Dec 22nd, 2006
Not Made Up: Part II
Long time artist/activist Patrick Scully donated his many, many boxes of materials to the Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies, declaring, “History is written by those whose stuff is saved!”
As a community organizer on the last leg of my phase-out plan, any documentation of my work is basically worthless if it’s just stashed away in the back of my, um, closet. It could be helpful, however, to researchers and activists in the future, to have access to these boxes — to get a sense of the challenges, struggle, and progress of legitimizing the queerspawn identity in the beginning of the 21st century.
So in the spirit of Patrick’s wise words, I, too, am preparing “my papers” to donate them to the Tretter Collection. It’s not just “papers” actually, but also posters, brochures, buttons, and other items from my years of activism.
When I tell people what I’m “doing with all that stuff” I rattle off a quick list of what I’m ready to part with — including the two T-shirts I reference in the prologue of my book, Families Like Mine.
And that was the spark for yesterday’s post. After mentioning the T-shirts, some people give me this give me this look of surprise in which you can almost hear the cartoon sound effect: Doi-oi-oi-oi-oing!
“You mean you really made a t-shirt like that?”
“Yes,” I say, “my book is non-fiction. I really made that t-shirt.”
And it’s going in the archives at the Tretter Collection.
Here is a photo of the front. I made it at Kinko’s in 1998 and it is quite faded now:
This is the back of the same shirt, but the lighting in the photo makes it look like a different color:
That’s a quote about me from “The Kids are Alright” a cover story written by Joel Hoekstra, editor for QMonthly, a very cool paper that folded too soon. I pitched Hoekstra several times to do a story about kids of gay parents, especially after there was a cover story on “families” of gay and lesbian people speaking out, but really it was about how great PFLAG parents were, with nary a peep about sons and daughters. About a year later, he agreed to interview me, and I connected him with a bunch of queerspawn that he profiled in the story: Alina and Daniel Hornfeldt, Kirk Wisland, Kristin Scott, Wayne Bruns and Nate Howard.
That was my first successful media pitch — 10 months in the making — and it was vindicating to be described as “vociferous.” It belonged on my t-shirt.
So, yeah, the shirt is real.