Gabby Haze and Soami de Lux

00:15 My name is Sister missionary position. Actually, it's now sisters Deluxe. I'm 69. It's March 16th, 2016. We're a Nashville, Tennessee and I'm with a comrade in fairy arms.

00:35 Hello. My name is Gabby Hayes. I'm 75 years old. It's March 16th, 2016 and we are in Nashville, Tennessee and my relationship to my friend Mitch is camaraderie. We are old friends from a long time ago.

00:56 Okay. Okay. So we're here today to talk about the evolving culture of the radical Faerie movement. And I'd like to start the conversation. That's how Mich is referred to Sister missionary position is also known as Mitch. How did you become involved with actually let me start that over again. There's a group of men who have over the years become gay male nuns and they are called The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and I'm going to ask you miss how you became involved with them and where it took you and

01:40 As sister missionary position, I'm one of the founding for mothers of the group, although very quickly. We turned into 15 and now we're a thousand around the world and what we started out as gay male taking on the role of sisters in the queer communities say beginning in San Francisco. We now are quite open to lesbians and straight folk and we've become quite diverse as our queer Community. I think you're not answering the question. How did you become involved and my connection to the sisters really came from my coming out into queer activism, which started back when I went to graduate school.

02:40 University of Iowa back in the seventies and I was City Iowa and the Gay Liberation. I went there to get a masters in film and TV but really I went to come out and immediately. I got involved with the Gay Liberation Front and during that time we did the first couple of Gay Pride conferences in Iowa City and 74 and 75 and sit and Kenny Bunch was my co-chair in creating these events and

03:13 That that involvement that creativity carried onto when Kenny moved after I what he moved on to San Francisco and. And but when he was in Iowa, he also had a group the Sugar Plum Fairies that performed in cabarets and he did not drag and they were the most popular numbers that they did and sister habits and you inspired and I did not then I mean, but I certainly laughed a lot because my whole background I had spent my youth in a Capuchin Franciscan Seminary so during the Vatican Council II era I was studying to be a priest a Franciscan priest said you became a nun. I will write you many years later and there are stories there and. But somehow let's let's get to Yuma to San Francisco.

04:13 After your friend Kenny did and he persuaded me to move. So I moved in with him Easter can use up that would have been 1979. It was the end of 78 actually Harvey and George had just been murdered assassinated Harvey Milk and George Moscone. I just been killed by Dan White and you had just moved to San Francisco in that happened right after it is when I moved it was a very tremendously.

04:46 Hot busy with creative demanding time if you will end and the sisters. Were you move there? And how did the sister's phone? What happened next to that thing where you became involved in the founding of the sisters of Perpetual Indulgence Kenny had brought the habits that they had used in there Sugar Plum Fairy Productions with him to San Francisco and they murdered in his closet for about 2 or 3 years and all at once. He said hey, I've got these habits you could use another good habit, and he said what and I said, well Easter's coming up. Why don't we go out and so on Holy Saturday of the Easter weekend. We went out and Jazz the visuals on San Francisco in the first in the Castro District the queer neighborhood and then to the nude beach at Landon's and then to a coffee shop in Pacific.

05:46 Tight end and we met such good whip that we generated such good willing. Good afternoon sister. I can I confess to you sister a happy and you know it. Who exchanged we got to start doing this morning and then

06:09 Two and that very quickly four of us were living together and we won was Agnes who's a dancer and Reverend mother was a meditation teacher and we started fighting and they went to the first radic national. Radical Faerie Gathering that Harry. Hay and Don kilhefner in what year and that would have seen 1979 270. We had tried to get a group going. It wasn't quite happening until Agnes and Reverend mother went to this. Radical Faerie. Guess they came home all at once within a month. We had 15 people. Agnes was getting neighborhood Arts to create our how do the hobbits from neighborhood Arts. He had a non-profit dance group. So he went to the city and county of San Francisco and got them to build and construct our first abans and and

07:10 And then we started.

07:13 Probably the big event was the Christians came to San Francisco that following summer in 1980 with a campaign that called SOS save our souls and they sent Young missionaries out to give witness to Sodom and Gomorrah and the sisters became the counterbalance to that whenever they would show up on our neighborhoods bible-thumping. We would try to join in with them and sing songs and dance and flirt and it became a kind of way of the community could could address and and feel comfortable with what was happening and somehow we're getting too stuck on the sisters. I'm what we're winning. I would love us to get more into the radical Faerie.

08:06 Connection that that I think Boyd up two sisters in our first few years and and it's where we came under the influence of people like James Brown The Poet wonderful fairy poet add. Harry. Hay and John Burnside and they're kind of lovely committed relationship to became inspirational for us and and

08:33 Also the the RFD connection which

08:38 Was created by radical fairy faget men back in Iowa City in this 1974 and grew out of those conferences. That is the RF connection opposed to rap.

08:51 I mean, what does RFD mean? Yes. Yes tell us and the first radical Theory Circle Harry. Hay is one of the original founders of was one of the original founders of the mattachine society at a time when it was all most dangerous to be to be gay. Even if you weren't out if people thought you were gay they gave you a hard time, you know, a lot of people got killed in a lot of people that build up your beat-up and as Harry's thinking evolved. He began to realize that the only way he felt for us to come together as a community and I guess in a sense survive and some kind of honorable way was to create another kind of Paradigm within the larger culture.

09:51 People came together to try to live differently in the sense that in the in the way they behaved and the way they treated one another and how they dealt with the universe and their lives and after that conference was over a lot of people went and a lot of people were affected including the radical Siri. I mean the conference after that conference there began to develop a number of what we going to call radical faeries sanctuaries, which are

10:34 Thank you, which are places where let me put it this way. So we're in Tennessee and a group of people got together. We own some land and we decided to create a radical Faerie Sanctuary. We call a short Mountain sanctuary. And the reason for that was so that we could have a space that was ours in the broader culture. There are sanctuaries for cats and dogs and not forget people. And so we wanted to have a place that was ours that we could control in the sense that we could make the rules and we could establish how things should go to be different, you know, and I'm creating safe space and

11:32 People find the sanctuary. How did people find out about it like where to file? Yes, it was word of mouth when it originally started. It was mostly word of mouth. And the reason for that is because word of mouth is like a filter. Okay. So if you told your friend about your mat and you told him because you wanted them to come to shore matinee, I found this fabulous place that you should go to not to give that information out to people you didn't know wasn't appropriate at that particular time. So that's how people found us through word-of-mouth and this has been going on for like since 1980 1979-1980 and we have been extremely successful in terms of our longevity. We have we are very much supported by the larger gate community and we have a over the years.

12:32 I want to know what we've already is what I want to talk about something else in that respect again, and that's in trying to create a culture that's different. So one of the things we came up with it was money. How do you deal with money differently than the larger society? So no one turned away for lack of funds. You don't have to have money. If you don't have money will take care of it for a while get yourself settled that doesn't happen outside to call you other country and then another and I think maybe even something more important is like

13:21 Young gay men Sometimes women would come and be able to speak to people who had more experience than they did and had interesting things to say to them about the way to live their lives and the things that they needed to know who they needed to become excetera. And that is how to very profound influence on a lot of people. Okay, young men come to the sanctuary and they leave feeling that had a magical experience that their lives have changed and I have found a new Direction and new way of thinking and it's it is for me personally because

14:08 All I do know one of the great Pleasures I have the normal. This is kind of like watching people grow up, you know, so I've been to at this, you know for 35-40 years and when you need someone who's 23 20 years ago their 43 now, so that has been a very satisfying experience for me.

14:27 I don't know what else to say. Well, we had this excessive short Mountain has certainly helps pain.

14:36 This kind of radical Faerie movement around the world and you know, we've got people have lived with us. And then maybe we went back to Australia and helped establish Fairyland there in Northern New South Europe. Are there no one else is in Wolf Creek Inn, Oregon Zuni Mountain Sanctuary is in New Mexico can wash away is a seasonal one way up in the Wilds of Minnesota Destiny star Destiny up there in New England the RFD magazine that I saw my friends create and I was City back in 1974 40 years later is still in publication. We at Short Mountain took it on for 22 years after.

15:31 It had moved to the south east and Ron Lam at running water did it for a great number but nine years nine years and and an important part of that time even before the

15:51 Harry Hayes first national gathering you and 78 started connecting with the regional queer dandified flood at got running water. That was then under Michael Wilson's auction that magical Michael. So we've joined at this kind of impulse to create something alternative to what straight Society was offering hunt. And and now we're doing it all over the world. The sisters founded like the Roman Catholic sisters. It's good to be charitable. It's good to help your people. And so the sisters by donning the habits that many Roman Catholic sisters had left behind have found in that being administering to their Community, you know have found an ongoing way of perpetuating themselves in a fun and joyful way to get people to

16:51 Come together and probably that.

16:58 RSD through its publication I think has been a voice to to reinforce that at so many levels and for us it was exciting to to give our artists in our writers in our poets a place to to share the discoveries in the the feelings that they're having and create a form for that. We're going to talk a little bit more about RF gate address of 74 was started in 1974 where at Stewart's gopher went to that first gay pride conference said I want to have a mother earth Jones for gay people and he proposed the idea in May 1st issue came off the presses the iris. I will women's breasts are the printers of those issues and it started there.

17:58 Thank you. Okay. So the magazine the purpose of the magazine the reason was created was because they're lots of the same to be lots of gay men and counterculture people moving to the country Mother Jones is a mainstream magazine, which told people how to do that. You know, how do you have that I've done so, excuse me. If I told people how to do that in the broader culture, you know, how do you heat with wood out of your garden and then I got to stop and artoo was created as a gay counterpart to that. He's gay guys moving to the country. He was how to do it and over the years. It has evolved into something even broader than that because it has in some kind of sense become what would you call a radical or Ferry at digest RFD and

18:58 So it's perspective as Broad and as the movement has broadened, but that's an end some publishing. I think it's been publishing for forty some years and it's probably one of the few gay magazines that are left. Absolutely that have that long ago that have that long of a publisher basically two because it's been a volunteer organization. It hasn't had to pay salaries that probably went and put things in the life has been a labor of love and it continues and the destiny crew up there now Bambi and Matt are doing a wonderful job with it and returned it to that earlier format of a sort of a 7 by 10 size a very comfortable magazine in the hand it now take as bleeds colors off the page. It's it's really quite, beautiful nose evolve into

19:58 Yeah, I went to Iowa City to come out. So where did you come from? And why couldn't you come before I was teaching at a residential Center for adolescents and an Upstate New York near Cornell University in the Finger Lakes Region. I started and it was the era. It was the Vietnam are the end of the Vietnam World War 2 Vietnam sadly and so I started to come out around the campus and with gay folk there, but I found the the I could see other people who are in the closet where I worked and I didn't like how they were dealing with that and I thought I know and and then when I saw two of my faculty members fellow faculty members fired because they were living together outside of marriage. I said no as a gay as I come out more as a gay person. This is not going to

20:58 Welcoming. So what else do I want to do? I think and I had already been kind of teaching film with the young people I said, so I thought why don't I get more intensely into film and how to get ostensibly what I really wanted to do was find a larger involve involvement in my community and it has led to while I've had jobs to support my

21:24 Queer cultural work. Is it where it really is that I think I've had a life committed to queer culture and changing and reinforcing or champagnie that we are to be congratulated. Thank you girl, I grew up in Miami, Florida and actually born in New York 1940 and my father was transferred down to Miami. So the family move down there and I grew up there. All my schooling that I went to University of Miami and after I graduated I had to leave I I I could stay there. I'll let you know. I was coming out as a gay, man and

22:12 Miami was a small-town back then and I just didn't want to be around anymore. So I moved to New York City with some friends and I live there from 62 to 72 and which was 22 to 32 in my age bracket and

22:32 As of this one of the big things in my life kind of like for me anyway, The Road Less Traveled going right instead of left in the sense that I've been kind of innocent in a lot of ways sort of the outside of the you know, outside of sexually I've been and I was innocent in a lot of ways. I never done drugs or anything like that and suddenly I was in New York in this environment this woman. Turn me on

23:00 To marijuana and I had this fantastic experience and as in relationship to that I wound up becoming closer to this woman who I knew from Florida who had come up to New York with the fellow. She had married to maintain the facade of normality in a sentence a lot of at that time a lot of gay men and women were marrying each other so that the families would think. Oh my God, they're married, you know, when will they have children and that kind of a think there's a way kind of like letting pressure off and that woman took me on my first LSD trip, which was another one of those things that changed my life and as we began to hang out how to become closer and closer we decided at some point that we both we both wanted to raise children and have

24:00 That kind of thing and we had rented a farm in Upstate New York and we like living in the country on the weekends. We both were from the city. So we have too much experience of that and

24:14 We decided to adopt actually. Yes. Yeah, we decided to adopt children that we got married. We had a psychedelic wedding in 1968 and then got married sort of like under the law in in the courthouse to make things legal in the sense that if you're legally married, it's easy to adopt and so we were legally married and we adopted our first child in 1970 a little biracial boy who been left on the hospital steps and after living with him and Marilyn died in this really tiny little apartment in New York and he's not two years old and when you walked down the street with a two-year-old New York have to have them on a harness so they don't run out into the street. So kind of difficult to raise children in New York. And so we decided to move we thought we

25:14 Move to the country so we bought a school bus and we fixed it up and Maryland Jamie who is too at the time and I in a dog travel around the country for a year looking for land and we didn't like it out West which was kind of a revelation for both of us. The West is the Restless to join us to Grand and getting deep in spectacular and a little unsettling for us because we're from the East which is the old part of the country where things are soft and green and much more gentle. Okay, so we came back we came to Tennessee where they'll have friends in Knoxville and

25:56 There was an old copy of Mother Earth News that had an ad in it from some people who lived in dowelltown, Tennessee saying something like a we just bought land it's cheap and beautiful but they are not old enough people like us here. So if you're interested in looking for land, give us a call and we wrote them a letter was two years later and they were still there and we went to visit them and maybe 6 months or less later. We bought land that mile-and-a-half and where they lived and at the same time that was happening other people are moving into the area. So we had like two small countercultural community. Now, we we will do drugs together. We should get over there were lots of children we played let's just swim naked in the creek and all that kind of stuff and then

26:47 And you're adopted more children. Yes. Yes. Yes actually adopted another child will move to Knoxville. That was David who was gave me was like 10 weeks old and dated was 11 months. And after we bought the land in 74, we adopted Anand Ahuja first little girl and now I can't I was kind of 7077 what the land of 74 but we didn't move out till 77 cuz we were afraid we wouldn't be able to live in the country without you know, having an income or something like that. But after a while I realized I was kind of silly we need to just do it and make it happen and we did so we had Jamie and David and Ananda at that particular time and then it'll be dr. Scotti after that who was an older child forward half.

27:37 I know we kept wanting girls were kept wanting more girls or somehow. They kept giving us boys. I got no, I don't want that one. Was that kind of thing? And then we okay, you know for kids that's enough. So all we talk about, you know, let's do foster care work in the foster care system. There are emergency situations where child needs to be taken out of a home and it might be midnight and there's no place to put them. So what is a social worker? Do you know, sometimes these kids are taken to jail and put in cell so they'll have a safe space to sleep for the night. And so they ask people to volunteer to do emergency Foster work where they call you up at midnight and say hey we got this kid. We need to drop them off at your place for 5 or 6 days until we straighten things out. And so we did that little little Jesse was from Cookeville came from a background of awful abuse and it came to live with us.

28:37 For as a foster child, and we were the first home that were able to actually deal with him even throughout a large number of foster homes because he was wild and

28:53 Say something okay, its compassion and a lot of strength to deal with.

29:07 What are the kind of Damages that that happens to us in life and repeatedly we seen that at the sanctuary over here forever. We find ourselves there because we all coming from damaged places and and somehow we need to tap into or find other people who have compassion for us in a demet to help us get out and and Jesse continues to to demand work cuz I was it just that the kids were biracial. There is a white boy coming out and those trashy number from Cookeville. And the first thing you said was pardon me. This house is filled with niggas. Well, he ran out the door and the kids ran after him and they were screaming and I was yelling don't hurt him and all that but he stayed with us.

30:07 My neighbor house. Yeah, but now he's in prison, you know, he just is background and his, you know, all the things that happened to him. This stuff is Scotty at 4 and 1/2. Jesse was 4 and 1/2 Scotty came from a background of Abandonment. And Jesse came up from the background of abuse we sent them both to Wilderness programs.

30:34 And it helped Scotty, but it didn't help Jesse. And so Jesse continues on this sort of like wildlife and has been imprisoned a couple of times and his dad will be out soon. And maybe this time it will work. I don't really know but I sure hope so and I do too and

30:57 As we get older, you know, I realize or part of what also was so Dynamic for the Sisters was AIDS happened.

31:12 And we started dying and great numbers and our sisters as well to when I look back on those those this Say the original 15 sisters half of us are still here, but half of us are now what we call nuns of the above and maybe a sleeper ashes we often have ritual when we do ritual. Usually the rituals involve the mixing of glitter and the ashes of the ancestors of the other nuns of the above cool. They certificate scattered in the in the rituals that we do but

31:58 In 1982, even before it had the name AIDS we had sisters who were nurses who said, you know, something's happening. Sexually related. We came out with the what became the first safer sex pamphlet called Playfair to come clean. So we started our mission of Education of the populist if you will in a bar queer community and with humor and factual information as we knew it about STDs and sexual practices to to take healthier and safer and and underlines affecting is probably one of the finest things we ever did some of them the later chapters have updated that information because we have learned a lot in these intervening years here, but do

32:58 Keep that active Ministry of with humor and facts getting people to embrace and live responsibly their wonderful sexual lives. Remind me of something that I want. I want to say so in the community that we lived in where the sanctuary initially was sort of like the center of

33:27 Activity and as a result of that a large number of people have moved to the area. So I'll probably within a 30 mile radius. They could be 70 or 80 gay lesbian transgender or transgendered folks and we are all friends and we work together and we helped one another and we helped one another with physical projects that are related to the land. And if you sometimes you get older you don't have as much strength people help others cut wood or do things like that? And we also help each other when we get sick. Okay, we have like I told my kids when I get sick. I don't want you within ten feet of me because I can see the revenge in your eyes for all the things you think I did to you. My friends are going to take care of and that's what's happened in our community. We take care of one another and I really feel that that's unusual to a large extent.

34:27 The amount of love and caring we have for one another and I think probably a lot of that's related to the fact that we are a marginalized group. So we find other people who are similar we tend to have more in common with them or more sympatico more more more of that kind of vibration which encourages love and care. I feel so lucky to be where I am at this moment to be here talking with you and and I confess as like you I get older it does make me want to pray and sisters like to pray when they were in public and is that spelled the same way as the other play? Well, this one actually is a seventeenth-century none prayer that I would like to get in into the Library of Congress and its it acknowledges that I am aging and so I say oh

35:27 Divine mother don't know us better than I know myself that I am growing older and will someday be the old keep me from the Fatal habit of thinking I must say something on every subject and on every occasion Release Me From craving to straighten out. Everybody's Affairs make me thoughtful but not moody helpful, but not bossy with my vast store of wisdom. It seems a Pity not to use it all but thou knowest your mother that I want a few friends the end.

36:05 Keep my mind free from the recital of endless details Give Me Wings to get to the point seal my lips on my aches and pains. They are increasing and love of rehearsing them is becoming sweeter as the years go by I dare not ask for Grace enough to enjoy the tales of others pains, but help me to endure them with patient.

36:30 I dare not ask for improve memory, but for a growing humility and a lessening cocksureness when my memory seems to clash with the memories of others teach me the Glorious lesson that occasionally I may be mistaken. Keep me reasonably sweet. I do not want to be a saint some of them are so hard to live with but it's our old person is one of the crowning works of the devil. Give me the ability to see good things in unexpected places and talents in unexpected people and give me holy mother the grace to tell them so

37:13 Amen, well, and so I'm telling you dear old comrade of these many years. I love you. I forgive you for all the pain and badgering you've done to me. Well, let's admit that. There is no need to defend yourself. You've done it with love and empathy and I appreciate that seeing the young people who do come and help sustain the sanctuaries in the neighborhood. We do have a pretty great say neighborhood hat meaning I think they're more like a hundred and fifty and

38:02 And we keep creating vital ways for us to all be together and we need and I see the new generations doing that and that's good.

38:15 I would agree. I agree.