UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

Interview #942
WIPPERFURTH, DJ (Donna Jean Mary Francis Rose)

WIPPERFURTH, DJ (1945-)
Bartender, Cab driver
At UW: Not applicable (At Madison: 1963-)

Interviewed: 	February 14, 2009 
Interviewer: 	Pat Calchina
Index by: 	Pat Calchina & Troy Reeves
Series: 	Madison’s LGBT Community 1960’s-present
Length: 	1 hour, 31 minutes

00:00:00	Start of Interview/Interviewer’s Introduction
PC:	 Valentine's Day, February 14, 2009. DJ Wipperfurth. DJ, would you spell your last name for me? 
DW:	 W-I-P-P-E-R-F-U-R-T-H. 
PC:	 And what is your birth date? 
DW: 	2/2/45. I just turned 64 two weeks ago. 
00:00:27
PC:	 All right. Thank you so much. So this is an interview with DJ. And I guess, DJ, we're going to start with when you arrived in Madison. 
DW:	 New Year's Day of 1963. Arrived to live here. 
PC:	 But you'd been here before? 
DW:	 Well, in my junior and senior years of high school, I used to come to Madison. 
PC:	 And where did you come from? 
DW:	 Dane, Wisconsin. 
PC:	 OK. That's what I thought. And so why the move to Madison? 
DW: 	Because I needed to figure out my sexuality, to tell you the truth. I needed a larger city. Dane was about 250 people. I'd been struggling with my sexuality for-- well, since I was 11. And I talked to my grandfather about it-- who was my mentor and my trusted adviser. I miss him a lot. He told me I didn't need to worry, that if I got to a larger city, there was other people who were like me, and that I wasn't the only one. Because at a very young age, I was very worried that I was strange, and that I was the only one that thought the way I did. I knew I liked girls the way boys liked girls, and I didn't understand why. And so eventually I talked to him. And that's how that came about, basically. 
PC:	 And you were-- did you say 18, when you came? 
DW:	 No, I was-- oh, when I moved here, yes. 
PC:	 You were 18 when you moved? 
DW: 	Not quite. New Year's Day of '63, and I turned 18 February 2. But for all practical purposes, I was. 
PC:	 Right. So, when you came here, did you know people? 
DW: 	No. 
PC:	 Other people? So how did you go about-- 
DW:	 Well, this is the largest city next to Dane. 
PC:	 Right. But how did you go about-- 
DW: 	And it's not that big of a city. Well-- 
PC:	 --finding a community? 
00:02:27
DW:	 For me, it was. I went to the gay bars. 
PC:	 Tell me about that. What was that like? And any bars that you can-- 
DW: 	Well, they weren't really gay bars, except-- well, the Velvet Swing was a gay bar, and so was the Pirate Ship. The Pirate Ship was later, though. The Velvet Swing was at first. 
PC:	 And so were they primarily gay bars or were they straight-- 
DW: 	They were men's bars. 

PC:	 OK, they were men's bars. 
DW:	 Men's gay bars. And women always congregated in the back around the pool tables, back then, pinball machines, stuff like that. We had our little group meetings there and we did our thing. But actually, when I first came to town, I wasn't old enough to drink. And then what-- oh, Three Bells, it was called. It was a straight bar on University Avenue, in the 800 block, which would have been Park and University, right by humanities building, across the street from where humanities is now. And it's where all the gay fly boys would come, from [UNINTELLIGIBLE] down to the Three Bells. And lesbians, we sometimes used to meet in this one back corner of the bar, where there was these booths, and we'd be there, and the fly boys would be in the other side of the bar in this back corner, and the rest of the bar was straight, college students. And it was called the Three Bells because it had something to do with the guy who owned it. It had something to do with the Navy. Although he obviously welcomed the fly boys. 
PC:	 So when you'd go into these bars-- so you found the other women like yourselves. And was it a quick acceptance? 
DW:	 Well, it was older women that-- I was very young, obviously. I was 18 years of age. I was very young. Then I could drink. But then the law changed and I couldn't drink, and then I could drink again. It was weird. But that's-- Wisconsin's weird about its drinking laws. You can get your ass shot off at Vietnam, but you couldn't have a beer, during that period, which was weird. But that's another situation. But to meet other people, the only places I knew to go to do that to socialize was bars. Because they were the main things. There were coffee houses here and there, but a lot of that had to do-- well, I'm 64, so at that time, a lot of that had to do with the poets and the Beat Generation and that kind of thing was going on, especially out in San Francisco and stuff. And so here, they'd have these little coffee houses. So they weren't really for-- later on, they became more known for gay women. They have coffee houses. But before that, it was always the poets, and the Beat Generation, so to speak. So we more gravitated towards the bars. And back then, I didn't drink very much. But that changed, though-- excuse me-- over the years. And the Velvet Swing was a gay bar. It was men, but as I said, women had the back room there again, where the pool tables were and the pinball machines and shuffle boards. And you'd go in there, and us younger lesbians-- the older ones would-- well, first of all, they'd be chasing us like crazy. And secondly, they'd take us under their wing, kind of let us know what was going on, where to go and stuff. We got tired of this business all the time of going to the boys'-- where the men drank. And Nancy Trotter-- she decided one day, up there-- Jack McManus owned this little bar on the corner of Butler and Wilson Street. He's a famous criminal lawyer here in town. And all the lawyers would go there and have sandwiches for lunch and stuff and what have you. And she started-- she worked the day shift, but then she started-- when the courts closed, the lawyers would go out either out to eat, to fancy restaurants or fancier bars, and the place would be dead all night. So she started-- she was a lesbian. She started inviting us gals down to the bar. So we kind of took it over. And then the attorneys started to tease Jack about-- 
PC:	 Is that the Velvet Swing, then, you're talking about? 
DW:	 No, this is the Stop Lite. It's called the Stop Lite, because it was right on the corner-- the stop light there was right on the corner of Butler and Wilson, just up the street from the Cardinal. It's a law place now. 
PC:	 I know exactly where you mean. 
DW: 	Same side of the street as the Cardinal, at the other end of the block. The Cardinal was on this end, and the Stop Lite was up at the other. And the lawyers had started to tease Jack. They said, you know what, you got all them girls hanging around down there, but they aren't our kind of of girls, Jack. What's going on down there at that bar of yours? And he'd say, oh, the girls got-- they always called us girls-- oh, the girls got to have someplace to go. He didn't give a damn. Besides, all of a sudden, this little bar-- he had so much money he could care less if it made money. But all of a sudden, it started making money at night, too. What he told Nancy one time, he says, since you invited all the girls down here, he said, this isn't a tax write-off anymore. 
PC:	 Oh, for losses. 
DW:	 Yeah. He was doing business from 10:00 in the morning all the way through bar time. 
PC:	 So when you would go to the bars-- I've read about butch-femme. I understand it, intellectually. Was what I've read true for you, that you'd need to identify as butch or femme, and if you didn't, you'd feel stuck somewhere and not-- 
DW: 	Well, I always hated it. I hated it with a passion, because it confused me. I'll be honest. I came out of Dane, Wisconsin, as I said. I was pretty young and naive, and I didn't grow up in a larger city or something. And I got confused. I thought, well, why can't I just be me? But that was me at a very young age. I just had that rebellious streak in me. I wouldn't be-- 
PC:	 You weren't going to accept a label. 
DW: 	And some of these-- I'm just trying to remember her name. I think her name was Liz. And I can't remember her last name to save my soul, but it doesn't matter. But she kind of took me under her wing. And she was very-- what they would call butch. And she said, you actually don't fit either. She said, you're strong-willed, but you're kind of a cream puff. She kind of basically told me I didn't quite cut it as a butch. Which then I was wounded, because I thought, I don't fit nowhere, do I? It's kind of ridiculous. Then that's why I hated it even more. And then we started going to-- Patty [? Rupp. ?] She had the boys over at the Pirate Ship. So then we had the Three Bells, the Velvet Swing, the Pirate Ship, and the Stop Lite. So this town, for as small as it is, it's always had a lot of places for gay people to go, because we were always welcome in straight bars for some-- I mean, not that we didn't have troubles. I and my friend-- the first woman I was ever involved with, Deirdre-- she and I left the Three Bells one night. We got caught down on the corner, these three punks. And they started heckling us. And I knew there was going to be trouble, because I thought they were going to try to hurt us. I wasn't sure, but it didn't look too good. And Deirdre says, what are they doing? And I said, if something happens, I said, you turn around and you run for the bar and go get help. She said, I'm not going to leave you. I said, we can't take them. You've got to go get help. So they attacked us. And I got my nose rearranged a little bit. I still have a little lump right there where they cracked me one good. But anyway, she got away, because I was just flailing everywhere. They had all they could do just to keep track of me. And she ran like hell because it was only 3/4 of a block. And this is what I mean about strai-- she ran down and said to the doorman, somebody's beating up DJ. And he snapped his fingers, and the boys at the bar-- they were all straight-- come out, we got trouble down the street, and they all came out of the bar and kicked the living daylights out of the-- 
PC:	 Good. 
DW:	 I mean, they came to our defense immediately. And then after that, when we'd come in, they'd always buy us drinks and stuff, because we got hurt. But that was the kind of attitude in bars. But that was a college crowd, too. It was academia and student, basically, because it was right there on campus. And that's the only incident I ever hit [? rough. ?] I got in a few scrapes in my cab, but that was something else. That had nothing to do with my sexuality. This definitely had. And we were. We were holding hands when we were walking down the street, which was not the coolest thing to do back in the early '60s-- '65, it was, '64. It wasn't a good thing to do and I didn't care. But I shouldn't have-- I at least understood that, kind of in the back of my head, and I shouldn't have risked her, because she didn't understand any of that stuff. 
PC:	 Let me stop for a second and make sure that everything's good. 
DW: 	You think so. 
PC:	 Yeah, I do. 
DW: 	I'm trying to remember all this stuff. But anyway. As I said, that was out of the Three Bells. And then, as I said, we had quite a few places we could go to, but we didn't have our own until Trotter invited us up to the Stop Lite. And that was kind of a place for the women to go, or the gals. She'd always call us her gals. She was crazy, but I loved her. 
PC:	 Is she still alive? 
DW: 	I have no idea. I have no idea. Oh, you know, I think she's a good 15 years older than me, so I don't think so. That would make her probably about 80, 79, 80, 81. She could be alive, but who knows. She's not in town here. I know that, because I would have kept track of her if she hadn't left and stuff. 
00:13:57 
DW:	But you know, this was before we got into a lot of the politics. Things weren't changing real fast then, and things weren't-- as I said, people thought they had to be butch, they had to be femme, they had to fit into their little molds and what have you. And then when people start to get more astute politically, about what was acceptable and what wasn't, when the politics got involved, that's when attitudes started to change about butch and femme. David Clarenbach-- I don't know if you ever met him. 
PC:	 I did. 
DW: 	He's-- his mother's wonderful, Kay. 
PC:	 Remember, I told you that I did an oral history of her. 
DW:	 Oh, that's right, you said you did a-- interviewed her. I forgot that. But yeah, there's a woman has a lot to say. 
PC:	 How did you know her and David? 
DW:	 I met-- well, I met him through the fact that we used to talk about politics, and he used to go to the bars. And then Kay would sometimes come to different things that were going on. We'd have little things that would happen, and Kay used to also-- and shortly after that, when the politics started to change, when he got that law changed. He started to work with that stuff. Law started to change. The only sad thing I have to this day that really upset me is that laws haven't changed enough about domestic partnerships. Because when I was in the hospital here recently, I just was really sick. The first time I was in the hospital, I got my leg-- my foot amputated. Some of my friends couldn't come to see me because they weren't family. But they didn't argue. I was so sick that they said family only. And I happen to be the oldest of 11 children, so my family was so big they were trying to cut it off somewhere. They weren't like, you can't see her because you're this or that. But my sister, my wonderful sister who has in charge of me, she kept saying, she's family, she's family, she's family. Women would come to see me that she knew I've been involved with over the years, and known, and grew to love, and were my friends and stuff. And she'd just say, they're family. And she meant that in the sense that this was my other family. And the nurses would go, OK. Finally, they just gave up and just let anybody come and see me that wanted to, because the whole damn place was full of people. They couldn't-- I have so many relatives just on my own, and then to have about a dozen people come up and say, we really need to see her-- they got a little taken aback. And then I wasn't even conscious. But I'm getting ahead of myself. What happened is when the law started to change, attitudes started to change. And then we started to get involved in other things-- Take Back the Night marches and things like that, and women's issues that were important, really important. 
PC:	 What about-- 
DW: 	And then you'd get these crazy women, sometimes, that'd just get nuts, because us lesbians felt the same way they did. They just were bananas. Driving me nuts. We said, oh, how could they say-- this one woman, one time, said, oh, what do you lesbians know about Take Back the Night? And I thought, I'm a woman. That's all I need to know. Not all of them were like that, just a few crackerjacks. Things started to get convoluted, started to get strange between-- but then that calmed down after they got to know us a little better. And then we started to have our own activists, like Barbara Lightner and Margot-- oh, I forget their names, now. None of them live here anymore. Patty Dudley and some of these women that would work really incessantly hard to get a lot of this stuff changed and turned around and stuff, et cetera and what have you. And then people like Sue Goldwomon would bring about "Her Infinite Variety," the radio show, and have women's music. And a lot of times it'd be lesbians that sing their songs for women, women towards women, and all that stuff started to blossom more. And then the heterosexual community started to calm down and not think we shouldn't be a part of whatever. But then, the whole thing kind of turned around, backfired on us, because all of a sudden, they were worried they were going to get called lesbians, because we were out, loud, and active, now. So they got to know us and respected us for it, and realized that we did think and feel the same way they did, but then they got worried they'd be labeled a lesbian themselves as they continued to be active. It was so bizarre. I just remember that happening and thinking, now why does this have to-- 
PC:	 The homophobia. 
DW:	 They didn't want to be labeled. They got scared. Because they thought nobody'll-- I don't know. It was bizarre. 
00:19:41 
PC:	 Yeah. OK. So we've got the movement starting. "Her Infinite Variety." I imagine A Room of One's Own is opened then? 
DW:	 It just-- yeah. See, my problem is I can't remember any dates at all. It all runs together. 
PC:	 Oh, that's OK. I think that was '60-- it's in the-- it was the same year-- 
DW: 	You can find the dates out. 
PC:	 --the community pharmacy started. I think Union Cab-- 
DW:	 Right. 
PC:	 It all started about the same time. 
DW: 	Union Cab started in '79. 
PC:	 OK, that was '79. 
DW:	 Yeah, that was later. That was much later. 

PC:	 OK. What about Lysistrata? Was that a place that you-- 
DW:	 Well, I'm just getting to that. 
PC:	 All right. 
DW: 	And then there was wonderfully lovely Catherine Rouse. And she had this dream that we should have our own place to go to, our own restaurant, our own bar, so it wasn't just bars we were going to. Because we all were sitting around, commiserating that the only places we had to go is bars. And a lot of times I'd say, but whose fault is that? That's ours. We don't do anything about it. Then the lesbian potlucks started out of all that stuff. Some women got that idea and started that, and started having it transferred around to different homes and stuff. And then Catherine put together the works to put together Lysistrata. And then we had that for a long time, and that was really the nicest place we've ever had in town, as far as I'm concerned. You could do all kinds of things there. You could have dinner there, and if you wanted a few cocktails, you could have them. You could go and-- there was a dance floor. You could dance. You could meet other-- there was poetry readings. People'd come with books and stuff that they'd written, authors. Then A Room of One's Own, and stuff started having authors in. Excuse me. So a lot of that-- it just started, in that particular three, four-- well, now, three- to five-year period there where all that started to take place. I really thought, we're taking off here. This is going to finally make all this happen. We're going to have to not be so discreet about who we are. We don't have to worry about walking down the street holding someone's hand and having your nose busted. You don't have to worry about when you go places, you got other places to go besides-- don't get me wrong. I didn't dislike the bars. And most of them did have dance floors and stuff. And all that was happening. And I managed the Cardinal. I was one of the managers of the Cardinal Bar for five years. And we had women come a couple of nights a week, because Ricardo would say, oh, just do what you want. Just do what you want. He would never get in the way of the women if they wanted to come. He'd get too nervous. He was always-- he never knew what to do with us. Just, oh, do what you want. But it was OK if the boys came in. So I thought, what's good for the-- you know. So we had a lot of nice places over the years to do it. Now we don't have much going on. We don't have much going on at all. You can go up to the-- oh, I forget what the place is called, now. Up there is Club-- that's out to Club 5. 
PC:	 That's so far away. 
DW: 	That's dancing, but that's a long ways to drive. Nowadays, even if you had a couple drinks, you don't want to be driving that far. It's not centrally located where people can come from all areas and congregate. And everybody that seems to be talking about starting something never gets it off the ground. But nowadays, the economy is such, too, that it takes a lot of money to open something. 

00:23:50
PC:	 Yeah. Well, back to Lysistrata. How long did it exist before it burned down? 
DW: 	Oh, I don't know. 
PC:	 What's your take on all of that? Do you think it was arson? 
DW:	 Oh, I have no doubt in my mind it was arson. Because one of the cab drivers that drove for us, his wife's brother knew the guy that owned it, and knew he torched it. It was proven later on. He got fined heavily for that. 
PC:	 So [? heartbreaking. ?] 
DW:	 But he torched it for money. He didn't torch it because he didn't want women-- lesbians to have a place to meet. I mean, it was nothing homophobic about the arson. He just-- the place, it did well, but it wasn't-- it was a bar and restaurant, and women don't make all that much money. And he wanted more rent out of the space. And they told him, we can't afford to pay any more. We'll have to leave. And so he just decided the easier way to do it would be to torch it and collect the insurance money, the jackass. Excuse my language. It was really-- 
PC:	 What did you all do when that happened? 
DW: 	Nothing we could do. People were sad about it, though. They missed that space. 
PC:	 People-- I came to town shortly after it clo-- it burned down. 
DW: 	Oh, you would have liked it. 
PC:	 And I hear so many stories about it. 
DW: 	You would have liked it. Penny Caruso was manager for a while there, towards the end, and it was starting to do really well again. Things were turning around. Things were doing OK. And then I was driving cab that night. And the dispatch came across and said, what do you want me to call the fire department for? What's on fire? One of the cab drivers noticed it. And he said, that Lysistrata. And he said, DJ, Lysistrata is on fire. So I went down right away, as soon as I unloaded my passenger. It was burning. It was a sad, sad day. And then after that, Catherine, oh, dear Catherine. She never quite did well, after that. And then she ended up shooting her lover. [? Who ?] they'd broke up. And it was quite a while after that. 
PC:	 I was in town. 

DW:	 It was quite a while after that. But she shot Joan and killed her and killed herself. 
PC:	 God. What a tragedy. 
DW: 	Yeah, and then the newspapers were running rampant about lesbian blah blah blah, this and that. And finally, her sister, Mary Rouse, who was dean of students, finally wrote the newspapers and said, cease and desist. This has nothing to do with homosexuality. This has to do with mental illness. Stop it already. They were making it such a-- it was terrible. It had nothing to do with Lysistrata. 
PC:	 How did it affect all of you who loved her, and part of the lesbian community at that time to have that happen? 
DW: 	Oh, I was so angry with her, I wanted to shake the stuffing out of her, but she wasn't here to do it. I just-- god, it's been, what, 10 or 12 years? Oh, at least-- 
PC:	 More. 
DW: 	12. 12 or 13, maybe. And it still affects me so much. It made us all feel very vulnerable. 
PC:	 Yup. I'll bet it did. 
DW: 	Because you start to question everything. Was part of her not dealing well with her sexuality cause the mental illness? Later, we realized it didn't. She had problems. But we weren't aware of all those problems, and all the medications, and all the-- 
PC:	 When she was running-- 
DW: 	Right. Because when she was up, she was up. She was fun-loving, happy-go-lucky. She had a dark side to her, there's no doubt about that. 
PC:	 Did you know her lover? 
DW: 	Yes. And I knew her. She used to go with [? Cathy ?] [? Zatler, ?] before Joan. I can't believe that struck me so. But that's OK. 
PC:	 Of course it is. It honors her. 
00:29:11 
DW: 	But there was a lot of things going on after that. And then things started to change again. They went into a different phase of politics and stuff-- Tammy Baldwin. The pride, that she could stand up there and say, I'm one of you, and I'm going to Washington. That was a pretty good day. 
PC:	 Oh, yes, it was. 
DW:	 That was a pretty good day. And she hasn't lost yet. Of course, she hasn't really ever had any competition. These turkeys that run against her are just-- they make Sarah Palin look like a-- Isn't she a number? 
PC:	 Yeah, she sure is. 
DW: Boy, I'll bet she doesn't believe, she doesn't believe in domestic partners. 
PC:	 No, I'm sure she doesn't. Did you have anything to do with Women's Transit Authority, Lesbian Switchboard, any-- I know that those were also early organizations. 
DW: 	The only thing I ever had to do with Women's Transit is that I got women cab drivers involved when they were about to close because they couldn't get experienced drivers and they didn't know what the hell they were doing. I was in the cab business for 31 years. And so I just dispatched, et cetera, what have you. I had Carolyn Briggs go down there, and some of the other women who were driving, try to bail them out and try to save the damn place. And we were doing fine and got it back on its feet. It was going to be OK. And then the university pulled the funding. But I didn't do it personally. The women I talked into going to do it did the work and did it. I didn't do it. I just got after them a little bit. Because we had a switchboard running out of the Wil-Mar neighborhood center that also had a gay hotline involved with it. But that came about, so then they could call there instead, so that helped. I was a part of that going on, that there was enough training for people to deal with. Because one of my main concerns back then, when we started that people's hotline was that we had concern about suicide. Well, it was after Catherine, post Catherine, and of course, when you're dealing with-- unfortunately, there was murder-suicide. And there was no pact there. She just lost it. And if she couldn't have her, nobody was going to have her. And Carol-- well, I don't remember her last name. But she was going with Joan at the time. 
PC:	 Oh, really? 
DW: 	She was upstairs in the apartment. Catherine called Joan and said, I want to come over. I might have somebody to buy one of the antiques out of the garage. And can I come over? This was after they separated, and her and Carol were there at the apartment that they had rented. Well, it was Carol's apartment, I believe, but don't quote me on that. Catherine went over there, and Joan met her downstairs, because she didn't want a confrontation between Catherine and Carol to ensue. But she didn't realize she had brought a gun. And she shot her in the garage. And then she went home and locked herself in the-- well, Donna Winter called and said, Catherine's locked in her house. We think that she killed Joan. Because Donna was a cop. I took the camera, went down up over the hill, and I come down to the road a piece. Donna was at the site. Catherine had just spent thousands of dollars to put all beveled windows in that house she was remodeling that she sold herself. And they were put tear gas canisters through the glass. And Donna and I looked at each other, and I said, she'd come out of there hell bent for leather if they're breaking her windows. 
PC:	 Right. She's dead. 
DW:	 Something ain't right. Donna said, she's dead. She's got to be dead. She would never let them do that to the house. She's got to be dead. I said, I think you're right. 
PC:	 What a hard time. 
DW: 	And then I had to leave and then I came back and Donna said, oh, she's-- nothing yet. And then finally, they got in there. It was a bad day. A bad, bad day. She was a wonderful person, but she just-- you know when you always look back and think, well, jeez, if I'd known that she was that depressed or that screwed up, but she took all this goddamned medicine that made her feel-- act up around us, so we thought she was handling it so well in a lot of ways. Because the medicine was there to help her, but it deceived us. 
PC:	 Good point. 
DW: 	We didn't know we needed to be concerned. I mean, she had friends, lots of us. Judy Cashman and Susan Walsh and all of us, Donna Winter, and-- 
PC:	 What did you all do afterwards? Did you gather together in some kind of a way-- 
DW: 	We had a memorial. 
PC:	 --to talk about this? 
DW: 	Well, no, we had a memorial at the Quaker House, that thing up on Roberts Court there, that little church or whatever you call it. And a lot of people from the realty come. She sold real estate back then, after she left the-- when Lysistrata went down, she got her realtor's license. She seemed pretty happy doing that. She liked going there for the sale. People came-- Karla Dobinski flew all the way back from Washington, DC for the memorial. It was a long day. 
00:36:16 
PC:	 Did any-- do you think there were any changes? You kind of alluded to it, after her-- after this all happened. You said that you were much more conscious about suicide. Do you think you all watched each other more closely? 
DW: 	Yes. Just the fragility of the psyche. You just-- what's going on here? Are you OK, is things OK? And out of that, too, came a lot of-- women in this community, they make me angry. They don't want to deal with domestic violence. And that makes me very angry, because there's no reason not to. I don't care who knows. If it's going on, it has to-- we need to support each other. We need to deal with it. Now I understand, it doesn't happen a lot. But that's not the point. If it happens once, it's happened enough. 
PC:	 That's right. 
DW: 	It's too many times. And if we know somebody that's being hurt, abused, like that-- you take these things. They all became more clear to everybody, I think, in a lot of ways. Well, not everybody, but a lot of us, that were-- I'd get in so much trouble all the time because I was considered mouthy, because I said, I don't care who knows. It has to be dealt with. It should be dealt with publicly. It should be out in the open, so that it never happens, so it never, ever happens. And they used to say, well, it just gives a homophobic society ammunition to-- I don't care. 
PC:	 Did you know couples where you knew there was domestic violence going on? 
DW:	 One situation. I won't go into who they were. But well, that's what got me so riled up to begin with, people who-- friends, close friends were willing to look the other way and say, oh, they'll work it out. Bull roar. You don't work something like that out. If somebody's got a problem like that, it doesn't go away. It doesn't change. It happens-- as I said, it doesn't happen very often, so people are-- first of all, they're shocked by it. But then they want to be in denial about it, because oh, well, how could we do that to each other? Well, it happens sometimes. It's not good. So a lot of those things-- the Take Back the Night Marches, and the rape, and the domestic violence, well, there'd be especially male on female, try to deal with all that stuff. And then oh, it's just those goddamn lesbians. They're riled up again, which is a crock. So we'd always get brandished with that thing. God forbid that we should do that. And then you get young people, and I'd try to-- you know, maybe I lectured too much. But I wanted them to understand where they came from. I used to go down to [? CE's, ?] and I'd sit there, and I'd buy the whole table a round of drinks, and I'd say, this is something you have to really understand. You can come here and drink today because of lots of people that came before me. When I was your age, I had lots of mentors that really struggled hard so that we could do what we're doing here today. Because we couldn't just go out and do that. And they'd say, yeah, we know, we know, DJ. And I'd say, no, you don't. 
PC:	 Yeah. You'd worry that they didn't really know. 
DW:	 And a lot of them, though, would listen and ask questions. But some of them-- maybe I said it too many times, who knows. But I thought, you can't say it enough. 
00:40:27
 PC:	 Did you participate in the pride marches once they started in Madison? 
DW: 	Yes, always, till I couldn't walk. Till I got in my wheelchair. Yes. 
PC:	 How'd it feel, when you participated in the first one? Do you remember? 
DW: 	Didn't feel any different. I just knew it was important. I mean, it did make me feel-- I'd been out there so much, though, talking and talking and talking and talking, that it wasn't a question of pride, to me. It was a question of I'm doing this because I can and you can't stop me. 
PC:	 It's a political act. 
DW: 	It was-- yeah. I guess you could call it that-- a rebellious act, for sure. I was determined that this is who I am, and if you don't like it, you can go plumb to hell. And that's exactly what I felt about it. It bordered on belligerence, and arrogance. But I didn't care, because it was necessary. And there'd be a lot of people that weren't-- there'd be a lot of heterosexuals that would march with us. Every year, it got to be more and more. It was interesting. And I remember one year, I was going down the road, and all of a sudden, DJ, can I walk with you, or would that not be good? And here's three of my cab-driving buddies, my drinking buddies, men, who want to know if they could walk with me, or do you want us to walk in back? I said, no, you can walk with me. Well, they told us we should walk in back. And I said, don't worry about it. You don't have to walk in back. They used to tell the men that at Take Back the Night March, too, but that was different. There was a different tone, because it had to do with-- men brought up the rear because they were supportive, and not because they were-- but I didn't feel the same way about the gay pride marches. 
PC:	 What-- 
DW:	 Go ahead. 
00:42:50 
PC:	 Well, I was thinking about the bookstore, A Room of One's Own. When you first came to town, you said you went to the bars to meet people. Did you ever use A Room of One's Own as a gathering place? I know it was awful tiny at that time. 
DW: 	No, we just went there to see authors. 
PC:	 OK. 
DW:	 Well, I'd go sit there sometimes and just read. I'd go sit in the lesbian section, take out books and look at them, see if they interest me. And some of them were boring, and some were all, jeez, I've been that, I've done that. I lived that. I don't need that. And every once in a while, something would grab me, and I'd say, all right, maybe I'd better buy this, just support it and stuff. But otherwise, I never sat in there and read. It was only the lesbian stuff I sat in there and read. 
PC:	 Do you remember anyone in the store that stands out, that was kind of your person, when you would go in the store, you'd be so happy to see? 
DW:	 Karen. But she died. Karen [? Axeness ?]. She'd call me up and say, DJ, I got this in, I got that in. Oh, you'd really like this. She used to always take care, because I'm a voracious reader. I just read constantly. That was sad, too, that she-- well, when I used to have the big house and we'd used to have a lot of meetings at my house. And the first meeting that I had, when people that were upset with A Room of One's Own opening, because they weren't going to be more geared towards lesbian and gay issues and women's issues of that nature. Well, what's the lady that owns the place? 
PC:	 Sandi Torkildson. 
DW: 	Sandi Torkildson came to my house. It was at my house. Goldwomon and I and Captain Kyle lived there. And we had this-- 106 North Brearly Street. We had the meeting there, the first two meetings of whether or not-- what was going to happen at Room of One's Own. We were trying to talk Sandy into all these things. God, a lot of women showed up. Jeez, it must have been Joy [? Colelli ?] and all these crazies-- Catherine-- oh, wait, was Catherine still here? I don't remember. At the big house, we were having meetings, but we also used to have huge lesbian Thanksgiving dinners. About 75, 80 women would show up. And someone came in the house one Thanksgiving, and said there was two men down the street sitting in a car and they were watching the house. And I said, are you sure? So I got my coat on and I walked down the street. And there they are. The car's running. They're sitting there. And it's a cop car. Because I drive a cab. I know unmarked squads. I didn't realize it was probably the FBI or something. But anyway, I said, roll down the window. You know, I motioned for them. And they rolled it down, and I said, shut the car off. And they said, what? I said, shut the car off. Who are you? I said, you know who I am. That's my house you're watching. Shut the car off. I pay my taxes and I don't want you wasting my gas money. I went back to the house, and they left. [UNINTELLIGIBLE] They were writing down license numbers and-- 
PC:	 God. 
DW:	 --shit. 
PC:	 Is this the late '60s [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE]? 
00:46:30 
DW: 	Yeah, early '70s, late '60s. See, I started driving yellow cabs spring of '66. 
PC:	 Yellow cab. 
DW:	 Yellow cab, yes. I drove that 10 years and then Union Cab 21 years. And that's when I rented that house. And we all drove cab-- Goldwomon and Kyle and me. And we had this big house and we used to have all these lesbian-- it was fun. 
PC:	 I'll bet. 
DW:	 And then I got a job part time. The Back Door opened. The Back Door was wonderful. 
PC:	I remember that bar. 
DW:	 Rodney-- I tended bar there, cocktail hour. So then I slowed my cab hours down at the cab company. But that's when I lived at North Brearly, too, that same house. That's when the Back Door opened. Rodney didn't have a place-- Rodney Scheel-- he didn't have a place where he could dance with his lover, Warren Olson. So he opened the Back Door and I started tending bar cocktail hours there. And then this college bar that was across the street-- I forget the name of the damn place-- but anyway, they used to cause us all kinds of trouble. The bartenders would get them liquored up and they'd say, get them all liquored up and riled up and they'd come over to beat up the queers. So they'd come down-- you literally had to come down the back stairs, down the back door. And I'd be tending bar down there, and they'd come in there and they'd start raising hell. And oddly enough-- Meika Alberici, she's just this really small woman. She's lucky if she's 100 pounds wet. She's since passed away. But she was lucky if she's 100 pounds wet and five feet tall. And when the shit would hit the fan, the men would sit in their little booths, scared as hell, and the women would come and watch my back. And here's little Meika swinging a pool cue. I got your back, DJ! I got your back! And she's so little. She was right in there. Boy, she'd get mad, though, hell bent for leather. And then, of course, there was always Phil. He was about 6'5". He was this tall, slender drag queen. He would always be up with us when fighting. And I remember one time, he had one of these characters. They'd fired an ashtray or a beer bottle or something at the mirror behind the bar and broke it. And they were yelling obscenities at all us and stuff. And Phil come flying out of his stool and he slammed him up against the wall, and he kind of picked him up off the ground a little bit. And he said, you know, there's nothing worse than an angry queen. Have you ever been hit with a high heel? I'll never forget that. I don't know why I remembered now, but I'll never forget it. It was so funny. 
00:49:34
DW:	But we used to have a lot of trouble down there. And the cops-- by then, police were more educated. They'd come down and they'd say, what's going on? And I'd say, it's the kids from across the street, again. They were yelling and we got into fights. And they never arrested any of us. And these kids would get really ang-- oh, they hit us. Or, they did this. Or she hit me with a pool cue. Or she-- which she did, Meika. 
PC:	 But they never arrested any of you-- 
DW:	 None of us. 
PC:	 But they arrest the kids? 
DW: 	Because they said, you came down here to hassle these people and you need to leave them alone. We're sick of coming here for this. And you're going to jail. It's that simple. They started-- but then, you've got to remember, I think that the police chief had changed to-- 
PC:	 Was that David Cooper? 
DW:	 It was Cooper. And he didn't allow that crap to go on anymore, where Sheriff Leslie was a little bit more homophobic. But it was my job to stop it, because I was the bartender. The buck stopped right there. So there was no choice in the matter. But as I said, Meika and then Joy-- not [? Joy Colelli, ?] but she'd be down there. But Andy Anderson, she'd always-- some of the others. We got a lot of lumps on our head to try to make that bar work during the cocktail hour. At night, when it was going full blast and it was all kinds of men in and it was dancing, too, and the thing was really rocking, there was very rarely any trouble. It was only at the cocktail hour. They'd get liquored up and they'd think they'd be tough. And they knew that there wouldn't be as many of us in there. They'd be too scared to come when it was fully packed, afraid they might get creamed, you know. 
PC:	 Were you ever afraid? 
DW:	 Yeah. Not afraid like scared, but afraid like one of these days, one of these jackasses is going to hurt me, stupidly. Same kind of thing with the cab-- it was a cautious awareness that I could actually really get hurt, here. But it didn't matter. I mean, it mattered, but it didn't matter-- I mean, I wouldn't quit the job because of that. This is what I wanted to do and I was going to do it, and just because I was a lesbian, I wasn't going to let anybody decide what I could do with my life and can't do with it. Kind of a simple thing, to me, anyway. And to some people, it's not. And that's OK, because sometimes I'm pretty stubborn. Pretty stubborn, I guess, period. We used to have a lot of-- 
00:52:27
PC:	 How long did you bartend at the Back Door? 
DW:	 Two and a half years. And I was still driving my cab. And then I went-- well, then I managed the Cardinal for five years. I left the cab company to do that, though, because managing was a full-time job. Tending cocktail hour was only three hours a night. And I only did Monday through Thursday, so it wasn't like Ricardo-- well, he knew me from the Back Door, and talked to me. 
PC:	 Did you enjoy managing the Cardinal? 
DW: 	Yes. But I would never manage a place again unless I owned it. Why put all that work in? Because it was a lot of work. I was there 70, 80 hours a week, sometimes, because you had to take care of what was going on. And Ricardo, half the time, wasn't around in that period of time. But that's what he hired me for, so he could travel. He wanted to travel, and he didn't want to be there. So that was the reason. And then when we'd have arguments-- I got mad and I quit, one day. He hired me back, gave me too much a raise. I had to give it back. He said, why're you giving your raise back? I said, you can't afford that. I had to tell him he couldn't afford the raise he gave me. 
PC:	 My god. You are something. 

DW:	 Jesus Christ. If we would [? have had ?] bankruptcy, pay me that much. He was afraid I wouldn't come back and I didn't. I said, you don't understand. I quit for a reason. He was funny. 
PC:	 So when Union Cab started, and you began working for them, what was that like? 
DW:	 Just another cab company. 
PC:	 It was just another-- 
DW: 	Well, we were worker-owned. We owned the company, for a change, instead of working for somebody else. But we ran it like a regular cab company. 
PC:	 Were you on the ground floor of that? 
DW: 	Yes. I was there day one, 7:01 AM, October 29, 1979. And I left December 15, 1999. 
PC:	 Wow. 
00:54:55
DW: 	I had to have rotator cuff surgery. I had the one, and then I had to have the second one. First one took so long but I didn't know I had that blood disease. The first one took so long to heal that I thought when I had the second one, I was in worse shape, and I thought, it's going to take me forever to heal. I never went back to work after that. But then I ended up-- slipped December 14, 2004. Slipped on the ice, broke my ankle, shattered it. They put it in a cast. Gangrene set in. Just that simple. All because of that stupid blood disorder. And then the rest of it all happened. Came down real quick. But that's neither here nor there. 
PC:	 Were you always a dancer? 
DW:	 Always. Love to dance. I love to dance. You and I danced, cut a rug, many a good time. Arlene and I used to cut it. Susan'd say-- Arlene'd say, Susan, I have to go dance with DJ. And she'd say, I know, dear, I know. 
PC:	 That is wonderful. That's great. 
DW: 	Susan, one time, she said, thank you. 
PC:	 Because she didn't want to have-- 
DW: 	Susan doesn't dance, no. 

PC:	 So did you ever go to Apple Island? 
DW: 	Well, you and I danced there. 
PC:	 Oh, that-- yes, we did. 
DW: 	One night, practically the whole damn night together. 
PC:	 That's right. 
DW: 	Just because we were on a roll. We were-- well, several dances together. 
PC: 	Yes, I remember that. 
DW: 	Anybody can follow me is a good dancer. You're damn good. 
PC:	 Well, thank you. 
DW:	 You're damn good. And I danced with Arlene there, and other women, with Barbara, and-- no, I love to dance. My mother, she-- I have five brothers and five sisters and they all know how to follow. My brothers-- she said, you're supposed to teach the boys how to lead. I said, but I don't know how to teach how to lead. I lead. My grandpa taught me how to dance. 
PC:	 Did he? The grandpa that you were talking about was so special. 
DW: 	Yes. 
PC:	 I'll be darned. 
DW:	 He taught me how to-- well, he used to have a band. And he taught me how. My mom used to be the female singer. Matter of fact, when she first sang, she didn't sing with-- he opened for some famous people, down at the Capitol Theater in-- oh, that's not important. Down at the Capitol Theater, and she sang for the band, and she was-- I don't know if she was seven or 10 years old, and she got a red wagon for pay. So she remembered that and told me that one time. 
00:58:07
PC:	 So thinking of music-- yeah, I'm looking at all of your CDs. So tell me about concerts in Madison, and lesbian musicians coming to town. 
DW: 	I don't know anything about that. 

PC:	 Never went to those? 
DW: 	Goldwomon. You should interview Goldwomon. 
PC:	 Oh, I will. 
DW: 	You should interview Goldwomon. 
PC:	 Would you go to concerts, ever? 
DW: 	Yeah, sometimes. Once in a while. Mostly, though, with jazz, because I used to date Jane Reynolds, and so I'd go to all the jazz things. God, that was a long time ago. 
PC:	 Did you go to the lesbian variety show? 
DW: 	Yes. I liked those. I liked the lesbian variety shows. I loved the jazz. Joan Wildman, and Jane used to play with Dane and with Hans. God, they used to do good work. Madison Music Collective, you know, the jazz thing. I'd do more of that than the women's music. Although once in a while, I'd go to them. It depends on who I was dating at the time, whether they said, come on, let's go. I'd go because they'd go to things I like to go. And then some, like Katie-- she'd go to softball games with me. So because of her, I saw Nureyev. I saw Baryshnikov. I saw-- who's that opera? I can't remember her name, now. But anyway, I saw a lot of people I wouldn't have normally gone by myself. But I would go with people because they'd go to ball games and stuff and jazz with me. 
PC:	 So were you-- I meant to ask you that. I would guess you were on a softball team. 
DW: 	Yes. 
PC:	 What's your position? 
DW: 	Yes. I was the pitcher. 
PC:	 Wow. Oh, well. Fast pitch. 
DW: 	Yeah. Oh, yeah. I don't play slow pitch. 
PC:	 Well, tell me about that. Tell me about the softball games. 
DW: 	Nothing to tell. 
PC:	 Well, we read in our history books that softball was a magnet for lesbians, and that-- 
DW: 	You got to understand that softball was a magnet for lesbians because Madison is a magnet for softball teams. There's over 200 and some odd softball teams in this city. And women, women, to be able to play sports, would join softball-- slow pitch and fast pitch. And a lot of them would-- it was just a way of bonding. And a lot of lesbians went to-- I remember one time, we were at this ball game. It was mostly lesbians on the team, and then everybody was doing [UNINTELLIGIBLE], and they were having this hell of a balloo about they were trying to get this law passed, where nudity wasn't against the law. So all the fans in the stands and the ballplayers took their shirts off. 
PC:	 Oh, that's wonderful. 
DW:	 All the lesbians. So here we are, walking around with no shirts on. The police come over and said-- I happen to know two or three of the cops, because kind of known around town, I guess I was by then. And they said, DJ, can't we just have everybody put on their shirts? I said, no. I said, did you get a complaint? He said, yes. A woman came through the park with her son, walking, left the botanical gardens, went through the ball diamonds, over there by Monona there, and all these women were running around with no shirts on. We had our pants on. Oh, boy. Kyle said, I'm not putting my shirt on for anybody. 
PC:	 Who is Kyle? 
DW: 	Mary Kyle [? Elliott. ?] Captain Kyle. She could pitch. 
01:02:09
PC:	 So were you on the same team, by any chance, as Cheri Maples? 
DW: I	 was never on a softball team in Madison. 
PC:	 Oh, you weren't? 
DW: 	No. As a teenager, I was on [? Danettes. ?] It's the only time I ever played softball. Never joined all those lesbians here. 
PC:	 You didn't? Why not? 
DW:	 Didn't feel like playing any more. 
PC:	 I'll be darned. OK. 
DW:	 Is that true? Maybe that-- no. I didn't join the team. We just played out in parks, and when we'd get together for picnics. And then we used to [UNINTELLIGIBLE] lesbians-- Karla Dobinski, when she was in law school, she got this whole thing together. The women from Taycheedah came down and played against us dykes. And when they figured out who we were-- I was the umpire. And she come right over and just said, listen, you old lesbian. I'm not out. She was like this close to my nose. She's staring me down. I am not out. I said, you're out of here. Not only are you out, you're out of here. 
PC:	 How did they-- 
DW: 	Well, they wanted them that were on good behavior to have little outings. So somehow, they got together-- Dobinski and-- what the hell was that other woman's name that went with Dobinski at that time? She ran for sheriff once. Toby Emmer ran for sheriff, too, speaking of lesbians running for office. 
PC:	 Toby-- 
DW:	 Toby Emmer. Ran for sheriff. She got a lot of votes, too. Toby Emmer ran for sheriff. This was pre Tammy Baldwin. Shotgun in every car-- she said-- she was in this long dress that was down to here like women in the old western days, and these big old laced-up boots, and she stood in front of this rocking chair with a shotgun. 
PC:	 Was that her poster for publicity? 
DW: 	Yeah. 
PC:	 Oh, that's great. 
DW: 	Toby Emmer for sheriff. 
PC:	 I'll be darned. 
DW: 	It was funny. 
PC:	 Can you imagine? So they brought the Taycheedah women down that were on good behavior, so they'd have this good experience. Do you think they had any idea they were going to be having this good experience with a bunch of lesbians? 
DW: 	No, they didn't. I don't think-- well, some of them were, too. 
PC:	 Of course. 
DW: 	And most of them were in jail for poverty crimes, I call them-- writing bad checks because they didn't have enough to eat. Settle down. So they were pretty tough, though, because they could act tough. And they wanted to just show me they weren't afraid of me. And I had to show them I wasn't afraid of them, or they'd walk all over me. They wouldn't have listened when I said, you're out. It was funny. We used to have a lot of good times with the whole softball stuff. 
01:05:28 
PC:	 What about race? 

DW: 	It's a problem in Madison, because they're not enough people of color. Madison thinks it's not racist and it's a lie. It's the biggest myth I've ever seen. Because you can't-- not so much in the lesbian community, although-- do you know who [? Candice ?] Lewis is? 
PC:	 Gosh, it's a familiar name, but I can't put a face. 
DW:	 She is a friend of mine. 
PC:	 She's African-American? 
DW: 	Yeah, she's African-American. You could talk to her about that. She'd have plenty to say. But there was a lot of-- it interests me, that there's just not-- this political correctness has gotten in the way of people really healing. Although it's really good that there's political correctness, don't get me wrong. I don't want it to go away, because I want things to change. And I want them to change for the better. But by the same token, because somebody thinks-- it's created a situation where people aren't outspoken, so you don't really know where they're coming from. You go down south, you know where everybody's coming from. There's no bullshit. If you're dealing with a racist bastard, you know you're dealing with one. Up here, you don't always know that, sometimes till it's too late. Even in this building-- there's 103 people live here. I've got 103 neighbors. And every once in a while, one of them-- the median age here is 81. And a woman said the other day, when I said, you know, we got a new person moving in, she said, black or white? And I said, black, I believe. I had actually to think about it. And she said, can't they find any white people to live here? And I said-- and I've known her a long time. I actually like her. And I said, where the hell did that come from? And she said, what are you talking about? I said, there's 103 people in this building. I bet you 15% are people of color. I said, I bet you there aren't more than 10 or 12 blacks, a couple, three Hispanics, a couple people from India, a couple people from-- I said, where does that come from? Are you afraid of people of color? She says, of course not. She said, now you're going to try to tell me I'm racist. And I said, well, it was a racist comment. 
PC:	 Good for you. 
DW:	 She said, no, it wasn't. I said, the hell it wasn't, Helen. Now, granted, she's 79 years old. And she said, oh, when you're as old as I am, you'll understand. I said, no, I won't. I'll never understand that. I'll never understand it. It ain't going to happen. And they think because I'm-- well, I'm the puppy here. They remind me all the time. What do I know? I'm only 64. 
01:08:35
PC:	 Were there racial issues in bars, ever? 

DW: 	Yeah, sometimes. And sometimes the race card was played by people of color. We used to have this lady come in to [? CE's ?] and she ordered this particular booze she always wanted-- [PHONE RINGS] 
PC:	 I'll stop it. 
DW: 	Yeah, that sign-- A Room of One's Own had that Madison Supports Its Lesbian and Gay Community. I really liked the sign. I was really proud of it. So I took the sign and then I took all those little pink triangles and put them in all the O's that spelled out in it. And then I took that rainbow thing and put it under Madison. And then I had it framed. 
PC:	 It is beautiful. 
DW:	 And I hang it on the wall just to remind me where I came from. 
PC:	 And you were saying that you are proud of that. 
DW: 	Yeah. I'm very proud to be a lesbian. I don't think-- first, I'm a woman. There's no doubt about that. That has nothing to do-- but I'm very proud to be a lesbian. And I'm very happy that I'm one. I don't want to be heterosexual. And I couldn't always say that. When-- excuse me-- in the early '60s, when I was a teenager-- well, late '50s, early-- I was very confused by it. Because I grew up in a town where I had no role models. I lived in Dane, Wisconsin. There was 200 and-- well, when our family moved in, we were a big family. It went from 211 to about 240 people. No, not that many. But you get my drift. I'm the oldest of 11 children. And I didn't understand what was happening to me. Because that's what I really hope that young people understand today, is that they have role models and they have people. That's why when people argue about issues about domestic violence, or that we shouldn't talk about it, or we shouldn't this. As I said, it happens with not a lot of frequency, but the point is that it happens at all. It needs to be discussed and protected so young people know that they don't have to deal with that. Just because you're a lesbian doesn't mean-- because it's just another woman hitting you, doesn't mean that that's right. The other thing I really want young people to understand is that they do have people that they can look to for guidance. They don't have to look up to anybody. If they want, that's fine. But they need to look-- 
PC:	 To them. 
DW: 	Look to them for guidance and for comfort and for understanding, so they can get through who they are. Because I went through a lot of torture, mental torture, that I inflicted on myself, because I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on with me. Because I had nowhere to go. And then I thought, well, my grandpa knows everything. 
PC:	 Aw. 

DW: 	Well, I thought he did. And I still think that, actually. And when I talked to him about it, he blew me away, when he said I didn't have to worry. When I moved to a larger city, I'd meet other people like me and it'd be OK. Of course, he had a big band. And he had musicians that were gay. So he, in the '40s and '50s, was perfectly aware of homosexuality. And so therefore to have a granddaughter worried about why she liked girls the way boys like girls-- I didn't even know what to call it. I didn't know what a lesbian was from a pumpkin. What a strange analogy. 
01:12:52
PC:	 Yeah, it is. So let's see. The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, I think-- 
DW:	 Never been to one. 
PC:	 --30 years old or something. And-- all right. So it's always been out there. Never been to one. Tell me about that. 
DW: 	I don't-- my idea of camping is my bed. 
PC:	 Ah. I see the difficulty we're having here. 
DW: 	I don't! You couldn't get-- I went camping once in my life because these three women said, oh, DJ, it's wonderful. Look, we'll buy you T-bones. We'll get corn on the cob. We'll bring a grill. I bought a brand new tent. It sleeps six. You'll be so happy. We got there. The brand-new tent leaked. I slept upright in the car. And they didn't know how to-- we couldn't start the grill because of the rain, so we never got to eat. 
PC:	 Oh, what a hard beginning. 
DW:	 And so I said, my idea of camping is a Holiday Inn. 
PC:	 All right. 
DW: 	That's where-- [INTERPOSING VOICES] 
PC:	 So that was it for Michigan for you. 
DW: 	That's it. And then every time I've ever had a lover that wanted to go to the Michigan-- not film festival, music festival, I said, that's right. You go have a nice time. Oh, no, it won't be the same without you. And I said, sure it will. So where were we? The Michigan music festival. 
PC:	 That you don't camp. You've never gone, and you send your lovers off on their own. 
DW:	 On their own. And I don't care who they take with them, or what they do there. I don't even want to know about when they get home. 
PC:	 OK. Well, there you go. How about the Hotel Washington? Did you ever spend time there? 
DW:	 Yes. I love the Cafe Palms, I love the Barber's Closet, and I like the upstairs gay dance floor. And as I said, because I worked for Rodney at the Back Door, when he moved over and bought the hotel and started remodeling it and stuff, I liked going there. It was a nice place. And his brother and sister-- Rodney's brother Greg and his sister Sherry, when they took over, when he got very ill-- he since has passed away because of complications of AIDS. But matter of fact, they have a house here in town called the Rodney Scheel house, where you can go and die with dignity if you don't have any place else to-- a lot of young people, young gay men are being thrown out of their homes and disowned by their families because they have AIDS. And this is a very important place. We did some drag shows and I MCed them to raise money for the Scheel house, did a lot of that. I was the only woman on stage, and I was the only one in a tuxedo. Everybody else was in a dress. 
PC:	 Right. All the gay men. 
DW: 	Yes, all the gay men, right. 
01:16:22
PC:	 So that takes me to gay men, and relationships with gay men, and how that has been over the years. I'm guessing there have probably been quite a few changes. 
DW: 	It's an interesting-- there's a certain faction of the gay male community that has a love-hate relationship with women. And then they get confused about lesbians. Because they like lesbians, but they don't know what to do with them. And if they supposedly have been taught by the older males that are guiding them that they're supposed to not like women, they get-- because i've been told many and many a time by-- I relate to men well. I'm not sure why that it is, but I do. And I don't know if it's the rough and tumble in me, the cab driver in me, or whatever that is. 
PC:	 Directness. 
DW: 	That, too. I think maybe more that, that in a lot of ways-- because I'll tell you something. Whether it's on the telephone or in person, I get called sir all the time. And my voice is not particularly that low. And I think it has to do with the way I handle myself. It's the direct way I come off. And the fact like in person, I have short-- but I've had people who don't even look up at me that call me sir, when I'm at a counter, buying something. Now granted, they haven't seen my name, yet, which-- you know, I use my initials. DJ stands for Donna Jean Mary Frances Rose. 
PC:	 Oh my god. Donna Jean Mary Frances Rose. 

DW: 	I was raised Catholic. 
PC:	 Oh, I wouldn't have guessed. So do you have some saints in here? 
DW: 	No, I have-- well, yeah. Donna Jean, obviously, is what my mother calls me, God rest her soul. And Mary Frances was my baptism name, and Rose was my confirmation name. You'll always get married with your baptism, because it's the blessed virgin Mary, all that [UNINTELLIGIBLE] Catholicism. Which, speaking of, I'm very angry with my church right now. Even though I-- I mean, I don't believe in religion. I believe in a spiritual entity that's larger than myself, obviously. It's obvious to me, I mean. But I don't believe in religion. And I was raised Catholic and I didn't object because my mother wanted us all to be under one religion. And that was fine with me, because there was a lot of kids. And she converted to Catholicism for my father. But I'm very angry with the church right now because of the whole situation with child molestation. And i'm very angry that they want to palm it off on gay men. That just pisses me off to no end. I just did not see what that little pink hat's going to really [? court ?] me one of these days. Don't put that in there. 
PC:	 It's in. I think it's in. [? Is it going? ?] Yup. I'm afraid this is history, now, DJ. So that takes us back to gay-- 
DW:	 Gay men. They get blamed for everything. 
PC :	Yes, they do. 
DW: 	They get blamed for AIDS. They get blamed for pedophilia in the Catholic church. They get blamed for child molesters all over the god-forsaken country, when most of them are heterosexual and pedophiles. There's a certain segment of the gay society, whether it be male or female, that has a built-in hate mechanism, that they hate themselves for what they are. Because they've lived on the fringes of society so long and been told they're either a criminal or a pervert or they're this or that. And it just makes me angry. It devastates the male community more, because the women-- because we're such non-entities. And we're not important enough to even be-- 
PC:	 We're more invisible. 
DW:	 Invisible. But they really have a-- I mean, there's a reason we have a high rate of alcoholism and suicide in our communities. 
PC:	 Right. There certainly is. 
DW: 	And it's sad. 
PC	: Well, you, actually, in your story, when you first came out, the only place to go was the bars. So that from the get go, you're surrounded. 
DW: 	Yeah, but that was the only place to go because that's what we'd created for ourselves. 
PC:	 That's true. 
DW: 	I mean it's not like-- when I was 18, I couldn't do anything about it. But all those older women, they could have gotten together and done something different. But they just chose to go to the Three Bells or to the et cetera, et cetera. It makes me sad. I take an inordinate amount of time with anybody I feel that dislikes themselves because of their sexuality, because I just think it's so important that they have moral support and encouragement to like and love themselves. It's just really important. And a lot of times, I've had to go to lengths to say, I'm not trying to come on to you. I'm trying to tell you something here. It's important you like yourself. Because people, you know, you say nice things about them, or you tell them-- oh, yeah, you're just shining me. Or you're coming on to me. Or I don't think of you that way. And I said, that's not what we're talking about here. And it's so streamlined. That's the only way they think of it because they can't get beyond that to think that I'm OK, even though I'm a lesbian. Or I'm OK, even though-- young gay men, I really worry about them. The suicide rate in their community is devastating. And it makes me angry, because it doesn't have to be that way. And this society has created that. And we, as a gay community, need to be more aware of that, so that we take better care of ourselves. Because we need to take care of each other, because the world isn't going to take care of us. And that makes me upset. Not that the world isn't going to take care of us, that we don't take better care of each other. And therefore-- what brought this up is that when I find men disliking-- a certain segment of men that dislike women and vice versa, a certain segment of women that dislike men, I say, what is the matter with you? What's the matter with me? There's nothing wrong with me. I can't stand them. I said, but listen to yourself. What are you saying? It's ridiculous. 
01:24:08 
DW:	Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't like certain men. There's certain women I don't like, too. I mean, not all women are my sisters. Anita Bryant and Sarah Palin come to mind. 
PC:	 That's right. 
DW:	 I mean, think about that. 
PC:	 Yeah, absolutely. 
DW:	 Anita Bryant, boy. Those are back in days when all that shit really-- it did bad things to us. 
PC:	 Yes, it did. That's during Harvey Milk's time. 
DW: 	Exactly. The orange juice. I want to see that movie. I'm going to purchase it. Now that Harvey Milk situation is a mind-boggler. And that whole twinkie defense bullshit-- do they deal with that in the movie? 
PC:	 Yes, they do, a little bit. The only thing they leave out in the movie is the White Night riots, after. 
DW: 	Oh. 
PC:	 Yeah, they leave that out. I know. You'll have to see what you think when you see it. It should come out pretty soon now. I hope you don't have to wait too long. 
DW: 	No, I'll be able to see it. I don't go to the movie house anymore, just because the bathroom situation and the aisles, it's just too-- 
PC:	 You've got a nice setup, here. 
DW: Y	eah, that's my brothers and sisters. 
PC:	 That's nice. 
DW: 	I got my stimulus check and my homestead check together. I gave my brothers the check, and I said, go buy me whatever TV I can afford for this amount of money. I want a TV that accepts digital. 
PC:	 Right. And they came back with-- 
DW:	They came back with a 37-inch-- 
PC:	 It's beautiful. 
DW: 	Well, beautiful. 
PC:	 It's good for you. Since you can't go to the movies, that's what you need. 
DW: 	And then they bought me a little one for the bedroom. 
PC:	 Aw, sweet. 
DW: 	Oh, they're good to me. I'm very fortunate. I have a good family and I have good friends. When you get sick, you find out who your friends are real quick. 
PC:	 Well, and you've given a lot. And now it's time for you to get back. And that's a good thing. 
DW:	 It does kind of come around full circle. It's interesting. 
PC	: Do you think that the AIDS crisis brought lesbians and gay men closer together? 

DW: 	Yes. 
PC:	 Have you ever worked with a support network? 
DW: 	No. 
PC:	 Or anything like that? 
DW: 	I just do MC fund-raisers. Well, when I had two feet. We used to have them at the Cardinal. I did a couple at the Hotel Washington when it was still around. 
PC:	 So do you think that the Hotel Washington's fire was an accident? 
DW:	 No. 
PC:	 I don't either. 
DW: 	I think it was torched because of what was going on there. I don't have any proof of that, though. 
PC:	 Many of us feel that way. You were talking about people calling you a man, even without looking at you. 
DW: 	Sir. They never called me a man. 
PC:	 They'd just say sir. 
DW: 	Yes, sir. 
PC:	 How does that feel? How has that been for you? Because I imagine that has happened for a very long time. 
DW: 	You know, I'll have to be perfectly honest about it. If I want something from them, I never correct them. Because it's power. Maleness is power. Especially if I'm on the phone and I'm calling up and I want to know what the hell is going on with this thing here, and, well, sir, you see-- I never correct them. And inevitably, it takes me less time to accomplish what I'm trying to accomplish. I very rarely ever get put on hold. And I never have to say I'm sorry. Even if I get mad. It's an interesting-- I kind of know what it's like to be male, because I've dealt with it so much. I deal with it constantly. It's just a peculiar thing to me. 
PC:	 Have you ever used it, when you were able to walk around, and, say, walking around at night? Do you ever use it as a kind of a way in which to just be male on the street and be safe? 
DW:	 I don't have to, because I'm a large woman. My bulk gives me authority on the street. Because in a shadow, you can't tell if I'm a man or a woman. And if I'm packing like a linebacker-- I'm a big woman. And even as a woman, when I hit somebody, I hurt them. I mean, I may not win a battle with a male, because they obviously have upper-body strength that I can't compete against. But I'll hurt them. They'll be hurting after they take me down. And that comes from just my size, and it comes from the fact that I know how to handle myself. 
PC:	 Where'd you learn that? 
DW: 	I don't want to discuss it. 
PC:	 OK. Could I turn the tape off and find out? No? OK. Never mind. 
DW:	 I'll think about it. 
PC:	 OK. 
DW: 	I'll think about that. 
PC:	 Well, is there anything that you want to add or say about Madison and-- 
DW: 	We're lucky we live here. It's not perfect. It's got quite a ways to go. But it's leap years ahead of a lot of places. I think it's a small big city. But again, too, because it strives so hard to be politically correct, you can't always tell when somebody's homophobic or racist or et cetera, because they just don't-- except around here, they just say what they think. At their age, they don't give a shit anymore.