The oral thing

I deal with oral history interviews as part of my job almost every day. I’ve digitized them, transcribed them, catalogued them, and created metadata about them. But tomorrow morning, I’ll be an interviewee for the first time. That will be a change of pace. I will be discussing my…ahem…trailblazing role as an LGBTQ (or whatever the hell the acronym is this week) student at UNCG in the 1980s for a student documentary of some sort.

I have this horrible feeling they’re going to be disappointed.

I pretty much got through most of my “coming out” issues before I even entered college–which may actually be of some interest, I guess, since that was less common in those days. All in all, I walked into a pretty squishy leftist environment as a freshman so I didn’t really experience a lot of discrimination and drama per se. I suppose I’ll talk about a few minor skirmishes I had with some people who didn’t appreciate my rather strident “activism” at the time and maybe about some things involving kiddie politics and the radio station and our growing awareness of AIDS. I could mention the fact that I somehow became everyone’s favorite person to “come out” to, so I heard a lot of stories from people who didn’t have it as easy as I did. And there was my friend who committed suicide by jumping out of a ninth-floor window in the library.

But even thirty years ago a lot of my thoughts on the subject were related to my dissatisfaction with what some people called “gay culture” and I’m not sure how that will play in this interview. We’ll see. I’m mainly disappointed that I’m not allowed to wear a black shirt since I’ll be shot in front of a lack backdrop. I almost always wear a black shirt, dammit.