Filling in the Journal

What can happen in 600 days?

I have been, over the years, an indifferent diarist. Although I started my journal more than forty-two years ago, there are huge chunks of time without a single entry. But okay, I mean, what really can happen over a mere 728 days?[1]

Yeah, if I could go back in time,[2] I would convince myself that even if I wrote a few words a day, it would be better than writing nothing. It probably wouldn’t do any good, since the intention of writing every day was always there, but sometimes it just wasn’t possible.

It’d be late and and I’d be in the dark.[3] The ride would be too bumpy to reliably mark things down. I’d forget where I put my journal.[4] I’d go a trip certain that I was going to keep a journal, but then leave my journal at home (which is better than leaving it in a hotel, never to be seen again). It is quick and easy to not get a journal entry written.

Hard to search through these

Over the years, I filled (at least) eighteen notebooks to some degree of completion.[5] That’s it, barring some forgotten volume resurfacing. I have finally transcribed the lot of them, in some cases replacing bad handwriting with bad typing, so I will probably revisit the volumes from time to time, when I look at an old entry and say, “just what the hell did I actually write here?” Now comes the next phase. It’s time to fill in the gaps. I have a plan.

Now, because I have been a less-than-diligent diarist, these are the things I must do:

See what I wrote elsewhere. For those times when I didn’t write a journal entry, sometimes I wrote something about it elsewhere. A zine.[6] An email. A social-media post. Time to check my words. I’ve been delighted to find that some of the gaps in my journal have already been written.

Like this one

See what I shot. There have been plenty of occasions where I didn’t jot anything down on a trip[7] but I did take lots of photos. That’ll jog your memory. If nothing else, they provide a simple guide to what I did that day, akin to a one-line journal entry. “Went to the museum” is better than just a blank.

What can I remember? And in the absence of any documentary evidence, there’s always the chance association. Every once in a while, I’ll remember something and—aware that there is no corresponding journal entry—jot down what I remember. Sure, this is nothing like a contemporaneous entry, but it’s better than nothing. (I also mark these as such, since they are memories.) What you remember today might slip from memory.[8]

You can’t bring back the past. There no do-overs,[9] but there is a chance—even after the fact—to improve on spotty journaling practices.

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1. That’s the gap between my last entry in 1983 and my first entry in 1985. I mean, yes, that’s almost the entirety of a relationship I had with a boyfriend and included two changes of address, but really.  ↩

2. There’s this fantasy of avoiding some great personal screw-up, but some of those unpleasant events led me to today, so I’ll settle for the lesser goal of not avoiding them, but at least chronicling them.  ↩

3. You can’t write in bed in the dark with pen and ink. I’ve tried.  ↩

4. One journal entry celebrates finding my journal after it went astray at the end of a trip. Had I left it in another country? If I had lost it, I might have now forgotten it existed.  ↩

5. One early volume is lost, though when I last saw it, I did note that it spanned all of three days before I put it aside, only picking it up again after I had started a new one. I don’t think I’ve seen it since. It could turn up.  ↩

6. Yeah, I used to do that.  ↩

7. See above with journals that didn’t make it along for a trip.  ↩

8. There have been times when I’ve remembered something with great clarity but have not been able to jot it down, only to draw a blank later as those memories had sunk into the background.  ↩

9. As nice as that might be in some cases. Oh, here are some mistakes I would undo. ↩

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The Boskone Queerbashing

What follows is something I wrote up for a zine after an incident at the science fiction convention Boskone XXII (February 15–17, 1985). I am not completely certain whether the events below happened as Friday became Saturday, or as Saturday became Sunday. I’m kinda splitting the difference and since 16 February 1985 was one of the days. Leaning more to the evening of the 16th, morning of the 17th.

Boskone XXII was full of surprises. There was great interest in my all-gay apa,[1] I hosted one of Boskone’s two Gay Fandom parties, and also ran a discussion group about Gay Fandom (yes, it was a rather gay con for me). I saw lots of movies. And I almost got queerbashed.[2]

Almost was more than enough. The intent to do more was there And—although I can’t be certain—I think much of it was premeditated.[3]

Start with the first Gay Fandom party. The crowd was only mostly gay. I have no problem with sympathetic straights being at a gay party. The point was to have fun in a gay-positive atmosphere. Then there were people like Drew, brother to someone I knew.[4] He and his friends were not sympathetic. When they showed up at the party, I was a little apprehensive, but there were more of us (and who can stop an army of lovers?).

Drew, in addition to being non-sympathetic, isn’t even a fan. Yes, folks, he’s one of the over-growing number of Mundane Fandom.[5] When I started going to cons, fans had a good reputation with hotel staffers (this heard from a maid (okay, I could be cynical and say she was staring for a bigger tip, but…)). This year, I heard about how the hotel liaison was trying to calm the hotel about the vandalism (most hall phones were destroyed).[6]

Well, they were quiet (although at one point, Drew called me over (I was in the middle of a conversation and said so)) and soon left. That’s when things began. There were a few annoyance calls and one in which Drew told me that his brother wanted to meet me by the film room (1. I don’t deal through intermediaries—his brother knows that; 2. I rarely come when summoned, which his brother knows too).

Finally, at 3 am., I was preparing to leave the hotel. I wanted to say goodbye to a few friends. This took us (Ron and I) past Drew and his friends. “Queers,” they said, “faggots.” Bluntly speaking, these things are true, but I’d rather not be called them. Ron and I have only reaction to queerbating: we kiss and walk on.

They got louder and cruder. “Faggot,” said Drew, “it makes me sick that my brother used to hang around with a faggot. I wish I had a gun so I could shoot your balls off, faggot.”

“At least he can find them,” shot back Ron. My turn: “I’d rather be queer than an asshole.” This got them mad.

They pursued. Drew pushed me. “Leave him alone,” said Ron. Then a large brick wall, disguised as a blond man appeared and said, “leave them alone!” He pushed the queerbashers away. We left, going for security, since a fight had broken out. We left, going for security, since a fight had broken out, and we wanted to make sure justice was served.

Unfortunately, by the time we got hotel security to come to the fourth floor, everyone had disappeared (everyone! combatants and spectators alike).

I was a little shaken up by this, so I suggested to Ron that we go to the film room and watch the rest of Slaughterhouse 5. So we did and told a few new friends of our experience. We soon became a group of angry young queers.

There are people in this world who think that gay people should put up with such abuse. Fortunately, con operations did not agree when we told them of the incident the next morning. The next morning, Ron and I bumped into a committee member we both know. We told her out story. She told us to meet her in Systems. So, we went there and told our story (just as it is above).

Later, we had to return to Systems. It seems the guy who stopped the queerbashing pushed Drew’s girlfriend, causing her to break her knee.[7] So, we retold our story (to another con staffer), pointing out that we could understand Drew & Co. feeling attacked, but that the attack was borne of chivalry.

[Not in my original account, but we were told by con staff that Drew and his friends had been ejected from the con and told that they were not welcome on the premises. They were also told that knew and believed me and that their tale of how Ron and I initiated things just wasn’t credible.]

Later, I saw Drew’s brother. I told him the story, and promised to do what he could although he doubted he could do anything. (We saw him still later; his parents refused to order Drew to come home, further Drew had sworn to get us).

We were a little nervous about all this. You can’t count on large individuals to come to your rescue. Fortunately, at most time we were with large groups of fen,[8] and usually several gay fen.

We went to Burger Thing,[9] and—as chance would have it—they were two tables way from us. This somewhat ruined our appetite, but nothing happened.

The rest of the weekend went by with only one more incident. While the finally incident wasn’t violent, it was homophobic. Earlier that day, I was about to go to the bank and didn’t want to deal with weirdos to say dumb things to people in top hats, so I had loaned my hat to a friend. I hadn’t seen her after that, so I went to a party where I knew she’d be.

I left several friends in the con suite and went off for the 13th floor. En route, another elevator passenger saw my badge and said, “You’re John Dumas. I’ve heard of you.”[10]

“In conjunction of with that?”

“You were involved in that thing where the girl got assaulted.”

“What girl?” I questioned, then it hit me. “Her—she was injured trying to assault a friend and me.”

“That doesn’t matter,” said the gentleman., “you only suffered verbal abuse, she has a broken knee.”[11]

There’s no talking to some people and this one was going to the same party. So, I collected my hat[12] (much to the disappointment of the friend who was now wearing it (sorry, Adam)), and explained why I couldn’t stay—and I was expected elsewhere.

My friend later told me the topic of the party became how stupid some people could be, excusing the intent of committing violence, just because the intended victims escaped unscathed. There is hope for humanity.

A few words in postscript
Ron and I broke up less than a year after that (for reasons that had nothing to do with the queerbashing at Boskone XXII). He’s a great guy (we’re in touch), but we were a disaster as a couple.

The incident was well remembered a year later at Boskone XXIII, which saw the founding of the Gaylaxians. I’m happy to say that only positive gay experiences happened at Boskone XXIII.

The question of what would happen with out gay fans at the con had been answered. Yeah, there could be problems, but the con would have our back (kudos to the staff of Boskone XXII, who handled things beautifully).

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1. An amateur press association seemed the best choice to me, since I assumed that gay science fiction fans were sufficiently rare that there would be no way to have a local organizations (1986) or a convention (1988), both of which I later had a hand in.
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2. I wrote “almost” in 1985 when I wrote this up. I was queerbashed. They made physical contact with me. (Queerbashing and queerbaiting were the terms used by the LGBTQ (then LGB) community. Later, non-community newspapers softened these terms to gaybashing and gaybaiting, because when you’re talking about physical or verbal assaults, you need gentle language.)
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3. I think anything less than an abject apology for existing and a promise to leave the con immediately would have been taken as a pretext for a physical altercation. They were spoiling for a fight. I wasn’t there for that.
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4. When I originally published this in my zine, I named him. I’ve removed a few identifying other details from this story. If you knew me in 1985 and you’re curious, yeah I’ll tell.
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5. Boskone had a problem in the mid ’80s. It had grown large enough that it was dubbed the “Winter Worldcon” and had attracted an increasingly large contingent who weren’t even remotely science fiction fans. These people increasingly became a problem for Boskone.
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6. And it would be two more years before Boskone XXIV, the “Boskone from Hell,” after which no hotel in Boston would host the convention.
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7. So it was said. That said, a few years later, I injured a knee when I was thrown off my bicycle and made a one-point landing on my kneecap. I didn’t break anything. Within an hour, my knee swelled so much that I couldn’t bend it for a week. That Drew’s girlfriend was ambulatory does cast some doubt on her story.
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8. Fannish slang of the era, with fen on the model man > men. Men is an i-mutation plural. These were common in Old English, but only a few of them are now left. That’s progress for you.
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9. Oh, figure it out.  ↩
10. Within a couple years, people would see my name on a badge and want to talk to me, but it was in more positive contexts.  ↩
11. Again, though this was her story, I’m inclined to believe that it was just a story.
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12. Although I have many hats, I don’t have this one anymore.
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“You Needed Better Friends” An Optometric Observation

See, I really do own glasses.
No need to see them on my face.

 This year—2020—marks fifty years of vision correction for me.[1] I recently had my annual vision check.[2] I was chatting with my optometrist and this recalled the days when I wore glasses.[3]
My glasses of that era could best be described as “heavy, thick, inconvenient.” Their thickness (due to my prescription) meant that optometrists would regularly tell me “no.” As in, “can I get wire frames?” No, I needed thicker frames to support those lenses.[4] Later would come the question of whether I could get contacts. “No, they don’t make them in your prescription.”[5] Heavy, thick lenses came with all sorts of problems.

My glasses were always either sliding or being knocked off my face. Grabbing my glasses because their weight was pulling them off a sweaty boy’s face was bad enough, but it seemed that anything that happened to me would result in my glasses going projectile, once into a campfire. The lenses were spared, but the frames were trashed. I had to go some days without my glasses. My father had been given tickets to a Red Sox game, and I went even though I couldn’t see more than about a foot beyond my face.[6]

Contacts, how wonderful!

The friend who bumped into me, sending my glasses flying, at least meant no harm. Thick glasses on which I was utterly dependent also made me a target. From third grade on[7] it seemed there were always bullies who would snatch my glasses from my face and hold them out of my reach.[8] Glasses weren’t only expensive, they were difficult to replace. If anything happened to them, I’d be lost for days. If I remember, replacement glasses took two weeks. Plus I couldn’t see. Taking my glasses away was a great way of making me panic.

When I mentioned this to my optometrist, she said, “children can be so cruel.”

“It wasn’t always children. Friends snatching my glasses from me persisted into my early twenties.”

“You needed better friends.” That was good diagnosis.

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1. Do I get a prize for that? Maybe new eyes, 20/20 without correction, also the ability to focus on close without reading glasses. You know, like normal 25-year-old eyes. I’ll settle for 30, I’m not fussy.
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2. This has grown into a series of visits, as now I see an ophthalmologist before I go to see the optometrist. I have old, very nearsighted eyes.
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3. Not that I don’t wear glasses now. I spend most of my waking hours with contacts, but I have glasses and wear them.
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4. Eventually with changes in lens materials, I was able to get wire frames. My current glasses are frameless, an impossibility for me in the 70s or 80s.
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5. I asked annually nevertheless. My gas-permeable lenses taught me I needed to wait for soft contacts. At one point, a friend asked if I had considered Lasix. It was, of course, not available in my prescription. When I was 40 an optometrist suggested it, although there was no guarantee of 20/20 vision and I would still have to wear reading glasses. Thinner glasses didn’t make it worth it.
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6. Baseball happens more than a foot away.
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7. Just do the math.
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8. Just to be clear, I wasn’t just the kid with thick glasses, I was the short kid with thick glasses. The short, chubby kid. The short, chubby, non-athletic, nerdy kid with thick glasses. My shirts might have all been concentric red and white circles. Yeah, I was bullied. (Note to my former bullies: fuck you.)
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