James Hensley and Chris Jarvis

00:04 My name is Chris Jarvis. I'm 58 years old. Today's date is Saturday, February 15th 2024 in Fresno, California. My interview partner is James Hensley and he is my husband. My name is James Hensley. I am 58 years old. It is February 15th 2020. We are in Fresno, California.

00:27 My interview partner is Chris Jarvis. He is my husband. Okay, so we came here today to talk about your history in gay bars in the business for a long long time. Can you tell us how that started and what got you into that the business? Well, I start attending bar during the Summers visiting my father and his wife in New Jersey. She was a bartender and she kind of trained me into it and when I went to my first gay bar and 1980s i

01:06 Fell in love with the bar scene. I fell in love with the atmosphere and I found out that it would be a great place to make some good money. So I applied to be a bartender and became a gay bartender. So were you out at that time? Not to everyone my stepmother knew and she had told my father and he told me I was never allowed to come back to his house again after he punched me and threw me through a door. That was when you came out to your father and tell me about that. What what situation was it? What time of day where were you it was about 7 in the morning. He was getting ready to go golfing and his wife had told him the night before when she came home from work that I was gay. Why did she tell him that did you did you give her permission to do no I did not but she felt that she should tell him so he asked me about it. He offered to pay for the therapy to have me to ord. I told him no therapy would do it.

02:03 He exchanged a few words with me at one point. He called me a very nasty slur and I looked at him and I said yes and as you have taught me all my life. I try to be the best at what I do and he subsequently punched me and push me through a door and told me to get out of his house now had there been physical violence between YouTube prior to that. No, never had never hit you through your whole life as children. And what happened? You said you went through a glass door now refresh me through her bedroom door my bedroom door. Okay, that means you actually through the door actually pushing me through the door. And what was your reaction to that shock and anger and I grabbed the phone. I called my mother. I told her I would meet her in Pennsylvania at my grandmother's house. This was in New Jersey. Now, what was your status with your mother as far as being you had no idea she had no idea when you called her.

03:03 Told her this is what just happened. I just told her I had a fight with my father know but not about what okay, so I got on a bus and I went to Pennsylvania and my mother met me at her mother's house and pick me up and I went home and I didn't speak to my father for 10 years and during that time is when I had gone into the bar scene and became a bartender and understood who I was and what I was and that there were other people like me and then I wasn't alone and there was a whole world full of people out there who loved me for being who I was and I wasn't going to compromise and back down from that. Okay. So after this you had not started working at a gay bar or any gay bar before your father you're in confrontation with your father after that. That's when you got in together. What about the rest of your coming out process at that time? Did you come out to the rest of your family? Did they know why your father and you had a fight and your

04:03 You didn't share with them either. So there was still a secret in the family. Okay, and it's interesting that you say that your father said he wanted you to go into therapy. I came out to my mother in 1983 82 somewhere around there. And you know that story I was on I was on a hospital gurney about to go in for surgery and I felt like I had to tell her that that we were in Alaska had to tell her that my partner or my roommate as he was known to them in Fresno was not just my roommate and terrible look on her face and they wheeled me into surgery. But when I woke up from surgery the first thing she said to me was we're going to get you some therapy and then do you know I was coming back then? That's what they thought would everybody said. Yeah. So you you tell me about the first time you ended up at at at work at a gay bar how that happened. Well, I was going to the bar. I had been frequenting the bar for about 2 months and the owner of the bar notice me.

05:02 And would talk to me and it was flirting. I'm sure and we talked one time and he said he had an opening for a bartender and he asked me if I had any experience and I said yes and he hired me and I went to work. So when you go back to your stepmother for second, we just experienced that you got from your stepmother. What kind of plate what kind of facility was it was a little I was kind of a Lounge Bar type place that had a small kitchen and during the day she would run the kitchen and the bar boat. And the first time I started actually behind the bar she was up in the kitchen making a hamburger for a customer and another customer came in and saw me and just looked at me and said I'll have a seven and seven and I looked at my stepmother and she nodded. Yes and I made the drink and I handed it to him and she told him it was 250 and he handed me $4.

06:02 Bars and told me to keep the change and I thought Life Is Good by the okay. So but as you had she trained you before that it when he said make me a Seven and Seven were just guessing days during the summer because of an Asbury Park. It was about the beach one block down from The Stone Pony the famous bar that Bruce Springsteen got his start in and I used to just go and sit there and watch her and growing up. I had always made occasional cocktails for my parents when they would have friends over but it was all basic stuff like Scotch & Soda in water to make a Long Island iced tea, but that time that's what most people drink. So I just a back up a little bit you mentioned Bruce Springsteen. I know you actually met Bruce Springsteen on the bar, but it was at the same time. That was during one summer in New Jersey and how many parsley about that my step brother worked at a bar called The Long Branch Saloon in Long Branch, New Jersey.

07:02 On the boardwalk and one night. I was walking by and he yelled at me from inside the bar to come in and I went around the corner of the bar and he said I want to introduce you to somebody and he said this is Bruce Springsteen and he said this was my step brother James Hensley, and I looked at the guy and he look like a bum off the street and I said you are not Bruce Springsteen and he said yes, I am and I made him show me his ID which at that time New Jersey IDs did not have a picture. I remember cuz I lived in New Jersey, but I was at this time. He was already famous. He was already he was on the road is very popular in colleges and universities was always saying that he was still very well-known and when he showed me the idea I handed it back to him and I said that proves nothing because they don't have a picture and he laughed and my step brother laughed and we talked for a few minutes and then I left.

08:00 Okay. So what was the name of the first gay bar? You work at the first gay bar was called 1470 West it was located in Dayton, Ohio and it was a supermarket that had been converted into a dance club and at the time I'm seeing the look on your face because it would have been huge huge huge bars three actually inside the cloud two different rooms that were like, we had a pool room or the pool tables were and then there was a VIP lounge and during its run and its Heyday. It was the most popular bar in the midwest because of a centrally located between Cincinnati Indianapolis Columbus a 2-hour drive from Cleveland a 3 hour drive from just about every large city in the midwest when you say popular bar you're being gay bar out, of course. So how did you get acclimated?

09:00 Being newly out to being you were a bartender to being not only in a gay bar a lot of times for work, but behind the bar, how did that how did you get acclimated to that whole experience of people being gay safe in a room together? Well, I never gone to but it was the first gay bar. I worked at I had been going out to the clubs for about a year and I had already felt comfortable and safe and and this is my world and when I got hired I just jumped in I literally

09:37 Not knowing half the drinks at people were ordering and I would look at the other bartender and make a joke and say I just had a brain fart. How do you make a and I would start doing it but I felt so comfortable and I felt it home because that's where I felt. I should have been there all along and I just jumped in I never questioned it. The only thing I ever had to do was when I told my mother I was going to work I would have to make up the name of the bar or the location. So she wouldn't know you didn't even know where you were working. She just knew that I was tending bar somewhere and you obviously weren't living at home at this time. Now I wasn't and I had friends of ours that friends of our family my brothers and sisters are a co-worker my sisters that had been in the bar because it was even and in that time in the age that was a welcoming club. We had a very long hallway to get into the club.

10:36 And in that hallway, we had signs that said this is primarily a gay bar in case straight people wanted a kissing or two women kissing or touching or closely dancing do not come in blah blah blah and there were times when you have straight people would be in there because we had close to a thousand people in there sometimes on the weekend and then it would get back. My sister would call me and she say who I talked to Karen at work the other day and she said she saw you at a bar in an uncompromising position to use those words and understand where the uncompromising position or a compromising position and I said, but I've never compromise myself when I've been anywhere so I don't know what she's talking about and I played it off as a joke. But this this girl I told my sister I saw him.

11:27 Doing something in a gay bar. Okay, but it was never race again. My sister never brought it. I would do something. I don't know sooner. So this was you work at this bar for how long I work there for two and a half years. So from 8283 summer run there, which was just about the time. The AIDS epidemic was having huge in the United States or at least coming to the surface in the United States and tell me I want I want to hear you talk about what it meant for gay people to have a safe space and then to have that save space start to feel compromised because the AIDS epidemic was happening what what are obviously the heart of the Midwest the simple fact that there was a gay bar that large was amazing. We had a very small community Within

12:27 South and then Dayton had a lot of people flying in and out we had National Cash Register. We had Standard Register. We had General Motors. We had one of the largest military bases in town in the country. So we had a lot of people flying in and out all the time. And when the AIDS epidemic started hitting we didn't think anything about it because it was hitting in San Francisco. It was hitting in New York. It was hitting it in Miami. It wasn't hitting in the midwest but there were a few of us that were saying wait a minute you guys there's a lot of people flying around the country in coming here and it started to slowly affect people but it never change their attitude when they were out in the bars. They were still being the same, you know, come out to the bar and drink as much as you can drink. There was a lot of cocaine a lot of Quaaludes going around and people were just it was the Heyday of parties and having a great time. Nobody thought about it.

13:27 What about getting what what what kind of what part of town was this bar located in this barbarous located in if it's in the shopping center in the very middle class area of town so that the security features for that bar where people in the parking lot and then the long hallway to get into the actual bar. The first bar I ever went to called Studio One was located downtown in Dayton in Dayton in Dayton at the park across Main Street, which had six Lanes of traffic.

14:09 And you would park your car and you would run across the main street because there was housing all around this bar. It was on the corner. But the people in the neighborhood would shoot BB guns at you trying to get into the bar and you would go in the side door of the building and you would be in a 3 by 4 room that had a person sitting behind a piece of bulletproof glass and they were check your ID and you would pay your cover charge if they had one and then they would advise you into the main room. So they were shooting BB guns and where they hitting. Yeah, I'm people got hit going into the club all the time. So you say there's like a thousand people at times in this club. They literally not in this. Sorry. I'm sorry. So this was your experience before you started working and Gabe and and other bullet proof glass when you had to go into the place because they knew people were facing violence on the outside.

15:09 Elmo slide at the bottom to put your money in and a little round holes at the almost like a glory hole that the person put talk through K and 800 everybody knew who she was and she knew everybody and if she didn't know who you were or she didn't recognize you she would question the hell out of you before she would like to go to a bar in a residential neighborhood on the corner in a residential neighborhood 19 what 7970 I would say probably 7778 through 88 maybe so tell me about after you worked at I'm sorry what four teams have 1470 you went on to another gay bar cuz you've been a while cuz you been doing working in gay bars for 30 for 30 years. You worked there from 1980 until 2014 here in Fresno. So tell me about obviously it was dangerous to go to Studio One tell me about

16:09 Appearances of going to these other bars even as a as somebody who work there at but maybe the patrons as well try and was there a lot of problem getting to these bars at that time because I know when the AIDS epidemic are there was a huge backlash against the gay community. Yeah. There was one night during a shift at 1470. I remember it was probably a t-38 sometime right around the end that I work there at the beginning of the age of epidemic in all the whispering going around and we were working and every visit middle of the week night. It wasn't even a busy weekend night, but somebody came through and they walked up can I walk to the hallway in the person if they the door check them check their ID and the person came in walked in and didn't look out of the ordinary look just like everybody else that was there and then started screaming die all you faggets and through a canister tear gas on.

17:09 Floor right in front of the main bar and took off out the door if they catch him know but that was the attitude in the mentality of what people were going through at the time not even necessarily associate with the AIDS epidemic had something to play into it. But that was how gay people think the gay bars used to be the same to Eyrie for gay people. You could go into a bar and be whoever you wanted to be you could be. Yeah romantic with your partner. You could be a big slot or a horde of what you wanted to do. However, you want to do it in the gay bar. You were safe to do it.

17:47 And as time has gone on people started integrating with straight communities coming into the bar and started accepting it and changing it. So what's out there now at this time to me is a more water down version. I recently as 2014 when working in a gay bar heard people make comments to couples who were giving each other a kiss and my first thought was this is our house. This is our Sanctuary. This is where we're supposed to feel safe. And you look at what happened with Orlando and all that. It doesn't so did you feel with part of you feel that working and it yeah, I mean, I completely I'm the same age as you are. So I understand the sanctuary thing. That was our one safe place to be the only safe place we exactly but you still were not out to your family at that time. I assumed you weren't out in public in general.

18:47 But I was I was more comfortable with who I was I came out to my family after my mother passed in 1989 because when she passed away she was very young when she passed and I felt guilty that I I felt like I hadn't been honest with her when she was alive. And so I made that decision to go around and talk to each is my brother. I have two brothers two sisters and I went to each of them and came out. I came out face-to-face. I didn't just call them on the phone and every one of them said, oh we knew we knew we knew we knew yeah, and my biggest regret was at my mother never

19:29 Said I never told her and got to either get her acceptance. My father's situation played a lot into that fear because I was afraid that yeah, I still wasn't talking to my father when I came out.

19:46 I was afraid that when you came out to the rest of your family, you still weren't talk to your father the first time I spoke to my father after he threw me out of the house was at my mother's funeral.

19:56 And even then it was a very

20:00 Short conversation I thank him for coming because it meant a lot to my brothers and sisters and the next morning after the service when he was getting on a plane to fly back to New Jersey. He left the house. He gave everybody a hug and he walked by me and walked out the door.

20:16 So we still were talking and I was afraid with my mother that I would get that same reaction and I've subsequently come to find out that I wouldn't have that she would have she would have been. Okay, and that's a that's a regret that happens for a lot of us. We we we wait and wait and wait to come out and then we find out when we come out the my family when I came out every one of them. I spoke to individually. Oh, yeah, we knew you could have saved me a lot of hard. I can do just told me 10 years ago that you knew where I was living in her house still working at the bar and she would have to give me a ride to get to work while I'd have her give me a ride to a friend's house and then they would give me a ride to the bar. So she wouldn't have to drive me to the bar because I didn't want her to know that's where I was working. So what I was going to ask you was

21:11 Given that this was all going on about you, you know having a strained relationship with your family because you weren't out and in general the the atmosphere toward gay people at that time. Is that one of the reasons you decided to work in gay bar yet cuz it made you feel a certain way it it's sort of like

21:33 If you are being oppressed everywhere around you, but you find one little spot where you're not you gravitate to that spot and I got pulled I didn't get pulled into it. I ran into it and when I got in there and I felt completed I felt there were people like me people that felt like me. Like me that were vibrant and funny and charming and mean and nasty the whole Spectrum, but I felt like those people were the people I should be with and when I was with them I was with and big

22:13 But then I would leave and if I got back in around my family, I would start to shut down again. I would have to change a pronoun when they say who are you out with last night or you do what you do tonight? If they heard me say on the phone to somebody I had a date and my brother were going to lose you have a date with that. Then I have to say oh some girl. I'm at the ways you do I do we went to such and such and played pool, you know and make up a story and it felt wrong. So when I was inside that club tending bar, you know me. I'm a very outgoing I love him and I just love to be around people laughing and joking and being sarcastic and when I was in the bar, I could be all of that and I can do it as loud as possible.

22:59 But then when I'd walk out and all the all the people in there, once we got outside the club we would shut down you didn't have to yours to be somewhat subdued you did not the guard yourself in the club. Like she had a gorgeous out the minute. You walked out that door because it was very much like

23:16 It was very much like living in and Two Worlds and I don't mean that in a subtle way. I would have said you lived in one world with your job and your family and your everyday life. And then once you cross over rice always say the threshold that door cuz in Fresno here we had to we would get rocks thrown at us when we walked up to the express. You know, there was a murder outside the expresso bashing there were other violent acts that happened outside the express live next door to the circle used to throw lug nuts up into the air at the end of the night run to the parking lot and hope that they would hit people in standing outside talking which at the time of the circle which was 2008 to 2014. You didn't think as much about it cuz I thought we had Advanced to adopt me on that farther along but we weren't cuz of course Fresno is a very conservative Community. But that door to the bar is almost religious to La people have Rh group actually because once you cross over that door,

24:12 You could breathe again. It was almost like you were standing yourself in the real world. But this was real life beyond the people died on that. I don't know if people today understand the effect of a gay bar on a on a month people are of all I don't think I do. You know, I I used to say that when I would talk to people about bartending to be a successful Mark and I even tell them you have to be able to talk sports and then turn around and look at somebody and be the biggest most flamboyantly gay person you've ever met and then turn to the next person and talk about politics and turn to the next person Tire you had to talk about everything and be so many different personality It's Entertainment. It's like

24:55 Once you go on your shift, you're onstage you're there to entertain these people and when we had that sanctuary of the gay bar.

25:05 It was stronger and louder and the girls was flying when she was in there. Yeah, we used to clip, you know, snap at people and the sarcastic queen and I think part of that is because you knew you had from 10 p.m. To 2 a.m. Yet 4 hours to live your life for ours absolute to get that all of that stuff out of you people who used to tell me when I came out to them. I've had people tell me why would have thought you were gay. I see you. I want to see you watching football. I see you watching basketball. I see you watching sports Icees and somebody said to me once you don't even walk like you're gay and I said, well, that's because I had to spend so many years hiding who I was out of fear acting acting out of fear of getting shot with a BB gun or having a lug nut thrown on yours. So the struggle to become where you and I are at right now because you know, I am just all throw it out there. I don't give a

26:05 Jet who cares? I throw it out there and I also think that's part of their cuz I had to hold it in. So right now I have to think that's the reason it's so many gay people are funny and sarcastic and witty because we had to spend at least people of Our Generation. We had to spend our whole I didn't come out till I was 20 so I just spent 20 years hiding who I was and judging the circumstances. I was in every every moment of your life. You have to judge the circumstance your and you know, we always talk about when we were active activist activist here. We always talk about coming out in the people. When did you come out? I'm like, well, you know, we can always talk about that moment. We came out as a gay person. You are coming out concert every day of your life till the day you die because in certain situations, you may not feel safe and others you do so daily thing and that's what you have to understand.

27:02 The degree of the situation when we were younger was so different and now you know, they have a younger younger gay people have that freedom of being loud and vibrant and and vigorous every day every minute of every day, but they have that because we went through the struggle that we went through to get them to where they're at now. Okay, and so everyday life is situation or you and I still wouldn't wear out having dinner or something, you know there still a moment where we think should I reach across and hold his hand her. Yeah, but what you don't think too much about that? I always if you have a longer moment than I do I do.

27:46 Soon as I start to think that the rest of me says the hell with them and I don't care. I just don't care anymore because I have to live the honest life that I meant to live and I tell people that all the time until you do that you did. You don't know the strength you have you don't know the weight of the burden that's on you for not being true to who you are. So let's go back a little bit. So do the bars cuz we miss some stuff. Let's talk about where what you did after 14770 West I moved to Los Angeles and I basically did like freelance work. I went from bar to bar because I would just like pick up shifts here. I had a regular job during the day and I continue to work at night in the bars. And at that time I was living with my sister and her husband and hadn't come out yet. So they were still thinking I was just some big old bachelor party boy or not thinking

28:46 Yeah, I was so much but not not quite understanding. You know, how I could be out until 2 in the morning and then get up and go to work at 8 the next morning, but I thought you were just going out there. They just know I have to go out all the time or yeah, because I wasn't seeing anybody in their eyes. I didn't have a girlfriend or any relationship. But what about the you said you went to LA? What about the LA bars in the 81? 85 86 I didn't I didn't necessarily working a lot of the gay bars in LA because I didn't fit the look that in La you had to have in it for you. If you're not model gorgeous and La they're not going to put you behind the bar. Right, right. Yeah back at that on the main strip. There were of course other clubs that they would so I did a lot of outside work a lot of like picking up Mia party gigs and stuff like that. And then I left LA and moved to Phoenix and went back into the bar scene full time and start attending bar and within four months I was

29:46 Manager of the bar and I stayed there for five years until I met you and then I moved here and went into the bar scene here when the Phoenix is a lot like Fresno in a lot of ways. I don't you know, even though I visited there many times. I don't know how conservative it was compared to a very concerned the difference in Phoenix was the most popular gay bar in Phoenix and the largest gay bar was a country western bar. So and it was right on the main drag on Camelback Avenue, so it was just out there but it was it was a conservative area not as conservative is Fresno, but

30:29 Again, there were times when I worked at the bar Fosters, which is the bar. I worked at where we would have people come in and make threats or they would open the door the door open right into the main bar. And the Dancefloor was right to the left of that and they would open the door and scream faget and died AIDS fucker and all kinds of things and very nice that it was slow enough that we had fear that something could happen, but it never really happened nothing ever.

31:01 Bad, do you have no injuries nothing like that? But there were still a prevailing attitude amongst the country boys. Yeah, because it's a very western town. You know, Joe Arpaio was the sheriff. So that's a subject we can't get into it was open but yet very closed at the same time. So then you can't you then I think you met an amazing person and then and then so you move to Fresno to be with you and you started working on the bars. He just about all of them. I think well, I worked at the express for a year and then I got hired at this circle and then when the circle had the fire due to the arson, so let's talk about that a little cuz I know we don't have a lot of time here. So we both work at the Circle or the manager of the circle. I djed in the circle.

32:01 Series of arsons in the tower district in the circle was one of them that's a hate crime. It was finally determined. It was a hate crime the bar closed for three and a half years before we reopen.

32:13 I retired there in 90.

32:16 8 closed in 04055 but that was a bar that that are bar was burned down because it was a gay bar. So I had to move to the other bar that the owner had and the worst part of town very gang heavy and the second night. I work there a guy came in full on Bulldog red gang colors and sat at the bar in order to beer and he said to me don't worry, you're safe, which fighting the hell out of me? And I said, I'm sorry. I don't understand and he said my father's been coming here for 35 years. My grandfather used to stop in here cuz he used to be a stripper wise once in awhile come in here to have a drink and he basically was letting me know that it was a safe environment you do because of it towards the end of the night you could have one or two customers in there and

33:16 Rosanna in a difficult area, but at at the exit, you know at the time that this happened 04 we were going through a lot of stuff still even though so how do you feel about I cuz I know a lot of gay people now the gay bar scene is dying in a lot of ways and then big cities and he are other place lgbtq people can now go just about anywhere and feel safe to add to a much higher degree than go to restaurants and go to regular clubs. So I know it's hard for people like you and me when we hear people go. We don't need gay bars anymore, which I hear, you know, what from a lot of people in like what you got, you know, you don't understand the history of it try to make out with your partner.

34:01 Like remembering the old days when you used to see a guy in the bar that was hot or you say you're fresh into a relationship and you would go to the bar and you'd have this freedom to be who you are and you would stand there. You have a couple drinks. You could start kissing each other. You could go into a full-on make-out to where people would say get a room go to an Olive Garden try to do that and see what happened. I would hope we would enjoy him at all about because you have that freedom to be who you are. I had the freedom to go to any restaurant. I wanted when I was in my 20s as well. I didn't have the freedom to make out or the kiss or even to hold hands with the man that I was interested in but try that now and see what happened but that that's turning back. It is hurting by now. I have I I said this the other day to a friend of mine. I have a prediction.

34:56 If this current Administration continues, you're going to start seeing a stronger presence and gay bars are going to start seeing more gay bars popping back up because people are going to be looking for a place to go where they can be themselves. Like we used to be and we still are in our full glory and like I say to people I didn't just come out of the closet honey. I came out with high heels on Annabella around my neck and I was screaming out of Diana Ross song. Well, you know, you know me, I'm an atheist but if anything was ever a church to me it was a gay bar and I don't think a lot of young people understand it because they think oh you just like to party. I might know you understand that was the only place we could breathe was in a gay bar literally means each other game and they give each other a kiss on the lips. Even if it's just a good friend. Why do they kiss each other on the lips? I say because we can't do it out in the street.

35:54 So we might as well say hi that way when we were in our place. Well, okay, so you haven't talked about yesterday when I came you manage a flower shop now and yesterday was your busiest day of the year and I came by to say hi and you were at the 7-Eleven across the street and ask him. Where is he at? He's at 7:30. I'll go outside and wait and I sit in the corner and I know you and I saw you noticed me and come across the street and even today as much as an ant have an activist as I am and very out activists in this community. I thought he's going to kiss me right on Blackstone and minarets and I don't know is his River Park and I have to going to go and of course you did and and as soon as I saw you and started walking towards you that thought came into my head that he's going to worry that you're going to give him ideas. But I and I said to myself right then and there baucom is this is the man I love when I saw you across the street Crest my heart felt good.

36:54 The smile that came across my face came from my heart and nobody's going to tell me I can't do that. Nobody's going to tell me I can't show the rest of the world what you mean for me and I went along with it. I was proud of you. I was proud of me too and terrified sometimes so we're now here where we are in 2020. It's a much different world and we grew up in what do you think about mayor Pete?

37:25 I like him. I don't mean a politically when I first first found out about him and read up on them. I thought he's a little early. He's a little or another four years see where you're at. But he's the top 10 at the well close to the top Canada because people need to know where there and people need to know. We're not just two people in the Bars were not just two people on the float in the parade were not just the people that they consider gay work everybody that's not know your neighbor campaign. They did a couple years ago might be yourself and I think with Pete if he just continues to be who he is and he's Unapologetic about it. You know, he he explained his story but they got the idea for you and me people of our age to have a gay president, who knows what it's going to end up.

38:25 I know when Obama was elected. I stood there and cried when it happened. Mayor Pete. That's just freaking. Can you imagine that happening in your lifetime? That's not even possible in our heads. I would scream like a girl me too. Well, I would I would become that overly flamboyant screaming queen that night because I would be so amazed that we have come that far. Well, this was thank you for having this conversation. I think it's good to

38:56 To know generationally what you and I went through a versus young people and how we'd all that. We all need to have that conversation. We need to listen to them about what they're going through. So absolutely and we need to share our stories not only to our community, but to the people around us and in our lives so they can better understand how we got to the place where at and how the next person that comes along for them is struggling and they'll be a little more sympathetic and have a little more compassion. Hopefully great. Thank you, honey. I love you. Love you, too.