Speaker 0 00:00:06 You are listening to right on radio on cafe 90.3 FM and streaming live on the
[email protected]. I'm Josh Weber. And tonight I read on radio, Ian Graham lease talks with Martin Keller, the author of the space pen club, close encounters of the fifth kind, UFO disclosures, consciousness, and other minds. Zoomers, Keller's a former pop culture journalist published author and unproduced screenplay writer. His work has appeared in rolling stone. The Washington post, the Boston globe, and many others Keller also has written hi-jinks and hearsay scenes, true stories for our Minnesota pop life. His work has also included a cinch for the center for the study of extraterrestrial intelligence. The spaceman club is based in part on that period.
Speaker 1 00:00:49 And I'm Annie Harvey in the last part of the hour. Liz olds talks with Brian. Mulloy an award-winning author and activist about his book after Francesco. Here's the recipient of the Alex award and the Minnesota book award. He was an early employee of the Minnesota aids project. He helped organize the state's first ands walk and as an ongoing member of the community, he currently teaches creative writing in Minneapolis, all of this and more so stay tuned to write on radio
Speaker 3 00:01:50 Amy and Graham Lee Gunn, going to be speaking tonight with Martin Keller. Who's the author of the space pen club, close encounters of the fifth kind UFO disclosure consciousness, and other mind. Zoomers welcome to write on radio Martin Keller. Thanks for having me in end in fact, to see it's having your backs a lot. Last time we were on have some years ago with your other book, wasn't it with the hi-jinks and Harrison. Yeah, you were on hearsay. There was a fair amount of heresy in, I think maybe you should change the title cause everybody's saying hairspray, maybe my are going. Uh, so it's good to have you here with this book and, uh, it's very timely given what's going to be happening with the government shortly, but we'll get to that in a moment. Um, tell us a little bit about why you wrote this,
Speaker 0 00:02:42 The reasons for writing one. I am, I'm a long suffering student of this issue going back to a high school. When I had a sighting with college with high school friends, two sightings, actually one was a little more dramatic than the other. And, uh, fast forward to the early nineties, I ended up, uh, going on a kind of a great adventure with Dr. Steven Greer, the founder of, uh, the center for the study of extraterrestrial intelligence as his pro bono publicist. And we saw quite a few UFO's and our, uh, endeavors, the whole thing with queer Greer's organizations. He said he has his human initiated contact, close encounters of the fifth kind. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a, you know, and I had quite a few experiences prior to meeting Dr. Greer's six months prior in my home in explicable paranormal funnels.
Speaker 3 00:03:46 So that's what, what got you interested in this likable, which we'll get into in explicable behavior in your own home, which suggests that in some way you are targeted? Yes.
Speaker 0 00:03:58 Uh, I think that's a good way to put it. It's a mystery that I'm still trying to resolve. And I think writing the book in some ways resolved it, but at another level, it completely, uh, enhanced the fact that it's still a mystery.
Speaker 3 00:04:12 Okay. That sounds good. There's obviously loads of, um, UFO books, uh, I guess you a P's as then alcohol calling them. Um, and you're jumping into a very, very large pool with this. Uh, how are we going to make that number one in that pool?
Speaker 0 00:04:32 Well, I think what makes my book different is I don't know how much you've personally read about this or your listening audience has read on topic, but, uh, most UFO books are very dry. They don't have a point of view. A lot of them are just based on individual cases or in the, uh, the case of Whitney Whitley. Strieber who wrote communion. It's basically a confessional. Yeah. Um, there's no sense of humor and oftentimes there's never really any voice. And this, this book actually, uh, goes into what Steve Greer famously calls the UFO ghetto. And, uh, you know, I had a lot of encounters with other researchers, uh, debunkers people in the media, obviously government officials and these, uh, people from the Avery, which was an ad hoc collection of men from aerospace, uh, Intel agencies think tanks kind of a loose organization, but they were all interested in the topic and including, uh, psy and paranormal, uh, subject matters. So, and they all had, they all had bird names and they were all like Partridge, uh, chicken little, and they were the, they were the alleged bad guys going, going into this.
Speaker 3 00:06:00 Hmm. When you call, that's why you call it the aviary?
Speaker 0 00:06:03 Well, I don't know who came up with it, but it's, it's sort of, it's part of the lore and legend of, of, of the UFO subculture
Speaker 3 00:06:11 And Whitney street. But did you ever meet him until
Speaker 0 00:06:13 I met Whitley once or twice? I can't say that we're close personal, but I've read his work. He's uh, he's one of the better thinkers, not just in the UFO world, but in the geopolitical stage at large, he writes a terrific blog on his unknown country site that I read pretty regularly. And I love to, uh, to listen to how his mind
Speaker 3 00:06:39 Works from the show youngster go. We, I think with a war war day, I think it was, it was nothing to do with this, but it was, it was a very good writer. And I saw that, that film read the book and saw the film. Did you see the film was community
Speaker 0 00:06:53 Communion? Yeah. I always thought a battle better title would be confession cause it's pretty much him.
Speaker 3 00:06:59 So what do you think about films that, that try to depict something that's that's hardly ever seen?
Speaker 0 00:07:06 Well, there's some very bad ones and there's some very great B movies that are fun just to watch for, for their own value. Uh, recently though in the last four, three or four years has been some really excellent work done. James Fox's the phenomena, which has just a, I think it had a, uh, March debut on Netflix, uh, Dr. Greer's three self-fund or crowdfunded documentaries that have come out since 2017 are also really well done. And I think pose more questions on there are answers, right.
Speaker 3 00:07:46 Netflix, if our listeners can come pick them up.
Speaker 0 00:07:48 Yeah. Yeah. I think it can pick them up on Netflix and prime and I think Greer's last film, close encounters of the fifth kind. You can even watch it free if you find the right link for it.
Speaker 3 00:08:00 Okay. Okay. So, um, all this is happening. A book has just been published a week or so ago and it's, um, selling quite well already. Um, it's coming out right when the government allegedly is going to say something about all of this phenomenon. Uh, it's probably, you're going to have the, you know, kind of hold the, uh, the, the, the microphone here for a while to explain all this, but tell us how that's going to affect things. What do you think they might say? Um, what do you think they might not say?
Speaker 0 00:08:38 Well, obviously you've been following this very closely. I, I listened to a part of an interview with Lou Elizondo today on, uh, on a national radio show that somebody posted on their Facebook site. And he said, uh, he didn't want to give away. A lot of Lou is one of the guys used to work inside on the UAP task force and then left it, uh, to help disclose the fact that these, uh, objects have been buzzing around our military, et cetera, et cetera. And, uh, was quoted extensively in the New York times stories that first broke in 2017 and continued to appear in the times, which previously, you know, they never touch this with a serious attitude. But, um, I think it, I think the expectations in the UFO community are low. On the other hand there, I think there may be some genuine surprises, but, uh, I did also read that there's a classified section and I'm betting real money that that's going to be leaked. I hope it is. Uh, the bulk of the article of the, of the report has already been linked to the times. And they're saying stuff like, well, it doesn't say aliens, but it doesn't rule it out either. It's like, no one can Artic articulate what this is, which I find hard to believe because our Intel agencies and, and select departments within military had been looking at this for over seven years. They don't know what it is. They should all be fired.
Speaker 3 00:10:21 I had a, um, my ex ex wife's, I suppose it was her uncle who was high up in the military. I can't tell you his name or what rank he was or anything, but he was getting ready to retire. And we went to his retirement party out east and, uh, he spoke to, he spoke about this issue quite a bit. And, um, he said, I don't mind telling you now that I'm retiring when there's some of this comes out and a lot of people are going to be very, very shocked, including you, who said to me, cause I'm a bit of a skeptic as you know. Um, but, uh, that I found that very, uh, very telling and a little chilling that he said that
Speaker 0 00:11:02 I think it's more surprising, at least in my worldview that there wouldn't be other civilizations in deep space. I mean, the universe is pretty vast. The multi-verse is even vaster. Um, you know, that which raises the next question. Well, can they get here from, from where they are?
Speaker 3 00:11:26 I think so. I was going to ask you is when you look up into the sky and, you know, just as an ordinary human being, and it's quite intimidating in some ways, quite frightening when you realize how small you are compared to what is out there. And when you look at the nearest possible planet, which is what would take us a thousand years to get to, um, well, that
Speaker 0 00:11:48 Assumes we're using what we know that we have the technology we have,
Speaker 3 00:11:53 But then some of my physicist friends look at me and say, I'm sorry, but I don't think we can go any faster. I hope they're wrong because I really want this to be real.
Speaker 0 00:12:02 Yeah. Um, they can go faster. They can go at a subluminal speeds faster than the speed of light. Uh, you know, I spent five or six years around Dr. Greer and, uh, I admired his work. I still admire his work. And he, um, he has quite a few theories on how that works. And a lot of it is related to mind consciousness and that these objects have figured out a way to bend the space-time continuum with either technologically assisted consciousness or conscious consciousness assisted technology. And that makes sense to me, uh, if we have a civilization that's a million or even a bill, or even better a, a billion years older than ours, they may have figured out all the tricks to physics that we don't understand about deep space or even the space around earth.
Speaker 3 00:13:04 Well, given that the, the big bang theory anyway there, the university is over 13 billion years old. I mean, it could have been thousands of such civilizations have come and gone. It was
Speaker 0 00:13:15 A Rand report that was never peer reviewed, but it was finally released after pressure. So much pressure from the UFO world in 1997, it was written back in 67. And it said basically all the things that the, uh, you know, the new telescope technology, the huddle and the Kepler, and some of those other, uh, high-tech satellites that we have in orbiter are finding, you know, that, uh, they're probably millions of civilizations like ours around stars. And this was, you know, a speculative report written 40, 50 years ago. And now our science is catching up with that. With that assessment, you know, in the Rand corporation is on the conservative side of the world. It's, uh, it's not given over to subjects like this too often, which is maybe why it was never peer reviewed, but it's very, well-written very, well-reasoned it also points out something that many subsequent books since then have come out and said that a lot of these things have been buzzing around our atomic missile silos. And, uh, that's one of the things that's starting to appear in the news more and more it's like, what are they doing?
Speaker 3 00:14:33 I remember as a kid, I went mad about Eric <inaudible>, um, chariots of the gods and, and all that kind of stuff. And even even went to some of the places to take a look at what was there and that that's still, I mean, it was largely debunked, I think, to some extent, but it depends who you talk to, whether you, whether you think it was debunked, not, but, um, you know, the whole, he introduces the first one to introduce, um, lay lines and all those kinds
Speaker 0 00:14:59 Of ancient astronauts, baby. I don't think I ever actually read that book. I mean, I read a lot about it. One of the quotes in my book, and there's quite a few, uh, source quotes in this work is, uh, a quote from JBS Haldane, a British geneticist and evolutionary biologists who in 1927. And he's going to use the word queer here because obviously had different meanings a hundred years ago, but he says, the universe is not only queer. Then we can, then we can suppose, but it's queer then we can suppose. I mean, I think that, that says it all right there. That's the end of the interview, that's it? You don't even have to read the book. I mean, that's it, that's, that's, that's the world we live in really
Speaker 3 00:15:45 Sure. That's all right. It was somebody that's scraps, making strange noises on the chair, um, who knows it might be an alien and I lean back. So I'm intrigued to find out some details about what actually happened to you.
Speaker 0 00:16:02 Well, quite a few things, actually
Speaker 3 00:16:05 Let's find let's get one that's appropriate for talking about over the air and tell us it, tell us the story, what happened? Well,
Speaker 0 00:16:15 Uh, there were a lot of synchronistic things that were happening, um, in my world in 1992, prior six months prior to even meeting Steve Greer and the CCD organization. And, um, a lot of it was, uh, things happening in her house lights coming on and after we'd turn them all out for the night, um, balls of a little red orbs, it's probably the most dramatic, probably six or seven months down the road from when some of the strangeness started at home. And that, that was the most disturbing. And I'm also, I'm still trying to figure out really what, what perpetuated it, how, why, how and why in my bedroom, four in the morning and it, and it had, uh, it had, uh, a nasty mental and energetic effect on me for three days after. And I go into quite a bit of detail about it. Um, I did a lot of reading about hypnagogic experiences, kind of a new, uh, intersection of wakeful consciousness and sleep that didn't seem to fit the bill. And eventually Dr. Richard Haynes from NASA Ames pretty well respected a NASA scientist, uh, hypnotize me and we at what they might be. And, uh, there was a good deal of avoidance and hesitation on my part.
Speaker 3 00:17:57 So, so how does that connect with the UFO's? Well,
Speaker 0 00:18:00 That's one of the questions is explored in the book. How does all this stuff come together? And it was the paranormal stuff in our house related to the, to the so-called, uh, E T or alien issue. Did I have a, a close encounter of the fourth kind, uh, like an onboard experience with whoever the visitors are, or as several books have suggested, this was maybe a manufactured event by, uh, by our guys, the bad guys that run around in the, in the black, black ops world. I mean, this goes in pretty deep. It's a start, it starts to sound conspiratorial, but that's one of the, uh, the narratives in the book is what was this? Was this a real paranormal event? Or was it a, was it a faked one, throw me off my game or to maybe at this point
Speaker 3 00:19:00 You, you were investigating and people knew you
Speaker 0 00:19:02 Were doing that. Well, I was starting to. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3 00:19:05 Yeah. So he's, that sounds very much like the whole concept of the targeted individual that is out there. It's quite quite a large theory that is going on. What about like in my family, you know, um, lots of stories circulating and kind of Celtic background, good part of it, things like the banshee, you know, white, the white, the white spirit, the white, the ghosts that have that appear. I, if you look at some of the ghost stories in my family and I, if I'm, if I'm to put your filter on them, they could be aliens.
Speaker 0 00:19:41 Well, they could be. And that's part, that's part of the problem with this, with this whole topic. I mean, there's no solid definition to terms, you know, I w I was, uh, award winning high school debate champ and, and, uh, extemporaneous speaker and all that. And one of the first things in debate that you D you do when you start a debate with your competition is define your terms. Yeah. Now what's an ITI. Hmm. Is it a, is it a, you know, three-dimensional extraterrestrial, biological entity as, as, uh, science looks at it today, our orbs ETS, I don't know. I'm, I'm skeptical about that. And then there's a whole, I mean, there's tons of literature on the, on the internet about orbs
Speaker 3 00:20:31 In the ghost world. Orbs are really a big thing on there. And there are a lot of houses and some, and sometimes it's shot in photographs and not, you don't necessarily see them with the naked eye, but they're in a photograph and there's that. And he digged down and never photographs, really. It really does something strange in it. So tell us a little bit about actual, what you know about actual ETS or creatures, you know, with, with, uh, intelligence that are visiting people.
Speaker 0 00:21:02 Well, I can't say I've ever met one face to face and had a conversation, but, um, I've read a fair amount of the literature that, that seems trustworthy. And, you know, I would describe those CE four events versus an abduction event as, um, learning points, learning events for people. Uh, Dan Sheehan recently, do you remember Dan Sheehan famous, uh, public interest, public policy lawyer worked on the, uh, the Watergate, Karen Silkwood and Ron Contra? Well, it turns out Danny Sheehan is also a lifelong UFO guy who I met at a UFO conference, and I actually recruited him to join, uh, Dr. Greer's disclosure process. And he's still involved. I mean, I watched out of CCD in the late nineties,
Speaker 3 00:22:02 So very interesting people, including Dan Aykroyd. We've got about a minute left.
Speaker 0 00:22:06 Tell us about that. Dan Akroyd, uh, is another lake Sheehan, another lifelong, uh, UFO seeker, for lack of a better word than I, uh, send them a query back in November to see if he'd write an endorsement for the book and, uh, come March. I got one, it's a, it's a very generous. Yeah. But anyway, she, uh, said recently on a podcast, you know, why is all this stuff happening now? That's the biggest question this report needs to ask. It needs to address, and I'm willing to bet we're not going to get that type of basic. Who, what, where, why information?
Speaker 3 00:22:46 No, that's very interesting. We'll look for, look forward to it with bated breath XE in Graham Lee. Scale's been speaking with Martin Keller about the space pen club. Congratulations on writing this. Thank you, sir. And thanks for being on, right. And right here again, let's do it again. We'll do it again. And now this
Speaker 2 00:23:05 <inaudible> Brian, can you hear me?
Speaker 4 00:24:11 Hi. Can you hear me now? Can you hear me? Yes, I can.
Speaker 5 00:24:15 Where's
Speaker 6 00:24:17 Brian Mulloy author of, uh, after Francesca Francesco. And, uh, why don't we start with you telling us a little bit about the book, uh, and then the reading that you have prepared.
Speaker 4 00:24:32 Absolutely. So the book is called after Francesco, and it takes place in 1988 in alphabet city, in New York, as well as here in Minneapolis. And the main character. Kevin is struggling to find his way after his partner, Francesco died of aids two years prior to the opening of the book. So, um, he's struggling. This happens in the first acts, the most spoilers here, but he does, uh, drink himself into the emergency room, not once, but twice. And then his friends decide, you know what? You need to make some changes in your life. So they ship them home to Minneapolis, where he is originally from. And he starts volunteering with the Minnesota aids project. And, uh, he meets someone there named Dave, who is also what they called aids widower, of course, marriage equality. Wasn't true back then, but they still use the term widower. And, um, Dave and Kevin have tried to rediscover their sexuality and had a complete failure in doing so.
Speaker 4 00:25:52 So now they're just friends because, um, they're still staying faithful to their disease partners. So they gave it a try and it just did not work out. And, um, we are going to join, uh, Kevin and Dave and other men whose partners have died of aids or whose partners are in the final stages of age, had a support group meeting. And the support group meeting takes place at Abbott Northwestern hospital. And this is about a third or fourth meeting that Kevin has been at now. So it's from chapter six, from June, 1988. And the chapter is called the drought continues.
Speaker 4 00:26:42 We had any rain and we're not going to get any, any time soon since I'm back in Minneapolis. The weather's the thing to talk about like crime was in New York. Anyway, it's how we're starting off tonight support group meeting before we fall apart in little heaps of despair, we talk about the weather. Men are dressed in shorts and tees and muscles, muscle shirts, muscle during nap, mostly not. And Dave, sit next, Dave sits next to me. You think we'd avoid each other, but strange as it seems, I actually feel closer to him after our failed attempt to rediscover our homo sexuality. It's like we're failures together and we don't care. I'm wearing cutoff jeans because it's hot. And I still like it. When men look there's bright colors on the preppies, green and peach and the kid with dyed blonde hair and Aaron with his dyed black hair wear tight jeans with ripped out knees, white muscle shirts that show off their pale skinny arms.
Speaker 4 00:27:51 Dave is Dave in a sandals and hiking shirts with the blues short sleeve shirt, Butch Bobby Joe, our facilitator who reminds me of the second, Bobby Joe from petticoat junction starts us off with the usual ground rules, confidentiality and an affirmation. Next we go around to do check-ins. She invites Dave to start. Dave says, it's been a good couple of weeks. My garden is a disaster this year. So that's disappointing. Work-life is fine, nothing too urgent coming down the road. Like I giggle Dave Cargill and a department literally called meat solutions, which Bobby Joe asks any, any anniversaries this month. She means things like the anniversary of the first time you met your partner, moving in together. First vacation together, things like that. Dave says, as far as June goes, we really didn't do much. Gary didn't care for gardening in our trips to the boundary waters wait until after the worst of the black flies and the mosquitoes.
Speaker 4 00:29:03 So no, nothing significant. I could think of. We loved the summer Equinox. Next up is Jeff. The sexual harasser. Who's enjoying the exposed skin of his fellow bereaved. As he talks about his partner who would have been 37 this month, I noticed the unmistakable violet reddish purple-ish lesions that are formed on an eyebrow and at his hairline. I don't think they were there. Last time we got to me, I just talk about gay pride in New York and how romantic it was to walk hand in hand up to the avenue. It was the only time felt safe, holding Francesco's hand in public Francesco, always wanting to hold hands when we're out in the street. If I could never bring myself to do it. The other memory I shared is how we flipped the bird at St. Patrick's cathedral, just in case Cardinal Connor was inside Butch Bobby Joe says there's some anger in those memories as say, oh, sorry.
Speaker 4 00:30:05 She says absolutely nothing to apologize for. There's a lot to be angry about. Next step is Aaron with the dyed black hair. And I noticed that's growing out, exposing brown roots. He's missed a couple of meetings. His partner died after they took him off the respirator. He didn't call any of us. His partner was 25. Aaron starts stops, starts stops. This month would have been their fourth anniversary. His brother told him it's not like Aaron and his partner were actually married or even together all that long. His parents didn't come to the funeral, but Bobby Jo tells them, I'm very sorry. Your brother said those things to you. I'm sorry. You had to hear that your relationship is something to honor.
Speaker 4 00:30:59 Aaron tries to talk, tries to talk, tries to talk and fails, which Bobby Joe's says, Aaron, is there any more that you need to say right now is twisted up like a pipe cleaner? Yes. If I can be honest here on some level, I wanted him to die. I couldn't stand it anymore. He was so sick and in so much pain and he lost his mind. I feel so bad about what happened, but I wanted it to happen. You know, I couldn't take it anymore. He fought it. Oh my God, how he fought it. He fought so hard right up until the last breath. And that's not what I wanted. I wanted him. I don't know. I wanted him at peace. He wasn't at peace. He was terrified. Watching him struggle with those last breaths. Aaron starts stops talking. He looks like he's convulsing, but not as sound comes out of him.
Speaker 4 00:32:09 Push Bobby. Joe says, would it help Aaron? If we made you a cradle support, Aaron nods, wipes away, his tears, the groups, veterans stand in a circle. So Dave and I do too, which Bobby Joe says to Dave and me the newest additions to the group. Sometimes there are no words or there are, but we're sick and tired of hearing them over and over again. So instead of words, we hold him physically in our arms, which manifest love and support. She takes Aaron's hand and he stands next to her, just tells Dave and me to join the veterans. And we formed two lines facing each other. Next. We lean down and Crip each other's risks tightly. As Erin lies back in our harms, we hold him up, which Bobby Jo's softly sings. You are my sunshine, my only sunshine and the jaded new Yorker in me almost laughs out loud. But then the veterans join her and I leave my ironic cynical self behind Aaron closes his eyes and silently weeps. As we rock him back and forth, back and forth slowly, gently held up in our arms. He saved to cry here, to scream here, to lose his mind here because we have these fags on this Dyke and we won't let them fall.
Speaker 6 00:33:39 Thank you. A very powerful reading from a very powerful book after Francesco say, I want to start with a question that you pose in your note to the reader after the book. Uh, the first question that you pose, why revisit the trauma of the first, uh, years of the aids in gay America?
Speaker 4 00:34:06 Well, um, I wanted to do it for several reasons. One is that this month, um, June, June 5th to be specific is the 40th anniversary of the first reported cases of aids in the United States. And, uh, at that time it wasn't even called aids. There was no name for it yet. And the, a report in the center for disease controls, weekly surveillance noted that, um, young, otherwise healthy gay men had contracted a rare form of pneumonia. And, uh, several had died by the time the report had been issued. And, um, that was 1981. And since then, um, you know, we both know the history of the disease and uh, how many gay men died of it. Uh, about one in 15 gay American men were diagnosed with the disease by 1995. Um, excuse me, one in 15 had died of the disease by 1995 and about one in nine had been diagnosed with aids.
Speaker 4 00:35:13 So, um, it was devastating to an entire generation of gay and bisexual men. And I fear that as those of us who witness it got older, that there wouldn't be much, uh, in terms of the history written down. Um, fortunately there are some good nonfiction books about the era, but I wanted to write a novel that really captured a one man's experience with the disease. The other thing that I'm concerned about is that, um, I think it was 2016 when Hillary Clinton said, um, you know, how the Reagans were leaders on aids and started the national conversation about the disease and the backlash was pretty immediate. Um, but if there hadn't been people like us to remember and say what really happened, I think that, um, she would never have apologized for it because she honestly believed it was true. And as we know, that was far from the truth.
Speaker 4 00:36:18 Um, I'll just add one more thing about this for those listeners who are, uh, much younger than myself, that you have to imagine this disease aids as what it was, it was a fatal disease. And to put it in today's context, you have to imagine Donald Trump saying nothing about COVID during his last year in office and Joe Biden, never saying one thing about COVID during all four years of his first term, that's what it was like. Ronald Reagan didn't mention aids until five years in and over 30,000 people had died at the disease. So, um, that's why I wrote the book,
Speaker 6 00:37:03 Uh, to speak about a current event, uh, uh, and connected to history. Uh, as you know, I'm sure there's a football player, Carl and receive, uh, from the NFL who has just come out and what he said, I think it's very important. He said, um,
Speaker 5 00:37:27 We need to,
Speaker 6 00:37:30 He said, he felt like he had been standing on the shoulders of those who had come before he talked about the heroines and hair harrows of the aids epidemic. And before that, and after that as well, um, how do you think after Francesco, uh, takes a look at, uh, this narrative of canes and heroes and heroines and standing on the shoulders of the people who came before?
Speaker 4 00:38:00 Well, um, you know, before aids, activism and act up, uh, of course there was Stonewall. And even before that, there was the black cap Tavern in Los Angeles. And before that there was mad machine. And before that, um, you know, there's activism in pre Nazi Germany that was shut down by, by the fascists once they took power. So, um, we are standing on the shoulders of the ones who came before us, and often we don't even know that they had existed. Um, you know, I, I had heard about Stonewall. I hadn't heard about the protests from the black cat cafe that happened, uh, Tavern, which happened even earlier. Um, I wasn't that familiar with, uh, the machine society or the daughters of Bilitis. And, um, you know, I only discovered one magazine and, uh, other things when I was looking at the archives at UCLA.
Speaker 4 00:39:03 So, uh, we're standing on some shoulders. Some we know about some, we still don't know about they're lost to history. And, um, I will say this about, um, the activism of the eighties and nineties is that it really did change systems, particularly, uh, uh, the FDA and, um, the national institutes of health, uh, in terms of involving patients in their own care, in terms of speeding up protocols, um, cutting through red tape and really having people afflicted by these diseases, having a seat at the table when these decisions were made. And we also, um, worked hard and were able to leverage increased funding for aids and spoke to people like Jesse Helms. And I would say we took our confrontations to the places that needed to be confronted like the CDC, like the white house, like the Supreme court, like putting a giant condom munch, Bessie homes house. Uh, we took it to the people, uh, St Patrick's cathedral in New York. We took it to where we needed to take, uh, uh, to challenge the people who are standing in the way of research and, uh, compassion
Speaker 6 00:40:21 And how, uh, I am, uh, uh, uh, uh, age that I, uh, lived through the epidemic and saw my brothers die. Um, and I worry sometimes that young people are, uh, not knowing that they're standing on the shoulders of the people that came before and are in fact, the history of aids is, um, uh, is going away that people aren't remembering it or thinking about it. And I'm wondering, uh, what we can do to keep this memory alive. That's so important to the GLBTQ plus community.
Speaker 5 00:40:58 Well,
Speaker 4 00:40:58 Um, I think part of it is commemorating anniversaries, like the 40th anniversary of the first CDC report, I think, um, you know, in 1987, the names project aids quilt was displayed for the first time on the mall in Washington DC. So there's anniversaries that we can commemorate just as we commemorate Stonewall each year. And actually I think with aids, given that the first CDC report was on June, that, uh, part of pride now can be to honor those people who fought and died in a literal struggle life and death struggle, uh, against not just a disease, but ignorance. And, uh, if you look at Birtles welcome and their instance, insatiable greed, and, um, the, the other thing we need to remember is that the violence, uh, against gay man, uh, in particular in New York at that time was pretty horrific and they weren't the murders weren't investigated to gay bashing murders. So, um, I don't want to be, you know, the cranky old man who says in my day at the same time, and I recognize that, uh, today's generation has their home very significant challenges that they're facing. And I think if they look back and see this as a source of strength, as opposed to a traumatic experience that we came out of this strong, and we changed the public's mind about our community based on our response to aids. We're
Speaker 6 00:42:43 Speaking with Brian Mulloy author of after Francesco. And let's talk a little bit about the story now that we've gone through some of the history. Uh, Kevin is a very complex character. His relationships are very complex. He's he, uh, gay man straight couple, his aunt, uh, even his sister, which we'll maybe talk about later. Uh, could you talk about those, uh, relationships with start, of course, with his relationship with Frankie?
Speaker 4 00:43:15 Um, well, he met Francesco in 1981, uh, before the first CDC report and he was smitten. Kevin was spending, he had a little fan crush on an actor and he went to a bar on Christopher street and there was Francesco who looked amazingly like this actor. So of course the attraction at first was very much physical. And after that, it became something deeper when he got to know Francesco better. And Francesco was, um, very, uh, relaxed nature and his complete self-acceptance of himself as a gay man, which was something Kevin was still struggling with, uh, Francesco had completely accepted himself and didn't have these, um, self-doubts or self hate that Kevin had experienced. Um, he, Kevin Francesco had pretty much perched himself with that. And that was part of what really attracted, uh, Kevin to Francesca was his ease with themselves. Kevin never, never really felt at ease, uh, it growing up or with his own sexuality.
Speaker 4 00:44:33 So that was part of the attraction with Francesco. And then, you know, he has friends old and new in the book. Um, he has a friends, two friends that he knew from high school. One was his sort of stoner friend best buddy. Uh, they're kind of the Beavis and Butthead of their high school, but, uh, this guy is straight and straight as they come. And it stands by Kevin cause I wanted to include a character that paid tribute to a lot of the straight men, my age, who stood by us. We tend to think of straight men as particularly white, straight men as the enemy. And they're really, you know, some of my best friends and strongest allies were straight white men. So, um, part of that was to honor them. And then there was a, another character named Laurie who was a bit of a book nerd in high school.
Speaker 4 00:45:30 And, um, she, she wasn't really, uh, Kevin's friend. They find themselves related by marriage, um, which horrifies Kevin, but then she becomes a very good friend to him when she moves to New York. Um, she becomes her nickname becomes Jane Fonda. She discovers politics. She becomes an activist. Um, she's a little bit of a know it all throughout the book and, uh, but she's always there to support Kevin. And, uh, I suppose the last character that readers are curious about is this aunt Nora, who is, um, his aunt who immigrated from Ireland and is very Catholic, strongly Catholic, but is always there for her nephew and always a source of support and tough love. Uh, she tells some things he doesn't want to hear about how he's wallowing in, self-pity how he needs to stop drinking, how he needs to get involved in the world again. Um, she's the one who makes him go to the support group. Um, there's a lot of, uh, wonderful people in Kevin's life that help him on this journey.
Speaker 6 00:46:45 You know, we only have one minute left. I can't believe that I have so many more questions, but, um, well, let's talk a little bit about pride month. It is pride month and, um, it's, it's odd to me. Some, I feel like it's getting a little commercialized with, uh, uh, advertisements with GLBT people and the twins are having a, uh, pride month celebration. And, um, I look at it two ways. I see it. One is possibly getting over commercialized, but also, uh, the other side is that we are becoming a part of a larger community, which is good. So I'm wondering which way you think about that, or both
Speaker 4 00:47:28 Know it's this month, everything has a rainbow slapped on it, right? Pet food to life insurance. It wasn't always that way. Um, you know, back in the day, marching and gay pride, you didn't know what was going to happen. And I got an, in some shouting matches back in the early pride marches with people who were heckling us or threatening us. So, um, you know, I really, I don't know about you, but I feel like I've lived several lifetimes in one lifetime because when I was born homosexual, he was illegal and we could be involuntary, institutionalized and criminalized. And today we have marriage equality, uh, last year, uh, or maybe two years ago now, um, we have federal civil rights protection from a conservative Surrey pre-IND court, which I never would have imagined. So, uh, part of it is my sense of disbelief and a part of it is asking myself, what are you really nostalgic for when you look, you know, at the time you didn't know if you're going to make it through it or not. So when you look back, it seems like you were young and passionate and committed, but you know, if you really look back at that time, you didn't know if we'd be here today. So I try not to let nostalgia, uh, cloud my thinking too much.
Speaker 6 00:49:05 We've been speaking with Brian, Loloi all through after Francesco a wonderful book. I have the recommended, especially during pride months here in the 40th anniversary of the first cases being, uh, discovered. Uh, so Brian, thank you so much. I wish we had more time, uh, but we don't so
Speaker 4 00:49:28 Well, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate. Okay. Bye. Bye
Speaker 1 00:49:52 You are listening to right on radio on cafe 90.3 FM and streaming live on the
[email protected]. I'm Annie Harvey. I'd like to thank our guests from tonight, Martin Keller and Brian Mulloy plus our listeners without your support and donations cafe would not be possible. You can find more news and info about right on radio at cafe.org/program/right on radio. Plus listen to recent episodes on our podcast. You can find it on Spotify, iTunes, Google podcasts, and anywhere podcasts can be found. Now stay tuned for vulnerable or Minnesota.
