UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM
MADISON’S LGBT COMMUNITY, 1960s-PRESENT

Interview #940
Bosworth, Lewis
Bosworth, Lewis (1942- )
UW Undergraduate Student (1960-1964), Wisconsin State employee 
At UW: 1972-2003

Interviewed:   March 20, 2009	
Length:           84 minutes
Interviewer:    Scott Seyforth
Index by:        Scott Seyforth
Series:             Madison’s LGBT Community, 1960s to present

00:00:00	Start of First Interview Session
SS: 	OK, this is Scott Seyforth and I'm at Lew Bosworth's house today at 2829 Barlow Street. It is Friday, March 20, 2009. And Lou and I are going to talk about his life and some of his experiences with the gay community here in Madison. And Lou, thank you so much for spending time with me today. 
LB: 	You're welcome, Scott. 
00:00:35
SS: 	Maybe to start with, could you just give us a brief outline of your life, where you grew up, the academic pursuits, some your work history? 
LB: 	Certainly. First of all, I need to clarify for the record that I go by Lewis, not Lew. 
SS: 	Lewis, I'm sorry Lewis. 
LB: 	That's perfectly OK. I was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1942. And I was there til about the age of six, when we moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana, where my dad was employed at the time, for a couple of years. And then to the St. Louis area, where I went to the rest of grade school and high school. And I graduated from high school in that area in 1960, from where I went to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, which at that time was just simply called the University of Wisconsin, it being, and still is, the flagship campus. And when I graduated from Wisconsin in Madison, I went to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan for graduate work in Romance linguistics. I left Michigan in around 1969 or so and went to Middletown, Connecticut to Wesleyan University, where I was assistant dean of the college and lecturer in French and linguistics for three plus years. Then I returned to Madison in the early '70's. 
00:02:40
SS: 	So maybe can you talk about some of your coming out experiences in Madison in the early '60's? What that was like? What the Madison scene was like in the early '60's while you were here? What was available? 
LB: 	Well, I was an undergrad, as I just said. And for me-- I should probably add right now that I never came out except socially. I was out when I was a kid, sexually. 
SS: 	Say more about that. 
LB: 	Well, to be honest, I played around with my cousins when I was three, four, five years old. And when I was growing up in grade school, junior high and high school, played about with a lot of my classmates sexually. But I really didn't come out socially, to the extent that we now have a gay community, until I came to college when I was 18 or 19. And at the time, I was very active in the French department, where my major was located, and came to know a large number of grad students as an undergrad-- I was-- many of whom, if not most of whom, were gay. And I became sexually active, although I had previously been quite sexually active anyway, not that that really matters, but that's the truth. I forgot where I was going with that. 
SS: 	Great, you're in the French department. There are grad students. 
LB: 	Oh yeah, lots of grad students. Some undergrads as well, but mostly grad students. I guess I was an early bloomer or something along those lines. When I was an undergrad, I did go to various and sundry bars and other gathering places for gay men. In the day when I first came here, there really wasn't a gay bar per se. But it happened to have been the 602 club at the time. And to a lesser extent, the College Club, which at that time was located where our memorial library is now, not where its current location is. And I would typically engage in sexual activity and was not particularly active politically at the time to the extent that I was when I returned to Madison in the early '70's. But I sure had a good time when I was an undergrad. And I did spend one full year abroad while I was an undergraduate, so I really was only here for three years. 
SS:	 Where we abroad? 
LB: 	In the south of France, continuing my exploits and learning a whole lot more French. 
00:06:35
SS:	 So Lewis, it seems to in talking to people that the French department has been a home for gay people for at least the last 50 years. 
LB:	 Well, it's a bit stereotypical, but I'll risk it and say, yeah, I think so. 
SS: 	But why is that? What makes it that? 
LB: 	Well, I think young men such as I, when I was an undergrad, and later on as a graduate student, and later on as a university teacher, seem to gravitate towards French. Or many of us did and do. I think that's still true, although I don't maintain close ties with the French department these days. But I'm pretty sure it's true. 
SS: 	And even the faculty were oftentimes the most gay, right? 
00:07:26
LB: 	Oh yes, well there were two what I call purges. One happened before I got here as an undergrad student in the late '50's, very late '50's. And then another that I unfortunately got involved in-- very unfortunately-- in about 1962. And as I have commented in the past, it was very, very bad. Now, in the late '50's, the first of those two so-called purges, there were faculty members who were fired because they were found out. And much of it, for the first of those two purges, happened as a result of what we sometimes called tea room trade, or mostly Memorial library sexual activity in restrooms, male restrooms. And the same was also true of the purge that I was involved in, but that took another, completely different turn. Do you want me to-- I shouldn't be asking you questions directly, but do you want me to go into that whole purge thing again? 
SS: 	Yeah, can you tell the story of the purge? 
LB: 	Oh sure, I'll try to do it as efficiently as possible. But in any case, in 1962, there was a dean of men, Ted Zillman was his name, who decided to take one or two young men, undergraduate men, into his office and question them about their sexual behavior and their sexual orientation, a term that back then we actually didn't use. So suffice it to say he was asking them whether they were homosexual or not. And some of them admitted to it, and others, such as myself, totally denied it, although it was completely true. And what his office did, ultimately, in addition to employing the resources of the what we now today call the Department of Protection and Security-- at that time, it was simply the university police. And I'll get to that a second, but I was at home in my apartment one day in 1962 as a sophomore I believe, and the phone rang. And it was one of my grad student friends speaking to me in French, which was perfectly OK, but not usual. And he explained to me that there was this purge going on behalf of the university to rid the university of gay male students. To the best of my recollection, there were no women involved in either of the two purges that I just mentioned, either in the late '50's or in 1962. I don't recall that at all, and my own feeling is that I don't think people were very worried about lesbians, but they certainly were a whole lot worried about gay men, young men. So after my friend called me and told me about what was going on, explained to me that I might be called in-- and I was-- and that I better be prepared for that. And so I ignored it as long as I could. I mean I was getting calls from the dean's office to come in. And I ignored it as long as I could, simply on the grounds that it wasn't any of their business. And at a later date, the authorities came after me during the summer, I believe it was. It may have been the summer, but in any case, sometime in that time frame. And since I was ignoring them, a detective from the university police at the time came to my place of employment, which happened to have been the University of Wisconsin hospital, and literally had my nursing supervisor pull me out of an operating room into the corridor and threatened me with not appearing before university officials as requested. And so I finally gave in. And I did go to the dean of men's office and lied through my teeth when he asked me if I was homosexual, and I said no. But they kept bugging me, and-- 
SS: 	What did they want to know? 
LB: 	Oh, that's a very good question. Thank you for asking that because it was important to their, quote unquote, investigation, to get as many names on their list as they could so they could bring in more and more young men who would give them more and more names. Well, one, I didn't give them any names. And as I already said, I denied being homosexual. And I remember distinctly at the time that I had decided, through silliness probably, to dye my hair blond, or parts of my hair blond in those days when I had a full head of hair. So here I was with this orange hair, and here was this Detective Roirdan, R-O-I-R-D-A-N. I've forgotten his first name right now, but anyway, the man who came and threatened me at the hospital. Now, there were good parts and bad parts to all of this. Probably the best part was the since I denied everything, there wasn't anything they could do with me. And there was one other good part. One of my friends at the time, a young man as well, was called in. And he had a great deal of interest in this because his much older sister was already a practicing attorney. And so he just looked at the dean and said, if you continue with this practice, I'm going to have my sister sue the university. And they let him totally off the hook. They didn't want to be sued. I didn't have the luxury. So the downside of my experience with that, one of the downsides, was I had been accepted to a program abroad, a junior year abroad program. And I had received, as a result of having been accepted to the very first year that program, a tuition remission scholarship, which meant that I could pay in-state tuition instead of out-of-state tuition because I was technically from out-of-state. Well, they reneged on that. They took away the scholarship. So my parents did in fact have to pay out-of-state tuition for the year that I was abroad. Now, there were other people involved in that who fared less well than I did. And those were men, either undergrads or grads, who lost scholarships. And I can't recall if anyone was actually fired from a teaching assistant position, for example. I don't think so, but I could be wrong about that. 
00:16:50
SS: 	You had friends who had scholarships taken away. Is that what you're saying? 
LB: 	That's my recollection, yes. Well, academic scholarships, right. 
SS: 	So they couldn't be a student [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. 
LB: 	There were some who had to leave their-- in particular-- graduate programs because they were out of money. And one of the reasons they were out of money was because they had assistance taken away from them. 
SS: 	So so you ended up meeting with Dean-- 
LB: 	Zillman. 
SS: 	Zillman. So Detective Riordan came to get you at work, and did he want you to meet with him? 
LB: 	No, he wanted me to appear before the dean of men, Dean Zillman, because I had ignored his requests prior to that time. 
00:17:47 
SS: 	And when you showed up with Dean Zillman, what did he try and charge you with? What information did he actually have? 
LB: 	Well, he attempted to get me to admit that I was homosexual. The term gay wasn't used universally at that time, but it certainly is today. And I denied it. But he also wanted me to give him the names of other homosexual young men, either undergrad or grad, and I refused to that. But I did go meet with him because I guess I was a little bit afraid at the time because I wasn't totally-- I wasn't an attorney or anything like that like my friend's sister. But at the time, I guess I was a little bit concerned that I might be expelled if I didn't cooperate. Well, I cooperated, but of course was lying. And I wouldn't cooperate by giving him the names of any other homosexuals because I didn't know any, I said, which of course was a total lie. 
00:18:58
SS: 	So how many people do you think were-- do you have a sense of how many of your friends actually were contacted by DNS? 
LB: 	Many. 
SS: 	What's many, do you think? Five, 10, 20. 
LB: 	Oh God no, more than that, both undergrad and grad. One of my roommates, a gay man at the time, was in school I believe-- if I remember correctly-- and he was contacted. And he flipped out. I mean he lost it. He was in the art department in the school of education. And he simply left school of his own volition. That was one of the examples that was pretty close to home for me. 
SS: 	He was so shaken? 
LB: 	Well, he just didn't know how to cope with it. That's my recollection. I guess I was a pretty good liar, which, except for losing a scholarship and lying through my teeth so I wouldn't be expelled or something along those lines-- 
SS: 	But that's what people had to do to protect themselves. 
LB: 	Well, you had to do something. My friend who got his sister to agree to sue the university if they pursued this was one avenue. That was the avenue that he took. He's still employed by the UW system at UW-Eau Claire last time I heard. So I went abroad for a year, and when I came back, that had pretty much died down. And then, much to the chagrin of most of the nation, we had the Kennedy assassination to deal with. And so much of our attention was geared to that when I came back as a senior after being away for my junior year. 
SS: 	So you graduate in '64. 
LB: 	I graduated in '64. 
SS: 	Anything else you want to say about the purge? 
LB: 	Oh, something may come to my mind, but I think I've covered the high points. I think I told the story fairly true to its origins at that time. 
00:21:55 
SS: 	You were talking about the bars. How would people know that that was a place for gay people to meet? How did you find out to go to the 602? 
LB: 	Well, I went to the 602 when I was a freshman. Of course I was grossly, to use a bad word perhaps, but I was terribly underage because that was a liquor bar. Whereas at the time, when I was a freshman at the age of 18 or 19, you could go to beer bars here in Madison at the age of 18 or 19, but you couldn't go to into a bar that served liquor. 
SS: 	And the College Club was a beer bar? 
LB: 	That was a beer bar, yes. I didn't have a problem with that, I mean legally. But I would have with the 602, so what I did was what a lot of other people did. Since they served liquor, booze I guess you'd say, I started going and blending in. And at the time, the 602 had an interesting story to tell because first of all, it wasn't at all gay during the daytime. But in the evening, in the back where the chess freaks-- chess as in checkers and chess-- and in the front, were gay men, only in the evening. And so what I started doing was just showing up. I never ordered anything. And so when they got to know my face and knew who I was, then I would occasionally have somebody else go up-- at the time you could do this. These days I don't think you can, or maybe you can. I'm not sure. So I'd have other guys go get me a beer or whatever it was I wanted. And then after a while, I got up enough guts to go up and get something on my own. But by that time, they knew my face so they didn't question me. And at that time, for ID, for undergraduates at least, driver's licenses were almost unheard of. But we did have in Wisconsin what we called a Wisconsin ID card or something, which proved that you were 18, 19, 21, whatever they wanted to prove. And so I had one of those, but they never asked me for it. So after a while, I just kept blending in and blending in and obviously used the opportunity to go home every chance I got with other men who were on the premises. And I was not shy in that regard. 
SS: 	And how did the chess players feel about the gay men being there? And was it generally known? 
LB:	 I don't think they noticed. 
SS: 	They just didn't? 
LB:	 I'm sure they knew. It's currently Wando's, for those people who know which bar I'm talking about, because it was the 602 way up into the '80's I think, '90's even. And then it was sold. But in the meantime, in the history of Madison, there had been, oh I don't know, a dozen perhaps bars that could have been called gay bars. 
SS: 	Prior to that? 
LB: 	No, subsequent to that. 
SS: 	Oh, subsequent to that. 
LB: 	Or at the same time. And now, I'm getting into the period of my life where I came back to Madison. 
00:25:43 
SS: 	Before we go there, can we just talk a little bit more about as an undergrad-- so that's how the 602 worked. Were there rules about where and when gay people met at the KK? 
LB: 	Well again, part of it was an age factor. See, you could go to the KK, and it was very cruisy, to use a term that many people might know. And there was sexual activity, not on premises, but people went home with other guys. Men, guys, went home with other guys at the KK. I certainly did. But I think the big difference between the KK at that time and the 602 was an age difference because it was legal to go to the KK. So there are far more younger people at the KK then there were at the 602. By younger, I mean like my age, freshmen, 18 or 19. 
SS:	 And was there a place that gay people met at the KK, a part of the bar? 
LB: 	No, no particular part of it, no. 
SS: 	And I've heard people say that The Three Bells was also sort of cruisy. Did you ever go there? 
LB: 	Oh, yes. 
SS: 	What can you tell me about The Three Bells. 
LB: 	Well, not much other than what you just asked me because if it was cruisy, that wasn't why I went there. I knew where to find other young men, or older men for that matter. And I might add-- suddenly something just popped into my head. At that time, in 1962, or 1964 for that matter, I don't believe that there were any adult bookstores that were cruisy, active-- [PHONE RINGING] I knew that was going to happen. Although I believe, historically, if I'm correct, that Red Letter News actually existed then, but I never went there. First of all, I did't have any transportation. I was a student. I didn't have a car, and I just went around town. 
00:28:21
LB:	Oh, something else just popped into my head. With respect to the KK in particular-- or the 602 for that matter but primarily the KK-- on State Street at the time, I'm going to blank on the name of this little cafe, but it was an after hours cafe. And one of the women who worked there-- actually, it was owned by two Danish matrons I'll call them, Ingebord and something. And I can't remember the name of it, but it was an after bar place where many, many gay men hung out after the bars closed. And I think at that time, the bars closed at midnight or one o'clock. Midnight maybe, I don't remember. Anyway, by that time if we weren't going directly home, we were all hungry. And so we all gravitated to this cafe. And one of the reasons we gravitated there, not only because of the two Danish matrons who owned it, but also because a woman who then became much better known to us in later years called Patty [? Pue ?] worked there. And she had a very huge gay male following. So we went there to have something to eat after the bars closed, but we also went there because she was very gay-friendly, to use a term that we didn't use back then but we do now. So Patty [? Pue ?] then later on in the '70s, early '70's and throughout the '70s' I think, tended bar at The Pirate Ship, which was probably the best known so-called gay bar where Bill Ferris, one of our former sheriffs who is now deceased, tended bar. He tended bar at a gay bar. He wasn't a bad person. He was kind of a sourpuss, but be that as it may, he did tend bar there. But so did Patty [? Pue ?] I've forgotten Patty's last name now. 
SS: 	Was it Lowe? 
LB: 	That could be right. I don't remember. She was good in many respects, but she was not a clean person. 
SS: 	Meaning what? 
LB: 	Well, she had very bad hygiene, shall we say. But she was much beloved, so to speak, by her gay following. 
SS: 	And you said she was gay-friendly. What did she do that made her gay-friendly? Why did people lover her so? 
LB: 	I don't know. All I know is that what we did was group together at the time, both when I was an undergrad and when I came back here in the '70's, early '70's. And we just gravitated to places that were certainly gay-friendly. And I'm still using gay meaning men, not women. I don't recall the time until much later in my career here when women were identifiable, included, in a visible kind of way. 
SS: 	There were no real lesbian bars in the early '60's. 
LB:	 I don't recall Madison as ever having had a lesbian bar, unless you count A Room of One's Own, which is a bookstore. It's not a bar. And certainly-- I won't speak for women. I'll let somebody else deal with that, but things have changed a lot for women as well. 
00:32:28
SS: 	So on your undergraduate chapter, is there anything else we you want to talk about? Were you in the dorms then ever? 
LB:	 When I was a freshman. 
SS: 	And what was like as a gay person? 
LB:	 Well, I have a couple of stories about that time my life when I was a freshman, several stores actually. One is that during the course of my time in that particular house-- it was part of the Kronshage group of men's dorms, at the time all men's, not co-ed. And I spent many nights away from the dorm all night long because I was seeing a man who was a little bit older than me, but not by a whole lot, and would spend time where he lived. I'm really rambling now, but nevertheless, things are coming back to me. He lived with a professor in, at the time, the school of home economics, Ms. Allen, Helen Allen, who had 17 cats. I may be exaggerating a bit, but not a whole lot. And Dick Richard would have me over for dinner sometimes. And these cats would prance around the dinner table, on the dinner table. And Ms. Allen-- we called her Ms. Allen-- had these cats. She also had a huge button collection. And she's forever known on this campus as the Helen Allen for her textile collection. What that has to do with my being gay, I have no idea, except that's where Richard lived, Dick. And so I would go over there, and I would spend the night. And Ms. Allen either was completely oblivious to the fact that I was spending the night with her tenant, Dick, Richard, or she didn't care. I really don't know, but it didn't matter to me. There was something I was going to add to this story, but I'm not going to add it because I really don't want to get into my actual sexual behavior. That's not relevant, I don't think. 
SS: 	Did that cause you-- did people notice at the dorm then? 
LB: 	Oh, yeah. 
SS: 	And what would happen then? 
LB: 	Oh, no. I'm glad you asked me that. Not only did people notice, but my dad kept trying to get me on the telephone in the middle of the night. And so ultimately, he called and said-- well, he finally did get me, I guess. He said, where have you been? I mean I keep trying to get you on the phone, and you're not there. Because at the time, it was, in my dorm anyway, it was almost exclusively, if not exclusively, double rooms. So my roommate at time, one of my roommates at the time, would keep answering the phone, and it'd be my dad. So when he finally got in touch with me, he said, well, where have you been? And I said, oh well, um-- So this is the beginning of my coming out to my dad, which is a long, long story, but it occurred during roughly the same period when I was an undergraduate. I was out. I didn't have a problem with it. I knew what I was doing. My friends knew. Even my straight friends knew. In that dorm complex, there were several young men in roughly my age group, all of whom were gay. And we all knew it. And so did our girlfriends of all things. Yes, we did have girlfriends, at least for show if not for any other reason. And we triple or quadruple dated, if you can believe that. So we would all hang out at a couple of bars on the west side of campus, which is where these dorms were located, Kronshage and Cole Hall, if I remember correctly. And so we would go to not the University Avenue bars or State Street bars that I have talked about already, but to two bars on the west side of campus, The Hasty Tasty, or the HT as it was known, and the Badger Tavern, or the BT as it was known. And that's where my three gay friends and our so-called girlfriends would hang out, particularly on Sunday nights because the dorms didn't serve food on Sunday nights. So the HT and the BT. But we were always with our girlfriends, and I never had any sexual contact with any of those friends. I mean we all knew that we were gay, but I didn't participate in any sexual activity with them, either through lack of desire or I don't know why. Maybe we weren't attracted to each other. I don't really remember, but we certainly were good friends. 
SS: 	So the girlfriend was it helpful in managing the present stigma to the wider population or of men in the dorms? 
LB: 	Well, it didn't hurt with my parents because a couple of them I actually introduced to my parents at one time or another when I was an undergrad. I suppose that even though I knew perfectly well what I was-- I might not have known the correct terminology for it, but I certainly knew what I was. And I suppose there was an element of among many of us in that time, in that age group, of needing to cover up in terms of the larger society. Not with each other, but in terms of the larger society. Not even with our girlfriends, our so-called girlfriends. I won't go into sexual matters except to say that I've never had sex with a woman. Consequently, there was no sexual activity between me and so-called girlfriend or girlfriends. And I don't think there was on the part of my male friends either. 
SS: 	I would just imagine because those dorms then were all male I think, right? 
LB: 	Well, the ones I lived it. 
SS: 	Yeah, the ones you were in. 
LB: 	Well, I lived only in one. 
SS: 	A pretty testosterone-y environment. 
LB: 	Yeah, but I was only attracted to one young man in my dorm. And it turns out I ended up living with him, rooming with him, because my freshman year, in the first semester with the roommate that I had, we didn't get along very well. Well, we got along, but we just weren't compatible. It was nothing sexual at all about it. So we ended up switching roommates with a guy who lived down the hall. I don't remember where he was from. He was from Wisconsin somewhere. So we swapped roommates. So his former roommate moved in with my roommate, and I moved in with him. And that's the first and only time. I never had sex with this guy, but I wanted to. And I attempted a couple of times to make moves, which I was little hesitant about it the first place, but I'll never forget him. 
00:41:19
SS: 	I guess what I was wondering-- I was thinking that even today, I think it's hard sometimes for gay men on these all-male floors. I think there's harassment when people are perceived to be gay. And I was wondering how it was like then. If you were perceived to be gay, was there harassment? 
LB: 	Oh, well that leads me to another story about my freshman year in that dorm. I will answer your question. When I was living there, there was a grad student in, of all departments, French and Italian. His name was [? Berl ?] Price. And [? Berl ?] took me under his wing, so to speak. And [? Berl ?], when I was continuing to be with my first roommate, gave me gifts. He sent me flowers that were delivered to my dorm room. And so all the guys of course wanted to know, who sent you those flowers? Well, I don't remember what I said, but I probably lied and said, oh my girlfriend. Well, it wasn't my girlfriend at all. It was my boyfriend at the time, one of my boyfriends. And he gave me gifts, as well as sending me these flowers. And he went on to get a PhD from here in French, and then he went to a tenure track position at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Not that that's relevant to anything except that he had been in the Air Force, and he was nuts about me. I won't say that it was totally reciprocal, but we did engage in a few things here and there. But those flowers, I won't forget that. 
SS: 	And how did the girlfriends-- did the girlfriends find out that you were gay? Or did you-- 
LB: 	I don't know if they ever knew. 
SS: 	Or did they assume? They might not have-- 
LB:	 Well, because of the four of us men, each of us had a girlfriend. And the girlfriends knew each other, and the guys knew each other. And I'm not sure they ever knew. I think they were way too ignorant at the time to even guess. After all, we were the boyfriends, and they were the girlfriends. And so what could be more natural? 
SS: 	Well, anything else from this chapter, the undergraduate chapter? 
LB: 	Oh, probably a whole lot more things. It's just nothing is coming to my mind. But, as I already indicated, when things pop into my head, you're probably going to hear. 
SS: 	OK. 
LB: 	Even if I have to go back a decade in order to [INAUDIBLE]. 
00:44:44 
SS: 	Oh, one other thing. Did you want to say something about [? Schmitty ?] at the KK? 
LB: 	Oh, just that he was cuter than hell. And that he was, what we would say today, very gay-friendly. He wasn't gay, it to my knowledge. I kind of wished he were at the time. 
SS: 	And explain who [? Schmitty ?] was. 
LB: 	Oh, he was a bartender. He was a regular bartender. He was there almost every night and a really cute guy. Oh, my friend, whom you've met, Jess-- Jess used to hang out there. And the thing that went on with Jess and me in full audio, for lack of a better word, in the presence of straight guys, bartenders, you name it women, was that we would speak very dirty French to each other. And of course, almost nobody knew what we were talking about because we used tons of slang. I'll never forget one line, which you may want to edit out or something. Jess and I were both very lingual, lingually-minded. And Jess spoke fluent Russian, and I spoke fluent French. Jess spoke very good French. But we would use gay phraseology as in, oh God, he's got beautiful blue eyes. Or in French-- I'll say it in French, but then I'll translate it. [SPEAKING FRENCH] Which in English translates roughly as, I wish he'd sit on my face. 
SS: 	So you were having this conversation at the bar? 
LB: 	But in French, we would do it all the time because almost nobody-- even if they knew French, they didn't know the slang so it wouldn't have meant anything. 
SS: 	Did anyone ever catch you? 
LB: 	Not that I recall. 
SS: 	Is there other gay slang from the ear that you remember? 
LB: 	Lots, whether I remember or not is another matter. Big blue eyes was slang for well-- you want to fill it in or shall I? 
SS: 	For genital area? 
LB: 	Yes, big genital area. That was slang. And I think even if we had said that in English, that the straight guys and the women-- there weren't very many women, but there were some-- they wouldn't have known what we were talking about. I mean that in-group slang. 
SS: 	What else? 
LB: 	Oh, God, many other things. Nothing is coming to be right this minute, but it was such a big part of my life at the time that I just remember a few things. 
SS: 	Did you guys use the term, Mary? 
LB: 	Married? 
SS: 	Mary. 
LB: 	Oh, of course, but not in that setting. 
SS: 	Yeah, not in that setting. 
LB: 	No, that would've been a little too obvious, I think. Oh, we used the term all the time. Oh yeah, of course. 
SS: 	And mother? 
LB: 	Yes. Now mother, at that time-- I haven't heard it used in recent years at all. But mother was-- if you said so and so was my mother, it meant that was the person who brought you out, whom you first had sex with or that kind of situation. Yeah. Very odd, but at the time, prevalent. 
00:48:46
SS: 	Well, should we fast forward to your return to Madison pick up? Since this is focused on Madison, should we move there? 
LB: 	Sure. As I mentioned, I came back to Madison after a time at two other universities and in 1972. I bought the house where you are sitting right now where I live. I've lived here for, oh what, 38 years now all together, such as it is. Fast forward to 1972. What I did when I came back-- when I first came back before I got this house was I stayed with my friend Jess over on Steven Street behind me here. And you've met him. And at the time, his partner, his lover. I don't think we ever used the term partner in those days, but we used lover, I think, most of the time. And they had been together, when they split up, which was devastating to me and to a lot of other people, for 10 years. At the time, in the early '70s, that was a long relationship. And so Jess and Ron had been together for 10 years. And when I came back, I really didn't know any other gay men here. I came to meet many, but I didn't really know any. I mean I didn't have old friends hanging around here or anything like that, except for Jess. And then I met, through him, many of his friends in those days. So in '72 and thereafter, I stayed with them for the first six months and met lots of people. Most all of them were their friends, many of whom are now dead, deceased. Many of whom because of AIDS, but not all. One of my own longtime love died about 10 years ago, and one of my pet peeves-- he was much younger than I, and everyone keeps asking me still to this day, 10 years ago he died, well, he must have had AIDS. And I say, I beg your pardon? No, people, men, unmarried men can have heart attacks. And I'm going on and on about one of me pet peeves, but I really hate that. And it infuriates me that people assume that if an unmarried man at the age of 40-- or 42 I think he was-- had to have had AIDS. I mean that could be the only cause of death, Well, that's utter nonsense, and he didn't. Anyway, I got off on a tangent because that's one of my big pet peeves. Anyway, when I came back, I was stayed with them for about six months, and then I bought this house. And here I am, much the worse for wear, but nevertheless, here I am. 
00:52:25
SS: 	And what was going on in the gay community at that time that you were aware of or knew about? 
LB: 	Well, these-- 
SS:	 Because I imagine some things had changed. 
LB: 	Oh, a lot had changed. Again, going back to 1972 now, where did people go, and what did they do? Well, the place of action was The Pirate Ship and the surrounding parking lots in the area of what is now our county courthouse or something. Well, it was just asphalt parking lots at the time, but there was a whole lot of action going on. I'm not saying that there was sexual activity in the parking lots, but there was an awful lot of cruising in the parking lots. I know because my car was there a lot of the time. Consequently, I would have to pry open my eyelids the following morning and say, go to work. But nevertheless, I was still very, very active. I wish I could say the same were true today, but unfortunately it's not. But anyway, that was pretty much the activity that went on in terms of the bar scene. The 602 was still there, but it had long been displaced by The Pirate Ship. And during that time that I was away, during that, roughly, decade between '64 and '72, I visited several times. And I can't recite these for you, but at one time I could have told you. I can remember a few names, but there probably have been a dozen so-called gay bars during that time. And some of them may still have existed in 1972, but The Pirate Ship was where the action was. The Senate was one of them, a bar down near the capital. There was one on State Street. I believe it's still there, now called The Tree or something. It had a different name at the time, but that was alleged to be a gay bar at the time. And in the early '70's, there was one, maybe two adult bookstore on State Street, where I also hung out, causing me to be up to the wee hours in the morning. It was fun. I often marvel, in a way, that I've never had an STD even though I indulged in-- in the early '70s-- pretty risky behavior. Never had an STD. If I have, I don't know about it. I don't want to know about it, although I get tested, as we all should from time to time anyway if we're sexually active, which I'm really not anymore. 
SS: 	So in '72-- 
LB: 	I told you I was going to ramble. Yeah, The Pirate Ship. 
00:56:05
SS: 	Did you ever go to The Back Door once that opened? 
LB: 	Oh, God yes. Oh, but The Back Door opened-- 
SS: 	December, '72 maybe? 
LB: 	Yes, I think that's correct. Well, Rod's opened in '79. I know that because I worked the door. Now I'm fast forwarding again, but I actually was a bartender at Rod's for about four years. No, The Back Door, commonly known as The Back Door Limited was call The Back Door-- well not commonly known, but that's the corporation's name. The Back Door opened and was called The Back Door because you entered via the back door. It's where some dorm or another is on Park Street today. That building hasn't been there in years. And Rodney Shield, the owner who opened it-- yeah, I went there all the time. I met Rodney, who is known by many, many people in Madison. Well, was known. He's now dead, but he was certainly known by many people in Madison, and still many remember him. He then opened The Hotel Washington, opened Rod's in The Hotel Washington, which of course was a completely gay bar. I can't even remember if I ever saw a woman there in the years that I hung out there and tended bar. 
SS: 	At Rod's? 
LB: 	Yeah, at Rod's. I'm switching gears now, but yeah, The Back Door, I went there all the time. 
SS:	 I read somewhere that at one time it had three floors. 
LB: 	Oh, yeah. 
SS: 	What was going on? Describe-- 
LB: 	Are you referring to The Back Door? 
SS: 	The Back Door. 
LB: 	Well, it was in the basement, technically. What was above it? Actually, I don't remember. I think it might have been apartments. It had nothing to do with the bar itself. 
SS: 	Describe The Back Door, entering The Back Door [UNINTELLIGIBLE] 
LB: 	Well, when you entered The Back Door via the back door, the first thing you came upon was a baby grand piano in a little, coat-room kind of place, a very small location physically. And then you go down some steps where the bar, the main bar was, and a couple restrooms. And it wasn't a large place physically. Excuse me. But it was accessible and popular and essentially-- again I'm switching gears a little bit, but if you consider The Hotel Washington as the home base for gay society and for the magic picnic and all those kinds of things. And I can talk more about that later, but Rod's, when it opened, The Hotel Washington, had two main competitors. And I'm not talking about The Pirate Ship. That came later, or I mean it was earlier rather. One was The Shamrock. And the other was 
SS: 	Going My Way? 
LB: 	Oh, I forgot about Going My Way. We'll add that to my list of other gay bars, but yes, that was another one. "The Gong Show" as we called it, based on that ridiculous TV program hosted by Richard Simmons was it? I don't remember. I think so. I mean this awful person. I hate Richard Simmons, but nevertheless, he hosted this TV program called "The Gong Show." And we called it that, Going My Way-- in slang, we called it "The Gong Show." I'm not quite sure why we did that, but we did. So somebody did anyway. The other thing about Going My Way that sticks in my mind-- again, other people will know better than I-- was that George Mosse hung out there, as in the humanities building. And yeah, George hung out there. And who was he there with frequently? It might have been Ron McCrea. George hung out there. Why he hung out there, I don't know. But I'm sure it was intellectual because that's how George Mosse was. I don't know if he ever did other things, but I'm sure he wanted to. And in his lifetime I'm sure he did. 
SS: 	So when you came back in '72-- 
LB: 	Yeah, get me back on track. 
SS: 	There was The Pirate Ship. The Back Door had started, so the first actually gay owned and gay operated gay bar in town was The Back Door. 
LB: 	The Back Door, yes. 
01:01:52
SS: 	And then there was also I think around '72, around that time was the birth of the gay center, which had various names, Gay Renaissance and all these. It had various names like that. 
LB: 	Yes. 
SS: 	And so were you involved in that at any point. And if so, what are your recollections of that? 
LB: 	Well, when I took my new job here at Wisconsin, it was called-- it doesn't really matter what it's called, but anyway, when I came back here, I did have this one job. 
SS: 	Which was? 
LB: 	Which was ultimately, associate director of undergraduate orientation, which you can read as the SOAR program if people know what SOAR program is. But it was the office that sponsored that program for many years, and then became the admissions office, but that's neither here nor there. I lost my train of thought. 
SS:	 I was asking about the gay center. 
LB: 	Oh, the gay center. When I came back here, I gained a fair amount of prominence and goodwill in doing what I did. And when we had an opening in our office for an assistant director, I persuaded a former student of mine from Michigan, who was also a very, very close friend of mine later on, to apply for this job. And he applied for it, and I don't know how much persuasion I had to use to get my director to hire him, but he did. And so Chuck came. And he stayed with us for five years maybe, very, very effective. And I knew that, otherwise I wouldn't have suggested he be hired. But then after a while, Chuck took off for better parts, better job and so on. At least that's what he thought. And when he left, he had been the treasurer of what I believe we called at the time, in the early '70's, early to mid '70's, the Gay Center. And so I took that over. He said, would you do this? And I said, sure, I'd be happy to do that. So for quite some time-- well not a long time, but several years-- I was the treasurer of the Gay Center. Now that involved writing checks from a checkbook. I mean it didn't mean that I was politically active in any sense of the word because I really wasn't. But I did go to meetings and tell them about the state of their treasury and so on. I was no Tim Geithner. I just hesitate to throw that in. No, I don't hesitate to throw it in. I did throw it in. But anyway, when Chuck left, I took that job over. And then there were a couple of other things I did that were a bit more upfront during those years. One is, prior to my meeting my late partner, I had two lesbians living here. And before they moved in here at my request-- I mean I offered it to them if they wanted to use the bedroom and so on-- we started a little journal. We wanted it to be a first-rate, gay lesbian journal. And we called it The Endeavor. It lasted one issue. Well, we couldn't market it, but I spent an awful lot of time working on that during those years. And [? Arliss ?] was a poet, and I am a poet. And so is Jess, by the way. That's a photograph he took if you're interested. 
SS: 	Oh, did he? 
LB: 	Well, anyway I'm piecing together things that I did in those years, basically in the '70's. And The Endeavor was one of them, this little publication that didn't quite make it. 
SS: 	And then-- so that's '76 or so. 
LB: 	The exact dates, I mean Chuck left-- He came early on. 
SS: 	Chuck Thoreau? 
LB: 	No. 
SS: 	Different Chuck. 
LB:	 Completely different Chuck. He's now dead actually. I mean my former friend and colleague, Chuck. 
01:07:16 
SS: 	So tell about Rod's and how you got connected with Rod's. 
LB: 	I have to back up a little there and say that I mentioned that when I came back to Madison in '72, that I stayed with Jess and Ron. And one of the people I met when I was staying with them was Warren Olson, who is a former professor of psychiatry here. And Warren's lover, if you wish, at the time was Rodney Shield. And Warren met Rodney when Rodney was a senior in high school at the old Central High downtown, which is now part of MATC, I think. And Warren and Rodney were together until Rodney died, many years, many, many years. But in the meantime, Rodney then opened The Back Door, and then subsequently bought The Hotel Washington and opened Rod's and other businesses, two other gay businesses and other businesses on the premises. So I forgot where I was going with that. 
SS:	 Rod's. 
LB:	 You asked me a question. Oh, Rod's. Rod's-- when I first came back to Madison, one of the other things I did, which had nothing to do with the gay community at all, except for both of my partners were gay. We opened a little store at Schenk's Corners, Atwood Avenue. It was a consignment clothing store. I will get back to Rod's because there is a connection. When we opened that little store, we bought or found an old cash register, not electronic at all. It's one of those things where you had to push the button hard. And we painted it yellow. And so when Rod's opened, I had this old cash register, this yellow cash register. And I told Rodney that I would do the door for him on Sundays, which was what is still called, I think at some places, beer bash. And so I sat at a little table at the top of the stairs. Rod's was downstairs so I was at the top of the stairs with this old yellow cash register. I don't know if we charged a buck or a buck and half or whatever it was. I can't remember. So I would give them a little drink ticket or something or a ticket for the beer bash, whatever it was. And that's how I got my start at Rod's. Then I worked my way up, or down as the case may be, to a couple of other endeavors. And I'll just mention what some of them were, and if you want to ask me additional questions, you certainly can do so. We had a little store at the bottom of the steps at Rod's. It was kind of like a-- what we wanted to be was a small version of the Levi leather store. And I ran that. Subsequently, it was taken over by other people, but when it first opened, I bought the merchandise. I was the bartender, and then I became assistant to the manager. And then I became an assistant to Rodney himself. And at the time of Rod's 10 year anniversary-- I could show you this stuff, but on purpose, I'll just add parenthetically that I didn't get out any documentation of what I'm talking about. I thought well, if it's oral history, it probably should come from my head. But I helped him out with some of the office business as well as doing things for that bar itself. Then he opened another part of our history certainly, what was called-- I'm also aghast at the fact that people call things something, and the name sticks, even though it's completely meaningless, For example, Rodney decided on the third floor of his hotel building, he would opening a new bar. And til the day the building burned down, it was still called The New Bar. The New Bar. And it was a dancing place, and many people may remember it. So I and my late partner used to hang out there. And we would watch Jeopardy, one of our favorite things. And so we had Rod's in the basement. And then we had The New Bar, which remained The New Bar. And then behind Rod's in the basement, we had The Back Bar, which was a den of inequity if ever there were one where there was all kinds of sexual behavior going on. I won't swear that I did or did not spend any time there. I won't swear to anything. So there were actually three places in the building that could have been decidedly called gay bars. Now there were other business in the building, such as the Cafe Palms, to name the most prominent of them, which was essentially a straight bar and a music venue. And then there was the Cafe Palms. which was essentially a restaurant. And then there were also hotel rooms in that building, a few of which were occupied by gay men, but mostly they were occupied by what we would call today probably people who were on the border of being homeless. I mean it was cheap. 
01:14:23 
SS: 	The Rod store. Can you talk about what does leather Levi mean, and what could you buy at the store? 
LB: 	Well, you could buy hankies in all 24 colors, left or right, however that list reads. I don't look at it frequently. Oh, the other thing I did at Rod's was I edited the newsletter. 
SS: 	Talk about that. 
LB: 	Well, that was tons of fun for me because that's part of the thing I do. I write. I edit. I did that at work. I did it for Rod's. He paid me, but nevertheless, it was a lot of work. I still have a notebook out there including every newsletter I ever wrote and or edited. 
SS: 	So explain what the newsletter was, how often it came out, what would be in it, how many people would it get mailed to. 
LB: 	Well, we started a mailing list. This was prior to the implementation of the newsletter itself, but we did have a mailing list. And what we would do is send out a notice of special events. I don't know if it was beer bash on Sundays or if it was-- excuse me. But so I said, well, why don't we do a newsletter. But anyway, the mailing list. So we got people to fill out these cards, little note cards with their name and address. Frankly, we didn't really care if it was their real name and their real address, but we collecting all these addresses. And I think at the optimum time of the newsletter's existence, we might have had 1,200 names slash addresses on this list. But it was always wrong. It was wrong because these people moved, same old thing. Maintaining a mailing list not fun. But I also was in charge of that, so I had to keep running these labels all the time because I kept getting these address corrections all the time. Rodney would give me stacks of returned newsletters or mailings or whatever was. And so he gave me these, and then I had to go correct the list. And then of course, once I corrected the list, I had to print the labels out again in preparation for the next newsletter or mailing, whatever it happened to be. I think the newsletter was very tongue-in-cheek. And I borrowed a phrase, which I subsequently learned is now today the motto of Rolling Stone magazine. I thought I had made it up, which wasn't-- well, I did, but it was in the limit environment of Rod's. "All the news that fits, we print." Not The New York Times, "All the news that--" 
SS: 	That's fit. 
LB: 	What is The New York Times'? 
SS: 	That's fit to print. 
LB: 	That's fit to print, right. So I thought I had made this up. Then I discovered later on, much later on, that Rolling Stone had been using it for years/ But much of it was newsy, what's coming up, what's going on. I would quote people unbeknownst to them. And I would use humor, and I'm not sure Rodney ever really understood my humor. At the time of the tenth anniversary, we put together a booklet. Four color, which in those days was very expensive, well probably still is. And I co-edited that with a woman who worked for him. And what I did was I used the newsletters, my memory and other sources to look at every year for 10 years by year. So we started with 1979, which is when Rod's opened, and went through 1989, I guess. It must have been. It was ten years. I can't remember what year Rodney died in. 
SS: 	I think 1990. 
LB: 	Oh yeah, it was shortly thereafter because he-- after the tenth year anniversary. I'm trying to piece things together. It was shortly -- yes, that's right. I wrote his obituary. And somebody asked me to do that, and I did. I certainly knew him well enough to do it. And I remember as well-- this brings the church back into it. Well, not back into it because I haven't mentioned the church yet. But at the time, I was what could have been called a deacon of my church. And Warren belonged to my church, Rodney's lover. And so when Rodney died, ultimately, unfortunately of AIDS, in addition to writing the obituary, Warren asked our former pastor if he would do the service for Rodney. And the service-- I'm sorry to say that it took place because of that, but it did. So after I wrote the obituary and we came in, Warren and I and the pastor and a few other people came in and talked about what kind of a service they wanted. And Warren, since was a member, said, well, I want this, this, and this. And then the pastor said, well, Lewis, why don't you serve communion at the service? And I'm being serious now, but I have to be serious. The pastor said he'd been pastor for I don't know, 16 years or something. He'd never seen the church that full. And a lot of the gay guys who attended-- Rodney wasn't cremated so his casket was there-- and they came up and said to me, as we pass by, can we put roses on his casket? And I said, no you can't. This is worship service. I better stop. Sorry. 
SS: 	Should I pause it? 
LB: 	A lot of my work gets me choked sometimes. 
01:22:03 
SS: 	Well Lewis, we've been going for an hour and a half. I'm wondering if this is a good-- should we stop here and maybe pick up again at a different session? 
LB:	 You mean I'm not done? 
SS: 	Well, it seems like there's a lot. 
LB: 	I think that was a long time, by my standards anyway. 
SS: 	Well, I know you want to talk about-- I think there's still more you wanted to get to. We could tale about the church stuff. 
LB: 	Well, we're only roughly up to about 1980. 
SS: 	Yeah, maybe this is a place-- can I go back to the newsletter quickly? How often would it come out? 
LB: 	My recollection is quarterly, but that's a rough estimate. We did it when he wanted to do it. And to me, it didn't matter a whole lot. I was being paid so I was on the clock when I worked on any part of it. So what we did was we tried to put it out whenever it was appropriate to do so. And some of it had to do with the fact that the mailing list was or wasn't ready. So I mean why should I spend time writing a newsletter to send to a mailing list that was incorrect? 
SS:	 Well, what do you think? Maybe we could stop here, and then we could pick it up again and do another session some other time. 
LB: 	Yeah, my calendar is in there, but next week is very busy for me. 
SS: 	Yeah, well let me pause this, OK? 
LB: 	Yeah, because you need to put your stuff away and take it with you and stuff. 
SS: 	OK, well this has been Lewis Bosworth and Scott-- am I saying your last name right, Lewis? 
LB: 	Bosworth. 
SS: 	Bosworth. 
LB:	 Sounds like a Z. 
SS: 	This has been Lewis Bosworth and Scott Seyforth on Friday, March 20, 2009. We're at Lewis' home in Madison. And that's all for today.