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Jasmyn Morris (JM): On this season of the StoryCorps podcast from NPR, we’re honoring the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising by sharing LGBTQ voices.
I’m your host Jasmyn Morris. And in this episode, stories about finding your people.
We’ll hear from folks who found that within their families, and from those who found family in their friends.
As we’ll hear from 71-year-old Jay Toole, discovering that who you feel most at home with, might have nothing to do with the family you were born into.
Here’s Jay talking with her friend Jess Valdez at StoryCorps, about the first time she wore boys’ clothes and got her hair cut short as a 13 year old back in 1961. And be warned, their conversation includes strong language.
Jay Toole (JT): My father took one look at me and said, ”You’re out of here, get the fuck out.” I ended up on the streets. And I ended up living in Washington Square Park for a very fuckin’ long time. I mean years.
Now back then, the park was queer. I’m talking about homeless kids, you know, just like me, all trying to survive. You know, I lived in a box. I lived in bushes with the rats and the squirrels. I lived in tunnels, I lived on roofs and stairways. My main focus was stay alive, get my drugs or alcohol. And as a kid, there was nothing out there to help anybody if you were queer.
But when I sobered up, I got my first ever apartment in 2001. And every day, I didn’t care, if I went in that building 50 times a day, I was going to that mailbox and opening it up because I had a key. [Laughs] I had a key.
JM: But just last year at the age of 70, Jay became homeless again… and that’s when Jess took her in.
JT: You know, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve had my ups and I’ve had my downs. But we became friends, and then we became family. You’re one of the very few people that I absolutely trust with my life and you saved it.
JV: I feel honored that you trust me enough to be part of your family.
JT: I know I can pick up the phone and you will answer. And when you call, I will always answer. It is chosen family, it is a feeling of belonging.
JT: You know, when I was homeless and living in my box, this thought used to come to me all the time, like I’m going to die and no one’s going to know it. And I didn’t want anybody ever to feel the way I felt, to be scared, to be alone, to think that no one cares because there’s people out there that care.
JT: I love you Jess. I’m so proud and knowing that I got family.
JV: You do. You will always have a home. No matter what.
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JM: That’s Jay Toole speaking with a member of her chosen family…. Jess Valdez.
And it’s worth noting… there are still many kids experiencing the same thing Jay did back in the 60s. Nearly half of all homeless youth in the U.S. are LGBTQ.
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Next, a different kind of chosen family…
In the late 90’s, Les and Scott GrantSmith had been married for ten years… and were raising their two daughters together… when they were faced with the decision whether they should remain a family or not.
At the time, Les was withdrawn and depressed.
Weeks passed where the couple barely spoke. Until finally, Scott confronted Les…
Scott GrantSmith (SGS): I said, ”What’s going on?” And then you said, ”I can’t tell you because if I do, you’ll leave me and take the children and I’ll never see them again.” And I said, ”You’d probably better tell me then.” [Laughs] Cause at that…You can’t leave it hanging like that.
Les GrantSmith (LGS): You can’t leave it like that. So, that’s when I told you.
SGS: First thing I remember is that you, you said that you were in the wrong body, that you should be a man.
LGS: And if it had seemed to me that I was going to lose you, and I was gonna lose the kids, I would have said, ”Ok. I’m not transitioning.”
SGS: It finally occurred to me to ask the question: Should I stay or should I go? And um, my visceral response was: Well, I won’t be better off. Les won’t be better off. And the kids won’t be better off.
LGS: Amanda was 7, at this point, and I explained to her where this was going. And she burst into tears and threw herself onto my lap. And she says, ”Oh please, don’t change into a man. If you have to change into anything, couldn’t it be a cat? (Laughs) And that was not a question I had prepared myself to answer.
SGS: (Laughs) I mean, I was kinda stunned. (Laughs)
SGS: So right around that time, you had started transitioning and we just kinda fell out of holding hands when we were walking along the street.
LGS: Spontaneous affection… We couldn’t do it comfortably any more.
SGS: A lot of it was me because it became clear that I would be perceived as gay. But at one point I realized that I didn’t fall in love with a couple of body pieces. I decided this is the person.
LGS: And I was still the same person.
SGS: More so. More like the fun person I remembered from 30-odd years ago, than before the transition.
LGS: Right…right. I mean, it’s just been amazing to watch you. You stuck with it. You persisted. And every year my respect for you grows and grows. I love you.
SGS: I love you. [both laugh]
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JM: And here’s Les… with his two daughters.
Thea GrantSmith (TGS): My name is Thea GrantSmith.
Amanda GrantSmith (AGS): I’m Amanda GrantSmith. I’m 18 years old.
LGS: Do you remember the conversation where I told you I was transitioning?
TGS: I think I was 11, right? 10, 11…
LGS: 10.
TGS: Yeah. I was really worried about you not wanting to be my mother anymore. So it was pretty intense.
LGS: Did you guys ever feel like maybe it was your fault, that, something that you guys had done?
AGS: You made that pretty dang clear that it had nothing to do with us.
TGS: What were you most concerned about when you told us?
LGS: Well, you know. Girls learn how to be women from their mothers. And um, I was terrified that I was gonna totally screw you up. And that, you wouldn’t be comfortable in your own skin and my only defense against that in my mind was to go, They’ll see love and have that be what makes a relationship work.
TGS: So…And this is a little scary for me to ask. Were you ever prepared to not see us again? Or…
LGS: No. That was never, ever an option. If it had looked like dad couldn’t have handled it and if it was really freaking you out, it was always my promise I would stop.
TGS: Dad said, like, when he was explaining it to me, we’d talk about it sometimes, it wasn’t going to help anything if he left. He got over anything that was in him that told him that this was wrong, or that he couldn’t do it, or that it would be too hard. He thought of me and Amanda and you. And, he made the right decision.
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JM: That’s Les GrantSmith talking with his daughters, Thea and Amanda GrantSmith. Before that you heard Les with his husband of 30 years, Scott.
After the break, we’ll hear from three more people who found new ways of making families, through good times as well as challenging ones…
Stay with us.
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JM: Welcome back.
Next, we’ll hear from Stefan Lynch Strassfeld. He came to StoryCorps with his friend Beth Teper to talk about being raised by gay parents, and the many men who he called his aunties, as HIV/AIDS began to spread…
Stefan Lynch Strassfeld (SLS): My family were mostly gay guys, who were my babysitters and the guys who you know, took the pictures at my birthday parties. And I felt like I had this amazing family. I called them my aunties. And it was a really wonderful, amazing world that came crashing down. Starting in ’82, the first person I knew, died of AIDS. Um, a young guy named Steve.
Beth Teper (BT): And how old were you at the time?
SLS: I was ten when he was diagnosed. I remember, I was on the beach and I saw Steve and he was covered in these purple spots and I remember asking my dad, like what’s wrong with Steve? And my dad said, “Oh, he has this skin cancer called Kaposi’s sarcoma.” And I said, “Well, what is that?” And my dad said, “Well nobody really knows, but there are some gay men that are getting it.” And within I think 2 months, Steve was dead.
And it was pretty much a succession of deaths of my family throughout the next decade. My step dad, Bill, died in ’87, my dad died in ’91 after a really grueling six months of me taking care of him. You know, I was 19 and at that point, everyone had died except for a handful of stragglers who I now hold near and dear to my heart. My aunties.
It was a powerful family. There was a lot of love. And they modeled for me how to …how to survive an epidemic, even if you were dying while doing it.
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JM: That’s Stefan Lynch Strassfeld in San Francisco.
This next story is close to home for us. When you walk through the doors of StoryCorps’ Brooklyn office, the first person to greet you at the front desk is Kathleen Payne… and after listening to dozens and dozens of StoryCorps interviews over the years, she decided to record her own.
Kathleen sat down with Corinthia Isom… They first met in the mid-90’s after Corinthia’s mother, DeSeane, started singing in a gospel choir for LGBTQ people in New York…
DeSeane had just come out as a lesbian to a few close friends… and Corinthia was just a child at the time…
Corinthia Isom (CI): She was a stubborn woman, vibrant. She used to sing. She used to draw. She was a really loving-type of person. And she looked liked me.
Kathleen Payne (KP): Yes… [laughs]
CI: I look in a mirror and I see my mom. But she had her own vices and she had been a heroin addict.
KP: I remember at one point when I was talking to your mom, she had discovered that she was HIV positive and she said, ”It’s really hard because I’ve been sober and I finally get my life back, and then I had this cold or flu-like thing that I couldn’t shake.”
How did you find out that your mom was HIV positive?
CI: She sat me down one day on the steps, and told me you know, ”I have HIV and things are going to change within our lives.” Me and my mother were very close in the last years.
KP: There was a point when April and I were partners and your mom had decided that we were going to take care of you when she passed away and I remember that she said, ”Don’t tell her that I’m going to die,” and so we didn’t say anything, which made it kind of hard because we wanted to get to know you better, so every weekend, April and I would hang out with you and your mom.
What were you thinking about when we started coming around so much?
CI:Y’all were cool. I knew that you guys were lesbians and that didn’t bother me.
KP: When we got the news that your mom had passed, I was really scared. For one thing it was difficult for a lesbian couple to adopt, so we had to go through the whole guardianship thing.
And I remember you asked us, ”Do I have to call you Mommy?” We said, ”Well, no”, and then later on you said, ”Why do you guys talk like you’re white?” I remember I looked at you and I said, ”Well, this is the way some black people talk.”
CI: Yeah… You guys are very educated and, for me, it was like, they’re boring, like, they’re so brainy and they’re going to want me to study all the time but I enjoyed you guys. It was really a good experience and I was looking forward to you guys being my parents.
KP: Your mom trusted that we would take care of you and she knew we had the support of a lot of people who knew her and would be there for us; which is the kind of thing that you also develop when you’re queer and your family may or may not accept you. And so you make your own family.
CI: Every day I think about my mom. And she never talked to me about why she chose you guys, but she made a good choice, a very good choice.
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That’s Kathleen Payne with her daughter, Corinthia Isom at StoryCorps in New York City.
And finally, we’ll hear a conversation between MJ Seide and her granddaughter Genna Alperin.
Genna was 12 years old when they recorded back in 2009. And here, she asks about how MJ fell in love with Genna’s biological grandmother. Both Genna and MJ call her “Mamommy.”
Genna Alperin (GA): How has your life been different than what you thought it was gonna to be?
MJ Seide (MS): I thought that my life was probably not one that was gonna be worth living. There was this hole that I had all of my life because, I never thought I’d be able to walk along the beach and hold somebody’s hand because I’m gay. But, you know, when I fell in love with Mamommy, I knew that she was my soulmate.
Do you know what I mean by that?
GA: Yeah…
MS: I’d never felt that way about anyone before. And um, after she had gotten her divorce from grandpa Jim, she was very upfront with your mom. She told your mom that she was in love, and it was with a woman. And that was the first time that anyone was proud to say that they loved me. That made me the happiest I’d ever been in my life. And then, when I got to know your mom and uncle Justin, I knew that I had hit paradise because I now have a family that I can wrap my arms around.
GA: Is there anything that you’ve never told me that you wanna tell me now?
MS: You know, you and I talk about most things but this is the first time that we’ve ever talked about the fact that I’m gay. And I guess what I wanna ask you is, does it embarrass you to have a gay grandma?
GA: No, it doesn’t really matter.
MS: It doesn’t…
GA: It just matters my relationship with you.
MS: I always tell you how much I love you, but I don’t know that you can really understand the depth of it, because you’re someone that I never thought would be in my life and I can’t imagine my life without you. And I am so, so proud of you.
GA: Uh huh…
MS: Because you have always been a child that makes up her own mind and I always knew that you were going to grow up to be a woman that we would all be very, very proud of.
GA: Well, um… You’re one of my favorite grandmas. You do, like, a lot of things with me, like ride rollercoasters and play poker. I don’t know what life would be like without you here.
MS: I love you, sweetheart.
GA: Love you too.
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JM: That’s Genna Alperin with her grandmother MJ Seide at StoryCorps in Norfolk, Virginia.
Genna is now 22 and recently graduated from college… and you can check out an animated version of this story…on our website, StoryCorps – DOT – ORG.
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That’s all for this episode of the StoryCorps podcast. It was produced by Jud Esty-Kendall and me. Our Production Assistant is Afi Yellow-Duke. Our engineer is Jarett Floyd. Natsumi Ajisaka is our fact-checker.
Special thanks to Nadia Reiman, Michael Garofalo, Jey Born… and StoryCorps facilitators Eloise Melzer, Carolina Escobar, Vanessa Gonzalez-Block, and Jeremy Helton.
As always, you can see what music we used in the episode on our website, along with original artwork created for this season.
And while you’re there, learn how to participate in Stonewall OutLoud StoryCorps effort to record the voices of LGBTQ elder with the StoryCorps app! Head over to StoryCorps – DOT – ORG – slash OutLoud to learn more.
I’m Jasmyn Morris. For the StoryCorps podcast, thanks for listening.
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