Revisiting a Lesbian Kiss-in From 30 Years Ago and More

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

We Made History, 30 Years Ago and Today

What a treat to travel via the way-back machine of our brains with Jack Ryan and Tom Rowan of "The 10% Show," an LGBTQ newsmagazine that aired monthly on Chicago's Community Access TV from 1989-92. Here's an Instagram promo for the panel we did tonight and I'll share the replay link when it's available. [Added the replay link later: https://bit.ly/3ekb8Cx.] 

Northwestern PhD Student Lauren Herold and the Director of Gerber Hart Library and Archives also discussed the cultural and historical significance of "The 10% show" that I co-hosted ~30 years ago @ https://bit.ly/2XtzxhV.

See an excerpt of the Lesbian Kiss-in segment from 1990. Click "Watch full video" to see the whole, ~8-min. segment.

Show Time

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

And It Went On

Segments on "Thing...she knows who she is;" Girth & Mirth; David Leavitt; International Mr. Leather, including an interview of International Ms. Leather; a documentarian of a self-proclaimed Kentucky drag-queen; World Conference of Gay & Lesbian Jews; ACT-UP demonstrations; show promo by Linda Clifford; lesbian kiss-in at Water Tower Place; Urvashi Vaid at the Chicago Pride Parade....

Most of these were "10% Show" segments that I produced, or for which I served as the interviewer or on the crew in Chicago, 1987-89.

Earnest Hite, may his memory be blessed, was my co-anchor for many of them. Earnest, a complete mensch, died on Monday in a car crash.

Why was Earnest cut off, yet I get to go on? I'm not complaining about getting to stay, certainly, but I don't understand the purpose of taking a good person out of this world.

Today, I interrupted a meeting my manager was having with a colleague and said, "Excuse me. Just wanted to let you know that I'm going to get going before the snow and rain comes."

"Good idea," the colleague offered, "With your history with snow and rain!" (I totaled my car in an ice-storm nearly a year ago.)

"That's not funny," I said sharply. "I know you didn't mean it, but that's not funny at all."

I wish I had said, "That was incredibly emotionally unintelligent."

Why was only my car killed last winter and not me -- and then not even my car, as I learned via e-mail yesterday that it's being resurrected in a Lithuanian body-shop(!)

Ugh! The burden, the responsibility, to do something further with my life to add meaning to the world, so that I can repay society a bit for having lost Earnest too soon. Again, I don't mean to complain. God, thanks for the extra time and please help me use it wisely.

Rest in Peace

The postings on this site ares my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

I Feel Like Saying "Kaddish"

My former co-host of "The 10% Show" for Gay Cable Network, Earnest Hite, is dead. I expected to write that sentence years ago. More often than not, the gay friends I made in the late '80s died of AIDS.

I'm trying to remember if Earnest was HIV+ or not. Many guys I knew then were. I'm trying to recall Earnest's day-job, or if he was independently wealthy. I'm trying to recall whether or not he lost his handsome, hirsute partner to AIDS.

They founded a group for African-Amercan gay, young men, and I imagined their serving as lovely role models for the guys.

I don't know that either of us had had prior TV experience, but I'm pretty sure we wanted our version of the same thing: late-eighties visibility for our people, including the Black and Jewish among them.

Once, I crewed for a segment that Earnest did, featuring Robert Ford, the editor of a Chicago-based literary 'zine called "Thing." We went to their apartment to do the videotaping. I can still see Robert Ford's face and body, sitting on his couch: If E. Lynn Harris had been writing then, Robert Ford would have seemed like an anti-character -- he had a close-cropped, yet patchy beard and writerly-rumpled clothes over his lanky frame.

Earnest, with his well-kept beard and frequent smile, dignified presence and lucid questions, always was flattered by the camera. How ironic that I never saw his obituary all these years from AIDS, and instead, I had to read of his death in a car-crash. God is odd.