RFD - Radical Faerie Digest — a queer reader-written journal since 1974

The title of this blogette is a line from Oscar Wilde. Goddess knows what that wonderful old queen was thinking when he wrote that and wouldn't he be surprised to know how many other old queens have healed their hearts in Arkansas. Arkansas, how unlikely that this conservative state would be one of the wombs of the radical faerie movement. Arkansas, the Ozarks of north west Arkansas in paticular, was a hotbed of what would become "radical faerie" activity before we had that name for ourselves. We tried to reclaim "sissy" for a while but radical faerie took root and blossomed.
For those of you who like hissstory, I will share just a little of this story. Charlie Thornton and I were living in New Orleans in the very early 70's both us being bayou boys. We wanted to move to the country like so many of our straight "back to the land" hippy friends were doing. Some in our hippy family were familar with the Ozarks and the spark turned into a flame. We were moving to the hills. Queen acres we are there! But before we left New Orleans, we saw a copy of "Out of the closets" an anthology of gay liberation in a store window on Canal Street. We never had any money to spare but the book was a must. By the time we arrived in the wilderness, our conciousness was raised and we were ready for the lavender revolution.
What a contradiction. We could not make a living (curse of the working class) living in the woods as we had no skills we could market so we moved to the university town of Fayetteville. There we found minimum wage jobs and formed a communal house with a few of our hippy straight friends. We began to meet a few gay men in town and we talked of forming a gay men's commune. We organized conciousness raising events to discuss gay lib (1974) and were surprised at how many lesbians came and the energy they shared. We met two lesbians from Oakland California who had to come to the Ozarks to buy land for wimmin only, they were sepratist lesbians. More contradictions, even though these two women were sepratist and Charlie and I were not politically sophisticated, there was a very strong bond between the four of us. These women understood class oppression and educated Charlie and I about our own oppression coming from generations of extreme poverty in the deep south. Charlie and were natural feminist and saw the struggle for gay rights completely bound up with women's struggles.
At one of these CR meetings, I met Dennis Williams who had a house on a side street in town with a huge yard and lots of privacy. Dennis was very open to having a gay commune at his place although his fantasy and mine might not have been exactly the same but close enough. Dennis called his place "Mulberry House".
Soon there were around 5 proto radical faeries living at Mulberry House. We had a business, a green house that we called Lavender Thumb created by the legendary Dimid Hayes. We also indexed school text books the real old fashioned way (remember this is 1974) with real index cards shipped to publishers in shoe boxes. Of course we lived on food stamps and we had a huge garden. Soon the "sepratist" lesbians showed up needing a place to stay because the local lesbians were just too freaked by their politics.
We the gay men bought 40 acres near the lesbian sepratist land and we were going to raise the male children of all the lesbian that were coming to live on the wimmin's land. It was a good idea at the time and almost worked.
We saw an advertisement for the first RFD magazine and were delighted to make contact with Donald Engstrom and others at the similar Kindore collective (we were now a collective and not a hippy commune, the difference was important)in Iowa City. We as a group went to Iowa City for a conference and the Kindore Collective came to the Ozarks to visit. Very heady times.
At some point around 1975 I think, Charlie and I got crossed ways with other collective members and ran away to San Francisco. We hitched a ride with the late but fabulous Olaf Odegarrd and toured the south west. First stop was San Juan Pueblo in northern New Mexico to stay with Harry Hay and John Burnside and the circle of loving companions. Harry and John "baptised" us in head waters of the Rio Grande river and we fell in love. Harry talked to us about his vision of what gay men could create. We continued on with our trip to SF but we had made a deep connection with Harry and John. They even talked about moving to the Ozarks and many letters were exchanged discussing that possibility.
After spending several months in SF we longed for the hills of home. Of course being broke, we could only afford a ticket on the Grey Rabbit (an old Greyhound bus with all the seats taken out for a communal sprawling area) whose straight hippie male drivers were all on speed. And then we could only afford tickets to somewherer in Wyoming and had to hitchhike back to the Ozarks. That is another story another time.
We had many legendary faeries come through Mulberry House. Faygele Ben Miriam stayed many times godess rest his wild heart. We traveled as a group in an old postal jeep with the steering wheel on the wrong side to the "Faggots in Class Struggle" conference at Wolf Creek before it became a sanctuary. This was 1976. There we met fabulous faeries and in my humble opinon, had the first faerie gathering. It was in the country, we used the word faerie and we met in circles and had several rituals. Blackberri was there and offered us songs. Aaron Shurin read his poetry (Exorcism of the straight man).So many are ancestors now. There really should be an exploration of this event and its influence on the proto radical faerie movement. Not all of us are dead!
Some time after this our collective imploded over class struggle and rigidity. I am a recovering political fundamentalist. Dennis would move to New Orleans to begin a new collective (he would create the faerie shawl that still exist)Charlie and I dropped out of the faerie movement for a while (we made a decision not to go to the "first faerie gathering in 1979 because we thought it was not political enough, yes I regret that).
Ok fast forward threw the AIDS holocaust. Charlie and I are still together (38 years) and are close in age to Harry and John were when we first met them, late 50's. We live on land in the Ozarks next door to a lesbian land trust. We have a fey gathering twice a year with lots of newbies and many old friends that we are so blessed to have.
And here is my old friend RFD all electrified on the web! Congratulations!It is amazing. Thanks for listening to this hisstory and lets keep growing the faerie garden.
love Micheal O.