Oral History with Phillipe Coquet, Part 1

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

There you are.

Phillippe Coquet:

Here I am.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Hi, nice to meet you finally.

Phillippe Coquet:

Nice to meet you

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

I am Tony.

Phillippe Coquet:

Hi, Tony.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

You go by Phillippe?

Phillippe Coquet:

Phillippe.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Phillippe, and is it Coquet?

Phillippe Coquet:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Okay, Phillippe Coquet. I have a little spiel to run through at the very beginning. Today's date is Thursday, November 19th. My name is Tony Shelton and I am talking to Phillippe Coquet. If you are comfortable, you can state when you were born and where.

Phillippe Coquet:

You want the whole date or just the...

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Just year is fine.

Phillippe Coquet:

I was born on July 12th, 1958 in Silver City, New Mexico.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

What are your preferred pronouns?

Phillippe Coquet:

Any that you like.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Sure.

Phillippe Coquet:

Any and all.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Okay. How long have you been living in this area?

Phillippe Coquet:

Eight years.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Is it Asheville or in another place nearby?

Phillippe Coquet:

In Asheville.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Okay. Well, that is the little introduction that I had to give just for the records. This is basically an opportunity for you to tell your story and it is open-ended. I have a couple of questions that I could use to help start conversations or guide us in one direction or another, but really it's up to you however you would like to share, whatever, just about your experience being a member of the LGBT plus community in western North Carolina.

Phillippe Coquet:

Okay, yeah. It would be great if you could start me with some questions. I can tend to go on, but it helps for me to have a starting point because I have many, many stories.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

What brought you here to this area?

Phillippe Coquet:

My partner and I were living in Oakland, California and we realized we were done with the Bay Area and with California in general. Both of us had been there many, many years. I spent some time in Texas, but other than that most of my time had been in California. We took a two year road trip and looked everywhere, and my partner's mom lived in Hendersonville so we visited her a couple of times. Each time we came we had more connections and within a couple of months 00:03:00after coming here twice, I had more friends here than I had had in four years in San Francisco.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Oh, wow.

Phillippe Coquet:

Everyone kept saying, "Are you guys going to move here? Do you live here yet?", because we kept coming back. That was it.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

I think my video has stopped.

Phillippe Coquet:

Yeah, yours has stopped.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

There you are. We had a little freeze.

Phillippe Coquet:

Yeah.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Okay, well that's really awesome. How exactly did you meet people and generate all of those friends just from those couple of visits?

Phillippe Coquet:

Wow. A few people that we met were massage therapists, which is what my partner 00:04:00and I also do. He got a massage from somebody and they became fast friends, a guy who had been here a long time. He introduced us to a few people. I also am a dancer and went to a couple of contact improvisation jams in town and met people there that were amazing. We're also active in a tantric community and so we met people in that community. We just kept meeting people. Ecstatic dance is something that we used to do back in the days when you could do such a thing. 00:05:00There's a big dance community here in Asheville. There were those things. I'm a theater artist and there was a really lovely theater community here that I became, just by going to see shows and meeting people. There were a lot of intersections in all these communities. Oh and also too, last but not least, we had some friends from the radical fairy community as well. With the proximity to Short Mountain Sanctuary in Tennessee, there were a lot of people that we met through a group, kind of a coffee meet up. And there was a lot of intersections, 00:06:00like I said, in all the different groups.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Nice. Well, I'm glad that you found all of those things. I feel like Asheville, not so much where I am, but definitely in Asheville, it's a very culturally connected community where whole lot of different groups of people intersect.

Phillippe Coquet:

I think so too. Where are you?

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

I live just outside of Cherokee.

Phillippe Coquet:

Oh, wow.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Yeah. Slightly different area.

Phillippe Coquet:

It is a slightly different area. I have friends who live in Cherokee and near there too.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

You have been here eight years so clearly you have really enjoyed it. What exactly is it that keeps you here? What elements in the community really have 00:07:00rooted you in this place?

Phillippe Coquet:

The first thing is, you said the word elements and I would say it's the elements. Obviously the nature is phenomenal and I'm a hiker and a swimmer and love all that stuff. It's bounty and I can just go on a walk through neighborhoods in Asheville and be entertained and enjoy. I love the seasons, I love just how much nature there is. I love the bears, I love how alive it feels here and healthy, vibrant, unpolluted relatively to most places I've lived. And 00:08:00I've lived in many places in the country. I feel grounded here. I would say in the community, it's just the warmth of people and the genuineness. There's an authenticity to people here that I don't find everywhere else. I've lived in some places where people were really authentic, but then they were really [inaudible 00:08:36] or harsh. Whereas here, you have the gentility of the South with the genuineness of a place like Asheville, which is very much a melting pot. It's like all the good parts do a big city in a small town, that's the way I describe it here. Because you know all the people, you know so many people.

Phillippe Coquet:

Less and less with COVID and all that too, but I can always go somewhere and feel like I'm going to run into someone I know. I love that but at the same time I can also go downtown and there's so many people from so many places which I enjoy and it's also becoming more diverse in the last few months actually. Maybe six months to a year. Going downtown, there's actually a lot more... more than White people. There's the community and then there's also people... I'm a pretty alternative type person, all the different things that I'm interested in are 00:10:00happening here, whether it's comedy or Appalachian music or herbalism, everything in diversity I've been able to find. Performance art and people who are into interesting different things academically.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

That's awesome. Have you worked with any of the LGBT plus organizations in the area?

Phillippe Coquet:

I haven't personally. I been involved in some theater that had some connections with some. I work with a theater company called Different Strokes and it's run 00:11:00by a gay African American women, Stephanie Hickling Beckman, who is really powerful in the community and she does a lot of work with organizations. I've been in a few plays there and participated in some experiences that they've had. I haven't done anything directly with that. I'm getting ready this weekend to start a workshop where I'm going to be playing a character called Guncle, which is gay uncle. It's working toward a pilot for a TV series for gay kids.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

That would be really cool.

Phillippe Coquet:

I'm going to be kind of a Pee-wee Herman-ish character probably.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Guncles are the best kind of uncles.

Phillippe Coquet:

I think so. I had one.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

I did not, have a few cousins though.

Phillippe Coquet:

Cool.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Yeah. Let's see, would you say that there are organizations or groups within the community that you would consider assets to the LGBT people?

Phillippe Coquet:

Yeah. I'm familiar with one called, Youth Outright, I believe. They do really great work with young gay folk, queer folk in town. A friend of mine is actually mentoring a young man who's 18 and had to leave an abusive situation at home. His father was beating him up basically, singling him out for being gay. It took 00:13:00him a while to extricate himself out of the house even though he's 18. They're doing a lot to help him. I've heard a lot of different stories about that group and what they do. Over many years I've been part of different situations in gay community in Los Angeles and New York and different places I lived. But at this point in my life I think I'm just not so connected to that realm, it's hard enough just to get by and be part of the arts community as much as I can. That's the way I give back.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Yeah. I'm sure this year has not been easy for making any connections or impact-

Phillippe Coquet:

Zero.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

[inaudible 00:14:00]. If you are comfortable with it, would you like to talk about your coming out journey?

Phillippe Coquet:

Sure. I was really lucky, I was never in the closet. I came of age in 1970 something and I lived in Hollywood, California. When I was 14, I guess I came out. My best girlfriend that I, who were very openly bisexual in high school, I guess I was 15. We had lots of friends who were too, it was very popular at the time because of David Bowie and Elton John had come out and Mick Jagger and people. They were all like, "I'm bisexual." We were all glam rockers. I wore 00:15:00platform tennis shoes and rhinestone collars and all kinds of stuff and my hair was all wild. I was active sexually when I was 15. It was a lot easier in those days because it was the sexual revolution, pre-AIDS. It was the bright light before the darkness of that. My girlfriend and I told my dad. We were just casually talking over dinner and we were like, "Yeah, we're bisexual." And my dad was like, "Yeah, so is everybody, so what?" And he was bisexual and I knew that at that point anyway.

Phillippe Coquet:

My mom was very open, she had some misgivings because I wrote a letter to the gay community services center in Hollywood. I think I was answering an ad in some local paper or something. I was asking for some kind of help. Probably meeting people, because I was meeting people my age who were interested in me anyway. I was just mostly dating straight guys that just wanted some sex. I wrote this letter somehow and I put my dad's name on it for some reason. I don't 00:17:00know why. Oh, I know why, because I was just going to look for it in the mail so my mom wouldn't open it maybe if it was addressed to him. Anyway, he was out of town when it came in. She opened it, saw this thing and was very disturbed. She couldn't understand what was going on. She had a little bit of a meltdown about that but it was fine after that.

Phillippe Coquet:

She knew my dad was bisexual, she was pretty asexual. She was like a lot of people, most of her female best friends were lesbians and all of her husbands were gay men, basically. She married a very openly gay man second after my dad. 00:18:00And she had had a boyfriend in college who was gay who committed suicide. I would say I grew up in a queer family. There were a lot of other people that were around our situation. We were in the theater and so there were gay people everywhere. I didn't ever really know life without gay folks. I met my first trans woman when I was eight years old and knew that she was trans, because my parents told me. I was very blessed. I was at my first gay pride parade when I was 14, 15 maybe.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Nice. I went to my first one last year.

Phillippe Coquet:

You did? Wow.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

It was loud.

Phillippe Coquet:

I'm not a big fan of them anymore.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

I'm more of a quiet, not crowded kind of person. It was way too much stimulation from all of the people and all of the music. But it was nice. It was nice to see so many people of the community coming together and all the different organizations showing support. That was really nice.

Phillippe Coquet:

Cool. Was it too corporate? That's what I don't like about them anymore. They used to be not corporate, it was very homegrown.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

I can't say I really thought that, but in retrospect, I could see that being true.

Phillippe Coquet:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Lots of banks and beer companies.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

And random companies that you wouldn't think would be, not necessarily associated with, but-

Phillippe Coquet:

[inaudible 00:20:11]

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

I couldn't really figure out why they were there.

Phillippe Coquet:

Right. Exactly. They're there to get more customers, basically. That's the sad part. They used to be very much little homegrown organizations, that would have the floats. Little dykes on bikes situations.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Let's see. My last little probing question here is, what are some of the most valuable or influential things that your generation has done for the upcoming 00:21:00generations? And I guess, what works [inaudible 00:21:12] for us to do to make sure that the future generations have what they need?

Phillippe Coquet:

That's a really good question. I'm not sure how to answer that. I know that a lot of the younger people that I talk to like to hear my stories of the way things were. Our generation fought for a lot of things but also missed a lot of things. It's interesting because in all society it seems like we went backwards, 00:22:00we were pushing so far for self expression, for radical inclusion and that was including race and gender and gender expression. In those days, when I was a young man, it was all part of it. We never thought of excluding people because of their age, their gender, their orientation, whether it be gay, straight, bisexual. If they were in the community, they were in the community. Race definitely, people of every color and this was obviously in a big city, it was all inclusive.

Phillippe Coquet:

It had more of a hippie ethos, free love and we wanted to explore new horizons in terms of relationships. There were a lot of open relationships and it was not so heteronormative, which then started happening in the 80s. Around the same time as HIV happened, a lot of gay people came out, started coming out, who were like, "No, we're really not like all those freaks. We're just as normal as they are. We want to get married and have children just like you guys do." But in my generation, that was not what we were into. I actually made an attempt to 00:24:00artificially inseminate a lesbian couple, it just didn't work with my partner at the time in my 20s. And my partner now has five kids. Four of whom are through artificial insemination with lesbian couples and he helped raise all of them.

Phillippe Coquet:

We were doing that kind of thing, but we weren't doing it in the normative, nuclear family kind of way. It was definitely the chosen family style. I guess I am answering the question. I would say, as I do to the young gay folks that I meet, be open to doing things in a different way. Be open to experimenting. We're different, meaning not heterosexually oriented, for a reason. I think 00:25:00there are a lot of things that we have and attributes we have to give to society that we need to cultivate and pass on. And those don't have to include feminine qualities necessarily in men or masculine qualities in women and it might include that. The Native American cultures they call us two spirit. Meaning that we're a more balanced version of the two. We have both genders in us. I feel like moving past the norms, which we actually help culture to evolve by busting 00:26:00the norms. And I think being on the edge in terms of thought, in terms of action, in terms of expression, in terms of just how we present in the world, how we show up in the world.

Phillippe Coquet:

Not that we need to be all the same, because we don't. I know a lot of what you would call street acting, gay guys, who are amazing people. And if somebody wants to be in the military and raise a family and have kids, that's great. I'm very happy to be around a lot of young, queer guys and women and girls who are 00:27:00breaking all the gender barriers and the binary and everything. It's great. It's like it was when I was in high school and college again. I'm glad that mantle is being taken on. That it's still continuing. And it went on before I was around.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

[crosstalk 00:27:35]. It does seem like the new generation, new people. I don't even know what they call them anymore, gen Z'ers. Is that what they young ones are now?

Phillippe Coquet:

I don't know.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

They seem to be more comfortable with being themselves in a public space. It feels like the older generations have, at least done something positive in 00:28:00creating that space where they can feel that comfort. Still a long way to go.

Phillippe Coquet:

Yeah, of course. There's lots of ways to go. But one of the things that some people talk about, being uncomfortable holding hands downtown or something in Asheville. And I'm like, "Are you serious?" For me, when I was coming out or being out and about, I was literally afraid of getting a baseball bat in my head. And I was gay bashed four times at least by groups of people and very close to death. And that was in a very enlightened place, in enlightened times 00:29:00supposedly. And that doesn't happen so much anymore, which is amazing, because you were always afraid. I think things have changed a huge amount in terms of visibility and representation and acceptance in the general society. It's way different than it was 40 years ago. I understand that gay marriage is good because it normalizes it for people. What I don't like is then when gay people bemoan the fact that there's still some really freaky gay people.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

I feel like there's freaky on both sides and there's nothing wrong with that.

Phillippe Coquet:

Yeah. Definitely.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Cool. I have pages and pages of questions. But you're more than welcome to just go open-ended about any of those topics. I personally have never heard of the Youth Outrights or the Different Strokes. I don't even know what a radical fairy is.

Phillippe Coquet:

Oh, cool. I can talk about that.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Yeah, sure. Go ahead.

Phillippe Coquet:

The radical fairy movement was something that started in various places of the country in the 1970s, probably early 70s. And it was a bunch of back to the earth, hippie, pagan, queer men at the beginning, some women very soon after. 00:31:00One of the places this started was Asheville, actually, or outside of Asheville I think near Black Mountain, maybe. And people started gathering. Then, there was a guy named Harry Hay who was one of the grandfathers of gay liberation, he was one of the heads of the heads of the Mattachine Society, which was studying and forwarding gay liberation in the 60s. And he and his partner John Burnside, started this group among several groups in San Francisco I think, and New York and LA. And they would get together and take people out into the mountains and 00:32:00have what was called a fairy gathering. And they had a radical fairy manifesto. It was all about inclusion, it was all about going back to the land and everybody being accepted and loved. They would do these things called heart circles, where everybody would stand around and each person would get a chance to share their heart with no talk back or anything.

Phillippe Coquet:

A lot of things that the radical fairies did have bled into the general culture in many ways. There were a lot of amazing people involved, including some authors and artists, playwrights, filmmakers, who got involved with this thing. I was involved in my early 20s, near the beginning of the radical fairy movement and then I left that, because it just didn't feel like the right thing for me at 00:33:00the time. I did something else for many years and then I returned back to find that the radical fairies were still around and blossoming. There are several sanctuaries in the country where people live on the land and it's communal although it's anarchic, they're very much into anarchy. In some of these sanctuaries there's many as two or three hundred people that live around the land and they've been there since the 70s and they're in rural, out of the way places. They have gatherings every now and then and they call out and several hundred people descend on a place for a week or two and farm and party and do rituals and dance around the fire. Kind of like a celebration.

Phillippe Coquet:

It's become much more inclusive, many more people come from urban areas and participate and they do workshops and figure out new ways to live and how do communities make it. There's a lot of drama and a lot of music and often a lot of electronic music all night long, in the middle of the woods. Stuff like that. It's a wonderful world and community and now they have them all over the world. Thailand and Amsterdam, or in Holland and France and I think Spain now, South Africa.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

[crosstalk 00:35:04]. Do you feel like the basic, I guess the ethos, of the community is the same now as it was decades ago or do you feel like it has changed or maybe growing?

Phillippe Coquet:

It has grown. It has definitely grown. There were some things, because people were just trying to figure stuff out, pretty new. And there was some of them that were like intense communists and some of them that were really intense pagans. There were some dogmas that came with it, even though it was radically inclusive and radically everything. Some people wrote books about it and they were great. But I think it's mellowed more. I mean, the gay community in general 00:36:00has had to deal with crystal meth addiction. It's had to deal with the rampant, still, the HIV issues. It's had to deal with a lot of homeless youth and not being prepared to take care of them necessarily. There's a lot of things that have come around that, it's interesting because it's a lawless community and there's no hierarchy. There have been issues, but they're learning issues and people are really working and learning. A lot of the young people are so smart. 00:37:00They've learned a lot, more than we knew at the time when we were doing it.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Do you think that the young people today in the community fully grasp the darker issues that previous generations had to deal with? The drug addiction, the HIV epidemic. They of course know that it happened and it still exists in the community today, but do you feel like a lot of people think of it as something that has already happened and not worth remembering or do you think that they try to take the lessons learned to heart?

Phillippe Coquet:

I think like with everything, I know a lot of young people who are really 00:38:00schooled and all that and they really understand. Because you said drug addiction, I think actually drug addiction's way more serious now in terms of what crystal meth does to communities and young people especially. We didn't have those issues at all. When I was young, we were all smoking pot, we took LSD and maybe we snorted cocaine once in a while, but we were not a big drug addicted culture at all. That happened later, 90s. The 90s and on, since then. In terms of HIV and also in terms of what we had to fight for to get to where we are now, I think a lot of young people are not... No, it's not even in their 00:39:00thing, which is good in a way. I mean, now that people are prophylactics, people who just take Truvada or whatever, or they just use condoms all the time and they don't think about, it's better than the young ones who grew up, who came of age in the 80s and 90s and were just afraid to have sex because they thought we would die. That's the worst.

Phillippe Coquet:

I came from a generation where just all my friends died and many of them, right in front of me. That was the plague that we experienced and most people don't know about that. And a lot of people don't know what it was like to be the younger generation who grew up in it, which would be very scary as well. I think 00:40:00it's just the same with anything, there's a lot of straight White people who know nothing about civil rights, there's a lot of Black people who don't know about civil rights, the civil rights movement. They have no idea. There's this like, "Oh, what do you mean?", people I talk to. I don't know how that happens. I think we get educated in pretty poor ways by the media, unless we seek it out. Now, right now, if you watch Netflix, for instance, you can get a history less on almost anything.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Very true.

Phillippe Coquet:

Because there's such great programing about these times and these issues and stuff. It just depends on if people are the type that want to learn about 00:41:00history or if they only want to watch video games, play video games and get high or whatever, I don't know. Like so many things, it's a both and answer to the question. But I am amazed that some people who I talk to who are young, who have no idea of any of it.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

It amazes me too and sometimes it scares me a little bit.

Phillippe Coquet:

Yeah. But I think it's always been the case. We just had a president that... Could have very easily turned into way worse situation with just a little bit 00:42:00longer. And it was because people didn't remember what happened before in other times, in other countries.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

I have a short collective memory. Okay, let's see, what else do I have in here? Have you had any experiences dealing with how the concepts of race and ethnicity have intersected in the LGBT community?

Phillippe Coquet:

Oh, sure. Once again, for many years growing up, civil rights was very much active at the same as gay rights, so there was an intersection. There was 00:43:00always, of course, gay White supremacists and homophobic African American and Latino people who I encountered. That was one thing and I've had many experiences with people who were [inaudible 00:43:28].

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

I hear a little echo.

Phillippe Coquet:

My voice is coming back to me, now it isn't. It's gone now, it's fine.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Not sure if it's my connection or what? My video freezes every once in a while for some reason.

Phillippe Coquet:

Yeah, yours too. I've known a lot of people, young men in particular, who are on the down low and how hard it was for them in particular in their community and 00:44:00their culture to come out and to be accepted. As far as racism within the White gay community, I haven't really hung out with that faction of the gay community. My community's always been on the fringe of the gay community. The fringe of the fringe. I've always been in the more spiritual, hippie, new age world and more on the queer identification rather than gay identification. Even way back then, gender fluidity and stuff like that. What we would call, norm gay, was not my 00:45:00world so there was always a lot of inclusion. There were always a lot of people of different races within the community I was involved in. But, I see it and I've encountered certainly people who have talked to me about their experiences of racism within the gay community, absolutely. You see it on hook up apps and things like that.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Oh, yeah. That's very true.

Phillippe Coquet:

The people saying, "Not into Black guys, sorry. It's not a racist thing", or whatever. And I'm like, "What? No." And I have said things to people, just randomly. I'll just say something, "How can you say that's not racist, because 00:46:00it's specifically about a race?" I mean, I'm not saying you hate Black men, but something in you has to make a statement about just those people. Why would you say that unless you were racist? There's no reason to. Any time people do that exclusion language, that's what it is.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

What do you think of app culture?

Phillippe Coquet:

I'm of two minds about it. In some ways, it's expedient. Bars were never my favorite way to meet people. I sometimes like to go to a bar, especially if it's a cute nice bar with some craft cocktails and really good music or something. I 00:47:00love that kind of situation, I'm an extrovert so I like being around lots of people, which had made it very difficult in this period of time. But the fact that we used to have to go to bars and get drunk to meet men, it was a drag. That said, some of the best sex i ever had in parks and public restrooms because that's the culture I grew up in and it was amazing. That way of being able to meet someone when you were walking down the street and somebody would just be on their porch and say, "Hey." And you would say, "Hey." And you would go up and talk to them and then you would start dating or you would have sex with them or 00:48:00whatever, but there were all kinds of more personal ways to do it that I love and they're gone, pretty much.

Phillippe Coquet:

I liked being able to meet people in all kinds of different ways. Whereas with app culture, it's like this is the only way you meet people. If everything else wasn't gone, I'd probably be okay with app culture because it just gives another opportunity. And that being said, i have met a few people on apps that are friends of mine. I also know two people who met their husbands on an app. One of whom who had never been on an app before, got on the app, met his husband and now he lives in Italy.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Isn't that nice?

Phillippe Coquet:

And we're going as soon as we can to stay in their little apartment in Florence. Isn't that amazing? He literally was talked into going on an app and he was like, "I'll never do that." And he was like, "Okay", and he did it. And the second person he talked to ended up being his husband.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Wow.

Phillippe Coquet:

Yeah, a year later. My problem with most of what app culture and even all the sites that are on, is that most people don't take them seriously, that it's mostly just a waste of time. That most people are like, and myself included I have to say, I've been a person who had been in the mood to be on an app looking 00:50:00for something, not that I need to be. And I'm looking and swiping and I'm like, "Oh, this person seems interesting." And I'll chat them up and then they'll chat me up and I chat them up and they say something else and then I'm off the app and I don't follow through, because I'm no longer in the mood or other things have happened. And that happens so much that it just feels like a waste of time. Do you use them?

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

It's been a very long time since I've lived in a very populated place. I have used them simply just to be able to find people to talk to. Because the community is so small in general and then when you put yourself in a very rural, 00:51:00isolated area, it's basically you're the only one for a very long distance and there's no real way to meet or talk to people otherwise.

Phillippe Coquet:

Interesting. They used to have gay bars in Silva, I think.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

That seems like an odd place for one.

Phillippe Coquet:

Yeah. I think there were two gay bars there. Not open right now probably, but right before the pandemic. Because I had a friend who lived in Silva and I thought, you're so gay, what do you do out there? Gay meaning gay community kind of person, very much going to the drag shows and supporting all these things. And he was like, "Oh, no. Silva is like the cutest place for gay people." You 00:52:00would never know. I can imagine that it could be great for people living out in rural places. In the old days, you would just go to places like parks, it was weird, and that's where you would meet people. And then, later people would put ads in newspapers and then online they started having all these things, or 1800 numbers. We went through a period of that, where we have all these numbers that you could call and chat with people on the phone. It was so random. It was very weird. And then you could meet up, that seemed even scarier than an app, because you didn't know anything about them at all.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Yeah, that's true. It's amazing how things have changed.

Phillippe Coquet:

Yeah and not at all. Men are still getting together for everything from sex to romance, to playing chess, through whatever way they can.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Yeah. How do you think that this year of isolation is going to affect the local community? Do you think that connections have been lost, or do you think that everybody's just put their lives on hold?

Phillippe Coquet:

I think connections have been lost and I think connections have been deepened. 00:54:00Among my community, we've gotten closer. A lot of us are not sheltering in place anymore and haven't been, so we're getting together in groups and we've become more community oriented. Tonight there were 10 people in my house making food and sharing and talking stories. I live in a house with six other people, exact opposite of you I guess. Almost everybody had somebody over that we all know, people over. It's deep, we have deep conversations and there was a lot of creative stuff that's going on that had never been doing before because people 00:55:00have more time and less distraction. There's been a bunch of silver linings to this thing. And I think people are getting to know themselves better. When they come out, I think there's going to be a lot of different ways of relating and different ways of being in community.

Phillippe Coquet:

My experience of gay community is much less about bars and organizations and more who I meet naturally and because we have like interests. We like doing the same things and if you happened to be homo oriented, that's great or if not, 00:56:00that's fine. There's a lot of metro sexual or other than heteronormative straight men in Asheville, who are very much into being around gay guys and cuddling with them and sharing their emotions and being vulnerable. They kind of look at us as role models and that's been really interesting and sweet. They're not teasing or being [inaudible 00:56:42]. They're not doing weird things. They're like, bring their wives and their kids over. It's a big mix of community.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

That's good.

Phillippe Coquet:

And I've actually met more gay women and bisexual women in the last year than I had the whole time I'd been here. Just through other situations and had reasons to be in contact with them and them be in contact with me, that's been a great addition because I always used to hang out with the lesbians. It hadn't been that way for a number of years, I like that.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Do you think that this strong sense of community in Asheville has started to draw more people to the city?

Phillippe Coquet:

Yeah. I think there's a bunch of things that have drawn so many people to the city. One is, getting out of where they are because a lot of people have realized through this whole thing that it was not healthy for them to be in such a stressful, dangerous situation in New York or LA, or Detroit, or even Atlanta 00:58:00or New Orleans. A lot of those people are coming here, running from just the stress. And then, also because this is such a healthy place to live. It's healthy, it's beautiful, it's relaxed. A lot of retired people come running even more, a lot of wealthy people moving here. But then there's also a lot of younger people moving here too, to get away from that stuff. I don't know if it's the community that actually impulsing that, but it doesn't hurt. I have four new friends who have just moved here in the last two months and community 00:59:00was on their list of reasons to move here, for sure.

Phillippe Coquet:

The gay community's kind of odd because in my experience, it's very spread out and there's no gayborhood. And usually, a town this big, there would be a gayborhood at some point but there really isn't here. My friends are all spread out, from people who live in Montford and north Asheville, near where I live, and people who live downtown. And then all the people who live in Canton and Silva and Barnardsville and Burnsville and all these different places that are a 01:00:00little far flung.

Phillippe Coquet:

And the nightlife scene, even before, was not really anything for the last 10 years from what I've heard. 10 years ago there was four or five clubs to go to and everybody went, it was fun, and then they closed down. O.Henry's is pretty much the only holdover and it's really not much to speak of. There's been some cute things that people have done there. But I don't know anybody, none of my gay friends go out regularly to bars or clubs, even before the COVID thing. There's a lot, I think, people who are in isolated couples or like yourself, 01:01:00they're by themselves somewhere.

Phillippe Coquet:

i do body work and both my partner and I have clients that we drive half an hour up to their little isolated bar to do a massage. It doesn't feel that much like a community, like other cities I've lived in.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

There's one big community and everyone's in it as opposed to lots of other communities. Just separate communities, living next to each other. I feel like it's better that way.

Phillippe Coquet:

Yeah, I do too.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

I feel like everyone can learn from people who are not like themselves. If you're all mixed together and you can interact with each other then it's better 01:02:00for everyone.

Phillippe Coquet:

I agree. Although, the couple of times I lived in a gayborhood, there's something pretty magical about that. I'm remembering, I lived in Silver Lake in Los Angeles for a while and it was a very artsy, gay neighborhood. But you would just know everybody and walking around to any place, you just felt really safe I guess. Safe and seen. Not that I don't feel safe here, because I do. If I can feel safe with the bears, I can feel safe with the non-bears. I don't know what 01:03:00it is. There's maybe a familial thing that's nice about living in a neighborhood where people are like minded. But it's fine, I traded it.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Do you intend to stay here or is this one stop on the road?

Phillippe Coquet:

Well, I've lived in a lot of different places and I always know when it's time to go, so it depends. Apparently, we have this big new aerospace company coming in that's owned my the biggest munitions company in the world. And I don't like 01:04:00that, that kind of thing. If that kind of thing continues to happen... I think people really are serious about doing it well here in Asheville, the growth, the boom. And so far they've been doing a pretty good job. If it gets too crazy, I might move somewhere else. My partner and I usually know when it's time, when the jig is up. Asheville's my favorite place I've ever lived and I've lived a lot of places. That said, if it isn't anymore, I may move to Portugal or Zimbabwe or something, I don't know.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Never know.

Phillippe Coquet:

Never know. I'm open to those, I like adventure.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Nice. Well, do you have any other stories or comments or feelings that you'd like to share?

Phillippe Coquet:

I would talk a little bit about the history of these mountains, the history of this place. It's funny, a lot of folks in Asheville who have been here for a number of years, maybe 10, 20 years, complain about it being a touristy place now and all the tourists and it's ruined. And I'm always like, "Well, you know Asheville has always been a tourist town, ever since it was created." It was a 01:06:00hub and a center back in the turn of the last century and it never stopped, it just got economically depressed and nobody came here for a while, in numbers of years. And then there was nobody here and so people formed their own communities.

Phillippe Coquet:

Then the tourists came back because everybody made it cute again and people started coming back. It's always been an arts town as well and has an amazing history with that. It's always been a gay-friendly town, mostly because it was an arts town and a healing town. A lot of healing arts people from a long time ago. Artisans, theater makers, dance, so many different things have been 01:07:00thriving here from the beginning. There were so many trains that used to come into Asheville from everywhere. People would take trains from New York right to Asheville, just because it was the coolest place to be and you came here if you needed to heal and if you wanted to be seen at the right parties and all different things. The Biltmore and the Grove Park Inn, all these places.

Phillippe Coquet:

There's something about these mountains that has always attracted this flow of all cultures and different energies. I think that's one of the reasons that gay community has always felt safe here and felt good because there's something about the vortex of this land, being in this bowl in the middle of the Smokies, 01:08:00it's a very gentle place. I just would hope that people in the gay and queer communities can really see that. Even if it feels like there's too many other people and they don't feel accepted, or whatever, or seen. I think they do. I think you can feel safe here. I think this has always been our home as queer people.

Phillippe Coquet:

Western North Carolina, I think it's always been our home so make it that way. I walk on the street with my partner and I also have a boyfriend, because we have 01:09:00a open relationship, whenever I'm with either one of them in the streets of Asheville, I'm holding their hands. I'm very much a believer that to be out and proud is really important so that we can continue to be out and proud. That we have to be in our daily life, showing up as ourselves. It's not like sticking it in people's faces, but just like, no, I'm going to be who I am in a big way so that people see me and they're reminded. When people come from the confederate flag waving mountains outside this city and-

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Where I'm living.

Phillippe Coquet:

Where you're living, exactly. But when they come here, they remember that Asheville is a place where queer people can walk down the street and feel safe. And they can see that and they can get whatever they get out of it, but at least they see it. Whether it makes them more accepting, or whether it makes them angry but not going to mess with people. That's why I'm happy to see more people of color in downtown Asheville. I think since the Black Lives Matter movement, since the taking down of the monuments, since a bunch of other things, I think Black folk who have lived here and in the surrounding communities now feel safe to be in the city. They're everywhere, it's like, wow. And the Mexican folks who 01:11:00are living in south Asheville, come downtown now. I've even seen a few Asian people.

Phillippe Coquet:

When I moved here I was like, "This is the Whitest place I've ever been and it's scary." It felt really scary at first. I'm very happy that more tourists and people that are coming, it's changing the demographic now.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Wonderful. Okay. Well, my last question is, do you know of any person who might be interested in contributing their story that we might be able to reach out to?

Phillippe Coquet:

I could tell four or five people probably. I can think of a bunch of people. 01:12:00People are all of a sudden coming through because I didn't realize you needed more people, I would have thought of that before. And I know people who've lived 01:13:00here for a long time too, in western North Carolina. Can I tell you them later?

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Yeah, you're more than welcome to forward them my information or refer them to the website where they can read about it and see some stories that other people have contributed and learn about what we're trying to do.

Phillippe Coquet:

Cool.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Awesome.

Phillippe Coquet:

That sounds great, I'd love to do that.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me and share your stories.

Phillippe Coquet:

Yeah. Well, thank you for being such a good listener and good question maker. 01:14:00Thank you. You seem like a very sweet person.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Try my best, not always successful.

Phillippe Coquet:

Well, none of us can always be successful, all of that. We all have our shadows. Do you live by yourself? That staircase is amazing behind you.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

Yeah.

Phillippe Coquet:

Did you make it?

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

No. I have no skills, unfortunately but I moved here from Alaska actually, last summer and my parents found this place for me. I agreed to move here without ever actually physically seeing it and it worked out.

Phillippe Coquet:

Cool. How long were you in Alaska?

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

I was there almost six years.

Phillippe Coquet:

Wow. Are you a geologist or something?

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

I'm in public health service. I work for the surgeon general and my purpose is to go to communities that have great health needs and to fill in those gaps that are in the heath care system.

Phillippe Coquet:

Wow. What a great service.

Tony Shelton, interviewer:

I worked for the Native Alaskan population, based in Nome and then traveled around the surrounding area. Now I'm here working for the Cherokee.

Phillippe Coquet:

How wonderful. That's so cool.