Things to know up front:

You can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. Click the back arrow key to return to the post.

Every chapter in My Life Story includes information about me, my work, my family and my friends. It also includes information about events that took place locally and nationally, etc. that I thought important enough to include. You’ll also find that I’ve included films, musicians and recordings/videos, in addition to books that were released in a given year.

While I have included many personal photos, most of the graphic content included below is borrowed from the Internet. I do not claim to own this material. I am just adding it for educational purposes. If the owners of any of the content in the “My Life Story” series want their stuff removed, I am happy to oblige. My email address is jrdiaz@arizona.edu. Thanks!

I have always thought of 1983 as the year I came out of my shell, and as the beginning of one of the most creative and productive periods of my life. As I’ve noted previously, I had always been a very shy person.  I had very little self-confidence and could never comfortably get up in front of a group of people, for example, and give a speech or a presentation without getting all nervous and feeling sick. 1983 would be the year I started to overcome these obstacles.

After I graduated from the University of Arizona with a bachelor’s degree in psychology in May of 1982, I decided to take a six month break and just work at the grocery store. It got boring, however, and I missed school.  By the end of the year, I had taken the GRE and got very good scores. I was ready to go back to school, so I enrolled in three classes in the Spring of 1983 at the University of Arizona as an “unclassified” graduate student. Just for the heck of it, I took beginning Russian with my friend Scott, a course titled Latin American Political Development, and an Introduction to Sociological Theory, a graduate course in sociology. I also worked at Fry’s the whole time, continuing the pattern I had established when I entered college—to work part time, go to school part time and to have fun part time, which included going to lots of concerts and various events in the community. Unfortunately, as I was starting to get serious about studying sociology, this arrangement was becoming a bit difficult to sustain.

I’m not sure when I did this, but sometime near the beginning of the year, I applied to formally enter the graduate program in sociology at the University of Arizona. I had done very well my last two years of college, primarily because I so enjoyed taking courses in sociology, and learning about things like political power and social movements, as well as Latin American and Chicano history. I figured that the graduate program in sociology would allow me to continue in this vein. I really had no idea, however, what I was in for. Before I knew it, I was confronted with the fact that sociology is a social science, and as such, a student at the graduate level was expected to learn how to be impartial and study the topic with an objective lens. Sociology isn’t just about learning about how social movements work or how political power manifests itself, it’s about theoretical framewoks and paradigms, comparing and analyzing events, about using data to extract trends and develop hypotheses about why and how things happen in the social world. It’s about theory, and includes the study of great thinkers like Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber, among others. These guys wrote for a 19^th century audience often in German or in languages other than English. They were difficult to understand, and I, at this point in my life, was very opinionated, and wanted to change the world for the better, not study it. Also, sociology at the graduate level was a full time endeavor, and I just didn’t want to let go of my job at the grocery store, even though I was offered a stipend when I formally entered the Sociology graduate program. Needless to say, I didn’t last long in the graduate program. I took just a couple more courses, but by the summer of 1984, I had fully checked out of it. Other stuff had popped up and held my attention.

Here are a couple of samples of the work I did this semester:

Sociology 500 Midterm Exam March 8, 1983, Dr. Fligstein

“Cuba”, (paper written for Professor Seligson’s “Latin American Political Development” class Political Science 447, The University of Arizona, April 28, 1983).

In late 1982, I had joined Teatro Libertad, a leftist, mostly Chicano street theater troupe.  As a member, I had to learn how to act and sing in public. I was very nervous and scared at first, and I’m sure I was awful, but I didn’t give up and just kept practicing, and before long, I was able to perform in front of large groups of people without much difficulty at all. I got over being shy, and it felt great. The Teatro performed  a number of skits in a variety of places throughout the year and by year’s end, we had also written and performed  the first act of an original full length play called, “La Vida del Cobre” or the Life of Copper, about the 1917 Bisbee copper strike and deportation.  I played several different characters in La Vida Del Cobre, and contributed a lot of the music to the play. I had a great time, and being in a group like this helped me strengthen my self-confidence and performing abilities. I was doing political theater, and working to raise people’s consciousness about the power structure and the social realities in which they lived. I felt like I was making a difference.

In terms of my personal life in 1983, I was a mess. I was still in love with my friend Scott, but as the year unfolded and the AIDS crisis became more serious, people started acting strange, and I lost a few so-called friends. Scott also pulled away from me. He found himself a girlfriend, and we drifted apart by the Fall. My friend Frank and I had our ups and downs too, as I was always restless, and could never see myself as his lover or companion. He was a lot older than me, and had his own busy life that kept him on the road constantly, but he kept popping in and out of mine. There were others that came and went too. I was friends with a guy who worked at Fry’s named Henry at one point, but he was really not a good influence on me, as he was into being a little badass cholo, always getting into mischief.

There was also a guy named Peter, with whom I became quite infatuated, but that went nowhere either. It seems like all the guys I was attracted to were straight, and that was a major bummer.  As I’ve mentioned before, I also still tried dating women, and there were a few here and there that also popped into my life at the time. One woman, named Lee, was also in my Russian class, and she actually got to visit the Soviet Union over Spring Break. She sent me lots of Russian souvenirs, including a balalaika. She was very nice person. Overall, however,  I felt lonely and unhappy, and after having had a taste of what “married life” was like when I was with John in 1979-80, I longed to have a steady male partner. It would take a couple of more years, however, before I found one.

Early in the summer of 1983, I signed up to take a course in radio programming from KXCI, a brand new community radio station that was planning on going live by the end of the year. I paid $475 to attend the radio course over the summer. (It was not free, as some have mistakenly written). My love of music, which I had been indulging in since childhood, was finally going to take center stage, and I was going to have the opportunity to share the music I loved with the whole community. Over the past 10 years, I had been collecting albums and had immersed myself in learning all about contemporary urban folk music, soul music, jazz, oldies, pop and other musical genres. I also had some basic knowledge of Latin music, but it would soon deepen and it quickly became a major focal point in my continuing musical education.

The radio course lasted a few months, and by late Fall, the station was ready to go live. I was a devoted volunteer at the time, and did a lot of work at the station.

KXCI and Teatro Libertad were where my heart was at this point in my life. I wanted to convince people to become politically active and to take a stand and work to make the world a better place. I had signed up to take a graduate course in Social Psychology with Dr. Patricia MacCorquodale in the Fall, but I withdrew from the course before the semester was over. Academia, it turns out, wasn’t for me, at least for the time being. I couldn’t see myself as a professor doing boring studies, writing boring papers, and teaching all the time, although teaching probably would’ve been more fulfilling than doing research. I would take one more sociology class the following Spring semester, but that would be it. After that, I was done with the program.

As the station went live, I was given two slots to fill in the programming calendar, one a Latin show on Thursday nights which I dubbed “The Chicano Connection”, and the other a morning music mix program that took place on Friday mornings from 9am to noon. I was still rather shy and wasn’t a great announcer when I started, but again, I kept at it, and got better over time.

My knowledge of music and my shows were also starting to get noticed out in the community, and I quickly became known for playing stuff that nobody else was playing or was long forgotten. Senator Dennis DeConcini even wrote to the station early on and noted how impressed he was with me and Kidd Squidd. I was in heaven. I even played political folk music, but this would eventually get me into trouble.

Here are more of my playlists from December, 1983. (click the title to see the list).

The Chicano Connection, December 15, 1983.

The Morning Music Mix, December 16, 1983.

The Chicano Connection, December 22, 1983.

The Morning Music Mix, December 23, 1983.

The Chicano Connection, December 29, 1983.

The Morning Music Mix, December 30, 1983.

Even though my personal life was a drag,  this was indeed an amazing time in my life. I had some wonderful friends, many of whom I haven’t seen in a long time. For one reason or another we all just drifted apart. Some have moved away, some are still in town, and others have passed on. As I was thinking back on this particular year, I was overcome with emotion for the first time since I started this writing project. I really miss these folks. I still love them with all my heart. They were all wonderful, talented people. I’m lucky I still have friends like Ron and Jane. Our friendship has stood the test of time.

There’s one final thing that I want to say about this particular time in my life. I have a few regrets, that’s for sure. There are some things I did that I should not have done, and over time I’ve paid the price in one way or another for these mistakes. I likely hurt a few people along the way, and to this day I feel very sad about all of that, but I realize nothing can be done about it now, except to say I’m sorry to those who find this and know what I’m talking about. It was all so long ago. I was young and still had a lot to learn at the age of 24. Some things I figured out pretty fast, while others would take a lifetime to finally figure out.  Overall, I feel pretty good now and I am happier than I’ve ever been. I look forward to continuing writing my life story. I’ve come a long way on this project. 24 years down, 37 more to go…Stay tuned!

Things to know up front:

You can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. Click the back arrow key to return to the post.

Every chapter in My Life Story includes information about me, my work, my family and my friends. It also includes information about events that took place locally and nationally, etc. that I thought important enough to include. You’ll also find that I’ve included films, musicians and recordings/videos, in addition to books that were released in a given year.

While I have included many personal photos, most of the graphic content included below is borrowed from the Internet. I do not claim to own this material. I am just adding it for educational purposes. If the owners of any of the content in the “My Life Story” series want their stuff removed, I am happy to oblige. My email address is jrdiaz@arizona.edu. Thanks!

1982 was an important year in my life. I was 22 years old when the year began.  I lived alone in my small apartment on 7^th St, and I continued to work part time at Fry’s. I turned 23 on the 15^th of January, just as my final semester at the University of Arizona was about to begin. I signed up for four classes, and they were quite demanding, with lots of assigned readings, tests, papers and lab reports. All of this kept me rather busy. 

On top of all of this, I continued to spend time with my friends, who included Frank, Scott, Richard, Tim, and others, and to indulge myself in having fun, going out to the bars to dance and partying a lot. There were times when I felt like the partying, which consisted primarily of drinking lots of beer and smoking, was starting to have an adverse effect, and I wrote in my journal in February that I wasn’t focused enough on my schoolwork. There were even a few times when I had to fake being sick and take time off of work to catch up on school stuff. This was risky, as I could have easily lost my job by calling in sick, but I was luckily able to get a doctor’s notice (usually by making something up, like a bad back or a sore foot) each time I needed time off, and that covered me with work.

February 23, 1982: Contemporary Latin America exam

February 24, 1982: Political Sociology Take Home exam

February 25, 1982: Mexican American Politics exam

 I saved a lot of my schoolwork from this period. (To see my work, just click on each title above). Overall, I got good grades on my tests and papers, even though I was having too much fun. I was young and full of energy, I suppose. One way or another, I covered all my bases when there were deadlines to meet.

In February, my mother bought me a car. My ’64 Buick Special turned out to be a real lemon, and was always giving me trouble, so I needed to get another one that was more reliable. As luck would have it, my next door neighbor was selling her recently deceased husband’s 1964 Galaxy 500, a beautiful white, four door monstrosity with a great engine and body. I told my mom about it, and she agreed to buy me the car as an early graduation present. The former owner took great care of it. I had a lot of fun with that vehicle in the next several years.

I received several letters from my sister Becky early in the year. Her relationship with her husband Paco was over, and by early March, she had divorced him. Aside from one or two notable exceptions (see above), most of her letters from this period are heart wrenching, and describe a very lonely, unhappy person in the midst of profound change. I was elated when she came home in the Spring. My brother Charles flew up to Washington and helped her pack her stuff and come home. Charles drove a U-Haul back with her and all her stuff.

As the semester progressed, I continued to subscribe to and read a lot of political magazines, such as The Nation, The Progressive, Mother Jones, In These Times, and the Guardian. I considered myself a socialist, and even joined the Democratic Socialists of America .

I was also starting to get interested in the Sanctuary Movement, which was founded in Tucson by Reverend John Fife and others. The following article appeared in the local paper in late March.

Sometime in the Spring, I met a young woman from Bolivia named Pamela Bartholomew. She would sit in on my Political Sociology class at times, and we became friends. She soon invited me to attend a play called “Semilla Sembrada”, by Teatro Libertad, a local political theater group.

I attended it, and loved it. I later got to meet the members of the group, and would soon end up interviewing one of them for a paper I had to write in my Mexican American Politics class. A couple of the female members, Pernela and Teresa, had also grown up in my neighborhood and I knew their brothers. I would end up becoming a member of Teatro Libertad by year’s end.

My niece Michelle’s first son, Solomon, was born on March 28, 1982. Here’s a photo of him taken a couple of months later.

I had more papers and tests due in March, April and May. Overall, I continued to get A’s and B’s in most of them. The one class I didn’t care for at all was titled Introduction to Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. I got a C in it. Even though I had done well in previous science classes, this one just didn’t interest me at this point in my college career.

March 30, 1982: Contemporary Latin America paper on the Somoza Dynasty

April 1, 1982: Mexican American Politics exam

April 20, 1982: Political Sociology essay on American Ideology and Science

April 30, 1982: Mexican American Politics paper

May 11, 1982: Political Sociology Final exam

I was exhausted by the end of the semester, but it was worth it! I graduated on May 15 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology, with a minor in Sociology.  I remember that I promised my parents when I quit high school that I would complete my education at the University, come hell or high water, and I did it!  It took five and a half years, but I didn’t care. I had reached one of the most important milestones of my life. I ended up with a 3.41 grade average, which wasn’t bad at all. I was the first and only one in my family to go to a four year college and graduate, and it made my parents extremely proud, and that made me very happy.

I had no immediate plans for the Fall, so I hung out with my friends and had fun. Frank and I drove up to Oak Creek Canyon at some point, and we took some photos. My dad had taken the family up there way back in 1965. He had grown up in the area, and knew it well. It’s beautiful country, and the drive with Frank was very enjoyable. I loved playing my guitar at the time, and Frank enjoyed listening to me. He was my biggest fan. Nobody else thought I played very well, and I probably didn’t, but he was a real sweetheart to me.

I also attended several concerts over the summer, including one by the Clash in Mesa, and one by the Grateful Dead. I drove my friends Richard, Denise and Mike up to Mesa in my new car to see the Clash show, and we had a blast. Denise made some silk-screened t-shirts for the occasion and sold a bunch of them up there.

When we went back up to Mesa to see the Grateful Dead, I got a ride with someone. It’s a good thing, because I was flying higher than a kite that night. It was a wild, memorable, trippy occasion. I won’t divulge the details, but believe me, we all had fun.

I didn’t have a steady boyfriend, but I had a few very close friends like Frank. He and I were very tight, and he would write to me a lot as he traveled the country and Europe. He bought me the book, Be Here Now, and was a big follower of Bagwan Rajneesh, and A Course in Miracles. He loved me dearly and was my mentor. Sometime in the summer, I took a flight to Albuquerque to meet up with him while he was staying there. I remember shopping at the various record stores in the University area with him. Poor Frank quickly learned that I had a constant habit of shopping for books and records. He even found a copy of Joan Baez’s album, “Live Europe’83: Children of the 80s” for me when he went to France the following year. The record was available only in Europe at the time, and apparently, it took him a while to find it, but he did and he brought it back for me. Bless his heart.

While I had did have strong feelings for Frank, I was also still very infatuated with my friend Scott, who was quite handsome and a very nice guy. We would go hiking together to Sabino Canyon, and he taught me how to shoot a gun, believe it or not. We didn’t really have a lot in common, as he was into things like hunting, but we enjoyed each other’s company. We also both worked at Fry’s, and would often go jogging together. Other guys that I hung around with at this time included my friend Harold, who was a choir director for a local African American church, and Michael, who turned me on to the movie, Harold and Maude. He and I clashed some, so our friendship only lasted a few months. My friends Ron and Jane, Sylvia, Dennis, Jim and Gary were still around too. I was very lucky to have so many good friends at this point in my life.

In August, my dad and I took a road trip to Las Vegas in my new car. We stopped along the way in Superior to visit his brother Raul, and then drove through Phoenix before heading north to the Verde Valley region, where he was born and raised.

We visited Jerome, Cottonwood and Camp Verde. At one point, in Cottonwood, we stopped by the river and he took his shoes and socks off and waded into the water. It was so cool to see that. This was where my dad spent his childhood and youth, and it was a very special moment.

We continued driving north to Flagstaff and visited a lady who was from a family my dad knew when his family lived there in the thirties. From Flagstaff, we drove west to Needles. We had almost made it and were just 40 miles outside of Needles when, as luck would have it, my car’s water pump went out, and the car stalled stuck outside of Yucca, Arizona, in the middle of nowhere. It was the middle of the night too, and we were stuck. My dad tried lighting a fire to get someone’s attention, and a State trooper even drove by, but did nothing whatsoever to help us. We ended up walking a couple of miles up the road to a motel that had a pay phone. I barely had enough change to make a call to my uncle’s house, and I had to memorize his phone number after getting it from the operator. It’s a good thing I was able to do that. Otherwise, I don’t know what we would have done.

My uncle came and got us, and the next day, we got the car fixed. It was a very scary situation there for a while, but we pulled through. The experience helped my dad and I bond like never before. All that walking we did was hard on him, as he walked with a limp due to a broken leg he had gotten years ago while working in the mine. I felt really bad for him, but he was a good sport.

Once we had made it to Needles, we spent time with my dad’s two brothers Val and Failo, and their families. We also went to Las Vegas, but it was awkward and we didn’t have a great time. He wanted to see showgirls. I didn’t.

My cousin Clarisa later took me to Laughlin, Nevada, another gambling mecca on the banks of the Colorado River. I had a really bad experience there too. As we were walking through one of the casinos, we went through a dance area that had a band playing, and the band started mocking Mexican music and making stupid noises. I yelled back at them and flipped them off. Little did I know I was being watched. A few minutes later, we were served drinks, and I suddenly got very, very sleepy. I ended up crashing in the car, and the next morning I was sicker than a dog. Apparently the servers slipped something into my drink so that I wouldn’t cause any further trouble. I had never vomited bile before, but I did that day. It took me a while to get back on my feet. It was a horrible experience, one I’ll never forget. We later made it home without any problems, thank goodness.

I decided not to enroll in school in the Fall. I needed a break. There wasn’t much to do other than work, so I continued that and just hung out with my friends, listened to lots of music, partied and went to the movies.

Sometime later in the Fall, I decided I wanted to branch out a bit and find something creative and fun to do. Since I liked playing the guitar and flute, I looked around and found a music group that I liked that I thought I’d try to join. After hearing her group perform at an event, I met up with a woman named Rebecca, who was with a folk music group called Bwiya-Toli, to talk about the possibility of joining them. They played progressive folk music from Latin America. I auditioned with them, but didn’t impress the group leader all that much. I didn’t know how to play percussion and they wanted me to do that. I could play the flute and guitar, but hadn’t played in an ensemble in quite a while either. Things didn’t work out with them after all.

However, my friend Pamela soon thereafter invited me to attend a Teatro Libertad meeting. The group had been in existence since 1975, and had several major plays under their belt by the time I came along.  Earlier in the year, I had attended a performance of Semilla Sembrada,  their most recent full length play, and over the summer I became friends with Teresa, one of the members of the group. My very first meeting with the Teatro was on November 9, 1982. The group was very disciplined, and meetings were held two to three times a week. There would be no alcohol or other drugs allowed at any of the meetings, and punctuality was very important to the group.

While the primary focus of Teatro Libertad was theater, the group also sang a lot, and I particularly enjoyed participating in the singing and learning new songs. The acting was another story. I had always been, believe it or not, a very, very shy individual ever since I was a child, and it took all the courage I could muster just to get up in front of a group to speak. I had trouble giving presentations, for example, in college. I would just freeze at times, and usually bombed whatever presentation I was supposed to give. I knew if I wanted to stay in the Teatro, that I had to get over this fast. It took a few embarrassing moments, but I was soon participating in skits and contributing as a full member to the group.

Jesse Jackson visited Miracle Valley, Arizona on November 11, which was the sight of a controversial shootout in the predominantly Black community south of Sierra Vista. He also came to Tucson and spoke at the Mt. Cavary Baptist Church that evening. I was there and he was fantastic. Unfortunately, the writer of the article had to be a smart ass about things. It’s so frustrating that some journalists can twist things around like this and get away with this kind of garbage.

This Ray Charles concert was alright, not great. My friend Richard was one of the people that hollered at the wrong time. He yelled out, “You bad, Ray”, and Ray told him to shut up. How funny is that? Richard told me about it later. This was the first of two Ray Charles shows I saw in the 80’s. The other one took place a couple of years later at the Temple of Music and Art. My brother Charles and I took our mom to see him. The concert was over in about 40 minutes, and was the shortest performance I’ve ever attended. We we all very disappointed.

As the year came to a close, I knew I needed to make some decisions about my future. I decided to take the GRE exam and to go back to school. I considered going in to social work, and my friend Frank even wrote me a letter of recommendation, but I also thought about law school. I couldn’t make up my mind, and it took a while to figure it all out.

I knew one thing for sure. My feelings for my friend Scott continued to deepen, and I wrote him this song. I was crazy about him.

Things to know up front:

You can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. Click the back arrow key to return to the post.

Every chapter in My Life Story includes information about me, my work, my family and my friends. It also includes information about events that took place locally and nationally, etc. that I thought important enough to include. You’ll also find that I’ve included films, musicians and recordings/videos, in addition to books that were released in a given year.

While I have included many personal photos, most of the graphic content included below is borrowed from the Internet. I do not claim to own this material. I am just adding it for educational purposes. If the owners of any of the content in the “My Life Story” series want their stuff removed, I am happy to oblige. My email address is jrdiaz@arizona.edu. Thanks!

As the year started, I was getting close to getting my bachelor’s degree. Having passed the midpoint with only a handful more credits to go, I had hoped to finish by the end of the year, but would have to continue through the Spring semester of 1982, as I ended up dropping some courses along the way. I continued to work at the grocery store too, and began the year still living with my parents, but that would change soon enough.

Ronald Reagan had just won the presidential election in November, and my friends and I all braced ourselves for the coming onslaught of conservative government policy, which included backing dictatorships once again in Central America and busting unions. Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority was more popular than ever, and things didn’t look good for the gay community or other minority communities either.

During the Spring semester, I took three sociology classes.  My teachers in these classes were  J.T. Borhek,  Gary Jensen, and Stanley Lieberson, (who would move on to Berkeley, and then Harvard).  The reading assignments, particularly in Borhek’s class, were rather dense, and included The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by  Max Weber, The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx, and Suicide: A Study in Sociology, by Emile Durkheim.  I did my best to wade through these, but sometimes I had to re-read things again and again to comprehend stuff. I enjoyed reading about ethnic and racial groups much more than the heavier theoretical material.

I was completely immersed in my school work. I loved my classes this particular year, as I had started to move away from psychology to the study of sociology, which became my minor. I was particularly interested in minority groups, politics and social movements. It was easy being more serious about my studies at this point because I found the subject matter so interesting. My grades improved a lot at this time. At one point, I got the highest grade on a test in my class on minority groups, and Dr. Lieberson awarded me with the following book. A couple of my fellow students didn’t like that Dr. Lieberson had done this, but I sure was a happy camper.

I also got an A on a paper I wrote for Dr. Borhek’s class, “Sources of Social Theory”. The paper was titled “The Chicano in America Today: A Sociological Analysis”. (Click on the title to read the paper). I didn’t get a new typewriter until the Fall semester, so I very carefully wrote this one in cursive. It got some water damage, but it’s still readable.

In Central America in 1979, the Sandinistas had taken power away from the previously U.S. backed Somoza regime, and other nations in the region were also clamoring for freedom. El Salvador had been suffering under a brutal dictatorship and had witnessed in the previous year the killings of the ever popular Archbishop Oscar Romero and four Catholic nuns who had started a land reform school. In early January, the civil war started to escalate, and the FMLN, the revolutionary rebel forces, was on the offensive.

By this point in my life, I was starting to refine my political views, and they were definitely left of center. I was quite sad and depressed that Carter had been defeated and that Ronald Reagan had won. I could not stand the man, and have never thought he did our country any good whatsoever. I felt that the freeing of the hostages in Iran had been a publicity stunt that Reagan and others within the Republican party had engineered with others in the Middle East to give him more credibility and make him more popular. There were definitely some shady deals made to make this happen, in my opinion. Jimmy Carter had been a great president, but Reagan’s shenanigans made Carter appear weak and ineffective in the end.

At home, life continued to be a challenge. I decided it was time to leave again, and this time it was for good. Around the third week of January, I found a small studio apartment in back of a professor’s house on 7th street, a block east of Campbell. I had to practically beg the man to let me rent the place, and assured him I was working and in school. It was humiliating, but I loved the location. It was perfect, and the one big room was all I needed. The one thing it didn’t have unfortunately, was a stove, but I managed. My mom and dad’s house was just a mile away and I could always pop over there to eat and do laundry. Mom wasn’t happy, of course that I had left again, but I couldn’t take it living at home. People were in and out of the house all the time. My parents were always bickering and babysitting the grand kids, and two of my brothers were always there just hanging out. My brother Fred and I never got along, and as time went on, our relationship deteriorated further and further.

Reagan, in response to the allegations that Nicaragua was supporting the rebel forces in El Salvador, quickly stopped providing aid to the leftist Nicaraguan government and started aiding the “contrarevolucionarios”, or counterrevolutionaries, instead. These forces consisted of former members of Somoza’s military, who, from their home base along the Honduran border, began to fight to regain control of the country. In the ensuing months, Reagan would secretly authorize more and more funding to this clandestine force, popularly known as the Contras.

From Wikipedia: “On March 30, 1981, United States President Ronald Reagan was shot and wounded by John Hinckley Jr. in Washington, D.C. as he was returning to his limousine after a speaking engagement at the Washington Hilton Hotel. Hinckley believed the attack would impress actress Jodie Foster, with whom he had become obsessed. Reagan was seriously wounded by a .22 Long Rifle bullet that ricocheted off the side of the presidential limousine and hit him in the left underarm, breaking a rib, puncturing a lung, and causing serious internal bleeding. He was close to death upon arrival at George Washington University Hospital but was stabilized in the emergency room, then underwent emergency exploratory surgery.^[4] He recovered and was released from the hospital on April 1.”

I was at home in my apartment when I heard the news about Reagan getting shot. Thinking back on it now, I wouldn’t wish that kind of thing on anyone, but Reagan was such a slimy politician, at one point I was hopeful that we’d get someone else to run the country. My fears about the kind of damage Reagan would do to our country came true soon enough. I discussed the shooting with my friend Tim, who had dropped over that day. I couldn’t help telling him what I thought. He and I spent a lot of time together around this time. He would bring his guitar over to my apartment and we’d discuss the class we were in together and the papers we wrote. I never felt attracted to him. He was completely straight, and had his share of girlfriends. He certainly was handsome enough to have lots of them, but he was quite skinny. Not my type, really. He was just a friend.

I made some other new friends around this time in my life, and they included Jim and Gary, a couple who had been together for many, many years. Jim was an artist who grew up before World War II in Southern California, and he met Gary in the bay area when Gary was very young. They lived there for many years. At some point, Jim also spent time in Europe studying art. After they moved to Tucson, they owned an art gallery in town, but then sold it so that Jim could devote more of his time to his art. I met Jim at a bar called the Graduate one day while I was playing pool. He noticed that my hands were big and had prominent veins, and he asked me if I would be willing to model for him while he worked on a sculpture. I agreed to do it. I went to his house way out on the far west side and sat still with my hand relaxed, but stretched out, while Jim did his sculpting. We hit it off and became friends. His partner Gary was also nice.

Jim had been an actor in Hollywood at one point and was very handsome, even as an older guy. He and Gary had a big record collection and they were crazy about Judy Garland. I remember having conversations with the two of them about wanting to “change the world.” They chuckled at my youthful idealism, and encouraged me to do it, but I knew they thought I was “very young”.

I spent a lot more time with my old friend Richard this particular year too. He had also made some new friends who lived near his new apartment, which was on 9^th St. near 4^th Ave. Their names were Mike, Denise, Jimmy and Merricat. Denise and Mike were both artists, as was Merricat. She made beaded jewelry,  and either lived next door to Denise or was her roommate at one point.

We all partied together frequently, and while there was always beer and marijuana around, at times we did other heavier things, such as hallucinogenics. Richard had become a big fan of the Grateful Dead, and such people are known as Dead Heads and acid freaks. I enjoyed the music, but never considered myself that big of a fan, although I did try the drugs once or twice.

Doing acid and other psychedelics was sure an interesting experience! One could easily have a bad trip if the setting for the “party” wasn’t mellow enough. I went through this myself once or twice, and afterwards realized that I shouldn’t indulge so much in the heavy stuff. While I was in much better shape psychologically than I had been when I was 18, I still had issues at 22, and the drugs sometimes brought those issues out into the open in a very creepy way, and I would find myself in a downward spiral. If it weren’t for a friend of mine who saw that I was sinking one evening at one of these parties, I’m not sure where I would have ended up. She calmed me down and made me relax on the couch and told me, “remember this is just temporary. It will wear off”. Wow. That sure helped.

As far as dating was concerned, there wasn’t anyone steady. I continued to go out to the bars to meet other guys. I had a lot of fun, and still liked to dance, but was really tired of the bar scene after a while. It all revolved around the pretty people, and around drugs and alcohol. I was young, and indulged myself, but I wanted more. I’m glad I had some stability. Working half time and going to school were my two big priorities, and I never let the partying get out of control. My mother’s favorite saying to all of us was that “you have to learn how to paddle your own canoe,” and that lesson was embedded deep in my psyche.

Word was slow to get out that gay men in big cities like New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles were starting to die from combination of pneumonia and a rare strain of cancer called Kaposi’s Sarcoma, but by early June, the Centers for Disease Control had published the first official report on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS, and by July there were over 40 reported deaths. As time went on and word spread about the disease, gay men became further targets for discrimination and violence, and they began dying at an alarming rate, particularly on the east and west coasts. The world would never be the same. By the middle of the decade, at least two of my friends, Dennis and Leonard, had contracted the disease, and both eventually died. A lot more friends would die through the 90’s as well.

Around this time, Frank Weill, my old religion teacher from Salpointe, and I bumped into each other at a bar one night, and we started spending time together. He had left the church by then, but still did spiritual counseling for a lot of people. He would become a very close friend in the next few years, and I learned a great deal from him.

Summer dragged on. I was working constantly, feeling unsure of myself and unhappy about my sexuality, but still going out and messing around and partying a lot. I felt lost and alone, especially after my buddy Tim took off and went back east for the summer. I couldn’t wait for school to begin.

Before school started, in mid-August, I took a little vacation, and booked a flight, one of the very first I’d ever taken, to Seattle, to go see my sister Becky, who lived in Lacey, a little town just east of Olympia. She and Paco had moved across the country the year before, where he was able to find work with relatives. Becky and Paco were having lots of problems at this point, but I didn’t care. I wanted to see her and I needed to get away for a little while. They would soon split up and by early 1982, she was back home with the family.

I had a great time this semester. My classes were interesting and I learned a great deal in them. I particularly loved my class, Collective Behavior and Social Movements. The professor, Dr. Diane Bush, was a wonderful teacher. My History of Women in America class was also very good. I was the only guy in the class! I’m still friend with my professor, Dr. Karen Anderson. The class on Mexican American Culture was taught by Dr. James Officer. He was another wonderful teacher and was the author of the book, “Hispanic Arizona”.

When the film Zootsuit came out, I decided that I would take my mom and dad to see it when it was playing at the theater in El Con. Mom and Dad were a young married couple in the mid-40s and the music and the fashions of the era were well familiar to them. They enjoyed the film a lot. I did too.

By the end of the semester, I had written a series of papers on the Gay Liberation Movement for my Sociology 313 class titled Collective Behavior and Social Movements. They were called “take home exams, but were really very long essays. Here’s the entire set of them.

“The Gay Liberation Movement Part I (Take Home Exam #1). Sociology 313: Collective Behavior and Social Movement. Dr. Diane Bush. September 15, 1981.

“The Gay Liberation Movement Part II (Take Home Exam #2). Sociology 313: Collective Behavior and Social Movements. Dr. Diane Bush. October 29, 1981.

“The Gay Liberation Movement Part III (Take Home Exam #3). Sociology 313: Collective Behavior and Social Movements. Dr. Diane Bush. November 30, 1981.

“The Gay Liberation Movement Part IV (Final Exam). Sociology 313: Collective Behavior and Social Movements. Dr. Diane Bush. December 14, 1981.

As the year came to a close, I had made more new friends. I became friends with Scott, a guy I met at Fry’s. I developed a very heavy crush on him and we spent a lot of time together for the next couple of years. I started dating women again too. I had hooked up with my friend Merricat sometime in the Fall, for example. She and I fooled around some, and I even took her to a Christmas party some friends from Fry’s were having. Merricat came to the party dressed like a modern day hippie, with a beaded headdress and a long flowing skirt, and my friends from Fry’s got all freaked out and even asked me, where did you find her? She was such a nice person, but we didn’t last. I was gay, and that’s all there was to it. While I fought my attraction to guys, it overpowered my desire to be with women. It took a few more years and a few more awkward sexual experiences with women to finally let go of any notion that I was attracted to them or could sustain a relationship with one. But in the meantime, I kept trying.

Things to know up front:

You can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. Click the back arrow key to return to the post.

Every chapter in My Life Story includes information about me, my work, my family and my friends. It also includes information about events that took place locally and nationally, etc. that I thought important enough to include. You’ll also find that I’ve included films, musicians and recordings/videos, in addition to books that were released in a given year.

While I have included many personal photos, most of the graphic content included below is borrowed from the Internet. I do not claim to own this material. I am just adding it for educational purposes. If the owners of any of the content in the “My Life Story” series want their stuff removed, I am happy to oblige. My email address is jrdiaz@arizona.edu. Thanks!

I started the year by continuing to work at Fry’s as a cashier/stocker and going to school full time. I was busy as ever. John was busy too, and we continued our lives together, living in our guest house on S. Warren. My classes included two sociology courses for the first time, and I ended up loving them.

 When my birthday rolled around, John threw me a party and invited both my new friends and some of my old friends to the gathering at our home. Unfortunately, that was like mixing oil and water. I was hurt and disappointed at my old friends, as they clearly didn’t want to mingle with my new friends. I suppose they felt threatened or something by the fact that one or two of my friends were just a bit too effeminate. It must have made them quite uncomfortable, as they stayed in another part of the house the entire time they were there.  Homophobia was rampant back then, and it took many years for some people to come around and accept other gay people as they were. It hurt to know that my own friends didn’t really accept my chosen path.

One of our “very gay” friends, Leonard, hailed from the upper Midwest and before moving to Tucson trained horses on a farm in Michigan. He moved to Tucson to get away from his old life and he became a hairdresser, and lived his life as an openly gay man. He and his partner Virgil, who had gone to junior high and high school with my brother Fred, were a lot of fun. Leonard gave me a “perm” at some point, but I let my hair grow out after the first one. Perms were something John liked getting. My hair was curly enough on its own, but they were a big thing at the time. Everyone was getting perms. My sister-in-law has a photo of me with my perm all grown out, but I don’t have a copy of it. She took the photo just before she cut my hair.

Sometime at this point, I got very ill with the flu. It was the worst case of the flu I’ve ever had in my whole life.  I was delirious with fever and weak as could be, and was sick for days. At one point, I even wanted John to take me home to my parent’s house, so that they could take care of me. I wanted my mommy! Somehow I managed to survive it, but the flu that winter killed a lot of people. I truly did feel like I was going to die.

As a 21 year old, I continued to identify primarily as a Chicano and as a bohemian/hippie type, but as I began to experience life as a gay man, my perspective broadened. I was becoming immersed in “gay” culture, hanging out with other gay people, either at the bars or in other social settings where my partner and I found ourselves. I continued to learn as much as possible about the history of the gay community, about “camp”, drag and gay sensibility. I also learned a lot about gay icons like Judy Garland and Joan Crawford. I learned about gay subcultures too. There were different groups of gay men for example, such as those into the leather scene, men who identified as “bears” or “clones”, and women who were separatists, and about “butch” and “femme” roles. Overall, I learned that there is a great deal of diversity within the “gay” community, but I didn’t identify with any specific group, as my radical political leanings, my ethnicity and my anti-materialistic outlook, kept me from feeling like I fit under any specific “label” or belonged to any specific group, so to speak. A lot of the other young, gay Latinos I encountered were into the disco scene and harder drugs like pills and cocaine. I found them superficial and cliquish, and didn’t relate at all to what they were into.

Critics panned this movie, but who cares. Richard Gere appears in the nude! That’s all it took for us to want to see it. It was one of the very first films to show frontal male nudity, and while that particular scene lasted just a few seconds, it was, shall we say, quite revealing! Richard Gere was gorgeous.

While I do not like violence in films, this movie was much more than that for me. It was authentic in so many ways. The New York leather scene came to life in this movie, and while the plot of the movie was creepy, the scenery, the music and the men in it made it quite fascinating. I’m glad I got to see the film, although I could understand why various gay organizations were boycotting it. There was nothing else about gay culture out there at the time in popular culture, and this movie was unveiling a segment of gay culture that was quite hardcore.

Here’s a live version of Mad Love, the title cut.

My love for Linda Ronstadt all these years has been unwavering, and I made sure to buy each new disc that came out, especially in the 70’s and 80’s. I didn’t care much for the Gilbert and Sullivan stuff or the opera material she covered later, but I loved everything else. My hip friends thought I was too “corny” and bland in my tastes at times, especially because I loved Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, Rita Coolidge, James Taylor and Joan Baez, artists one could easily characterize as “middle of the road”. They just weren’t “cool” enough. I shied away from hard rock, disco, metal, funk etc. I liked what I liked, and I was beginning to develop in-depth knowledge of American soul music, jazz, and urban folk music. It would take a few years before I immersed myself in Mexican rancheras, mariachi music, and other forms of Musica Latina, but once I did, there was no turning back.

I had been listening to country music for a while when this came out. I never cared much for Loretta Lynn at all, but the movie was just great because Sissy Spacek was so incredible. I loved listening to country music, especially the local group, The Dusty Chaps, The Byrds when Gram Parsons played with them, Freddie Fender, Willie Nelson, Pure Prairie League, and of course Emmylou and Dolly. There’s a line I draw, however, in my own head, regarding this genre of music. It can get very corny and too “all-American” and too Southern and redneck-like all too easily. I’m definitely very picky when it comes to this stuff, but still, some of my friends just don’t understand how I can even tolerate it at all. For me, it goes back to when I was a child. My uncle Nato would take me with him at times to his local watering holes like the Cactus Room or the Wooden Nickel, and there on the jukebox would be a mix of Mexican music and country music. It was always there in the background and I listened intently.

You really get to know someone when you travel with them. This trip was a real challenge at times. John and I argued a lot, but we made it through without killing each other. Something wasn’t clicking after a while with us, however. Perhaps I was too immature for him. I have always been a big “baby”, and there were episodes on this trip where I whined a bit too much and got him really frustrated.

At one point while we were living on S. Warren, our little house was broken into, and the thieves took a bunch of stuff, like my lawn mower and a battery that was in the porch. They also took jewelry and other stuff from inside the house. I was completely traumatized by this when I found out, and I called in sick at work. The boss reluctantly let me stay home. Working at Fry’s was not always a piece of cake. One had to be on time at all times and if you called in sick, you needed a doctor’s excuse. It’s a good thing we had a union. It did what it could to help protect our rights.

John had a very liberal attitude towards sex, and didn’t believe in monogamy. I preferred it, however, but reluctantly went along with how he wanted things. One day after school, I noticed that he had a pile of record albums stacked against the couch, including the one above by Judy Collins, that had just been released. I asked why they were there, and he said he’d gone to our friend Kidd’s house to listen to music with him. However, I knew that he would never play any of his records on Kidd’s stereo because Kidd had a crappy record player needle, and John was a big audiophile who took good care of his albums. I told him that didn’t make any sense, and after I continued to question him, he finally revealed that he had been seeing someone else, closer to his own age and that he really liked the guy. He said he loved both of us and that he still wanted to be with me and to also see the other guy. I was shocked and heartbroken. I went outside, got on my bike, and rode it for what seemed like hours, trying to gather the strength not to cry and thinking about what I was going to do.

Our relationship was over. I could not continue with John knowing that he was falling in love with someone else. I called my sister Becky and told her what had happened. I was crying and upset, and she got mad, and told me I needed to get a grip. I was so surprised. I thought she’d be supportive, but she was not going to coddle me this time around. She made me face reality and told me that “the show must go on”, and while it was hard to hear at that point, in the end, she was right, and it helped. I spent 8 months of my life with this guy, and just like that, it all went down the drain.

I moved back to my parent’s house sometime in April. My mother, who had been trying her best to lay off the alcohol, saw that I was a mess, and likely realized that I was indeed gay. That was all it took to get her started on the alcohol again. She likely blamed herself for me having turned out gay, as she spoiled me a lot when I was a kid. My sister would even yell at her at times, saying “no le chipilees tanto. Va a salir joto!” (Don’t spoil him so much. He’s going to turn out queer!). I felt so bad, and blamed myself for the fact that she was drinking again. My poor mom loved me to the moon and back and couldn’t stand seeing me hurt, but she was happy I was home again. I stayed with my parents until the end of the year.

I spent the following months at home, working and going to school. I also started going out again, hitting the bars and meeting other guys. I was footloose and fancy free and partied a lot. I also worked out a lot, and began jogging. I was in pretty good shape overall. It’s a good thing I stayed active, because I could’ve gained a lot of weight drinking all that beer!

I bought a camera around this time and started taking pictures. The photos below are ones I took over the summer months in our back yard at home.

A few years back, my friend Rose turned me on to Joan Armatrading, a British musician who wrote her own music. I wore this album out and ended up buying most of her other material too. Me, Myself, I was released in May, 1980.

Here’s the title cut, Roses in the Snow.

I was very happy to see that Aretha Franklin had a cameo appearance in the Blues Brothers movie. For me, her performance was one of the best parts of the whole film. This was the beginning of what was to be her great “comeback”. She was done with Atlantic Records, and in 1980 signed a contract with the Arista Records label, which was run by Clive Davis. He was a legend in the music industry, and would later go on to strike it super rich by signing Whitney Houston to the label. It would take Aretha another five years and five more albums before she struck gold again with Who’s Zoomin’ Who and the smash hit, “Freeway of Love”. She was definitely on her way!

At this point, I was transitioning from a focus on psychology to one on sociology. I particularly enjoyed my jogging class and the Philosophy in Literature class. I dropped the Spanish class early on, as I didn’t care for Dr. Leo Barrow, the instructor. He would later be censured by the University for giving marijuana, in various forms, to his students. Had I stayed in his class, I would have been treated to marijuana-laced cookies. Oh boy!

I clearly remember receiving this album in the mail at my parents’ house when I was living with them after my breakup with John. It was sold by the Book-Of-The-Month Club, and I was a member at the time (1980). Holiday first recorded “A Fine Romance” back in the 1930’s but the version below is from the above album, “Music for Torching,” which was released in October, 1955.

My philosophy in literature class included discussions of Jean Paul Sartre’s works. This book contained the essay, “Existentialism is a Humanism” by Sartre. The essay itself wasn’t required reading, but it was what I was reading on my own at the time. I considered myself an “existentialist” by this point, and was far removed from my former religious beliefs. Over the years, I’ve flip flopped from being a believer to being an outright atheist to being agnostic. These days I find comfort in having faith in a higher power, and saying my prayers each night helps me sleep without getting nightmares.

I remember where I was when I first heard the news about Lennon’s death. He was a real hero to so many people. His new album was doing well, and everyone was happy to hear his voice again on the radio. What a tragic day and such a tragic loss. I loved his early solo albums, and, of course, his Beatles songs. So much for there ever being a Beatles reunion now.

I ended the semester having made a new friend. Tim M. was a student from New Jersey, and we met in one of our sociology classes. He had very long brown hair and played the guitar. He loved Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen, and we’d try our hand at singing duets like Two Of Us by the Beatles. We’d hang out together a lot in the next couple of years, and I was later a member of his wedding party. After college, he became a cop and then an FBI agent. We eventually lost touch.

I stayed with my parents until the end of the year. The past 12 months had been a roller coaster ride. My relationship with John ended, and then I started going out a lot again, meeting different guys here and there, but not really connecting with anyone in particular. All that, combined with work and school kept me on my toes. While things were as crazy as ever at home, I at least felt safe there and was able to assist my parents by helping them with their bills and keeping the yard clean. I didn’t have much privacy, however, as my brother Fred was always breaking into my bedroom and taking my clothes or rifling through my personal belongings. My parents didn’t like that I’d sometimes not come home at night either, and they became very suspicious about my activities. I could never, at this point, bring myself to tell my mother or father directly that I was gay. I just figured they knew, and we never talked about it.

Stay tuned for “My Life in Pictures: 1981”.