KEITH ST CLARE

VANGUARD MAGAZINE

Keith St Clare by Will Shellhorn, 2023.

I do not know where to start with Keith St Clare. He was in my life, heavily, and then he vanished. In 2019, I discovered Vanguard magazine. It was possibly from Vanguard the group, from which the magazine sprung (read here), Compton’s Cafeteria Riots, or the magazine itself. Starting with issue 3, Vanguard magazine became the brainchild of Keith St Clare. He labeled himself “The High Scribbler.”

A 1980 issue of The San Francisco Crusader described him as “a nice man who cares about real problems.”

At 17, Keith’s father steered him into the United States Air Force, where he served as an Aerospace Ground Power Repairman stationed in Okinawa, Japan. Four years later, in 1966, he returned to the U.S. and settled in San Francisco. Immersed in the spirit of the Summer of Love, Keith became the editor of Vanguard magazine—a publication dedicated to the marginalized, often rejected by mainstream gay assimilationists and the heterosexual world they sought to emulate. Vanguard provided a platform for persecuted youth, drug users, trans individuals, drag queens, and all gay men and women, fostering an ongoing dialogue for those whom society has often ignored or denied.

What made Keith’s work remarkable was the subject matter and his courage in publishing it under his current name and address. Keith was gay liberation pre gay liberation. Although he admits he was scared, he credits his military training with teaching him how to protect himself. Determined not to become a martyr, he pressed forward with his mission.

Keith’s contributions extended far beyond Vanguard, which he published until 1978. He went on to work in community theater, produce 186 episodes of the nationally distributed, youth-run TV show Young Ideas, and raise over 600 foster children.

Back to Keith and me. We spoke frequently during our collaboration, and I recorded almost all of our conversations—there were many. Besides being of historical importance, Vanguard was also beautiful. It would make a great coffee table book. Keith insisted he had complete copies at his home in Victoria, Texas. Regardless of the state of our relationship, this idea has always been on my mind.

Being in New York City, I could not get to his house to find—and to save—Vanguard. I wrote to the local college and found a volunteer to go to Keith’s. I did not believe the volunteer when he told me stories about Keith. Keith, as you will read, speaks in poetry. He has issues finding the noun and the verb. However, when he makes sense, his beautiful words sing.

The volunteer told me about Keith’s home, which contained hundreds of boxes. There was only space to walk through. Everything was a maze. The volunteer never did find Vanguard. They had gay, queen-on-queen drama. I tried to distantly make the partnership work.

I decided I really had to go to Victoria, Texas. In February of 2023, with a friend, I made the journey. What unfolded was a series of unfortunate events, including a death threat from a crazy Uber driver, a rat-ridden motel, hundreds of boxes, thousands of wasted dollars, a dead cat, and a rude, old man. The adventure unfurled like a kaleidoscope of a psychedelic journey. There is more to the story. We were there for four days. And there was no Vanguard.

When I was originally editing this interview, I wrote: “Keith’s phone has been shut off for close to a year. Six months ago, I called the local police department and asked them to check in on him. They called me back, saying he was home and wouldn’t open the door. Time heals all wounds, and I wish the best for Keith. He is important and paved the way for people like me. Below is interview number one out of 52 recordings.”

Now, a lot has changed. Keith St Clare is dead (March 25, 2025, at 6 AM CDT). About three weeks ago, I called the local police again. They told me Keith was in a facility in a neighboring town. I called him, and we talked. He was confused and talked about being in a shoe store. With some quick detective work, I found his two surviving sisters. This reunited the family, and they were able to spend time with him during the last few days of his life. RIP, Kieth St Clare. Thank you.

—August Bernadicou, Executive Director of The LGBTQ History Project

August Bernadicou: Where were you born?

Keith St Clare: In San Antonio, Texas.

August: Did you like growing up there?

Keith: I did. I didn't know anything else actually, and I was optimistic about it. I thought this life is what it is. There was not a lot of comparison going on at the time. There was not a lot of alternative making, not at least in the present. I did travel, but I traveled within, not necessarily without where I was much. When I traveled, I always had a reason for it. We left the family home because of a divorce. As far as I knew, my father suddenly divorced my mother to marry the housekeeper. I was seven at the time, so I was sentient. As a good student, I had followed my geography and some history. I liked historical movies when they came to the theater.

I thought of it as a Henry VIII thing. It's hard to believe your father is quite that mystical. I thought it was a double cross. Nonetheless, I did see him. I lived with his wife, so I could see how irascible and sometimes difficult she was to live with. He tried to keep a neutral tongue in his mouth whereas she was vitriolic. During the entire life of my mother, I never knew a day in which she did not refer to my father in some hedonistic, diabolical, criminal, or disgusting manner. At some point, the criminal becomes Robin Hood or, maybe, Al Capone, or maybe some good-bad figure. Anyway, he wasn't doing anything to anybody that I saw, and we did meet from time to time. There were visitations.

My sisters were younger. Melanie is two years younger, and my other sister, Laurelee is seven years younger. I thought of my father as the person who took me to see Disney's classical music movie with all the dancing elephants and the hippopotamus and the fox. Other ones, but especially that. What was that movie? For me, it was the time of the great, colorful, historically preposterous movies. I was just a small part of epic events because this all seemed so very important to me and to others. I got interested in cub scouting.

My mother became the Cub Scout leader. Suddenly, I was a den leader. I was a leader. Being a leader meant that you had to take responsibility for things. You had to do things and provide for your team, or in our case, our pack. You had to earn your respect, but it wasn't all that difficult because, after all, you had to do the things prescribed in the blue and yellow book. You had to read the book. Of course, there was lots of swearing, promising, learning what that meant, and so forth. I stayed in the Boy Scouts my entire time in San Antonio and missed out on it when 15 rolled around.

I moved from my mother's home to my father's home because I wanted the last three years of my adolescence, at least, to live with my father and pick up what I was supposed to have missed. I traveled with my grandfather finally when I was old enough to be useful and he worked for the Western Union. He traveled from place to place fixing the little deets and also all of the other equipment. He repaired it. He drove a big van with many bookshelves, cubbies, and drawers. We went down the roads at reasonable speeds like gypsies with all of these things.

I would hand him the tool or pull the thing. He would climb the pole, and we learned to fix things. He was also a leader because he could do something that people needed to have done and show them how to do it. Also, I started working when I was eight, selling little cards. Again, for the Cub Scouts, you would take them to the local charity lot and buy your Christmas tree, Christmas cards, greeting cards, or packets of seeds. I got bit by a dog once. Typical of Texas, this was taken in the context of an epic. We need to learn how to approach dogs and whether to run or not, what to do and what the consequences could be.

How to respect both the dog and the owner and understand that the dog was defending its territory unless the dog was sick. Maybe I cut across the grass, maybe I didn't listen to the dog when the dog was warning me with the little yips and yaps. Again, it was epic. When I went to school, I went to Catholic school, but that was interrupted because of poverty, so we lived instead on an apple orchard, in a house with no windows and no doors. There was a fire pit outside and also a water pump. Every day, we had to unlock the gate so these Mexicans could come in and pick from the orchard.

They worked in the orchard, and I worked sometimes with them. The women and children stayed at our house. Over the fire, they made food. I was about eight and a half, nine or something at the time. This was wonderful because Mexican women, lots of love, the children, lots of happiness and gaiety, and playing games with whatever we had. I learned pick-up-sticks and hopscotch, tag and things, and some Spanish. Then, as the day wore on, men came in and ate what the women had prepared outside. Every day was a picnic. On days that they didn't come, like Saturday, we would walk down to the school.

This whole process lasted only a year. We would walk down to the school, which we couldn't go to because it was Saturday. Because we couldn't be in school, we were on the land. She was having financial problems, so she took the job of being the lock and key and guard of all these trees that were full of fruit. Of course, we ate all the fruit we wanted and had all the water we wanted as long as we could pump it.

The weather was good during the part of the year we were there. We slept on the floor and lived on the charity of these immigrants, whom I came to know. They would bring the pan, forks, and other things. We would share our home, privy, water, and fire with them. We had a wonderful time. I thought that's what people did.

August: I read a quote about you that called you “a nice man and a man who cares about real problems.” What real problems do you care about?

Keith: Again, the epic real problem of my life was my mother and her hatred of my father, and my father not being there, and the support coming sometimes and not coming other times. The first problems I cared about were the real problems that affected me and those who loved me and who I loved. I decided that one of the things I needed to do was get a job. That's why when I got back to the city, and we got regular support payments from my father, I took these jobs because I made money and could contribute to the family.

We ended up living in a house that my grandparents, my grandfather in particular, bought across the street from his house. I had a new father figure and a new purpose in life. It was a job that I could do and it would immediately help those who I knew were in need. The salesman job then turned into the paper boy job. When I was old enough, it turned into a package boy job. I was buying my own clothes and also contributing to the family. My mother was reasonable about that, so I always—I didn't always, but I had a little money. I had my little allowance to buy comics and candy and little things at the five-and-ten, which really was a five-and-ten, walking home from school, which was about 10 blocks away.

That was in San Antonio. I'm not sure where the orchard was, but it was close to San Antonio, where they had orchards of apples, pears, and so forth. The women brought other foods that they had grown in their little gardens wherever they lived. It again was an opportunity to solve some real problems by sharing and caring, taking care of each other, earning money if you could, and so forth. Then I began to feel that I had a calling, that I had a vocation to become a priest, and I talked to my priest. They knew me well because I was an altar boy as well.

By then, I was in a Catholic school, and we were very poor, so we had a tremendous discount. Also, my mother worked at the annual Catholic fair, and I was the altar boy a lot. That was that. I stayed after school when she finally got a military job as a secretary. For me, problem solving was always that. The best problems to solve were the ones that would help others, and because I needed to survive as well, would also help me and those most immediate to me. It just seemed like the thing to do was to become a little bit like who I imagined was Dr. Zhivago. Also, in theater situations like It's a Wonderful Life, which I have seen, I don't know how many times I've run out of fingers and toes long ago.

August: What were some of the problems that you solved with Vanguard?

Keith: Then, as I grew up, Vanguard was, of course, after the Air Force and my time in the seminary studying for the priesthood. Vanguard was in the '60s and the '70s. It was the time when I lived in San Francisco. In San Francisco, the problem for me was that I thought there was something I could do. Here's another opportunity to do something unique. I don't know anybody doing what I am thinking of doing. Therefore I don't have to be competitive. I just have to be, in the case of a magazine, I have to be additive.

I have to apply my skills to include and not to exclude, because I need volunteers and I need resources. I went to work for Glide Church. Cecil Williams and Jan Mirikitani ran Glide Church, an interracial couple and the two most Christological religious people I have ever met and that I became close to. When I went to San Francisco after the military, I decided it was the most beautiful city I'd ever seen, and I wanted to live there, so I did. Anyway, I moved to Hunter's Point, a very rough neighborhood, but I never had any problems and lived in a little house, and worked for Glide Church all day.

Again, I was learning the methodology of solving problems by making the world, at least your corner of it, and the future, at least as much as you could—whatever the mission was, I learned how to lead by doing something that was, as far as possible, unique and special and had far-reaching consequences, but that you could also make enough money to survive the hours or minutes of the day that you had for your very self, like meals and sleeping. My patron saint was still St Anthony and Father Damien of the Lepers of Molokai. Both of them are sexual in the mystic and grand view, and yet also very non-physical in terms of sex as a pleasure pursuit for yourself alone.

I decided that Vanguard was also going to be a leader in a way. I used to go to the library a lot, and I would ask for books on the subject of homosexuality, but also books written by Sholem Aleichem, who is the intellectual precursor of authors that used to tell the stories about the chickens and the other animals in the barnyard, and so forth. He was a tale-teller. His classic tales became the moral tales of other authors in other countries. Sholem Aleichem was a name, of course, that he took as his own. I went to the library and got to know the librarian well.

Yet that was back in boyhood when the idea of writing began to occur to me, that you could write things, and there they were. They didn't look like you, they didn't sound like you, they were not you, but they were permanent. What can you do with these writings? I used to write what I later came to know were written philosophy or written opinion papers and things like that whenever I had the opportunity in grammar school and then in high school. In high school, I got to write for one of my school jobs, which was setting up for assemblies. I used to write routines and jokes that I would use as a bumbling technician coming out on the stage.

Students are coming in, lots of noise and stuff. I'd make a fool of myself and then speak into the microphone, thinking it was off. I'd do things like make it squeal and things like that. These were prepared acts, which the principal liked. Of course, I made fun of him. I wrote critiques and jokes about that. Just a little. These were very short performances. I couldn't sustain them for five minutes so for less than that. They were published because everyone heard them, but no one ever read my scripts. I did that in my last year of school in San Antonio before I moved to New Braunfels.

I entered the theater in New Braunfels but couldn't act. I could only read. I could help the actors but couldn't perform because I lived on my father's ranch. I could go to the performance, and I learned makeup. I learned that you could read a book, the book was called Stage Makeup by Gregory Corson. It's still a masterpiece. I learned that you could read a book, and you could master a craft. I read that book several times, and I got the materials from the school, through the school. The first time I ever did makeup was the dress rehearsal for a play called Where Were You on January the 22nd.

It was a crime drama. It was a courtroom drama that would end when the audience jury decided whether the person was guilty or innocent or that they were deadlocked. We never did that one, but we did this drama in the city hall courtroom in New Braunfels. Again, I learned that you could write something that could go this way or that way. It could be very real, even if it was actually just play acting, but it would have consequences. The people in this play, the accused, are usually either guilty or innocent and are sent to death, which has great consequences.

I would only have done that if it had been theater. After the military, in which I did a lot of writing and a lot of reading of the realists and publications from Greenwich Village, which helped me work my way through the Vietnam War, was I complicit? Was I a victim? Was I a participant? What was I? My chosen opportunity to serve in the military was not to fight; it was to fix. As in the television show M*A*S*H, I became Radar. The radar equipment, that was the patient for me. I learned every single thing I could about the equipment.

Keith St Clare, 1967.

I traveled in the Air Force in C-130s, packed with equipment, and these big, rolling metal cabinets full of books, books about the equipment, wonderful, wonderful books, with exploded views and all the parts and all the things and how to do it, and how to operate, and everything like that. All I had to do was read volumes and volumes. I could repair anything. I could order the parts, and then I set up a system of keeping track of where all of the equipment went so that if I needed a part, I could find it, or I could take a part from something that was in the dump yard, the depot dump, a part from that, and then put that on the defective piece of equipment, but then keep ordering for the things that were in the dump yard.

Eventually everything would go into use and then be destroyed or be lost, or whatever, but replaced. It was the military. I found there was some good in this because I moved up in rank, almost to sergeant, but I refused the sergeant. I could be rewarded for my writing, compositions, and organization of where things were, what was needed, and how to keep track of it. After the Air Force, I went to San Francisco and wound up first in Hunter's Point. It was so far away, so I took—instead, I went to Haight-Ashbury, not completely knowledgeable of what was going on, but it was the '60s.

I went there and rented a six-room flat in a corner building with a view of the city. The sub-scene on the second floor for $400 a month. At about the same time, I was in my next phase of Glide Church. Cecil shared his vision with me and others that he wanted to put into the center city a place for the homeless and the jobless, and the addict, and all that sort of thing, and also programs of feeding and educating, and so forth. When I met him, he was just a very good preacher and a person I had not seen in life that was more Christological.

Most of Christ's philosophy is about what to do, and there's also a lot of personal sacrifice. It's also realistic in that here are loaves or fishes to eat, and so all that. I took that in the practical context but out of the literal. The literal, I thought, was hogwash, but that lesson was mystical. Also, Christ was intolerant of bigotry, and I'm better than you, and you have to be condemned and stuff like that, except he didn't like the people who were cheating in the temple yard. That's always bothered me. He didn't do much to reconnoiter and help them; he just threw them out.

I thought that was not quite fair, and that's my issue with Jesus as a philosopher. When I got to Haight-Ashbury, I met the Communication Company. That was a free service. A person could write something, or type something on their typewriters, or draw something, and give it to them. If they liked it, they would print 10 copies or 50 copies or 100 copies. They kept track. These pages were then distributed. Often, they were distributed, and then they went away. The only person with a collection of them was the Communication Company, which I thought was good.

That is talking to the choir, isn't it? Because most of them were pretty rebellious and caustic, they had language and all that stuff. They were using the cheapest forms of print that they could, which usually was the copier at the Glide Church. At Glide Church, they were monitoring them, seeing how people were concerned about, because here you have a document. Cecil would talk about it. Much of the Haight-Ashbury would go downtown on Sundays, and go and hear him talk about it and hold it up.

There was this thought, and this thought, I thought, this is terrific. I want to be part of this, but I think I do want to have a wider audience and stuff like that. At last, I got my severance from the military while I was living mostly hand-to-mouth in Haight-Ashbury. Glide was also my breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was also my clothing because free clothing was available there and through the Diggers, which was—the Diggers were all about free. Free was free. They found a place, actually, that was given to them for free. It was an abandoned store. They took things in as long as they didn't have to pay for them and just gave them out of the free store.

They had bulletin boards of things you could do for free and places where you could get stuff for free. I thought, this is another wonderful concept. The Diggers had breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but they also provided an awful lot. It's extremely Christological, without the burden of all that don't do this and don't do that. The Diggers were also—they were sexual, but they were not straight or gay or bi. They just were. So were the Angels of Light and the Cockettes that happened to hang around the Diggers as well because the Cockettes were not making any money to speak of, and neither were the Angels of Light.

They were beautiful. The shows, of course, were free. This was an epic moment, but what can I do? I'm not a butterfly. I can't do the beauty of the Cockettes. I'm theatrical, so I can do things for them. I can do the lighting and find things, but I don't have the beauty of these butterflies, and I don't have the team building to make all this free stuff happen here. There's no reason to compete with them. For heaven's sake, that would be ridiculous.

August: You were involved with the Cockettes?

Keith: I was an audience. I knew them. From time to time, as I think anybody else who wanted to, went and slept for a while or ate and read the other stuff coming out from the Cockettes as a commune. They also did a publication, and the communication was a communication that went with things that some of these things were delivered, because they would get lots and lots of food from time to time. They would have access. Somebody would have a truck or a car, and they would go down to the San Francisco depot of food, get meat, green stuff, all that sort of stuff.

That zone was where all these things were sold and distributed everywhere. At the end of the long morning, they still have bunches and bunches of food, but it's a little smashed, broken, crushed, old, or something. Here, take this stuff, take this stuff, otherwise, we have to cart it to the dump, and so forth. They would do that. They would bring it, take it to the Haight-Ashbury and other places, but the Haight-Ashbury is where I was, and distribute it in the park, the Panhandle Park. I lived on one side of the Panhandle Park, and Haight, near the corner of Ashbury and Clayton.

Just across the park was Haight and Ashbury. I was existing within this community, earning just enough money as the so-called manager in a two-person café called the Haight-Ashbury Café. Half of this café was the doughnut shop. The Chinese would make doughnuts. That was the concession of the owners of the store. The other store was mostly a 24-hour cafe. It was a small restaurant with tables, chairs, and books. We could make what is typically made. A menu was up on the wall. We didn't have any menus to pass around. It's inexpensive.

We made essentially hamburgers and hotdogs, and other things. When the doughnuts were ready, then we had doughnuts to sell. I took the night shift because I liked it, and it gave me some daytime, and I held on to that job for a while, especially when the tide turned, and my money came in from my GI bill. My GI bill gave me the power to enroll at City College, and suddenly I had money. I had money to burn because City College costs just a few hundred dollars a semester to take all the classes you wanted.

The severance was a big chunk of money. It made it possible for me to buy my press, the Gestetner. The Gestetner was a machine system that allowed you to take a black-and-white copy and put it over a drum. Then, another drum had a stencil, and it allowed you to transfer the printed copy to the stencil. You had essentially a strip of paper and plastic that you could use and put on a Gestetner printer, and again a drum, and you could print hundreds or thousands of copies. Because you could do this over and over again, it was a printing shop, which I set up in the basement of my flat.

I thought, this is a wonderful thing. I have found what I can do: accept writing and authors from the Diggers and the Communication Company, and I can help them. For a while, I became the Communications Company printer. Therefore, I can also reach the public and contain them. Most of them will never know where I live, they'll just know where I work in the community. I'll have my little desk there so I can take it in, but I can filter what I want and suggest what I want, and authors will create it, and I don't need very much. I can also write and publish.

What is going to be my subject and so forth? Through this mix, this is where Vanguard evolved. I wanted stuff to be different from the publications of the day. There was a signature publication of the day during that part of the late '60s and '70s. It was a beautiful newspaper. It was a newspaper. It had thousands and thousands of copies, and a staff and a floor. It was on Haight Street, but it was an expensive. I thought, that line of action, that's taken. They're the best. There's no reason I have to compete with the best. If anything, I want to contribute to the best.

I wrote a little bit about it. I also created a couple of cartoons for it. Not many. One of my cartoons—what is this thing called? I don’t remember, but you'll find it in your research of Haight-Ashbury Times, it's this wonderful publication. One of my cartoons was very simple. It was just a—it was two, maybe three cubes of sugar, and it had this—each of the cube of sugar had a little tail. At the end of the tail, it had an electric plug. That was a cartoon of how LSD was distributed at the time. You took the cube of sugar and ate it, and then you were turned on.

I thought that was cute. They published this simple little cartoon, and that was that. There were people to interview. I was able to interview Doctor—what's his name? The LSD doctor. Also, Gregory Corso, and also Allen Ginsberg, and someone who—I think his name was Christian Marty. There were also free opportunities to do yoga, listen to philosophers, and stuff like that. I didn’t make much in terms of writing from these people, because I was in the—I was not necessarily a reporter. This wonderful newspaper did the reporting.

There's no reason to compete with that. Where is my voice in all these? What was not happening in this voice, in this chorus of artists and writers, and publishers, and giving awards, and philosophers, and social forms of living this, there wasn’t much of a minority voice regarding gay liberation. Gay liberation itself in the hippy world was just not an issue. If you are, you are. If you're not, you're not. If you're not, maybe you will. If you are, maybe you'll try the other side too. It was moot, very individual, and not particularly political. The day's political issues dealt with the real struggles of getting a job.

Freedom of expression anywhere other than Haight-Ashbury, not getting busted for drugs, and getting a place to live. Those were the big issues of the day. I had something to say about that, but it was already being said very well, so I thought, well—Vanguard evolved as a journal. I learned about journals in college, I learned about journals in high school, and I learned about journals in the Air Force. I thought, that's where my writing will go. I think it will go into Vanguard, and I will make it something different: a primarily homosexual magazine in which there are very few pictures, if any, of homosexuals.

Certainly, nothing that is in there specifically as erotic literature, but rather, let's try to put a bit of an intellectual spin on the content to the best of my ability. That's what I focused on, and I included bisexuality as a form of specialized sexuality, almost like homosexuality. It's just that the genitals are a little different, but it was really sexuality between two people who were different. Maybe half and half of the time, it was almost sexuality and half of the time, it wasn't. A lot of the time, it was all the genders at the same time, in the same platform. What's the difference? What's the issue?

If you don't understand it, then you understand it perfectly because it's not there for you to understand. It's a participant practice. You're either in, or you're out, or you're in and out, or you're out and in. So what? The evolution of Vanguard was around that, and I put out several issues. I put them out whenever I wanted to and whenever I had help to do it. I collected my inspiration, and my help, and my financial backing from the people of the day, from the founder of the Mattachine Society and from the founder of ONE and SIR on 6th Street.

Vanguard magazine, 1967.

They were good for paper and sometimes a little money, a little grant. They were a good place to distribute, and to talk about things, and to debate on how this might work. They were good for the occasional retreat. I went to Los Angeles a couple of times and met the folks down there. They paid my way, and they put me up. There was a little sleeping together going on, and that was very tender, that was very appropriate—some nice houses, memorable moments, and still looking for the voice. One issue of Vanguard was an exhaustive experience and experiment at City College.

In '69, I proposed to the Theater Department and the Art Department, which was unified, that I would like to do some experiences for the student population. It was a sociological event, and we would ask them to tell us their attitude towards certain things. Then we would expose them to an experience that might cause them to revise because it would use a different modality. Issues like racism, homophobia, sexism, and women’s rights, for example, were explored through elaborate stage settings employing scrims, platforms, slide projections, movie projections, and strategic lighting. There aren’t words to describe how complicated and elaborate the production turned out to be. It became a three-day experience that went beyond all expectations and even my own imagination. The whole thing climaxed on the third day.

By the end, people were crying. When I remember it, it brings me to tears now. They were crying, and they were hugging, and they were touching each other, and they were reaching out. Some of them knew each other, and some of them, I don't think they did. Some of them were Black, and some of them were White. Sometimes you couldn't be quite sure who or what that person was because there were all these colors in the environment, crossing the stage, which then focused on the white that was behind the scrim that was transparent or caught by a scrim that was rearview. You get the picture, right?

August: Yes. How old were you?

Keith: Let's see. That was in '69. I was born in '45. Do the math.

August: When you were printing Vanguard, you were printing it on Clayton Street, but it says a “Tenderloin Magazine.”

Keith: Right. Glide Church was at the edge of the Tenderloin. The Tenderloin was essentially low on the cityscape, and Glide was high. It was a little higher. Everything in San Francisco is lower and higher. Everything is low and high because it's a hilly place. It wasn't much higher, but it's on the high end of the Tenderloin. The Tenderloin is low, and even lower is South of Market, which is 6th, and to some degree, 7th Street and across the street from the Tenderloin. Do you know the topography?

August: I grew up in Northern California and went to USF for college.

Keith: Wonderful. I lived next to USF and went to USF every chance I got to use the library without authority and anything else that I could do without authority where I wasn't a pain, or illegal, or whatever it is. I just couldn't afford it. I went to church, but not so much for the reason thing, nor for the basic stuff, but for the philosophy. Anyway, Glide, right in the middle of the Tenderloin, rented a loft above the Gaiety Theatre right in the middle of the Tenderloin, not very far from Compton's and the other nightly places that persons on the edge, transsexuals, drag queens, hair fairies would go to these places.

Of course, the Tenderloin was a pickup intersection, especially two or three of the intersections. There were a couple of gay theaters that showed gay movies, which I went to to see what all this was about. These were pickup joints, and also they were participant joints, which I avoided because I didn't like the thought of picking up diseases. I'm not a nun. This place over the Gaiety Theatre had gone by a couple of names, but it was a safe place where people could come up the stairs to use the bathroom for bathroom reasons. "You've been in there long enough." "Okay. Oh, fine." "I'm just saying there are other people." "Okay. Fine. Fine."

There were no issues with that. Had lots of windows and tables and chairs, and a little, not exactly, a kitchen, but like a little kitchenette place. There had been some sort of stove thing going on and cooking there, but we had a few things that we could plug in—mainly coffee pots. Then we also had a couple of places where we could put things like pastries. It was a coffee shop that we couldn't smoke in. Nobody could smoke in there because that was against the law. After all, there was a theater directly below you. That was the Gaiety Theatre.

August: Is that the one right before Market Street that's still there?

Keith: Yes.

August: Right next to a place called Aunt Charlie's?

Keith: I think so. There was a gay bar in the same block and a gay bar at the corner. I haven't been there in decades. There it was. It was a job. I could go there and open it up, and make the coffee, and sell the donuts, or cookies, or whatever we had, whatever they gave us, whatever Glide got or somebody else got. There were volunteers. For some reason, some of the board members of Glide Church took an interest in it. One of them in particular, whose name I remember every once in a while—she was a grandmotherly type.

She was a grandmotherly influence and person there. She was a motherly influence. She was very welcoming. She had the kind of aura that when she comes toward you, and shakes your hand and says, "Hello, honey," you know you've been honeyed. You have been helloed.

You've been mothered. You have just met a person who thinks of you as you. That's the person you can go to. Just wonderful. As I recall, there were a few of these board members. It was actually the second coffee shop that Glide rented out. In no time, I was the manager. It was a place where I would spend my evenings. Usually, it was not open during the day much, Weekends occasionally, yes. People came from the Tenderloin. I was doing the Vanguard at the time.

August: How many copies were you printing?

Keith: As much paper as I could get. Of course, I would reprint copies, but note taking and accounting for all of this, I didn't do. I just printed as many as I could in as many colors as I could with as much paper as I could get. Stencils. The stencils worked on the Gestetner. The Gestetner was—I could put my entire operation in a taxi or less. I would have the press, and I would have the scanner, and all the paper, and supplies, and the saddle stapler, which I still have two of and staples, and I'm in print. That was it. You could do it in a rowboat, but you couldn't collate in a rowboat.

I liked the job in addition because I could bring boxes of the publication and collate it. There was a, not a competitor, but for lack of a better word, there was a competitor publication there as well. It was called The Needle. I think there are not as many copies of The Needle because the editor wanted to do a very professional-looking thing. It costs profit money to have it printed, but it was lovely. I've forgotten the name of who did it, but I think his last name was Marat or something like that. I've seen the name, and every once in a while, I see it around.

He was one of the founders. The Needle was a publication essentially from the point of view of addicts and those who've recovered and those who have discovered that they don't want to recover. They want to control their addiction. They're into needles or other things like that. I wasn't into needles, so I didn't have much to do with that population or the process.

August: Was it gay as well?

Keith: It was gay because it was gay people that were primarily doing it. Also, because a lot of gay people were doing needles. I'm a gay person who has never done a needle, although I take needles every day. I'm looking at my needle right now because also, now I'm a diabetic, so I take insulin, but I've never taken a drug that involved a needle. I just couldn't see myself doing that. It looked to me like, in some ways, I identified with Joseph and his coat of many colors. From time to time, I felt that my brother human beings were beating me to death and throwing me down the well.

I didn't want to be thrown down the well and didn't want to jump down the well. Taking needle drugs and hard drugs to me was jumping down the well. I would be wasting my coat of many colors and losing contact with myself, my human family. I just didn't want to be an addict. I didn't mind being around addicts, or people who used needles, or people who were drag queens, or hair fairies, or prostitutes. I didn't mind any of these people. These were people. These were Christ's people. These were God's people.

These were people who were in touch with what they were in touch with, and it had consumed them, or it had involved them, or they did it for fun, or they did it sometimes. I don't know. I'm not a puppet master, and I don't like puppet shows. I'm a participant. I'm an observer. I'm a participant observer as a sociologist. That is my role as a sociologist, the participant observer. My sociology professor at City College identified me as that, and nurtured, and encouraged, and tolerated me as that. He was my counselor. I have his name in my annals somewhere. It didn't matter. It was his spirit, and his enthusiasm, and his encouragement that helped me during that little chunk of time.

August: Did anyone in Vanguard use a fake name? You changed your name, but you listed your public address and phone number?

Keith: I didn't. Instead of editor or publisher, I called myself the High Scribbler. It didn't seem logical to me or anybody else I recall to use a fake name. That would be—why are you doing that? Why are you ashamed of this or that? I had to get over my shame. Really, after the military, I had to get over my shame. Even in the military, I didn't have shame, as long as I was not going to be beaten up. Eventually, of course, I was beaten up. You know that. I did tell you I was beaten up, right?

August: No.

Keith: Oh, that's another story. It's the final military story. It was a good move. It has given me my retirement income.

August: Who was Doug Patrick?

Keith: Who?

August: Doug Patrick.

Keith: Where is he in your references?

August: In Vanguard. He signed some things as a president.

Keith: Oh, could be, yes. Doug Patrick. Well, he's just one of those people who were volunteers and a contributor, a supporter, a helper, an intelligent person, and who, as I recall, had something to do with Glide. I had always tried to keep somebody involved from Glide. Sometimes they were gay and sometimes they were not. Adrian Ravarour was also involved in Glide. He was a very good dancer and became a good friend. He was from Glide. He was very active at Glide where he hosted meetings for Vanguard, the activist group. He was definitely out. He didn't take two steps in a room, and someone did not know that this guy was not only gay, he was very gay. Another character was Reverend Ray Broshears, who was a minister in the Universal Life Church. We also had that in common. Actually, he ordained me after a few years of knowing each other.

August: There were a few other churches that advertised in Vanguard too, I noticed.

Keith: Yes, there were.

August: Can you talk about the gay churches besides Glide, the ones that would advertise in Vanguard even if they were’t explicitly gay?

Keith: Yes, well, if you were in Glide and you were gay, that's where you were. If you weren't gay, but you were in Glide, then you were unofficially gay. If you ever want to be, or if you ever were, or you might as well be, and we don't care. It was that way. You learned what your pronouns meant in this situation, and sometimes they didn't mean anything. They meant something different from what they were supposed to have meant. You quickly learned that sexism just wasn't going to work here. That's that.

Also, racism wasn't going to work here, and ageism wasn't going to work here. You just had to get over it if you had it, and if you didn't have it, you probably did have it anyway. We'll keep learning more and more about it, and we'll just try to get better and better and better. Yes, there were usually people, there was usually someone involved at Glide who was my other go-to person. Cecil was the main go-to person, but he was very busy, and so was Jan.

August: Yes. I want to interview them.

Keith: It may be the physical way you're approaching it. If you're doing it through phone calls and the internet, I think they're very distracted by their current and ongoing projects. Both of them, in the process of their projects, have handled a tremendous amount of money and put it to very good use. Money entangles your time in so many things. All sorts of banking and investing and accounting, and so forth, as well, because of my Young Ideas and years of experience raising foster kids, primarily kids who were discarded at age 14 or 15. I raised 600 and lived with 600 foster kids during the 38 years I was in San Francisco.

The final 18 years, especially the last eight years, were financially very successful. $36,000 a month to take care of six kids, but they were extraordinarily challenged kids, and my job was to keep them alive and also to help them through school. They were very special kids, and we went to very special places, including Mexico and Canada and Disneyland and Disney World and Washington and New York and Chicago and Texas, and all that sort of stuff. I spent lots and lots of money on them, and that's what I did with the money. I spent it on them, and that's what Jan and Cecil do. They make lots and lots of money, but they spend it on the people that they say they're going to help.

Once again, it's a very Christological application. I know of no instance in which any of them have ever been accused of putting a project or people aside so that they could afford a Mercedes. I never had a Mercedes. I never wanted one. I thought it would be a corruption of the money if I were to buy such a thing, a Mercedes with foster kid money. How could I drive that? How could I do it? I couldn't.

They're probably very busy with mundane things. If you went there, on the other hand, and they could look in your eyes, see your face, and question you about your ethics, morals, and motivations, then I think you would succeed. You couldn't fail. Being a stamp and an envelope or a name on a website or a printed thing is very different. They're very tangible.

August: Yes, that makes sense. I wish I could be in San Francisco thinking about it today. I think it was the first issue of Vanguard. You had your mission statement, and it said Vanguard is determined to change these conditions through organization and action. Can you speak to organization and action?

Keith: Between my early Vanguard days and these days, I've been in the hospital several times due to this or that accident, or this or that disease. I'm fortunate because of the military to have extremely good insurance and professional care available to me. Still, I've had several near-death experiences that usually relate to the good things I'm trying to do. The good thing I'm trying to do is take the kids on a bus from Las Vegas to San Francisco. The bad thing that happens is that the bus driver has been drinking and passes out and crosses four lanes of traffic and hits a bunch of trees, which saved our lives, by the way, and turns the bus over and kills four people, one of them unborn.

August: As long as you would like to speak, I'm here to record it.

Keith: Wonderful. I consider this a magnificent gift to have this opportunity, and I look forward to reading whatever it is you publish. I haven't cock-a-doodled about it, but if anybody chose to listen, I'd say I feel so glad and honored if somebody thinks that what I did, tried to do, and the people who I had some influence on did, and the people who influenced me, what they did. I mean I'm just, I'm really quite honored by all this.

August: Yes, you obviously sound very sharp, and these are detailed stories. Is there anything you want to speak about that I could do research about?

Keith: You brought up a couple of names, and I look forward to reading and hearing other names. Also, there was a very important meeting of the editor of One, the editor of Mattachine and SIR and a couple of others in Los Angeles. That was sometime in the early '70s, as I recall. I was invited to that, and I went and stayed at someone's home. Not one of the named editors, but that meeting, and what's his name, Harry and the other one, the two, Harry and—these two lovers were out, and as old lovers, they went on to found these conceptual retreats, annual retreats. John Burnside. John Burnside was one of them. He was younger. John Burnside and Harry Hay. Do you know them?

August: Yes, of course.

Keith: Well, they're also pivotal individuals, and I hope that you've interviewed them, but those two phenomenal people gave to me, in our times together, the greatest sense of being normal and essential for the human and on the human planet. They were so loving and casual. I never had the opportunity or found the time or was in the right place at the right time to go to one of their events, but I talked to them about it, and other people who went there, and during the early days of the Gay Freedom Day marches, and picked up their literature and things. To me, they're another inspirational element.

There is something about the gay movement that brings it together with other movements that had their times of exclusion, and cruelty, and rejection, and humiliation, and confinement. These two seemed to escape that because you just couldn't arrest them for what they do, even though what they do is public nudity and stuff like that and so forth, although you sign on for it, but it just was so pure. I really admired those two, and when I was with them, well, many of the movements have had persons who were quite essentially spiritual in all the instances, and most of them had feet of clay.

We know that Gandhi had his faults, and we know that Christ had his doubts, and we know that some of these figures are mythical, and some of them are physical. We know, of course, that, what's his name, the Black founder, the Black leader, we celebrate his birthday on the 15th of January, Martin Luther King had his flaws. You find yourself looking back on your life, and you think, I was going through this Gandhi period. I wasn't Gandhi, I'm not as great as Gandhi, but I was going through these periods, those were my MLK weaknesses. Those are my Christological doubts.

It's easier to look across the room and see people like John Burnside and Harry Hay and say that the Apostle John and the other one is a Christ figure because they're in it for the spirituality, not the religiosity. Of course, spirituality doesn't have to have anything at all to do with religion. I understand you published quite a lot or a lot of your work is available, and I look forward to reading about these other epic men and women I knew.

Not all these figures that I'm thinking of as epic are necessarily gay. What is he now? He's now governor, or he's lieutenant governor, or something. Of course, he was mayor for a while. Yes, when he was mayor of San Francisco, and he was the one that okayed the gay marriage, he was the first gay marriage-ing mayor. Yes. What's his name?

August: Gavin Newsom.

Keith: Yes, Gavin Newsom. I met him and spent some time with him and his story about that night in some governor's meeting and then realized that he and only he had the opportunity to start marrying people because he's the mayor of a city and a county. So then he called up Phyllis and Del, which would be the first. That's a wonderful story. It's a wonderful time. These are chapters of, the ones I'm thinking of, these are chapters of giants.

August: That could be a possible title. Thank you for that.

Keith: Oh, and not only gay giants about gay rights, which are attached to other rights. There's nothing in gay rights that makes Black rights wrong. There's nothing in gay rights that puts down women's rights. In fact, they're all built of the same thing. It's a composition in colors and in heights and depths and stuff like that, but you have to approach the collage in darkness, and you can feel the differences between these movements. As the lights come up and you see the difference, you say, that's not what I felt, and what I felt is more true than what I'm seeing. I'm seeing skin colors and genitalia, that's not what I felt. When I was blind, I saw more than when I see now.

The differences, just the differences, were made to seem as if there were differences, but there weren't differences, it was just the touch. When you touched it, you saw the similarities. The history of blood is somewhat like that. It's not the difference that you see, it's the commonalities that make the blood system a great equalizer. Obama has got to be part of gay rights. He's a terrific gay right stanchion. I personally think he walks on water, but he has flaws somewhere. I don't know what they are, but—

August: What do you think your biggest flaw is? Last question.

Keith: My biggest problem is probably procrastination. I've fought that all my life and can't do it alone. I've got someone to work me through or with it, and so forth, so that's that. I live in a personal universe of procrastination, but, still, I've managed to get a lot done.

August: Yes, and we're, like I mentioned, one-fifth of the way through, so a lot more to talk about. I'll save those questions for next time. Something for you to think about. What day is best for you?

Keith: Well, this week I have mostly insurance and medical stuff to tidy up—my episode with dengue fever. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I have day appointments.

August: I have work untill the evening.

Keith: Then the only time I can speak to the health officials in the Philippines is in the evening, after midnight because of the time difference. You know that they're 24 and something or 12 and something, 13, I think is what it is. It's tomorrow in the Philippines, it's Monday, and so I have to talk to them after midnight but my evenings are good all week. Does that work for you?

August: Yes. How is Wednesday evening?

Keith: Oh, Wednesday evening would be fine.

August: Okay. Well, actually I take that back because I'm three hours ahead or two, only one hour ahead. My bad. Sorry. How would six o'clock be on Wednesday?

Keith: Six o'clock on Wednesday would be supreme.

August: Perfect.

Keith: By that time, the VA clinic is closed, my personal doctor is closed, and my insurance company is called Generali, and they are worldwide and they're 24/7. I've never met such a company that is so interlocking. They call me from Finland and somebody else who is also here in Germany. They have this computer thing. Somebody will call me from Finland and will go over something and this, this, or that needs to be done, and then someone from Germany will call me and pick up the conversation as if they are in the next desk over. That's the way it is.

August: That's crazy.

Keith: It is. It's very global. I haven't had that kind of personal experience of globalization before, and it's lovely. I have a lot of talking to do with them because I've got to collect all these records to get reimbursed for this hospitalization. My budget took a $2,500 hit, and that's substantial. Although I'm not insolvent, and I did try to plan, and then the other thing when you ever want to hear it, being beaten, raped, injured, and threatened with death, and escaping gave me an income, as it turned out, thanks to Obama. When, at last, being sexually and physically abused because you're gay became a military crime that they would do anything about.

August: Wow. Yes, if you don't mind talking about that, I'd be very appreciative. I understand a lot of these things are probably tough to talk about.

Keith: It is. I'm not the only sexual abuse survivor, and certainly not the only gay sexual abuse survivor, but thanks to Obama, there's a little pot of gold. There's also a bit of forgiveness and acceptance at the end of this rainbow. There's a happy ending to the humiliating first 12 chapters of a 13-chapter book. Yes, it did make a fork in the road. Either I would go down the path of bitterness and self-destruction, and all sorts of bad things, or I would take it as a learning experience.

August: Yes, and make a difference like you did. That's why we're talking.

Keith: I grew to feel in talking to other survivors. They were very fortunate, and mine was not the worst. It was my worst, but it wasn't the worst. Whenever you're ready, add it to your list. ​

LISTEN TO KEITH ST CLARE IN THE QUEERCORE PODCAST