True Life Lesbian Adventures is a feature by Carolyn Weathers, a recently-retired librarian with the Los Angeles Public Library, and a writer. A Baptist preacher’s daughter turned irreligious, she came out in San Antonio, Texas, in 1961 when she was 21 and became an enthusiastic participant in the pre-Stonewall bar scene. Tagging along after her big sister, she left Texas in 1968 for Los Angeles, where she strolled barefoot up and down Hollywood Boulevard performing haphazard gay/feminist guerilla theater, especially in front of the tour buses at Hollywood and Vine. After Stonewall she was a participant in the Gay Liberation Front and in the Gay Women’s Liberation Front at the Women’s Center on Crenshaw. She was co-publisher, with artist Jenny Wrenn, of Clothespin Fever Press, now defunct, a lesbian book publishing company publishing 37 writers and 22 books from 1986-1994, including an anthology of the first five years of Ann Bradley’s Lesbian Writers Series at A Different Light Bookstore in Silverlake. Carolyn and particularly her sister, Brenda Weathers, are mentioned in Gay LA: a History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics and Lipstick Lesbians, by Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons (Basic Books 2006); and in Feminists Who Changed America 1963-1975, edited by Barbara Love (University of Illinois 2006.) Carolyn is delighted to be included among Dr. Marie Cartier’s informants for Cartier’s doctoral dissertation in religious studies for Claremont Graduate University: Baby, You Are my Religion – the Emergence of “Theelogy” in Pre-Stonewall Butch Femme Bar Culture and Community (2010.)
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THE CORONATION OF QUEEN ELIZABETH II: “A CRUSH ON THE QUEEN” Brownfield/London 1953 |
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Wednesday, 02 September 2009 21:47 |
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AUTHOR’S PREFACE: In June 1953 Elizabeth II was crowned Queen of Great Britain, the United Kingdom and the British Commonwealth. Her coronation was the world’s first major television event, TV itself being about four years old. Over 20 million people all over the world watched the coronation, many of them crowded around a neighbor’s TV, watching TV for the first time in their lives. It was broadcast in 44 languages. |
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Sunday, 08 February 2009 06:26 |
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My sister, Brenda, was lovers with Anita Ornelas. Today, we would say partners, but in 1961 it was lovers. Anita was a WAC at Ft. Sam Houston, and when she wasn’t at the barracks or the beery WAC Shack, lived with Brenda at her apartment on Army Boulevard. Terry and I had seat-of-the-pants jobs, and we were kind of seeing each other. |
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Renaissance Pleasure Faire |
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Sunday, 08 February 2009 06:26 |
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Agoura Hills, California, May 1970 We took the Ventura Freeway north from Hollywood to Agoura Hills, in three car loads, past Calabasas to the Kanan Road exit. We parked in a lot and walked the rest of the way on a dirt road that wound through hills and old oaks and turned, as we turned back in time, into the High Road, down which the Lord Mayor himself led the opening procession of lords and ladies, artisans, tumblers, lute players, wenches and rogues, and Queen Bess Herself on a white horse into the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, in May of 1970. |
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Sunday, 08 February 2009 06:26 |
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On the Texas Honkytonk Trail in 1980s L.A. Author’s Preface: The author has been asked many times over the years by her non-Texas friends, who outnumber her Texas friends: “Just what does this crude word mean”? And: “Couldn’t you have used another word that meant the same thing?” The author must politely but firmly inform the reader that there is no other word in Texas slang that means quite the same thing as the crude word itself. “Shitkicker” is a versatile word, both verb and noun, both an action and a place, and need not refer to bodily function, except that it possibly originated from cowboys and cowgirls in the long ago times having to kick the cow patties out of the way before they could dance. |
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A Midsummer Madness Upon The Death Of My Sister |
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Sunday, 08 February 2009 06:26 |
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Long Beach 2005 With increasing and frantic intolerance, I drove back and forth to my local stores. Why was it so hard to find Mar-o-Snacks? Why did I have to go to so many stores to find what was on one grocery list? Why wouldn’t my dog eat any old treat, like regular dogs do? My sister’s dogs ate anything you threw at them. |
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KISSING IN CASTS, 1985 East Hollywood/Highland Park/Echo Park |
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Sunday, 08 February 2009 06:26 |
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Every Wednesday night, Jenny and I met for chess at the Go-Between coffeehouse. |
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Pre-Stonewall San Antonio 1961-1963 Cheers Everybody! |
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Sunday, 01 February 2009 18:44 |
The Acme Bar was a dingy rat hole, a shoebox painted black, with sagging wood floors and a forest of signs, like "Credit? Forget It!" It thumped with life in an eerie area of locked warehouses and abandoned storefronts where life had left, as though an alien spaceship had beamed up all other life during the night. The Acme, scene of stories both lurid and hilarious, was called the Hollywood and Vine of San Antonio because if someone sat there long enough - - one weekend - - a preponderance of the gays in San Antonio would be seen walking through its swinging doors.
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