People in search of hot coffee and a break from the
muggy winds of Sacramento's first days of spring enter the small bookstore/cafe on the
corner of 21st and I Streets. I await the arrival of one of the city's leading artistic
personalities, Michael R. Gorman.
It is a name that crosses many boundaries within the Queer community and sparks
recognition with politicians, activists, religious leaders, journalists and community
members alike, most of whom will be more than happy to launch into ribald tales about the
man who is known as the Poet Laureate of Lavender Heights.
Above the sound of cappuccino machines and chatting customers comes a loud robust laugh.
The sound turns many heads, but mine is the table the man comes to. I am greeted with not
a handshake, but the firm warm hug afforded a friend.
I am standing face to face with man Patricia Nell Warren has dubbed "the Cantankerous
Celt." As we sit, I find myself slightly intimidated by the piercing gaze of his blue
eyes as they peer out past the frame of long red hair and an untamed beard the color of
Irish fire.
It is four weeks before Gorman will become the first Sacramento author to win a Lambda
Literary award for his book The Empress is a Man: Stories from the life of Jose Sarria.
"My publishing company has explained it as the academy awards of the gay community.
Just being nominated is a big deal. Haworth has never had a finalist, so they were really
jazzed when they heard."
With a master's degree in play writing from California State University of Sacramento,
Gorman left the world of academic writing to pursue his love of poetry and story telling.
He has a list of journalistic credits including the Bay Area Reporter, Genre, the
Advocate and four of Sacramento's GLBT publications.
"I spent so many years writing and editing for free with the local GLBT press. Then I
moved up to writing and editing for peanuts," he adds with a laugh. "The gay
press is not the highest paying genre in the world, but people do it because they believe
in it. We know it's important. It was a wonderful training ground; it taught me how to
write for deadlines and it kept my pen oiled. But there were times I thought, ‘I'm
never going to have the time to write anything else.' I was always on a deadline."
It was during this time that Gorman teamed up with a photographer named Brian Ashby who
had just moved to Sacramento from Minneapolis. "He told me he came home one day after
walking home in the cold and told his lover, ‘We're moving--I don't know where, but
it'll be somewhere warm.' A few months later they were here."
Their friendship formed while both were working at Sacramento's oldest GLBT newspaper Mom . . . Guess What--Gorman as editor, Ashby as
a volunteer photographer. They continued to work together doing freelance articles long
after they left MGW.
"Our first big article was on gay homeless in Genre Magazine. It was just
after they began publishing and I would tell people that I had been [within a fourth of an
inch] of Madonna because she was on the cover of the issue [our article] was in."
As they searched for a topic for their next collaboration, Gorman and Ashby began
discussing their curiosity of transgendered people. "We were both intrigued by the
topic of transgenderism, but also about how so much of the [modern] gay rights movement
began with the drag queens. We started wondering what's different about the queens of that
era and the ones now. Are they more or less political than they were 30 years ago?"
What began as questions for a feature article comparing the Stonewall era drag community
with the contemporary drag community began almost at once to evolve into more.
"Everywhere we turned the name ‘Jose Sarria' kept popping up."
Sarria was the founder and first empress of a nonprofit organization which would later
become known nationally as "the Court." The organization would raise funds
primarily through the staging of entertainment events that featured drag shows.
"My first lover had been involved with the Sacramento Court (Court of the Great Northwestern Imperial Empire), so I
knew who Jose was and that he was mentioned in a few of the queer history books. So when
people suggested we interview him I was a little star struck. I kept thinking ‘will
he even let us talk to him?'"
Gorman's body rocks with laughter, "Little did I know how much he loved the
attention." As we pause to refill our coffee cups, I look up to notice those around
us turn back to their newspapers and conversations. I realize they have been listening to
the tales Gorman has been telling, his voice, weaving an intricate story line, has
captured the attention of the entire room. I smile as they look my way, attempting not to
be obvious as they await the continuation of the tale.
"You know," he begins, as he takes a bite of lemon meringue pie from the plate
in front of him; he is speaking to me as a fellow journalist. "It's so embarrassing
when you are trying to find someone and you go through piles and piles of research and
then realize all you had to do was look in the phone book."
"Well, lucky for me, I looked there first," he smiles conspiratorially.
"Sure enough, it was there. So, I called him and he answered himself; no body guards
or anything [like I had imagined]. And we arranged our first meeting to take place at his
annual memorial for the late Emperor Joshua Norton.
"So, I called Brian and said I arranged the interview with Jose Sarria, we have to
meet him in the cemetery. He said, ‘Come again?'"
"It was bizarre. Here was this guy dressed in a full black Victorian mourning dress.
The San Francisco gay and lesbian marching band and part of the gay chorus were there in
the middle of a cemetery where there was a full continental breakfast being served. It was
too bizarre."
It was during the interview afterward that Sarria would mention a biography on his life
that had fallen by the wayside. He inquired as to whether Gorman had an interest in
continuing the work. Gorman agreed to send Sarria copies of his writing and if they found
a mutual interest, he would consider taking up the project. Several weeks later, the
foundation for The Empress is a Man was laid.
Difficulties arose from the beginning. "I got bogged down with trying to balance jobs
and getting time off from a job to do the research and then the difficulty of finding the
money to drive out to San Francisco; then there's the cost of meals and gas when I was out
there. There were times I had to cancel appointments with Jose because I didn't have the
money for the gas to get there. I enjoyed it most of the time but it was a huge strain
financially. There were times almost weekly I just thought I wouldn't be able to do
complete the book."
The real break for Gorman was due in large part to his lover, Dean Copsey, who was
finishing a master's degree in computer science at UC Davis. "He said, "I know
it'll be tight for a while, but I know I'm gonna get a decent job with this degree' and he
suggested I quit one of my two jobs and go for it. And he did get a good job so now I'm
kind of a kept man." His laughter rings throughout the small cafe.
He hesitates a moment as he thumbs through a local queer newspaper. "You know, it is
so hard for artists of any kind because you have to have all these other jobs to pay rent
while you're trying to make money at it. You have to be a starving artist for years or you
luck out and have a partner who can support you while you're trying to make it. I'll
always be thankful to Dean for doing that for me."
With the money problem temporarily solved, production of the book became steady, if
uninspired. Gorman found himself facing the challenge of writing a conventional biography
about an unconventional man and became more and more discouraged.
"I started to get bored with it and I thought ‘if I'm bored with the book, the
readers are going to be incredibly bored with it.' I wanted something that would capture
the stories Jose was telling me--not something that would going to be used in academic
circles for research."
"I taught folklore for a time which are the stories that get passed from generation
to generation. The stories that people chose to tell about their lives are the ones that
have the most meaning to them. It reflects the way they look at the world and shows you
the things that are important to them. Listening to someone's own personal folklore, you
don't just get their life story, you get their perspective and their feelings and what
they think is important and that fascinates me. That was what I wanted to capture in Jose.
"I wanted it to reflect his view of his life so it was kind of like my retelling his
story rather than an academic analysis of his life. As soon as I decided that I got all
excited about the book again." He smiles.
The recorder between us clicks off and he uses the opportunity to stretch his legs. I take
a moment to sift through my notes and down the last swallow of bitter coffee. As I look
up, I notice a woman at the far counter looking through a copy of The Empress is a Man.
A second woman approaches her, looking at the novel questioningly.
"Some drag queen," the first woman says, placing the book back on the shelf. As
Gorman returns, taking his seat across from me, the woman's words echo through my mind and
a flood of new questions take shape.
The tape begins to record once again, I turn the topic toward Jose's transgenderism.
"Jose is a female impersonator," Gorman states emphatically. "He may call
himself a drag queen jokingly, but he doesn't dress as the widow Norton in his everyday
life. He only puts on the female persona when doing a performance or at certain public
events."
Sarria worked as a female impersonator for a number of years at the Black Cat Cafe,
a well known restaurant and bar on Montgomery Street in San Francisco which began as a
popular hang out for the figures of the seedy underworld. While Sarria is adamant about
his cross-dressing being strictly professional, the contemporary writer in Gorman still
categorizes Sarria's behavior as a reflection of the transgender community.
"Transgender includes a lot of variations of crossing gender lines," he
explains.
The nomination for the Lambda Literary Award for The Empress is a Man was listed in
the transgender category. While some may argue that the biography is more about Sarria's
life and struggle as a gay man, rather than focusing on his cross dressing, the author
defends the literary foundation's choice of categories.
"In the preface, I made a point of stating that this was not a traditional biography;
this is not an attempt to catalog academic research. I was more interested in the story
telling aspect of the book and entertaining people. Jose has lived a fun, fascinating
life.
"I'm really glad the Lambda Literary Foundation understood that. [I think] it works
better in the transgender category and I'm proud of having written something that reflects
that aspect of our community's history. Transgendered people have been an integral part of
the GLBT community's advancement [to] where we are now--starting with the drag queens at
Stonewall. Even before that it tended to be the transgendered that were out there stirring
the political fires--Jose ran for office ten years before Harvey Milk."
"When I hear people say ‘Oh, it's just about the drag queens,' I say ‘Just?'
I want to scream ‘Hello! Have you ever read anything about stonewall?'"
Gorman's frustration with the middle-of-the-road gay, lesbian and bisexual community's
marginalization of transgendered people dates back into his earliest days of working for
the gay press. "There were these PC homos wanted to keep the transgender out of [the
papers] because of this underlying thought that ‘people in mainstream society
wouldn't understand it.'
"I'm proud to have written about that part of our community because they're an
undeniable part of who we are and who we've become. The political struggles Jose went
through and the amazingly creative ways he found to deal with those struggles, I think, is
a wonderful thing that we need to embrace and stop being ashamed of."
Gorman first became acquainted with Sacramento's Court of the Great Northwestern Imperial
Empire, an offshoot of the nonprofit organization Sarria founded almost 30 years ago, when
his first lover was involved with the group for a short time in the late 1980s. Gorman
distanced himself from the organization when he began writing steadily for the local GLBT
press.
"I felt an obligation [to keep a professional distance] from a lot of organizations.
I wanted to try not identify too strongly with any one group in our community so that I
could cover all of them freely. I dropped out of a lot of different groups. Then as I got
into the book, it went from being a professional decision to just not having the
time."
While there are those in the community who label the Court system as a never-ending party,
Gorman is quick to defend the organization. "The Court has given tens of thousands of
dollars to charities all over the country. The people that become involved in it--the
emperors and empresses--basically give up their lives for a year to oversee the fund
raising. If they are just going into it for the partying, why would they take on all the
responsibility? There's always been a fun, campy element to the Court, but they do some
serious work. I have a great deal of admiration for many of the people involved in the
Court."
His brow tightening, he seems for a moment lost in thought. "Sometimes," his
voice is tight, "I think that type of PR [by our community] is an attempt to justify
prejudices against the drag queens and transgendered. To say they are a bunch of drunks or
it's all one big party is a way to marginalize them and the work they are doing. That
disturbs me that we, who have been discriminated against by the culture-at-large, turn and
do the same to our own--because of our discomfort around them. I find that incredibly
hypocritical.
"Groups like the Radical Faeries and the Court system and some of the groups we would
view as being on the fringes of the community, we try to marginalize because we still
carry this internalized homophobia. We want the world to see us all as good little Guppies
(Gay Urban Professionals). I refuse to buy into that."
Those sitting at the tables around us have almost forgotten to maintain their pretense of
pretending not to eavesdrop. They quickly turn their attention away as we shift in our
chairs to view the list of authors that will make appearances at the small cafe in the
coming weeks. He turns to me, his eyes twinkling with a childlike glee.
"I'm really excited about what's happening in the Sacramento literary community with
the Open Book being able to host writers
from all over the country and also with the new Lavender Library and Archives
opening this month. [Finally] literature and history are becoming priorities for our
community in Sacramento.
"There is a tremendous amount of talent here that goes unsung and I hope as avenues
like these continue to open up, they will provide local writers with the opportunity to
get their work out where a lot of people can be exposed to it."
"It's incredibly difficult for many writers to ever get noticed, particularly in
smaller markets." Gorman begins to tell of attending writing seminars and listening
to fledgling writers ask experienced authors the secrets to get published. "They
would never give a direct answer. They made it sound like there was this magic or
circumstance that either happened, or it didn't. They'd say ‘keep writing so that
when something happens you'll have plenty of work to present.' I promised myself that when
I got published I was going to tell writers the exact process to go through.
"Well, a year before the book was published, Jose flew to New York for a Court
gathering and on the flight back, he just happened to sit next to the acquisitions editor
for Haworth Press and they started talking. Jose mentioned the book and was told to have
me send it to them to read when it was done. So now I'm going to have to tell people
"keep on writing, have a lot of work ready, it's magic"
That magic would not stop until Gorman flew to Los Angeles where he would attend the
Lambda Literary Awards and become Sacramento's first Lammie Award winner.
"Sometimes it's like it hasn't really hit me. There are times when I am by myself
that I'm dancing around the room and I'm whooping and hollering, but part of me is still
amazed that it's happening. There's this little voice inside of me that says ‘hey,
I've been paying my dues. I've been writing for a long, long time with little reward.' Now
I'm starting to see some benefits."
He laughs. "I'm like one of those actors that the media call an ‘overnight
success' when they've been doing stupid little commercials for 30 years.
"I called Patricia Nell Warren and I asked her does it ever get kind of blase and
casual she said, ‘hopefully not.'"
His demeanor seems that of a seasoned journalist. "Most writers, even well published,
don't get awards. Then, even after you get one, it doesn't take long before you're in the
background again. The public remembers the names of the faces on the screen, not the names
of the people who write the scripts."
"But more important than awards is having family and friends in your life who believe
in you and are willing to make sacrifices so you can continue your work. I know people say
that all the time, but it's the truth. I am truly blessed to have people in my life that
do that for me and I owe a lot to them."
Gorman's next goal is the publication of his second book, a collection of poetry tracing
the healing process of survivors of childhood abuse. The poems deal with the process from
the prospective of a gay man. Some of the poetry has been used in workshops by
psychologists.
A third book, a collection of Gorman's own folklore centering on the relationship between
himself and his son Mack, is also in the works. "Mack is a unique, intelligent, very
verbal human being and has been ever since he was a kid. [This book] is a collection of
stories about us and how he's handled growing up with a gay dad." It is expected to
be completed within the next year.
As I turn the recorder off, he takes a copy of his book from his bag and inscribes a few
quick words on the inside page. He places it on the table in front of me with a smile and
we exchange our good-byes.
I step out onto the patio of the cafe. The wind has died down and the afternoon sun has
sunk below the Sacramento skyline.
So begins the tale of Michael R. Gorman.
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