A picture of downtown Watsonville, Ca. three years after I was born and six years before my father made  a Commie speech in the park that bordered on  Main Street. I loved Watsonville when I was a kid.  Louie and Jackie( my older brothers) and I had a ball  robbing  the FIVE AND TEN.  My older brothers would raise a ruckus in the back of the store while I stuffed THREE MUSKETEERS candy bars and Hershey KISSES into my pockets.  Since Daddy was always somewhere carousing and drinking we learned how to steal pork and beans from the corner grocery so we wouldn’t go  hungry.  We got hot, fresh baked bread from the bakery because the fat lady who owned it would only come downstairs from her apartment when the front door ding-a-linged.  I was always the one who rushed in–grabbed a loaf and was out the door in a flash. For entertainment we stole empty gallon jugs from garages and we’d sell them to the junk man for five cents.  The  Pajaro movie house (a half a block from the left side of this photo) only charged a dime Sometimes we would pay to get in but other times we managed to sneak in and hide behind the velvet curtains in the balcony until the movie started.

Louie and Jackie protected me from the school bullies when we weren’t playing hookey.They also taught me how to use my fists.

My baby sister Easter will turn 81 on March 20th. Don, her ardent lover is 89 years old. This photo was taken—uh–I think in 1990–when she was in her seventies–something like that.

My CHERRY RED  SCOOTER WITH THE QUEER FLAG  is a few months away from being two years old.  However, it can qualify for my OLD-OLD AGE BULLETIN:  A doctor just gave it a new heart—ooops!  I mean a month ago it needed a new battery. It goes chug-chug-chug and sometimes I have to turn the ignition key three–maybe four times before it will start.  Also, it scared the shit out of me when it stopped while I was driving it–I’ve felt unsafe ever since.  The good news is that HEATHER, who works at the V.A. is getting a brand new one..  The bad news is that it won’t be CHERRY RED–it will be burgundy.The title of my biography is THE CHERRY RED SCOOTER WITH THE QUEER FLAG. How does this sound—THE BURGUNDY RED  SCOOTER WITH THE QUEER FLAG?  Not so hot?  Any suggestions, dear reader? gbirimisa@sbcglobal.net   CHERRY

DEMOCRACY NOW–DEMOCRACY NOW!!!!!

This is a sideways view of my play MR. JELLO–1968

DAVID KOPAY, the former running back  played 10 seasons of professional football in the National Football League. He shook up the sports world i 1975 when he publicly announced to a national newspaper that he was gay. “When I came out as a gay man, I was confronting bigotry, the silence, and the hatred directed towards gay men and women,” Kopay said in a 2009 speech.  “Gay men have always been considered weak, silly and equated with women as being something less.  Sure, hatred still exists, but there is a huge difference now. Hatred, dominance and brutality are no longer considered fashionable, celebrated or tolerated. Hopefully. more people will continue to embrace change and diversity.”

KOPAY  enrolled at the  U. of Washington and in 1964 he was named ALL-AMERICAN as well as Rose Bowl co-captain.  He was signed by the SF 49ers and he eventually played for the legendary VINCE LOMBARDI. After he retired from football, he wanted to coach professionally but believed his sexual orientation stood in the way. Since he retired only two former NFL players have come out of the closet.  ROY SIMMONS IN 1992 and Esera Tuaolo in 2002.

HE IS ONE OF MY HEROES!

ONE OF MY MANY, MANY HATS!

ED GALLAGHER, an offensive lineman for the University of Pittsburgh from 1977-79, tried to commit suicide by jumping from a damn 12 days after his first sexual encounter with another man. He survived but was left a paraplegic.  Gallagher said that before his suicide attempt  he had become unable to reconcile his image of himself as an athlete with gay urges.  He later admitted that the incident forced him to come to grips with his sexuality. “I WAS MORE EMOTIONALLY PARALYZED THEN, THAN I AM PHYSICALLY NOW.”

PAUL SAGAN told me there was more to the WOODY GUTHRIE quote:  “I fully aim to get my soul known again/As the maniac, the saint, the sinner, the drinker, the thinker,the queer/ I am the works, the whole works/ And it’s not ’till you have called me all of those things/ That I feel satisfied, I feel satisfied.”

These angelic little boys grew up to be rich and to be landlords. They were the sons of Mateo Lettunich, my great Uncle,who owned most of the apple orchards in Watsonville and also the local bank on Main Street. He hated my father because he was a free spirit–didn’t do what he wanted him to do. Daddy got even with him by joining the Communist Party. However, Lettunich did put a down payment on a house on Main Street when Mom was in ‘the family way’ with Violet, my older sister.   Rumor has it that Uncle Mateo had the fire department turn on the hoses when Daddy was giving a Red speech in the park. Daddy caught pneumonia and went to the charity ward of the County hospital  in Santa Cruz.  A few days before he died Uncle Mateo took him out of the charity ward and placed him in private hospital in Watsonville where he died. It seems that Uncle Mateo did not want a relative of his  to die in a charity ward.  Then he  foreclosed on our bungalow. Finally he took me and my two brothers out of  St. Francis School, where we were wards of the County of Santa Cruz ,and bought us suits so we would look like little gentlemen like his sons who are pictured in the photo.

This photo by Steve Susoyev–they garden on my patio.

WOODY GUTHRIE who in the Depression rode the freight trains and would stop in small towns and play his guitar in a bar or a cafe.  When he was hungry he would beg for food.  But he  would always go to the poor section of town because  he knew the rich would tell him to get a job and slam the door in his face, whereas the poor people would share what little food then had with him.   Woody wrote in his journal on April 17th 1942:  I never dread the day I will die/Because my sunset is somebody’s morning sky.”  Woody became world famous with his folk songs, especially  THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND. In the love song ALL YOU GOTTA DO IS TOUCH ME, he made an amazing leap to humanity from his songs about the poor and downtrodden.

I fully aim, to get my soul known again./ As the maniac, the saint, the sinner, the drinker, the thinker, the queer./ I am the works, the whole works

FOR MOST OF THE TRUTH, CHECK OUT DEMOCRACY NOW

Yes, that’s me with my very, very, very, very CLOSE friend STEVE  SUSOYEV, AT ONE OF MY BIRTHDAY PARTIES MAYBE SEVEN–EIGHT YEARS AGO WHEN I WAS YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL.   I’M WEARING A FABULOUS SHIRT THAT DON CHAN MARK GAVE ME. ONE OF MY DYSFUNCTIONAL CARETAKERS LOST IT IN THE LAUNDRY ROOM ALONG WITH MY LOWER DENTURES AND I  DON’T KNOW WHAT ELSE.

OLD-OLD AGE BULLETIN: dizzy–dizzy–dizzy–DIZZY as hell this morning as Marlene, my caretaker, helped me out of bed and helped me into my blazing crimson robe that Liz Brenshaw gave me.  Seems like every day someNEW HEALTH PROBLEM happens to me but I’m keeping a stiff upper–I mean a stiff lower ding-a-ling. lLuckily, I received some ear drops fom the V.A. and I’m putting four drops in each ear–three times a day. GOTTA DO THAT RIGHT NOW!

RICHARD HAMMER finalized our trip to Hawaii.  We leave on February 28th for six days.  And yes, there will be oxagen (sic) in our hotel room COMPLIMENTS OF THE V.A.

THIS FROM LEE JEFFREYS:  I’ve always thought my Great-Uncle Arthur may have been gay. He was my mother’s favorite , he was unmarried, lived alone. You know all the signs of a early 20th century gay man in a rural community.

To the left is my Uncle George–I was named after him and I’m pretty sure he was queer. He was one of those little old men who hung out in toilets.  One timer I found him in the piss-green, stinking Men’s Room at Penn Station on the North Side of Pittsburgh, Pa.

I had a visit from my niece Charley,(my ex-nephew) who I once called Charlee.  Soft and gentle and very proud of  her brand new boobs.  Every time she comes for a visit she is more of a woman.  She is a logger who lives in Mt. Shasta and she is coming to my birthday party on Feb.19th–two days before my real 88th birthday.

A picture of my older brother Louie at the foot of Mt. Shasta.  He has been a logger for nigh on 40 years and loved his work. Bruce, his favorite, and the youngest of his two sons, died when his tractor overturned on the side of a hill–he was 22. Louie became an alcoholic and had very painful arthritis. He died about four–maybe five years ago.  Of course, he was homophobic like everyone else I knew when I was a young man.

However, the minute he died in his eighties I received a call from his eldest son  Charlie, who I had never met. In a trembling voice he told me he thought he was TRANSGENDER.  Over the last five-six years he has visited me from Mt. Shasta and I gave him strong  support for finding out who he really was and is.  Charlie  came to my birthday party as a woman but it took her a long time to come out in Mt.Shasta. He joined A.A. in Mt. Shasta and after a year or so he started going to A.A. meetings for women.  They loved him. Now he struts down the main drag in all of his 200 pound glory of a woman and he is accepted by the community.  He told me he had been a controlling very angry man. Two weeks ago he had breast implants and I just received an email–he’s coming to visit me tomorrow to show off his boobs. Oh, I forgot to mention–he has been a logger for a long time and still is.  I’M VERY PROUD OF MY NIECE.

HASN’T BEEN A VERY GOD DAY—I CAN’T GET LOWER CASE ON THIS BLOG–CALLED MY TECHNICIAN WHEN I COULDN”T REACH GOOGLE–HE QUICKLY FIXED IT.

OLD-OLD AGE BULLETIN:  I feel like a tin lizzie that is falling apart. Went to see my ophtholmologist (sic)–never learned to spell the word correctly even though I lived with an ophth________for over 8 years. You see, I’m blind in my left eye and Doctor Swift told me that the pressure was increasing in my right one.  Does that mean I might go blind?  “If it gets high enuff,” he replied. He gave me a prescription for eye drops.  I was shocked when Walgreens charged me $90.  I ranted and raved to the pharmacist but when  I thought about it I’ realized I have  received thousands of dollars worth of drugs for FREE from the V.A.  Also, if I hadn’t lost my MEDICARE card I wouldn’t have had to pay a dime for the eye drops.   I’ve also got a pain on my right side. Think maybe it’s from gas or my extra large pot belly. At least I hope so.

Oh! The fucker in the photo starred in my POGEY BAIT at Theater Rhino.