by Demian
© August 2003, Demian
Demian in June, 1993
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My ancestors came from Russia — Belarus. My grandfather, Nate, told me he remembered the crossing by cargo ship when he was five. He said that he sang and danced for the sailors who tossed him oranges and biscuits, which helped his family survive the trip as they had no money for food. I was born in 1945 and didn’t know hunger until I left home when I was about 20. I was an artist, with photography and filmmaking as my media. My work has always been non-commercially oriented and as the arts are not prized in this country, poverty was inevitable. I knew I had an artistic nature from the age of 10 and thought of myself as a photographer from 13. My earliest interests where in cartooning and I adored the Disney animations. During my early teens I often borrowed my mother’s Brownie Hawkeye camera, frequently to create stereoscopic images. To do this, I snapped two pictures, one after the other and about two inches apart, making sure they lined up horizontally. Once processed, I mounted the prints in a Holmes viewer I located in an antique store. My dad’s Keystone 8mm movie camera was also available for my experiments. I played with odd angles and wild camera movements, sometimes editing for disorienting scenic jumps. When I was 21, I was introduced to meditation, vegetarianism and Macrobiotics by neighbors Gretchen Priest and Michael Rayson. These philosophies changed and improved my life. At first for health, then eventually for ethical reasons, I decided to never eat any kind of animal or the products of animals. About the same time I was discovering my sexual orientation. Effortlessly, I had fallen in love with my best friend, Stanley Wilczynski [See: Friends I]. Fortunately, he had fallen in love with me, too. This, however, provided us both with a shock and it turned our understanding of the world upside down. We knew we couldn’t publicly celebrate our relationship because we understood, without ever being directly told, that gay people were a despised subculture. Working to understanding our relationship and our newfound orientation, we discovered an entirely new, underground society. Surprisingly, we eventually discovered that many of our friends were also gay or bi. Our relationship ran less than a year, partly because we where unskilled in relationship-building. More critically, there was no support from families or friends to form and keep strong same-sex relationships. In fact, we dared not tell our blood relatives about our love for each other. Stan was a very shy, quiet and darkly moody person. He hated to be controlled by society. He eventually became more hostile to social rules (Genet was his model) and subsequently broke contact with his friends and family. The last I heard from him was in the form of a diary he sent of his hitching from New York City (we had both coincidentally moved there) to California. It contained a heartrending story of his unrequited love for his good friend Dominic, the man he was traveling with.
In New York, I practiced photography and filmmaking, and attended dance and theater workshops with Yvonne Rainer and Carolee Schneeman, from 1968-1969. [See: Teachers] I also studied yoga and T’ai Chi. After a year and a half, a friend introduced me to a very exciting School of Education at U. Mass. in Amherst, and I enrolled to pursue a Masters and Doctorate in Education. When I moved to Amherst in 1969, I realized my life goals had shifted toward the more spiritual, and meeting a whole new community allowed me the opportunity to present myself afresh. When one of the school departments had a first gathering, instead of being asked, “what is your name,” we were asked, “how do you want to call yourself, and what do you want to do.” In the past, I had thought about changing my name back to my family’s old Russian name, “Kopeka.” As I was thinking about that, just a few seconds before it was my turn to speak, the title of a book I’d read a few years back popped into my head. I said, “My name is Demian.” Instead of saying what program I wanted to be involved with at the school, I stood up and performed a few T’ai Chi movements. While I didn’t clearly have it in mind at that first meeting, my doctoral thesis later revolved around the use of movement for self-awareness and communication. At the time, it got a wide variety of responses from “Wow, tell me more about this T’ai Chi stuff” to “Is this guy weird or what?” As the weeks went by and everyone continued to call me Demian, I decided the name fit very well. For consistency and to simplify things, I went to court and had my old name changed to just “Demian” as my full legal name. My dad complained about my name change, until I reminded him that his father had changed the family name, as had he and his brothers yet again. It’s a family tradition. The second major relationship in my life was with Patricia Davis, when I was about 24. Pat was sensitive, intelligent and full of vibrant, positive energy. She was a highly supportive individual and knew how to make a relationship work; however, we both knew we needed a different kind of person for a partner. Shortly after my relationship with Pat, I set up a vegetarian household and maintained it through many different housemates over the course of more than nine years. One group of people lived with me for a large chunk of that time; Bruce MacDonald, Kathleen Murphy, Celia Ross and Rick Best. (Bruce, who I knew since 1969, had briefly been my sweetie.) I credit these four housemates for making living together a pleasurable and growthful experience. My doctoral dissertation consisted of creating theater workshops for non-performers as a means of self-expression and personal growth. I also formed a theater group in 1971 known as Sweet Corn Productions. We created a theater piece from four months of improvisations and toured briefly with the completed play. Before finishing my degrees, I created an experimental restaurant, called the Noodle, on the U. Mass. campus. It was staffed by volunteers and offered vegetarian fare. The Noodle was highly successful and continued running far longer than originally planned. Several of the Noodle volunteers went on to create the Yellow Sun Natural Foods Cooperative in Amherst. Another volunteer, Rob Johnson (a housemate of mine), went on to create Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Albion, Maine. Not long after the Noodle, I became business partners with three others to create a full-fledged veggie restaurant in Amherst called the Equinox Café. I stayed involved with this for a year. Following the completion of my doctorate in 1973, I became producer and host of one of the nation’s first radio programs for gay men and lesbians. Gaybreak ran four years on WMUA in Amherst. I received numerous letters from listeners informing me that they valued the link with other gay voices. Some told me they could only listen with an earplug, because they didn’t dare let their parents or co-workers know they were gay or lesbian. Since the wire services reported about Gaybreak, I thought it time I told my parents I was gay, before they read about it in the newspaper. Since I expected my father would have a hard time listening to this, I composed a “coming out” letter, and let them think about it before responding. I got a letter back saying that they worried about what it would mean to my future, and that they loved me.
By 1981, and living back in Boston, I had been in part-time relationships with three men, not getting what I wanted from all three put together. I emptied my social calendar and made a list of what I wanted in a relationship, and decided to settle for nothing less. This was scary because I now had no fall-back sweeties, and, also, I might get what I wanted — and that could eventually change my life. It did. Steve Bryant was traveling around the country performing in early European music concerts when we met at a gay conference at Boston University. Only after talking together did I discover that we had a long list of commonly shared interests and philosophies. It became clear after several meetings that he truly fulfilled my list. When Steve came along I was about to move from Boston to Seattle and knew that if he continued on his tour that we would likely never see each other again. So I proposed that we go to Seattle together and see if we would make a good relationship. He took two weeks to think about it, and then canceled the rest of his tour. The car I had purchased to make the trip kept breaking down. With no money for motels, we slept in the woods and in the car with only a few blankets during the onset of autumn. The trip taxed our wallets and our relationship. We arrived worn out, but with a close bond that led to a 20-year commitment.
Steve and I moved from Seattle to San Francisco in 1984, where we lived for a year-and-a-half. We both liked Seattle better, so moved back. Since then, Steve has become a public relations executive and has been extremely successful. We produced concerts and plays, the most notable: “Scaredy-Kate and the Monsters - or - How to Pay the Rent,” a marionette opera, and “The Voice of an Angel: A Castrato Remembers.” I wrote both, the latter being a one-man show for Steve. Steve and I realized the paucity of resources for same-sex couples and created Partners Task Force for Gay & Lesbian Couples in 1986. Our role began as reporters producing a periodical, however, that gave way to include research and publishing in other journals and books. We have also produced videos and created an extensive Web site. Over the years, I’ve had the usual run of house pets: duck, lizard, birds, turtle, fish, cats, salamander, snakes, guinea pigs and rats. However, the critters that have most captured my heart are bunnies. Since 1987, I have made very large cages for them to romp in. Some of the rabbits come to me via owners who give them up. More often, I have found domestic bunnies abandoned in the park. In 2002, Steve decided to leave our relationship. We have continued to be best friends and work together on arts projects. These days, I work on video and photo projects, design and program Web sites — including the Partners Task Force Web site — give shiatsu massage, and go to yard sales. |
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