Partial Transcript: ANDREA PINO-SILVA:
Yes. I noticed that. I also wanted to say, too, that I really enjoyed the prep interview that you had with Tom, where - with Bliss - where I was just like, well, Bliss knows a lot more than I do. Because I definitely took notes of things that Bliss said that I'm like, I don't know what he's talking about.

JOHN KILLACKY:
That's all right.

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:
It's interesting because I was in a graduate class this past semester and I didn't love the assigned reading, as no one really does, but there was a book called Gay New York that was assigned, and it taught me a lot about just art culture in New York that I just didn't know about. There's just things like, that's what I love about these interviews, just how much I get to learn. But that's the reason why I wanted to go ahead and send you what I was gonna talk about, in case you wanna look at it, which there really isn't much time. I recognize that, but I did also want to encourage you to explain, if you feel like explaining if there's things that are either jargonized or you want folks to understand that are maybe not familiar with art culture, with New York, with even life during the AIDS pandemic.
I have found that I think particularly for young audiences that just don't understand what life was like before there were rainbows everywhere, for lack of a better way of saying it, I think it's really powerful to hear what life was like and also what community was like. That was one of the things that I actually loved the most about the Gay New York book, is learning how even when people were not necessarily out and proud everywhere, there was a really rich queer community in New York and really all over the country. But I think particularly in New York and I think that stories of community, I think particularly how they intersect with art, I think are really powerful. In your prep interview, you did get at it, and that's something that I would really love to shine as well in the interview, is how community is always present and how it's been present in your own journey, how it's influenced your art. Because I think particularly for young audiences, knowing about that rich history that they come from, I think is really powerful and compelling. That's something that I picked up in your prep interview that I would love to see shine. If you like that.

JOHN KILLACKY:
Yeah. Well, thank you, Andrea, it's really great to kind of talk with you and reflect on that. Currently, I'm a legislator in the Vermont House of Representatives. Pre-COVID, there's an affinity group for kids, for high school kids. 91 kids came to the state house to meet with the out legislators, and there were six of us, and it was so moving for me because I remember in the 60s, in high school saying to my older sister, “I think I'm gay,” and she said, “Okay, I don't know what that means.” There were no role models. There were no media, there were no politicians. The images were of people who were miserable, unhappy being blackmailed, evil, killing themselves. It was amazing to me to fast forward through my life.
And now look back at 91 high school kids from all over the state of Vermont talking to six out legislators. Because the change in our lifetime is pretty profound. I love the idea of talking about this and talking about living through the AIDS pandemic, because I lecture a lot and colleges think it's just a chronic manageable disease and it certainly was not that in the beginning. I look forward to this interview very much, and I appreciate you taking the time to do this.

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:
Of course, thank you. And I will say even in my lifetime, I will be 30 next week, so I'm gonna be 30 years old, and I will tell you that even in my lifetime, I have seen a huge difference. It's something that you know, when you talk about yeah, precisely positive stories and it not being tied to death, not being tied to family rejection is something. I mean, that's basically all I heard, even in the 90s. I think, to me, it's incredible to see young people … I'm a youth leader at a church, and I don't think there is a straight person left. Honestly, I check in every once in a while, [inaudible], I'm not quite sure. And it's incredible to me that young people have, I mean, they have elders, right?
I think that's the biggest thing too. I think that's something that the AIDS crisis took away from us, is a generation of elders. I think it's beautiful to see that there are elders and that they have something to look forward to, they have people, they have community. Because I think, again, when you're told these stories, and this is what life looks like, this is what you're burdened with because of who you are. It's very easy to feel hopeless. I think it's really all you can do. I mean, it's something I even think about. All I can ever hope is to be that person for someone else, even if it's only this is what your life could be like in 10 years from now, I think it makes a big difference.

Keywords: Coming Out; Introduction; LGBTQ History; Oral History; Politics; Representation; Role Models

Partial Transcript: ANDREA PINO-SILVA:
But in that vein, I would love to hear about what your world looked like as a child. I know that you came from a Catholic family in the Midwest. I want to hear about those early days and what your life looked like.

JOHN KILLACKY:
Well, Irish Catholic, which means Irish Catholic, which means Irish Catholic. We went to an Irish Catholic school, we couldn't even play with the publics, the kids who went to public school. It was all Irish Catholic. It was very monochromatic. My father and my grandfather sold cattle at the Chicago Stockyards, and both my grandfathers had come over from Ireland. It really was the only job that the Irish could get at that time in Chicago. It was a working-class family. There were five kids, middle child, first boy. It was very difficult for my father to have his first son be this sissy, this feminine creature. We had a challenging relationship through our life. I remember coming home from a school trip and we went to see the Alvin Ailey dance company. I had never seen a dance before, ever. Culture for us was like Ed Sullivan on Sunday night. That's what we watched. But I came home and at dinner that night with my four siblings and my mother, father, my, I don't know, 10-year-old self or something said, “I know what I'm gonna be now.” My mother said, “Okay, what's that?” “I'm gonna be a modern dancer.”
It's like, it didn't exist. I had to explain what it was and what I saw, but that day I knew that whatever was on that stage, I wanted it. I wanted to be that creature, these beautiful people I saw on stage. My mother took out the yellow pages, the telephone book, and looked up modern dance, and there it was, modern dance studios, downtown Chicago, and astonishingly, she said, “Okay, we'll call. You can go to a Saturday class; I'll drive you downtown Chicago.” My life opened up in a very profound way because I came into my body. I came into my being and I studied really hard with dance. I was pretty good in Chicago. Then at the age of 20, I got a scholarship to New York for the Harkness ballet to spend the summer with them.

Keywords: Catholicism; Chicago, IL; Childhood; Dance; Family; Family History; Fathers; Grandparents; Introduction; Ireland; Mothers; Parents; Religion

Partial Transcript: JOHN KILLACKY:
And then to see if they take me in the fall, this was 1973. For this isolated Irish Catholic kid who grew up in a vacuum in Chicago to suddenly be thrust into post Stonewall New York was astounding, just this extraordinary. I also, at that time, was in a play called Coming Out!, which I'm told it was the first gay history play. But the first? I don't know. It was Jonathan Ned Katz’s play. It was wonderful. The Gay Pride march that year, in 1973 happened on my 21st birthday. There we were at the stage and the Pride march ended in Washington square park that day. We were introduced from the stage “Oh, here's the actors from Coming Out!,” and we waved.
They were like 10,000 people in Washington Square Park, and I'm thinking, I'm not alone. I have a community; I have a tribe. It was rambunctious. Sylvia Rivera came out and tried to disrupt the proceedings. Jean O’Leary was one of the co-hosts of that day, I think she tackled Sylvia Rivera to get her off stage and then out comes Bette Midler to sing “You Gotta Have Friends.” I just thought, this is the best 21st birthday in the world. Nothing could be better than that. Things were opening up, but still, gay people could be kicked out of their apartments if they were gay. You couldn't be a teacher and be openly gay. People were being attacked at night and the police didn't come. It was kind of amazing what the situations were. It was so fragile.
There was this huge community blossoming, but there was no kind of societal support for it. Even same sex was not decriminalized in New York till 1980. A lot was happening. Then in my art world, which was tied into my queer world, of course, I was pretty good as a dancer in Chicago, in classical ballet. When I got to New York, it was like the Olympic style, and I was only mediocre because people like Gelsey Kirkland were taking classes with me. But what was amazing at that time, Andrea, was postmodernism was happening. A lot of experimental work. The 60s really did change the parameters and the conversation about arts. I began to work with people like Meredith Monk. I took workshops with her. I started dancing in a different way in modern dance. I became that modern dance person again. I went to Canada, toured for a year up there for a company in Winnipeg, but I really wanted to be back in New York. I came back and had about a 10-year run as a dancer, dancing and making work. I, from there, worked with other dance companies as an administrator, Laura Dean and then the Trisha Brown dance company were two companies I managed as well. New York was a very rich time for me.

Keywords: 1973 Pride March; Art; Coming Out! Play; Dance; Jonathan Ned Katz; LGBTQ Community; Meredith Monk; New York, NY; Sylvia Rivera; Theater

Partial Transcript: ANDREA PINO-SILVA:
I have a question. Were you out before you moved to New York?

JOHN KILLACKY:
Yes.

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:
What was that journey like for you in the Midwest? I think about this particularly because, I mean I'm from Miami which I think a lot of folks have a certain idea of Miami, but we didn't really talk about queerness. I think it's definitely something that was oftentimes tied to AIDS, even in the 90s, late 90s, I think it was still this, of course, unfortunately enough, there's still a huge epidemic of HIV infection in Miami, particularly people who are not out as gay. That's very much what we saw as queerness. I was also raised Catholic, so I'm actually curious, was going to New York kind of an escape for you or did you have community and refuge in the Midwest, did you feel like you had to leave to be who you were?

JOHN KILLACKY:
Well, that's a lovely question. Thank you. I knew I was gay in high school. I didn't know what that meant because I didn't have community. I found a community of sorts in dance, taking dance classes and performing. I didn't really have sexual relationships with people, I just found a wider community there, but once I went to New York, it was like … So, I was out, but there wasn't anyone really to be out with, there wasn't really a community I found, but then in New York, there it was. It was incredible. We were everywhere, and that was very thrilling, to find others and to find elders. I would talk to people, you mentioned elders and there were a number of people in the dance world that I got to know, retired now.

Keywords: Art; Chicago, IL; Coming Out; Dance; LGBTQ Community; New York, NY; Theater

Partial Transcript: JOHN KILLACKY:
And they really were incredible. My ballet teachers, there are so many people. I lived at 93rd and 3rd, around the corner from Andy Warhol, so I would see him walking in and out and Bob Rauschenberg and he worked with the Trisha Brown Dance Company. I got to know a lot of out artists. This was the 70s. Then really, by ‘79 though friends began to get sick. My friends, in the dance world, in that kind of gay art world, and we didn't really know what it was. We just thought like, oh, well, another shot of penicillin will take care of it because, there was a lot of having sex that was part of it. But I remember I was in Fire Island for the 4th of July in 1981, when that first New York Times article talked about, there was a rare gay cancer in gay men in New York and San Francisco. Women didn't have to worry about it.
It just seemed odd that it was with only gay men, and there were 44 cases. I remember reading that and thinking, wow, what does this mean? It was the purple lesions that people would get. And then what was amazing is that slowly is AIDS is still unnamed and people didn't know what it was. People were terrified of it. People didn't know what it came from. As people, my friends, and you'd see people on the street suddenly you'd see the purple lesion on their neck, or you'd see that people have put a little powder over their cheek. People began to wither. Families often found out for the first time that their son was gay when he was sick and dying, families rejected them, hospitals were freaked out. People wouldn't bring food into the rooms, they'd leave it in the hallway, because they were afraid of getting infected because they didn't know what it was.
It was an astonishing time. Many of my artist friends were dying. At that point, I had gone from New York, I went to Philadelphia to work at the Pew Charitable Trusts and I was running the arts program there at the foundation, and I got all of the foundation leaders to put in money to start an AIDS office for the city of Philadelphia because there was not one, and the mayor at that time was Mayor Goode. He came from the military and all of his department heads were military people. I remember meeting with the director of the Health Department and I said, “Well, we have $250,000 gathered together to open an AIDS office in Philadelphia.” This man looked at me and said, “We don't need that. This is a white gay disease.” He said “It only affects the homosexuals in New York and west coast. We don't have to worry about that here.”

Keywords: 1981-present the AIDS epidemic; Art; Fire Island; LGBTQ Community; New York, NY

Partial Transcript: JOHN KILLACKY:
They refused the money in Philadelphia. By the end of the 80s, Philadelphia was one of the top tier cities with AIDS. To look at the beginnings of it and to see the denial and the fear and the misconceptions and the homo hatred, at one point, one of the theories, it was the four Hs: it was homos, hemophiliacs, Haitians, and heroin users; that's who was getting AIDS. Women still were not getting AIDS according to the public health people, and it was pretty amazing. In my world and the arts world, ACT Up was happening. Artists who were sick were getting really angry, and so they started making work that was very volatile. Keith Haring was making work. Peter Hujar, the photographer, was doing photographs of people.
Bill T. Jones, a choreographer, started making work, his partner, Arnie Zane, had died of AIDS, and in the hospital Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane used to play cards to pass the time. 52 cards are in a deck, so Bill told me, on his deathbed, Arnie said, “Okay, the name of your next piece is called the ‘Last supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin.’” Bill, I ran into him, I was now at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis presenting contemporary artists, and Bill told me that he wanted to make a piece about finding hope as a gay black man in America, as his friends were dying. This image he had was of 52 handsome nudes, he called them, from the deck of cards, and he wanted to workshop this in Minneapolis. It was an incredible piece, but as that piece toured around America, people were so freaked out that they're gonna be nude people on stage.

Keywords: 1981-present the AIDS epidemic; Arnie Zane; Art; Bill T. Jones; Death; LGBTQ Community; Medicine; New York, NY

Partial Transcript: JOHN KILLACKY:
And it was about death and dying and AIDS. People were picketing the piece, they hadn't seen it, of course. It became a very incredibly rich time for artists. In 1990, I did a series at the Walker Art Center called Cultural Infidels. Karen Finley opened the series, and Karen is a performance artist, very powerful. She did a piece called “We Keep Our Victims Ready,” and it's about her friends dying from AIDS and also misogyny. At one point she takes chocolate and she smears it on her body as she's now naked, as she's doing this piece. She's talking about Valentine's Day and the myths of this. She had never performed in Minneapolis yet, and so opening night there I was, I was called over to the box office, and these two men said, “We'd like to see the show.” I said, “I'm sorry, it's sold out. Maybe you can come back tomorrow or the next day.” They said, “No, no, we're the vice squad.”
I said, “Vice squad?” I didn't even know Minneapolis had a vice squad. I said, “I don't understand. Well, why do you want to see the show?” I said, “We got a complaint that this is pornographic.” I said, “She hasn't performed yet, how can it be pornographic? Who complained?” What I realized is that the mere image of a woman who's angry, who's naked talking about these issues, terrified people, just the mirror image of it. The vice squad came in, of course, there's nothing pornographic about Karen Finley, so they left, but the news reported the next day that the vice squad visited the museum Walker Art Center, Jesse Helms, the conservative Republican Senator picked it up. That became what's called the NEA 4 that year. It was Karen Finley, Tim Miller, Holly Hughes and John Fleck, were denied grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, on pressure from Congress, because they were considered pornographic.
The same time Robert Mapplethorpe had a show in Washington, DC. It was canceled because Mapplethorpe's work was very powerful. It was black men often with large dicks, and it was scary to people. Like, how can you have nude people around and these kinds of things. There was also a few S&M photos there, so the museum dropped it. Art became very politicized. But for artists, it became that the body was really important and that body fluids were important. We had to take this, so very powerful work happened then. A few years later, I presented Ron Athey, a body artist from Los Angeles who did piercing on stage. The same thing, the same fury happened, Jesse Helms went wild and I got death threats at the museum. It was amazing really that this image of a naked body, or in Ron’s case when there was blood, that it was so terrifying to people because these are still the early dates of AIDS. The Culture Wars of the 90s were about these embodied angry artists making very powerful work in response to AIDS.

Keywords: 1981-present the AIDS epidemic; Art; Jesse Helms; Karen Finley; Minneapolis, MN; National Endowment for the Arts; Robert Mapplethorpe; Walker Art Center

Partial Transcript: ANDREA PINO-SILVA:
I was wondering when you were gonna stop, I wanted to ask you more about specifically the body. You mentioned the body a lot. You mentioned it pretty early on when it came to dancing. I will say that I saw Ailey when I was 18 years old, and I will say, I think it's the first time that I saw dancing as powerful. There was something about the dancers, I think, particularly the men that I had never seen dancing as a strength, as a power. When you were describing Alvin Ailey, I could see that, but I wanna go back to your metaphor, like actual reflection on the body. I think particularly with disease, anger, and grief. I got a chance to go to your video page and I'm thinking about flow and just what it means to just visualize tears.
But also what it means to think about a body deteriorating because of the disease and what it means that a body that’s powerful is seen as a threat, a body that is diseased, so we don't think about, we don't talk about, whether that be AIDS or that be gun violence. This country does not want to see violence in its reality, we're okay with it being video games and movies, but we're not okay with actually seeing death. We're not actually okay with seeing its impact on the human body. I want you to reflect a little bit about the body and the impact of violence and grief on the body. I wanna read you this precise question because I was reflecting on this.
I had a chance to see some of your films. I was moved particularly by your artistic depictions of grief, sadness, and death and the body, particularly during the AIDS pandemic, especially now as we live through another. What do you want audience to understand about the weight of loss and why it's important for us to allow the body to feel it? I wanted to read that just because I was thinking about that even before you mentioned the body now, because I particularly think about the impact of those moments. We rarely think about how daily lesions on us now, even if you survive it, even if you survive something or you lose someone, what doesn't leave on us, even when headlines no longer talk about it, or even as years pass. I wanted you to reflect a little bit about the impact of the body. I think particularly why it's such a threat that art allows us to see the impact on the body of these moments.

JOHN KILLACKY:
If I look through an aesthetic lens at this, in the 60s, the living theater and a lot of dance was doing a lot of nudity, as well, that people were reclaiming their body. I would say in the 90s, the same thing happened because with AIDS, it was considered a diseased body, a broken body, a feared body. I think what was happening is people were reclaiming it. Personally, as I was losing so many friends, it was monumental. We were doing all these memorial services and we were doing care circles. We were washing down people, taking care of them, changing their clothes and doing 24 hours shifts being with people. We were there as people died, we were there when the families wouldn't take the body. I found for myself in the 90s that I started writing elegiac pieces to kind of hold onto my dead, find hope for myself, I guess. Part of that is I started making these films.

Keywords: 1981-present the AIDS epidemic; Art; Film

Partial Transcript: JOHN KILLACKY:
It was very important to reclaim the body and to find a hopefulness in it. I love that you mentioned flow, which is one of my more recent works that you thought it was tears. I love that. Other people read other things into it, and I think that's great. What I did in the 90s though, is that I made very myopic pieces about my life, about my friends, about holding onto Peter, holding on as Celie died and raging with David whose family just refused him. And I wanted to tell their stories. I found that I was telling my own stories as well. I also presented a lot of this work because that was the work that was so potent that Karen Finley, the Bill T. Jones's, the Ron Athey. Bill T. Jones made another piece called “Still Here.”
He workshopped it by going to hospice places, and people dealing with terminal illness, and he got their input and he made this piece. And an outrageous thing happened when the piece premiered, it was incredible piece, but Marcia Siegel, who was sort of the dance critic for The New Yorker, refused to review it. She called it victim art, said, “how could we not empathize with the dead and the dying?” She refused. Newsweek reviewed and called it one of the masterpieces of the 20th century, Marcia Siegel should have been fired. It's outrageous that a dance critic would refuse to see this kind of politicized work as still potent dance theater. You look at these artists, and many of them, the David Wojnarowicz’s and the ones that died during this time, there almost wasn't a legacy left for them.
David finally has a show at the Whitney and Peter Hujar had one at The Morgan. But during their lifetime, they were impoverished as they died from AIDS. It was amazing, it almost took 30 years for society to catch up to them, to the power of their art. For me, I started making my own work, but I also started presenting these artists because it was really important to show them. I remember at the Walker when David Wojnarowicz came, he was doing a performance piece with Ben Neill, the composer, and David was sitting backstage with his coat on because he was shivering. I brought a blanket for him and I said, “David, you don't have to perform if you don't want to.” And he said, “It's keeping me alive.”

Keywords: 1981-present the AIDS epidemic; Art; Bill T. Jones; Dance; David Wojnarowicz; Film

Partial Transcript: ANDREA PINO-SILVA:
I think it's really interesting because in so many ways art allows us to eulogize. You talk a lot about, because either those that didn't die are also mourning what could have been, mourning the fact that they could have been one of those [inaudible], but also mourning who they were because when you talk about being at that pride and that joy and that sense of safety, in many ways, it’s completely shocked that that moment of safety, that moment of community, it revolutionized what was, and even if it was temporary and even if it came back, in many ways, it was that moment, those moments in which nothing felt safe. In some ways art continues to allow you to eulogize.
It continues to allow you to talk about what couldn't have been talked about and also to continue to talk about it. It's one of those things that I've learned a lot of, hearing from folks who survived the pandemic, those who lost those that they loved, is that it's just so important to continue talking about it. I think particularly now more than ever about what it means to be forced to return to normal. Did you feel that the world wanted you to get over it, wanted the art world to get over it, wanted folks to just stop talking about it? Did you ever feel that there was a moment where you and your community were not ready to keep going forward? But the rest of the world was?

JOHN KILLACKY:
Well, the art world certainly was ready to go on, the identity politics that was happening in the 90s was very important. Certainly, out of AIDS, there was the queer aesthetic that was emerging, but also, in many cultures, there was a lot of identity work happening and it was very potent and very powerful. What was happening is that the National Endowment for the Arts stopped funding individual artists, state arts agencies stopped funding individual artists. Suddenly, the art world got very afraid of individual artists and these angry artists and stuff, so the kind of shift happened. What was funny is I was at the Walker Arts Center and we were my job as a curator, performing arts. I was there eight years. I presented 5,000 artists, but by ‘96 or so, the art world was shifting to lyricism and beauty and technical virtuosity. I remember saying to the head of the Walker, “I don't like pretty.” I think I had to get out of the way because I think the next generation of aesthetics is coming through and it's different. It's about beauty and this lyricism and it had never interested me. So yes, you were very astute about that, that the art world shifted.
They shifted probably for financial reasons too. Donors probably got annoyed at all of this kind of potent, in-your-face stuff. But what's amazing, in 2010, there were these in that decade, there finally were these major retrospectives of some of the artists that were considered too hot in the 90s, and now, took 20, 30 years. Ron Athey, who I mentioned, in ‘94, performed, and there was so much controversy. He moved to Europe; he couldn't get work in America. What's amazing is I was at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, 20 years later when they welcomed him back and he performed in LA and then I did a Q and A with him afterwards, but that was the first American museum to present Ron Athey after 20 years. I have a new book that just came out called “because art,” and I talk about these artists, because it's really important to me for people to understand, historically, where they were, and also to live through the AIDS crisis, a lot of that is these artists who died, and to talk about their work.
Keith Haring, once he became sick with AIDS, he was on fire. His career is only like 10 years long and the output became so much more as he became sicker and more frail, it was fierce. It was extraordinary to watch some of these artists in their gasps, but the creativity really expanded.

Keywords: 1981-present the AIDS epidemic; Art; Dance; Keith Haring; National Endowment for the Arts; Ron Athey

Partial Transcript: JOHN KILLACKY:
If I could shift the dialogue as I'm talking about this shift, that ‘96, what was interesting for me personally is I'd been a dancer. When I stopped dancing, I was a marathon runner, and now in 1996, I'm in Minneapolis, a tumor was found inside my spinal cord. It was way up high at C2. Because it was in the cord, we couldn't do a biopsy.
We didn't know it was malignant or benign, and it was blocking 60% of the cord. I was told that I needed to have surgery and that I would be in the hospital three or four days, and with a sore neck for a month. I said, “Great.” My now husband, but my partner at the time, said to the surgeon, “Okay, that's the best scenario? What's the worst-case scenario?” Surgeon said, “Oh, he'd be at the Sister Kenny Institute, learn how to walk again. But that's not gonna happen. Don't worry about it.” Well, I ran five miles the night before I went to surgery, because I was a little nervous, and went in for surgery. I woke up completely quadriplegic, paralyzed from the neck down. Surgery had gone haywire. When my husband, Larry, was waiting in the waiting room for hours and hours and hours, he finally said to the nurse, “What happened?” Because the surgeon come out and said to him, “Things look good. I'm going home. They're cleaning up, you'll see him in a while.” The nurse said, “Oh my God, you didn't know what happened.” He said, “No, no, I'm just waiting.” He said, “Come with me.”
He said that he walked in and the cage was still screwed into my head so, in surgery I wouldn't move. And I was covered in blood and iodine. They hadn't cleaned me up yet and I was screaming incoherently. To run five miles the day before, and when I came to consciousness to be completely paralyzed from the neck, couldn't move anything, was kind of mind blowing, to say the least. I'm sitting right now in a wheelchair, and I walk with a cane, but it took me three months to learn how to walk again, because I've lost the function of my legs.

Keywords: Boyfriends; Disability; Hospitals; Medicine; Paralysis; Relationships; Surgery; Wheelchair

Partial Transcript: JOHN KILLACKY:
This was in Minneapolis, and I was on a ward with spinal cord injuries, brain injuries and people that had strokes. It wasn't the happiest of wards, I'd say. But I was in intensive care for 10 days and then they moved me over to the rehab ward. In my early days, I remember they picked me out of bed, put me in a wheelchair and then rolled me to a psychologist. They said, while you're here, you can meet someone weekly. I said, “Oh, that's great.” Wheeled in and this female psychologist said, “What's on your mind?” I said, “This is pretty dramatic for me, and I’m pretty depressed. I'm just wondering, could you talk to me about the return of sexual function?” She said, “Well, gee, I'm not gay.”
And I said, “I didn't ask you if you were gay. And I really don't care if you're gay, you asked me what's on my mind. I'm telling you what's on my mind. I want to know about the return of sexual function with spinal cord injury.” She said, “Well, I'm not gay.” I said, “What are you talking about? This is crazy.” I said, “There's only so many ways about talk about sexual function if you're gay or straight and you're in a rehab hospital and you're psychologist, gotta know this.” She said, “Well, you know, anger's good.” I said, “Oh no, no, we're done. We are done.” I said, “Please call the orderly.” I said, “I'm gonna report you and I'm never coming back to you. And this is an outrage.” Off I went, I wheeled away.
A good thing out of that, Andrea, was that in this newly disabled body, I learned to walk again. It took three months but the good part of being a dancer, you learn with your body and in physical therapy, they had to stand me up for me to stand up because I don't really have sensation in my legs, but I thought, “I think I can learn to stand up visually.” They're like, “What are you talking about?” I said, “Bring the mirror over.” They said, “The mirror's backwards.” And I said, “Oh, I know. As a young man, I was a dancer. We worked in the mirror all the time in rehearsals to try to make things better.” If I hadn't been a dancer, I don't think I ever would've learned to stand up again. I'm grateful for that. The other part of it is I then moved to San Francisco, and I needed to find a new tribe, as it were, so there was a lot of queer activism in the disability world as well. Out of that came a book that I co co-edited called “Queer Crips: Disabled Gay Men and Their Stories.” So, I was able to build a whole different community for myself as well.

Keywords: Dance; Disability; Homophobia; LGBTQ Community; Paralysis; Psychology

Partial Transcript: ANDREA PINO-SILVA:
You jumped to this part faster that I thought you would, but I promise I was gonna get to it. But it's actually, I think the way that you just ended it goes back to the question that I had initially, which was I've noticed that in so much of your career, you actively make space for those in your community. It seems to be a big part of your art and of who you are as a professional. Do you feel that your work as an art and then now your work as a legislator has been impacted by your membership in communities, and particularly communities that have faced so much?

JOHN KILLACKY:
Well, we talked early on in the 70s about finding a queer community and it was people who were very disenfranchised and disempowered and then a generation, we kind of built our own gravitas around that. Then a generation of people lost to AIDS who were disenfranchised, disowned, and we built community around that. It was always my professional side and my artistic side were in the middle of these things. I was trying to, as an administrator, support and advocate for this work and as an artist, try to make some of this work to make sense for myself. As I moved to San Francisco, I was running the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, which is an extraordinary complex, four galleries, two theaters, a screening room. But suddenly, I left the world of the temporarily abled and was in this world of people who were disabled, who also were very disenfranchised, ignored by the world.
I found that community and built around that. I, both as an administrator, had to open up opportunities for artists with disabilities and audiences with disabilities who were not really welcomed into the museums or theaters except for the accessible seating in the back. But also, I then had to find my own way of finding queer crips basically, as well to find community. I was able to make some videos that have been well received on disability as well. But what was funny about that time is that I always kept my artist side separate from my administrator side, because I felt like if people knew me as an artist, they’d think I wasn't a serious artist if they knew I was also running a museum, or if people knew me running the museum, they’d think I was less of an administrator because I also did this art stuff.
It was ridiculous that I was trying to bifurcate my identity that way. I remember the Harvard Film Archive was showing some of my work and this one guy raises hand, “Do you ever get confused with that, John Killacky?” I said, “No, no.” And then afterwards, I apologized. I said, “Well, I'm actually the same person. I just try to keep my identity separate.” And then I didn't anymore; I thought it doesn't matter. I make work, I write a lot of pieces, I'm on the radio doing radio pieces. They're queer, they’re political, they're about disability. They're about death with dignity. It's things that concern me and my life, and it’s sort of things that I do as well as run multimillion dollar organizations. And I continue to make these really myopic pieces. My video pieces are very small, you mentioned “Flow.” It's because I think those are most resonant for people.
I made a piece with the choreographer Eiko Otake, it's called “elegies.” We made it in 2019 and it's just looking right at the camera and it's just talking to our mothers. Very simple. But as it went into the world, it was COVID and people weren't able to say goodbye to their mothers. When we showed it in the Twin Cities. It was the week George Floyd was murdered and his last words were calling out for his mother. For me, what's interesting about when an artist makes work, it finds its meaning in the audience that receives the work. It's almost like, Andrea, you define “Flow.” I can't define it. You defined it by seeing it. I love that because I make these small pieces, then so many people have shared with me their last words to their mother after seeing this piece. And that's very fulfilling to me that people find meaning in the work.

Keywords: Art; COVID-19; Dance; Disability; Film; LGBTQ Community; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

Partial Transcript: ANDREA PINO-SILVA:
I think a lot about how when my grandfather died, it's like, almost thinking this might be the last time I see him. And it's true, it's just what you tell a person you're not gonna see again. I think so few of us have the opportunity of being able to do that. I think that for many people the AIDS pandemic, I think that the epidemic of racialized violence and police brutality has forced people to come to terms with what it means that the moment that you have with the person might be the last. I know it's something that I don't think one can ever be thankful that someone died, but I am very thankful that my grandparents did not die during the COVID pandemic.
Not that there's ever like a perfect way for someone to die, but I think one could at least want to be able to have a conversation with them. I think it's interesting too, because when we think about speaking to mothers, speaking to family members, I think that there's probably always something that you wish the person knew. I know that's something that you know, I oftentimes, not feeling like I could be my full self with my grandparents. It really wasn't anything that they did or didn't do. I think it was a fear of losing that connection. I know that a lot of people feel that if they are their full selves, they might lose a relationship, even if that person has never acted in a way that is adversarial, but there's a fear. There's a fear of that something, whether it's a career or it's a sexuality or something that, some way, might disrupt that relationship, people don't wanna talk about it. Then when it comes too late, then you mourn what could have been.

JOHN KILLACKY:
Well, I'm smiling as you're talking about this because I was very challenging to both my mother and father. The kid goes off to New York and goes to dance and he does this strange thing. Didn't finish college until nine years later at Hunter College. Throughout my life, I lived openly and it did challenge them. I remember I got a tattoo and I was so thrilled, it's the tattoo on my arm here. When I was visiting my mom, I showed her my tattoo, and she just goes, ”Oh my God, I thought the surprises were over.” Even in a funny way, I didn't think that would be shocking at all to my mom, but suddenly it was.
You're so right that it's so fragile, relationships, and we so want a connection with our family of origin. I'm lucky, as fraught as it was, that I maintained relationships with both my mom and dad before they died, I was blessed about that. I spent that time in San Francisco and it was great, 14 years. I went from the Yerba Buena Center to the San Francisco Foundation. I worked in philanthropy again, and that was great. I did the art stuff, of course, but I also had the queer portfolio and I had the disability portfolio. I kind of carried all my life experiences with me and that was powerful. Then I just was bored and my husband was bored, and so I got a call from a headhunter in Burlington, Vermont, of all places.

Keywords: COVID-19; Family; Mothers

Partial Transcript: JOHN KILLACKY:
We moved to Burlington, Vermont, which was a smaller place than I'd ever been. I was running the Flynn Center, which is a beautiful art deco theater built in 1930; 1400 seats. It was a great community center. I loved it. I did that for eight years. There, we really tackled disability access in very profound ways. It was incredible, the work we did. Working with artists with disabilities, but also working with audiences - like to do sensory friendly pieces for families with a member on the autism spectrum was really just a powerful, powerful work that I learned so much and was grateful to do that. But eight years, I thought I was gonna retire, and then I felt, well, what would my service be now? My legislator, Helen Head, took me to lunch.
She said, “I have an idea for your retirement. We're gonna call it reemployment.” I said, “What's that?” She said, “I think after 12 years, I'm gonna step down in the Vermont House of Representatives, and I think you should run. You should consider running.” I had the best coach in the world, Helen Head. I'm now serving my second term in the Vermont House of Representatives. It's been a great experience. You kind of asked earlier about bringing all these selves in all the jobs as I've moved across the country, and it's been really fun, Andrea, I'd say, to approach legislating as an artist.

Keywords: Art; Burlington, VT; Disability; Flynn Center; Helen Head; Politics; Vermont House of Representatives

Partial Transcript: JOHN KILLACKY:
Because bill making's very iterative. You create a bill, you submit it to the committee, the committee hears testimony, it gets changed and amended in committee. If it's out of committee, it goes to the full House, it gets changed and amended on the full house. It then gets sent to the Senate and they do their thing with it and often amend it, then it gets back to the House to accept the amendments from the Senate. If it's agreed upon by both bodies, it's sent to a governor, who can either accept it into law or veto it. If it's vetoed, it has to come back and we can override a veto. What I learned, when you make a film, you can storyboard a film, but you work with your sound people, you work with your lighting people, you work with your camera people, you work with your editors.
Once you film it, you almost have to forget the storyboard because you can only use the material you have, and it's so interesting. I think it's the same thing as legislating. You start with an idea, you storyboard that idea, you present it to the committee and then suddenly it starts shifting all the time. I feel like my artist’s eye thrives in that kind of chaotic way, because I learned early on that, even in dance, you're not always gonna be the soloist. Ensemble work is often smarter and more powerful than solo work. Oftentimes, I'm weighing the background on things. I hadn't thought of it in this way, but as we've talked about these disenfranchised communities, I'm now focusing on homelessness in Vermont, spending a lot of time with that community. I am working with Recovery Homes, and people grappling with substance use disorders, and it’s there a through-line in life. These are the voices that I'm working with. I'm there to really hear from them and raise them up. This COVID has been so brutal to people who are not housed because they are completely invisible to society. And it's been a profound learning for me to work in service of those voices, those people.

Keywords: Activism; Art; COVID-19; Film; Politics; Vermont; Vermont House of Representatives

Partial Transcript: ANDREA PINO-SILVA:
Really quick, I'm gonna bring you all the way back in your interview, because I didn't ask you earlier, because I wanted to see where you would go, but you mentioned the Sylvia Rivera speech. I was a teaching assistant this past semester in a social justice class, and I showed her speech because someone recently remastered it, so you could actually hear what she's saying, and in her speech she talked about why she interrupted pride and she specifically talked about housing insecurity, police brutality, imprisonment and drug abuse. I wanna challenge you a little bit, because I think one of the things that the LGBTQ movement gets a lot of critiques about is accessibility. For starters, the obvious is physical accessibility, as in who gets to act, actually come to how many events are acting as all, but also whose stories get heard and what aspects of the movement that oftentimes get lost.
I think for me, I remember where I was the month that George Floyd was murdered. I was living in Washington DC, and I was at the march, one of the many marches of the initial march. What I saw all around me were queer people, and I will say that DC Pride is one of the largest Prides in the country. It's not San Francisco, it's not New York, but it's certainly not small. There's always been a lot of tension around who pride is for. I will say that that moment was the safest and proudest that I had felt to be a queer person because it was a protest, it was a protest about survival. It was a protest about grief. And frankly it was the first time that I had actually seen queer people and not corporations. It was mourning, but it was celebration.
Andrea Pino-Silva: 00:59:09 I wanna take you back to that moment and take you to where you are right now and perhaps your growth, but also like what you now see as the concerns that you wanna focus on, but also the way that you have changed as an activist and how you've grown and how you've been challenged. Anyway, I just wanted to bring it back there because I think about that speech and the fact that a lot of people who were there were like, what is [inaudible] talking about? But I was listening to it recently because the young people in my classroom were saying those are the things we're talking about now, like now they're like the headlines all the time, homelessness, drug abuse, mass incarceration, police brutality, and she was talking about it in 1973.
Why did it take us almost … I mean, it's gonna be the decade anniversary next year. When you think about how many years it's taken and how these are the same pressing issues. What is it about now that the things that Sylvia Rivera was talking about are now mainstream? What does it mean that now these are the things that everybody's talking about. I mean, literally they're the headlines all the time, police, drug abuse, housing and security, I think particularly in the queer community. Anyway, I wanted to bring it back to there, which I think it's just so interesting how different the concerns are now and how they echo what she was talking about them.

Keywords: Accessibility; Activism; Disability; Intersectionality; Sylvia Rivera

Partial Transcript: JOHN KILLACKY:
Well, Sylvia had nothing to lose because she had been given nothing. She was outrageous and that made her powerful, but it scared the assimilationists in our community. It's like, oh no, we wanna pass as normal, and we saw the pride protests turn into these marches that were corporate events. Banks for sponsoring floats and what was amazing is to see after AIDS that gay marriage became the highest priority. I remember in San Francisco right before Prop 8, which was to deny the constitutionality of that and it looked like it was gonna win. I said to my husband, “Let's get married.” He said, “Why?” He said, “Is this what we’ve worked for? Marriage?” I said, “It's going to be turned down in California next week.”
And financially it's better for us as a couple to file taxes, and you will be able to get my social security benefits or I can get yours if we're legally married, when one of us passes.” It was like a financial decision to get married, but so we went to City Hall and it was amazing because the mayor had deputized any staff member that wanted to. City Hall in San Francisco was very ornate and there were like 40 couples getting married simultaneously. There were the young boys in their tuxedos with the flowers and the bull dykes were there and their pants. It was like so thrilling to be around a community that was being accepted into something that we hadn't been allowed into.

Keywords: 2008 California Proposition 8; Assimilation; Gay Marriage; Homelessness; Intersectionality; LGBTQ Community; San Francisco, CA

Partial Transcript: JOHN KILLACKY:
But it is odd that that is where the gay movement went. It forgot the Sylvias, it forgot people were homeless because society wants to forget people who are homeless. When I visit the homeless encampments in Burlington before the city cleared them there were 25 people living there, they had built their own community. Some of them did not wanna be in shelters. Some of them did not want to be in a single room occupancy hotel. They actually felt more comfortable outside in their community, but it was a very fractured community. There were people dealing with a lot of generational trauma, generational poverty, substance use disorders, mental illness, and it was a very fractured community. What society wants to do is just bulldoze them away and hope they disappear. What was interesting for me now as a legislator, and that is in my committee's work, is to look at this.
When COVID happened, we suddenly couldn't even have people in the shelters. We moved people into hotels and there are now 1800 and adults and 450 children who are in hotels. In June when the federal money runs out, there's no available housing for these families. It is a very daunting thing to think about what to do with this. We've built out some of the shelter capacity, but we've kept people in these hotels because of the federal money. As a state, we're grappling with that and many people just want the people to go away. Our state government, which I've opposed, is giving people money to like … They telling them, “Well, you could get a bus ticket to go live with a family member, perhaps,” but basically they're saying, “Get out of town.” And that's classic, New York did that too.
They give people without homes bus tickets. California does it, bus tickets to move, go away, just don't be here. I don't think the Sylvia Rivera’s of our world … I mean, there she was, as I came as this unformed little gay boy into New York, and there's Sylvia. It hasn't gotten any better. It hasn't changed. People are still terrified of them. If you think about the Stonewall riots, it was the drag queens who started that little war and fought back and in Tenderloin, it was the drag queens in San Francisco who fought back in that, it was a few years before. It's always been the most disenfranchised who have nothing to lose, who begin to fight.

Keywords: COVID-19; Homelessness; Intersectionality; Politics; Vermont

Partial Transcript: ANDREA PINO-SILVA:
I think it's really interesting because you mentioned assimilationists and I think it's something that every movement has. It's not something that I think is exclusive to the LGBTQ movement. I mean, the women's movement, I think the movement is frankly worse when it comes to assimilation and what is always put on the chopping block. But I think COVID gave us a glimpse into what is possible, I think particularly around community care and a lot of disabled activists as I'm sure you have seen have talked about how, in many ways, COVID made the work place more accessible than it's ever been for a lot of people.
So, why take it away, right? Why take away or why “go back to normal”. I think that there's violence in that phrase “return to normal.” Or even what is normal? Because I'll just totally say it too, is that I also took advantage of getting married. I have plenty of critiques of this being seen as the end of an era. I don't think it was the end of an era. I don't really think it's the goal of the movement, but I think in many ways it is a protection. I will tell you exactly why we got married, just because the day that the capital was stormed my now wife and I had a conversation and I said, “What if we have to leave?”
“What are we gonna do?” It wasn't that we hadn't talked about it, we had, but I think that that was the moment that if we have to leave, how are we gonna go? She's a European citizen, that was literally the conversation. If we are not safe here, where are we gonna go? There's something about that protection, and I think also I will say that the George Floyd protests I think were a very humbling moment for me. I think it made me really realize just how much I have access to whiteness, as a one-and-a-half generation American, I look the way that I do. Even as a lesbian, most people don't think of a lesbian, but most people don't think my wife is a lesbian.
I was raised speaking English by my parents [inaudible], even though I've been minoritized categories, I am digestible to whiteness. I am digestible to the establishment. And what is our responsibility to recognize where we were, to recognize what it means to have been othered? You mentioned it was like that, even though there was a community and there was a sense of pride and celebration, you got to go to that Pride festival, but it was not safe to be gay. That's something that I think a lot about, is that, as we are on the precipice of assimilation, and to just be clear that I think assimilation is our choice or not. I think at some point you become digestible and you become digestible and that's just how it is.
Because I don't think I have a choice. I don't think that no matter how much tan I get, no matter how much Spanish I speak, I think that at some point I would be seen as a white person because it's already happening. It's happened to me; it's happened to my sister. I think about what my responsibility is to recognize who doesn't get that, who in the queer community, who among women, who among Latinx folks don't get to have that opportunity? I think a lot about that and I think a lot about how time passes and as we're afforded certain privileges, we maybe start to forget that immediate fight for survival. I'm not sure if you do. Because I mean, I certainly do. There's certainly parts of my life that I don't … I'm not always thinking about survival anymore.
Anyway, I wanted to mention that because I think particularly where you are right now as a legislator, I wanna know if, perhaps, those moments where you either had to just survive or you saw those around you that had to survive, those moments in which you were othered, those around you were othered, if that influences how you are as a legislator and how you've been as a community leader. Because, again, you've made it a point to include community and create space, no matter what role you fit in.

Keywords: Assimilation; COVID-19; Disability; Homophobia; Intersectionality; Politics; Privilege; Racism

Partial Transcript: JOHN KILLACKY:
Well, this new book I have out, called “because art”, there's an essay in it that's called “Imagining a post-pandemic art world”. As I discussed the 70s, there weren't really careers for dancers. This was pre-dance company moving around and doing stuff. People were making work and they didn't have anything to lose. Because there was nothing to gain. They were just making work and breaking all the rules as Sylvia Rivera is doing that in the queer world. I would say that's how change happens aesthetically, is in the margins, it forces the center to shift. I would say that the Sylvia Rivera’s, they forced the center to shift, and I think this pandemic and this racial reckoning that was happening, literally overlapping, has been a huge center-shifting moment for all of us, for me included. I really hope that the arts groups, the theaters don't try to put themselves back together as they were. I was suspicious after the murder of George Floyd, when so many arts groups were starting posting #Black Lives Matter
And it’s like show me. Show me in your staffing, show me in your programming, show me in your board of governance. Because if you put yourselves back together and you present a diverse array of programs, nothing has changed, nothing. As you said, the new normal it's like, well, let's make it new. Let's not make it what it was because what it was is broken now. I think a reset moment, but that thrills me. It's like we really have an opportunity individually to grapple with what you're talking about by privilege. We have a responsibility to do that. I've been working on a Truth and Reconciliation process in the legislature. Last year, I introduced a eugenics apology because in Vermont, in 1930, the legislature passed eugenics.
Where it encouraged people to be sterilized and targeted were the indigenous tribes, people with disabilities, people who were poor. Families were torn apart. People were institutionalized against their will and people were sterilized against their will. This happened for 40 years in Vermont. It happened all over the country. But to have the legislative body that did this and acted this formally up apologize was really moving because we listened to testimony of people that were in these locked wards who survived them. Now, we're grappling with what are the next steps for this process and what's the accountability in our society? I mean, we're dealing with that, in terms of these affected population in Vermont, but it's happening all over this country. Reparations is an issue that many legislators are rightfully grappling with.
I think it is a huge transformational change, where at the cusp, I think the terror of it right now is the pullback of the insurrection and the whiteness of that, and the fear of that is so immense as that's moving forward now. How this is all gonna collide. if change happens from the fringe, we're hoping it happens from this fringe, but it all could tip us into an authoritarian place from this fringe. It's kind of a terrifying moment that we're in, but I think this is why we build community and we move forward together.

Keywords: Art; COVID-19; Intersectionality; Politics; Privilege; Racism

Partial Transcript: ANDREA PINO-SILVA:
I agree with you. I think that while there is a terror and I think it's an incredible privilege and me not be immediately fearful for my life 24/7 like I think a lot of people are right now, but I do think in many ways, COVID destroyed the normal. I think that that's positive. Again, recognizing the immense privilege and me not fearing for my safety, but I do think what's the point of us returning to normal when the normal wasn't working. It wasn't working for black people. It wasn't working for indigenous people. It wasn't working for queer people. It certainly wasn't working for disabled people. So, why would we go back to that normal? I think that that's something that I think a lot of people are thinking about, is what does it mean to refuse normal?
My wife is the editor of a journal and she had a special issue on specifically that, like what it means to refuse return to normal and see it as a violence, see it as an erasure. Again, this goes back to the body, I think goes back to how the body has been impacted by the pandemic and what it means that every time we think we have a grasp of what has happened … I don't know, but I feel like I'm still processing. Like, I don't know, Charlottesville? I feel like I'm still processing that. And then I'm certainly still processing the fact that Trump dealt with reelection. There's so many things that I'm still processing of that election night, that that may very well return to a second term.
There is no time to pause and agree. There has been no time. I think in many ways, this moment is a humbling period in which we have, I don't wanna say we understand what I think a lot of people with the Sylvia’s were talking about, but I think in some ways it’s a glimpse to what it means that all these terrible things are happening and you're being told to return to normal. What does it mean for us to refuse that? I think that in all of our capacities, I think as family members, I think as citizens, I think as community members, refusal is also acknowledgement of hope. I think what you were saying about acknowledging the impact of these [inaudible], I mean, I think it's something that North Carolina loved [inaudible] around.
I think it's something that you know, having spent a good time with my life in the south, I will say that acknowledgement is oftentimes rarely even a possibility. I mean, reparations and actual accountability is, again, like so far off. I don’t think about it. At this point, we think about if not. I, oftentimes, think that acknowledgement is the hardest thing to do. It's literally the hardest for a group of people to admit harm, literally admit harm, that there was a harm and the harm wasn't an accidental consequence. It was a calculated potential decision. I do think it is the start. I think it's the start. I think a lot of [inaudible] have taken those steps. I think that the next step is going to be, how do we hold them answerable to us, answerable to community?
I think that's something that we're probably going to see in the next few years, is precisely was this a reckoning? If so, how do we make sure that it's a reckoning that actually leads to change? That's what I call the placebo effect. I say this because I've worked in social movements for most of my adult life. Most of my work has been in sexual domestic violence. When the #MeToo movement happened, people are like, oh, finally, this happened. I'm like, no, it isn't because we're not actually doing anything. I mean, first of all, we're sending people to prison and we know that prisons aren't working because most folks would even go to trial, one. Two, what does this actually do for people who've been impacted by violence?

Keywords: COVID-19; Intersectionality; LGBTQ Community; Politics; Privilege; Racism

Partial Transcript: ANDREA PINO-SILVA:
Just like marriage. It's great. It's great benefits, I enjoy them, but what is this actually doing for the generational trauma of the queer community? What is this doing for queer people who don't have community, who don't have security? In many ways, yes, it is a victory, but is it a reckoning? Is it what the community needs? And if that’s something that we're gonna see, we’re gonna see the impact of both our forced consciousness to the depth of racial justice in this country, but I think also just general inequality. I am personally very curious as to what's going to happen after this. I think a lot of people are just claiming victory.

JOHN KILLACKY:
Well, the women's prison is in my district, my legislative district, I visit and my neighbors don't even know where the prison is, because they drive by it every day. It is astonishing how many mother/daughters are in prison together and really looking at the generational trauma that their families have endured. The women's prison has about 150 women and it's really a facility which was supposed to be a temporary holding place for people coming to court or just getting arrested for 40. 150 women are being warehoused, and they have no voice. I've been working with them and they weren't believed about some of the things that were happening from the guards. Finally, a law firm was brought in, an investigation was done, and the women were telling the truth about their physical, their sexual abuse, their exploitation in prison.
It is an interesting thing that we're talking about, about this re-shift moment. Those are my Sylvia Rivera’s in that prison. I bring them forward. That was aside because I was just thinking about them so intensely as you were talking, but there is an opportunity here because the ‘great resignation’, a lot of people have said, “You know, this just isn't working.” I don't know if you and your wife have kids, but people I know that have kids, it's impossible for them right now during this pandemic to really figure out how to cope. If someone tests positive, they gotta stay home and it's just complete chaos. Sadly, many of the women in Vermont are opting out of the workforce to stay home, because it just was simpler.
And so they've lost that opportunity for financial growth, for professional growth as they step out of doing this. But it's not acceptable. Families are reconsidering things. My fervent hope is that the reset is not back to normal, and I agree with you, there has to be a new form and normal's probably not gonna be the word if it's gonna work. I'm with you on that. It's like, okay, how do we recreate? But I would say queer resiliency has taught us in our generations how to recreate things. How do we recreate families, how to recreate societies, how to recreate justice. I'm hoping our queer selves can bring us to the new future.

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:
I love that. Before I forget, by the way, you mentioned the prison in your district. There's a scholar, Maya Kaba, just came out with a new book about, specifically, a mother and daughter who are separated when she goes to prison. I don't know if you do like readings or anything like that, but that's like a great book. I have it on my list to get it for some kids in my life. I don't have kids yet, but she literally wrote a book about a mom and her daughter who were separated to talk about how women who go to prison, how they and their families are her impacted, which I think is a really beautiful thing. I think particularly for how many kids don't have anyone to talk to about that specifically.

Keywords: Family; LGBTQ Community; Politics; Prison; Trauma

Partial Transcript: ANDREA PINO-SILVA:
Anyway, I just thought of it. I will say specifically what you mean by resilience. One of the questions I had is, how has your queerness, and what I say by that is, my wife loves to talk about how she's always struggled with lesbian spaces, I have too, for some reasons. I think a lot of it has been because I grew up in an immigrant family, and even my idea of American was very different because our American was just different. The immigrant hustle is just different. I never really felt fully American, just like I never really felt like I belonged in these lesbian spaces because my queerness was different. But at some point, I realized that my queerness was a part of everything that I was, it made me a very different employee.
I think particularly, when I've been an educator, when I’ve been a youth leader, I operate differently because of my queerness and particularly this past semester. It was an incredibly difficult time to be an educator for a lot of people. For me specifically, I lost the students with suicide. We had four students die by suicide this past semester. What I realized was that I refused to go back to normal. I realized that I couldn't let these kids think that what happened to them wasn't that bad. I realized that it's because as a queer person, I've always had to operate differently and I've always had a different way of dealing with crisis and dealing with anger and frustration. I realized that that in part, my queerness made me a better educator last semester, I was able to care for my students and to be able to create a safe place because I knew what it was like to desire that. I wanted to ask you, if you felt early on that your queerness allowed you to create community, allowed you to be a better artist and now allowed you to be a better legislator. And if so, how?

JOHN KILLACKY:
Well, my husband and I have been together 26 years. Larry Connolly is like the love of my life, which I'm so grateful for, but when we first met, what was interesting to me to realize, and I hadn't realized that is I mostly socialized with other gay men and I didn't have very many women friends. My husband, Larry, I call ‘my husband the lesbian.’ He completely surrounded himself with lesbian women. He felt really comfortable in that community. All of his friends were women. All of my friends were gay men. He didn't really like gay men as much. Suddenly, I realized, well, how small my world is. I was introduced to a whole other side, a female side of the community that I didn't really know before. I had sort of siloed myself as I think a lot of people do.
That was an extraordinary opening for me. I think as I proceeded my career and I became directors of things, I had to become comfortable with talking to powerful people, well-moneyed people, donors who were completely heterosexual, who knew very few people who were gay, and there I was the gay director coming and asking for money. I realized it was never a problem for them. It was more of a problem for me thinking that I was different, I was other. I had to erase those doubts in myself. I had to erase those, kind of my own homophobia about that. That was fascinating for it to come up for me because I was more isolated in my own queer community so I felt safe in queerness.
But suddenly when I had to reach over, I had to confront my own homophobia, which was very healthy. Then disabilities taught me there's a lot of other in that as well. I don't know, I think the artist in me, we've spoken about this, integrated this work, my own work, my own internal work with this. Now as a legislator, the President Pro Tempore of our Senate in Vermont is a lesbian who rides a motorcycle, and now she's running for Congress. It's incredible. In my lifetime, to think I could go from a high school kid where no one knew anybody, and now, queer dykes, little baby dykes can look at Becca Balint in the Senate and say, I'm gonna run for Congress in United States because of Becca Balint. So, has queerness helped? Yes. But I had to also encounter my own internal homophobia along the way as well.

Keywords: Homophobia; Intersectionality; LGBTQ Community; Marriage; Politics; Relationships

Partial Transcript: ANDREA PINO-SILVA:
I think in many ways we just wanna belong. I think that's something that is just so funny because I was telling my therapist this where after everything happened last semester, I said, “I am so thankful that I am older.” And I was telling her this morning, actually that I don't wanna say that I'm thankful for what I went through or the challenges that I did, but I'm just so thankful that I can talk to somebody about it. Again, I'm not an elder, but I'm in this weird place where like, I'm somewhere between like the parents of the kids and the kids, like we're about 15 years apart, both ways, they're 10 years apart. And I think it's really interesting because I think we all go through things.
I don't know about gen Z, now that they're just born queer, like really born [inaudible] they know right away. I admire that. But I think that a lot of people, I mean, certainly my friends went through a period of trying to suppress who they were. I don't know. I wanna say it's always an overt self-hatred, but there's certainly a wanting to be digestible. I mean, like, I have certainly never considered shaving off all my hair. Like I've never. And I don't know if that's like an internalized, like, no, I just can't be too much of a lesbian. Like, I just can't. If I'm too much of a lesbian, I might stick out. I don't know what it is.
But I think there's definitely those moments of struggling with that, which I think is actually great for one of our closing questions. That is one of Mason's favorite questions. And, again, because we, lately at OUTWORDS, have wanted to do more generational reflection. I'm part of the board, which I forgot to mention earlier. But one of our goals as an organization is doing more intergenerational conversations. It is precisely because we think that among the best things that we can do for both our elders and our youths is to have conversations, and to talk about what was, what wasn't and what is now, until we can learn from each other. One of the questions I wanna ask you is if you could tell your 50-year-old self anything, what would that be?

JOHN KILLACKY:
I think I'd reach back and say, “You're not alone. You're not alone.”

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:
And by this moment you already had your dancing community, right?

JOHN KILLACKY:
When I was 15, I had my dancing community a little bit. I was taking occasional dances at that time, but I was still in high school. I was pretty alone in the Irish Catholic high school. I had one priest who was marvelous. He said to me, at one point, he said, “Are you gonna be in a talent show?” I said, “Oh, God, no, no, no, I don't really have any talent that way.” And he said, “Well, you should read a poem or something. I think poetry is your road ahead.”
I was bewildered by that. I wanted to know what that meant. I did find the poets, I found Rod McKuen of all people, who was a gay poet, or certainly the Allen Ginsberg’s, and people like that. But I think he was indicating to me that there was a world that was different than the working class Irish Catholic situation I was in, and there was a road ahead and that was his signal to me, of something. It was very sweet. My brother's daughter got married and they wanted to have a Catholic wedding. I'm not sure she's in a Catholic parish, but they asked that particular priest, because my brother knew him, if he would marry his daughter. At the marriage, we all went out to lunch with Father Rubey, and we had such a good time, and I thanked him. I said, “You indicated to me that I wasn't alone, and that there was a road ahead through the arts. I'm grateful that someone let me know that I was gonna be safe, because there wasn't much safety then.” He did it in his own way and I'm grateful to him.

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:
It's really beautiful. I think that there's these depictions of what Catholic spaces look like, I think ministry overall, but I think particularly Catholics. I think, frankly, anything, that's not the coastal elites as to what support looks like. I mean, [inaudible] saying, there's the Midwestern moves to New York trope, which Hollywood loves to make movies about. But I think that it's beautiful to hear about those moments of affirmation and care that perhaps weren’t everything you needed, but like more enough for a young teenage John to keep going. I think that it's beautiful to think of those moments. It's something that I certainly think a lot about, because young people will ask you, like, how does it get better?

Keywords: Catholicism; Elders; LGBTQ Community; Priests; Religion; Schools; Teachers; Youth

Partial Transcript: ANDREA PINO-SILVA:
How did you know it got better? Then you'll tell them like you have those moments where somebody showed up for you and that was enough, and it's a beautiful thing to think about that. But what you were saying about, I even think about telling my own 15-year-old self, which again was 15 years ago is, I also would've told her like you're not alone, that it will get better and it doesn't just get better because the world changes. You'll find more gay people, you have a wife, which I would've never even thought about, but rather that you'll come to terms with who you are. You'll love who you are, because I think that we don't talk a lot about the queer journey and how before you even love someone else, you have to love yourself.
This goes for everybody. But I think particularly for queer people, there's a journey to loving ourselves and everyone has a different way of getting there, a different career, a different life experience, but the loving yourself journey is just when you get there, it's so indescribable. I think that that's something I always think about telling a young version of myself, but it's what I like to tell younger people is that the world seems so terrible and so small when you're 15, 16 years old, that it's just so much bigger. It's so much bigger than you'll ever imagine.

JOHN KILLACKY:
Yeah, you said that so beautifully. Thank you. I think in our queer conversations with different generations, it's important. I also found it very important in the disability community, especially people that have faced disability midlife, I would often go back to that rehab hospital and visit people in the wards, and not promising that they'd be walking with a cane or because many would not walk again, but that there was life that was possible as imploded as it seemed at the time. The media is all about happy, well-adjusted crips. If you look at New Mobility, everybody's happy, they're coming out of their wheelchair, out of the van and look at this, the happy smiling family and everyone's and it's sort of like, I don't know too many happy, smiling vrips.

Keywords: Disability; LGBTQ Community; Media; Representation; Youth

Partial Transcript: JOHN KILLACKY:
Part of the book that I did “Queer Crips: Disabled Gay Men and Their Stories” was about people telling the real stories and the depression, the despair, the suicides, the issues that are really important to people. Also, people trying to have sex, gay men who are disabled, trying to have sex, and it's really difficult if you roll into a bar, if you can get into it to be seen as a sexual object is really difficult. It’s really difficult to go into a dark bar and try to have a conversation with somebody and to be seen and not ignored. There's this one hilarious piece of a guy who hired a hustler in the book. Of course, he didn’t tell the hustler that he was in a chair, when the guy came to his house he was like, wait a minute, you didn’t tell me this.
He said, “So? What's the issue here?” I found myself in this same conversation with people who are disabled. I find myself in the same conversation with people struggling with substance use disorders, or some of the women I visit who are incarcerated, that beginning loving yourself and then building from there is so essential. I was thrilled when you reached out and asked me to be interviewed for this because I love the platform. I've loved looking at Jewelle Gomez's interview and other people's interview here because there's such wisdom, lived wisdom, lived experience, and there's been so much in our life of time that has changed and there's so much work to do, because if you look at international queer rights, it's horrifying, what's happening, and if the right gets back in, it's gonna be even more, not even more, but it's gonna be as horrifying for us queers who have assimilated into a society. The road is very treacherous ahead. I hope that a kind of history of resiliency and finding each other and holding dear to each other that I've experienced in my life will continue in the queer world. I appreciate the conversation with you.

Keywords: Books; Disability; Elders; Publications; Queer Crips: Disabled Gay Men and Their Stories

Partial Transcript: ANDREA PINO-SILVA:
And you actually answered my last question. The way I was gonna ask you is to mention OUTWORDS in it. But basically, it was precisely why you think it's important to share stories like yours why it's important for organizations like OUTWORDS to exist.

JOHN KILLACKY:
Andrea, here's what's important, our conversation is what's important. It's actually not my life. It's us in dialogue. It's an intergenerational dialogue. We come from different worlds, but we have this shared experience and that's what's thrilling to me. Just as when I make a piece of work, it becomes realized when a viewer sees it and defines it. To me, my experience I've shared actually, because of your conversation, it's our conversation. That's the gift of this to me, is having a conversation with you. I hope people see this and that they will have their own experiences because of this and their own reactions, and it'll make our conversation have different meaning when it's seen by others.

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:
I completely agree with you. It's actually why I have been like the token millennial in the board that has constantly said, we need to have these conversations. That said, again, I'm not even the youngest generation, but I think it's such a beautiful thing when a person who maybe doesn't know what that's like, I mean, because there are people now who just don't know what these things are like, who don't know what our world without marriage looks like. I would tell this to my younger students, because I'm currently in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and I went to the University of North Carolina. I told my students I'm like, listen, when I was a first-year student here, this state passed the marriage amendment. I was here on this campus in this classroom and I'm telling you that they passed the marriage amendment.
It was the first election I ever voted in because I couldn't vote for Obama, I was like a little bit younger and I couldn't vote. The first election I voted in was against this marriage amendment. I'm telling you this now because you weren't living in a world in which they were passing marriage amendments just because they felt like it. I think it's important for us to have those conversations and for young people to know what it's like, I think particularly because again, that resiliency, it is generational education. It's something because we know what's gonna happen again. We might look a little different, because, again, 10 years later they were passing bathroom bills. It's the same rhetoric because they were also talking about sexual violence when they passed the marriage amendment. This is not new rhetoric, and that's the beauty of telling our history and telling our story is that we get to tell that history that is so oftentimes erased, and that's why it's so important. That's the only reason why I see it as so important, is because we get to pass along that resiliency that was passed on to us.

Keywords: Elders; LGBTQ Community; LGBTQ History; OUTWORDS; Oral History; Youth

Partial Transcript: ANDREA PINO-SILVA:
Anyway, I am asked to have you say OUTWORDS in one of your answers as Juan has reminded me just now. If you wouldn't mind, just like in that last sentence, what is the importance of, and actually we can even frame it as like what's the importance of queer organizations, being queer run, telling our queer stories? Why is it important for us to continue to tell our stories and just mention OUTWORDS in the answer?

JOHN KILLACKY:
Well, I was very touched actually when I got the contacted from OUTWORDS about participating in this conversation. I remember, I thought, how did they find me? How do they know who I am? How do I exist in this world? When I responded, I said, “Yes, I'm very interested. But I'm curious why this organization in Los Angeles is reaching out to this aging queen in Vermont.” And I was told by Bliss, wonderful man, that I met through this whole process of OUTWORDS that Kenny Fries, another disabled gay man who's a writer, beautiful writer, had recommended me as well. I was touched by that. I thought, well, OUTWORDS is really serious about looking at diversity of voices. I went to the website and really enjoyed some of the conversations.
I was touched because those are conversations I didn't have; my lived experiences was different. I just thought, how incredible this is that they're creating like a mosaic of lived experiences. It's like an archive of lived experiences in all of our queerness, from very fringe activists to very mainstream assimilationist, to artists, to legislators, to writers, to playwrights that were all part of this. I was excited to think about, well, what's in my living archive of queerness. I think it is so powerful to have people's stories for all of us to learn from. I'm grateful, grateful, grateful to OUTWORDS for including my voice.

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:
That was perfect. Thank you, John. I wanna also note what you said about living archive, living queerness. Because I think that's something that goes back to one of your early points about why it is that they portray our stories as just death of despair and accursed. And that's just what's so powerful about something like this, I think is this counter narrative. I always think too, like when folks don't have community, when they don't have, the father that maybe gave that little bit of nudge know even more alone, like I'd like to think that those stories, like conversations like ours can be that space for a young person who doesn't … Like, they're not just a young person, but a person who I think has just never had access to conversations like these. There are many, and that's what I think is really the valuable nature of a space like this. I feel the same way. It's the conversations that I wish I had been exposed to, that I want to continue to be exposed to. It's that living community that isn't just bound to certain spaces or bound to time. But anyway, thank you so much, John. I've really enjoyed our conversation.

JOHN KILLACKY:
Thank you. Thank you.

ANDREA PINO-SILVA:
Thank you for sharing your time with me.

Keywords: Elders; LGBTQ Community; LGBTQ History; OUTWORDS; Oral History; Youth