Malachi Truman Harris

Politically, I've always been that way ... For as long as I can remember, I've been angry that people weren't being given a fair shake because I wasn't actively gay when I was in high school or college. I buried myself in the theater, immersed in education and drama so to speak. Sleeping three, four, five hours a night.

I just looked in the mirror one day-in Denver-and I said, 'You're gay. And you're not going to get anything in the way of a personal experience that is joyous and intimate unless you do something about it. So why don't you do something about it?' And I went out and did something about it.

All I thought was "Who is this guy? He's so flamboyant."...I didn't know how to deal with someone like Truman.

He had a really broad perspective...and he'd come through the McCarthy era, the 50s, refusing to sign the loyalty oaths. He had a job where he just refused to sign it. And that's what you were asked to do in the 1950s if you had a job, was to sign a statement that you're not a communist. And he refused to sign it. That was the kind of defiance he had.

"Im an admitted gay 24 hours a day, and it's one of the few places I can work. Overall, I enjoy it. They don't care what Ido in bed as long as I do my job and that's very rare at this time in this city."

In the late 60s and early 70s, I think Boulder-because of the University-and Colorado Springs—just because of the people who were here-were much more attuned radically, while Denver was much more asleep. I don't know anymore about Boulder, but Denver seems to be more awake than it's ever been in its past. But still not awake radically, in the sense that Boulder and Colorado Springs were in the early 70s. Awake more in a liberal sense, more in the sense of working through the system... more on an NGTF level. And Denver to me has never had the radicalism, say, of Boulder or Colorado Springs.

And that attitude of superiority-they don't deal with street gays. They don't deal with the street reality. I don't think they're a group which brings into their reality the co-struggle of blacks, of women in general, of poor people, of elderly, of children, of the yellow people or the red people-the third world struggle to find some kind of humanity and equality on this planet.

"Fuck this! I do not wish to kiss my HET master's ass! I want to be OFF his ass and be rid forever of him and his oppressions constantly heaped upon me. I Will NOT be defined by him." - Malachi Truman Harris

It was into "74 or '75. But a lot of those people have long since moved or gone into other things. There's a reaction here which throws gays into a much earlier period-more self-imposed now, the hiding, living the schizophrenia-straight by day, gay by night. They're within the system again believing the myths. They don't even have a comprehension of being oppressed.