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Special Guest
Evansville, Indiana
LGBTQ+ historian Kelley Coures

This episode is free for all!

A Mattachine meeting on Main Street in downtown Evansville, Indiana—my hometown!—with special guest historian Kelley Coures! 🌽🤠

Join us on the free feed for a new MATTACHINE MEETING‼️🎉🌈

or your favorite podcast platform.

Buy his book "Out in Evansville" here!

Read Kelley’s fabulous piece about Evansville’s red light district here. Watch that Jerry Springer clip we discussed on my Instagram here or on YouTube here. You can also see Evansville featured on a recent episode of HBO Max’s "We’re Here." (Eureka is waving a flag outside the courthouse my Granny used to work in.) Also, check out Someplace Else if you’re in town! And say hello to Li’l Sebastian. 🐴

Check out these free bonus pieces from season 3 & beyond:

Instagram @queerserial

JULY 28, 2022

Rest in peace to the high-steppin’ toe-tappin’ country music queen of Indiana, Jackie Cherry AKA Jackie P. Lee. 💖

Jackie gave me one of my absolute favorite gay bar moments ever while visiting my hometown of Evansville, Indiana for the holidays. It was the only time I had the honor of seeing her perform, and she did Brenda Lee's "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" among a few other holiday classics at Someplace Else Nightclub in 2014. She was outpacing all the younger performers in that show. My best judy Jacob and I were in the front row absolutely living for her energy. This brief clip here captures that. A moment later, Jackie stopped lip syncing as the song went on, sat down on the stage, and said to us, "I'm too old for this." She was obviously kidding because she then immediately got back up and started shaking those Stritchy legs again. Thanks for the memory, Jackie. We'll never forget a legend.

#gayhistory #draghistory #jackieplee @someplace_else_nightclub

NOVEMBER 12, 2021

My hometown was on @werehere this week and showed off some gay redneck glamor!! It means so much to me to see queer people from our town tell their stories on fucking HBO!!! 🤯🤯🤯💖🥰

and my Granny worked in that building!

Watch the trailer here.

"Out and Proud"
2007 Anonymous Interview with 15-year-old me

May 26, 2023

The past several months have been all about archiving and logging Randy Wicker materials for his papers and the documentary, so I thought it might be fun to shake things up and share some personal history.

When I came out at 15 years old, I was the only openly gay person in my high school of a few hundred people, Tecumseh. It was a largely white school with hardly any Indigenous people, and everyone pronounced the Shawnee chief's name incorrectly. We'd call this area MAGA country now. A friend of mine who wrote for the school paper The Arrow asked to interview me. I had only been out for a few months, but I must've had some nerve.

Unfortunately, the teacher in charge of the paper wouldn't allow Destiny to print my name in the paper, so the title "Out and Proud" doesn't really work! The teacher was probably concerned for my safety. But our intention was outright pride and winning over Tecumseh students, so we went ahead. It was actually pretty brave of Destiny to put her own name on it.

"In this interview he was asked many personal questions so that it might help us to understand how difficult it is to be bi, gay, or homo and so that our generation will be even more open and accepting."

I really admire Destiny's effort to educate young Hoosiers in 2007. Looks like she pulled a lot of stats right from Wikipedia, but that was truly groundbreaking for the time, just to get those facts in front of people at school. I'm also really surprised by how confident I seem. And I now find it hilarious that I make it clear that gay people don't necessarily love musicals, and then I immediately recommend watching Rent and I quote Moulin Rouge. However, the lyrics in those musicals are what gave me that confidence.

So we never intended for the piece to be anonymous, but looking back at it now, I feel connected to my queer ancestors because 10 years later I made a podcast about a group of anonymous queers who started the Mattachine Foundation, and here we are.

Pretty much everyone at school knew I was the person in the interview, except for my best friend's dad, who threw the school newspaper down on his dining room table in front of us and complained about this anonymous "faggot." Somewhere deep down he probably knew that his son was a faggot, too.

If you'd like to learn more about my hometown of Evansville, Indiana, check out my recent interview with Evansville LGBTQ+ historian Kelley Coures here! And you can buy his book Out in Evansville: An LGBTQ+ History of River City here.

Thanks for indulging me with this one!
xo
Devlyn 🧚‍♂️