Oral History with David Hopes (2020)

Amanda Wray:

It probably pops up for you, now, that you see that we're recording. Up in the left and your little light probably pops up.

David Hopes:

Yes.

Amanda Wray:

Okay.

David Hopes:

See it. Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Amanda Wray:

All right. Thank you for sharing your time and the gift of your stories. We can take a break at any point. If you need to go do anything, we can pause. I'm Amanda Wray, and I am working with Blue Ridge Pride and the YMCA to record oral histories from elders and members of the LGBT community in Western North Carolina. With your permission, all stories will be archived with Special Collections at UNC Asheville, and available as audio, video, or typed transcriptions. Before we make anything public, David, I will email you and I can snail mail it as well, if you prefer, your typed transcription. You can go through it line by line, correct errors, spellings, anything like that.

David Hopes:

Oh, okay. All right.

Amanda Wray:

Nothing will be published until I hear from you directly, and this is me being OCD, but I talk to every single participant, even if I don't interview them, just to make sure that I have their consent, even though you also sign this form, because this is a lot of private information, this is your life I don't want to...

David Hopes:

Yeah.

Amanda Wray:

Okay. Today's date is September the 29th, and I am here with David Hopes. Would you mind to say your name, how you would like it to be published and maybe pronouns or how we should refer to you?

David Hopes:

My name is David Hopes, he, him.

Amanda Wray:

All right. Well, thank you so much for being here with us. I wonder if you just wanted to start by telling me a little bit about yourself, how did you end up in Asheville?

David Hopes:

I ended up in Asheville, because I interviewed for a job at UNCA. It was the year I finished my dissertation and I'd taught for a year at my... I'd done a couple of other things and it was time to get a long lasting job, and so I interviewed and came here. This is the one I chose. I moved here in July of 1983, and part of the Literature and Language Department as it was. I came here to head the creative writing program, which I did for, I don't know, 10 years, and passed it off to Rick Chess, and lived out in Candler, out in the woods, which was an interesting beginning to things, and I learned about people I would not have met otherwise.

David Hopes:

For the first while I was here, the gay life that I understood is mostly bars. I 00:03:00want to say that's what gay life was, or I was not aware of the political side of it. There might've been a political side and I didn't know, I was just busy going to the bars. In tiny little Asheville, there were at one time, six gay bars downtown, and nothing else, nothing else. There was Three Brothers Restaurant and gay bars. That was it, and so if you went downtown to these bars, you could be pretty sure that anybody you met on the street was doing the same thing that you were doing, which was fascinating.

David Hopes:

I started going to All Souls Church, which was highly politicized and highly pro LGBTQ at the time. That abbreviation was not in use at the time, I don't think, but it was very much in favor of gay and lesbian persons. They had an 00:04:00organization called CLOSER, which I think had just formed the year I arrived, and it was for gay people to get to know each other. That added the first-

Amanda Wray:

Do you remember what was the acronym? Community Liaison Organization for... I don't remember.

David Hopes:

It was... I don't either. I don't know what the SER is. I've completely forgot. Community Liaison Organization for...

Amanda Wray:

But they were active for two decades, at least. Right?

David Hopes:

Absolutely. Yeah. Sort of disappeared when gay life in Asheville became less political, more personal. When everyone got old and was tending their gardens essentially. CLOSER eventually threw out a couple of branches, and one was 00:05:00SALGA. The Southern Appalachian Lesbian and Gay Alliance, which was far more political, and I became active in SALGA for a while. One of the things that happened when I was active in SALGA... Well, a number of things happened. One thing, we tangled with the state, because we wanted our name on the highways that we were cleaning up and they didn't want it on the highway, so that was a big deal.

Amanda Wray:

I've seen the news articles about that, actually. Jim Cavanaugh, do you know Jim Cavanaugh?

David Hopes:

Oh, God, yes. Yeah.

Amanda Wray:

Okay. I interviewed Jim a couple of times and he gave us just the richest materials.

David Hopes:

Absolutely.

Amanda Wray:

Boxes and boxes of stuff, and I saw this article about how the sign kept getting torn down, right?

David Hopes:

Yes. Well, Jim was the editorial editor at the Citizen-Times, so all the stuff came through him. Since Jim Cavanaugh and the newspaper has come up, let me make 00:06:00a detour and say that it was an interesting time, because the policy of the newspaper then was to, I believe, was to publish whatever came in. Every month or so there would be this vicious anti-gay diatribe, which I could not stop myself from answering, so that went on for a while and then I sort of accidentally became a spokesman for gay people in Asheville, because I kept mouthing off to people who had mouthed off in the newspaper. Jim Cavanaugh was a stalwart, because he made sure that both sides were represented, and that if an anti-gay letter had gone on unanswered, that someone would answer it. He was behind the scenes, but very important on this.

Amanda Wray:

Can you give me a date here? About when was this? In the early '90s?

David Hopes:

I think before that. End of the '80s, beginning of the '90s. It lasted a while. There was a famous Sunday when I received a phone call, they said, "You have to tune into the TV, to Trinity Baptist," and Ralph Sexton at Trinity Baptist was giving a sermon about me, because at that time I was the faculty advisor for... Let me get this right. For the Wiccans and for the Latter Day Saints, and also a gay activist, so he was just going on about what was wrong with UNCA, because you could have a quick plug for the Wiccans. There were community meetings. One 00:08:00of them, an important one was in Lipinsky Hall where we're Ralph Sexton would say his piece and be refuted by people in the lesbian and gay community.

David Hopes:

For a while, I had in my house, a hotline that SALGA had set up for people who had been harassed or abused. Gay people who thought they were being harassed or abused. I was the answering person to that, and it gave me another perspective on what was going on, because people were suffering, especially teachers, were suffering things that I had no previous knowledge. UNCA, it's not completely without problems in that area, but largely without problems in that area, but the public schools are not, so it was an eye-opener.

David Hopes:

I don't actually know what happened to all that. Everything has a lifespan, and 00:09:00one day I woke up and there was no SALGA, and I don't remember why that was, but it was very vital for a while. One day I woke up and there was no CLOSER, and I don't actually know why that was.

Amanda Wray:

Tell me how you ended up having the hotline in your house. SALGA came after CLOSER, right?

David Hopes:

Well, at the same time, they were like... I don't know, NAACP and SNCC. When they existed at the same time, but one was much more a political force. I went to the meetings at SALGA and saw something that I could possibly do, and so I volunteered, and so they installed the phone there.

Amanda Wray:

Were you the only hotline, or did other people have these kinds of hotlines in their house?

David Hopes:

I was the only SALGA hotline. Now, there might have been all sorts of other hotlines that had to do with other things, but this is the one for SALGA.

Amanda Wray:

Were you a listening person, or did you have resources that you gave people, or are there things you did? I don't know. When somebody calls in and tells you a story, what happened next?

David Hopes:

I had no training whatever, so I had to use my best judgment. I mostly just listened, and if I thought of suggestions, I would make them, but often people in that situation want their story to be told. I was also writing for Community Connections and occasionally these things could find a way in there.

Amanda Wray:

How would you do that? You wouldn't, of course, write about a specific person, but you might elevate their need through Community Connections?

David Hopes:

Well, since the Community Connections was actually a legitimate journalistic enterprise. It wanted to be a newspaper, I should put it that way. It was a newspaper. What you would do is you'd go and interview the person who had caused the trouble without mentioning what the trouble was, and go and say, "Well, are you happy about having gay faculty in your junior high?" Then just let them approach it from a whole new side, so you'd have to be subtle, but you could get to it.

Amanda Wray:

Tell me a story about one of those times when you went and interviewed somebody. If you remember one.

David Hopes:

I do remember one. Here's one of the places I'm going to be devious, but there was a local person who was one of these people who had written to the paper many times about how gay people were causing moral problems in the city, and apposed 00:12:00pro-gay initiatives in the city council, et cetera, and even demonstrated in front of All Souls at one point.

David Hopes:

Well, because of my own adventurous spirit, I'd encountered him at a rest stop, at one point. Now, I didn't want to say, "Well, do you remember..."

Amanda Wray:

That's nice, see each other, somewhere.

David Hopes:

Yeah. Go ahead, name... What I had to do was I had to go and interview him about his problem with gay people, and about halfway through he remembered me. That was never in the newspaper, because he backtracked like mad, and I thought that he should have the opportunity to backtrack, because he seemed to recognize a 00:13:00big fat hypocrisy in his life, and so the work was done. That's one, okay?

Amanda Wray:

Wow. Don't you-

David Hopes:

I know.

Amanda Wray:

Okay. I have a few things I'm going to go back to, so let's go back to when you first get here, and you're living in Candler and on a farm.

David Hopes:

Yes.

Amanda Wray:

Yeah, somewhere out in the middle... You know, one of the oldest gay bars in the region was in Candler? Opened in '67. If you can believe that?

David Hopes:

I did not know that. Was it still open when I got here?

Amanda Wray:

No. Not in '83. It closed, I think, in '75 maybe, '72, somewhere around that.

David Hopes:

Isn't that interesting.

Amanda Wray:

I'll look the name up for you and I'll send it to you. That was information I found doing that research for Holly's article, but tell me what it was like. Why Candler? Why did you live there and not in Asheville?

David Hopes:

Amanda, I-

Amanda Wray:

How old were you in 1983? Let me get your birthday.

David Hopes:

September 1st, 1950.

Amanda Wray:

Gotcha.

David Hopes:

So I was 32. I didn't know how to do what I was doing. I didn't know how to be a new college professor. It never occurred to me to ask, "Help me find a place to live." It never occurred to me, so when I got here with my car loaded, I started looking around for a place to live. One of the places that I had said, "I love the cabin by a lake in Candler," so I found it. That cabin had been rented, but there were little apartments that are really like a motel, and those were open and I panicked, and took one of those.

David Hopes:

This was way out under the shadow of Mount Pisgah, so in some ways it was fascinating. It was about an hour drive into campus, with the winding roads and 00:15:00stuff, so it was fascinating, but it also had to do with my not knowing how to ask the right questions. I didn't get anyone to help me. I could've gotten somebody to help me, but I just didn't think of it, so it was completely by accident. I was surrounded by... What do I want to say? Criminals of various... Mostly having to do with the drug trade, and I remember one guy coming over and knocking on the door, and I opened the door and he says, "You're gay, aren't you?" I thought, "Whoa," because I had had friends who were need... I thought, "Well, this is the end of that." He came in and had a beer, and that was it.

David Hopes:

My experiences in Candler, associated with the gay life are neutral. I mean, the people that knew it didn't seem to care, or sometimes people send me signals that I don't get, so I might have been getting signals that I wasn't picking up, but that was perfectly fine. One of the professors, Jeff Rakim, I don't know 00:16:00that you knew him. Do you know him?

Amanda Wray:

I know of him.

David Hopes:

Oh, okay.

Amanda Wray:

I don't think I've met him, but I know of him.

David Hopes:

He went on a Fulbright to Macedonia and had me house sit, and so I house sat for a semester. By that time I was in town, and so I just moved in town after that, but that's how I got up that. I had been living, in New York, a fairly active sexual life, and so one of the first things I did was found out how to do that here. When I was looking for an apartment, I had a magical sense for where you stand to get picked up. At that time there was a particular place down town, and I just knew that if I stood... And that happened, and I got picked up by lineman for the power company, who we had a relationship, but he also filled me in on 00:17:00places to go, which was basically, at that time, Greg's and O.Henry's were the two big places. Soon followed by Cockatoo and all that stuff. Greg's and O.Henry were the big places. I did everything I could to drive in from Candler in the dead of night to get associated with that.

Amanda Wray:

I heard also, the Grove Arcade was a place. I've interviewed Michael Harney a couple of times, and so...

David Hopes:

The beach.

Amanda Wray:

The beach, exactly, that's what it-

David Hopes:

Yeah, yeah. I didn't do that so much, but one did, I mean, one certainly could do that. Yeah. Do you suppose that's still going on that way? I don't even know. I've so lost track. Well, Bent Creek. The Bent Creek Experimental Forest. If you walk there, especially over the weekend, you would be there looking for a 00:18:00hookup. You'd be walking through the woods. You see that you get different kinds of people in different areas, you get that-

Amanda Wray:

I think that Warren Wilson, the trail at Warren Wilson is the place for that.

David Hopes:

Well, I never did that, but I don't doubt it at all. See? It's just like... I'm sorry. The kids probably know different places, but I don't know what they are anymore, but those were what they are. It was sort of magical how you got to know them, because you just sort of got to know them. By wanting to see them, you saw them and that's still miraculous to me. Just sort of the first day I was here, I knew where to stand, and I thought, "Well, okay. That's weird," but it was also exciting.

Amanda Wray:

One of the other people, a trans woman, that I've interviewed said, "There was no Twitter. There was no way to know, everything was word of mouth, all social organizing, and socializing, and gathering. It all was considered, happening 00:19:00just by word of mouth. You had to know somebody and entering the space was the hardest part." So you said-

David Hopes:

Oh, you had to have someone sign you in to places like Greg's. You had to know somebody that'll get you in.

Amanda Wray:

Yeah. Tell me what happened before you were here, I guess. Where were you born? I think Akron, Ohio is that where you were born and you went to college?

David Hopes:

Excuse me.

Amanda Wray:

What happened before 1983?

David Hopes:

I grew up in Akron, Ohio. Went to the public schools. I went to Hiram College, which is a little college between Akron and Cleveland. I went to Johns Hopkins for graduate school. Had a series of catastrophes there, and I just sort of dropped out of everything. When I got myself back together, I went to graduate school at Syracuse, right? Got an MA and... I'm so sorry.

Amanda Wray:

It's all good.

David Hopes:

PhD and all that sort of stuff. I taught for a year at Syracuse. Then I was writer in residence at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, and then I taught for a year at my alma mater, at Hiram. I was there when I interviewed here, and so that's my professional life. It's sort of straight, except for that one little ditch, sort of straight and narrow.

Amanda Wray:

UNCA seems to do that to people.

David Hopes:

It looked pretty good on paper. Say it again?

Amanda Wray:

I said, "UNCA seems to do that to people," gets us here, and then we just don't really go anywhere else. It's a nice testament.

David Hopes:

When I got here, I thought, "I'll be here five years and then move on."

Amanda Wray:

Oh. Why do you think you felt that way?

David Hopes:

I'd actually applied for and gotten... I wasn't happy at first.

Amanda Wray:

Okay.

David Hopes:

Is your connection good?

Amanda Wray:

I think so. I'm at the university, so I assume it's better here than anywhere else.

David Hopes:

Oh, okay. Because I think, something going in and out, it's probably my side. What did you ask me, I forgot?

Amanda Wray:

Tell me why you weren't happy, or why you anticipated you would leave once you got here, within five years.

David Hopes:

It's the South, and it was a shock. I'd never been surrounded by people who had the opinions about things that people down here did. Well, I guess... Pardon me one second.

Amanda Wray:

If you need to go get a drink or anything, I'm happy to pause.

David Hopes:

I think I'll do that, because I'm going to just keep coughing at you, so I'll be right back. There you go. Now, I might not choke to death.

Amanda Wray:

It's funny how many people in the middle of their interviews are like, "I need 00:22:00to get some water," because you're talking the whole time.

David Hopes:

Yeah. Well, something was up in there. Before I came to Asheville. I had lived, for several years, a quite cosmopolitan, energetic, and sexually driven life, and that changed for several reasons when I got here. My attempt at reestablishing that was not successful, because this is Asheville, it's not New York. Amanda, I've never thought about why I was not happy here until you asked the question, and I'm thinking that was sort of the answer that came to mind. I was ambitious and was Asheville a place to work out your ambition? I didn't know. I did apply for other jobs, got them, and then didn't take them. There was something that said, "You want to be here," and as time went on, I'm retired now 00:23:00and everyone says, "Well, are you going to stay in Asheville?"

David Hopes:

I said, "Yeah." It never crossed my mind to leave. All that reconciled. The South was a shock at first, just the way people think, the way people deal with each other. I'm sort of direct, and this circular way people go about things in the South, always, still to this day, takes me by surprise. To hear from a third party, some problem, the person... It still takes me by surprise. I think, being in the South was a bit of a shock.

Amanda Wray:

Do you think that circular way is related to social politeness in some way? Or what do you mean by the circular way that people deal with each other?

David Hopes:

If-If Jane Smith and I have a quarrel, Jane Smith will never tell me "I'm not satisfied with how that came out let's talk about it." She'll talk to 15 other people and then it will get back to me.

Amanda Wray:

Okay.

David Hopes:

Yeah. I'm sure you said the same sort of thing.

Amanda Wray:

I've lived my whole life in the South, so it's just yeah.

David Hopes:

Okay. I'd never in my life say "bless his heart." Never would I say.

Amanda Wray:

Yeah. Well, that's offensive, right? Like to say that to about somebody.

David Hopes:

I know. Yeah, I just. It could be it's south at all. It could be that just the sort of person who I am does not deal well with not knowing what the score is without the lack of direction.

Amanda Wray:

Transparency.

David Hopes:

Yeah.

Amanda Wray:

You said that it was kind of a shock in the South, the opinions people had. Did 00:25:00you encounter much anti-gay rhetoric? I mean, you talked a lot about Ralph Sexton or mentioned that, but in terms of at work or in your day-to-day life.

David Hopes:

Yes. And again, it was so hidden that each time it was a shock. I thought that my students wouldn't know or wouldn't care that I was gay. And I never said that I was cause I thought, well, what's that anybody's concern? But I remember on the day before class began and we hadn't met the classes yet, a boy who was going to be in my humanities class. I could hear this while I was walking into what's the place by the humanities? Like their hall.

Amanda Wray:

Lipinsky?

David Hopes:

I was walking... No, the long one off the quad, the classroom building.

Amanda Wray:

Oh, is it white side? Is that what you mean?

David Hopes:

No, It's the old one. I was walking into one of the classroom buildings and one student said to another, "Well, who do you have humanities?" And the guy goes, "Well, I had Hopes" and he did this big fag thing. And I'm thinking, Oh my god. You know, and he didn't see me. And so when I saw him the next day, I realized that there, he didn't really... Matter of fact, where the fuck did that come from? Cause I don't think I'm particularly a feminine. And that it's just people knew. And that was the first thing he had to say about me. So, it was that. That sort of thing.

Amanda Wray:

How did that feel going in the first day with that, I guess feeling like not that you were hiding it, but that it was hidden. That's what you said. It seems so hidden.

David Hopes:

Well, it always surprises me when someone is interested in that. And if they're 00:27:00interested in it and they'll come to me about it.

David Hopes:

"Hopes, we hear you're gay. What's up." And just have this whole other story builds up about it. And this whole narrative he was doing that I wouldn't recognize as being, I didn't recognize that as part of my narrative. So the thing was whether they knew I was gay or not, whether they cared, whether they didn't. I wanted it to be more visible because I don't know what to do about it if I didn't know if it's there. And he was not a bad student. He never mentioned anything about that in class. I'm thinking "Did I misinterpret it? Has he changed his mind?" Is this student thinking "God, I hate you, you fag." And successfully covering it up? So, it's just that sort of... You get the same thing with religion.

David Hopes:

The people you're talking about evolution or something. And, and then at the end 00:28:00of the year, you get these long essays about how Jesus is the Lord of the world. And I have to reject everything and I'm thinking, "Why didn't you bring that up at the time?" Just this whole hidden world we can talk about and people resenting because their point of view was not honored. And my response to that, how do I know you had that point of view? This is the only place I've taught for any length of time. So it might be the same everywhere, but I blamed the South for it. You know, that the people would have these entire narratives that he didn't share and therefore it got weirder and weirder.

Amanda Wray:

Yeah.

Amanda Wray:

Well, speaking of some of that stuff, can we go back to you when you were doing the hotline. You talked about teachers who were really suffering here. Could you 00:29:00characterize that time? Tell us some things about that time, this is in the early eighties, right?

David Hopes:

Yeah. Middle and late eighties. A public school teacher actually sang with him in choir later on. So I knew him, these people could be anonymous, but I recognized his voice who had been threatened by his principal, not to ask for a raise, not to do this, that, and the other, because the principal knew he was gay and he better not step out of line in any additional way.

Amanda Wray:

Like advocate for himself to ask for a raise was to put his job at threat. Wow. So we're tolerating you.

David Hopes:

Yes. Yeah. We've got already a huge distance, not firing you on the spot, and that seemed to me to be widespread. That the idea was that even to be allowed 00:30:00your career was a concession, you gave her, we've already got that. How could you want anything else? You should just shut up and enjoy that. And I didn't get that people recognized that that was weird in any way. It just is the way people thought. It's all question of special privileges, accusing gay people wanting special privileges, because they want the same privileges as other people. The interpretation we're already enduring you because you're gay. What else do you want?

Amanda Wray:

Now do you want to get married and have babies?

David Hopes:

Now you want to get married? You're right. You don't want to lose your job, please.

Amanda Wray:

And so you feel like that wasn't located in any one school district or any one age group?

David Hopes:

I have no way of knowing, because the people didn't all the time specify that. I 00:31:00had a couple of calls to North Bunkin. I do know that, and there was at some times some problem with that there. There seemed to have been an anti-gay culture among the students. Here's my interpretation of that. I think as a boy would call another boy a faggot without any sexual implication to it. I think that people were in North Bunkin we're using that word and calling each other queer without really meaning to have any reference to gay people. I think that the people can be sensitive to that sort of thing. It's a little like mis-gendering, a trans person. That sometimes that's just a mistake, but when it's heard becomes a political issue. So who knows, I wasn't a student, but it seemed to me that a little of that was going on. It was just careless rhetoric. 00:32:00It was hurting people's feelings.

Amanda Wray:

And there weren't any even now in 2020, there's still so few legal ways to help LGBT folks retain jobs. So I can't imagine how little support there was.

David Hopes:

Oh yeah. And I felt lucky because I've never felt threatened at UNC for being... I felt really lucky. It never even crossed my mind. I think that was fortunate. Not Peter Kendrick. There was a faculty member here in political science, his name I'm not remembering. But he was a contemporary, Peter Kendrick, who felt that was why he was not ever ready to. Who knows? I wasn't on the committee so I don't know.

Amanda Wray:

So when you were dating, did you bring your partners with you to UNC events without fear?

David Hopes:

Never.

Amanda Wray:

Okay. Tell me why?

David Hopes:

I brought women.I dated women here. And one of the last woman I actually dated seriously was a aerobics instructor at West Gate Spa, and we had to be friendly. I can remember bringing her to a Halloween party at Merritt Mosley's house and introducing her as... And later thinking, Oh dear God. Because I wasn't intending to be deceptive.

Amanda Wray:

Right.

David Hopes:

I really wanted to bring her to the party. I thought it would keep people from having to have another issue, but afterwards at the... Oh my God. What have I done? But I never brought a male date to anything at the university. And I never 00:34:00thought of that until you asked the question.

Amanda Wray:

After the Halloween party, why did you feel like "Dear God, what have I done?" Did you feel like you were giving them a false impression? If you dated women, you got to date women, right?

David Hopes:

Yeah. I guess that's not a false impression, but somewhere inside me, I was using her as a beard. And even if that was not conscious at the moment, I knew it was somewhere inside me because I could have just not brought anyone. Not her fault.

Amanda Wray:

Interesting.

David Hopes:

You mentioned Tom Boswell or Holly Boswell. Did he tell you about directing me in a play?

Amanda Wray:

So I read about it in some of Holly's papers actually, that she was part of... I can't remember what the group was called,

David Hopes:

Asheville Repertory Theater.

Amanda Wray:

Yeah, exactly. Tell me about that. I'd love to hear anything.

David Hopes:

Asheville Repertory Theater was in the space that is now above table. You know the restaurant?

Amanda Wray:

Yeah.

David Hopes:

It was above that. So it was on the second floor and it was the magnetic theater of its time. It didn't do original works, but it did new works. And the one that she was at the time that directed was called "Days of Possibilities." And it was about the student uprisings in the generation before. And so it was really kind of fascinating, but he, I didn't know what to say. He or she. He, at that time 00:36:00also was a lay minister or an internet minister and performed a marriage for one of my best friends, Kevin and Corey. I don't know if that's coming up or not. I first knew Holly through the play. And at one point she came in dressed differently and said, "I would like you to call me Holly."

Amanda Wray:

That happened right in the midst of the play.

David Hopes:

In the rehearsal.

Amanda Wray:

And so what year was that?

David Hopes:

I'm going to say 89. Let me, I can look that up. I'll get back to you on that.

Amanda Wray:

That sounds about right though, because the first time Holly ever went into Old Henry dressed as Holly, was in like 1990 and 1991 and Rosie coats was there. Do 00:37:00you know Rosie?

David Hopes:

I know Rosie! Absolutely. I do. Yes.

Amanda Wray:

That is a fantastic interview. I cannot wait to sit down with Rosie and do a follow-up. Tina did the first interview. Wow. So Rosie talks a lot about that block downtown. This was a LGBT space there and then moved up the Hill and opened Malaprops right down, and Henry's was right next door. It's really amazing. We've done a historical walking tour to teach high schoolers LGBT history here in Asheville. It's very cool.

David Hopes:

That's interesting. That is fascinating. Huh.

Amanda Wray:

So they use a little app and we give them little clues and they have to do historical research to locate the landmark, and then we have Rosie telling 00:38:00stories or some of our other participants tell us stories about when they first went to malaprops and stuff like that. So tell us some stories about some of these places and we'll include your voice in that. Do you have any stories about really formative places early or late?

David Hopes:

Well, I would think the most formative of all early on was of Henrys. The kids would go to Craig's. But the old time people are native-

Amanda Wray:

Parties. Is that the old time people?

David Hopes:

Yes. Well, I've always thought of by somebody younger than I actually am. Have you been told about chroma, the bartender of Henry's?

Amanda Wray:

No.

David Hopes:

Well, he was the father of the gay community. He would help you in any way, help you find an apartment. He would give you a note, so you could get into Craig's, he would introduce you around. He was there for maybe two or three years when I 00:39:00was, but then he went off with his lover to Atlanta and lost track of him. But he was a really important person. Rosie would know about it, but the first place I'd ever seen a woman in... Well, that's not true. The first drag show I ever saw was at Henrys. I think that's reasonably formative.

Amanda Wray:

Completely.

David Hopes:

People would always have been fights at Old Henry's. It wasn't fights between gay people and straight people, it was fights between gay people. It would like lovers and stuff. So it was rich in familial. And if you were too drunk, they would call you a cab. It was really quite lovely, and downstairs where they finally opened downstairs, there will be dancing. There'll be country dancing, which was a big thing for a while. At first, you would get one of the best 00:40:00lunches in town, in Old Henry's because it serves sandwiches and stuff. And so you would go there to eat during the day, but they got past that.

Amanda Wray:

Well, they were the one of two places downtown that served alcohol during the day.

David Hopes:

What was the other place, was it the hotel? I don't even know.

Amanda Wray:

I have it in my notes. It was, but it was a professional men's club. So they didn't really let in a lot of women, it was mostly a business person kind of place.

David Hopes:

Sure.

Amanda Wray:

That was one of the things that I learned was they... And then they started playing disco. Rosie says once they started playing disco, everybody knew.

David Hopes:

Oh, that's true. Yeah, you could tell. And it sort of had a war with the bar that is now by the... on Broadway. It's right by...

Amanda Wray:

Was it hairspray?

David Hopes:

No, it wasn't hairspray. There was a straight man's bar, a redneck bar. And there would be sort of an unspoken tension between those two bars. He didn't go back. Of course, he googled back and forth, no we didn't say anything. But that was the daring thing to do is have a couple of drinks at the redneck bar and then go back to Old Henry's and then talk about it. That was fun. Hasn't been the same since the mood.

Amanda Wray:

Yeah. Which they lost their lease. Right. And became too expensive.

David Hopes:

I don't know why that must be it. I never knew why.

Amanda Wray:

I wonder, tell me about the first drag show. What did you think about that? If you've not ever seen one after being in New York and everywhere, how did you not see drag with that?

David Hopes:

I'm thinking that my time is up because I know the places where I went in New 00:42:00York, they did not have directions. But I'd seen it in Pensacola. I guess I'd seen it in grad school, I suppose. I didn't expect it in Asheville. I think that was what it was. I'm not a great fan of drag, but it was remarkable. It was remarkable to me because someone was very much into something I flat did not understand, knew people had devoted themselves to it. And I was sitting there thinking that can't be your authentic self. I don't believe it that Madge the truck stop waitress with bouffant is not your authentic...

David Hopes:

But so I couldn't get past that, but I did appreciate...

David Hopes:

Oh, you'll like this. The first faculty report at the end of the year, that I made it. I included in my community service judging a drag show. I guess this 00:43:00was a cockatoo. It was a different bar and Mike almost hit the ceiling. He said, you can't put that on there. So Mike made me take judging a drag show off my community service on my faculty record.

Amanda Wray:

And how'd you feel about that? Were you all right with that?

David Hopes:

It didn't seem their university like. I didn't mind it. I didn't feel oppressed or anything, but I thought that's not very open-minded. And also it's not exhibiting much of a sense of humor. I thought it was sort of funny and I thought everyone would think it was funny. So I said, it didn't seem collage-y to me.

Amanda Wray:

Do you have other stories where something you thought might be really funny, 00:44:00just didn't play out the way you expected in a professional context like that? Not necessarily at the university, but you've had so many professional selves, really. Like you are such a Renaissance individual.

David Hopes:

Well, Amanda, one of the things that I think I mentioned a little earlier is that I'm not always keenly aware of the impression I'm making. So there may have been times when I was offending or shocking and simply did not know it. And I say that because there were times when I would say something in class or in a community situation that the people would go on forever about. And I didn't know it until someone accidentally said...

David Hopes:

I used to have an art gallery downtown, in public service pool. And I had nudes, above on the wall and people were blocked by and I didn't know that the bank 00:45:00across the street and some women upstairs that serve women who had been abused, were furious with me and were just indignant. And this went on for months and they were angry.

David Hopes:

Finally, a woman I had working for me said "David, you have to come down here." And I had no idea until that moment that everyone was mad at me because as we've talked about it earlier, nobody said a thing. Not to me. And what did I do? I took the paintings down. So the answer to the question is I probably had done horrible things that shock people to death. And I didn't know, cause I don't know until someone tells me.

Amanda Wray:

You had paintings, that's what they found offensive. Tell me what the nature of 00:46:00your paintings were.

David Hopes:

Well, it wasn't just me. I had new paintings up, but they were by a bunch of people. The one that really got people wasn't in fact by me, it was a friend of mine who was standing naked with his Dick in his hand. And I thought it was cute. I thought that was kind of funny cause his expression on his face. Like ah, ha. And the people that looked at it would give me the thumbs up like it was funny. So I thought I was doing this triumph deed of public relations and people were friendly with art when I was infuriating, everyone. And I just, sorry. And plays that I've done would be months later not hear about them saying, well you did X, Y, and Z. And I realized that it caused a stir. I didn't know. So I think I have escaped internally the repercussions of horrible things that I've done 00:47:00because I just didn't know they were horrible.

Amanda Wray:

I wonder if you could talk to us a bit about, it seems like you've written a ridiculous amount of stuff. That's really impressive, and it seems like LGBT themes run into a lot of your written work and maybe even also your art. Could you talk about that a little bit? Is that intentional? Does it just work out that way?

David Hopes:

Both. It's both intentional and both work out that way. When I started being called a gay writer. Some was including gay anthologies in the nineties, men on men and things like that. I realized that if that's, when that were going to be the case, I wanted to be a predicted kind of gay writer. And when I started 00:48:00doing plays, a lot of my plays. How to be a writer, and when I started doing plays a lot of my place had gay themes. I was a gay playwright. I was also a Southern playwright, which was really shocking to me. You know, there's no such thing as an Ohio playwright. You can be a Southern playwright, but you can't be an Ohio... Anyhow, I wanted to be-

Amanda Wray:

I think it says more about Ohio people than Southerners.

David Hopes:

Yeah. It might. I wanted to be the gay writer who assumes that being gay is perfectly ordinary. I will never write a coming out story. Never, ever. I will never ever have a character say, "Well, I'm this, that and the other, because I'm gay." But my characters are gay and do gay things without mentioning it. And that part of it is deliberate because I want to get past, I want the gay and lesbian section bookstore to disappear. And it just be contemporary fiction.

Amanda Wray:

This desire to normalize, right?

David Hopes:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because in the gay life, at least the way I lived it, there was so many people who thought it was heroic to be gay, and I got tired of that.

David Hopes:

I would say to myself, as I say, "I see why people hate us. I see why straight people don't like us." I don't like us sometimes because we can be self dramatizing. We can be self-congratulatory and sometimes that's okay, forever it's not. It's not okay forever, and so I want to be part of those people that get past that and say, "It's no big deal, here's my husband, don't worry about it." I want to normalize it. You already used the word. So yeah.

David Hopes:

It took by surprise when people noticed that I was gay, and then I looked at my 00:50:00writing, then I looked at what they were looking as, "Oh, how can I be more blatant?" So a lot of this started unconsciously that people would mention things to me, and I would acknowledge, "Well, that's true." When I thought I was being really subtle.

David Hopes:

So now it's becoming a programmatic? Is that what I want to say? One has to constantly reinvestigate one's art to make sure one has not frozen into a point of view. So I'm hoping I'm doing that.

Amanda Wray:

Well how do you do that, investigate that about your art?

David Hopes:

What a good question. Here's what I say. Here's what I say to my creative writing classes about that. If you write the story that you intended to write 00:51:00you have failed. If you write the poem that you intended to write you have failed, because the writing should be a process of discovery. So as long as I keep discovering myself at the edge, discovering something new, I can be sure that I have not frozen into one perspective.

David Hopes:

So I suppose by following my own dicta about how a writer should work, I'll be okay. As long as I allow the story to take me with it. I taught playwriting and someone who would come in and say, "I want to write the great lesbian play." And you're just not going to do it.

David Hopes:

That sentence is going to keep you from doing it, and it's really sort of hard to explain how that works, but I believe that's how it works. I think that's how you avoid becoming your own desert, which happens to just so many people.

Amanda Wray:

Could you talk about maybe some of the pieces that you feel like in your lifetime were maybe most poignant as a process of discovery? What have you written that you were like, "Oh my gosh, this was the biggest discovery." Or-

David Hopes:

One of the first plays that I wrote that is mature, that is to say that I knew what I was doing, was a play called St Patrick's Well, and it is set in Ireland. And it was about a man who discovers an inscription in a book by an Irish poet to his father that has some heat to it.

David Hopes:

The Irish poet is still alive, so he goes to Ireland to meet him, and discovers the poet and his father were lovers. And I was just writing a story that I 00:53:00realized, all right, here's a bunch of stuff. First of all, here's my obsession with Ireland. I always thought I was going to meet the love of my life in Ireland. That's why I kept going back, and I didn't know until I wrote that play. And I think that I had, but that was the sense of loss, that the friend left him, left the poet and came to American and had these kids and stuff and the poet remembered that stuff.

David Hopes:

And so I taught myself so much about what I thought of my life and the gay life, and what I thought of my life was that I had done something whereby I barely missed the person I was supposed to be with all my life, and I didn't have any idea that that was going on until I wrote the play. Not even until I wrote it, until someone talked to me about it. It won a North Carolina playwrights prize, 00:54:00and when I went to see it done knew there was a talkback. In Greensboro, there was a talkback, and I though, "Oh, fuck sake. That is what it's about." And I didn't know, you just read the damn thing, you know what it's about.

Amanda Wray:

Are there any other pieces you want to talk about that were especially formative and self discovery?

David Hopes:

Well, I would say, all in all, the plays that I've written have enabled me to enact my personality better than other things, more than other things. The, excuse me, the novel that came out last year, The Falls of the Wyona, it suggested to me the...How do I put this? In that play even though it happens right after World War II and not in that book, people are not much concerned 00:55:00when two boys are in love with each other. And when the tragedy of the book happens, when someone does get concerned about it. So I didn't realize I was being so political, but it is my political stance, just don't worry about it, and if you're worried about it, it's your problem.

Amanda Wray:

Yeah.

David Hopes:

And so that was it that enabled me to discover something else.

David Hopes:

And again, I didn't know that was in there until someone told me. I had submitted this novel in several places, and I must've sent it to the contest. And the woman on the phone says, "Are you David Hopes?" "Yeah." And she says, "Well it's just won the queer prize." And "What's that?" And she said, "Queer writing." And I thought, "What's queer about my-" Then I realized it was. And I realized that I was doing the same thing.

David Hopes:

I didn't really intend it to be queer. I never thought this could be queer book, although there are queer people in it. And so I sort of liked the idea that I 00:56:00couldn't remember why it was so queer until I sat down and re-read it. "Oh, that's why. These boys are having sex." So people help you discover the way you are from what you say, whether you just say it in conversation or whether you say it in a work of intentional creation.

Amanda Wray:

I wonder also if, I feel like something you said earlier, and this it's not heroic to be gay. And earlier when you said something about queerness seemed just kind of hidden, right. That we don't have to wear it on a sleeve or hang your flag off the car on the way here. I wonder is that always the way it is with you're writing? People started calling you like a quote, unquote "gay writer" in the nineties. When you sit down to write, are you intentionally 00:57:00writing to normalize gay identity, or does the gayness come out and the way in which it comes out is so normal for you that-

David Hopes:

I sit down to tell the story and how it comes out, I must determine, has something to do with my character. But I would say that being unintentional has always been part of my artistic process. So I don't blame myself for any of that. I do not sit down in order to... I justify what I've written by saying, "Well it normalizes gayness." But that was not on my mind when I did that.

David Hopes:

When my gay plays began being done in New York, people would say, "Well how gay are they? This guy's just gay." And that would be what I'd say. I'd say, "Well, this is a political choice. That they're not wearing their lavender on their sleeve. They're just living their lives." But it only came about because I found 00:58:00myself defending myself from people who thought that my gay plays were not gay enough.

Amanda Wray:

Yeah. That's interesting critique that still permeates the LGBT community, right?

David Hopes:

Oh god, yeah.

Amanda Wray:

Yeah, absolutely.

David Hopes:

Do you have the right vocabulary? There are certain ways that you must demonstrate gayness. What is the word now, enacting virtue? I've forgotten what people call that.

Amanda Wray:

I don't know.

David Hopes:

Demonstrating virtue or something. You just have to do it the right way.

Amanda Wray:

Do you think that the South, however you want to conceptualize that, as a place or an ideology, but do you think that the South was important to your writer life or even necessary to the kind of things that you've produced over time? Which span the globe, right? You write off a lot of things, travel pieces and things like that set in other places beyond the South.

David Hopes:

I have been here 38 years. I don't know how to do that experiment. Would I be the same person if I hadn't come here? I think being in the South, let me start this sentence again. It is more special to be a writer in the South than it has to be right in the North, if I'm remembering things correctly.

David Hopes:

It's a more of a honored vocation in the land of the wealthy than it was in Ohio. That, "Well, you're a writer and I'm a lumberjack." But see, I might be making that up. I've lived here for so long that I don't know how to be otherwise.

David Hopes:

I thought I wanted to stay at my alma mater and teach there for the rest of my career. But UNCA offered me so much more money that I left, and I often make 01:00:00that comparison. Would I be the same person if I'd stayed in Ohio, as I am here? Would have I started writing plays? Would I have started painting? I was happy being a poet, why did I start doing other stuff? And I don't know whether it was the new environment. I don't know. So it's hard to know that-

Amanda Wray:

So all of that came about, your painting, excuse me, your art and your playwriting, that came about after the move here?

David Hopes:

Everything. I was strictly a poet when I came here.

Amanda Wray:

Wow.

David Hopes:

Yeah, and so I give thanks to whatever caused that. If it was the South. It has to be said that UNCA is very supportive about doing things other than the thing you were hired to do.

David Hopes:

I was hired as the poet, UNCA encouraged me, allowed me to do everything else I wanted to do. Never said boo. And I'm grateful for that.

Amanda Wray:

Yeah.

David Hopes:

So in that sense, this particular environment was a very good one.

Amanda Wray:

So asking the question everybody wants to hear, right? So if you're comfortable, could you tell me about your own coming out journey, how you came to know yourself and-

David Hopes:

Well, that is kind of interesting to me. I've already said that I would never tell the story, but I might, because it also has to do with... It's always-

Amanda Wray:

You don't have to.

David Hopes:

...Lack of intention. When I was a little kid I can remember going to the Ice Capades, and there was a famous skater named Ronnie Robertson, who was, I didn't know he was also a famous gay person, and one of the first people. And I, in Ice Capades, fell in love with him. I couldn't have been more than four or five. So 01:02:00I was all the time enamored of men, but never thought that was different from what was going on in mindset of the boys. I just assumed that this is what boys do. In the boy Scouts you didn't, well sometimes you did, but I couldn't tell much difference between me and the other boys.

David Hopes:

And then when it got to be dating time, I dated all the time. I asked girls because that's what you did, it's not because I wanted to. And I would go out with the homecoming queen, and it was fine, but I'm thinking, "Why don't I want to jump her bones? Why am I not on-" You know?

David Hopes:

And I think, "It'll come, it'll come." And so it was a matter of just not knowing any better. I didn't know why I was attached to men all the time. I didn't know why I was not going on about Kathy White the way the other boys in high school were, why I didn't care about Kathy White. And when I was in 01:03:00graduate school I lived across the street from, in Syracuse, across the street from a important gay assignation place. It was a hill that you could drive around and pick people up. And I would see these cars going around all the time, not know what they were for, so I wandered up there one time and a man asked me to come in the car with him.

David Hopes:

It had never occurred to me that I was gay, even though I knew that I loved men. The minute the word was applied it all came into... And so I took it really pretty well. I went through about a month or so thinking, "Oh my god." But then I thought, "Well, fuck it." And it helped being on my own because I didn't have to confront my parents, and it was okay.

David Hopes:

It was not without trauma, but not a very bad transition, but the coming out was 01:04:00gradual, but it wasn't tumultuous. I didn't have to undo lies because I'd never lied, because I didn't know myself. I had no word to call it. It's sort of interesting that even though when I was in public school in Akron, people knew that I was gay and I didn't. Things that said that people said about me suddenly made sense.

David Hopes:

Oh, that's... I remember being at this girl's house and her boyfriend called and, "Who's there?" Well he was, "Look, don't worry, he's not a real boy."

David Hopes:

But years later I'd go, "Oh." She knew and I didn't. So I think my being oblivious about stuff, in my deliberately oblivious in my writing, comes from being accidentally oblivious in my life. Oh my god, I'm gay. Who knew? Well, 01:05:00everyone but you.

David Hopes:

I remember telling my sister, I said, "Well, I want kids." And she said, "What happened?" And I said, took a deep breath, "You know I'm gay." She says, "Yeah."

Amanda Wray:

And when was that conversation?

David Hopes:

Oh, that was what I was here because as I already said, I'd dated women, it's not that I'd cut women off, poor dears.

David Hopes:

And again, I didn't talk about it. I didn't walk up to people, "Hey I'm gay." I guess that connects to the fiction, I just thought, "Why would they want to know?" So I didn't feel that I was hiding anything, I felt that I was not imposing too much information on people.

Amanda Wray:

Oh.

Amanda Wray:

I'm writing that down, that's interesting.

Amanda Wray:

So could you talk a little bit about your relationship with your parents? When you came out to yourself did you share that information with other people in your family? Or-

David Hopes:

Just my sister. My mother's dead by then.

Amanda Wray:

Okay.

David Hopes:

She died in heart surgery. I mentioned to you that year, Johns Hopkins, that was a terrible part of it, was her death. The there's more to it, but my father and I never had that conversation, never once discussed it.

David Hopes:

And my fathers not dead, but my sister said that she and my father had discussed it. And that my father said I had told him that I was not gay, and that I couldn't be gay because I didn't act gay, and because I dated women.

David Hopes:

Except for my sister, who's still alive, but I felt, were they deceived? Did 01:07:00they not know better? What does the mother know about her son that she doesn't feel like saying? My dad was dead set against my going to see musicals in the theater. And I think about that, and wonder, well did he see that in me? So it's all speculation. It's all speculation. I have no-

Amanda Wray:

So was that, you were in high school, he didn't want you to go see musicals?

David Hopes:

Yes.

Amanda Wray:

Or for your whole life?

David Hopes:

Well he didn't have say over it afterwards, but if we were picking a movie my mother would say, "Well let's go see The King and I." "No, no. Boy can't see that."

David Hopes:

And I never could figure that out. What my father thought of it is a great mystery. I remember noticing that my mother and I had the same taste in men, 01:08:00which I thought was really kind of funny. Although even though I noticed it at the time, I didn't know what that meant. I didn't know, all right, so she thinks he's attractive and so do I. It never occurred to me that that was not the way it was done. Yeah. I thought I would wake up one day and hot for Trina Browning and that would all be over. Didn't happen, lucky for Trina.

Amanda Wray:

What was your taste in men? What is your taste in men?

David Hopes:

A little rough, the car mechanic, farmer.

Amanda Wray:

The line-

David Hopes:

I was in Ireland... Pardon me?

Amanda Wray:

The lineman, the electric wa-.

David Hopes:

Absolutely. Yeah, the first person I met in Nashville was the lineman. Absolutely. Yeah, and he was a little grubby and I liked that. I was in Ireland once walking around from Sligo and this... I'm so sorry.

David Hopes:

This farmer was lifting something, it was too heavy for him and he didn't know what to do. I could see him, so I ran up and helped him lift this thing off. And I'm saying to myself, "I have to marry this man." And actually we ended up having a relationship for as long as I was there, but that was a farmer struggling with a piece of machinery, and he's in Ireland, oh my god, it was right down the line.

Amanda Wray:

Did your play turn into a book at some point?

David Hopes:

It hasn't yet, but it was just might. It was too happy, it was too happy without consequence to be a book. There wasn't any dark side to it, we just had a good time, and stuff.

Amanda Wray:

It didn't have , you have to have some kind of conflict. Could you talk a little bit about your traveling? You've gotten to travel everywhere, it seems like to me. What was traveling about for you?

David Hopes:

Well, I think it's about what it is for other people. I just love seeing other 01:10:00places. Some places are mystical to me. I think that Ireland is mystical to me in a way that other places are, and I love going to Italy and all this. I'm going to Greece with Sophie in March, if we're not all dead, but Ireland was different because I am Irish, and I felt that my real life would be there.

David Hopes:

Ireland rejected me, and I got over that. My real life is not there, the love of my life is not there. If it was I never found him. So part of it is mystical, but part of it is just curiosity. I tried to go to as many different places that I possibly can, trying to think of the last, oh, the Holy Land is the last place they managed to get to that was interesting. And it was fascinating to me. So it's curiosity, it's seeing new places, and I think you mentioned before, I 01:11:00often get writing out of it. I've gotten a couple of stories out of a week I spent in Vienna, that seemed to be very rich. I love to do that. I also love being at home, so it's okay. The quarantine has been okay for that.

Amanda Wray:

Yeah. Do you know how many places you've been? How many countries you've seen?

David Hopes:

Oh, 20. I've seen all but two of the states, been in all but two of the states. I like to go someplace stay there, I don't do tours, so usually I just go to one country to time so I can stick that out. And you do explore gay life there and find it in other places really very much different. In many places it's very-

David Hopes:

Very much different. In many places it's very much suaver or what have I say, less agitated than it is here. You don't expect that. If you go into every bar in Ireland is a gay bar, which is to say, I've picked men up in the straightest bars in Ireland, because it's not ... There are gay bars, but they're an American concoction there. They're American bars. And then so it is different in different places. Italy, you meet people on the street. So that the way people relate to each other, even sexually is interestingly different. I'd like to figure out why Holland and Belgium can be so different and they're so small and so close together. It's just fascinating.

Amanda Wray:

We;;, would you talk a little bit about the gay bar culture? Because you mentioned that early, I'd see, I don't know that I wrote that down exactly. Gay 01:13:00life was bars. That's what you said.

David Hopes:

Yes. Gay life was bars.

Amanda Wray:

Now it's?

David Hopes:

I came out in Syracuse. I was living in Syracuse when I came out and the first thing I did was go to God's which is a bar. And so my statement that gay life is bars had to do with my time. It might have to do a little bit with my particular process because that's what I found first. That's the place I needed to go to was God's in downtown Syracuse. And then I moved to New York, but I went to New York and they had all this stuff going. You're drunk. Your inhibitions are down. Everyone is there for the same reason. You can dance. And I have really nice feelings for disco in the way that most of my contemporaries don't because like I said, fun in the gay bar. So I believe that gay life was largely in the bars 01:14:00everywhere for all people at that time. But I don't know whether that's true. It could be just the way I did it.

David Hopes:

I like bars now even because your inhibitions are down. You laugh and you meet new people and it's easy. So I've always had that feeling about it. Since the quarantine began, I have finished two books that I started when I was at UNC but didn't dare finish because it was about the gay bar life in New York. One's about the gay bar in New York. One is about the gay bar life in Asheville when I first came here. And they both of them, will not be shocking even to me at this point, and that's why I just left them while I was employed at UNC. I figured better not do it. But there about, I suppose they include the idea that the 01:15:00impulse of exploration that you find in a bar can become transcendent, that you can be led to do things you would never have thought of before with the right combination of personnel and alcohol.

Amanda Wray:

I like that. That's a quote I'm going to use Sunday.

David Hopes:

There you go.

Amanda Wray:

Impulsive exploration in a gay bar is transcendent. Do you still go to O'Henry's? When was the last time you were there?

David Hopes:

I bet it's 10 years. But you know it has to do with parking.

Amanda Wray:

Oh yes.

David Hopes:

Yeah. I really when I think about. Yes you know. The last couple of times I was there, I went because I thought I ought to. I thought I ought to support a gay institution. And so I would go there and have my drinking but now I think, 01:16:00pardon me? So it's not Henry's fault that I go there anymore, but it has been a long time.

Amanda Wray:

Well, what kind of socializing are you doing with other LGBT folks in town? How are you keeping community? Or are you?

David Hopes:

I have fallen down on my responsibilities.

Amanda Wray:

I don't mean it as a responsibility. Like a social, like having your friends and-

David Hopes:

Well most of the friends I have now are from the gay cause. Most of my gay friends now are from gay cause or from All Souls or people that are leftover from the time before. As far as I can tell, gay life in Asheville is very domestic now. You don't go out. You don't go to bars. You sit in your house and have barbecues and I'm not a barbecue person. So in some ways, gay life has 01:17:00evolved past me. I go to bars and meet people. And that's just not that anymore. At least not people my age, I suppose, although I haven't done the test, I haven't been out in 10 years. I've been out other places, but not in there. So, I must not feel the need since I don't put much effort into it.

Amanda Wray:

Could you talk a little bit about All Souls because you mentioned them early and I just think of the pillar that All Souls is in this community is just kind of radical really the way in which they, the work that they have done and have been doing for decades to create a space of inclusion and education. I read so many things about, with Closer like Holly coming in and doing lectures and things 01:18:00like that. Could you just talk about some of that stuff and how you were involved in it? How did you even end up at All Souls?

David Hopes:

I'll go with the easiest one first, how I ended up at All Souls. I was here about five years. Is that right? About five years but I decided I'm no longer going to mark up and down the in Bent Creek looking for sex on a Sunday morning. Imma go to church. Now, this came about because I've always sung in the church. I booked when I was at Johns Hopkins, I made my money by singing, by being a bass soloist in church. So I've always done that. And I wanted to get back to that. So episcopal churches have the best music by and large. So I tried every episcopal church in Asheville and the one that took was All Souls. And it took because of the priest of that time Neil Zabriskie was so impressive. And so I 01:19:00joined the church and joined the choir. And the deacon there, a deacon is a clergy man who has chosen a particular social activity to pursue, and her activity, Joan Marshall was her name, was the lesbian gay community.

David Hopes:

So Joan Marshall could be attributed I think, the fact that All Souls was a pillar of gay rights and gay education because she worked very hard at that. She was there for every Closer meeting. She was there for every SAGA meeting. When AIDS hit Asheville hard, she was there to comfort and help people with that. So 01:20:00she quarreled with the Bishop, she quarreled with the Dean of the cathedral, wants to blame the cathedral. She fought very hard to make sure that gay people were accepted at All Souls. There were times my belief is, the only church gay person could go to in Asheville was All Souls. I don't know that that's true, but that's what we told ourselves. And the congregation before the gay people, to the degree that we'd have other congregants saying, "Well, we love our gay people so much. We'd like to spread you out some so other people can have it." And keep on saying that straight to your face you're like, "Oh, are you hearing yourself?"

David Hopes:

So, I want to say it was largely Joan Marshall but she had tremendous backing from the congregants, from the congregation. And if they didn't like it, they left. For a long time people would just leave All Souls a lot. And it was almost always. It is not that emphasized anymore, but in defense of All Souls, I want 01:21:00to say that it doesn't need to be. I don't think that the gay interests have to be fought for quite so hard as they did in the eighties in Asheville, and so All Souls was there when we needed now it's gone under. Other things like social justice, poverty issues, which I think well why not?

Amanda Wray:

Absolutely.

David Hopes:

So that is my take on it. It comes pretty much down to Joan Marshall and also the fact that her dean, Neil Zabriskie was brow beaten into supporting her. She had to educate him but she didn't.

Amanda Wray:

Could you talk a little bit about the education, the outreach stuff? Because it wasn't just about trying to educate people within the church. They invited community people in, took Closer and things like that-

David Hopes:

Yeah.

Amanda Wray:

How successful do you think that was and shifting kind of the rhetoric anti-gay rhetoric here? Was it formative or-

David Hopes:

I think that it means something when a church does that and mainline church that became the cathedral.

Amanda Wray:

Right.

David Hopes:

All right. It wasn't the cathedral then, but it is now. And so people stop bitching about it when it becomes institutionalized. Now I think that, my belief is that people want to be swayed by reason. And if you're patient enough, you can convince them, no, these gay people are not any of what you are. And if you say that often enough, people will believe it. All Souls did that. It lived that. It never allowed anti-gay rhetoric. And it mostly took the, I think, especially Christian route of demonstrating love by supporting people getting 01:23:00there. Just saying, "Here's your support. Here's some money, here's a place to live. Yes. We know you have AIDS, but you can still come to services." And Closer always met at All Souls. The gay men's causes always met at All Souls. No, but then so are the alcoholics anonymous, it's not just that.

Amanda Wray:

Right.

David Hopes:

But it's opened its doors. And I think that it succeeded through tenacity. I mean, that's taken 20 years don't you think?

Amanda Wray:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

David Hopes:

For people to stop being so touchy about gays.

Amanda Wray:

Right. Just as though gayness is contagious or something right?

David Hopes:

Right. Right.

Amanda Wray:

Okay.

David Hopes:

Oh, the issue with the chalice especially with AIDS, what do you do with the chalice because everybody, well, a, alcohol kills people but people didn't want 01:24:00to hear. It was, people were just frightened. People with children would say, "It's not me. I have nothing against gays but my children."

Amanda Wray:

What was that like? So how did they change, or they didn't -

David Hopes:

They left. Yeah. Well, part of it was that Neil Zabriskie was a querulous old man or took no shit or something. He would say, "You don't like it you go." He would not back off. Once he was committed that, not back off and people would. Behind that is I know they're okay but they're going to molest my children and they didn't have to say that. He knew this one and so he'd say, "Well if you're afraid go somewhere else," which seems to me to be. Yeah.

David Hopes:

So I think it was just, it was moral courage, non demonstrative moral courage. 01:25:00People were not strutting about with metals on their chest but they just wouldn't put up with shit. And I admire that so much. I miss Neal, I miss Joan. Now there are other peoples there who have taken a different sorts of crusades and they're also admirable. But I think that the gay-lesbian thing was the chanciest thing for them to do. Yeah. There was also some luck in having Bishop Johnson who recognized the validity of the gay rights movement. I don't know if he was enthusiastic about it but he said he could see no more reason to treat gay people in different many miles. So the Bishop in an episcopal church is the Bishop. So they also had him.

Amanda Wray:

Absolutely. I am noticing our time. Are you doing all right? We've been talking forever.

David Hopes:

Have we?

Amanda Wray:

You alright?

David Hopes:

Well you know I'm here. Not much to do so if you want to do this again, let'd do it.

Amanda Wray:

Well can I ask you a couple more questions?

David Hopes:

You sure can.

Amanda Wray:

Okay. Could you talk a little bit about that time in the late '80s, in the early '90s, when everybody in the country's really learning about HIV and AIDS and just trying to wrap their heads around what's happening and just the real kind of genocide of people that began to happen? What was it like here in Asheville? And-

David Hopes:

I first heard about AIDS when I was in New York and the first person I knew to die of it was the choir master. I sang in a group called ProMusica and the director in New York, the director of that got AIDS and died really pretty 01:27:00quickly. I don't even know it was called AIDS then. For one, it was gay cancer. You probably knew the history of all this, people wondering what it was. Some people thought poppers did it. Some people thought that if you were having a number of sexual context there was a magic number that your body started falling apart afterwards. I kid you not.

David Hopes:

When I came to Asheville, the first couple of years I was here, I would have someone from the AIDS organization come to my classes and talk about AIDS awareness. That stopped after about five years because people didn't care anymore. There were no longer afraid of AIDS. The part is AIDS was not, is no longer and necessarily death sentence.

Amanda Wray:

Right.

David Hopes:

So people were terrified, but it's like Trump and the COVID saying, it'll go away. Well, it will, given a decade or something.

Amanda Wray:

Right.

David Hopes:

And that sort of happened here. The people in the bars in Asheville, I'm going to go ahead and say didn't care. There was, as far as I could tell, there was no extra caution. It was not like it was in New York, a place where people just really cautious about that. It was just, let's go ahead and do it. We're too far out in the boonies and just the thought that, that's not our problem. Now when actual people began getting AIDS, many of them, the General Marshall's Ministry at All Souls took care of them. So we knew about how people died of AIDS. And a lot of those people would be in our congregation one week and two weeks later they would be dead.

David Hopes:

I'm not sure what the impression in the gay world wasn't that. I didn't notice 01:29:00much remission of sexual activity. And if I wasn't doing a study of it-

Amanda Wray:

Right.

David Hopes:

So I might be wrong about that. But caretakers seem to be much more worried about people with AIDS than people who might be getting AIDS. I stopped counting at 40 of the people I knew in Asheville who died of AIDS. But I don't know that it made that much difference to community awareness. Have you developed the feeling that it was otherwise? What have other people said about that?

Amanda Wray:

I haven't gotten a whole lot of conversation around that actually. I really haven't. So that's why you're going to be my primary source here.

David Hopes:

Well okay. Well I've done Angels in America a couple of times and wondered why I 01:30:00wasn't getting people didn't care about AIDS. The idea that it was an AIDS epic can help in their understanding of the play. So now it's later, it's afterwards but it doesn't have much historical presence. So I don't know what to say about that but people knew people were dying.

Amanda Wray:

Do you feel like, did you encounter educational efforts or prevention efforts anywhere in your comings and goings during that time?

David Hopes:

Well, yes. You know the condom guy from downtown?

Amanda Wray:

Michael Harney.

David Hopes:

Yes Michael Harney. I obviously mentioned him earlier. Absolutely. Yeah. He was always out. So you'd have that. Someone who had taken it upon themselves to be observant in that stuff.

Amanda Wray:

So was Harney like a one man show then, was that really I mean-

David Hopes:

As far as I know. For a while, he was supported a little bit by SAGA but I don't know whether we started him or not. I know we bought him condoms for a while but 01:31:00he outlasted us. I miss him. Is he still out in the valley?

Amanda Wray:

Oh yeah. He's still at WNCAP.

David Hopes:

WNCAP

Amanda Wray:

And he came, that kind of came when, he came in '93, maybe '92, early '90s is when he came, I think.

David Hopes:

Is that when WNCAP was starting? WNCAP did well on that.

Amanda Wray:

Yeah.

David Hopes:

I don't know anything about WNCAP anymore. I've lost track of it, but for a while it was important.

Amanda Wray:

Yeah. They're still doing a lot of stuff.

David Hopes:

Good.

Amanda Wray:

Do you remember, since you kind of knew the caretaker side of it or saw some of that through Joan and others, do you feel like AIDS patients experienced a lot of discrimination here with health care and being able to be caretaked?

David Hopes:

I think early on the ignorance of AIDS made people afraid of them. I think that as time went on, that became less because you don't get it by touching someone. You don't get it from ... There's a whole bunch of, it's a difficult disease to get actually unlike COVID. So when people realize that, I think some of the fear went away, but,\ ignorance made people with AIDS scary and backed off. And the ignorance was in the gay community as well. There's magic that went on that the magical things could not do to get AIDS and just, who knew it was kind of buy poppers. Just don't do it.

Amanda Wray:

Yeah.

David Hopes:

Yeah. It's like.

Amanda Wray:

Or douche, right. If you'll douche afterward or something like that, then you don't, those kinds of things.

David Hopes:

Yeah. Or if, what was the, oral is okay.

Amanda Wray:

But it is really interesting to me how the rhetoric around COVID and what we knew, what we know and don't know. And just all of that obscurity is very similar. It really is.

David Hopes:

And we have a president ignoring it. Reagan-

Amanda Wray:

And exactly. There's that.

David Hopes:

Didn't say a word about AIDS.

Amanda Wray:

Right. No. That's true. That's absolutely true. Is Joan Marshall still around or-

David Hopes:

She's dead.

Amanda Wray:

As I say, she'd be somebody definitely I'd love to interview. Do you have recommendations of other people that we might want to interview? You're welcome to just email them to me, but be thinking about who might be some good people for us.

David Hopes:

We'll email them. Because I, probably can. I could probably think of some people. Yeah.

Amanda Wray:

That'd be great.

David Hopes:

Yeah. That's cool. it seems like you know everybody already though, it's fascinating.

Amanda Wray:

Hell yeah. I've gotten to, it's just, I love oral history. You my dissertation 01:34:00was oral history base around white, progressive whiteness in terms of racial identity and I just love how people just tell you stuff. I've heard the best sex stories. Oh my gosh. Just so much fun stuff.

David Hopes:

Well, your history is different from just tell me a dirty story even if it's history.

Amanda Wray:

It still has the same effect on me.

David Hopes:

Excellent. Well I'm glad you're enjoying it. That's the important thing.

Amanda Wray:

Yeah. I have a lot more things that I'd really like to talk to you about but we're getting close to two hours. So I'm going to give you pause. I would like to schedule a follow-up with you maybe in a couple of weeks, if you're around because we didn't really talk about the gay men's chorus at all. And I wanted to talk about like, have you ever been, what your pride events have been, if you've been to a parade or any of those-

David Hopes:

Every year.

Amanda Wray:

So I'd like to hear about all of that kind of stuff. So there's a lot still to get.

David Hopes:

Well we'll make another date.

Amanda Wray:

Okay. Do you have any questions for me or anything like that?

David Hopes:

I don't at this moment but I know how to get a hold of you and I will email you questions if I have.

Amanda Wray:

Okay. Thank you so much David. This is a real fun.

David Hopes:

This has been fun.

Amanda Wray:

It should be. Telling your story should be fun. And it's one of the things is, you be thinking about what parts of your story you want to tell that I don't know to ask about. Right? So I have a certain list of questions but I know you were already a master storyteller. And so be thinking about what more you want to share with us as well.

David Hopes:

Sure. I will.

Amanda Wray:

All right.

David Hopes:

You have a good day now.

Amanda Wray:

You too. Thank you so much. Bye.

David Hopes:

Bye bye.