is Cleo Creech and I am 50 years old. Today is August 7th and we are in Atlanta Georgia, and I'm here with my friend Colin Kelly and my name is Colin Kelly. I'm 40 today is August 7th 2010. We are at the WABE studio in Atlanta, and I'm going to be interviewing my friend Cleo Creech.

00:31 And we've been talkin earlier about some of your experiences just I guess being gay in Atlanta and coming out and we've got a slight age difference, but we we've done a lot of stuff together. So I think I came a little bit earlier than you did and play its parents comment earlier. In Atlanta and I think it's kind of interesting that the Explorer that because I died was very much. It was very much a different. In time. Will you grew up on a tobacco farm in North Carolina? So what was it like moving to Atlanta and why did you move here and it's always interesting cuz Atlantis had always had this role is kind of being the gay capital of the South and it is always traditionally been this huge magnet for four people from Mattress Firm spell like the Carolinas, Tennessee, Alabama pretty much every all these

01:26 Otherwise means of gays and all these little Southern towns. They all I think dream of like coming to Atlanta cuz really it's the only place that has a community that you can really feel that you can move here and be yourself and express yourself. That is true. I was born in Atlanta, but I grew up in the south of the city and Fayetteville, which is a little suburb and even though I was living there. I always dreamed of coming to live in Atlanta because it just seems like that. That's where I needed to be that that's where that's where my people were and so I even even living that close to even if you could drive your like 30 minutes it seemed like I was like a hundred miles away from it, even then so and when I finally did get to move here in the in the in the 90s, I was excited to be here. Yeah. I remember when I was at school at Wake Forest in North Carolina, and I was going through a lot of difficult things and come to terms with my sexuality and

02:26 If I would be able to take these long road trips just to have to clear my mind and stuffing as as I was kind of funny things more and more the road trips at what time should be down to Charlotte and I'll just driving to Charlotte back and actually end up just driving from Winston-Salem to Atlanta and just it had that sense when I got here to it the city that Unity this is where I really need it, but you know why I really need to be so a lot of creative think we're both creative people you're a poet and a designer and I'm a novelist in a poet and journalist in a lot of people who are in the creative arts like this. They move on to San Francisco or Los Angeles or New York. So why haven't you been always liked?

03:11 Atlanta being a southern city and I've always had a very much identified as being Southern and all that kind of entails and I always knew I never really saw the conflict between being out and gay with being Southern and now he's like having those things together. It's always been interested in the early days. There are a lot of people that moved to Atlanta and like couldn't take it. I mean couldn't really they was too much of a big city formally move back to the Carolinas for Alabama wherever but a lot of people that did well in Atlanta, it was always a stepping stone either like New York or La as a lot of people went out to San Francisco. Like I'm resetting my phone and it was always interesting that we always ended up losing some of the best people but I'll always was comfortable here and it was it was upset. I think so tied in with my identities of Southern game in this is your life. We're always thought. I was at home. I think to me staying here. Now that George has become such a conservative that's staying here is almost

04:11 Form of protest it is because you know where the reddest of the red States then if they if they actually do legalize gay marriage Crossland. We will fight it to the death. I'm sure to try to do to stop it but I do feel although I've traveled around the world now and I love a lot of other cities. I always seem to wind up back here because I have so many friends and my family is here and there is something about being here and being gay in Atlanta and in Georgia this feels like it's it's a form of protest. It really does an inside. The perimeter in Atlanta is it's almost as island of liberal it is and creativity and what are the list I published about what the gayest cities in America are at some of them are really surprising cuz they're in these really conservative States if that brighten the island and Atlanta is definitely the island where there is a

05:11 Big gay community in a big you no more liberal Progressive community and we've actually been talkin earlier about some of her earlier experiences was just as far as you're going out in some of the institutions and borrow some stuff therapy the I guess the gay scene in Atlanta has changed so much just since I came out cuz I came out when I was 16 Wishes in the 80s and and started going to clubs when I was 18. That wasn't always legal. Wish I was doing that. I had the fake ID like so many teens have but there were there were so many places to go in the in the 80s Petras which was a really great night club and week weekend with a brake light in the town of the first place. I ever went and went with some friends. We all use our fake IDs to get it out. And and then later on there was Live Aid of which were they did the great drag shows and I still miss all three devices.

06:11 Maximum out earlier actually, I think the very first gay club I went to Atlanta was the old Sweetgum had which was on Cheshire Bridge Run has a huge drag club and it's now a strip joint. But it also Backstreet which was in the Backstreet Boys Everybody Everybody by Backstreet's but you know right next door to the Armory where they had the armored rat show and you can get cheap drinks the Aaron people seem to kind of start their evening there then move on to Backstreet's in that kind of has had the cheap drinks and we've kind of grown is a city. We've lost some of we've lost some of the businesses in the club and some of that made it seem much more vibrant than it does now, which is very odd to me at one point. Midtown was such obviously the center of gay Atlanta. It is not so much. It's spread out United. This is bitters good things and bad things about that, but you are now there's over.

07:11 Tell got label is the gay ghetto in Atlanta, which now, it's really not because you know gay lesbian people have moved out to the suburbs condos. Yes. It's it really has changed. But you know, I remember you know, Petra switch was was mostly a straight club, but then on the weekends, they have the Sunday tea dance, so I might like the Limelight. Yes also and and so it was just another seem to be a lot of you know, it seems like there was more freedom than there is now well which is beer, you know, and I remember the one of the big bars on it to you when I first got here is Miss Pease on Ponce which was a notorious bar and it was back when Bars were very dark tint you kind of plays on if I may have the huge back room. That was just there just purely to have sex right and that's just that's a whole different.

08:11 Are those dirty dark bars didn't even get going till 4 in the morning and all the other bars close at night and with the with the rebuilding of Midtown and all the condo who's in the new business all that seems to kind of been kind of wiped away and and the lesbian clubs you have a lot of friends were lesbians and they always took me to the other side from the sports page Sports Page and the other one lesbian bar in town my sisters room and also knew we had AIDS came along and just changed everything everything everything. He used to work at the Pharr Road Library for the referral was really interesting that was set up to look like a librarian was really just got time cuz it was a big trap bar. It was he had to wear a polo shirt. Yes, you do topside nice and I think you might have been working there when I first started coming there. We probably saw each other. I'm sure I'm sure yeah, and it was really a

09:11 Listen, cuz at the time it was too far and drinks on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I will be packed on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Wednesday night was the big night for cheap drinks at Miss Pease. So the same people you would see at the property on Tuesday in the polos. And khakis my Topsiders you'd see it in his keys like on Wednesday in their leather harnesses and we worry, you know, the the it was always playing C&C Music Factory or black box. That was the music all the time albums on Loops. It was a lot of time so that you lost your speaking of age. You lost your partner David at the very beginning of that AIDS epidemic. So what was that like and how have things changed well,

10:02 This was way back when they didn't even know what it was at the time. He just started getting sick. So what year was that? That would have been early 90s I get high but I mean if I'm there wasn't even a test and he got sick and kept going to the hospital and it was at the time when yet it was a scary time and it was just emerging that there was this crisis going on in there was all kinds of wild speculation what was causing it had really identified the virus yet. And but by the time we got around to having even a test that you could do, you know that you took your blood testing center off it would be weeks to get results. He was already sick and

10:46 It was one of those, you know the time he had his horrible TV movies like an early frog, you know, it was that times ten cuz he went through just that horrible line illness and sickness and even at the end when

11:00 You decide not to do the hospital thing anymore came home just basically a pass away. It was supposed to be three weeks and it being 6 months have like a round-the-clock nursing care and I was having to change out of these and then at the same time to I was working Coca-Cola and had to go into work every day pretending like there's really nothing else. There's nothing going on right now. That was he that kind of a shock and then why was my Uncle Terry Graves. He he contracted AIDS in the 80s. He was living in San Francisco at the time and then he moved back to Atlanta and dumb.

11:38 He died and B passed away and in 1994 and it was that was he had the long it was a long illness. There were the drugs, you know, weren't the drug cocktails. I have now one available and it was you know, it was just a beer and I remember when I had my first aid test was 1988. That's when I've had my first AIDS and it did it took 2 weeks to get the results back and that whole two weeks. You were just absolutely just anxiety ridden cuz even though even though you're like all I've been say I've been said everything's fine. You're still like but there's that what is a factor and it was a very scary time and how did that affect you that you being young and coming out and having that someone in your family? Well, I mean I was you know, it was my mother's care guys with my my mother's brother and I've been fairly close to him. He was a really nice guy and you know, he did come out very early.

12:38 I'm out in the early 70s and I remember when he and his partner. Do you know I was there I was a kid. I was like five or six years old. They were they were packing up to leave Atlanta to move San Francisco. And I remember going to their apartment they lived over on morosgo drive right off Lindbergh and I remember going there and get him watching them pack up and I remember him saying, you know, we've got to get out of the sound we have that move west. We have to go to San Francisco because that's where everything is happening. And and he he really flourish out there and then had a terrible accident in the late late 70s or a he was like 1980 he fell from a third-story window and he had to have

13:24 Massive blood transfusion. So the thing is is we are still unsure today whether he contracted AIDS from unprotected sex or from the blood transfusions at the hospital in San Francisco. Cuz I work testing the the blood donations then so it was never clear how he contracted but his partner when he passed his he is partner that he's been with for like nearly 10 years at that time and also contracted a so he died just a few months before my uncle did so is something that was there was a very very sad, how did your family but however, they were always been supportive of my my mother and her brother were very close and my his partner. My dad was a with a plumbing contractor, you know, and you know, the suburbs of Atlanta, you know Baptist Southern and he

14:24 Get my my uncle's partner can get a job anywhere else because he's been sick and so my father gave him a job, which I thought was amazing, you know, because my dad grew up in the rule South and my mother was a county as they used to say, you know, she was grew up a little more fluent, you know, and but they were just very very supportive and my uncle had a very close circle of friends who were always there, but it was it was very difficult but things have changed so much since 1994 when he passed, you know, can you talk a little bit of a curse because you do you are hiv-positive.

15:10 Cancel hiv-positive just one David was and is from the blood work started coming through number-wise. I wasn't that far behind him. Right? And so but we have this there's a kind of a dynamic going on where every time a new drug would come out. He would just miss being able to take advantage of it. He'd be a little too sick or whatever and I was just in time to take advantage of it. So even though we were kind of like, you know the time I think when he passed away the doctor said, well, you probably have another six months to a year but your pets this is what you have to look forward to basically and but the password of diverging with an emergency like a ZTE and I buy drugs and I was very proactive and going to the National Institute of Health for drug studies and getting in an experimental stuff. Even when I lived in Florida for a while and

16:02 So it was interesting see that the virgins there were like he just could never take advantage of anything, but I was able to take advantage of stuff in as in a different regiments wore out. I had it I always there's always I was always on the very latest thing and just as that was wearing out for me. The next thing would just come available. So you've been hiv-positive for 25 years 25 years and with no real side effect snow in a big hospital stays. So I've been incredibly Fortunate Son That's genetics but does not seem like so many of my friends passed away and everything you just horrible diseases to having a friend who just had a heart infection without even knowing that he was positive display had a heart attack one day and died.

16:51 Fast you'd better has changed. My one of my ex-partners from around 1992. He passed away just two years ago from AIDS and which was shocking to me as people think people don't die anymore because there's the drug cocktails and and you know, and he did he passed away from complications due to AIDS and and that was just it was even though I knew people were still dying it still shocked me that he passed away. So that's those two people in the closest to me who have passed Remy. I've known others who have passed away but you know clothes that I was in a relationship with her family, you know my uncle and then my partner those were popular in the peak of the epidemic back in the crisis days, right? Probably a good Sunday 5 90% of my whole circle passed away and

17:49 It was kind of a sad thing for you wouldn't just not hear from somebody for a while cuz I'll people didn't want to go let people know there was sick. They would move back home or you they were just kind of disappear. And then you almost afraid to ask like poor people have been and I've had several people over the years come up to being up. Oh my God, you're still around and they had just assumed I passed away, right? Because the thing is if you don't see somebody in the gay community for 5-10 years, you just like, yeah, so well, let's talk a little bit about now. I know we're both politically active for both activist. So can you talk about your early activism days? How do you know if it was just kind of General gay rights? And will you talk to her about the whole crackle Cracker Barrel Cracker Barrel backed up switch over the AIDS crisis and I think Ben David passed away. That was one way for me to kind of cope with that whole thing. I'd really jumped headfirst into night act up and protest.

18:49 Member protesting the vice presidential debates with Gordon and quail that were at Georgia Tech and there's always lots of stuff coming up and when I always have combat Core group right that you had to go from organization organization. They've always kind of been there. So it's always been kind of interesting to follow that and I marched in my first pride parade in 1990. I was just I was 19. I think when I did that so in a group or just as yourself friend of the time and then another small group of friends, and that was when I it was really the 90s when the the pride parade started really a growing in the whole Pride Celebration Atlanta, you know through the 80s will it start in the 70s in the early seventies and it's just progressively started but it was the 90s after Bill Clinton got into office and there seem to be a little bit more progression of even though

19:49 Define don't ask don't tell there seem to be a little bit more freedom to be who you were in the nineties. And so there was a lot more activism going on and there more people coming out in the 90s and you start saying gay characters on television in the 90s and you know, they seem to be you know, what time of freedom in and progress which all died. When when George W bush became president Lana community and I think hit dollar across the country the whole Anita Bryant thing. I wish or just as there every was getting this feeling of me. I were Community we can come out we can express ourselves and there's his backlash Grande community. So there's this feeling we really have to like Step Up write a check out. Right? And then of course we were both we went we went together with a group of people when they when they the first Proposition 8 right when it was passed in California, and now it's been overturned and hopefully permanently, so, can you talk about you? What do you want to talk about the

20:49 About yeah, I know. What are your feelings about gay marriage, by the way, I used to be one of those people that was pretty much fine with civil union rep me to me to now but the conversation I think I move to the whole marriage thing and it got moved there by the conservative did so once they were using it as a scare tactic in a weighted to shore up their base and and raise money. Yes, they're the people who kind of created the whole it's true and turn in it's almost like they're going to make it an issue. That's that's why I want right, right exactly because I think if you know when when Clinton was in office are getting ready to let me know if there had been if we had kind of moved toward having civil unions. Everyone have been fine have civil unions in many countries are in the UK, which is still stuns me that they got several Nations before we did but if that had happened at that had progressed that would have been fine. It would been fine and we wouldn't be at this place, but you know, we've been kind of

21:49 Push to that place and so it's you have to push back and I think it's really interesting especially with with the way the decisions right now is that it's actually it's not like his limbs are pushing marriage Society at the decisions written where I'm going from a conservative standpoint that you know, the government really doesn't have any business keeping gays and lesbians from getting married exactly. But it's almost a thing. You know, why is Dago Red even what is this kind of interference even exists exactly the same with the Defense of Marriage Act, which you may go down as well so we can hope we can help let's talk about the arts and culture. We are both Europe and for your poet and a designer. So talk to him about being in the artist Community here in Atlanta, Georgia.

22:49 Interstate and my background background actually in studio Ceramics in printmaking. I was actually a studio assistant teacher at callanwolde Arts Center for 2 years has a lot of my background for the visual arts. It's been very interesting in your going back to some of the old days. There was a very much a big underground scene in Atlanta and we talked about the Mattress Factory sharings which was huge for years because it was basically arts groups taking over an abandoned warehouse and it wasn't even a judge show is basically showed up and got in line holding your painting right and they kind of it was kind of like one of those things where they open the door it when stores are having big sales and everybody rushes in and tries to grab the best wall. And yeah, yeah, it was it was amazing and I wasn't an event of a huge cat and I I've been a poet I guess longer than I've done anything else is a ride or and I remember going over to the old.

23:48 Stadium space over on on Highland Avenue and they had the big Open Mic there. That's where I first started reading poetry and then over to Java Monkey in Decatur, which is where we met reading poetry and

24:05 And now I'm part of I'm on. I'm on the board of poetry Atlanta and I've written three books of poetry A lot happened in the last 15 or 20 years and you're very much tied in with us with what you do, but actually the community at the writing Community is so you're very instrumental in helping other people get stuff done. And in what I just I think there's there's a real lack of that in Atlanta actually is that people, you know ride or specifically and Poets even more specifically there so few opportunities for poets that you know, what everyone's kind of out for themselves. So I just kind of created this role for myself and I was going to be the person if I found a new poet who I really love and thought they need to be exposed. I was going to try to get them a venue or help them get published or whatever I could do and I'm still trying to do that cuz I just think that you know poetry just kind of that.

25:05 Become that Niche part of literature America, you know kind of pushed to the back of the shelf. And you know, I still love it even though I'm writing fiction now. So how do you think being gay and that backgrounds influence the writing and that really aren't Southern per se and maybe it's because I travel so much and I kind of you know, I kind of I know it's kind of a cliche but I kind of feel like a citizen of the world, you know, but I kind of feel like I can't take my upbringing with me wherever I go when I kind of filter other places through being trailered, I love going to the UK. I love London. That's one of my favorite places in the world. I just got back there from teaching it worse to college at Oxford University and it's that's still my favorite place. I love it. But yeah, I always wind up back here. So I wanted to touch

26:05 Briefly on the the chat book that you edited called outside the green zone which you did. It's been for 5 years ago and it's still resonating. So yeah, it's about when I guess we first got started getting involved in a rock the government made of kind of a deal with a rock to based on political expediency to okay a constitutional rock that was based that allow shared Sharia law now that's very unfriendly to gay and lesbians and actually it's constitutional a lot of people realize that it's constitutionally protected in a rock to execute and kill gay people lesbians and there's police squads gotten do it if it's an if it's an honor killing within a family, it's just kind of accepted. So we did a Anthology with a lot of Atlanta poets, but other people as well kind of addressing those issues and ended up getting a commendation from the UN and

27:05 A lot of food, but we had a couple of fundraisers around it. But I'd lie enough when I did it. I really thought it was going to be one of those things that like a very topical kind of okay, this is happening. Now. It's going to be resolved and here now like five-six years later like you're saying it's nothing's really changed the situation in Iraq. Now the situation for lesbians and gays, so it's it's very kind of unnerving that something that really was just really kind of a very topical. Let's get his house. I was afraid that I had to get it done immediately cuz I was almost afraid by the time I got it done it was going to be relevant anymore and sadly it's still it's still very very very love it. So and any discontinue cuz I know that Franklin Abbott who was one of the contributors his Pace that he's sending his being turned into a choral work. Yeah by the Charlotte gay men's chorus the poems that are in the book. They are powerful poems they discontinue to to have left.

28:05 Eggs, which is sad. Yeah it is but I think it also underlines one of the great powers of poetry and Poets that you know your weekend kind of help highlight some of those social things going on in Injustice is on whatever and I've always thought one of the big coming from a very conservative Southern background. I think one of the gifts I was being gay. Okay be kind of assumed that Outsider roll and I think being gay it forces you to question everything and I think we carry that into so many other aspects of our life and it's specially useful in poetry and writing because I think we are forced to take kind of a critical outsiders look at things and really in really questioned so much so much stuff that other people would just take for granted now, we're both involved in the Atlantic for a literary Festival, which is it's the it's there's only two gay and lesbian literary festivals in the country. They're Saints and Sinners in New Orleans and there.

29:05 So I think it's amazing that your family that's to actually but there's something about also that we the organization the events call the Atlantic. We are literary Festival that that word queer still raised as a lot of hackles. Yeah. It was in the LGBT community. It raises some act right we can advertise in certain places or gets there first gets banned. A lot of people take it a lot of people equate it to the n-word in the black community, right and some people and some people have the argument or you have to embrace that you have to own a ever make your own. So other people going well, you know, we just need to get past it and I think I think that is I think that's happening. I think that there's cuz I remember when Queer as Folk the that which you know with a UK series first and then it was the Showtime series win when that came out. I think that kind of started I actually think that show can start breaking down the stigma around that word and no more people who embrace the word queer.

30:05 Play two more to the a lifestyle approach and approach interview philosophy. Right? So what are your feelings on just on gay and lesbian literature right now to ensure your part of the the Literati? Where do you think we are right now as far as that there's a big debate on post gay literature now because a lot of people say the Gaylord for basically amounts to coming out stories, right and 3 I think for decades that was basic gay literature Stories the struggles of coming out all the old Corvette doll stuff and right and you weren't there. Traffic even would like Tennessee Williams and a lot of the people that are really pointed out as great a great writers and great.

30:57 Yeah, I am troubled by some of that because a lot of it was people were just glad it was just mentioned that somehow that just the mention of being gay or lesbian. No matter what the context I mean weather was a killer or somebody who was just terribly confused and ruin and everyone else's life that just because people were dealing with a subject. It was somehow moving forward and I think you know, there's the the film that was just out that we saw The Kids Are Alright. Yeah with Annette Bening and Julianne Moore playing lesbian parents of adopted kids, and I thought what was so great about that movie is it it really wasn't about the fact that they were lesbian.

31:39 Then you get that spent the day with you more about the adoptive in the the the the sperm donor coming back into their lives and family. Are you in a fight who were having just a life, you know, and so I'm hoping there's more stories like that. Well, I mean then to get into the whole argument about how mainstream should Gay Culture get right? I mean do we want to be a are we wanting us to be absorbed into everyday society and be seen to we want to be seen as just regular couples and or you know, there's almost some new people go back to the years the fear of assimilation. Definitely people go back to the 70s.

32:21 You no answer. Well, that was the. When we were so being so, you know crucified Community we had because we were forced to build a community, right? So all people at what's happening with that now personally, even if we get gay marriage across the land and there's you know, you know benefits and adoption is allowed now that I still never think I'd never will that the gay lesbian Community will never be mainstream right and I'm using the air quotes and I just don't think we ever will obey I just think there's there will always be

33:02 You know, none of philia stigma to always. Do, you know kind of a bit of a invisible wall there? So there's a huge opportunity there for a literature poetry. There is it's not just about coming out there. Most definitely there is so much more in there that you know, it's like how you walk those fine lines and make those distinctions how we're alike, but different Cleo. Thank you so much for doing this today for doing story-telling. This is a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun.