Dramatization of the Convention
The conference began on a Friday. This gave people a chance to spend Thanksgiving with their families and afterwards head to Champaign for the rest of the weekend. Roger Hamilton was the official greeter. The first group to arrive, early in the day: five students from Ames, Iowa. Roger managed to house them all at biology professor Marty Monroe's. Marty’s was a little far from campus but Roger convinced the Iowans by casually mentioning that Marty looked like a lumberjack.
The campus was empty and the university had given us ten small classrooms and a large lecture room in Lincoln Hall for the conference. Rooms in the Illini Union would be opened up in the event of overflow. I had initially estimated the number of attendees at six hundred, but with the intransigence of the YSA, New York and Washington D.C., I officially cut the estimate in half, but hoped to beat the reduced number with a large showing from Chicago.
Activists from around the country filtered in all Friday afternoon. The first session was scheduled at five p.m. It would be short, leaving plenty of time for dinner and a night out. Roger had printed up a welcome packet with lists of restaurants, friendly campus bars, maps and instructions on getting to the Balloon Saloon, Champaign's newest gay bar that had replaced the Crystal Room. Murphy's Pub was designated the local campus watering hole. The packet also contained a booklet I had prepared with Winston before he left. It was titled 'Mobilizing for a March on Washington' and was filled with organizing principles, tips and strategies.
I was in Lincoln Hall, taking notes for my speech and ready to greet people as they entered the lecture hall. At four-thirty, Roger reported that fifty-eight people had registered. “Only fifty-eight?” I said, panicking. “I had commitments from well over a hundred and that wasn’t including any of the buses from Chicago and where are those damn buses?” After lighting a cigarette, I paced the front of the lecture hall.
There were no buses from Chicago. Ultimately, we had sixty-four gay activists who barely filled the first few rows of a lecture center that seated over six-hundred. People turned around impatiently, waiting for the seats to fill up. They never would.
While I sat at the front sweating it out, a kid poked his head around the doorway and stared at all of us like he had never seen a gay person before. I glanced up scowling and he took off like a bat out of hell.
“That wasn’t very nice,” said Roger. “The kid was kind of cute.”
“With all the shit that’s going to come down at this conference,” I replied, “the last thing we need is harassment by neighborhood urchins.” I was in a foul mood and the poor kid got the brunt of it.
“Grumpy,” muttered Roger and then we sat there saying nothing for probably ten minutes, although it seemed an eternity, with me drumming my fingers against the metal chair. Nobody else entered the room and conference attendees were fidgeting.
"You’ve got to get up and speak," implored Roger. The irony of “El Stooge” taking the leadership, while I felt like Curly, Larry and Moe rolled into one, didn’t escape me.
"Damn it,” I swore, “We can’t even discuss a march on Springfield. Nobody’s here from Illinois…This is a disaster," I moaned in a voice so soft only Roger could hear. "We've had Gay Liberation dances bigger than this. We’ve gotten as many people to the Urbana City Council. How can I get up and speak?”
“If you think it’s a disaster now, watch what happens if nobody gets up to speak. People are getting restless."
"Everything I've done is a failure,” I muttered. “The Washington gays were right. Anything this group puts together would be shabby and useless."
"Then go out there, express your disappointment and make the best of it." Roger was adamant and I slowly walked to the podium. The expectation that shone in their eyes gave me a little more confidence.
"As everyone can see," I began, "the conference, so far, is not well attended. We are expecting several buses from Chicago and they have not yet arrived. Perhaps they will be here by tomorrow for the break-out sessions. I was going to speak tonight about the different sessions, so you could plan to make the best use of your time and go to the sessions that interested you. In light of the turnout, many of the sessions will simply not take place. Tonight, we can decide which sessions to eliminate."
As I described those sessions, they all sounded so pie-in-the-sky: transportation session, soundstage session, political demands session, media session. I felt foolish and wanted to disappear from the Earth. I rushed to finish, then looked pleadingly at Roger, who took over the podium.
Roger introduced himself and started right in with the nightlife. "There will be a big celebration tonight at the Balloon Saloon in honor of the conference. Drinks are half price all night." The group applauded and cheered. Roger then made sure all housing needs were met. The mood of the room had improved and seeing that the crowd was not about to lynch me for ruining their Thanksgiving, I returned to the podium and stood next to Roger.
We discussed eliminating sessions, but the Iowa folks proposed a single session to decide where we go from here. It was approved unanimously.
With our new limited agenda in place, Roger took the floor. "A group of us have decided to liberate the Red Lion Inn for dinner. Everybody is welcome to join us. Afterwards, we will go party at the Balloon Saloon." There was applause and almost everyone gathered around the podium to begin the night's adventure. I did not join them but wandered instead out into the darkness, out onto the empty quadrangle and into the Illini Union where I climbed the steps slowly to the NGMC office. I tried phoning Garret Gray. There was no answer. For a moment I thought the buses might have crashed, but I knew that wasn’t the case. Then I put my head down on the desk as tears ran down my cheek. I racked my brain trying to figure out where to get some speed.
The next morning those attending assembled in a large circle in one of the classrooms. There were no sad faces save mine. People chatted with their new friends and laughed at the hanky-panky along with several misadventures from the previous night.
I suggested we start with introductions. “Honey,” said Roger, “I think everybody knows each other by now—some biblically.” This brought applause, laughter and whistles. “But Dave’s right,” continued Roger. “We should do it formally.” Each person said a few words about themselves and their organization.
One guy said he had inside information that the American Psychiatric Association was within days of declaring that homosexuality was no longer considered a mental illness. Everyone applauded. Breaking down as I was, this was especially welcome news.
When a guy named Step introduced himself, I interrupted him. "You came from Chicago? What happened? Where are the buses?"
"I never heard about any buses. In fact, I only heard about the conference a few weeks ago and that was just a coincidence. I overheard some people in the Chicago Gay Alliance talking about a bunch of communists meeting in Champaign to plan a takeover of the gay movement. Hell, I'm a communist, so it sounded interesting. Then I saw a blurb in Boston's Gay Community News with the time and date, so I came down to check it out."
"Garret Gray, the head of IGLA, black beard…”
“Yeah, I know Garret.”
“Garret told me there were posters in all the bars, stories in the gay press, that everyone was excited about the conference."
"No posters, nothing," replied Step. "Garret was one of the guys at CGA talking about the communist takeover…I think you've been had."
"What do you mean, this is a communist front conference?" shouted a young guy from Indiana.
"This is not a communist conference," I shot back. "We wanted the Young Socialist Alliance to help us with the infrastructure and they told us to get fucked."
"I don't want communists or anybody like them in charge of our movement,” said the guy from Indiana. “We're Americans."
"This is getting us nowhere," shouted Roger. "We need to be united. All of us want a march on Washington or we wouldn't be here. Let's not forget our purpose and degenerate into a bunch of bitchy queens." There was applause and the topic was dropped, but I felt shame for every political belief I ever had; I was damned by all of them. I thought of Traffic’s Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys.
The conference went on and there was genuine enthusiasm from most everyone. I had managed to buy some street Valium the night before when everybody else was partying at the Balloon Saloon. Today I sat in the back row, drowsy and relaxed, listening to the debate. Roger and some of the folks from Iowa had taken over the leadership.
I thought of all the people who had left Champaign-Urbana. Even Roger would leave at the end of January. Cling as they will to the unreal life of a university campus, sooner or later most everybody moves on. The University of Illinois had become a stranger to me.
The conference ended on a cheery note. A network was set up and people agreed that they would continue to meet until the time was ripe for a gay march on Washington. I nodded and smiled and thanked them for coming. But my mind was elsewhere.
On Monday, when the bank opened I withdrew all my money, two hundred dollars, packed my trunk and sent it ahead, then boarded a bus for Chicago.
