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!

Personal life

By the time I turned 26, most of my life since adolescence had been consumed with looking for that one person that I could be in love with and who would love me in return. There were lots of guys along the way who I fell for, but all of them, with the exception of one, were out of reach. That one person who I did connect with stayed with me for 8 months from the summer of 1979 to early 1980, and I was quite happy for the bulk of that time. I loved having a companion. I felt complete, and I had a real friend. When we broke up, I was devastated, but I was young and resilient, and I survived. Work and school kept me busy, and I had lots of friends to spend time with. I have to admit, however, that those years when I was single again, between the summer of 1980 and winter of 1984, were rough. I hated being alone, I hated the bar scene, I partied too much, and I hated myself for trying to pretend I was straight when I dated women. Then one day in the middle of December, 1984, Brent Bates showed up in my life, and we fell in love. He was nine months older than me and was from Muskegon, Michigan. I spent the next six years of my life with him. Little did we know when we met, where our relationship would take us.

Brent moved in within a month after we had met, so he must have been settled in with me by the end of January. The house on Manlove St. that I had moved into the previous summer was nice and roomy, and there was plenty of space for two people.  Once again, I felt that I had what I wanted—to be in a relationship with someone I loved. The first 8 months of our time together were exceptionally happy ones.  We got along well and while we came from different backgrounds and had a lot of differences, we did our best to communicate openly and to understand one another.  We also both enjoyed partying and had fun going to concerts and movies together.

Brent worked in the shipping/receiving department at Mervyn’s Department Store when we met. He was a conscientious person, with a strong work ethic. While he had just a high school education, he always sought to improve himself in one way or another. Within a couple of months after having moved in with me, he bought a new car, a little white Toyota Tercel. He was very proud of that car, and he took very good care of it. In July, we drove it across country to Michigan to visit his family. It was a fun trip, and my second road trip east. Unfortunately, I don’t remember many details about the trip there or the trip back. It’s all one big blur. However, I do remember our arrival. When we got to western Michigan, it was very late at night, and I was asleep. Brent decided to surprise me and he parked the car in a wooded area near Lake Michigan, outside of Muskegon. When I woke up I couldn’t believe my eyes. The scenery was beautiful, with gorgeous tall trees everywhere. And Lake Michigan! My god, it looked huge. It was like being near the ocean and quite a sight to see. I’ll never forget it.

When we got to Twin Lake, a small township north of Muskegon where Brent’s family lived, everyone was happy to see Brent again, and they were very nice to me and immediately treated me like family. We stayed with Brent’s parents, but at night, we slept in a small trailer away from the house. Brent’s dad was a bit weirded out about our relationship, but he came around in time. We hung out with his family for about a week, and while we were there, Brent took me to meet his uncles. One of them had a friend who lived on Duck Lake, which was just north of where we were staying. We went on a nice long boat ride while there. We also went out into the country and visited an old cemetery with graves from the 1800s. As I noted, Brent’s family was very nice, and while I found them to be a bit on the conservative side, they accepted our relationship and seemed happy that Brent had found a partner. Brent’s mom and his sister Teresa were especially kind to us.

About a month after our trip, Brent brought home two kittens one day that a  friend of his from work had given to him. They were very small, and irresistibly cute. We named them Cleopatra and Frederick, but called them Cleo and Freddie. They were so adorable. It was fun watching them play together. They got along well and  we kept them until we moved to Nogales in early 1987. It was nice having pets, and these particular cats shed very little cat hair, which was a relief. 

By September, Brent was presented with the opportunity to become a manager in the shipping and receiving department at Mervyn’s. The only catch was, he would have to move up to the Phoenix area to take the job. He decided to go for it, and before we knew it, he had moved out of our house and was living in an apartment up in Chandler. We visited each other regularly, but it was a difficult period for us. Being apart was a drag, to say the least, but we managed. We were both quite busy and that helped the time go by. By the following Spring, Brent realized that he wasn’t doing so well in his new job, and he came back home and landed another job working as a tile setter.

Work

I continued to work at Fry’s part time, about 25 hours a week, but I became increasingly unhappy with my job. I loved my co-workers, but the management staff were another story altogether. Some of them were nice, but there were others who were big jerks. After having worked for the company for nine years, I just couldn’t wait to leave. The job sure did pay well, however, and that’s why I stuck it out. I enjoyed having spending money. I’m not sure when I decided to become a union steward, but in the summer I attended an all day union stewards seminar. I worked hard to recruit new members to the union, something the management of the store wasn’t too thrilled about.

My education

I think I’ve always wanted to be a librarian. Ever since grade school, I would love to go to the library. I loved to read, plain and simple. My sister Becky would sometimes take me with her to the public library when I was a kid, and there also used to be a bookmobile that would park on the corner of 22nd and Cherrybell once a month on Tuesdays, and I would walk to it or get a ride to visit it whenever I could. In junior high, I would have joined the library club, but that was not something “boys” were supposed to do, so I bowed to the peer pressure and didn’t bother. In high school, however, I volunteered in the library at lunchtime and after school, and became friends with the librarians who worked there. One of them, Ms. Koster, bought me a brand new copy of the Joan Baez songbook as a thank you gift for having volunteered and another, Jeannette Bahr, helped me get a job at the UA library my freshman year. My English/newspaper teacher, Jane Cruz, had also enrolled in library school around 1975, and I was intrigued by her stories about someone named Dr. Trejo and the program she was in, the Graduate Library Institute for Spanish Speaking Americans.

I had received my BA in 1982, and for a couple of years, while I still took courses here and there , I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I tried the graduate program in sociology , but as I’ve previously noted, things didn’t work out. I finally decided that I would try something else, and enrolled in Library School late 1984. I got accepted, and started the program in mid-January, 1985, determined this time around to complete the program and graduate, and to find a job as a librarian either in a public library or an academic library as quickly as possible. By the time I entered the program, Dr. Trejo had retired and the GLISSA Program had folded. I was one of just a handful of minorities in the School when I began my studies.

So there I was, getting ready to pick my first few courses in my new program. I have to admit, I didn’t know what to expect as far as what was offered was concerned. I knew that librarians built collections and helped people with their questions, but I didn’t know much else about what librarians actually did or what they had to know to do their jobs. It was a good thing that the school provided some guidance on course choices. There were required courses and elective courses. I decided to tackle the required ones first, so for the first semester, my classes were: Foundations of Library Science, Collection Development, and Basic Reference. The foundations class was supposed to cover the history of libraries and key issues and topics within the profession, such as ethics and community analysis. The basic reference course covered the tools one uses to answer factual questions, as well as tools that help people find more in-depth information. The collection development course covered things like the publishing industry, censorship, how books are reviewed, collection development policies and other topics. I found all three of these classes to be very interesting. There were exams throughout the semester. The ones for basic reference were held in the Central Reference department in the UA Main Library. The professor for the class was Dr. Donald Dickinson. He became my favorite teacher, and I took several courses from him while in Library School. I didn’t keep any documentation for the basic reference class,  but I did keep all of my assignments from my other two classes. They were both taught by a woman named Gladys Stalschmidt, a recently hired professor. Unfortunately, she  had difficulty maintaining control in her classes. There were two women, in particular, who talked incessantly in our Foundations class, wasting everyone’s time with their long, boring stories. They drove everyone crazy. Many students complained about Professor Stalschmidt’s inability to control the class, and as a result, she didn’t last long at the school. I really liked her, however. It’s too bad some people had such big mouths. They ruined the class for a lot of people.

My assignments for both classes are available here:

• 1/24: Essay in collection development class on growing up with reading and books.
• 2/12/85: Assignment one in Collection Development class
• 3/4/85: Exam in Collection Development class/Stalschmidt
• 3/13: Assignment 2 in Collection Development class
• 3/14: Exam in Foundations class
• 04/01/85: Collection Development class, assignment 3
• 04/16/85: Foundations class assignment 2
• 04/29/85: LS 503 Collection Development selection project
• 05/08/85: Foundations class assignment 3

I ended up getting all A’s this particular semester. I was off to a great start.

In early May, the Mexican American Studies department held a convocation for Mexican American students. The guest speaker was the legendary activist, Jose Angel Gutierrez. In the late Sixties, he founded “La Raza Unida”, a political party in south Texas that had quite an impact in communities along the Rio Grande. The party spread to other regions of the Southwest, including the Tucson area. Gutierrez also authored several books, and was a revered leader in the Chicano movement.

When summer rolled around, I decided to do volunteer work at the Valencia branch of the Tucson Public Library. It was an interesting experience, but I didn’t put in as many hours as I would have liked. I also tried to get involved with the Tucson Lesbian and Gay Pride committee, but I dropped out after just a couple of meetings. The summer went by quickly. I received great news by summer’s end, and that was that I was being given a lot of financial aid. I was quite excited and humbled at the same time. I was, for a change, getting recognition for doing well in my studies.

In August, I enrolled in several classes, including Introduction to Information Science, Research Methods, the History of the US , Library Management and  Cataloging. By October, however, I reduced my course load by dropping the research methods class and the history class. With Brent gone, I felt depressed, and I didn’t do as well in school as I could have. I even missed an important AZLA meeting, where I was supposed to receive the Alice B Goode Scholarship. Believe it or not, I really enjoyed taking cataloging. The professor, Margaret Maxwell, was a real pro, and she knew her stuff, and taught it well. My management class was taught by a lady named Helen Gothberg. She was very nice, and I did well in the class. My other class, Intoduction to Information Science, was essentially all about computers, which were just starting to catch on in the wider world. It was at this time that pc’s and word processors were starting to become more affordable. While I didn’t care for the class, I did learn the fundamentals of using databases, spreadsheets and word processing software.

Here are some of my management class papers from the Fall semester:

• 09/26/85: Planning paper in Management class
• 10/15/85: Library Management budget exercise
• 11/14/85: Management class performance project

I ended the semester getting A’s in cataloging and management, and a B in Info. Science. One year down, one year to go!

Radio

When the year started, I was still hosting the Friday morning music mix and I was running the board for my friend and landlord, Ted Warmbrand, who hosted a program on Saturdays titled “Music from the Living Loom.” Ted was a challenge to work with at times, but he has always been a good hearted soul, so I didn’t mind helping him out. I loved doing my morning mix show, as I could play both Latin music and music in English, spanning a wide array of genres. There were guidelines in place, of course, as to what we should emphasize (lots of contemporary jazz. I called it elevator music), but we were also given a lot of freedom to play lots of different types of music. I particularly enjoyed adding leftist leaning, political music to my mixes, and found that overall, people really liked what I had to offer. I even got to produce a couple of special tribute shows, one on Aretha Franklin and another on Billie Holiday. I also came out on the air around this time. I vividly recall playing a song called “Glad to be Gay” and saying during the introduction, “I dedicate this to all of my brothers and sisters”. As luck would have it, one of my own siblings was listening at the time too! If he didn’t know I was gay before, he knew at that moment, that’s for sure!

Unfortunately, over time, the management of the station started to crack down on those of us who were stretching the boundaries of what was considered “acceptable” for daytime programming. One day sometime in March, I decided to play a tune titled, “Shoot First”, by Judy Collins. It’s an anti-gun song. After the show, I was called into the program manager’s office, and he let me know that he did not approve of my musical choices that day. I had also been getting harassed by Roger, another station manager, for bringing in my own music. That was enough for me. I decided right then and there to hang up my headphones, and I quit, which in hindsight was a bad move, but I was stubborn and didn’t like the idea of not having creative license to play what I thought I should be able to play. I had other things going on anyway, such as work and school. I have kept several cassette tapes of my shows from this time period. At some point, I’ll have them transferred and included in my Chicano Connection archive. Here are some of my playlists from the time:

• 01/11/85: Playlist for morning music mix.
• 01/19/85: Playlist for radio show covering for Kidd Squidd
• 02/08/85: Morning music mix playlist
• 3/1/85: Morning music mix playlist
• 07/04/85: The Chicano Connnection Revisited playlist

My time away from the station didn’t last too long. One night at a street party, I ran into the station manager, Paul, and he asked me to come back to host one of the Thursday night Latin slots,  from 11pm to 1am. While the hours weren’t great,  I was happy to be able to go back, so on June 11, 1985, I started back up again at KXCI and called my new show “The Chicano Connection Revisited”. I would continue doing this show until the end of 1986, when I graduated from Library School.

Friends and family

I spent most of my free time with Brent during the first eight months of the year, so I didn’t get to see my old friends too often. I really missed them, but being with Brent, working, doing the radio show and going to school took up all of my time.

Sometime in the middle of the year, my good friends Ron and Jane moved with their two children to Washington DC, where Ron had landed an important position with the Catholic Church. I attended their going away party. It would be years before I would see them again. I regret that I had drifted away from them after high school, but I was young and immature, and distracted by lots of other things along the way. I’m just glad I didn’t lose complete touch with them. I would always try to see them when they visited Tucson, but those times seemed few and far between. In recent years, however,I’ve visited them in Washington a couple of times and they’ve also come to Tucson to visit. Today, I feel just as close to them as I did while in high school. As I think back on it, they were always there for me. I just didn’t realize it.

In July, my dad’s eldest brother Raul, died. He was the only one of my grandparent’s children to have been born in Mexico. He and his family lived in Superior since the 30s. His wife Prudence had died the year before. I wrote a blog post about him a while back: https://bobdiaz.net/2020/02/19/happy-birthday-tio-raul.

My buddy Richard and I stayed in touch throughout our lives, but our friendship wasn’t the same in the mid-80s. He had become very involved in sports and was on a softball team, and unlike me, he was just crazy about the Grateful Dead and was always going to their concerts. We clashed more often than not. We never stopped being friends, however, and we found time every now and then to hang out together.

My two buddies Scott and Tim each got married in 1985. Scott, the guy I had a giant crush on and for whom I wrote the song, “My Kind”, married a young woman named Penny Aldridge, who he had been dating for a year or so. I missed his wedding because I was traveling home from my Michigan trip with Brent, but I did get to participate in Tim’s wedding as a member of his wedding party. He married a woman named Chris Fox, a fellow UA student. The festivities were held in Trail Dust Town, and we all had a blast.

Scott and Tim both became police officers with the Tucson Police Department after college. What an amazing coincidence! I never dreamed Tim would become a cop. He just didn’t seem like the type. He was such a freak, with all that long hair, his guitar playing and his love for partying. He even moved on from the police department and went to work for the FBI, which was even more shocking. While I knew that Scott liked hunting and shooting guns, it came as a huge surprise to learn that he too had joined the police force. I lost touch with both of them long ago, but I think of them often. They were good guys. I miss them both, but so many years have gone by, I wonder how we’d get along now.

Another death in the family occurred in late December. My cousin Charlie Mendoza died from burn wounds he received from a car accident that took place near 22nd and Country Club on December 27. His brother Richard, who was driving the car Charlie was in, survived. Charlie was only 19. It was a terrible tragedy.

I didn’t spend much time with my friend Dennis in 1985. Unfortunately, he got sick, and by January of 1986, had passed away. He was a great friend, and we had a lot of fun together. His death was heartbreaking. He was the second of my friends who died of AIDS. The other was Leonard Brown. I had met both of them through John, my ex, back in 1979. They were real characters, and I think of them often.

My mom and dad were doing well at this time in their lives, although my mom still struggled with her aches and pains. My dad retired from the mines, and he and mom spent most of their time taking care of their grandchildren and great grandchildren. By 1985, my niece Belisa had three kids, Michelle had one, and my brother Rudy also had two. Fred’s daughter Edessa also spent a lot of time with my parents. Our family would continue to grow as the years went by. Becky and I were the only two who didn’t have children, but there were already plenty of grandkids to keep my parents busy.

Other stuff:

We were in the midst of the Reagan era. He had just won re-election at the end of 1984, so we were in for another four years of terrible fun.  His administration was corrupt to the core and there were indictments and resignations taking place throughout the year. Reagan also continued to ignore the AIDS crisis, which hit Tucson pretty hard in 1985. He was also secretly funding the Contras, and a big scandal broke out that would continue for another two years.

On the bright side, there were lots of concerts that took place in Tucson that Brent and I both attended, and there were some great movies that came out as well, along with a number of great albums by some of my favorite artists. The following visual chronology includes many of these as well as other memorable events, places and topics.

A photographic/graphic chronology of events and activities for the year:

Here is a playlist from July 4, 1985.

For more information about my tio Raul and his family check out the blog entry I wrote for my tio on his birthday in 2020.

A great song….

Here’s one of my favorite Dylan tunes from the above anthology. It was recorded live at the Royal Albert Hall .

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!

For this segment of “My Life in Pictures,” I’ve decided to include the bulk of the text at the beginning of the post. Photos and graphics follow.

I was a busy guy in 1984. I continued, as in previous years, to work 25 hours a week at Fry’s. I was also enrolled in graduate school at the University, hosted two weekly radio shows on KXCI, and continued to participate in Teatro Libertad. While I knew that graduate school should take priority, it didn’t. The bulk of my energy, aside from working, was spent preparing and hosting my two radio shows each week, and in attending Teatro Libertad meetings, where we planned and rehearsed for a number of local performances and our next big production, La Vida Del Cobre, Acts I and II. I also continued to find time to go out and have fun, attending lots of concerts, going out dancing, and partying with my friends.

WORK:

By 1984, I had already worked for Fry’s Food Stores for eight years. I’d been a cashier and stocker since the age of 19. The pay was very good, and while working with the public could be challenging at times, for the most part, I enjoyed meeting new people each day, and I generally got along well with my co-workers. The actual work itself, while at times physically demanding, was easy. I was a very fast cashier and could bag groceries with lightning speed. In the summer, I worked on the night crew stocking the shelves, but it was difficult keeping a night schedule, as I often had daytime obligations. On top of that, some of the guys I worked with were homophobic jerks, but I managed,  although I must admit, there were times when I hated my job. I knew I needed to keep it for a while longer, however, at least until I was done with school or had found something better. My annual earnings at Fry’s, for part time work, weren’t bad. By the end of the year I had earned $15,000. I spent it all on rent, food, bills, books, records and fun. I didn’t save a dime, unfortunately.

SCHOOL:

I had been accepted into the graduate program in Sociology the previous year, and while I had enrolled in a class called Social Psychology in the Fall of 1983, I ended up withdrawing from it. I don’t even remember attending it. I tried again in the Spring, and this time took a class called Political Sociology, with a teacher named Doug McAdam. Our big task for the semester was to write a dissertation-level research proposal. Dr. McAdam wanted us to have experience doing this kind of work, as we would all have to write such a proposal at some point in the future, that is if we wanted to pursue our PhDs. I chose to study the American Indian Movement, and I ended up writing a research paper, missing the mark on the assignment altogether. Dr. McAdam was a nice guy, and he ended up giving me a B in the course. I guess I wasn’t exactly sure what he had meant by a “research proposal”. I was disillusioned by the end of the semester, and ended up dropping out of the program altogether. My heart wasn’t into it anyway. I was too busy with my other activities to take my studies seriously. What can I say? That was the truth.

In the Fall, I tried taking a mechanics course at Pima College, but quickly dropped it after just two sessions. There were no teachers in sight. I guess I had enrolled in a self-study course or something. It was an awful, but brief experience, and I got the heck out of there as quickly as I could.

By the end of the year, I made up my mind that I wanted to be a librarian once and for all so I applied to the graduate program in library science and got accepted. I was given several scholarships, along with financial aid so this time around I didn’t have to pay for my education out of my own pocket like I had when I was an undergraduate. I couldn’t wait to start school again in January.

KXCI

Most of my attention went into preparing and hosting my two radio shows, the Chicano Connection, which aired on Thursday nights from 7 to 9pm, and the morning music mix, which aired from 9am to noon on Friday morning. I devoted approximately10 hours a week altogether to this work, both in prep time and in being on the air. My shows became quite popular, and I would receive letters from fans as well as get lots of phone calls while on the air. On Saturdays, I would help another host, Victor Blue, with his bluegrass show by “running the board” for him. He was a very nice man, and I enjoyed the music. Those of us who did this work for other volunteers were known as “techies”.

During the summer, Kathy Hannon, who I knew from Fry’s as the representative from the United Food and Commercial Workers union, wrote a  newspaper article about me for the union newspaper. In the article, she mistakenly noted that I had taken the KXCI radio course the previous summer for free. I actually paid nearly $500 to attend the course. I was earning good money at Fry’s at the time, and was able to afford it. It was a great investment in my continuing education.

Sometime in June, I decided to stop hosting the Chicano Connection, and just focus on the morning music mix. I can’t remember exactly why. I think it had to do with the fact that I didn’t have that much Latin music at the time, and the station’s collection was sorely lacking. It would take a while for me to build my own collection of Latin music, but I did, slowly but surely.

Later in the year, I went up to Phoenix to a Buffy Sainte Marie concert that she did as a benefit for the Heard Museum. One of the station staff members, Martha Van Winkle, invited me along, as she was scheduled to interview Ms. St. Marie after the concert. When the interview started, I just took right over and talked my head off. I was a huge fan of Ms. St Marie’s,  and we had a great interview. I’m not so sure that Martha thought so. It was supposed to be her interview, not mine. I just couldn’t help myself!

I have compiled all of the playlists from this time period on my Chicano Connection Archive page. They can be accessed here.

TEATRO LIBERTAD

In the first few months of the year, I spent an average of 8 hours a week in meetings and rehearsal with the members of Teatro Libertad. In the Spring, we performed at various community events and also co-wrote part II of La Vida Del Cobre. We performed the entire play, Act I and Act II at various places in Tucson, and later in Ajo and Clifton. Our performance at the El Pueblo Neighborhood Center on May 19 was attended by a packed house, and we received a resounding standing ovation at the end of it. It was such a great feeling and we were in seventh heaven.  We had put our hearts and souls into our work, and it had paid off nicely. A week after our El Pueblo performance we traveled to Santa Barbara, California to perform the play at TENAZ, an international theater festival sponsored by a California group called  El Teatro de la Esperanza. Unfortunately, we forgot part of our props back in Tucson (our slides), and we basically bombed, because we were upset over having forgotten them and there was tension between some of the individuals in the group. A critique of the play was given the following day, and we were subject to some rather harsh feedback that included some very mean comments by a former member of our group. It was unnerving and depressing. We didn’t even have an opportunity to respond. That evening, some of us took off to the beach, while others attended a Poncho Sanchez concert that the festival organizers were sponsoring, and we let all of our frustrations out by dancing the night away. The trip home was sad,  and seemed to take much longer than the trip to the festival. We were crushed.

But as they say, the show must go on. Our performances in Ajo and Clifton in June  went well,  and the copper strikers enjoyed the play, especially Act II, a lot. In early July, during the first year anniversary of the strike, we were in Clifton again. What was supposed to be a happy occasion, a rally and a picnic, turned into a riot, however, and the Department of Public Safety ended up shooting tear gas into a crowd of protesters. I was there too, and got hit by the tear gas. I had never experienced being tear gassed before, and my eyes were burning so badly, I wanted to gouge them out. I went running through the street in search of water so that I could drench my eyes in it and I finally found a hose and turned the water on full blast, rinsing my eyes out as much as I could. It didn’t help much. The burning in my eyes was an awful sensation, and I’ll never forget how painful it was. I wasn’t even participating in the rock throwing, although some of my friends were.

By September, we had decided to organize a festival called “Bedtime for Bonzo” where we featured a skit called The Beggar and the Beast. We had first performed this skit at Café Ole, and then outdoors at Carrillo Elementary School. I played the role of the beggar and was planning on continuing to play it at the Bedtime for Bonzo program until I injured my foot at Fry’s. I could hardly walk, much less run around on a stage. Someone else in the group ended up playing the part of the beggar.

In November, R.G. Davis, founder of the San Francisco Mime Troupe came to town and did a workshop with the Teatro in November. We were finally getting some professional training, and I learned a great deal in just one day. However, by December I had announced that I was leaving the group. My friends Juan and Teresa had left earlier in the year, and I felt it was time to move on too. I had a great time being a member of the Teatro, and made some lifelong friends along the way, but I needed to get serious about my education. I was so tired of working at Fry’s.   

PERSONAL LIFE

My personal life continued to be a drag for most of the year. I dated a woman named Ann for about a month early in the year, but finally just told her I was gay. I just couldn’t stand lying to her any longer. She immediately thought I had given her AIDS, but of course, that wasn’t true because I never caught the virus. It was an awful time to be gay, that’s for sure. Gay men were dying by the thousands and the Reagan administration did absolutely nothing about it. It was tragic. At the gay pride picnic at Himmel Park in June, I ran into my old friend Leonard, who John had introduced me to back in 1979, and he did have the virus. He was one of the first of my friends to catch it. He ended up moving to Bisbee and eventually passed on. Other friends that were around at the time included Lee, Scott, Peter, Tim, Dennis, Frank, Richard, my Fry’s friend Debbie Spedding, and my Teatro friends. I partied some with Richard and we went to several concerts together, but he had become a sports fanatic, and we weren’t as close at this time in our lives as we had been before. I continued to go out a lot and I partied way too much. I was so lonely, and longed to meet someone I could have a steady relationship with. That’s all I wanted. As luck would have it, in December I did end up meeting someone. His name was Brent, and he was a tall blonde guy from Michigan. A woman named Ila Meyer, a lesbian folk singer who I had heard perform at the Shanty, introduced us. Just like that, we started dating and before we knew it, he moved in and we were a couple. Our relationship lasted for six years.

I attended lots of concerts and bought lots of records in 1984. I was lucky to have such a good job and be able to afford it all. Some of the concerts I attended and music I bought are included below. I’ve also included a few other memorable events.

This song by the Pointer Sisters was released as a single on 4/11/84. It first appeared on the album Break Out the previous year.

My only paper this semester was in Sociology 510, Political Sociology, with Professor Doug McAdam. The title of it was “Political Process and the American Indian Movement: A Research Proposal.” I missed the mark, and got a B on it. This would be my last effort at writing anything related to the study of sociology. I soon dropped out of the program.

Here’s a list of my radio shows from 1984:

The Chicano Connection, January 5, 1984. (Playlist only).

The Morning Music Mix, January 6, 1984. (Playlist only).

The Morning Music Mix, Jan/Feb, 1984–exact date unknown. (Playlist only).

The Chicano Connection, Jan/Feb, 1984, exact date unknown #1. (Playlist only).

The Chicano Connection, Jan/Feb, 1984 exact date unkown #2. (Playlist only).

The Chicano Connection, February 23, 1984. (Playlist only).

The Morning Music Mix, February 24, 1984. (Playlist only).

The Morning Music Mix, June 22, 1984. (Playlist only).

The Morning Music Mix, June 29, 1984. (Playlist only).

The Morning Music Mix, August 17, 1984, Part 1. (Audio only).

The Morning Music Mix, August 17, 1984, Part 2. (Audio only).

The Morning Music Mix, September 14, 1984. (Playlist only).

The Morning Music Mix, September 21, 1984. (Playlist only).

The Morning Music Mix, October 12, 1984. (Playlist only).

The Morning Music Mix, October 26, 1984. (Playlist only).

The Morning Music Mix, November 2, 1984. (Playlist only).

The Morning Music Mix, November 30, 1984. (Playlist only).

The Morning Music Mix, December 21, 1984. (Playlist only).

The Morning Music Mix Date Unknown #1. (Playlist only).

The Morning Music Mix: Date Unknown #2. (Playlist only).

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.

A few days later, they performed in Texas, and the concert was recorded. This was how they sounded when they were in Phoenix. Great!!

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”.

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!

1979 would be another remarkable year. I started the year out deciding that I needed a break from school. When I quit Salpointe in 1976, I did so on the condition that I would finish college, so I knew this was temporary, as I did not want to break my promise to my parents. I had already completed 54 units of courses and had a solid “B” average by the end of the year, and was nearly halfway done. While I was becoming wary of pursuing a profession in psychology, it remained my chosen major. I took the semester off, in part, to think about what I really wanted to do as I continued my education, and to earn more money.

Life went on. I continued working as a stocker/cashier at Fry’s and living in my little one-room efficiency apartment. I pulled back some from the partying and bar hopping, but didn’t stop completely. I had been “out” almost a whole year, since March, and while I met a few guys here and there who I thought I really liked, I hadn’t yet met anyone who I dated on a steady basis. That would change as the year progressed.

During the last couple of years of her life, my grandmother Josefa became ill with Alzheimer’s disease, and my aunt Mary took care of her. Her husband Fernando decided that he was moving the family to Los Angeles where he had found work after he had been laid off from his job here in Tucson, so aunt Mary put our grandmother in a nursing facility. My grandmother begged my mother not to leave her alone there, so my mom decided that she would take care of her at home. It was a huge burden on my mom and dad, but mom could not stand seeing my grandmother suffering in a cold hospital room all by herself. She took care of her for nearly a year.

My grandmother died at the house on January 13, two days before my 20^th birthday. She was 75 years old. She had always been very kind and sweet to me and was the only grandparent I ever knew. (I am working on a separate blog entry about my grandmother and her family. Stay tuned). This was the second death in my family within the past six months, and this one hit particularly hard. I was grief stricken. My aunt Dora, Uncle Armando and their daughter Tish came back to town for the funeral, as did Aunt Mary and her family. It was a sad time.

A month or two later, my sister Irene’s son Anthony was baptized at St. Ambrose Church. My mom and I were his godparents. After church, we all went to mom’s house and had a little celebration. Carlos and Elaine were there, as were others. In contrast to our previous family gathering for my grandmother’s funeral, this one was a happy occasion.

Sometime in March, I decided that I was going to move back home. I don’t remember exactly why I did this. It might have been to save money. I let one of my  cousins sublet my apartment, and stayed with my parents until later in the summer.

In my journal at this time, I wrote a lot about not really knowing where I was headed with my life. Even though coming out was a major milestone, I was still lonely and longed for a companion. I was tired of the bar scene and all the so called “fun” I was having, and of working all the time. I missed school, too.

I continued to listen to lots of music and to go on shopping sprees for albums and books. Several albums were released in the Spring, including discs by Rickie Lee Jones and Emmylou Harris. Dylan also released a two album set, titled “Bob Dylan at Budokan”, a live recording of concerts he gave in Japan, with the same band that Richard and I saw him perform with at the McKale Memorial Center on the UA campus a few months earlier.

At the end of May, I met a guy named John. He was an Italian-American from New York who moved here after having served in the Air Force. He was 10 years older than me, but we hit it off. We dated regularly during the first month or so of our budding relationship, then at some point in the summer I decided to move in with him. I also re-enrolled in school and took a psychology class during the first summer session, followed by a full load of courses in the Fall. My grade point average was slowly starting to improve.

At some point in the Spring, I was transferred from the store I worked at on 22nd near Alvernon to another store on the south side of town, way out on the Nogales Highway. I wasn’t the only Mexican transferred. The new manager of our store, D.W. Green, was an avowed racist (he had a confederate flag in his office), and he tried to transfer all of the Mexicans out of “his” store. My friend Richard ended up getting transferred to the far southeast side at the same time. I didn’t like the manager at my new store, and when I let him know that that I was planning to take vacation time, he declined my request. I decided then that it was time to quit, so I left Fry’s for a short while. It took just a month or so for me to go back, however. I went to my old store and asked to be re-hired. In the meantime, D.W. Green, who also had a cocaine problem, had been caught stealing money from the store’s safe, and was subsequently fired. I was quickly re-hired and stayed with Fry’s for another 7 years, long enough to be vested in the company’s pension plan.

I listened a lot to Joni Mitchell in this period of my life. She had started out as a “folkie” but then became more daring in her musicianship and by 1979, was recording jazz. I had all of her albums. The album, “Mingus”, was released at this time. My record collection only continued to grow, as did my book collection. I loved reading both novels and non-fiction.

I was also still close to my friend Sylvia, although I could tell that she didn’t approve much of  my “new” lifestyle. She was still very much into wanting to be a nun at the time. My other friends, Jim and Judy moved to Missouri, and Rose and Teri had drifted away several months earlier. It was more my doing than theirs, as I was busy celebrating my new found freedom as a gay man, and I didn’t respond to their letters as consistently as I had before. Ron and Jane were still around, and I remember at one point I worked for Jane at her bookstore, Campana Books. The two of them have always been supportive and reliable friends. I’m forever grateful.

My friend Richard and I, while not as close as we once were, continued hanging out together too. We partied a lot, and listened to music together. Our friends, Ron Burch and Sandy Hernandez, decided to tie the knot, and their wedding was a lot of fun. Richard was Ron’s best man. They had been friends since grade school, and at this time Richard lived with Ron and Sandy in a house just south of Speedway near Alvernon. We had lots of parties there.

John and I lived in an apartment on Elm St just east of Tucson Blvd. for a short while, but we left because some guy walked by our front window one afternoon, glanced over, and saw us kissing on the couch, and it freaked him out. Later that night, he showed up again, sounding very drunk and very angry, yelling at us at the top of his lungs to come outside. He wanted to kill us, or so it felt. John and I were fearful for our lives. The next day the landlords asked us to leave.  We could have protested, but we feared for our safety. We got out of there as fast as we could, and moved into a guest house on S. Warren, a couple of blocks south of Broadway near Campbell, that belonged to another gay man, and things felt much safer there. As I’ve said once already, being gay back then was sure a lot different from what it’s like now.

Being 10 years apart had its disadvantages, but was also beneficial in many ways. I was very happy and in love. John had a lot of friends and over time, they’d become my friends too. These guys were usually several years older than me, and I learned a lot about gay history and culture from them. We saw lots of movies together, including The Rose, La Cage Aux Folles, and the Rocky Horror Picture show.

By this time, I was also a big Aretha Franklin fan, and was starting to acquire as many albums of hers as possible. She started out recording for Columbia Records in the very early 60’s and then switched to the Atlantic label in 1967, the year she hit it big with her single, “Respect”. This recording, her last for the Atlantic label, was released in early September, and was a major flop. It would take a change in management and record labels and a few more years for Aretha to bounce back from what was considered a low point in her recording career. This album included two disco songs that didn’t go anywhere at all, lending creedence to the popular phrase, “disco sucks”.

John was a big music buff too, and he loved jazz and Frank Sinatra. He turned me on to singers like Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, and I too became a big fan, (but I drew the line at Sinatra. I couldn’t stand him). We also listened to new music like Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Supertramp’s Breakfast in America, Bat Out of Hell, by Meatloaf, and the recent album by The Cars. I still loved my Bob Dylan, however, and bought Slow Train Coming as soon as it came out. In December, one of John’s friends got us front row seats to see Dylan live at the Tucson Community Center Music Hall. It was an incredible show, with some very talented musicians. Dylan played all of the songs from Slow Train Coming, and the singers he had with him were amazing as they belted out one gospel tune after another.

By the end of the year, John and I had lived together for almost five months. We were both very busy. I was working and going to school, and John had two jobs. We clearly loved each other, but it wasn’t all perfect, however, and the relationship had its rocky moments. John was sometimes bossy and moody, and I had a hard time standing up for myself at times. Nevertheless, my dream to have a “lover” had come true, and we did have a great time together. I was happy, and did well in school and continued to work at Fry’s as the year came to a close.

My cousin Tish sent this Christmas card to me from California. When she came to town for my grandmother’s funeral at the beginning of the year, I asked her about the Harvey Milk assassination, which had just occurred the previous November. She told me she had attended the vigil for him and said there were thousands of people there, all with candles lit, and that it was a beautiful sight. She was one of the only family members who knew I was gay at the time.

Overall, 1979 ended on a high note, as things were going well with John and me. I had new friends too, that included Dennis Krenek, Leonard Brown and his partner, Virgil, and others such as Kidd, Leonor and Shirley. These were all people that John had introduced me to, and they were all very nice.  My old friends Richard and his brother Albert were still around too and I’d hook up with them occasionally, but John and I didn’t hang out with them together much at all.

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 soon as I turned 19, I was given a promotion at Fry’s. I went from carryout to cashier/stocker, and the pay was much better. These were my work tools. I can’t tell you how many boxes I opened and cans I priced while working for this company or how many groceries I checked out. I was pretty fast too! I lasted 10 years with the company, and got vested, so now I receive a small pension check every month. Thanks to the United Food and Commercial Workers Union!

This was the text for my class titled “Normal Personality”. It was really a course on transactional analysis, a humanistic form of psychology that was in some ways a takeoff on Freudian psychology. Instead of the id, the ego and the superego, T.A. talked about the “parent, the adult and the child” being the driving forces in people’s psyches. The teacher was good, but not pro-gay, unfortunately. Still, I loved the class.

I was living in the dorm at this time, and was so depressed, I seriously thought about ending my life. Pushed to the edge, I finally decided that I wanted to live, and that I was going to at least explore what being gay meant. What I really wanted was to find a friend, someone I could get to know and have a relationship with. I also wanted to have fun. I knew that Jeckyll’s was a gay bar, but I had never been in one before. It was located at the intersection of Drachman and Oracle Rd., and I drove around it several times, but then went back home. I drove back and forth again a couple of times before I finally decided to enter the place. I had no idea what to expect. On this particular night, the bar was showing a movie. I got myself a beer, and I met a nice looking guy who was sitting at the bar having a drink. We started talking and we hit it off. His name was Bill and he was visiting from Yuma. We then went to sit down to watch the movie, and soon began to make out in front of a lot of other people. I really didn’t care at that point. I was completely swept away by the guy and the desire I felt. We later went to his hotel room at the MacArthur Hotel, a real dump of a place, and messed around. It had been the first time I’d ever done anything sexual since I was 15. I absolutely loved it. Later at work, someone, a “straight” guy who was in the audience at the movie with his girlfriend that night saw me making out with the guy I was with, and I found out a while later that he told everyone at Fry’s that I was queer. Wow, what luck, and on my first night out! That really messed me up. I even had a falling out with my best friend for a while because he continued being friends with the guy who outed me. I felt betrayed, and it took a long time to let the grudge I had developed go. Being outed didn’t stop me, however, from continuing to go out and meeting other people. I felt liberated and free, and felt like I was finally starting to really live.

Shortly after I decided to start going out, I visited Jane, my teacher and friend from Salpointe, and I came out to her as bisexual. I guess I wasn’t quite yet ready to admit that I was gay. It took several years to embrace that fully. I wrote the following in my journal. The guy Bill was my psychology teacher at the time.

Although I would not always remain so positive and upbeat, during the first month of my life as a gay man I was incredibly happy. I celebrated my new freedom in the following journal entry.

While I was in the Fisherman’s Wharf area, I decided to eat a sandwich and buy some sourdough bread for my aunt and uncle. As I was eating my lunch, two nice looking, well dressed guys in their twenties came up to me and struck up a conversation. They asked if I was by myself and if I had a place to stay. I told them I was just visiting from out of town and enjoying the sites. We engaged in small talk for a few minutes, and then suddenly, they invited me to have dinner with them, and they gave me a postcard with a sketch of their house on it that included the address. I wondered if they were gay, and I took the postcard but didn’t commit to anything. When I went back to my aunt’s house, I mentioned to my cousin that I had met these guys and that they were very nice and had invited me to dinner. She shook her head at me and suggested that I not go, because “there were all kinds of kooks in the city”. I ended up not going, and boy, I’m sure glad I didn’t. A month or so later, I was flipping through People magazine and I noticed a copy of the postcard these guys had given me. It was included in an article some guy had written about his undercover experience with a cult called the Moonies. Then it dawned on me. Those guys were trying to recruit me to become a Moonie! Man, that sure was a close call. Since I’ve been putting my life story in pictures together, I thought about that postcard and wished that I had kept it. After searching for it on the internet without any luck, I finally found a citation to the article, and was able to buy a copy of People Magazine that included the photo of the postcard. Here it is, the infamous Moonie House.

By this point, I had met several guys, and after while I figured out that just because you sleep with someone and fall for them, it doesn’t mean they love you in return. I realized that there was more to life than just sex. I wanted someone I could relate to, someone I could spend time with and connect with. I had also met a couple of women and had sex with them too by this point. One minute I was happy being gay, the next I was forcing myself to try going in the other direction. This pattern would continue up through my mid-20s. Deep down, I never “wanted” to be gay and while I accepted it to a degree, I continued to fight it, again and again. It was just crazy. Being gay in 1978 was not what being gay is like today. It was a huge deal, and very controversial. I couldn’t be completely “out”. No way. I hid my sexuality from my family and my friends, with very few exceptions. I was living a secret life, and it got me down a lot of the time.

I really did want to be less closeted, and even joined a new gay group on campus, but the fear of being outed, beaten up or even killed was all too real for many of the students. At one point, I expressed the opinion that we should be more visible, and a fellow student stated, “what, you want us to go out there and hold hands in public or something? Are you crazy?” One of the activities this group sponsored was movie viewings. We all sat in the living room of someone’s house one night and saw the documentary, “Word Is Out”. It was very inspiring, but it didn’t change things for us locally. Just two years earlier, a guy named Richard Heakin, was visiting from the Midwest and was murdered by some teenage guys outside the Stonewall bar on N. 1st, a gay bar that later became one of my watering holes, The Joshua Tree/Back Pocket. The memory of that murder was likely still on a lot of people’s minds. Heakin’s murderers were let off easily, but the City of Tucson soon thereafter passed the first civil rights, anti-discrimination ordinance in the country, which provided a number of protections for members of the local gay community.

My sister Becky came home for Christmas, and it was  joyous occasion. We had a number of family get-togethers. The photos included here bring back wonderful memories of her visit with us.  She promised that she’d soon come back home permanently, but it took another two years before that happened.

Wow, what a year! I managed to complete another year of school while working part time. My wages this year ($7,000+) increased significantly when I started cashiering and stocking. I came out to myself in March, became sexually active, starting dating men (and a few women), and going out a lot; I went to San Francisco, saw Bob Dylan for the very first time and saw Joan Baez again, fell in and out of love a few times, and lived on my own in my own space for half the year. As the new year approached, my hope was to find a steady boyfriend (or girlfriend) and to take a little break from school. I was beginning to sour on psychology as a future profession, and needed to think about what I really wanted to study, so I decided to just work as much as possible at the grocery store the following semester and take some time to think about the direction I wanted my education to take.

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!

All in all, 1977 was a milestone year. I completed my first year of college while working all the while (earning $2,348 for the year), I went to New York by myself, I learned how to drive, opened my own bank account, and I moved out of my parents’ house.

Included in this post are events that meant something to me. By this point in my life, I considered myself a bit of a bohemian with a politcally radical bent, and began to shy away from a lof of stuff that was super popular in American culture. I acknowledge that there were several other key events that occurred this particular year that aren’t included here, but they didn’t really impact me nor was I interested in them. I wasn’t interested in seeing Star Wars, for example, nor did I care much for Saturday Night Fever or Donna Summer, even though I loved to dance. Also, Elvis died this year, but I was never a big fan. My sister had told me that he once said that he didn’t like Mexicans, that he’d rather date a dog before he dated a Mexican girl. That was enough to keep me away. As far as I was concerned, he was a second rate singer who ripped off the music of the Black community and made tons of money in the process.

The first important decision I ever made in my life was to attend Salpointe. Choosing to leave Salpointe early to attend the University of Arizona was the second most important decision. I was 17 when I started at the U of A. I lived at home, and had a job at Fry’s Food Stores as a carry out clerk. My friends Richard, Sylvia, Rose and Terri were still all away at college. It didn’t matter, however. I was going to college too!

My classes started on January 13, two days before my 18^th birthday. I had initially signed up for five classes. They included Freshman English, The Chicano in American Society (Sociology 71), An Introduction to Anthropology, An Introduction to Logic and Mexican American Literature. 15 units was a lot to handle, especially given that I worked half time at the grocery store, so I quickly decided to drop the Mexican American literature class because it would be taught all in Spanish, and I had a feeling I would struggle with it, even though I had just taken the Spanish proficiency exam and had passed it with flying colors. My friend Richard’s sister Ana was in my sociology class, which made things easier, as I didn’t really have many friends around when I started at the UofA. I really liked my Freshman English teacher, Sally Perper, who was a former journalist. I wrote an essay on the Rolling Thunder Revue tour that brought Bob Dylan and Joan Baez together again and I got an “A” on it. I did pretty well overall in all of my English and literature courses. I could’ve been an English major.

I had also found a job at the University of Arizona Library at the beginning of the semester. A woman named Jeannette Bahr, who had worked at Salpointe the previous Fall semester, helped me get the position. Her husband, Steve Bahr, managed the Library’s Media Center, and my job was to staff the front service counter, to re-shelve materials and to clean filmstrips and records. I didn’t last very long, because I really didn’t like it, and because the staff that worked there weren’t very nice to me, so by March I had quit. Working at Fry’s was sufficient, and taking all those classes kept me quite busy.

The full album is available on Youtube. You can listen to it here too:

I began to buy lots of music recordings once I started my job at Fry’s the previous year. I had a great time exploring all the used and new record stores and spent a lot of money on albums. I loved the folk singers from the 60s especially, and a variety of contemporary male and female pop vocalists. I wasn’t crazy about hard rock, funk or disco, which became all the rage when I was in college. Around this time, I bought albums by Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, Rita Coolidge, and Janis Ian. When Janis Ian came to town, I went to her concert. I particularly liked the opening act, Tom Chapin, brother of Harry Chapin, but both performers were amazing. I also attended a Russian balalaika concert with my friend Ana around this time.

In late March, my brother Fred got married. I was a member of the wedding party, and my sister Becky came home from New Jersey for the occasion. My mom was feeling a lot better by 1977, and she participated as well. Many relatives from out of town also showed up, and we had a wonderful time. The wedding was held at St. Ambrose Church, and the reception took place at the Fireman’s Union Hall. There was food galore and a live band. The after party took place at my brother Carlos’s house and it lasted until the wee hours of the morning. I should’ve had my hair cut for the occasion, but never got around to it. The best part of the whole thing was having my sister Becky home. I told her I wanted to go visit her once the school semester ended. It was a promise I was to keep. May was just around the corner.

Working and going to school kept me quite busy. At home, I finally had my own bedroom and desk so that I could study. Life was never peaceful at home as people were always coming and going, but I managed. My grades were okay. The semester flew right by and I ended up with a solid “B” average.

On Thursday, May 12, at around 8:30pm, I was reading a novel titled Saint Francis, by Nikos Kazantzakis at Winchell’s Donut shop on 22nd street. I was the only customer in the store, and suddenly a guy appeared with a gun, and he robbed the place. I knew something was up, and dared not make a move. I sat perfectly still with this book in my hands pretending to read it. When the guy had left and the cops arrived the clerk informed them that the robber had his gun pointed at me. I had no idea because I was seated facing the back wall.

Once school was over, I decided it was time to keep my promise and go see my sister in New Jersey. Greyhound Bus Lines was advertising $100 round-trip tickets to anywhere in the USA, so I decided that is how I would get to the New York area. Becky lived in a small town called Cranford, New Jersey, just outside of Newark, which was just 20 minutes away from New York City. It would take me two and a half days to get there and two and a half days to return. The route on the way there took me through the South, all the way through Texas to Arkansas, Tennessee,  Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania and finally New Jersey. The route home cut through the middle of Pennsyvania to Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, to Tucson. While my parents didn’t like that I’d be traveling alone, I was up to the challenge and felt completely fearless. Now that I think back on it, a lot of stuff could’ve gone wrong, but I made it there and back with no problems at all.

The things that stick out for me on the trip to New York included a stop in a town called Van Horn, Texas, where the jukebox included a couple of songs by Emmylou Harris. I was just thrilled to be able to play her music on a jukebox in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. The songs I played were from her recent album, Luxury Liner. I think I played two songs, but can’t remember both, although I know for sure that the title of one of them was “You’re Supposed to Be Feeling Good”. I also remember how long it took to get through Texas and how boring most of it was. A couple of passengers who sat next to me at various points turned out to be born again Christians and they both tried to “save” me, but I was a good Catholic kid, and wouldn’t buy what they had to offer. Once we finally got to the eastern side of the state, things began to change, and there were rolling hills and short, stumpy trees everywhere. Arkansas was pretty lush too, but by then it had started to get dark and I couldn’t see much by that point. As we headed into Memphis and then Nashville the following morning, I became awestruck at how beautiful and green everything was. I’d never seen such beautiful countryside in all my life, especially in Tennessee. The mist just hung in the air, all the way to the ground, and there were miles and miles of lush, green hills and trees all around. When we got to Nashville, I ordered breakfast at the Greyhound station restaurant, and it was the first time I’d ever tasted grits. I had no idea what to expect, and I must admit, I disliked them immediately. They probably would’ve tasted much better with some butter and salt, but I had no idea what to do with them. Yuck. I still don’t like them.

The trip from Tennessee through Virginia was quite scenic. We arrived in Washginton DC late at night, and it was one of the only times I felt scared and out of place. I was in need of a bath, and felt itchy and uncomfortable. I was also carrying too much stuff, including a styrofoam ice chest that my parents had packed full of food for me. The food was all gone by the time I got to DC, so I ditched the ice chest and felt much better. The rest of the trip was okay. I remember that Delaware was just beautiful with lots of farms and lush green countryside everywhere.

When I got to Newark, I was expecting my sister’s husband to be there waiting for me, but he was nowhere to be found. I waited for what seemed an eternity, and it was the second time I felt frightened. What else could I do but wait?  It was pretty creepy, but Paco, my sister’s husband, eventually showed up, and all was well. We drove straight to Cranford, and there was my sister Becky waiting for me.

My sister and her husband pulled out all the stops for me and for a whole week, took me all over the place. We went to New York City at least twice  and had Chinese food in Chinatown, and Italian food in Little Italy. We went up to the top of the Empire State Building, to Times Square  and St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I even got them to take me to Greenwich Village to find Gerde’s Folk City, the club where Bob Dylan first played in the early 1960s and where he met Joan Baez. That was a real thrill. They also took me for a long drive down the Jersey shore to Asbury Park, and then to Menlo Park, the home of Thomas Alva Edison. We also ate at the best restaurant I’ve ever been to, a seafood place called Long John’s, Ltd. It was incredible. I’ll never forget that meal.

The trip home was not as exciting as the trip to New York. Pennsylvania is a beautiful state, but I have to admit that Ohio, Indiana and Illinois were almost as boring as Texas. There were nothing but cornfields everywhere, it seemed, and it took forever to get through it all. But, all in all, I had a wonderful time. I’ll never forget that trip. I’ve been to New York only one other time since then, and would love to go back again for another visit. There’s still so much I want to see!

During the summer, I attended my very first Joan Baez concert. She had just released a new album titled “Blowin’ Away”. It was different from most of her other albums in that many of the songs were played to the accompaniment of a rock band. I went to the show with my dear friend Rose, and we had a great time. I was totally in love with Joan Baez, and would remain an ardent fan for life. This was the first of many of her concerts that I would attend.

 I also took a class during the summer, my first psychology course. I wanted to major in psychology, and I did well in the class, but my enthusiasm for the subject would eventually fade and my grades in the next couple of psychology courses would drop. My buddy Richard was home from college, and I helped get him a job at Fry’s. He ended up not going back to Colorado, but enrolling at the U of A. It was good to have him back home. While we weren’t as close as we were in high school, we remained the best of friends over the years. 

I was very “religious” 18 year old during this point in my life, and I was still battling my attraction to men. I thought if I prayed hard enough and was a good person, it would all go away, and I’d find me a nice girl to marry. Ha! That didn’t happen. What I did end up doing was falling for another guy. This time, he was an older man in his late 30’s, married with children my age and younger, who worked at the grocery store. His name was Jim. He was the sweetest person one could ever meet, and was very kind and generous to me. He was from Missouri and had been in the Air Force. He even liked Joan Baez. I became so “attached” to him that I joined his church for a while. He was Southern Baptist. It was an eye opening experience. The Baptists are, in general, a pretty conservative bunch of people. The minister of the church we attended drove a gold Cadillac and was not much interested in the teachings of Jesus. He was more attuned to the writings of St. Paul and the notion of salvation from sin through grace and baptism, and in making sure his congregants all donated to the church regularly. It’s called “tithing” and you weren’t a good Christian unless you gave at least 10% of your earnings to the church. The members of the congregation were all Anglos who lived on Tucson’s far east side, and some were outwardly racist. I clearly didn’t fit in, and eventually stopped attending services with Jim and his wife. Jim ended up leaving Fry’s, and we drifted apart after a while, but I sure fell hard for him. He surely must’ve known I was attracted to him, but he never let on. He treated me like a son.

Just before the Fall semester started, I moved out of my parents’ house into an apartment in a complex near the University. Another friend of mine from Fry’s told me that his wife, who managed the apartments, was looking for someone to help do maintenance there. The deal was I’d get free rent if I helped clean vacated units. I lasted two whole weeks. I liked living there, but I hated the work. Some of those apartments were downright disgusting and filthy. It was nasty work so I quit and moved back home. I still had my job at Fry’s,  and that was enough for me.

I was still determined to move out of my parents’ house, so sometime during the Fall semester, I moved in with my brother Charles and his family. They lived on Calle Aragon, on the south side of town, near my Aunt Mary’s old house in the Elvira neighborhood. I opened a bank account and was driving by this time, using my dad’s old beat up pickup truck. Going to school and then to work and back to Charles’s, whose house was far away from both, took its toll on me, but I stayed there with him and his family until the end of the semester.

During this period, I continued to buy records. Linda Ronstadt and Jackson Browne came out with new albums, as did Dolly Parton. I loved her album. It was called “Here You Come Again”. I also continued reading a lot. One book in particular, titled “Your Erroneous Zones,” had a huge impact on me. It was a self-help book essentially, written by a man named Wayne Dyer, and in it he discussed the futility of things like worry, guilt, and living to please others, and he emphasized the importance of living in the present moment. It was an eye-opener and it helped me begin the process of self-acceptance. I often credit it for saving my life.

The following event happened just five months before I decided to come out of the closet.

According to BusinessInsider.com, “In 1977, singer Anita Bryant led a campaign, called “Save Our Children,” to overturn an anti-discrimination ordinance in Dade County, Florida. Bryant was the spokesperson for the Florida Citrus Commission, and gay activists and celebrity allies called for a boycott of Florida orange juice. At a press conference on October 14, 1977, Bryant was hit in the face with a banana cream pie by an activist posing as a reporter. She led numerous successful efforts to repeal gay-rights ordinances in cities across America but failed with the Briggs Initiative, which would have banned gay teachers in California public schools”.

Less than a month after Anita Bryant was hit on the face with a pie, on November 8, 1977, Harvey Milk became the first openly gay politician to be elected to public office in California. He helped lead the effort to defeat the Briggs Initiative and then won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He was sworn into office in early January, 1978.

My brother Fred and his wife Ruth had a baby they named Edessa in September. She would be the first in a new crop of family members that would include my niece Estrella and my nephew Anthony, who were born the following year.

The Fall school semester was a rough one for me. I had two psychology classes and didn’t do very well in them. I got C’s in both. One of the classes was on statistics, and I got really lost. I was usually pretty good in math, but I felt like the instructor was a lousy teacher. I didn’t do so bad in my other classes, however, and  got an A in my English class and an A in general biology.  I also got a B in volleyball, which even though I didn’t ace, I enjoyed a lot.

At the end of the year, I decided to apply to live in a dorm room at the University the following semester. I also bought my very first car, a homely looking 1964 Buick Special. It had seen better days, and was not very reliable, but it was all mine, and I drove if for 3 years, until 1982.

1978 would prove to be even more significant as I turned 19, moved into my own apartment, and slowly but surely started accepting the fact that I was gay.