Oral History – Charlie Thornton
Interviewer: Jason Ezell
Transcriber: Eli Wiseman
July 2, 2019
CHARLIE THORNTON: I’m Charlie.
EZELL: If you could start, if you don’t mind, to just talk a little bit about your family background and growing up, where, and what it was like.
THORNTON: I’m 68 now… I grew up in Winnfield, Louisiana in Winn Parish, home of the Longs, and… I’m a working class background. My mother was rural, grew up in rural south–y’know, very poor, talking about dogtrot cabins–and my father was from Arkansas, and had moved to Winnfield and married my mother. He worked for the Coca-Cola company, soft drink distributor, soda water distributor, which was wonderful. I would go with him, and, y’know, we would go to the end of the road with soda water, and go to black churches, and fish fries, so I was very rooted in the culture of the South, I guess.
EZELL: [2:07] [agrees]
THORNTON: …I knew I was different at that time as a young man. I always felt different than everyone else around me, but I didn’t know wh-, how, or why, but I knew I was not like–there was no one–I felt like there was no one that was like me. At age 15, my father had gone bankrupt, and we had a lot of financial difficulty so we moved to another town, Winnsboro, Louisiana, which is in the Louisiana delta. It’s a cotton town… and at 16, I met this brilliant young man in this little cotton town —
EZELL: [laughs]
THORNTON: He was an artist… he was a classical pianist, he was… the valedictorian of the high school, and… he was a beautiful man, and we both fell in love, at 16 , you know… so I began to know [chuckles] why I was different, you know,–
EZELL: [laughs]
THORNTON: …So that was our high school years. When we graduated, he went off to a different school and I went off to a different school, and I lost touch with him, and… I went off to Monroe, Louisiana, to the small college, and met another man,–
EZELL: [chuckles]
THORNTON: Named Terry Flaherty, who would–we would go to–this is ‘67, ‘68–we would go to a college party, soon he’d say “My name is Terry Flaherty, [pronounced like “flirty”] and I am a homosexual,” [laughs] and–
EZELL: [laughs]
THORNTON: [chuckles] Everything would ripple out from there, but he subscribed to the Village Voice , so we got a lot of gay news–
EZELL: [4:21] [chuckles]
THORNTON: –from the Village Voice , and we read a lot of beatniks, and… [pauses] we took a lot of drugs together–this is the 60’s, ‘67, ‘68. We would experiment–it was all sexual experimentation–as I talked to you before, we would go to the Creole Lounge, which was the gay bar in downtown Monroe, which was systematically shut down by the police department who would come in every night and take everyone’s name and address and generally arrest or look for some reason to arrest people, and it was… so terrifying, to the, to all of us that were there that they shut the bar down,–
EZELL: [5:26] [agrees]
THORNTON: Therefore, gay life was–as a young gay man, our life consisted of this downtown street, two blocks, where people would gather, just discreetly gather, and meet each othe. That’s how gay–how we would meet eachother, and…
EZELL: Was that where the Creole Lounge was?
THORNTON: It was in that area,–
EZELL: Okay.
THORNTON: –it was in downtown, and it was deserted after dark, you know,–the downtown of Monroe was deserted. All the straight people went home.
EZELL: [chuckles] Yeah. [chuckles]
THORNTON: And that’s where I met another man, Michael. There was a little cafe at the end of the street called the Pitcreole, where truck drivers and professional wrestlers and queer people would go in and have a bite to eat,–
EZELL: [6:28] [chuckles]
THORNTON: –and at 4:00 in the morning I walked in, and there was this beautiful man with this long hair coming down to his shoulders and he had these striking blue eyes, and he was sitting with a friend of mine, and I said “Oh. This is the–[chuckles] This is the man.” [laughs]
EZELL: [laughs]
THORNTON: So 47 years later we’re still together. You know.
EZELL: How did you hit it off? Did y’all just know that y’all were right for eachother? How did your relationship develop to be one where you considered yourself to be a couple?
THORNTON: There was an immediate attraction. I was a radical thinker, I think, for the time, and Michael was very attracted to that, because I spoke differently and thought differently than other gay men. We had a little–this may be off the subject–but we had this little classic struggle of becoming a couple. There was another man that fell in love with Michael at the same time I did. I was very poor. I worked in a service station and had a little one-room apartment in an old house, but this other man, this Southern gentleman, from the elite, who lived on the bayou in this plantation-style house, a beautiful man, artist, the classic Southern gentleman, fell in love with Michael at the same time and so Michael had to decide,–
EZELL: [8:28] Aw.
THORNTON: –poor Michael had to decide. I made him, that’s wh–y’know, make a decision. Go with this man or go with that man and thankfully, Michael chose the [chuckles] gay radical.
EZELL: [chuckles] So, you were a gay radical. Can you share just a little bit to help understand how you were radical? Was there something that really influenced you to be radical in those earlier, those young years–the 60’s, I guess. I mean, there’s a lot, but what in particular?
THORNTON: It was the 60’s, and everything was in turmoil. In those days you had to–my college was a land grant college and men were forced to be in the ROTC,–
EZELL: [mild gasp]
THORNTON: –the military training camp, and I did that one day and they showed films of Vietnamese people being killed in the streams of Vietnam and I never went back. I hid out in the library.
EZELL: [chuckles]
THORNTON: Because every man on campus was marching up and down with guns. That was the training, so I had to hide out. So, I hid out in the library and started reading things… and I was trying to figure out how to be a gay man. There were no, no… images, no models, no information, and I would meet these older gay men and I was not like them. I wanted to–it was the 60’s, we wanted to live in a different way. And so I was searching, searching for how to be an open and free gay man.
EZELL: [10:30] Did you find any–
THORNTON: Without being killed.
EZELL: Oh–
THORNTON: [laughs]
EZELL: [chuckles] Yes. [chuckles] Do you remember anything you grabbed off the shelf in those days? When you were in the library instead of marching.
THORNTON: [10:41] The one book that I found was… Psychopathia Sexualis [an 1886 book declaring homosexuality to be a pathology caused by degenerate heredity], which… I later learned were all of these wonderful 19th century gay men who anonymously gave their stories, but at the time, all the information that was available was that “you’re sick,” per se, “you’re evil,” per se. So, in Pyschopathia Sexualis , the case histories presented people living their lives with minimum–if I recall–immoral judgement. It was just their story.
EZELL: [11:26] Yeah.
THORNTON: So that was helpful, and… gradually they were, y’know, filtering out. Young gay people were living in different ways, you know. My friendship with Terry and reading his Village Voice ’s was very helpful too. So I had these inklings. At one point–I don’t remember the date– Esquire Magazine had an article called “The New Homosexual”–
EZELL: Oh wow.
THORNTON: –and it had this beautiful gay man on a motorcycle, proudly. I don’t remember if it was before Stonewall or after.
EZELL: Yeah. Yeah. So… how long–you met Michael, and how long–you became a couple, so, did you live together?
THORNTON: [12:32] Yeah, automatically.
EZELL: Okay.
THORNTON: Michael had just turned 17. I was 20. I was the older man at 22,–
EZELL: [chuckles]
THORNTON: –which, you know, it was… illegal. I could have been sent to prison. So that was real, but we didn’t care about that, actually. After, we started living together right away.
EZELL: What was your life–so how long did you live together there in Monroe and what was your life like, at that point?
THORNTON: [pauses] I’m not sure how long we lived in Monroe. A year? We decided our life was–we were very poor. We wanted to enjoy ourselves and be ourselves. Michael more than I were involved with younger gay people, and we both worked. Michael worked in a department store, a five and dime store, and I had various little jobs, and at some point in the Nixon recession, or something like that, he took away food stamps, et cetera. We got a little more desperate, and we decided we needed to leave town, so we moved to New Orleans.
EZELL: [14:07] Oh. Okay, and… how did you find life in New Orleans at that time?
THORNTON: Well, you know, there’s no place like New Orleans, and–
EZELL: [chuckles]
THORNTON: –New Orleans, I’d been there to visit several times, as a young man, but New Orleans was always sanctuary for queer people in the South, ‘cause you could go there, and be around other gay people. There was no gay movement in New Orleans at that time. There was no–not a lot of gay political awareness, but there was the gay–the culture, and I just loved it. I loved it, you know. The beautiful queens, street queens, and just to go to a gay bar was a thrill. And a privilege.
EZELL: What part of town did you guys live in?
THORNTON: We lived in.. we lived in the quarter, which was not… inaccessible at that time, and I worked at a coffee house, and I think Michael went to Maison Blanche and worked.
EZELL: So there wasn’t a political movement, and there were bars, as far as gay life there. Did it seem like a welcoming place for you to be? I mean, it’s a gay haven in some ways. Did it feel like a really welcoming and safe place to be, or?
THORNTON: [15:55] In the quarter it was, and then certain–just certain sections of the quarter. When the tourists would come, they would turn around, and go back. [chuckles]
EZELL: [laughs]
THORNTON: “Oh, this is the end!” [chuckles] But, you know, if you go a little further in the shadows, that’s where the gay people were.
EZELL: [laughs]
THORNTON: Isn’t that a 60’s song? “At the Dark End of the Street”? That was popular at that time. I completely understood that, so… we were tolerated. Gay people were tolerated, and the queens were… You couldn’t–they couldn’t–they would not be suppressed. But the police were always–the New Orleans Police–even now, are just… legendarily… mean , [chuckles] and the police would stop us every single day, as we walked to our jobs or whatever.
EZELL: Why do you think you were targeted?
THORNTON: We were obvious–we were hippies, we had long hair, we… were gay, obviously gay… we would walk holding hands, and… it’s a happy–it was a–I was very angry about ‘em, and also very scared, because if they took you to central lockup, no one knew what would happen. They were not–police were not controlled at that time, but these old Cajun ladies would sit on their stools and take up for us. They’d say, “You leave those boys alone! Those are good boys!”
EZELL: [17:48] [laughs]
THORNTON: And I went… ‘loved them for that. So there was support, yeah.
EZELL: Did they… this was around the time of the upstairs lounge arson. Is that right?
THORNTON: Yes. We–I think–it was after. We were in Monroe, and read about it in the paper, what we could. We knew what it was. We knew it was a gay bar, and everybody had died, but they didn’t say that directly in the papers that we read up in Monroe. So it was a little horrifying but everything was sort of kept in the shadows. I’ll get back to that. There was a lot of [chuckles] shadowy stuff . We went–we took a visit–when we lived in Monroe, we visited New Orleans together, and visited my friend Terry who lived in New Orleans, and…
EZELL: Do you remember Terry’s last name?
THORNTON: [18:51] Flaherty.
EZELL: Oh, that’s Terry Flaherty. Okay, right.
THORNTON: Terry Flaherty. He moved to New Orleans, and… we would visit him and walk by the… lounge… and saw the burnt relics…. Very tragic. Very sad. And scary.
EZELL: M-hm. Did you–so how long were you in New Orleans? The two of you, this time.
THORNTON: After we moved to New Orleans… I’m not sure how long we lived there. One, it was hard to live there because we were [chuckles] poor, [chuckles] and the city was changing, too. There was some violence. I had some scary–a few scary situations, and… So we decided–my 60’s family, my hippie family–some of them were moving to Arkansas. To Fayetteville, Arkansas. This whole “back to the land” movement was beginning, so we–we decided–we would leave the urban landscape and go back to nature. That’s where the hippie movement was headed at that time.
EZELL: Did you–if you don’t mind–if you feel there’s something to add there, you said you’d had a few… scary experiences? Is that right?
THORNTON: …Yes.
EZELL: [20:39] Do you mind to say what kind? Or just–if you feel comfortable talking about that?
THORNTON: Well, one, I think that–I remember–was… on the bus, late at night, in New Orleans, and two… thuggish guys were, y’know, threatening–approaching me in a threatening manner and being very… I don’t know. There was a mugging situation or robber situation, but I managed to… [chuckles] talk my way out of it, [chuckles] you know, and all scary situations like that, I always managed to talk myself out, but gay people were always threatened. We were always threatened, and the sad–you know, we would have no recourse. Even if we were victimized, the police would not… honor or respect that, because we were criminals also, and we deserved it, so… But, we lived in the French Quarter in this old–what used to be a slave quarter ring–and right around the corner was a little convenience store, the little general convenience store, right around the corner from Dumaine, and we would run in there all the time and get milk or bread or whatever. One night, I walked into the little general, and five minutes after I left, someone went in and shot everybody in the store, robbed the store, and shot and killed everyone in the store. Five minutes [chuckles] after I [chuckles] left, so I said, “Hmm… Maybe I should go to Arkansas… [chuckles] Maybe I should leave the city and go to…” You know, but I did love New Orleans, so I don’t wanna put a bad reputation on it.
EZELL: Did you see–if you–did you see a kind of gay life for youself in this “back to the land” movement that you were leaving New Orleans to go to Arkansas for? And if so, tell me about what you… foresaw.
THORNTON: [23:01] I think Michael and I, one thing we shared in common, actually–besides our–we considered ourselves gay liberationists and we were looking… for gay community. Gay community, and I thought that might be–I knew that would be possible. We would find our people, and… that was a big–always a motivation for us. To create community, among gay people. Because we felt like–I should speak for myself– I felt like… I had insight. There was another way. And they had–there was free sexuality, and there was more acceptance. Limited acceptance, but…
EZELL: So you left New Orleans and you came to Fayetteville?
THORNTON: Fayetteville, Arkansas, yeah.
EZELL: So this is maybe ‘73? ‘74?
THORNTON: …Yeah, maybe ‘74.
EZELL: The Upstairs Lounge happened in, I think, June of 1973…I guess it would–I guess it would probably–
THORNTON: [24:13] –’74… ‘75.
EZELL: Okay. So, you came to Fayetteville, and what did you do–what did you find in Fayetteville? What was it like?
THORNTON: It was ‘74. It was the last of the hippies. They’d been banished [chuckles] everywhere else.
EZELL: [laughs]
THORNTON: [chuckles] So, there was… a hippie cafe, and it was just a quiet, laid-back town. It had a lot of tolerance for difference because it was a university town, and you know. It was a political town. There had been antiwar protests and some environmental awareness and… Actually, you know, the same reason we went to New Orleans. There was a limited amount of freedom here that we could be whatever we wanted to be and act however we wanted to act.
EZELL: Did you find gay community right off?
THORNTON: Let me think… There was no gay bar at that time, and we would… I think it took a while. A little while. I always had to work, and that was the priority, you know, to survive. So that was what we did.
EZELL: [26:07] What kind of work?
THORNTON: At that time I was in the foodservice industry. I would cook–I was a vegetarian and I was the meat cook–
EZELL: [laughs]
THORNTON: –at this buffet restaurant. I would cook these huge turkeys and hams, completely vegetarian. The first place we lived was right outside of town–it was the cheapest place we could find–and then we moved into the center-town, and that’s when we began to meet gay people, and… [pauses] I really don’t remember, I’m sorry.
EZELL: Oh, that’s fine! That’s fine. I know that because of our conversations we’ve had earlier, it didn’t take terribly long for you to meet Dennis Willliams, is that right?
THORNTON: Yes, that’s right.
EZELL: Can you talk about your first meeting, at least, that you remember of him? And tell a little of your first impressions.
THORNTON: [27:14] …Michael met him first and came back and told me because Michael had gone to–there was no gay organization, but people would have parties, and there was this little subculture of gay people–and so Michael had gone to this party and met this man and talked to him and said he was interested in gay communal living. We were searching for community, always. So Michael met him first, and… My memory is vague about it, but we lived in the center-street house, this big house, with a big room, and we decided to call–I think–we called people together–maybe that was later, but at some point Dennis came over to this house. That’s when I met him.
EZELL: When you called people together was there an activity? Was it just a party? Or was it just a gathering?
THORNTON: I’m trying to remember… We had a community dinner. I think that’s what we called it, like a… like a potluck, a gay potluck. And I think Dennis was involved in that, because many of his friends came over. And these women, these radical lesbian women, had come to town. They came there, and so it was–we had no furniture in this house–
EZELL: [laughs]
THORNTON: [chuckles] So we layed out these cloths on the floor and everybody put their food on the floor, but it was the first time in Fayetteville, that I know, that many gay people had come together in a non-party atmosphere or a non-sexual atmosphere, but had just come together as a group of gay men and women. Dennis and I and Michael began having these long conversations just about what it meant to be gay. Dennis had a wonderful gay history, you know–Texas and then New York City, and… he had experience of communal living with straight people, and he wanted to live with gay people in that manner, as we did.
EZELL: [29:57] So that shared vision of gay community eventually led to Mulberry House. What do you remember about the very earliest formations of Mulberry House, and who were the core people?
THORNTON: I can’t remember how we decided to move in, but Dennis–I’m sure he invited us. His house was always Grand Central–young people coming and going throughout the house, but… I think we committed to being a gay commune, whatever that would mean. The first grouping–they were not afraid of us wanting to live in a radical way–was Dennis, Michael, and I, and a hairdresser who loved to wear leather clothes, and a cute little Irish poet boy who I had a crush on, but who didn’t fancy me–Sean Michael. He was a florist.
EZELL: Ohh. And was Dimid–or Dean Hayes, I guess, at that time–was he part of that group in the original, as you remember?
THORNTON: Not in that first group, which was not [chuckles] a successful one–
EZELL: [31:53] [laughs]
THORNTON: — commune… I can’t remember all the details, but the other two people left for various reasons. I can’t remember, but Dennis and Michael and I were still very bonded.
EZELL: So then Dean came at some point along the way, and he became one of the core members later?
THORNTON: Absolutely, yes, he did. Immediately, yeah.
EZELL: Okay, and was that the core group as you saw it? The four of you?
THORNTON: Yes–Dennis, Michael and I, and Dean–Dimid–and then there was a periphery of people. A lot of people. Princip Dennis–gay man–who was held up in highest esteem by everyone.
EZELL: [agrees] You’ve talked a lot about how important a lot of the publishing and literature of this time was. Do you remember RFD as an important part of your life there? And how so?
THORNTON: [33:17] Oh, absolutely. I’m not sure about this, but I think that might have been a connection with us and with Dennis. I’m not sure if I introduced him to that, but somehow, there were a lot of independent, underground gay publications. There were a lot of political, alternative papers from the ‘60’s, and that evolved into underground gay papers that came. Perhaps one that I picked up in New Orleans, or something–I can’t even remember the name because they would just come and go, they were like zines I guess–but I saw an advertisement for a magazine for rural gay people! Back to the Landers . So, absolutely. I think I got the third issue? I just fell in love with it, you know, saying “I want to live that way,” and it was very personal for everyone. It was a reader-written magazine.
EZELL: Can you tell me about how you guys–and if this is too early, let me know, to talk about this. How did you come to identify as sissies, or to start using that word, and what did it mean? Was that around this time?
THORNTON: I think it was later… after the radical lesbians came to town.
EZELL: Okay, so let’s talk about the radical lesbians, because you mentioned them earlier, and I didn’t remember to go back to that. So, could you talk about the radical lesbians coming to town and what influence they might have had?
THORNTON: The radical lesbians came to Fayetteville, to the Ozarks, by land, for sanctuary. That was our desire, too, for gay men–to have sanctuary. There was a tiny gay separatist movement happening. People in California wanted to buy a whole town and move to California, and that was in our minds, too–separating ourselves from straight society to find out who we were without straight society telling us who we were. Who did we wanna be? So, that was a connection that we had. The lesbians had come to the Ozarks to do that. They were radical lesbian feminists, radical lesbian separatists, very strong and powerful women, and I think, in my opinion, [chuckles] they frightened other lesbians–
EZELL: [36:24] [laughs]
THORNTON: –and other straight feminist women, and they were looking for a place to stay, and they saw these gay men living together–radical gay men, actually. They said, “Can we park our van in your driveway?” So, they became part of Mulberry house, also.
EZELL: So, for the record, what are the names of the lesbians you’re referring to?
THORNTON: The first were [?] Laughlin and Patricia Smith, I believe. They had had a lot of political experience, and they helped create the Women’s Movement–the original Women’s Movement. Then, the radical lesbian feminists, they tried to kick them out of the Women’s Movement. So, they had very strong, feminist politics. And so, coming to Mulberry House, to these men–they were trying to separate themselves from all men–but they found these men, who honored and respected and loved them, and so our politics began merging, and we–I–learned so much about feminism and what women experienced in this world and what lesbian women experienced in this world. I’m talking about the evolution of “sissies.” At some point we decided we didn’t want to call ourselves “men” because we were questioning the requirements of being a “male” and to be considered a “man,” and we rejected that. We rejected that. We’ll call ourselves gay but we won’t call ourselves gay “men.” There was a lot of… disrespect from gay men toward women at that time–a lot of separation and misunderstandings. So we didn’t want to call ourselves men, so what did we call ourselves? Sissies. Reclaiming.
EZELL: [39:04] Reclaiming is how you came to that–
THORNTON: Reclaiming the word–because we had often been called sissies as children, growing up. We reclaimed that. We’re Sissies.
EZELL: Were there ways that you could talk about, that you reclaimed being a sissy in addition to just saying it. So, you called yourself sissies, but were there ways that that changed the way that you thought about things, or think the way you did, or the way you looked, for example.
THORNTON: Absolutely the way we looked.
EZELL: [chuckles]
THORNTON: [39:42] Dennis had been to India and had brought all these beautiful embroidered curtains and exotic clothes which we loved to wear, which he shared freely. We used to say, “In one day in a skirt, a man can learn more than any book.” We loved to wear skirts. A lot of it was just gender exploration, if we’re not “men”… All men are trained–I was trained, “This is the way to sit. This is the way to walk,” and so, rebels that we were, we said, “We’re just gonna do the opposite.”
EZELL: [laughs]
THORNTON: So I learned how to swish a little bit more.
EZELL: You have described to me–it’s intriguing, I hadn’t thought about this before–I’m seeing now this moment where these radical lesbians roll up to your house because of other lesbians rejecting them, and then you kind of encounter each other… Is there anything else you would like to say in terms of what made you two separatists groups–separatist women and gay sissies–what did you see in each other’s politics, do you think?
THORNTON: Just a desire to be free, to be ourselves.
EZELL: [agrees]
THORNTON: [41:28] Politically, among gay people at that time, lesbians had separated themselves from the Gay Movement. That’s when they became the Lesbian Gay Movement, because they claimed, “Why should we use your name for us? We’re not gay, we’re lesbian . We want that word.” There was a lot of separation and misunderstanding from the gay men, and the lesbians–they wanted to be woman-identified… I think I’ve lost my train of thought.
EZELL: Oh, no, that’s fine. I wondered if there was a particular kind of political mirror you encountered between, like, “These people are radical, and these people are radical,” if there was a specific kind of radical, and you were answering that by saying it was a shared desire to be free…
THORNTON: Yes, but what I was saying also about the Gay Movement at that time and the separation–in my early experience of gay people out on the street, or in the bars, there was severe oppression, and there was no separation between men and women, and I never had felt that, so I was more open to these women. And I love them because they were fierce, and determined, and they loved themselves, and they wanted to live in a different way. They wanted the world to change. Besides the politics, as we grew to know each other, we loved each other. I don’t wanna leave out the love and affection, you know. That was a bonding.
EZELL: [43:26] That’s important to remember. Was there a shift? Because the word–correct me if I’m wrong–but the words that you use–”communal,” “commune,”–Was there a shift where you started to use the word “collective?” Did it change the way you lived or how the house worked, the influence of these women, in other ways? If not–just, if there is anything else…
THORNTON: I’m not sure if the women were connected with [?]. We were also enmeshed at that point. I think the word “collective” came because the gay men of Mulberry House were trying to focus on what work we needed to do. At that time, “commune” was more lifestyle, and we wanted to focus. We had this work to do in the gay community. One of which was encouraging and promoting feminism.
EZELL: [agrees] And, so, what was daily life like? How did you share your space? What did the day look like? What’s a day in the life of a gay collective? Anything that pops into mind, just give us an idea.
THORNTON: Here’s the main thing for me about living in Mulberry House: I’ve had to work all of my life, trying to please straight society. For two years, for those two years that I lived in Mulberry House, I didn’t have to work, because we shared everything. We shared food, we shared money. At some point we decided we would give each other $5 a month for spending money [chuckles]–
EZELL: [45:28] [laughs]
THORNTON: –personal spending money, so you could go out and buy something just for yourself. But, we had those two years to not work, and I lived at Mulberry House. I didn’t leave a lot. I didn’t go outside of Mulberry House a lot. For two years I lived in a completely queer world, separated from straight people. That was very [chuckles] life changing. I never thought I was a gay separatist, but I realized because I didn’t have that influence of being defined outside. I had that freedom to do whatever I wanted, to be whoever I wanted.
EZELL: It was really important, especially given your background, to be free of a wage job.
THORNTON: To not have to work, yes.
EZELL: Is this when you did indexing work in the co-op work, also? Did that come later?
THORNTON: It was a process. Dennis–that’s how he supported himself financially: Doing indexes, and he had this wonderful reputation, and publishers knew who he was and what kind of work he did. So that was intermittent, and at some point we all began to do it together. [pauses]
EZELL: [47:16] Did you work for the Ozark food co-op?
THORNTON: That came a little later.
EZELL: Okay.
THORNTON: [pauses] The food co-op was an alternative center of the Ozarks–of Fayetteville and of the Ozarks–it was an alternative center. But it was called a cooperative, but in effect it did not work that way. It was completely run by these straight white men. They made all the decisions. I think the radical lesbians decided–a concern for all of us was our health, and good clean food–nonpolluted, nonpoisoned food–was a primary concern for all of us–hippies, straight hippies, all of us alternative gay people. So we were shoppers at the co-op. It was a very unfriendly place because we were different and misunderstood. Not everyone, but especially straight men. We began questioning the policies, and why the only people there were bankers’-sons-turned-hippies. [chuckles]
EZELL: [laughs]
THORNTON: That’s the only people who shopped there. There were no people of color, no poor people, no working class people, and we began questioning all of that and met fierce resistance. “This is ours.” So we attempted to overturn that, the food co-op. It was a big enterprise. They became the warehouse that served alternative food in four or five states, so it was a big game, money-making enterprise, and they would find us little jobs. First job I did for them, working at the co-op–because you could work and not have to pay. You could get credit for your work. It would be a non-monetary thing. First job I did, and some of the women: we would roast peanuts and make peanut butter.
EZELL: [49:54] [chuckles] Wow.
THORNTON: From organic peanuts, and we’d roast them. It was a nighttime job. So that was a lot of fun. I enjoyed that.
EZELL: Was the name of it the Ozark Food Co-op?
THORNTON: Ozark Natural Food Co-op.
EZELL: [agrees] And I need to get my timeline down, because I don’t want to jump too far ahead. You went to the Oregon Conference, somewhere in there, as a collective. Is that correct? In ‘76?
THORNTON: If that was in ‘76.
EZELL: Yeah. It was Labor Day 1976. Can you talk a little bit about your experience within the collective of attending that conference?
THORNTON: [50:47] Before I talk about that, I would like to be sure to say a really radicalizing and life changing event was–we talked about RFD earlier, and we were connected with the RFD people. I’m not sure of the date. ‘74? ‘5? ‘74 maybe.
EZELL: Early, yeah.
THORNTON: For Gay Pride, in Iowa City, the RFD people were participating in the Iowa Gay Pride Conference. And, so, as a group, the gay men, we travelled to Iowa City for the Iowa Gay Pride Conference at the invitation of the RFD people. That was a very radical event.
EZELL: Was RFD already around then?
THORNTON: Their collective was publishing, maybe three or four issues in.
EZELL: Okay.
THORNTON: They lived outside of Iowa City in the country. Rita Mae Brown… gave a fiery speech,–
EZELL: [52:10] [chuckles]
THORNTON: –gave a keynote speech, and [?] the radical queens from the East Coast… It just completely opened my brain to a whole new experience [chuckles].
EZELL: Did he speak?
THORNTON: He spoke. I lost track of him. I’m not sure what happened to him, but he was an early gay pioneer, the radical queens.
EZELL: And then of course you met in person the collective that invited you there–the collective that published RFD .
THORNTON: Yes. Donald Engstrom and his partner Rick Graph. They were especially dear. We recognized each other. We shared the same desires, I should say.
EZELL: [agrees] So that conference happens before the one in 1976 out in Oregon, and it really does also expand. Like you’re saying, you’re meeting lots of different people more and more who share your vision.
THORNTON: Yeah. At the Iowa Gay Pride, all kinds of gay people came from all over the Midwest, actually, because there were not a lot of Midwest gay prides at that time, and Iowa City was like a center . So we did meet people from all over the Midwest–from the upper Midwest. There were people from Kentucky who had came, who had been harassed by the FBI looking for radical weathermen. They thought they were hiding out in the gay commune. The gay communes were spreading. Our ideas sort of spread.
EZELL: [54:09] Was that the folks from Lexington?
THORNTON: From Lexington, Kentucky, yeah.
EZELL: They were there. Okay. That’s amazing.
THORNTON: And they were at our gay pride. So it was an expanding thing. And also, as you say, since that, “Oh, we’re everywhere,” [chuckles]–
EZELL: [laughs]
THORNTON: –I think that was the expression at the time. “People like us are everywhere.” So, that was very empowering.
EZELL: [agrees] If we’re not ready, let me know–so how did you find out about the ‘76 conference in Oregon, and if you can lead into telling me a little bit about that process. If we’re ready.
THORNTON: [54:49] [pauses] There was a radical socialist–gay socialist, gay leftist–magazine begun in San Francisco… called Magnus , named after Magnus Hurstfield. I think we saw an advertisement in there, or maybe we had an invitation. I’m trying to remember the publisher’s name–another gay pioneer. Do you recall?
EZELL: I don’t, but Michael named it. I just can’t remember.
THORNTON: Alright. But we were in correspondence, because it was a subscription from Arkansas [chuckles] to Magnus —
EZELL: [laughs]
THORNTON: — in San Francisco. We always blew people’s mind. They’d say, “Arkansas? Is that in the United States?” [chuckles]
EZELL: [laughs]
THORNTON: These coastal elites. actually, but–I think we were in correspondence, the Mulberry House, and the Magnus Collective. I think he invited us to go.
EZELL: [56:01] So, what was going there like?
THORNTON: As a group of radical sissies travelling across the United States, it was fun. We wanted to see America. It was our road trip. We took a road trip, you know.
EZELL: Yeah. [chuckles]
THORNTON: We camped out, and…
EZELL: Who went?
THORNTON: Let me think… myself, Michael, Dennis, Dimid, Jack–
EZELL: Oh. That’s right–
THORNTON: –I think Jack went. Absolutely, Jack went.
EZELL: And how’d you go?
THORNTON: The lesbians had lent us their mail truck. I thought it was an English mail truck–
EZELL: [56:52] [laughs]
THORNTON: –I thought it was just an English truck, but Michael reminds me that it was a mail truck. So we drove on the wrong side of the road–the steering was on the wrong side of the road than American. So, we drove in that. Yeah.
EZELL: [agrees] What were your impressions–give us a sense of understanding what happened at the conference. I think even the name was surprising the first time I heard it–a conference called the Faggots in Class Struggle Conference was unexpected. So if you can give your impressions of what the conference was like. Maybe good and bad–challenges and the really great things.
THORNTON: I was very excited because another political gift from the radical lesbians for Michael and I, at least, because we grew up poor and working class–they had an understanding, somewhat, of class struggles, and for the first–I felt that they… gave Michael and I respect for the life that we had lived. Working class people are looked down upon by others, so they respected our life, and thought that what we had to say was important. So, there was a growing class consciousness for me, and so to have a Faggots in Class Struggle Conference–how exciting can this be? I was trying to grow my understanding and identity as a working class person. In America we were supposed to be “classless,” “we were all just movin’ on up,” but Faggots in Class Struggle–and the word “faggots,” that was another attempt, I think, to–there were many people calling us faggots. it was very controversial at the time, you know, to use that word. It was a reclaiming but it was also an intent to avoid being called gay men. So I believed in all that stuff. Faggots in Class Struggle. I was very excited.
EZELL: [59:37] Was the actual thing what you imagined?
THORNTON: No. [laughs]
EZELL: [laughs heartily] How so?
THORNTON: [chuckles] Not at all. It was… I was met with a lot of academia, a lot of middle class people telling me about working class people in language that was not… common speak–language that would not be understood by anybody that I had grown up with. You know. I had had enough of that.
EZELL: [chuckles] Right.
THORNTON: But… the other part was the Wolf Creek–the host of the gathering–were these beautiful men who were living, trying to live together in the country, in these beautiful… and they had been in danger–it was very heavy, because they had been threatened–the gay men living in the country had been threatened several times, so there was always that . But… there were people up and down the coast, from Oregon and down in California had come up, and it was a variety of men there. A variety. Not just the strict political people. I loved the politics. I loved all that. I believed all that. I think the California people brought some support for feminists–the Lavender and Red Union, and Socialist Feminists was beginning–brought that into the understanding of the communists and the more strict, old-fashioned–what I would consider old-fashioned–Marxism.
EZELL: [1:01:38] So there was a diversity of political opinion there.
THORNTON: There was a diversity of radical political opinion there.
EZELL: Right. [agrees]
THORNTON: I don’t think there was [chuckles] anyone there who did not have radical positions at the Faggots in Class Struggle Conference.
EZELL: [laughs] Yeah, that kind of read–it advertises that kind of thing. And was it a diverse gathering otherwise? Other than politics.
THORNTON: …I think there were a few people of color. There were some gay latinos from San Francisco and several African Americans, but majority white.
EZELL: [1:02:17] [agrees] Right. And–what did you do most of the time that you were there? Because it was like a weekend–one weekend, right?
THORNTON: I think so, yeah.
EZELL: Okay.
THORNTON: What I did, personally, was hang out with the country gay men, because I just fell in love with all of them, and they would show me all of the work they had done in the fields and–I did listen to some of the presentations, but they were–no, I didn’t enjoy those. And we would cook. And we would show each other our aprons…
EZELL: [chuckles]
THORNTON: So I really developed very close, intimate relationships with those men.
EZELL: So when you guys–when you sissies–returned from Oregon, do you think that experience of going to the Faggots in Class Struggle Conference impacted how you lived your life when you returned at Mulberry House?
THORNTON: [1:03:30] Absolutely. It intensified the class struggle [chuckles] in Mulberry House, which turned out to be disastrous, actually. The working class people–which I think were Michael and I and some of the lesbians, there were working class lesbians–who were also experiencing the same issues, and so we were newly awakened to class differences, and, as I said, I was in this little world–this little gay world, queer world–in straight society, and I was not able to address those in the bigger, larger society–in the straight society, because I would have been–I don’t know. So, I was able to address those in the Mulberry House, because, one, again–I was listened to. I was respected. My ideas and thoughts were respected, so I could express this class anger that I experienced all my life and had never been able to express, you know, and that was detrimental at times. It was hard. It was very hard, but three or four gay men and lesbians who were from a higher–from another class–were receptive. They were open, and wanted things to be different. We wanted equality, and did not know how to do that.
EZELL: [agrees] Did things get more difficult–tell me if I’m on the wrong tack here, but… there was a period where the relations at the co-op also become more strained. Was that around this time? Is that right, that things became rough and challenging even more at the co-op?
THORNTON: A lot of things were happening at the co-op. The lesbians were very involved, and many of those feminist women–alternative women, and straight feminist women–began hearing the truth of these handful of white men were in control of everything and had the only say-so, and so the whole political–it became a little mini political revolution inside this organization. So women began rising, and we were going with women–the gay men were going with the women–and we wanted to change it. We wanted to open it up. We wanted to be aware that there are poor people in Arkansas–in the Ozarks, who deserved clean, natural food. “Why are the prices so high? Why are there no people of color here?”, you know, and so we wanted to change the focus of the food co-op. So… at the time, the way we attempted to change it, we just–we demanded. We made demands, and we were supported by women. Many women, and many–not many straight men. These queer people making demands of their beloved organization just led to a lot of anger. And it was also the anger between straight men and straight women. Because that was changing. Their relationship was changing. Straight women were becoming feminists, saying, “I have a voice. I have this say-so. I need to be respected. What I want is what I want and should be supported.” We–looking back, I think we were sort of caught up in that revolution that was happening between all men and all women.
EZELL: [1:08:18] [agrees] And was race part of that? Because, there were no people of color. It was mostly a white, male organization, right?
THORNTON: It was mostly a white organization. Women did a lot of the work. They were very involved in it, but the men were making the decisions. All the decisions, and, you know, that–there were not many people of color. Compared to living in New Orleans–living in the Ozarks, if I saw a person of color I was just so delighted. We didn’t see one. There were ethnic minorities at the university–students–some, but they were not involved with all of this.
EZELL: [1:09:05] [agrees] So… after the Faggots in Class Struggle Conference, there was kind of a–a turning-up in terms of the thinking about class struggle and working through those things. You also have these… tensions and demands that are going on at the co-op. Can you talk a little bit about what you see leading to the dissolution–just the events that lead to the dissolution of the Mulberry House?
THORNTON: [pauses] We–I, I’ll speak for myself– I was very angry about a lot of things. I was very frustrated about how things changed. I was very angry. I used to have a poster that came from God knows where–Goddess knows where–of a rainbow ticking time bomb [chuckles]–
EZELL: [laughs]
THORNTON: — with butterflies coming out of the fuse, and it said “Gay is angry,” and I was very much an angry, gay man, and… As I said, I lived in the separatist world, and I turned my anger about inability to change and do rapid radical change against the people who were next to me. It’s a lesson that I’ve learned, never to do–always let them know how much you love them, but… So, that was very difficult for everyone, and no one knew–we all knew–we wanted things to change but none of us knew how to do that. Plus, it was hard living on $5 a month…
EZELL: [1:11:10] [agrees]
THORNTON: And maybe, the energy–we had done together what we needed to do together. I had a feeling of that, because, after Mulberry House imploded, I went back out into the world and got a job, and… kept washing my dishes. I could wash dishes if I wanted to and not if I didn’t want to. [chuckles]
EZELL: [chuckles] Yeah. How did it, though? How did Mulberry–what happened in this implosion of Mulberry House? What is the point, would you say, that it happened?
THORNTON: I don’t remember specifically. I know there was–there became constant tension about tiny things, about who used what space, about who slept in what bed, and… So, I think the middle class gay men–Dennis, Dimid, Aurora–they said, “Well, we need to leave,” and they did. They were under–they felt so much pressure to do the right thing and nobody knew what the right thing was, so there was tensions. There was a lot of pressure and sadness, and fear , probably. So they took another house, and we were gonna continue, and the women were in and out–we were sort of enmeshed together–but, we stayed at Mulberry House, and they moved to Watson Street House, and… [pause] that was very hurtful. At that time, we were all hurt. We all hurt each other and it was hurtful to split apart because we lived so intensely together for several years, and I didn’t know how to react to that. I think I probably shut down at that point, I think, and then… Dennis disappeared. We thought he had killed himself. [pauses] So… that was the end, for me, the end of the Mulberry House experiment. I had to deal with my inability to express my love for him. I thought Dennis had died and I did not know [sniffles] how much I loved him, and he was such a beautiful man. That was our story those days. Gay men didn’t live. They killed themselves. They didn’t deserve to live. [swallows]
EZELL: [1:14:31] Yeah… so that was the reality that you had–that was what had happened, as far as you knew. Right when he just disappeared, you didn’t have any answer of what had happened at that point, for a while.
THORNTON: I think–I’m trying to remember–A lot of this stuff just, does not want to remember. I think he took a box of rat poison from under the sink with him, and then we–he may have even left a note saying he died. I don’t remember. There may have been a note?
EZELL: Yeah. There was. [?] there was.
THORNTON: And, so, we thought he was dead. We looked for him, and we watched the news for reports of bodies being found, and… yeah.
EZELL: [1:15:31] Well, thank you for sharing this, because it’s really difficult to go back and… bring back up something so difficult, I think.
THORNTON: It was a difficult time, because we had–we all–I say, “we,”– I thought I had failed everywhere , of living as a gay man, and creating wonderful, loving gay community. I thought it was a failure. I thought, at the time. But, in my–as I continued my life, the major lesson I learned was… the major mistake I made was speaking in these harsh, political terms, you know, the way straight men talk, and I didn’t speak as the loving, beautiful man that I was. I didn’t speak the love that I had. And so I swore. And I have lived ever since. I’ve always let everyone know how much I love them, and I try to say everything I have to say in a loving manner, so that was my biggest takeaway from living in Mulberry House. That lesson I learned–a difficult lesson.
EZELL: So… Dennis moves to New Orleans. What did you do after he made that move? What was the next step you made for yourself?
THORNTON: Let me add this little bit of color–
EZELL: Yes, please do.
THORNTON: We had this terrifying few weeks thinking Dennis was laying dead somewhere, his body. Mulberry House was in the center of town in a little forest, but it was in a little dirt road with mailboxes on the street, and those little dirt driveways that went back to Mulberry House, so I walked one day, and disappeared. I walked up the road to check them out, walked up this dirt road, and opened the mailbox, and there was a letter from Dennis. I got the news. I opened it up, read it, he’s alive, he’s in New Orleans, and… I don’t know where that letter is. Maybe Dimid has it. But I had to go back and tell all the people in Mulberry House. [chuckle] That’s what happened immediately after.
EZELL: [1:18:34] Yes, that’s immediate–yeah, right.
THORNTON: And, so, what did we do? I think… Dimid went down right away. I think Trella and Dimid went down, or I don’t know. I know Trella went down, also. I didn’t for a long time because… I didn’t think Dennis wanted to see me. I felt responsible… for his pain… rightly or wrongly, so… I did go down later [?] when there became… when things got a little calmer. My life was–I was going back, I went back out into the world and dropped back in. We still had not lost the desire for gay community, so I tried to–I had to go to work, and we met other gay people, and… [pauses] Yeah. I just continued to look for gay community. I’ve never given up to this day. I’ve still been. I love that.
EZELL: And you’ve mentioned Trella. Did your relationship change? Or continue? With the radical women, or the radical lesbians, in your community at that time?
THORNTON: [1:20:11] [pauses] Yes, we were supported. We were supported by–and we were–the lesbians also had this huge division, class division. I called it the lesbian wars of Fayetteville. They were very–[chuckles] some of it was very scary: stealing trucks, and carrying guns. They were very fierce. Michael and I became neutral ground between all the different kinds of–there was tons to sort out. How were we gonna move forward, all of this work? Michael and I were neutral ground, and they all came to us. So we became our unique part of this radical lesbian community. I still don’t quite understand it, but–
EZELL: [chuckles]
THORNTON: –because we were open, and we would try to be healing after all the pain and hurt of Mulberry House. We never wanted that to happen again. I, personally, I would try to bring people together. I would listen and counsel these lesbian women. There were other gay man, but… we were mainly involved with the lesbian community, and they upheld us and supported us. Once Michael and I were very poor, and Trella had come into some money, an inheritance or something, and she would just drop by and say, “Oh, here’s a hundred dollars,” and we could pay our rent that month.
EZELL: Oh. Wow.
THORNTON: [1:22:14] [agrees]
EZELL: Did you guys… have a reaction to the–did you jive with the Radical Faerie Movement when that came around? Because it was shortly after. Did you connect with that at that time, or was it later?
THORNTON: I think it was in the midst of it. We visited San Francisco, or–I can’t remember the details of it–but we left Mulberry House. I think we were gonna move to San Francisco. After the Faggots in Class Struggle we had lived in San Francisco for a couple of weeks, with radical gay men.
EZELL: Oh, right, that’s right.
THORNTON: San Francisco was a unique place in the world, is a unique place. Especially for gay people. That was when the gay explosion was just… happening. The [?] was just happening, you know, and people from all over the nation were coming. Gay men were coming to San Francisco. So, I think that was part of the limitations of Mulberry House and living in Arkansas. We were always pulled to San Francisco. One of our visitors came through, and he was travelling. He was in RFD , a contributor. We were a stopping point for gay gypsies travelling in the nation. There was lots of coming and going, I think. But, he had this BW van with his grandmother’s mint coat, with the seat covers.
EZELL: [1:24:06] [chuckles]
THORNTON: It was a faerie wagon. Just a very magical wagon. That’s what he was travelling in. So, he stopped at Mulberry House, and he sort of fell in love with Michael and I. He wanted to set us up with a farm in Oregon, but we were so righteous. “Oh, no, we can not take that.” He was very wealthy.
EZELL: Oh.
THORNTON: He was with another really wealthy gay man. But, so, we were travelling to California in this faerie van, and stopped. He had heard RFD was a network. Magazine people would say, “Here I am. Here’s my address,” so we had heard there were these two men in New Mexico. Somewhere Pueblo. So we just stopped there and said, “Hi!”
EZELL: [laughs]
THORNTON: [chuckles] “We’re from Arkansas.” It turned out to be Harry Hay and John. John Burnside. When was this, ‘74, ‘5?
EZELL: [agrees]
THORNTON: [1:25:22] It was very early on. Harry Hay–they had been living somewhere Pueblo, and… after a lifetime of gay exploration they had been isolated from their gay people. I think we were the first young people to come. Some of the first. There were one or two others who had come to Harry Hay, and said, “Oh my god! You’re our hero!”
EZELL: [chuckles] [agrees]
THORNTON: They were both so thrilled that these young people were listening, and honored and respected them and wanted to be understood, what they were saying. There was Harry Hay’s radical notion that we are a separate people. We’re a special people. We were very receptive of that. All of this is before… the naming of the Radical Faeries.
EZELL: Right.
THORNTON: We were all living that way, without a name or without an idea. I think–I credit Harry for giving us a philosophy and theory of why we were– [end]
contact info
Address
1308 Esplanade Ave
New Orleans, LA 70116
