Michael Jackson and André Pérez

00:04 My name is Andre Paras. I am 26 years old. Today's date is September 24th. I am in the Chicago Cultural Center. My name is Michael Jackson. I'm 71 years old and today's date is September 24th, 2014 and I am in the Chicago Cultural Center at about what was your family like my family conventional for a few years. It was my mother my father my sister. I was born in 1943. So that was the two years before the end of World War II in London. I don't remember anything about it, but we have lots of family stories about the war in the V1 Rockets coming over from the Nazis and at the age of 3 is my first memory.

01:04 We moved from my aunts house right off the the war in 1946 up to place called Northolt in Westland. And about half an hour's Drive North of Heathrow Airport. And that was for the house I grew up in and I only sold a couple of years ago when I had to finally move my mother into a home. My father was a pacifist but joined up for World War I because the alternative was to go down the mines and my mother grew up in a mining community in South Wales, and she said they got married in 1957. She said if you go down the mine and she said I'm leaving you a joined-up instead, but he was eternally grateful that he never had to fire a gum during World War II even though he

02:04 Selective Service in 44 and 45 and was ended up the war in Germany. We were pretty conventional family hadn't got much money. I didn't we still had rationing when I was a small child and so wasn't until about 10 that I ever heard of things like chocolate and candy or sweets as we would have called them in England. They just went there because you needed to use your ration book coupons on more important things. I also remember us a child thankful to America being thankful to Americans because they were worried about the nutrition for British children. So we used to get concentrated orange juice and cod liver oil. The orange juice was bad enough because we never I don't know why but we never die you to death with water.

03:04 So it was always pretty intense. You just used to get a spoonful of light medicine every day when I was quite small and the

03:15 Public Royal was just like that at all, but I've been pretty healthy all my life. So I guess I've had good genes and the combination of good nutrition when I was young seems to have benefited me the sad thing about my childhood was that I my sister died when I was about nine and she was just five she had meningitis and that I always remember my parents shielding me from the funeral and the soda grieving process nice to be a little indignant but not voicing my thoughts then and as a young child just because I felt love I needed some sympathy too because she was my sister.

04:10 What was it? Like when your sister had meningitis it was all over in it happened within light 12. Oz she woke up one morning and started vomiting 3 hours later. She had a rash and like three hours after that. She was unconscious and an hour or so after that she was dead. So I remember my mother late afternoon when my sister finally went unconscious asking me to run around to have friends who lived across the other side of the Railway Bridge and I did so and I ran all the way it was August and I remember that feeling the backs of the cops if my leg feeling like lead weights.

05:02 I couldn't run fast enough and I knew I had to keep running and not to the sticks if it's one of my to the early childhood memories of that.

05:14 Did your family understand how severe it was how severe it was? My father was a traveling salesman at the time and this is before cell phones. Of course, I love has no means of reaching Amy was somewhere in London and my mother had to deal with in their own her own a local GP was on vacation and we couldn't track down any other doctor and so it was just a question about Jewish Neighbors coming in with a bottle of brandy was about the Anis of the sukkah that she had until my father plus the fact that my father's mother my grandmother on his side and his eldest brother had both committed suicide. So cool sign you learned about this in later years as an adult, but my mother was not only crushed about seeing her daughter slip away from her.

06:14 Worried how to present it to my father and wondering whether he would commit suicide because we had that history in the family fortune athlete that didn't happen. And then you went on to live many happy is my mother to this day since they're wonder what it would have been like if I ain't lived in you never really get out of that. Damn. How do you think it's infected you as a gay man? I think it's impacted me not that was a shock to my system somites of the views about death was so deformed at an early age knowing the impact of it and and I like to think that we would have grown up very close and that she would have been very supportive of me and my lifestyle.

07:08 Habitat cool schnitzel in a conjecture

07:13 I'm so then how how did you start coming to the recognition that you were gay? Haha that recently and I don't really know except that. I remember when I heard sluz School particularly in high school when I was beginning to become sexually aware. I remember thinking well, I don't see anything wrong with that if somebody and I feel numb a man likes another man or a woman likes another woman. What why are these people also the bent out of shape over it because I don't see any harm in that and I remember one day must have been when I was about 14 or 15 walking down from the train station to school, which is about two blocks.

08:06 And with three or four guys and inferences front of us with three or four girls, and we were now mid-teens and my friends in our group, did one morning on the burgeoning hits of the goals in front of us Hoover Al friends in our class and they were talking about the sexual attraction, but they found that to be with developing breasts in the hips widening and I was sort of thinking while I know it was something wrong with me, but don't do beans for me know interested and I remember the I've never been into sports and I remember the only time I enjoyed going down to the sports field when I was in high school was to watch one of the older boys putting the shots.

08:59 Because he was built like the proverbial Outhouse and had a lovely Italian 822 Dusky skin and Rippling by said I was in heaven when you finish putting the shop then the rest of it the whole that silly stop chasing a little less the ball around a soccer field in cold temperatures and wet mud was for the birds attraction like you remember the first crush you have

09:40 I do other people that if you go to your crush that one must I remember syrup.

09:47 Struggling with that idea. Nothing that I sort of felt more attracted towards men than I did to women, but I've always got home with women and then high school and that was born out recently will 10 years ago when I went to a high school reunions, it was the girls in the class that I was friends with them all but nothing too sexual. It was no sexual attraction that I was just quite happy to do you know who hang around with the girls and talk with the girls and people respected that recently just think I just lost month. I was in London and a friend of mine that I had known slightly when I was in high school. She was in the same school, but the year above me her husband plays golf and he found somebody at his golf club, but knew me from the high school.

10:45 And you said oh, I remember Mike Jackson. He was not such a kind guy and he hadn't even been in my class and he's perfectly straight and I hardly knew it. I knew his name, but I can't remember ever sold of socializing with him at all and yet obviously in high school he remembered me so I don't know what the interaction was there. That's the tea tired all those years, but that was so damn nice to hear that and I'm hoping to meet him next time I go to London in it. So what was it like to come out?

11:25 I said it took me till I was twenty-five and I heard already by that time. I had been in India for 18 months out of the year in Hamburg. Which looking back home was a chronic waste of time because being gay in Hamburg, you know, even in the 60s that was a place to be they had gay bathhouses in the oldest of the thing and I never even found out about until after I'd left.

11:59 And I had a year 18 months in India and a year in Doha Qatar, which is then was unheard of now. It's in the news every day and ongata. I had a couple of what I would cold ropings with a couple of out of friends, but never anything sews really satisfactory because most out of man will play with another guy just because there aren't any women around is a very masculine Society the few women the weather in the country were all under heavy Veil especially in it and a lot of the men with expatriates like myself from all over the United the Middle East Palestinians Rockies syrians Lebanese and

12:54 So I'm sort of traveling along and one day the wife of world husband and wife who were very good friends of mine. Her husband's name was Mike and he was also tall and slim phrase similar people used to get us confused at parties because they suck that we both have the same name so that I often used to get people used to think that I was at a heads husband. No, that's the other Mike but the three of us has to be paid off and go around together and one afternoon when everybody is in Siesta and the Sleep the town sleeps In the Heat of the afternoon in the Middle East.

13:36 Does a knock on my door and it's Anahit who was a flat chested charismatic Charming wife of my friend Mike and she's backing me into my own bedroom and getting me into bed. It was all her all her pushing me and we actually had sex. I think it was sort of okay, but I remember feeling more guilty about the fact that she was my friend's wife, but then answer the puzzle then try to work out because it was such an unexpected shocking and planned as to you know, what she doing this for him cuz I really just wasn't interested.

14:27 And then a little while after that I was in the India on vacation leave from the bank and I was staying with my successor in the bank, dacian that I used to live in and I was met at the airport by a girl that I met when I was in Bombay the first time I belong to a group called Bombay Madrigal singers of organization, I'd had the privilege and fun of singing in Rigoletto and Faust and Performing faure's Requiem, and also playing a minor part in an amateur production of Passage to India about young. And also another play with the British women's Association.

15:25 And

15:27 I met this girl Andrea she was going she was six foot tall again flat-chested seems to be the gay guys seem to when it's still trying to figure things out. They seem to go for the flat chested girls. She was a model she was go and she was Catholic very pretty Weston Weston eyes. She could wear sarees like nobody else and miniskirts and anything else. She was professional about it.

16:01 She used to Simba.

16:04 She taught Michael anyway, she was very attractive and we were good friends. So I took her out to dinner and I'm sitting at a realizing that.

16:26 She had totally when she was totally expecting and having being away from India for a year. She was totally expecting me to come back and marry her but I don't think this right away because I had no intention of that by being straight she to being a good catch. She was a fine person. But this time I just knew it wasn't going to work. So I took her back to her family home doing the right thing roach release of the next day actually, but when I got back to the apartment, my colleague in the bank was having a wingding off a party. There was lots of Air India flight attendants and must have been 30 or 40 people and people with dashing off into the bedrooms that had sex since I got drinking my hand probably had a couple by then and I'm sitting on one of those

17:26 Sofa seats or on the arm of the chair or something chatting to any Ronnie nightclub dancer named Mockingbird.

17:35 And I don't know that you got conversation. But anyway, although his wife was across the other side of the room his wife and dancing partner in the local hotel scene. He's making the date with me for the next day.

17:52 So he came round and that was my first real sex with a man and right off the woods. I thought nobody you can tell me this is wrong.

18:03 This was so perfect was so marvellous and I was so happy. My phone did Michael Caine and they asked for another date and he said Michael he said that was a good experience and he said that you are not for me.

18:23 You said what if you want to know the date you said I'll get you one. So I thought blind date India contact Disney Ronnie nightclub dancer. I need U cated but as I found out latex clearly understood people cuz boy, did he get me right? How did a tuna Terrace Cafe upscale Terrace Cafe on the ocean from to Bombay House at 6 Saturday night and in walks this six-foot tall handsome lawyer by age drop dead gorgeous and we sit down and we go out. We meet a friend of his who's into Sailors. So we go down with Sue do remember his friends named Sue do we drove he had the cops was useful thing in the 60s in India, so we went down to the pool.

19:23 Siri I need picked up a couple of sailors and we've been back to suit his place and I spent the next 18 hours with Rumi this Posse lawyer and we're still friends and he's now practicing law in Littleton Colorado. And so that was some of my coming-out story but I knew then that nobody no official no parent. No authority figure could tell me this was wrong. We hadn't heard anybody we had both being very happy and it was a blissful experience. So,

20:04 I've been sitting never look back on that.

20:07 Sounds like this is a very like personal exploration and a sense. But what happened when you brought that kind of personal revelation into your life. I told other people.

20:24 That was a very gradual process probably over the next.

20:30 405 years it was before I had this conversation with my parents by then. I told a few friends. I didn't mention anything about it obviously to my employer in the Middle East over when I got off the plane from India.

20:51 I was meant by one of my colleagues who had known me in London office and I was actually replacing him he was going to be moving on somewhere and he was gay. He was a sort of like an Oscar Wilde type figure. He he should have been in theater theatrical production. You spoke like you imagined Oscar Wilde would have spoken about how you look like pic quick, but he can get sex from any man. He just knew he claimed to have sex and I can quite well believe it with US Marines guarding the American Embassy in Kuwait Cena.

21:40 And anyway Christopher met me at the airport and he had my number to I said how did you know and he said Michael he said no straight guy goes back to India for vacation. And so we took me to a party with parties in the Middle East with the bank crew at that time with very mixed. So it was straight some gays everywhere and I remember being offered a ride home by a handsome Palestinian also at my age if I found out he's a year younger than me because I was talking to him on the phone a couple of weeks ago and I don't think we ever actually had sex, but but he was suddenly I was trying to get into my circle the trouble walls with the bank.

22:35 Was that they moved you around at a moment's notice and in my twenties, it was fun having one night stands with whoever you can find sneaking in boys like my boss in Abu Dhabi.

22:51 Was known he had the bank car which was a big mistake ades and he was known to go out and pick up some Molly boys and put them under the dashboard and bring them into the bank compound and slide them into his house. He also had a dog this high and we used to reckon that when he couldn't find somebody boys used to fuck the dog.

23:16 And this is my boss.

23:22 Life is a little different from Chicago. So what happens when you tell your family? Well, I never told them they all asked me because I was by then I was living in the states and here in Chicago and my mother flew out for a visit and when we go back to my apartment cuz I was 30 by then and she just said I had an African-American boyfriend at the time John.

24:01 And he she just said your father and I think that John means a little bit more to you than you're letting on to us. So I thought in a quick flash one of the few times I thought I'm not going to lie about it as if you're right. So we had tears for the next 3 hours. We talked into this late into the night ideas for my mother of tears from Maine went to bed rather on happy and everything but kept walking the next day and I found some books for my mother to read evening those days in the seventies the review books coming out on parrot food parents and Friends of lesbians and gays to deal with the situation and my mother and my father both intelligent people and compassionate. My mother couldn't believe that I didn't want to tell her because

24:56 She couldn't believe that I thought she might kick me out of the house. So I was too old for that by then, but she said no she stole my son and my father wrote me a very nice letter when you my mother spoke to him and which I have to this day. Which began I don't mind. He said you'll still my son. That's the important thing and so they would always it was never an issue beyond that and by then most of my friends knew on my pee has never and ever had any problem to this day. My best friend is somebody that I've known from the beginning of what was grammar school for us, but I've known since he was about 9, so we both 9 or 10 years old and he and he's a straight as a die but was we've been friends all our lives and good friends. I still going to visit him. He's

25:56 Visited me here in Chicago. I go to visit him with his family and in England when I'm over that and if I come get to visit him because of time constraints been getting together. We usually managed to me to the Krypton some mountains in the fields and London law of Trafalgar Square where there's a Wonderful Buffet lunch. We going to have a buffet and then adjourn to a pop and have a chat for 2 hours to shoot the breeze. So I've had good friends farting sound Mighty go from a point in your life or your kind of more isolated, you know, when having to move around a lot to being in Chicago and you're really involved in the gay men's chorus. Can you talk about you know coming to Chicago and like finding a sense of community, right?

26:50 The reason I came to Chicago went anywhere from the Middle East, you know, go to hell for the Middle East was to settle down and I knew then by wanted a steady relationship and I had a good relationship with this African American guy Joe on whose side they died last year and he was talented he he could design and make evening gowns for his workmates to go on cruises and sell them to them without batting an eyelid at $1,000 a throw in 1974 prices.

27:32 He was good. He could cook you could sing Blues on Rush Street and a dive he could get up on Sunday morning and going and seeing Bach and some flukes in Evanston that man had talents in which attracted me if it is very very attracted and good-looking too, but he didn't want a relationship at the time so that in didn't so I could go anywhere we Pals around for about 4 years together, and I was looking for somebody else and

28:07 It was just about the time the windy city. The gay chorus movement was just of a starving. I think they had groups in New York and San Francisco and an item called Richard Skyrim was trying to stop a group here in Chicago. I miss their first concert before another friend told me about the group and I song in high school and also with it in Bombay a little bit. So I thought that sounds like something that I would find fun. And so I joined up and then Richard had the first ever gay and lesbian Association, of course it choral directors and manages here in Chicago and I went to the opening night party because I was hosting I had a a hide-a-bed foot a double height of bed and I was going to get two guys from Portland, Oregon to stay with me for the weekend.

29:07 I'm going around the room with the Posse looking for them. I came across Fred. He was the manager of the New York.

29:17 City gay men's chorus

29:21 And we got on well.

29:26 And ended up spending the night together. So I had three guys. I was going to potty that week with Fred and he woke up the next morning and said to me said I know I'm not supposed to say this he said but I think I'm in love with you.

29:45 And we spent

29:48 Well, we had a long-distance relationship for a year while he was wrapping up things in New York. And then he phoned me one day and said we talked about moving together and he said are you ready? And I said yes. With the rest and he said I'll be there in a couple of weeks and we spent the next 30 Years together. The reason why we broke up was in the end was not conflict. It was the we had drifted apart. He also had trouble with a mild form of Asperger's so the autism witch.

30:38 He's very very clever, but you caused attracted me to him.

30:45 And but very very weak on social skills.

30:51 And as you can probably guess from talking with me this this morning, I like that people around and I like to talk and I like to socialize my light the following I like to party and so it wasn't a complete but we just no longer had anything of Interest together. We still get all we see each other professionally we do back of book indexing and I'll be helping him put up the 2016 conference getting that organized here in Chicago and we'll work together fine on that. But that was what I post in the private life of become a sort of business relationship. Is it adjusts aloof?

31:37 Dyed is natural death and the mutual friend who visited me and went out to dinner one night with Fred recently reported back that we both a lot have here.

31:53 And we just sold a nice in a way that there hasn't been that conflict we manage. We did have a domestic partnership in Cook County which we had to have dissolved to separate and we be any problems. We had separate bank accounts with our lives. And the only thing we had in our joint names was a two-flat in Rogers Park. So we had to get a formal separation so that we could sell that and split the proceeds it touch with the vet.

32:28 Got through that in a few months without much problem, and he thanked me for it cuz I had to bail him out a little financially and I really wasn't worth fighting over. You know, we both got what we wanted out of it and

32:43 So that's good. So I enter retirement now so that alone but busy making friends and that's why I joined the central on. It is it's another group to you. Meet people and find people of your own with with similar interest yourself, cuz I going to have that you've been getting out for very long time. How do you think life is changing LGBT people? It's funny. I listen I listen to some of my colleagues at the senior voice Center on Halsted and think that I must have led a Charmed Life cuz it seems to me it seems to be quite easy and I haven't had an encounter with very many problems at all.

33:38 So I think one of the things that's changed is that

33:50 Although there are still issues and I hear might you know, I believe what my colleagues at the same to tell me that there are still things that we need to get correct it and

34:01 And teach them the community-at-large about the gay community and then being gay, but I think it's we've made it a lot easier the other night. I Monday evening a friend asked me to volunteer at a performance at Orchestra Hall of these Chicago Sinfonietta and my job to the evening was to pass out little Flyers about the bee has that cuz there's a beer tasting along with the concert. So Indie before and during the intermission is handing out these little flies. So these people coming down the line after they had their ID checked and they were old enough to have the samples of beer and everything. I needs to young man about your age dressed to the peak of fashion.

34:58 I'm woke back in London in the fifties and sixties. We used to call minced down the aisle and I looked at them and they both laughed and thought back then yes, you know 40 years ago. You couldn't you wouldn't have seen that, you know, except it would do me much if you have seen somebody is blatantly homosexual is that it wouldn't have been sort of an easy. It means they didn't think anything of it. They just laughed and you know, they probably guessed that I was one of them in some ways we

35:49 We talked about this at the same time, you know, sometimes we don't realize how much progress we have been able to make getting back to the Windy City Gay chorus days, Richard Gary and I always used to say that we always used to argue about whether we have gay in the title was just Windy City Chorus or Windy City Gay chorus, and he said no is going to stay that is it because you walk out on stage anywhere you'll making a political statement and I think he's right the funniest thing happened. We will sing in a competition once at in Indianapolis by think it was and we were sharing the Hyatt hotel with the Gideon Bible convention. So we gave him a couple of rounds of songs in the lobby one day.

36:43 Singing family draped over the atrium Atrium balcony your 25-year old self anything or give yourself advice. What would it be?

37:03 Come out when you're 15, I don't know about that, but I would have done anything differently, but when I was in high school settling down with a pot that a straight or gay was just not done the when I was in high school. The emphasis was very much.

37:29 Work hard at school

37:32 Get a good job, then think about you know, who your partner in life is going to be and I think that's changed a lot now people seem to think about who that partner in life is going to be first before they got an education and before they got a job and I know token to my students they could always get their attention by starting to talk about jobs because by golly it's much harder now for people of your generation getting jobs than it was for me when I was leaving school.

38:09 Partly because this is the population of the world has more than doubled in that time.

38:16 Which is a sobering thought and it says

38:21 But I do think I really would have changed much for giving myself any other advice. I got a bath houses that happened. I remember the first time I did go to a bathhouse in Hamburg when I'm assuming passing my way back from the Middle East once in a friend took me that I don't remember looking at this young lad walking round the boss area of the pool area in the Steve rooms with a raging erection and not being in the least bit concerned about covering it and think of my god. I've missed all this what time is it? Do you have any we had just have a minute or two left to do you have any final words would like to leave them though? I think that

39:09 I felt like I've mentioned to you. I've had a good life. I feel very satisfied with it. And I'm looking for I seem to have good genes. My father went to didn't die until he was nearly 90 and my mother still have been saying going strong, but she still alive at 97 and so I seem to have another $20 years ahead of me and touch would hopefully in good health to enjoy life.

39:38 So I feel it's

39:42 Pinnacle spinner guys had a good run for my money. I think well, thank you so much for coming and sharing some of that. Thank you.