For Windy City Times' 20th Anniversary
By Yvonne Zipter

Twenty years ago, when I wrote my first column for Windy City Times, the world seemed very serious: AIDS had claimed nearly 6,000 lives that year (including that of Rock Hudson) with no cure in sight, we continued to fight and plead with the Chicago city council for equal protections for queers, and a creepy Republican was president. I was depressed. Today, though the drugs are better there's still no cure for AIDS, we're fighting on a national stage for equal marriage rights for queers, and a creepy son of a creepy Republican is president. And I'm depressed.

Ah, how things have changed in twenty years!

Of course, the world has changed, and often for the better. Twenty years ago, the revelation of Rock Hudson's homosexuality was shocking news; today, one of the most beloved celebrities in this country, with her own network talk show and a regular hosting gig at the Emmy's, is the lesbian every girl wants to take home to mother, Ellen DeGeneres—and she's not all that unique! A celebrity coming out these days hardly warrants thirty seconds on "Access Hollywood."

I've changed over the years, too: I've learned to put those scary "very serious" things in their place by laughing at them. There's not much funny about thousands of lives lost, of course—whether from an unchecked, puzzling disease or an unjust, unnecessary war, or the bungling of rescue efforts after a natural disaster. But calling attention to a scary guy's inability to pronounce the word "nuclear" or to put together a coherent sentence takes away just a bit of his power over us: we are not as stupid as he thinks we are and we have a better sense of how stupid he is than he realizes.

Twenty years ago, we laughed more furtively: at inside jokes, in private spaces with others like ourselves. Today, what makes us laugh makes everyone laugh, in places as public as television and college auditoriums. Windy City Times and Tracy Baim let me find my voice and then gave me a place to let it be heard. Everything about me has matured over these past two decades: my love life, my body, my writing skills, my sense of humor. Some of that's a function of age, and some of that's a function of having a community maturing around me, supporting my sense of worth. It's hard to overstate the worth of the gay press in that process, validating our truths and our lives.

But that first year? I had no idea what I was doing or what it might mean, in the long run (or that there would even necessarily be a long run). But there was a sense, I think, that we were pioneers—little homos on the prairie, pull the typewriters into a circle, a queer manifest destiny expanding into the larger society. Ah, you should've seen us in our sun bonnets and gingham dresses, the smell of patchouli and revolution in our hair.

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