PRIVATE SPACES

Private Parties
JR 

JR: There used to be a guy called Jim Strauss, before I opened the bar and he always had parties at his house. So once I opened up, then they started coming to my bar. 

Lauren: Did you ever come to these parties?

JR: Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah.

Lauren: How did you find out about them?

JR: He’d come down to the bar and invite me. 

Lauren: Oh ok, so that was after you had your own bar?

JR: After I had my first bar, yeah. I hadn’t been to any parties prior to that because I didn’t even know that they had parties at that time. Well I guess I knew, I just didn’t - wasn’t invited. And when I went to the party, I knew a lot of the people. (laughs)

Lauren: Yeah? What was it like being at a party like that. Could you describe it to me?

JR: Well yeah. It was a fun - actually, you drank and you talked and somebodied put music on you’d dance. It was just kind of neat.

Impromptu Gatherings
John and Bill
(and Paisley)

John: We were really slowing down on the bars because we'd had this great big house that we moved in to with no furniture hardly. So this ended up Grand Central Station.  

Lauren: You had parties?  

John: Oh, well, just impromtu yeah. We kept saying we were going to put a revolving door  in the back door. (baby yelling) 

Bill: (to baby) Shhhhhh

Paisley: Shhhhhh

Lauren: Yeah, yeah. So people would come over here?

John and Bill: Yeah.

John: Because it was safe here.

Solitary Activities
Avery

Avery: You go through a period of being terrified, even as I got more comfortable going out in public. You still have this feeling that everybody knows. In some cases -

Lauren: You mean, going out in public as a woman?

Avery: Yeah.

Lauren: When did you start doing that?

Avery: In college probably more than high school. High school I did it maybe once or twice. I mean in college, living by myself - you know, I could get dressed in my room, put on guys clothes over it. Get in the car, drive out in the country somewhere and take the guy's clothes off, throw some makeup on and then go and do whatever it is I was going to do as a woman. Sometimes it was just shopping. Sometimes just driving around for a couple hours because you're deathly afraid of being caught and discovered. 

Lauren: Did you ever hang out with other people?  

Avery: Oh, no. 

Lauren: No, just solitary activities?

Avery: Just solitary activity. Just trying to figure out, can I do this? Is this what I'm supposed to be doing? And part of it is my own makeup. By nature, I'm an extreme introvert and so I never really interacted. When I was in the military and would go on a trip somewhere, I would occasionally look and see where the gay bars were, because there really were no transgender communities. In every community, everywhere we lived, I would look to see if there was counseling available or support groups or something like a support group -we didn't call up support groups back then but - and you'd never find anything.