JOEY TERRILL:

Okay.

ANDREW LUSH:

Great. So that's going, and I'm just going to blackout your screen here. Is this okay, can I click "Allow"?

JOEY TERRILL:

Well, sure. If that's what you need to do.

ANDREW LUSH:

Okay, great. And then, okay, so I'm going to turn my microphone and camera off on zoom. I am here. If anything goes wrong, you can ask me a question. 

ANDREW LUSH:

If you're worried about anything and I'll be here the entire time. Have a good interview.

JOEY TERRILL:

Thank you.

DREW

All right. Great. So, we can start. So, I have heard so much about you ...

JOEY TERRILL:

But you can't prove it. You can't prove it.

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

I can't prove it.

JOEY TERRILL:

Just kidding. I tend to have a little bit of humor, but ...

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

Listen, I think you're hilarious. I also thought your pre-interview was also like your little bits of humor. Sort of about me. So, my name is Andrea Pino-Silva. I am a one-and-a-half generation Cuban American, and I say one and a half because my dad was born right outside Havana and came over right after Castro. For me, being Latina is a huge part of my own queerness and the work that I do. I got really excited about 

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

how in your pre-interview you talked so much about your family. That's something that actually, I'm going to ask you to talk a bit more about, kind of the ins and outs of what makes your family different. Cos I really do think that [inaudible] and the family, I think, especially how important our families are, is so instrumental to how we even frame our queerness and how we talk about it and how we bring ourselves into a movement. That's something that I want to really hear about. 

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

Perhaps things that you, maybe, haven't been asked in the past. Because I think, again, I always say this, right. Like, my family might not be going to pride marches, but they have been so instrumental in my own journey and really me believing in my own voice. So, that's something that I am really interested to hear about. Yeah, I wanted to say that up front because I don't want you to [inaudible] yourself, I want you to talk about the weird things that your family does that are instrumentals to who you are. 

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

So yeah, so I wanted to go ahead and tell you that. But in terms of our interview, I would like you to start at the beginning, right. And to tell me a little bit about what it was like ... Just the beginning, how your family was. And I think especially I want you to start with even the way that your family welcomed you to the [inaudible], right. And how the way you looked, perhaps set the tone for your place in your family going forward.

JOEY TERRILL:

When you say how I looked, did you get indication of the story I shared about when I was brought ...?

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

Yeah. I want you to start right there from the beginning. Quite literally, how you looked frame the way that you would be brought into this world.

JOEY TERRILL:

Okay. So, when I was born, and this is a family story that used to get told at family gatherings 

JOEY TERRILL:

that when they brought me wrapped in a blanket to my mother she just saw all this dark hair and kind of a dark pink face, and she thought I looked like a monkey. So, she insisted to the nurses that this can't be my child. She goes, "This child is [inaudible]. It's too ugly." And the nurses assured her that, "No, this was definitely your child." 

JOEY TERRILL:

And she insisted, and they actually wheelchaired her, I mean, they put her in a wheelchair and they drove to where the newborns were placed in the hospital. And she could see that the other newborns were all African-American or black. So, she knew. And she would say at the family gathering, "So, I knew you were mine. But, oh, you've grown up so handsome since then." To me, that was always so funny and silly, but it also was one of the first clues or indications that I had 

JOEY TERRILL:

that my mom was a little bit she had her ways about her, her perks. And for four years I was an only child. I was the Apple of my mom and dad's eyes. They definitely provided me with a lot of support, education, information. I mean, by the time I was entering kindergarten, I could recite every nursery rhyme. I had all these books, 

JOEY TERRILL:

they were sort of teaching me and investing in me to read, to embrace the world. My dad was an artist and he painted and made art. So, I grew up with his art all around the house. The garage was his sort of mini studio, and he made furniture as well. And then my mom was a housewife and she was at that point in time she was the happiest that I think she was in her life 

JOEY TERRILL:

because she was a success in all the ways that she was raised to be, as a Latina, as a Chicana. Here she was, Catholic, married, she had a beautiful husband who was very handsome. And now she had her first born son. So, she was on top of the world. And the reason I say that is because it would be about seven years later 

JOEY TERRILL:

after I was born that my little family life just totally went to skew. My parents started having problems with each other, arguing and I mean, to be frank, I witnessed my father hitting my mother, which was a big shock to me, that's not the way the world's supposed to be. And I realized years later, I was told 

JOEY TERRILL:

that my father suffered from post-traumatic stress from world war II. He was in world war II and he fought in Iwo Jima, and my mom had shared with me that he had had hand-to-hand combat. But, of course, at that time, they didn't have the term post-traumatic stress syndrome, but he would have these flashes of anger that were unexplained. And I know that that was part of it. My mother, on the other hand, 

JOEY TERRILL:

when my parents got divorced at the age of seven, my age of seven, she had a nervous breakdown, and she was admitted to a hospital, institution. She was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic. And so, the first part of my life, the first few years, was idyllic. I was the only child. I was probably pretty precocious. I was probably a bit of a brat. 

JOEY TERRILL:

And then my younger sister is four years younger. When Linda came along, my mom and dad both had kind of prepped me for my role as Linda's big brother. And I took that as a very serious responsibility. I loved helping my mom with my sister when she was an infant. My mother was also a dancer and a singer. Not professionally,

JOEY TERRILL:

but enough that, in the 1950s -- again, one of the family stories -- she won an award as La Reina del mambo in one of the ballrooms here in LA. And the story goes -- this might be of interest to you -- that the contest where she won this. It was with Perez Prado & His Orchestra who was playing, and Perez Prado actually offered to my mother

JOEY TERRILL:

the suggestion that she might want to contract and join them as a dancer on their tour of Latin America, which my tias, my aunts, were like, "Oh my God, that would be fantastic." But my mother declined because she was dating my father at the time. So, there was always this sort of story in my head that, "Oh my God, I could have been the son of Perez Prado." But it didn't happen. But why I say that is my mom was always singing. She had a beautiful smile. 

JOEY TERRILL:

She loved dance, and I just remember as a child, always hearing her sing popular songs in Spanish, songs in English. I thought of my childhood as idyllic until the problem started with her breakdown. When that occurred, when the breakdown occurred, we were living in our house in Santa Fe Springs, which was the house that my mom and dad had purchased, but my father left.

JOEY TERRILL:

My mother was one of six sisters, and she was the second youngest. The context there is that my grandmother and grandfather had moved to LA from Mexico, from Cananea and from Durango. They moved back in the 1920s, I think.

JOEY TERRILL:

And my grandmother had six children who were all boys in a row, and none of them lived beyond childhood. They all died by the age of two or something from childhood diseases. But my mother remembers having a little brother or an older brother who died when he was about 10 or 11, then she had six more children and they were all girls. So, I grew up with my tias, never knowing that I had previously had uncles.

JOEY TERRILL:

When my mother came out of the hospital the first time, me and my sister were living with aunts and uncles. When she came out, my aunt Josie, who was the matriarch of the family, the second oldest, and sort of taking the reins on representing my mother in court for custody and all this she had sat with me and she wrote out schizophrenia.

JOEY TERRILL:

I knew how to spell it. I was a spelling fanatic. I would go around telling people that, "Do you know how to spell schizophrenia? I do." But I realized years later that our roles were sort of reversed. I became a caregiver to my mom in a sense, because I always had to make sure that she took her medication. I could tell when she was falling under one of her, what I used to call her spells. 

JOEY TERRILL:

Things could trigger her to go into a depression. Like, there would be something on the news, whether it was president Kennedy being shot or it could be something like just a horrible report on a murder or something. I could tell right away, she'd be shaking her head saying, "Oh, wow, God, why does that happen? That's so ugly." She was a very vain person, 

JOEY TERRILL:

as she always tried to present well, dress nice and wear her makeup. And that's why I could tell when she was going through one of her spells. It's like, okay, I can tell my mom's not smiling. She hasn't combed her hair this morning. So, it was sort of like, "Mom, you need to get up, you need to wash your hair." And for about six years there my mom went in and out of the hospital at least twice. 

JOEY TERRILL:

And during that time, my sister and I lived with different aunts and uncles. And then at one point, my, the courts gave custody to my father who had, by that point in time, gone back to his first wife. Now I have to tell you that at the age of nine years old, I was shocked to know that, "What my dad was married before? I had no idea." And we were very poor. 

JOEY TERRILL:

At one point, we were living in a motel. My dad worked in a factory, he was a truck driver, an independent truck driver. But at the time those small kinds of trucks and he would do different deliveries, it was just a very different way to make a living back in the 1960s. And I would accompany him on those drives.

JOEY TERRILL:

So, I got to go with him to make deliveries. And I got to see all these different parts of neighborhoods of LA when he would do that. But once my mom came out of the hospital in 1966, for the last time, the courts had determined that the children need to be with their mother. And so the way that it worked out -- I may have mentioned before that --

JOEY TERRILL:

when my father had left and we were still with my mom, we would go into LA from Santa Fe Springs and visit my aunts and cousins and family. And my mom had a friend at that time named Nora, who was Italian, and she was also a divorcee. And I realized now, in retrospect, that back then in the sixties, being divorced had a lot of stigma to it, especially being Latina Catholic. 

JOEY TERRILL:

I know that that really bothered my mom. But she bonded with Nora because, and Nora had a little boy named Frankie. So, here was my mom with two children, and here was Nora with two kids, and Nora was funny and sweet, and she did great cooking. And we went to visit her in these apartments in Highland park. And I remember as we got back on the bus to go to Santa Fe Springs, back to our home, I told my mom, I said, "God, how come Nora and Frankie live in such a horrible place?

JOEY TERRILL:

 I mean, it's such a small, tiny apartment." And she said, "Mijo, that's all that Nora can afford. Since her husband left her." Whatever, but I just remember feeling sorry for them. I thought, "Oh, gee." Because we had a two bedroom home, we had carpeting, I had a backyard, I had a little mini swimming pool. I thought that we were, like, way above or better. My mom goes into the hospital. 

JOEY TERRILL:

1966, she came out. And during that time when she was institutionalized, they gave her shock therapy. And all this was explained to me by my aunt, my tia, Josie. And one of the things I recognized right away was that my mother was not the same. I could just tell. When she came out, there seemed to be a sadder part to her personality. In fact, all of her ability to cook was gone.

JOEY TERRILL:

And she even attributed that, "You know what? I think when they gave me the shock therapy," she said, "I don't even know how to cook." That actually led to me taking on the role of cooking because mom, you know  what, I'm tired of TV dinners, but I got up the cookbooks and I would ask my tias for recipes. And so I started to do cooking, and I consider myself a good cook to this day. But when we met at my aunt's house and she was going to walk us to our new apartment, 

JOEY TERRILL:

she was telling me about how things are going to be better. It's going to be good. We're a family once again, it's you, me and Linda. And the best thing is we're going to be neighbors with Nora and Frankie. And I realized, "Oh my gosh, we're moving into that ugly, decrepit apartment building." Now, my mom didn't realize that or knew that. Frankly, when I got into the apartment, I went into my room and I just cried 

JOEY TERRILL:

because I knew that, okay, the world is going to be different. Now, this is where we're stuck. We no longer have the house, we no longer have the home. And that was like a new journey, in '66. And so we lived in Highland park. And, I have to tell you that regarding being gay, I already knew. I was never in the closet. I always knew from watching TV, right? It's like, Oh my God,

JOEY TERRILL:

Dr. Kildare, Dr. Ben Casey. The news reporters, like, "Oh, they're so handsome." And even though I sort of already knew, I couldn't quite articulate it. I used to draw a lot as well. And I remember, I think I was three or four, but I drew this little drawing of the actress, Dorothy Provine. Dorothy Provine, for those that don't know she was an actress in Hollywood. If you've ever seen 

JOEY TERRILL:

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, she stars in that. But in the early sixties, she was in this program called The Roaring 20's. Remember, it's black and white TV. I still love TV. I was constantly glued, watching different programs. But she played a flapper in the 1920s, during the time of speakeasies and gangsters and the opening of the segment for the show was a big, huge mirror ball.

JOEY TERRILL:

And it just was turning. And I was fascinated. I loved anything that sparkled or glittered. And to this day, rhinestones and glitter, you get me going. But I thought, "Wow, what a harbinger for years later, when disco was King and the mirror ball was everywhere." But I drew this picture of Dorothy Provine, I mean, it was just a kind of a scribble, but I did her dress, her kind of 1920s flapper style. And I remember my mom and dad saying, "Oh my God,

JOEY TERRILL:

 that's such a good drawing. So, who is that?" I said, "Oh, that's Dorothy Provine. That's from the TV." And they go, "Oh, so that's your girlfriend." And that's at the age of four, I thought, Oh, okay, I get it. It's like, "No, she's not my girlfriend. I just liked her dress." But I also sorta knew that, okay, the expectation is that I guess I'm supposed to have a girlfriend, et cetera, et cetera.

JOEY TERRILL:

 So, I was already learning to hold back expressing my, what we would call queer inclination today. When we were in Highland park, I went to seven different schools before high school because I lived with different cousins, aunts, my mom, my dad, and each time we moved meant a different school.

JOEY TERRILL:

Finally, in 1966, I ended up at Divine Savior Catholic School, there in Cypress Park. And that became my sort of, this is home. This is a place where now I'm moving forward. I knew that this was going to be life progressing. I, absolutely, at that time, found strength, I thought, in the Catholic church, at least the way it was presented to me.

JOEY TERRILL:

 I also knew that I loved being in the choir. I loved singing and Latin. I loved the surpluses that we would wear because they were almost like the dress. People had all these horrible experiences and fear of nuns, I thought the nuns were very cool. And part of it was that I realized that some of the nuns, I was starting to realize that, they're women, 

JOEY TERRILL:

but they're strong, they're educated, or apparently they seemed educated, and they weren't weak like my mom. That was one of the things that I remember. But then it became quite obvious, I think by the age of 12. I think I was 12. I used to go to church and mass. First of all, during the week, I would go every morning before school. Mass was at eight o'clock, it would end at eight 30, and then we would go right into school.

JOEY TERRILL:

The church was right next to the school. But one Sunday, I remember being in church, and it's the first time that I heard the priest even mention homosexuality. And he said that homosexuals were the work of the devil, that they were evil. They were blah-blah-blah. And I remember sitting there being stunned and it was like this bright light, sort of the proverbial light bulb went off in my head 

JOEY TERRILL:

where I realized, "Oh my God, they're talking about me." And they're so wrong. He is so wrong. And if he's wrong and the Catholic church is wrong, what else are they incorrect about? So, I started to realize that the stigma around my mom being a divorcee, I remember my mom coming home one day and she was sort of in tears. I said, "Mom, what's the matter? What's going on?" 

JOEY TERRILL:

And she said, "Oh, those women, I can't stand those women at the parish." And I was like, "Why?" She goes, "They're planning for the big annual dance or whatever," and she said, "but they did tell me that I was not invited." I said, "What, why? You volunteer there?" Everyone loved my mom. And she goes, "Because I'm divorced, they think I'm after their husbands." She goes, "I couldn't care less about their ugly husbands." And I realized like, "Oh, that is so unfair." So, I was already becoming 

JOEY TERRILL:

very, very conscious of the Catholic church, homophobia, misogyny, even if I couldn't articulate it in those ways, I was intuitively gaining all of that. Back in the early sixties, mid-sixties, and even into the seventies, we didn't have a place in the general culture, popular culture. You did not see gay images, 

JOEY TERRILL:

you did not see queer people. And if you did, it was very marginalized or something that was to be made fun of. It was Milton Berle on TV dressing in drag, and everyone would laugh. Okay. But I would search for anything that even mentioned homosexuality or lesbianism. Many times, it was the newspapers and there were reports, and it was all kind of forbidden and taboo. But I did look up homosexual in the dictionary 

JOEY TERRILL:

and I realized, "Okay, that's who I am." I mentioned that to my friend, Javier [inaudible] in sixth grade at Divine Savior? Who's one of my oldest friends actually, and we're still friends today. I remember us walking home from school and I told him, I said, "I think I'm a homosexual." He was a smart guy too, and he said, "Really, really, you think so?" I said, "Yeah. No, I'm pretty sure." He goes, "Oh, well, okay." 

JOEY TERRILL:

And him saying that to me -- I mean, he realizes now, I told them -- that helped me so much to know that there are people out there who would say, "So what? That's all right." He's an actor, he's been an actor. And, of course, he has all kinds of friends that are everything that falls under LGBTQ to this day.

JOEY TERRILL:

My mom had gone back to school. She had gotten a degree so that she could be enrolled as an intermediate clerk typist for LA unified school district. And so, she would work during the day, nine to five, come home at night. My aunt, Josie, who was the matriarch, like I said, 

JOEY TERRILL:

had talked to the boss at LA unified, my mother's boss. She explained to him that my mom was frail and had some mental problems. And they couldn't tell, they loved her. She was very personable, beautiful smile, she was always very friendly. But when she would have a spell, they knew it. And so, they would call me on the telephone and just let me know that, "Joey we were sending your mom home today, 

JOEY TERRILL:

or we sent your mom home. She's not feeling well." So, I don't know, "You need to make sure she takes her medication." So, the roles were reversed. Where instead of the school calling the parent on the truant child, it was, my mom was more childlike and I would make sure that she took her medication and got dressed and continued to function. Years later, when I worked at LAMP on Skid Row, 

JOEY TERRILL:

with the homeless or mentally ill, I recognized that there were so many folks on Skid Row that were homeless, that had mental issues and problems, and that, you know what? If it weren't for me and my sister, my mother could have ended up like that too. They just didn't have the family support around that. Hearing myself talk about that, I feel like I'm leaving out so many instances of happiness and joy; 

JOEY TERRILL:

birthday celebrations. I went to high school, Cathedral High School. There's only two college prep high schools, Catholic schools in East LA, Salesian being one, Cathedral, the other. I went to Cathedral. They were archenemies, and they had been for years. But I went to Cathedral. We were taught by the Christian Brothers at the time. 

JOEY TERRILL:

There were a couple of Christian Brothers there that recognized that I was without my dad around, that my mom had her frail health. So, they kind of mentored me or took it upon themselves to be mentors for me. And I really appreciate, especially as an adult, I've appreciated so much what they did to me, how they supported me, 

JOEY TERRILL:

gave me confidence, self-esteem. They would take me places. And for my mom who, "Oh my gosh, Oh, brother Gerard wants to take you to San Francisco for the weekend. Oh, yes, please." She totally trusted the brothers, I mean, that was because they were Catholic and she just felt comfortable with that. And she was correct, they were great mentors to me. In fact, 

JOEY TERRILL:

brother Richard Alanna, he's retired now, but he lives up in the retirement facility for the Christian Brothers up in Sonoma County. I have visited him. We went up to celebrate his Jubilee, 50 years  as a Christian Brother. Being at Cathedral High School is so entrenched in my development and who I was. And I'd like to say I have a love, hate relationship with Cathedral. I went through a lot of issues there,

JOEY TERRILL:

like being harassed for being for being gay or queer, but at the same time, it's also where I got a sense of my own worth, self-esteem and my introduction into social advocacy and activism. It was the Christian Brothers who in 1970 were getting involved with la huelga and the grape and lettuce boycott for Caesar Chavez and the farm workers. And they recruited me if I wanted to be a volunteer.

JOEY TERRILL:

And I said, "Yes, absolutely. I thought it was the right thing to do. I also thought it's the Christian thing to do. I mean, if people were really invested in listening to what Christ had to say, then I think they would support housing and making sure that the farm workers were treated with respect and dignity. We would go to different supermarkets and we'd have petitions for people to sign, out in front, asking to boycott this particular store 

JOEY TERRILL:

because they're selling non-union lettuce or non-union grapes, and many times people would sign. And so that was my introduction as a young student, talking to people about advocacy. But I also would get cussed out. One man spit on me once, and that was an introduction to, "Oh my gosh, there's a whole lot of people out there who are very negative 

JOEY TERRILL:

and, or racist, or what have you." I learned that very early on. In 1970, I attended the Chicano moratorium, which was a march that was speaking out against the Vietnam war, but particularly the focus was on the disproportionate number of Latinos who were actually dying in Vietnam.

JOEY TERRILL:

A lot of students at that time, if they could get a college deferment because they were going on to higher education, they could, and those were mostly white educated folks of privilege. Right. In that Chicano moratorium, it was initially an exhilarating experience. There were, I think it was something like 20,000 people who marched through East LA and I loved that. It was, wow. There's all these advocacy groups. There were Jewish groups, there were groups that were anti-war,

JOEY TERRILL:

there were groups that were feminist. It was such an exhilarating experience. And then we get to the park, Laguna park, and everyone's spread out on blankets and picnic baskets at the baseball diamond. We're waiting at the stage there, we're waiting to hear Cesar Chavez was supposed to be a speaker. And then a skirmish occurred in one corner of the park where the police and LA County sheriffs. 

JOEY TERRILL:

I guess somebody was accused of stealing some beer from the liquor store, and instead of it just being focused on that incident, the police just came in, they marched through the park with batons drawn, and they just shoved, beat and arrested everyone. They called it a riot. In my personal opinion, 

JOEY TERRILL:

it was a police riot. We were all shoved into this ... The way that the park was situated, there were these walls that for one corner of the park, there was just a small entryway to actually go in, and they shoved us into that corner. So, everyone was jammed and trying to get out because they started shooting tear gas. I remember my cousin who happened to be there as well, she said, "Come on". And we jumped into a small VW. 

JOEY TERRILL:

It was somebody who, we didn't even know who they were. These were all students, mostly all college students at the time and activists. We jumped in the car, we tried to roll up the windows, but the tear gas came in. And as we drove away up the street our eyes were burning. And I just remember the different houses there, people that lived there were outside with their water hoses. They were offering the water hoses to people to wash out their eyes. 

JOEY TERRILL:

I also stood in line to use the phone, because back then it was all rotary dial phones. But I wanted to call my mom to tell her that, I know she would see on the news, but I needed to let her know that I was safe. I recognized that the world and my place in it as a Chicano is definitely a political stance that I needed to continue with and embrace. 

JOEY TERRILL:

And that meant also as an artist, I think it was the month before I had attended the [Spanish language] at Lincoln high school. And that's where it was my introduction to other students, there were members of MEChA, were members of the Brown Berets from different colleges and schools that were arts programming. There was silk screens. I got to see that the teatro campesino, from the farm workers and the Louis Valdez led theater troupe. 

JOEY TERRILL:

And it just really lit my spirit and my fire for being a Chicano power advocate as a young student. But at that same time, I also was checking out, "Oh my God, some of these Brown Berets are so cute." I knew that I was gay and that this emphasis within the Chicano power movement on la familia, as a theme excluded LGBTQ.

JOEY TERRILL:

 La familia meant that it was the mother, the father, the children, and, of course, the church or God. Anyone else outside of that was excluded. So, I knew that that was an issue that I needed to either confront or address. I figured that that would be a starting point in my art, to explore or examine my identity as a Chicano, but also as a gay man. 

JOEY TERRILL:

First of all, Cathedral High School, the way it is today in the 21st century, they've expanded, they've gotten, really nice buildings now. And I think there's a uniform where everyone goes into a shirt and tie to school. It was not like that when I entered in 1969, the unofficial uniform of Cathedral at that time

JOEY TERRILL:

was khakis and a white t-shirt, and maybe a sergei shirt. It was very cholo. And apparently, you have to have a certain grade point average to get into Cathedral. And I certainly qualified, I was on an academic state scholarship, but there were a lot of smart cholos and homeboys, but they brought with them their own homophobia. I also recognized that a lot of them, 

JOEY TERRILL:

that homophobia was their shield to not be in touch with or to hide their own inclinations towards men. There were a couple of instances where I get thrown up against the lockers and you puto, maricon, what are you doing here? Blah, blah, blah. Also, I was a little bit of a, I don't know if you want to say rebel, but I would wear jeans. I was much more into sort of like hippie/rock and roll 

JOEY TERRILL:

kind of perspective or fashion. And that would sometimes get me in trouble with some of the homophobic guys at school. But I ended up having a very good friend, my best friend, Terry, that I met as a freshman. He's African-American, and we now recognize that we've been friends now for 51 years, we're still best of friends, which is amazing to me.

JOEY TERRILL:

He and his partner have adopted three children. I mean, now, his husband, because now they can get married, they've adopted three children. And I'm uncle Joey. So, it's just amazing to me that this journey ...  But when we were 15 and we were sitting there during lunch hour at school and well ... I'll back up. The year before, I would wait in the morning until Terry arrived and we would always talk before we started class.

JOEY TERRILL:

This one day Terry wasn't there. And I was like, "Gee, where is he? He didn't tell me on the phone last night that he wasn't coming to school." And I walked up to the front of the school where the library is, and there was Terry sitting against the library, the wall. His head was bowed and he looked like he was passing out or asleep. And I went, "Terry, what's wrong? Are you okay?" And he's like, 

JOEY TERRILL:

"Oh, I took some pills." And I was like, what? Now, at that point in time, the idea of drugs of any kind was as foreign to me as Martians from another planet, it was all bad and no good. So, I was shocked and like, "Terry, why did you do that?" And he said, "I tried to kill myself again." What, like my God. I put him on my shoulder, and we started to walk. The bells were ringing for us to start first period. 

JOEY TERRILL:

I saw Mr. Fowle, who was a lay teacher and he was a counselor there. And I said, "Mr. Fowle Mr. Fowle. And he goes, "What's wrong with Terry?" I said, "I think he took some pills." He says, "Come in my office, keep him here. I'm gonna bring you some coffee, keep him awake. I'll get you out of first and second period." But he said, "Please make sure he doesn't fall asleep, [inaudible]." I said, okay. And so, we were there in his little office and I said, "Terry, why did you do this? Why do you want to kill yourself?" 

JOEY TERRILL:

And he said, "Oh my God," he was crying. And he said, "I've got some problems that I can't share with you." I was like, "Yes, you can, come on. I'm your best friend. What are you talking about?" And he said, "There are three things." I said, "What three things?" I couldn't even imagine what could it be that you would want to kill yourself?" And he said, "Oh, well, I'm failing in my grades." I go, "Oh, stop it." I said, "So what, that's not enough to kill ..." And then he said, "I think my mom is a heroin addict." 

JOEY TERRILL:

And that one stopped me in my tracks. I was like, Oh, okay. I didn't know how to deal with that. But I said, "Well, how do you know?" He says, cause he found some work, some needles. I go "Yeah, but she's a nurse." He said, "Yeah, but, Joey, I kind of know. I think her boyfriend is --" I said, "Okay, we can talk about that, but that's not something to kill yourself." I said, "What's the third one?" "I can't tell you. Oh my gosh, you would just hate me. I just can't share it with you. 

JOEY TERRILL:

You would just hate." And I thought to myself, what could be so horrible? And I looked at him, I said, "Terry, are you gay?" "Yes, I am." And he started weeping. And I said, "So am I?" And he's like, "Huh?" He looked up. He stopped. He wiped his eyes. Like, "You are." I go, "Yeah." He goes, "Oh my God, don't you think Mr. Fowle is cute." I said, "Oh my God. Yeah. He's so handsome." And we immediately started talking about all of these pent up emotions and feelings that we had and stuff.

JOEY TERRILL:

Obviously, we bonded, right then and there. At the age of 15 though, we were getting harassed in school and that morning Terry came to school and -- between the getting harassed, being called queer and puto and whatever -- he said, "I feel like running away," and me, I said, "Do you want to?"

JOEY TERRILL:

And he's like, "Well, you think so?" I said, "I will, if you will." He said, "What's the plan?" I said, "The plan is we can hitchhike to San Francisco." I know that that would be the plan. I think we had like 5 or 6 dollars between us. We had our lunch and oranges, and we took number 26 bus down into Santa Monica. We got off the Pacific coast highway

JOEY TERRILL:

and we hitchhiked to San Francisco. It was an adventure which was thrilling. But I do have to say that the one thing I really, really regret is that I know that it caused my mother so much pain. But, I also recognize that, it's not an excuse, but I was 15. I was feeling so overwhelmed with everything that was going on. I couldn't tell my mom about me getting harassed for being gay,

JOEY TERRILL:

and I was trying to take care of her as well. It doesn't sound like much, but when you're that age, it really weighs heavy on you. Anyway, by the time we got up to San Francisco, because we knew we were going to go visit one of the brothers' mother, Mrs. Laura When we got up there and I thought, wow, she's going to be surprised to see us. We go, we show up, we knock on her door and she said, "Well, it's about time you boys got here. Your mothers are waiting for you. 

JOEY TERRILL:

Let's give them a call." But that was a sense of that I could actually have a life away from the constraints of where I was living, how I was living, how I was being perceived that I was a queer or a faggot, and all the homophobia bullshit that I was getting. Then at that time there was another Christian brother named brother Gary York, 

JOEY TERRILL:

who was not Chicano. He was not a Chicano brother. He was white, I guess from England. And he had a beard and he was kind of good looking, but he was stiff. He wasn't very friendly or personable, like all the Christian brothers at that time when they would see each other, like one of the brothers would come down from San Francisco or whatever, and they would all greet each other with big hugs. "Oh brother, how are you? Good to see you," blah, blah. "How are those kids, how are those students up in Oakland?" 

JOEY TERRILL:

blah, blah, blah. There was the Christian brothers winery, so they would all get together and have wine and drink, in a good way, in a friendly way. But brother Gary, I noticed when the brothers would come like, "Oh, hello brother Gary." "Hello, how do you do?" He was very formal. But I became his, sort of, pet, and I wasn't trying to be. He taught literature and he would tell me that he thought that I could really excel and I could be a writer, 

JOEY TERRILL:

I could do this, I could do that. And he was introducing me to books and novels. He even had me go to his room in the Christian Brothers house, where all the brothers lived, the brother's house, to listen to classical music. I remember at a time -- it was a little bit condescending -- he had said, "Well, this makes me think of beautiful colored fountains." I said, "Really?" I said, "This makes me think of the aristocracy in Europe." 

JOEY TERRILL:

He didn't even know that I would know about the aristocracy of Europe. But once Terry had attempted the suicide and the brothers had all talked, they talked to Terry, they talked to his mom and then they talked to me. Brother Gary said, "Joey, I would like to speak to you after class today." I said, "Oh, okay. Sure, brother." So, I went and he sat there at his desk 

JOEY TERRILL:

and he said, "What we've been talking about, we've heard that it turns out that Terry thinks that he's homosexual, but that you think you're homosexual too." And I said, "Well, brother," I said, "I don't think I am. I know I am." And he said, "No, that's impossible. You're much too young to know about sexuality and things." I was 15, and he didn't know it,

JOEY TERRILL:

but I'd already had some sexual experiences. But he said, "I recommend that you do what a lot of the other young men at Cathedral here do." I said, "What is that?" And he said, "Masturbation." And I said, "Oh, I do that too." Well, he just turned red. He got so angry and he goes, "You're dismissed, get --" And I was like, "Wow, okay." And I left. From that point on, he harassed me. 

JOEY TERRILL:

When I go into the class, you know how everyone's talking before the class actually starts and people are fooling around sitting in their desks. And I would get in there, I guess I was talking to one of the other guys there, like everyone was, and he would say, "Okay, class, come to order. If Ms. Terrill will please stop talking." And, of course, all the boys would laugh at me. I was like, "Okay, is that how it's going to be?" Then, another time we were reading Dante's Inferno 

JOEY TERRILL:

and he said, "Today, we're going to be reading a chapter that should be of particular interest to Mr. Terrill, because it is the ninth circle, the circle of the sodomites." And, of course, everyone was laughing at me. So I just, I took my book and I just closed it. I just refused, I refused to even read, I refused to participate. Anyway, the story on 

JOEY TERRILL:

that was what ended up happening, in order to maintain my scholarship, I had to have, I think a 3.8 grade point average, which I did. I think B was the lowest grade I ever got. It was always A's and B's, but because I did not participate in my literature class with brother Gary, by not reading the material he gave me an incomplete and that brought down my grade point average. By the time I was a senior,

JOEY TERRILL:

ready to graduate and go to college, that meant that I was told that because you failed this year, you owe a whole year's tuition. And there was no way, I didn't have that money. My mom didn't have that money. I was there because of my academic scholarship. And here that was taken away from me. Now, mind you, I had already taken the, I dunno if they call them SATs at that time, and I had already been accepted 

JOEY TERRILL:

at UC Berkeley as well as Immaculate Heart College, here in LA. I was already considering to accept going to Immaculate Heart. But one of the things that they required was that I needed to submit transcripts and evidence of my diploma, my high school diploma. Well since I wasn't going to pay that full year's tuition, I was told I'd be allowed to walk across the stage 

JOEY TERRILL:

with my fellow students, but what they handed me, the little folder would not have the diploma. I just thought, "Oh my God, what am I going to do?" There was another brother, brother Xavier. He was Italian, again, good-looking kind of thing. Personally, I think he was gay, but that's my own judgment. He's now a priest, actually. But he stepped in and he wrote a letter, personal letter to the president of Immaculate Heart College, 

JOEY TERRILL:

explaining that due to circumstances beyond whatever, but he vouched for me and my character and this and that. I was like, "Oh, thank you, brother. Thank you brother." That's how I got into Immaculate Heart. So, technically, to this day, I don't have a high school diploma, and I associate that with the homophobia of brother Gary. So, just another part to that or chapter to that is brother Richard Arona, who I said I'm still in touch with, he was my theology teacher. 

JOEY TERRILL:

He was really instrumental in helping me to embrace my Chicano identity as well as my creative artistic side. Then when it came out in junior year that I was gay, he was very supportive of me. I had written him a letter during the summer, during summer vacation. During summer vacation, he was mentoring or tutoring in Mexico, but he would fly into LA to visit his mother 

JOEY TERRILL:

because he was very close to his mom, in East L.A. He said, "But while I'm there to visit," he wrote me a letter, he goes, "I want to talk to you. And so please come and visit me." So, I went to visit him at the brother's house. And he said, "I'm just concerned or worried about you saying that you're gay. Are you certain, do you know what you're talking about?" He's like, "Are you out in the streets?" He thought I might be hustling out in the streets, and I was shocked. I was like, "Brother, no, I wouldn't do that." And I told him, I said, 

JOEY TERRILL:

"No, brother." I said, "I go to metropolitan community church, MCC church, with Reverend Troy Perry. I'm in the gay youth group there. And then I'm also in the gay youth group at the gay community center and stuff." And he was like, "Oh, okay." He was just glad to know that I wasn't getting involved with drugs or nefarious activities and things. Long story short, after that, I graduated in 1973. I was working part-time downtown waiting on tables and

JOEY TERRILL:

it was New Year's Eve. And it was, like, maybe five in the afternoon. I was off my shift and I was going on the bus. I knew that the bus was going to pass by Cathedral High School. I just had this idea, like, you know what? I'm going to get off the bus. I'm going to go say hi to brother Richard. I miss everybody. It's been like six months since I've been in school.  I just want to say hi, and tell him, thank you for his friendship. So, I go into his room and he's ironing a shirt. And he said, "So, your mother gave you the message."  I said, "No, what message?" 

JOEY TERRILL:

He said, "I called your mom and told her that when you got home from work, that I wanted to pick you up, I want to take you out to eat tonight, New Year's Eve, before the New Year. I said, "No, I didn't know that, I just did this on my own." He said, "Oh, then, it was meant to be." He says, "This is good." We went to [inaudible] restaurant in an echo park, which is now the echo club, 

JOEY TERRILL:

I guess, where they do alternative bands and stuff. But we sat there at dinner and he said, "Joseph, the reason I wanted to have dinner with you is to tell you how much I really have appreciated and congratulate you on everything that you have done and how you have persevered under a lot of difficult circumstances," whatever. He goes, "I admire you, and I admire you being out and open and proud," and blah, blah, blah. He said, "I have to tell you that I'm gay too." 

JOEY TERRILL:

I was like, what? I was like, "Brother, why didn't you tell me? He said, "A couple of reasons; one, I wasn't ready. Two, I didn't want you to maybe think that my interest in you was somehow maybe sexual or something." And he goes, "It wasn't." He goes, "I just appreciate your mind, your creativity, blah, blah. And I wanted to mentor you." I said, "Oh, okay, great." He says, "But you've inspired me. 

JOEY TERRILL:

So, last week, I went and spoke to the" -- I'm going to get all the terminology incorrect -- " head, the Christian brothers at their main house up in Northern California." He said, "I went and presented and told them that I was gay." I said, "You did?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "What did they say? He said, you know what? "They said, Richard, your record is exemplary. You are wonderful with students. You're not the first, 

JOEY TERRILL:

and it's okay." Which, I think for years, he thought that it would be automatic,  being kicked out of the Catholic church. Then we started talking and he told me that, he said, "One of the other newer brothers that's here, brother Glenn, who I had seen briefly, I thought, Oh my God, who's that big queen, big blonde haired queen. Even like, "Hi everybody, I'm brother Glen." And I thought, okay. But he and Richard have clicked. 

JOEY TERRILL:

And he said, "We both can't stand brother Gary." Brother Gary, who was the homophobic literature teacher. He said, "In the evenings, when we have the communal dinner, folks would say, "Oh yeah, I'm going to go see so-and-so, or I'm going to the movies over here," whatever. And they had several cars at the brother's house, but brother Gary never talked about what he was doing, where he was going. He was always stiff and very secretive. 

JOEY TERRILL:

So brother Glenn said, "Let's follow him." And he said, they followed him to a bathhouse. Bingo. I knew, okay. So brother Gary, his homophobia, his harassment of me was directly connected to his own internalized homophobia and self-loathing right. Which I always sort of knew about that in theory or what I had read in different articles and stuff. But now, I knew it precisely. 

JOEY TERRILL:

They said then another time they followed him and he had gone down to Selma Avenue. In Hollywood, at that time, Selma Avenue, which is one block South of Hollywood Boulevard, is where gay life and lowlife intersect. And it was all the hustlers on Selma. You could see them stand, there's one dressed as a sailor, there's one dressed in like short, daisy dukes, long blonde hair and whatever.

JOEY TERRILL:

They followed him down there as he picked someone up. But they kept the secret, they didn't confront him, whatever. And I was like, "Oh my God, I feel like writing him." Because now he was vice-principal by the time, and I wanted to write some anonymous notes just to torture him, but I thought, you know what, why bother? I said, "I can't do that." Then it was confirmed, because within a few months after that, 

JOEY TERRILL:

my best friend, Terry who ... And at that time we hung out with other street kids and teenagers, whatever in Hollywood. Because if we couldn't get into the clubs, because we didn't have fake IDs, we would just hang out and talk to each other. There were coffee shops and there was, like, record stores, things like that. It was something to do, an activity, but you also were socializing and cruising and meeting one another.

JOEY TERRILL:

I also recognize that a lot of the kids that I found out there were from elsewhere, they were runaways, throwaways, they were indicative of, as we know now that a lot of homeless youth are LGBTQ, particularly in Los Angeles. Terry was down there and he came and told me, he said, "You'll never guess who I ran into on Las Palmas and Selma. I was like, 

JOEY TERRILL:

"What, who?" "Brother Gary." He said, it was the red light, and he was walking with his friend Mickey and brother Gary's VW pulled up at the red light, and that he saw him. So, he went and knocked on the window, the driver's window. And he said, "Miss brother, Gary girl, what are you doing down here?" I said, "You did not address him that way." He goes, "I sure did." I was like, "Oh wow, good for you." And he says, "Oh, I'm visiting a friend 

JOEY TERRILL:

who's in the hospital." And Terry is like, "Where's the hospital? Selma Avenue?" "Oh, I got to go, bye." The light changed. I was thrilled. I felt vindicated. But I also thought and recognized, Oh my God. I felt sorry for him. I mean, I don't know what that would be like to live a life like that. Then in my junior year ... Oh, go ahead.

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

Really quick. Sorry. So, this is actually a great time to pause, because the lighting has moved a little bit. And Andrew can talk more about it also, by the way, I knew Gary was gay. As soon as he mentioned him [crosstalk]. It's like Lindsey Graham, we've known he's gay, [crosstalk] so terrible.

JOEY TERRILL:

Yes, lady Lindsey.

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

Lady G, that's ...

JOEY TERRILL:

Right, lady G. Do you need me to adjust the light?

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

I went to Catholic school, the one boy I've ever had a crush on, active crush on, was the nephew of the principal, who was -- what do they call themselves? They're like a Holy order in Cuba that I can't think of right now. But it's kinda like the brothers, and I can't think of what they're. But anyway, he was like, really high up there in the church. We were, like, obsessed with each other. People hated how obsessed we were because 

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

we had this weird friendship and we had a crush on each other or whatever. We're both gay now, which is perfect. But it's like, to me, like I always says the people who are most hateful are people who are just closeted, just literally closeted. We know they are. What reason? Why are you so hateful? Yeah. Just like, I know that story. We had one, her name was Ms. Cruz, and she was the worst. She also came after me because we did a mock election. 

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

I mean, I'm 28, so I'm relatively young, obviously. We did a mock election for Gore and Bush, and for Kerry and Bush. Over both of those elections, I was like one of the lone people who voted for the Democrat, and like for the week after, she was just like, "Clearly, you're just pro-sodomizer and baby killer." Which she would just do for like days.

JOEY TERRILL:

Wow.

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

It was a good thing that she did, especially sodomizer and the gays, like that was always something that she would bring up for whatever reason, kind of like, what is your obsession with the gays? What is your obsession with it? Which, of course, nobody was out at the time. [crosstalk] clearly you have a vendetta.

JOEY TERRILL:

Yeah, yeah, no, and the world's history is filled with those examples, right? J. Edgar Hoover. I mean, you can go down the line and ....

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

Lindsey Graham.

JOEY TERRILL:

Lindsey Graham. Yup.

ANDREW LUSH:

Okay. Okay. Hey, real quick. Joey, I think as the light has shifted, it's just gotten a little darker in there. Do you remember that cardboard?

JOEY TERRILL:

Do you want me to remove it? Okay.

ANDREW LUSH:

Add a little more light back into the

JOEY TERRILL:

All right. So, let's see. I'm gonna, I'm gonna just open the blinds a little bit and see if that helps.

ANDREW LUSH:

Just a little bit, yeah. Yeah, it's funny. It's so great on Zoom, but on the recording cameras, it's just too dark.

JOEY TERRILL:

Is that good enough or we need more?

ANDREW LUSH:

I think that's perfect. That's amazing. Yeah. And that's it. I'm good. We are recording again.

JOEY TERRILL:

Okay.

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

Wonderful. Okay, Joey. I'm going to have you go a little bit ... It's funny because you've been answering a lot of my questions that I had for you. Great. But I want to go a little farther back, because I anticipate it's a big part of who you are and you've got a lot to say with this, but I think for Latinos, family is everything, especially when we grow up, this idea of that white nuclear family is not our family. I'm assuming it's not yours either.

JOEY TERRILL:

Right. It's definitely ...

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

[Spanish phrases] that went to church with your mom, and that is all family. I think because of that coming out, isn't the coming out story that we oftentimes hear, at least, for Latinos. It definitely wasn't for me, I'm assuming it wasn't for you too. So, I want to know, I'm curious how your coming out journey was, and not just with your family, but with your, with your entire community. 

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

And in that same vein, I want to know how your Latina, your being Chicano impacts how you practice queerness. And the reason I say practice is because I anticipate for you, it's about more than just the identity, right. That your being Chicano and your being gay are not two separate things, but rather just two facets of who you are.

JOEY TERRILL:

Absolutely.

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

I know it's a big question. I mean, [inaudible] have a lot to say about it.

JOEY TERRILL:

Okay. Well, first of all, I'll if I can backtrack a little bit. So, when I was talking about how I lived when my mom was in the hospital, sometimes, I go live with my aunt and my cousin, and sometimes my sister would live with a different aunt and then other times we'd come back together and stuff. So, I engaged with my tias and a couple of uncles -- uncles by marriage -- and cousins differently than I think a lot of families do. 

JOEY TERRILL:

By third grade, I went to go live with my aunt Sarah and uncle Rudy. My aunt Sarah was my mother's sister, and I adored them. I adored my aunt Sarah and uncle Rudy. They were married for 73 years and still could make each other laugh. They passed away about seven years ago, I think. No, actually, I think it was nine years ago,

JOEY TERRILL:

maybe. But when I went to go live with them, it was with my cousin, Pat, who was four years older. And my cousin Mike, we were about the same age. He was one year older than I, and we almost looked like twins, but could we be more different? Cousin Mike was the jock, he played football. He was kind of the ... I used to think of him as, God, he's such a roughian, whereas I like to think of myself as having a little more class, 

JOEY TERRILL:

decorum, and I was an artist. Then, cousin Pat, I knew before she knew, like "Cousin Pat, you're gay, just like me." I knew it. She was a big tomboy. But we bonded. And to this day she is the closest member of my family. But when we were living there with them, when we were children, when I was nine years old, I remember my uncle Rudy who married my aunt Sarah. 

JOEY TERRILL:

He was from El Paso, Texas. The stories were that he used to be a pachuco, back in the day. He had even revealed to us that he had actually smoked pot, back when he was in El Paso, Texas. The thing was that my uncle Rudy was a cook, he cooked all the time. He and my aunt Sarah both worked, 

JOEY TERRILL:

but the role was reversed in terms of domesticity. He was the cook, he was the chef. My other aunts used to say, "Oh my God, Sarah lucked out.  She doesn't have to cook. Rudy is such a good cook. He's always there." But I remember one time when cousin Mike was ... They were going to play football or something out in the street, whatever, and I just was not interested at all. I remember my uncle Rudy saying kind of out loud to my aunt and cousins, 

JOEY TERRILL:

and to me, he said, "Let Joey be who he wants to be." "If he wants to color and do drawing, so what? Let him do that." I just remember in my heart and my head going, "Oh my God, thank you uncle." That was the right thing to say, and it did set the right tone for me being able to just be who I was because my other male cousins were a little more on the macho side. Right. 

JOEY TERRILL:

Then my cousin, Danny, who was maybe like 16 or something, when I was 10, we go over and I spend the night and we'd have these little like nights where, I don't know, he seems like he's asleep and it doesn't seem to bother him that I'm feeling around and snuggling up next to him or whatever.

JOEY TERRILL:

And I actually ended up masturbating him. Right. But Danny would never talk about it. And I recognized that that was something that was forbidden. You just didn't talk about that, no matter what you might've done at night. My aunt Josie, the matriarch of the family on the other hand had already indicated to me, by the time I was 12 or 13, she said, "Mijo, those pants that you're wearing, don't you think they look a little queery?

JOEY TERRILL:

You might want to maybe wear some other kinds of pants or whatever." So, I was very aware that within the family, my uncle Rudy was cool with who I was, my aunt Sarah was cool. And, of course, cousin Pat was a lesbian, but the other aunts and tias were very, very homophobic, even if they weren't overtly that way. And then my cousin Ruby, 

JOEY TERRILL:

Josie's daughter, one time we were ... When we lived in Highland park, I hadn't realized this until I was already out of high school, but Highland park, it's an old neighborhood in LA, it has a history of having artisans and artists, and therefore musicians, therefore it had a history of LGBTQ, over the years. There were about four gay bars in Highland park that I didn't even know. 

JOEY TERRILL:

Growing up there, I had no idea. There was also one person, her name was Mary Lou, and she was what you would call trans today. But back then we just called her a drag queen. She would dress like a big chola, and she'd be up and down, walking up Figueroa street. And everyone knew her. Everyone says, "Hey, Mary Lou, how you doing?" "How are you?" And I just remember thinking, wow, she is so brave and more power to her. But I also thought, is that what I'm supposed to be? 

JOEY TERRILL:

I was looking for role models, right? And then one time my cousin Ruby, we were at the laundromat next to my aunt Josie's house. As we were doing our laundry, there was a gentleman, a white guy with blonde hair, he was taking his clothes and putting them into the dryer, and then he left. Then, my cousin Ruby said, "Did you see that man? See, he went over to Tykes, the bar." She goes, 

JOEY TERRILL:

"That's a gay bar." I said, "Oh, really?" She goes, "Yes." And I was intrigued, I was excited, but I wasn't going to say, "Oh, I'd love to go in it." She said, "And you could tell by looking at his hands." She says, "You see how clean his fingernails were. That's how you can tell when they're gay." So, of course, I made sure that I always tried to have dirty nails so that no one would suspect me. Depending on which aunt and cousins I would visit, 

JOEY TERRILL:

I had to kind of present or hold back my natural inclination. With my other aunt and uncle, and certainly with cousin Pat, I could be more free and who I was. Another thing that comes out of this, and maybe this will explain something. In 1974, just after high school,

JOEY TERRILL:

I used to go to the gay funky dances that were fundraisers for the gay community center. They were held at troopers hall in Hollywood. $1 to get in, if you didn't have the dollar, they'd still let you in any way, no age limit. So, that's where all the teenagers would go. And you knew that it was a good fun place and you would meet and cruise and all this other stuff. But I met a couple of friends there and one was a college student named Vincent.

JOEY TERRILL:

He said, "I'm doing my Chicano studies class at Cal state LA. And I asked the instructor if he won't mind, if I could bring in someone who is a gay Chicano. Also," he goes, "I was thinking of asking someone who might be a lesbian and to come and speak to us." And I said, "Yeah," because he knew that I was already on the speakers Bureau for the gay community center. I said, "Sure, I would love to do that." So, I got my friend, Martha. Martha and I, we were best friends. 

JOEY TERRILL:

She went to Sacred Heart High School. I went to Cathedral High School, and I had actually heard about her. Because back in the day, like the Catholic schools, well, Oh, the girls [inaudible], Oh yeah. They're all sluts, blah, blah. The guys that talk all this shit, whatever. And apparently the girls would talk to. And so Martha had heard of me because she had heard these rumors that there's this guy at Cathedral, he's really handsome, but he's gay. Then I had heard of this girl who was bisexual, and it was at the one of the Christopher street west pride marches 

JOEY TERRILL:

that a mutual friend Carlos said, Oh, Joey, I'd like to introduce you to Martha. And I was like, "Martha," I said, "Do you go to Sacred Heart?  She goes, "Oh my God, you're Joey from Cathedral?" And we immediately bonded and we became best friends. Then I made the ... Wow, not the mistake, but I introduced her to my cousin Pat, and they ended up being lovers for five years. That meant I had to find other people that have a car to drive me, but that's another story. But anyway, Martha and I went to this class 

JOEY TERRILL:

and it was taught by a professor in Chicano studies. And it was all these students and I guess each session or each class, they would have speakers who would talk about, I'm a journalist or I'm in law, I'm a law student, from the perspective of being Chicano. I talked about it and I emphasize that my experience so far showed me that this whole fallacy of somehow 

JOEY TERRILL:

Chicano identity is entrenched with the concept of la familia and that there's no room for gays or lesbian. I said, I think that's really false. I said, I see people and friends that, and maybe this has been your experience, but there there's a family and maybe there's four kids, the one's gay, but the other three are heterosexual. And as they get older, either the abuelo 

JOEY TERRILL:

or the mother or father are getting frail and they need someone to take care of them who takes care of them. It's the lesbian, it's the gay son who is there to take care of their parent. I mean, that's part of being Latino, but it's also that, "Oh, my other sons, they got their own families now, their own marriages." And sometimes to a degree that I just thought, how could anyone not accept 

JOEY TERRILL:

that Bobby or Johnny taking care of their abuelos are not family. That was the thrust of my conversation about being Chicano or Latino. I knew Martha also took care of her mother who was in frail health. She also ended up taking care of her older sister when her sister died too. And Martha presented that as well, that we're not from some other culture 

JOEY TERRILL:

or whatever, that we have a history and connection to Mexico and being Latino. And we got a good response from the students. But as we ended our presentation, the instructor said, "Well, I want to thank our guests for coming in here today." But he said, "I have to disagree that the identity of being Chicano is based on la familia, 

JOEY TERRILL:

and there is no room for lesbians and gay men." I mean, he was just blatant about it, and I turned to all the students, I said, "Do you see what I'm talking about? Do you see what we're facing? See what we have to deal?" I mean, I couldn't believe it. Anyway, it turns out that years later, professor Ricky Rodriguez, who wrote about my artwork, I was telling him that story, it turns out that he had that same professor years later, that he was homophobic and he used to criticize professor Ricky Rodriguez. But anyway, that's another thing.

JOEY TERRILL:

In my family, the perception was that Joey is a good son, he takes care of his mom. He's a good big brother, he takes care of his sister. And I did it gladly, that was part of my identity. I really don't know, if I was Irish American or Italian American, I think I would have been the same. I mean, in terms of wanting to take care of my mom and my sister, 

JOEY TERRILL:

it was a whole part of my identity. One of the things that happened, I'll tell you. When I came out to my mom, I had been planning -- I think I was 15, I guess -- I was planning how I would present it. I thought, I know I'm gonna sit down calmly, maybe make dinner, cause I was the cook. And then say, mom, I want to share something with you, blah, blah, blah. Well, instead it was during the summer,

JOEY TERRILL:

I had teenage angst. I was bored and sitting there and just pulling my hair and my mom was sweeping and cleaning the apartment and she was kind of upset that day. She was kind of nagging at me and saying, Mijo, you haven't cleaned your room and blah, blah, blah, and I'm sick and tired of this and that, whatever. And she goes, "And look at the way you're dressed." [inaudible] She goes, "You look like a queer. You want me to tell people that you are queer?" And I just responded. I said, "Yes, because I am," 

JOEY TERRILL:

The minute those words came out, oh, I wish I could have taken them back. It wasn't the way I planned it. My mom was stunned, and she kind of just sat down and the tears started rolling down her eyes. I went over to comfort her. I was like, "Mom, I need to explain, let's talk about this." And she just looked at me and said, "I'd rather you be a heroin addict. I'd rather you be a murderer in jail 

JOEY TERRILL:

than to be a homosexual." And I was like, "Ouch, ouch. That hurts. That hurts a lot." I said, "Mom, you don't know what you're talking about." She was weeping and she said, "If it weren't for your sister, I would kill myself." I knew that, Hey, my mom's frailty mentally, emotionally, and then I was realizing, oh my God, is this going to set her off into a new depression? It took some time, 

JOEY TERRILL:

but my mom had to get her medication to treat her schizophrenia, so she would go to a psychiatrist. And what I learned years later is that the psychiatrist, especially back then, especially if you were a woman, they didn't really talk to you very much. It was sort of like, "Oh yeah, did you do this? Did you do that? Okay, here's your prescription, bye." She said, "Joey, please, please, please. I need you to talk to a psychiatrist. Come on." I was like, 

JOEY TERRILL:

"Oh mom, I really don't want to, I don't need to." She goes, "Do you wish you were a girl?" I go, "No, mom, you don't understand." I said, "I know I'm a boy. I like that. I'm a boy, and I like other boys." "Okay. Okay." But I finally said, "Okay, I'll go with you to this psychiatrist, Dr. Wong." It was Dr. Wong. His office was on Wilshire. I went and he said, "I'm going to give you a test." It's a questionnaire. 

JOEY TERRILL:

I'm going to get the name wrong, but I think it's the Minnesota, Minneapolis something mental test or whatever. Sounds like something that Trump took or something. It asks all these questions, and some of the same questions, but they would be worded differently. It was everything from, I think there are angels in this world. Sometimes I can tell that the devil is at play. I have diarrhea more than most people. I mean, it was like an odd kind of thing. We took that test and then he finally calculated 

JOEY TERRILL:

whatever it was. He was calculating. And then he shows me this paper chart, and he had this up and down line, this graph, and he said, "See, so this measures your femaleness and it's extremely high. And then this is your maleness and it's very low." He says, "You have an imbalance, chemical imbalance in your brain, and we can correct that with medication." And I said, "You know what? Hold on." I said, "If you're asking me these questions that 

JOEY TERRILL:

if I think it's okay for a man to kiss a man and I say, yes, and you put that as female." I said, "No wonder it comes off that way." He goes, "No, I'm going to give you a prescription for Thorazine." And my mom said, "Come on, let's get that prescription." I said, "Mom, you know what? I don't trust this doctor. I think he's wrong. I don't think I have a chemical imbalance." And I said, "Let's ask Betty." Terry's mom, my best friend, Terry's mom 

JOEY TERRILL:

who actually had been involved with heroin, apparently, but she was a nurse. And so when my mom got on the phone with her, Betty told her, she said, "Inez, there's nothing more I would rather have than Joey and Terry to be straight." She goes, "But not if they have to be on Thorazine." She goes, "They give that to mentally disturbed, violent offenders," blah, blah, blah. So my mom said, "Okay, that's good enough for me. Let's not do that." But my mom said, "Let's go to a different counselor." 

JOEY TERRILL:

So, we looked up and we went to a community-based counseling, where it was all run by Latinos, Chicanos, and other Latinos too, I guess. We went. There was this, he could have been over 30, a Latino, I forget what his background was, but he was a marriage and family planning counselor, whatever. He interviewed me and my mom, and I was expecting, potentially, I was like, who knew, but I thought he was going to come out with this,

JOEY TERRILL:

there's no room for gays and lesbians in la familia blah, blah, blah. But instead he looked at my mom and he said, "Hearing your son, I don't think he has a problem." He goes, "I think you have a problem with his homosexuality." He says, "I think that there's probably a lot that he could teach you, you could learn." And my mom was just like, Oh my gosh, like, how dare ... But again, I was like, wow, this man was to me right on the money. 

JOEY TERRILL:

And I also started to recognize that within the Latino or Chicano diaspora community, that there were forward minded, pro-gay/lesbian people who were progressive, and I think he was a heterosexual man. From that point on, little by little, I started to talk to my mom more and more about me and being gay. 

JOEY TERRILL:

And I pointed out to her that, "My friends that have come over, Ronnie, Alfred and Eddie." And she goes, "What? No, no, they're not gay." I go, "Yeah, mom, they are." She goes, "Oh my God, I don't believe it. I don't believe it." She just couldn't believe that there were so many gay Latinos. Then I remember, 

JOEY TERRILL:

I think I might've mentioned this in my other conversation, where she was saying about, "How do you tell, how can you tell if somebody is gay?" She goes, "I can't tell." She goes, I'm around all these people, and especially within the context of Latinos, like, it was really difficult for her to like, she saw Liberace on TV, she would go, oh yeah, great Liberace. But I said, "Mom, it's gaydar." She goes, "What? [inaudible] gaydar, what are you talking about?" I said, "You look at each other just a little bit longer 

JOEY TERRILL:

and you can kind of know." So, wherever we would go, when we'd be out, I would elbow my mom and go "Mom, the waiter." "Oh, I know. How can you tell?" I said, "Mom, cause when he came over, he looked at me and I could tell that little glint in his eyes." She goes, "Oh, I don't believe it. I don't know how you can tell." I said, mom Mr. Ted, who would do her hair, Mr. Ted [inaudible]. 

JOEY TERRILL:

She said, "Joey, just because he plucks his eyebrows and dyes his hair doesn't mean he's gay." I said, "Mom listen to what you just said." She started laughing. She goes, Oh my God. And so she started to become more aware, and she would point out at times, "I think Mr. so-and-so is gay. I think Senor so --" "Mom, I think you're right." And when my mom was well, I want to make sure, I've been giving all this information about my mom when she was sick and in her spell and paranoid

JOEY TERRILL:

 and all that. But when she was well, we were best friends. Our role as adults, parent, and child, we were more like friends. And I think some of that had to do with, she knew or recognized that I played a role in kind of keeping her functioning in society. She ended up loving all of my friends

JOEY TERRILL:

 and accepting them. And then I told her, I said, "Mom, cousin Pat --" "Oh, no, cousin Pat's a lesbian? "Oh, well, you know what, come to think of it, oh, I guess --" She started to two and two together, whatever. Then my cousin Danny, who was very troubled, the one that I used to fiddle with when I'd stay overnight, he called me up out of the blue one day. And this was shortly after I had come out to my mom. 

JOEY TERRILL:

And he started yelling at me on the phone. He said, "I just heard that you said that you're a queer, that you're a faggot." And he said, "I just got to tell you, you better just stay away from me and stay away from my sister Ruby," which didn't make any kind of sense to me. Like, what? I'm gay, why would I do anything to your sister? And  Ruby was educated, she was a Chicana advocate as well, 

JOEY TERRILL:

for women and stuff. I was like, I have no control over Ruby, but he said, "And I've got a shotgun." He goes, "I'll come over there and I'll shoot you." He threatened to kill me. I was, I was horrified. I was just, I was blubbering. I was crying. I was scared. And I remember, I said, "Oh, I gotta call cousin Pat and tell her." My aunt Sarah, cousin Pat's mom, aunt Sarah and uncle Rudy, who I lived with for a couple years growing up. Aunt Sarah answered the phone. 

JOEY TERRILL:

And she said, "Joey, what's wrong. What's the matter I can tell." I said, "Oh, aunt Sarah, cousin Danny called me up and he threatened to kill me because I'm gay," blah, blah, blah. And she's like, that son of a bitch, who the hell does -- I've never heard my aunt cuss. Who the hell does he think he is? You and Pat are part of this family, no matter what. He has no right to blah, blah, blah. I was like, thank you. Thank you. And so, once again, I recognized that, where I said that some of the family was homophobic, 

JOEY TERRILL:

but the ones that weren't were very supportive and just accepted that, no, Joey and Pat are part of this family and that's the way it is. So, [inaudible] that was part of my accepting and understanding that it is possible to be who I am and be in my identity as a Chicano or Latino. 

JOEY TERRILL:

So, that would happen there. Then, in high school ... Oh, go ahead.

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

Your head is kind of cutting off a little bit, so it might make sense to like ... So, if you're going to get closer, just like take a little bit of a step back. Does that work, Andrew?

JOEY TERRILL:

Is that better?

ANDREW LUSH:

Yeah, that's great. It was just your hair when you lean forward. So, that's great. That's great. And do you want to just lean forward a little, just to show us what that would look like when you emphasize? Great.

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

[inaudible]. Okay. So, are you ready again?

JOEY TERRILL:

Yeah.

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

All right. Great. So, I want to talk a little about your artwork specifically in that same vein of being who you are, right? So, from what I've seen of your artwork, right? It almost feels like it's some window into all of what you are, right? Imagery of objects, [inaudible] that you've created and [inaudible] to culture, 

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

but also to queer culture. But it's very much these everyday things. Right. And it almost feels that your artwork is trying to demystify what white people think is so mysterious about being Chicano about being queer. When I say white people, I mean straight white people. Is that intentional? Is it intentional that you bring all of who you are in a way that almost seems ordinary, everyday.

JOEY TERRILL:

Short answer, yes, it is intentional. I was in high school when I recognized that, and this was part of like, two things. Two things were happening at the same time, my involvement with la huelga and being a volunteer for the farm workers, and the Chicano power movement, I mean, art and imagery, and iconography 

JOEY TERRILL:

is such an essential part of the development of that kind of advocacy and identity, and that included, like, getting back to one's Aztec heritage, and there was all, [inaudible] graphics was doing silk screens. Art was a part of the whole la huelga movement, with the icon of the Eagle, the [inaudible]. And there was all these artists, Chicano artists in LA, that it was all a kind of percolating at that time. 

JOEY TERRILL:

I knew, I mean, I was on the periphery of that, but I also recognized that, hey, some of these Chicano artists, you know what? I know that they're gay too, right. At the same time, I was also going to the gay community center. I was part of the gay youth group there. I was on their speakers Bureau. And, again, iconography and imagery related to being gay or lesbian was something that was prominent. So, there were these two kind of parallel 

JOEY TERRILL:

endeavors going on within both communities. And I was interested in seeing, what does that look like to kind of combine them, and, or where they intersect? So, that was definitely conscious on my part when I entered college in 1973, I went to Immaculate Heart College. The reason I chose to go to Immaculate Heart -- I think I had mentioned before that I had been accepted at UC Berkeley,

JOEY TERRILL:

as well as Immaculate Heart -- UC Berkeley was huge, big, it's its own city. I knew that moving up there, I think I, I said, "I just don't know how, how would I fit in?" I wouldn't have any family, no familia. Also, I already had a circle and network of support among queer youths and friends here in L.A. So, I decided to go to Immaculate Heart College. Immaculate Heart, for those that don't know, was a formerly all-girls college 

JOEY TERRILL:

run by the Immaculate Heart Order of Nuns, and in the 1960s, there was an international focus on Immaculate Heart because of sister Corita Kent. She ran the art department there, and her works were a combination of pop art, pop culture and iconography, with socially progressive and spiritual messaging. So, there would be things related to either Jesus' words

JOEY TERRILL:

or Martin Luther King or quotes from Albert Camus to poets, and also speaking out against the war and racism. And I just thought, wow, I love that. I love the activism, the advocacy. The fact that it was a Catholic nun who was doing this, it just really appealed to the Catholic young student in me. I wanted to go to Immaculate Heart. She left Immaculate Heart, 

JOEY TERRILL:

I think in 1968 or 69, but I was aware of her art. She was given a woman of the year award in L.A., but at the same time, Cardinal McIntyre was very conservative in L.A., and he had warned the Immaculate Heart Order that if they didn't stop these kinds of socially progressive, communist inspired art and anti-war things, that they would be kicked out,

JOEY TERRILL:

or whatever they call it, from the Catholic church. I loved that their response was, "You know what, we don't care. We know that we are doing the right thing. It comes from our hearts and we're following the words of Jesus Christ." So, they ended up getting out of the Catholic church. They decided to maintain themselves as a religious community. They kept the name Immaculate Heart, because it could be a metaphor for having a clean, 

JOEY TERRILL:

you know, in a spiritual sense. They also rethought the structure; we're still a religious community, why do we have to only be Catholic? Why not let in Jews or Muslims or whoever? Why do we all only have to be women? If males want to join our community, let them do that. In '73, when I was going to enter Immaculate Heart, they'd also gone co-ed. So to me, all of that was like impetus for me to go there.

JOEY TERRILL:

I also knew that I would be taught by the students of Corita Kent. So to me, it was like two degrees of separation. And so some of the first images, and one of them is a silkscreen. Immaculate Heart was known for their silkscreen department. One of my first silk screens is in the access window exhibit, it's called dormido. It's a very stylized image 

JOEY TERRILL:

of two men asleep or lying next to each other, very affectionate. And there were students at Immaculate Heart that loved it, but there was also an underlying Catholic, maybe a little conservative element that sort of looked at it as, "Oh my God, what is he doing?" My work from the start of doing silkscreens was images of lesbians, gays, 

JOEY TERRILL:

me, my boyfriend, Roberto, and I just pursued that from the start. The other thing, when I started to do paintings, I recognized that there's this clash of identities among Latinos and Chicanos. When I started going to gay bars, when I started going to the Latino clubs and bars there was this element of 

JOEY TERRILL:

what I considered to be a reflection of the self-loathing, some of the same cholos and whatever that used to harass me, I run into at the gay clubs, right? So, obviously they were coming to grips with their own sexuality or orientation, but there were at least five, six times that I remember where fights would break out. Now to me, you're going to a club to dance, 

JOEY TERRILL:

listen to music, make out, meet somebody, blah, blah, blah, have a good time. But instead, they would be fighting just like they were gang members out in the streets. That boggled my mind. And some of the most macho, hetero presenting masculine cholos who were closeted, were fighting over another guy. So, I recognized right away

JOEY TERRILL:

 that it wasn't for me, it wasn't just enough to proclaim myself as a gay Chicano, that we had our own issues that we needed to deal with within our culture, and that's what led to my doing the homeboy beautiful magazine which it wasn't a zine in the traditional sense of a magazine that would have different issues and that would be ongoing or sustaining, it was an art piece 

JOEY TERRILL:

that was done in a magazine format. When I was in Immaculate Heart College, at that time, in the seventies, painting was considered dead, and that happens about every 10, 12 years where in the art world, painting is considered a passe or done. And there's new, either conceptual art or installation work or at that time, the feminist movement was in full flower. The mantra at Immaculate Heart was the personal is political.

JOEY TERRILL:

Well, if the personal was political for all these women, well guess what the personal for me was also political, and that segued into my needing to do art about myself as a gay Latino. What that also meant was that there were a number of exhibits for Chicano art, Chicano art day, that were following along the lines of the usual iconography, 

JOEY TERRILL:

it's big Aztec faces, the big [inaudible] statues the fist like [Spanish], that kind of thing. And here I was showing men lying next to each other, hugging each other. Well, that didn't go over well. Essentially, my art was marginalized within the Chicano community as being too gay or queer, and that it wouldn't sell. 

JOEY TERRILL:

That was something that I also had to contend with and deal with. And then there were times in my paintings where I would exhibit in gay spaces, like A Different Light bookstore in Silver Lake, and I was glad, that's where I would meet other Latinos and Latinas who were proud and gay or lesbian as well, and that was how I developed a network of artistic circles of 

JOEY TERRILL:

what we would call queer Latinx today. I remember one time exhibiting my paintings, because I painted my sister, I painted my lovers, I painted myself, self-portraits. And there were two critiques I used to get. A lot of times in the Chicano art world, the imagery that you would show would be the barrio, the neighborhood, the tamalada making tamales, 

JOEY TERRILL:

the low riders, all this stuff. But there weren't very many self-portraits per se, but I became familiar with Frida Kahlo when I was just entering college, and I was blown away. I loved, and still do appreciate, her work. I knew that a lot of Chicano artists at that time were taking from Frida Kahlo imagery, 

JOEY TERRILL:

and people were dressing up like her, and women would like, paint in their eyebrows. For me, the power of Frida's work was that personal confessional aspect to her work. She showed her pain. She showed her birth. That painting of her birth, still, it's such a powerful image to me and it's so small. 

JOEY TERRILL:

One of the strategies for my making art is that I'm going to make it personal and confessional warts and all. Sometimes, my work would be graphic, sexually graphic, not necessarily showing the sex act, but nudity and nakedness, but from a personal standpoint. Not like, "Oh, look at me, I'm a big macho." It's like, I love Tom of Finland. 

JOEY TERRILL:

Hector Silva is another, Latino artists that does all these wonderful representations of gay Chicanx culture and homeboys and stuff. I looked at that as well, that's great, they're doing that, but only I can do Joey Terrill's versions. I was doing that and I used to get, sometimes, a criticism that gee, you're so self-absorbed, you're always painting yourself. 

JOEY TERRILL:

Are you conceited or what? And I said, "No." I said,  "When you hear a singer that's singing a ballad or a song, they're singing about heartbreak and love, they're singing about themselves, their experience does that mean they're conceited?" I said, "I think every artist that's worth anything is putting something of themselves, even if they're doing abstractions, into their work." So, that's how I viewed it and looked at it. When I was exhibiting at a different light bookstore 

JOEY TERRILL:

one time, and that the gay community was really receptive to my work, but I remember this, he was an older gay man at that time. And he said, "I'm looking at this. You only paint dark haired people. Why is that?" I said, "Well, I'm painting my life experience. And guess what? I live among dark-haired, Latinos and Mexicans. I don't think he even realized how unintentionally racist that was, 

JOEY TERRILL:

that kind of a question. I was aware, at times, that within the gay context, my work wasn't homoerotic enough because they were looking for, Oh yeah, we want the hot men and whatever, and Joey's painting these Latinos sleeping and that's all they're doing, sleeping, not fucking. Then in the Chicano art world, Oh, your work is too queer, too gay, men holding hands, blah, blah, blah. So, there was always walking this fine line ...

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

Really quick, cause I have a question in relation to that, which I think is really great. So, the LGBTQ movement has evolved a lot, so has the Latino movement, Latinx movement, Chicano movement, these movements have evolved a lot.  We have new Latinos running for office, we have Latinos in pop culture, but 

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

I think there's a lot of critique about the mainstream LGBTQ movement, and you kind of got at it a little bit about the racism, and also like the obsession with hypersexuality, seen as liberation. Right. Which it is for some people. Right. But I think now in the era of Pride parades and Fire Island parties right -- which are also happening during COVID, but that's a different story. Do you feel that the movement has deviated 

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

a little bit from its radical roots? And do you still see your work as an act of protest today?

JOEY TERRILL:

I would say that the perception of the work in terms of it being a protest or advocating for, fill in the blank, is really more a reflection of who is doing the viewing or the judging. I feel like I am continuing to do the strategies that I have always done 

JOEY TERRILL:

in terms of looking at the intersection of gay, Latino identity for myself. But I feel like there is now in the 21st century, a much greater audience for an acceptance of the work in a way that there really wasn't in the seventies and eighties. The fact that I've been in these exhibits or shows where

JOEY TERRILL:

young academics and curators are investigating queer Latinx history, culture, blah, blah, blah, and the fact that I'm even doing this interview, telling my stories shows me that, Oh my God, things have evolved and changed in a tremendous way. I'll also just point out, I don't know if this is how important this is, but it was one of the reasons why, 

JOEY TERRILL:

in the early nineties, I joined the organization, VIVA, the organization for gay and lesbian Latino artists. That's what it was called, and that's what we did. I was on the board for five years and it was one of the highlights of my life, I like to think. I got to engage with and work with artists and writers and people that I respect tremendously. It would be Luis Alfaro; 

JOEY TERRILL:

it would be Monica Palacios, who had her show at the time, the Latin Lezbo Comic; they would be Miguel Reyes; Teddy Sandoval; Jeff [inaudible]; all these visual artists and filmmakers. And we would do these events throughout LA. The goal was always to present to both the gay white audience, 

JOEY TERRILL:

as well as the Latino or Chicano not gay audience, or both. Right. I hadn't quite realized how pioneering it was at that time. We didn't have the term Latinx, but that's what we were, and that's what we were doing. We also, though, we're trying to address some of the concerns and issues specific to being Latino. For instance, one of the annual events we would do 

JOEY TERRILL:

was called chicks and salsa, and that was a term coined by the lesbians in VIVA. It would be like a dance, but it would also be women performers in their band, or maybe they'd be like female versions of mariachi, but it was all a celebration of [Spanish language], and also mujeres, women.

JOEY TERRILL:

With intent, all the boys, us men, we took the back seat and we were the ones that would wear our chicks and salsa t-shirts that were designed by Diana Garcia. We would check the tickets, we'd serve the food. We were in the sub, I don't want to say subservient, but in the roles that usually were designated to women. The women were the servers, the helpers, the assistants. 

JOEY TERRILL:

For chicks and salsa, we consciously changed those roles. We were always looking at exploring the gender roles specific to being Latina or a woman or a man within Chicano culture, especially. A lot of that, I think, today, it's sort of not just taken for granted. In some ways, it doesn't even exist, 

JOEY TERRILL:

but back then, it was still something that needed to be explored and worked through, and that's what we would do. And then, of course, all of this, all of my story is inflected with the impact of HIV and AIDS. And so, with me, if I was doing work and artwork that was reflective of my community, my experience, my lovers, my family, 

JOEY TERRILL:

it just naturally started to also be about HIV and AIDS, including the impact specifically in the Latino Chicano community. There's a number of works that I've done that were specifically around addressing HIV and AIDS that I did when I was a member of VIVA, as well as just on my own, which I can talk about or not. I don't know if that's sort of answered some of your questions now, the one thing I'll tell you. Yeah.

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

I want to make sure, there's a couple of questions that I want to try to get in and not go too far over, but thank you for that. What I want to ask you is, do you feel that queer people have a type of superpower that makes us a little different.

JOEY TERRILL:

Yes.

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

And what is that?

JOEY TERRILL:

I'm going to go way back, I'm gonna set the time machine back. When I said that I'm part of the youth group at gay community center, right? So, what that meant was that, hey, the youth group is meeting on Monday night at such and such and we'd sit around and we were teenagers. Mostly everyone was in the closet at home. They live with their parents, and our concerns and issues were, I remember we were considered mentally ill, 

JOEY TERRILL:

until I think 1973 or 74. So, we would have discussions like, are we mentally ill? Of course, I was like, "Hell no. No, we're not. I know mental illness, let me introduce you to my mom." But there were young people back then that thought, Oh, I'm wondering if I should try and get cured. I was like, Oh my God. Like, no, please.

JOEY TERRILL:

How can I put this? The cliche or stereotype of gay people being involved in the arts, that was something that I recognized and knew about. We would have these discussions about, why is that? Why is there the stereotype of all the ballet dancers, the choreographers, the painters that this or that, 

JOEY TERRILL:

and we would have these discussions. Some of us thought that it was genetic, others thought that when you come into the world, and you're different, it kind of sets your path to explore and open up in lines of creativity that sort of propel you towards that. I don't know if I necessarily think that's the case now, because you've got so many, like, soldiers, military who are gay, 

JOEY TERRILL:

and even sports figures and people coming out in ways that hadn't before. And they went into those things, not necessarily the creative arts. But I did and have always thought that there's something about every gay person that is just a little bit different, and I say different in a good way. Whether it's enhanced sensitivity to 

JOEY TERRILL:

other people's difference, et cetera. When I was working on Skid Row with the homeless, the duly diagnosed homeless, mentally ill, I was surprised at how many of the social workers, case managers, like myself, and other people were gay and lesbian. And I recognized that, Oh, that same kind of acknowledgement of our difference actually enhances our recognition of, 

JOEY TERRILL:

and service to people who are different, seeking justice, seeking equality, whether it's around civil rights, whether it's Black Lives Matter, whether it's about women's rights gender based violence. I mean, I think that overall, I think, it's extremely rare to find someone who's gay or lesbian and to be so close-minded and narrow. I know they exist. Like you mentioned, lady G, right. I mean, 

JOEY TERRILL:

but for the most part, everyone that I've ever known that's gay usually has that sort of extra what sensitivity to, observation of, recognition of, fairness, equality difference. And I think that's good.

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

Yeah. And that's actually a great [inaudible], because I was thinking exactly no matter what area of society we're in, we're everywhere. And I think that actually, [inaudible] I think about it 

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

that we are in military, in politics, we're in arts, in the fight and the front lines. And I know it's a really powerful thing to say. In that same vein, if you can tell your 15 year old self anything, what would it be?

JOEY TERRILL:

My 50 year old self. Okay.

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

15, one-five.

JOEY TERRILL:

Oh, one-five, okay. Sorry. I get my numbers mixed up. 

JOEY TERRILL:

Wow. If I could tell ... It's hard because I want to say something to myself at 15, that would, that would make me perhaps rethink how I approached dealing with stuff or not dealing with stuff by running away from home. Only because I recognized how much pain I caused my mom and my sister, because I also realized that,

JOEY TERRILL:

Oh my God, my poor sister, she's four years younger than me, and now I have left her to have to take on the caregiver role with my mom. Right. I felt bad about that as well. That if I could somehow inform the 15 year old, guess what, in the future, there's going to be X, Y, and Z, and Latinx, and this and that, and maybe have figured out a different way to mitigate some of the emotional issues I was going through

JOEY TERRILL:

so that I wouldn't have caused pain to my mom. On the other hand, I also would've said to the 15 year old, you know what, you owe it to yourself, to go on an adventure, like going to San Francisco. Cause I actually hitchhiked to San Francisco four times. One of the times that I did, I got to attend this big weekend party at the project [inaudible] with all of these performers.

JOEY TERRILL:

I got to meet the Coquettes, and that was, it just blew my mind. It opened up a whole lot of connections to creativity and queerness and genderfuck and all this stuff. I think that was valuable, and I wish there was some way that I could tell the 15 year old, "Explore those things, but figure out a way to do it where you're not creating such pain for your mom." I think that would be the thing that I would say to the 15 year old.

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

That's great. And it's true. We don't really know these things until they happen. Okay. Is any of your windows open cause we hear a lawnmower.

JOEY TERRILL:

No, I know. It's not that it's the leaf blower and I was hoping that they wouldn't come today, and hopefully they're gonna go to the other side now, but yeah, they just pass by my window. Sorry. Does that, does that throw everything off?

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

We just heard it. We really weren't sure [inaudible] had a window open or something. Why do you think it's important for you to share your story? And I want to add on to that and say your story in all its different facets.

JOEY TERRILL:

Well, I think it's important because I think that human stories are important. I mean, it's something that I've always been interested in knowing, 

JOEY TERRILL:

various stories of people, artists, musicians, even politicians, civil rights leaders, activists, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I mean, there's so many stories and there's so many facets to individuals' lives, particularly in a time when it's so easy to sort of dismiss or 

JOEY TERRILL:

cancel people who are different than ourselves particularly in this time of social media. And this also happens within our own Latinx community. It's my observation. Did I mention to you about the preferred pronouns? Have I mentioned that?

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

No.

JOEY TERRILL:

I'll just share real quick. I was on a panel discussion at [inaudible] street. 

JOEY TERRILL:

We were there talking about queer Latinx art and writing. And it was Alma Lopez who I know, I think it was Alex Danis, and other artists that I've known from VIVA and Juan. We were on a panel in front of all these folks, and we took our turns. They asked Juan, who I adore, he said, "Please state your name, what your art is and your preferred pronouns." Right. 

JOEY TERRILL:

Which, like, okay, I get it. As they went down the line, I was the last one. So, everyone said their preferred pronouns, he or she. Then I said, "Joey Terrill, I'm an artist, I mostly do painting." I said, "But on my preferred pronouns, I don't give a fuck." And people are, Oh my God. Then some people were laughing or even a couple of applause. And I said, "But let me explain." I said, "I want to make sure that everyone knows that I would never intentionally misgender someone. 

JOEY TERRILL:

I'm not interested in that, I would never do that." But I also have to share with you that my experience growing up during those homophobic times and within the Chicano Latino community where we had to deal with the macho expectations of being male, that the way that we would circumvent that and deal with that is we would refer to each other as girl, "Hey girl, 

JOEY TERRILL:

what are you doing?" And it was sort of our way of kind of breaking through those designated gender stereotypes. So, the fact is that now, at the age that I am, I really don't care. If somebody calls me girl, I'm like, yeah, so what?  Or if they referred to me as "She", I'm like, it's okay. The reason I say that it's that I want people to understand that there is room in the whole queer Latinx diaspora 

JOEY TERRILL:

to have individuals who identify as Latino or individuals who say [Spanish]. They don't have to necessarily ... And that, that's okay. And then in terms of gender, there are people who are non-binary, I would always refer to them as they, them et cetera. Then there's some of us that, you know  what? I'm a boy, I'm a man, I accept that, and generally, my pronoun is he, but if you call me, she or girl, I'm okay with that. Does it matter? 

JOEY TERRILL:

Now, you call me a racist, you gotta fight on your hands. Right. There are certain things that I just, I'm sorry, I'll fight you on that one. I was once called sexist by this ... Not a colleague, in the 1980s. She was awful. She was a clinical psychologist for children, and she was horrible. She was very prejudiced towards Latinos.

JOEY TERRILL:

I think she just assumed that me being Latino, I had referenced her by her first name in these notes, and she said, "Don't do that." She said, "I earned my doctorate. So you call me doctor." Whereas all the other doctors, we all were on a first name basis, male, female Asian, black Jewish, it was all first name basis because that was our crew, our team. But she said, "Always call me doctor, 

JOEY TERRILL:

don't be sexist." And I blew up. I said, "You got to understand, calling me a sexist is like calling me a racist." I said, "I was a feminist as a child growing up with my mother and my sister. I take that very seriously." I said, "I just have you know that if I called you by your first name, that's because I'm friendly. I'm not trying to be sexist." And she was all put out of shape, but ...

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

I'm just going to say, this is a white woman, just going to say that.

JOEY TERRILL:

Yeah, she was. [crosstalk] And one of my coworkers, Toya, who was African-American, she told me after she goes, Oh, I didn't want to tell you, but one of the things that Renee had said last month or whatever, is that something was missing or whatever, at her home. And she says that she's suspecting the help, the woman that she hired, because you know how those Latinos are. I was like, what? So, she was accusing the woman that would come in to clean her home of stealing from her just based upon, 

JOEY TERRILL:

not because, "Oh, she seems that way," but because she's Latina, and I thought, okay, that explains a lot. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

Okay. So last question. We're running over time. In your opinion, what is the value of an organization like OUTWORDS that [inaudible] record and share stories like yours, hundreds of other elders [inaudible] stories like you said, and make sure you mentioned OUTWORDS in your answer.

JOEY TERRILL:

Okay. I think the value in having OUTWORDS archiving stories, histories, examples of circumventing homophobia, racism, transphobia, all of those issues and concerns can only benefit everyone who has access to them. Especially, I really invested in wanting young people to be able to have access to their heritage, their stories. 

JOEY TERRILL:

I mean, for me, when I hear anyone's LGBTQ history and story, even if they're white, even if they're Jewish, even if they're women, even if they're trans, I recognize a part of myself in those stories, and I think that's important. Hopefully, I can contribute to that body of work and archiving, and a hundred years from now, there'll be somebody who says, "Oh my God, this is amazing. I love this. I really relate to 

JOEY TERRILL:

what Joey was talking about." I don't know. That might be a simple question, but that's what I think.

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

It's the humanity of it, right? I think that's exactly, it's humanizing our stories [crosstalk] allow us to connect with people no matter how different they are from us.

JOEY TERRILL:

Yeah. I was going to say, I do that when I'm investigating and looking at the black experience, right. When I'm looking at the experience of Mexicans from Mexico, when I'm looking at trans experience.

JOEY TERRILL:

 I mean, it's always fascinating to me to see how people have been able to persevere and sort of combat and succeed over all of that oppression.

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

Yeah. I mean, our story is a story of resistance. Unfortunately, we're out of time. I could listen to you talk forever, truly. I think especially I'm really interested in your unique experience with institutions. We are running over, so I will let Andrew take over.

ANDREW LUSH:

Thank you, Andrea. It's a pleasure to sit in. I'm going to stop the recording.

JOEY TERRILL:

Okay. Thank you, Andrea.

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

Thank you for letting me be here and get to speak to you and listen to you.

ANDREW LUSH:

All right. So, if you need to leave, Andrea [inaudible] time and I'll work.

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

All right, Joey.

JOEY TERRILL:

Okay. Till next time.

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:

Alright, take care.

JOEY TERRILL:

Thank you.