Film at 11

In ten years of being an activist, I’ve gotten my fair share of press coverage, nothing national, but I’ve been in the local papers more than a few times and I’ve been on the local news a time or two. When I was away at college in Terre Haute at Indiana State University, it wasn’t really a big deal, but when I returned to my hometown after I graduated, I nearly caused a family panic.

It was back in March, there was a demonstration down in Indianapolis at the Statehouse, the Supreme Court was hearing the oral arguments in the DOMA and Prop 8 cases, so the community in Indy joined in solidarity across the nation to show our support for marriage equality.

I drove in with my boyfriend at the time, who was a bit nervous since he had never been a demonstration before. I assured him we would be fine, I’ve never had any trouble protesting in Indianapolis. We drove down to the protest site, signs in the back and some good activist music playing on the car stereo.

We got there, unloaded the signs and stood tall, we were amongst friends, several fellow cast members from our local Rocky Horror show were there, there was a couple guys from Terre Haute, and even a few of my old camp staff buddies had shown up to show their support and solidarity.

As the demonstration progressed, my boyfriend and I were tapped to hold this giant rainbow flag on the steps of the capitol building as the speeches rolled on. We stood up there with the others, holding the colors proudly as one speaker after another spoke on the bullhorn about the fight in the Supreme Court and what it meant for all of us.

Well the scheduled speakers finished up and the young lady running the demonstration looked around and said, “Does anybody else have a few words?”

The guys from the Rocky cast were looking at me, my old camp staff buddies had that little grin on their face, my boyfriend was smiling, and of course, my buddies from Terre Haute were egging me on a bit.

So I walked up and took the bullhorn, my blood pumping with that righteous anger familiar to all activists, I started rattling off about our birthrights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, the progress of the movement, how we were seeing the beginnings of the last struggle, all that sort of thing. I finished up by getting the crowd in a good chant and then stepped back to the flag.

The demonstration wrapped up, we packed up our signs, drove home and went our separate ways. It had been a good evening, pretty good turnout at the statehouse, good speeches from the schedule speakers, and it always feels good when old friends share the picket line with you.

I was at work the next day, ringing up sodas, lottery tickets, and gas when this lady comes up to the counter. She was one of our regular lottery customers and she looks at me and says, “Hey, I saw you on the news last night.”

I got confused for a minute, thinking maybe she mistook me for someone else, so I replied “Really? What was going on?”

She got excited and said, “It was some rally downtown. I told my husband, ‘I know that guy! That’s the guy from the gas station!’”

I handed her the usual lottery tickets and wished her the best of luck. I didn’t think much about being told I was on the news, I thought it was kind of funny that I had been out of action for nearly a year and the first demonstration I show up at, I end up on TV. Still, it didn’t seem all together unusual.

Then I got home from work.

My mother called me in a near panic, “You better thank God that your grandfather no longer watches the local news!” Apparently she had caught the piece on Channel 6 where they used my fiery improv speech as their introduction to the story.

“Son, I didn’t care when you did that sort of thing in Terre Haute, we don’t have family out there, but the last thing your eighty year old conservative grandfather needs to see is you draped in a rainbow flag and holding a bullhorn on the local news.”

She was right, it would have been a nasty shock; my mother has accepted my sexuality, even if she doesn’t always understand my hellfire activism. The other members of the family? Well most of them don’t know about my sexuality and as far as the hellfire activism, yeah they’re a bit in the dark about that too.

My grandfather didn’t see the news story, but I’m pretty sure my Uncle Bill did since he hasn’t really spoken to me since.

Last Minute (Near) Bust

Back in 2011, I was having one of my best years as a live poet; I was doing at least a gig a week, sometimes two or three, hell I did three gigs in one day back in August. Most of them were triumphs, I did my first live show out of state at Printer’s Row Lit Fest in Chicago, I recorded a couple live albums, it was a pretty good year. But I’m not here to tell a story about my triumphs on stage.

It was December 14^th, I had finished my last final of the year and getting ready to move back home. My buddy Jimmie wanted to go out for a beer, so he came over. I suggested we call our buddy Ryan to see if he wanted to join us in a cold one.

I call Ryan and he says, “I can’t join you right now, but I’ll be out for your show tonight.”

I said, “What show? No, my show is tomorrow night, I’m booked at Coffee Grounds.”

“I thought you had a performance at Zims tonight, they said you’re performing.”

“Huh? Well I guess we’ll see you there.”

I hang up, and Jimmie looks at me sort of funny. I call the barkeep at Zims and she tells me, “Yeah, I thought we were doing the poetry thing on a weekly basis, I have you booked for 10:00.” I said OK and hung up.

So there I was, with a last minute booking, no time to really promote it or really get a good original set list together. Jimmie and I headed out to Ginny’s, one of our favorite local dives where we got a couple of power mugs, these big quart glass mugs of draft brew. I’m sitting there, pounding down this beer, flipping through notebooks and poetry books, trying to get a set together before I had to hit the stage at Zims.

After the power mugs, we went back to Jimmie’s place and I tried to get some last minute publicity drummed up. It was scheduled to be amateur night anyway, so I thought there’d at least be a few people out there to catch some of the upcoming and local drag queens, along with the notorious gonzo poet.

We went out to Zims at about 9:00; it was getting a bit nasty outside, not horrible, but cold and rainy. We walk in and it’s empty, there’s a few guys hanging out at the end of the bar, I recognize one of them, and that’s it. It’s alright, it was early, surely a few more would show up, so we ordered a pitcher of draft and hung around, I was still putting together my set list. It looked like I was the only one who showed up to perform, so it was all me that night.

10:00 rolls around and still nobody’s there. We decided to wait a bit longer, I ordered another pitcher of brew, Jimmie declined to have any more since he had to drive. At around 10:30, I said fuck it and went to do the show.

We move into the showroom, there’s me on stage, Jimmie, a couple of guys from the bar, and the sound guy. I’m up there on stage, pitcher of beer next to me, along with an ashtray, and my set list in my bag.

There were no other poets, no drag queens, just me. So I went through a forty-five minute set completely smashed, the previous beers were kicking in and the current beers were catching up. I did a couple of originals, but it was a lot of covers, I did some Ginsberg, some Bukowski naturally, and ended the set with Eric Norris’ three part piece “A Life”.

I stumbled off stage to a bit of scattered applause and Jimmie and I headed for the door. It wasn’t a total bust, the sound guy said he dug it and the other dudes in the showroom seemed to enjoy my act. It wasn’t my best performance, but I made it through and still got a good reaction from the few people there to see it.

Funny post script to that story, the next night, I did my gig at Coffee Grounds, it was a packed house, a good rowdy crowd, a forty-five minute set of originals, and one of the best performances I ever did in Terre Haute, IN.