Greetings from South Africa

Zooming in the Time of Covid in our new backyard

You may have noticed just how quiet I have been here on my website. Other than posting upcoming events, I have made few contributions to the site. I have been extra busy since September 202o after one big event set in motion a bunch of other events. And it is all good stuff (which is nice to hear no doubt in a year of many difficult times for most of us.)

The short version: My husband, Glen, received a Fulbright Fellowship to help develop a special creative writing program for high school students in a township outside of Pretoria, South Africa. Because of Covid this was postponed from June 2020 to the fall to January 2021 and now June 2021.

The VIEW!

We began to plan the move, and decided to put our house of 10 years up for sale. We lived in an area where it could take years to sell a house. Well Covid changes everything. It sold within two days. I joke how we accidentally sold our house.

The fall was filled with packing up the place and decision making for our next steps. After the closing, we rented a house across the street from my childhood home in Lake Huntington, NY. We were there all of November and December, close to my sister, cousins, and very good friends. With the help of an outdoor fire pit, we regularly hosted safe social gatherings even in the bitter cold.

Even though the Fulbright was postponed, we figured we could just go to South Africa and wait it out while also getting settled. Glen’s parents live in the Northeast of the country, so Glen found a wonderful long-term AirBnB in Waterval Boven, in the mountains in Mpumalanga Province. The area is known for its hills with spectacular views. Also there are ancient stone circle ruins nearby and many farms with wonderful fresh produce.

After going through many many hoops, we arrived in South Africa on January 9th. Now I maintain my base here as I produce radio programs and podcasts and even present virtual on-line workshops, consultations, and performances.

Now that we are settled in place, I will post more regularly. I am very excited about the recent podcast episodes I have produced with some pretty amazing guests and content.

I have included photos from my new world.

Glen perched on high looking at one of the many waterfalls in the region.

A story about bread and family: Tiny Nipples

My personal podcast, Bubble&Squeak, regularly gets weird. Just the titles suggest weirdness: Anal Thermometer, Jerk Demons, and Hairless Gerbils are each two word titles taken from something said in the podcast. My latest show though takes a tender turn, even if the title doesn’t immediately reflect that tenderness.

Ep 12 Tiny Nipples comes in three parts

Part one A story from the Toscano family archive: Grandma Toscano and the veneration of St. Joseph with Bread

Part two Elizabeth Jeremiah is alone during the Coronavirus lock down. Margery Kempe by Robert Glück is a book about a 15th Century holy woman opens Pandora’s box to deeper, passionate, sensual encounter with the divine.

Part three a sound slice from pre-Coronavirus Madrid, Spain.

Bubble&Squeak by Peterson Toscano · Tiny Nipples

Thanks to Pavel Nekoranec for making this photo available freely on @unsplash

Yes, we have no bananas! 17 years of Homo No Mo

Seventeen. That number is pretty significant in my life.

I was born on February 17th at 17:20
I spent 17 years trapped in a foolish and dangerous quest to de-gay myself through conversion therapy.
After I finally came out, I created a comedy, Doin’ Time in the Homo No Halfway House. I premiered the play on February 17th, 2003 at Holy Trinity Church in Memphis, TN
Yesterday marks 17 years since I first performed Homo No Mo.

Although I retired the Homo No Mo play in 2008, I have continued to perform the opening scene (and will feature it in the next episode of Bubble&Squeak.)

Reaching this anniversary though feels significant, especially as I have begun to transition my work away from live performances to radio and podcast production. Just today I started working with a new client for a podcast to accompany a quarterly magazine.

In those 17 years since I first performed Homo No Mo, I met extraordinary people–ex-gay survivors like Christine Bakke, Jacob Wilson, Alex and Noa, Daniel Gonzales, Anthony Venn-Brown, Jeremy Marks, Steven Fales, Darlene Bogle, Jallen Rix, and many more in the USA, Canada, the UK, Sweden, Ecuador, Malta, and South Africa.

Jacob Wilson, ex-gay survivor outside NARTH Conference

I am grateful for the many people who stood up and told their stories, who bore witness to the dreadful harm they experienced. I feel gratitude for the wives of ex-gay survivors like Carol Bolz and the many allies like Michael Airhart, Bruce Garrett, and Wayne Besen.

Morgan Jon Fox and a crew of filmmakers in Memphis recorded the final performance of Doin Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House. There are two thousand DVDs of it out in the world, and now it is available on Amazon Prime.

As someone who experienced trauma and is surviving it, I understood there was a time to move on to other work that was not directly related to my own story. That history though–both the trauma and the overcoming–are essential to my life today, and still comes up in my work around climate change and queer Bible scholarship. Last year I connected my wacky conversion therapy sordid past with my climate work today. I wrote an essay, Butt Demons and Climate Denial for MeetingHouseXYZ.

More and more though that conversion therapy past and the ways I addressed it through art and activism are a biographical footnote. Stil, I know I could never be doing the work I do today if it weren’t for the many lessons I learned through Doin’ Time speaking out about conversion therapy.

Many thanks to everyone who booked a performance, brought me to your campus or church, purchased a DVD, showed the movie to your group, and contacted me to share my story in the media. I am grateful for the Quakers who provided the moral support I needed to step up and tell my story. Oh, I especially love it when someone comes up to me quoting one of the lines in the show.

If you never saw the show or want to see it again, check out the recording of that amazing night in Memphis when I retired it. That was perhaps the greatest audience of my life!

Gay Porn, Kissinger, and Cow Bells: Ep 7 Bubble&Squeak

On the latest Bubble&Squeak podcast, we travel the world–silver service in NYC, gay porn out of LA, and cows with bells in the Swiss Alps.

The show comes in three parts:

Part One a True Story entitled, “What is this?” It takes place in the dinning rooms on the 50th floor of the American Express Tower in Lower Manhattan in the mid-1980s. I was a nervous country boy desperately try to find a cure for being gay. (NYC might not have been the wisest choice for that mission.)

One day in the dinning room, I had to serve former President Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state. Turns out Kissinger was very hard to please.

Part Two a Television transmission from the future: Turner Classic Movies presents, “Masturbate Theatre.

Utilizing the actual wording from gay porn in the eighties, nineties, and noughties, I create a radio play that reveals thatin the future they will greatly admire the terrible dialogue in late 20th Century gay porn.

You will not only hear the descriptions of three real movies and the awards they won, but even here an audio clip from one of them. Of course couched in the serious formal analysis of the Turner Classic Movie host, it becomes downright silly.

Part Three a Sound Slice, created for us by Taylor Lightman in the Alps. With Taylor’s brief introduction, the section is moving, reflective, and moving.

Episode Six: Masturbate Theatre

Featured Photo by Tobias Oetiker on Unsplash

Lazy or Being Productive Doing Nothing?

Photo by Tonny Tran on Unsplash

Olga Mecking of the New York Times writes The Case for Doing Nothing. Reading it though, it sounds like a solid endorsement for what I do every week during Quaker meeting.

Generally speaking, our culture does not promote sitting still, and that can have wide-reaching consequences for our mental health, well-being, productivity and other areas of our lives. Technology doesn’t make it any easier: The smartphone you carry with you at all hours makes it almost impossible to truly unplug and embrace idleness. And by keeping ourselves busy at all times, we may be losing our ability to sit still because our brains are actually being rewired.

Indeed, the benefits of idleness can be wide-ranging.

Ms. Mann’s research has found that daydreaming — an inevitable effect of idleness — “literally makes us more creative, better at problem-solving, better at coming up with creative ideas.” For that to happen, though, total idleness is required.

“Let the mind search for its own stimulation,” Ms. Mann said. “That’s when you get the daydreaming and mind wandering, and that’s when you’re more likely to get the creativity.”

There is no way I could look at my smartphone during Quaker Meeting for Worship; I am so terrified it might go off during the quiet, I leave it in the car.

The sort of quiet, doing nothing mode, Mecking advocates seems to work best for me when I do it with others. It may just be the accountability or there is a strange power in group idling, but when I am in Meeting for Worship, I can sit still for up to an hour. When I go it alone? About 10 minutes. Of course I can easily spend multiples of 10 throughout the day as I sit and pause between items on my to-do list as I often do.

Photo by Afonso Coutinho on Unsplash

Last year physicist and novelist, Alan Lightman, wrote about the importance of being quiet and still. He raises the alarm about how our brains have been altered by the immediate and constant access to data through our various devices. He then outlines steps of what we can do to free up our brains. He makes the case for Why we owe it to ourselves to spend quiet time alone every day.

What can we do? Somehow, we need to create a new habit of mind, as individuals and as a society. We need a mental attitude that values and protects stillness, privacy, solitude, slowness, personal reflection; that honors the inner self; that allows each of us to wander about without schedule within our own minds.

Wilson’s proposal is bold, and I would like to make a similarly bold proposal: that half our waking minds be designated and saved for quiet reflection. Otherwise, we are destroying our inner selves and our creative capacities. Different moments throughout the day can be devoted to contemplation and stillness, free from the external world.

Photo by Natalia Figueredo on Unsplash

Especially when I am not on the road and have some stability at home, I do two things that are very helpful in recapturing my brain.

I leave my devices downstairs after dinner and then spend the evening with a book. I tend to fall asleep faster, and when I wake up there is no device by the side of my bed calling me out of my slumber. Instead I just wake up. (I also have a husband who always gets up before me–a human alarm clock.) I might lie in bed a bit and let the daylight awaken me as I think about the day ahead. I might reach for a book and read a bit. I then stumble downstairs (it takes me some effort to wake up) and make coffee. Then I read news, and finally when I am awake, I go to my study and look at emails and the social media streams.
I take the day off on Sundays. When home, I try to make Sundays a device-free day. I don’t look at email, social media, news, etc. I drive to Quaker meeting, sit in the silence, then spend the rest of the day living like I did before there was all this technology. Sometimes I get painfully bored, then I get an idea to do something–clear out a cupboard, make jam, listen to a Stevie Wonder LP, write a letter, or just sit on the front porch.

What about you? Do you have a way of sitting still and doing nothing? Does it require a special place or conditions?

(featured image: Photo by Vincent van Zalinge on Unsplash)

Words of Wisdom that Inspire and Guide Me

Sometimes we drug ourselves with dreams of new ideas. The head will save us. The brain alone will set us free. But there are no new ideas waiting in the wings to save us as women, as human. There are only old and forgotten ones, new combinations, extrapolations and recognitions from within ourselves–along with the renewed courage to try them out
-Audre Lorde

. . . [O]nce we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of. Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our lives.
-Audre Lorde

This is what you should do: Love the earth and sun and animals,
despise riches, give alms to everyone who asks,
stand up for the stupid and crazy,
devote your income and labour to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God,
have patience and indulgence toward the people,
re-examine all you have been told in school or church or any book,
dismiss what insults your very soul,
and your flesh shall become a great poem.
-Walt Whitman

Corazón Nuevo
Mi corazón, como una sierpe,
se ha desprendido de su piel,
y aquí la miro entre mis dedos
llena de heridas y de miel.

New Heart
My heart, like a serpent,
has detached itself from its skin,
and here I look at it between my fingers
full of wounds and honey.
-Federico Garcia Lorca

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.
-Max Ehrmann

The Life of a Public Introvert

Most people do not believe me when I tell them I am an introvert.

But you are so friendly. You are so animated on stage. You seem like you love to be around people.

While all those things are true, I am still an introvert. The problem may be in the classic definition of introvert.

in·tro·vert [ˈintrəˌvərt] NOUN
a shy, reticent person.
synonyms: recluse · lone wolf · hermit · solitary · misanthrope · outsider ·

While I often feel shy, I have taught myself to be assertive and even bold. While I benefit greatly from time alone (and lots of it,) I am not a recluse. Yes, while I attend a conference, I often go to sessions alone and carve out time by myself. Does that make me a lone wolf? Almost every definition I find for introvert makes it sound like social disorder or a moral failing.

For me being an introvert is all about where I get or lose energy. In loud spaces with lots of people and chit chat, I feel like an ancient mobile phone quickly losing its charge. Move me to a quiet space where I can be alone or with one person for a deep conversation or time of reflection, and I feel the life pour back into me.

Peterson and Ruth on Tour!

In reading Susan Cain’s book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, I marvel at descriptions of people who get more and more energized in large gatherings, meeting new people, and with lots of lively activities going on late into the night. It’s not that I don’t like those sort of settings. I really do; I just can’t be in a space like that for too long. No, and it is not just that I am getting older; it’s always been that way with me. As a teen, I would find times and spaces to be alone in my room, in nature, in the toilet. Wherever.

I had the joy of traveling with a fellow introvert while I was on my recent UK tour. Ruth Wilde, who works for Christian Peacemaker Teams and is the national coordinator for Inclusive Church, agreed to a joint three week tour that took in multiple venues in England, Wales, and Scotland. It was a mad and wonderful road trip (with the occasional rail trip) in and out of people’s homes, churches, and universities. Ruth is also an introvert. Together we listened to Susan Cain’s Quiet as an audiobook. Ruth wrote about our time together in a blog post that both introverts and partners of introverts will benefit from reading.

Many people assume, unless I tell them otherwise, that I am in fact an extrovert. Cain explains that the reason many introverts have become so adept at pretending is because we learnt early on that we often need to be extrovert in order to get on in life. We are also often genuinely interested in people- we’re not faking that- but we are just tired out a lot more quickly by conversations and especially superficial chit chat.

Introverts have also developed throughout our lives. When I was a child of 4, I literally hid behind my mum. When I was 16, and in a school where I didn’t have many friends (due to my Dad’s job, we moved around a lot), I often preferred to be alone in the music rooms practicing at lunchtime rather than in the social spaces with other people. In fact, I hated most of my time spent in school because I was a shy introvert. Nowadays, I’m not shy, but I’m still an introvert, and there are still social situations which I find uncomfortable, for example team building exercises in work places where the focus is on enforced small talk with people who are not my close friends!

Ruth’s partner, Ellie, is an extreme extrovert. Ruth put into writing a list of the things that stress her out as an introvert and invited Ellie to create her own list. The outcome is fascinating.

You can see the lists and read the blog post, Being an introvert in an extrovert world, over at the Inclusive Church website.

What about you? Are you more introvert or extrovert. Are you an ambivert? How does that affect your work? Your relationships? I’d love to hear your experiences.

The Day the Gay Athletes Invaded NYC

It was 1994. I was deeply homophobic, particularly towards myself. I was trying to go straight for Jesus and everyone else–not an easy thing in NYC even on a normal boring day. I lived in NYC with constant temptation to break my resolve to avoid anything gay. Then they descended for the Gay Games. Thousands of gay athletes in skimpy clothing.

Hearing Sarah Fishko speak about this moment in NY history during her recent broadcast on WNYC Radio, I was transported back to that weird time and space. For Fishko Files she did a short piece about the groundbreaking play, Angels in America. She recaptured that time period–the HIV/AIDS struggle 10 years on and the art that tried to make sense of it all.

Hearing that report got me remembering.

I remember how the city filled with gay men for the Gay Games. I trembled–not with excitement but with fear. I had been living in NYC for 10 years and the whole time I felt desperate about being gay and sought a “cure” through conversion therapy.

As the HIV/AIDS Crisis began and grew, there was an underground scene of gay men trying to go straight for Jesus. LIFE Ministries, an ex-gay, gay conversion therapy group a began in NYC in the early 1980s. It soon became part of a larger network of Exodus “ex-gay ministries.”I was 19 when I first attended in 1984, a Christian studying at nearby Nyack College. I plunged headlong into a world of support groups that tried to pray and counsel the gay away.

While gay men partied, organized, and suffered, another group of us hopped onto a Noah’s Ark of sorts. From prayer therapy to exorcisms, I was desperate for a way out of being gay. Why? My Christian faith played a role, as did the fear of AIDS. The rise of Conservatism and Ronald Reagan made me feel small as a queer working class Italian Roman Catholic in a very white Protestant butch heterosexual rich world.

Then the gay athletes came to town and I hopped off the subway at midtown to hang out at the hotel where many of them stayed around 34th street. I walked and gawked and longed for connection, community, anything, knowing that once I had it, I would slink back to church to repent of it.

That was a long time ago. Shortly afterwards I stood on the subway platform feeling hopeless and ready to give up. I went through even more intensive conversion therapy at a residential facility in Memphis. Then in 1999 I came to my senses and came out gay. Since then I have been using art and therapy and community to make sense of my experiences.

Those were desperate times. And the times we are in today feel similar in parts of the world. For some queer folks in the USA, it is dangerous. These are times when people may harm others and harm themselves in the midst of political madness. I have hope though this time that most gay (and bi, trans, lesbian, genderqueer) kids will not fall for the bait like I did, and instead stand up, act up, and live life fully.

Learning in the Backseat

Do you drive? If so, I imagine you remember your first driving lesson. Where I grew up in rural New York, one could get a driver’s permit at age 16. My birthday is dab smack in the middle of February, and I wasted no time getting behind the wheel. That first time though is memorable for lots of reasons. I write about that driving lesson and others in the current issue of The Porch magazine.

When I was 16 years old, two half-drunk men in a car more than twice my age taught me how to drive on a frozen lake. One of the men, my dad, Pete Toscano, had helped a widow in her distress by taking a 1950 Ford four-door sedan off her hands. Then he gave me this classic automobile as a birthday gift. The car looked like a small black and white tank and weighed about as much.

Extreme Conditions

One thing I learned on that frozen lake was how to drive in the most extreme weather conditions. Back in 2013 my man, Glen Retief, and I took a cross-continental road trip that included a harrowing ride over the Canadian Rockies in a snowstorm. My dad had passed away the year before, and I inherited his car. I imagined he would have been proud to see his son brave the storm without a hitch. Glen, who grew up in sunny South Africa, seemed genuinely terrified by the steep slippery road and in awe of my ability to stay on the road.

My dad, Pete Toscano, with a trunk load of bread

In addition to learning all weather driving techniques, my dad taught me many other lessons in the car, most of which had very little to do with driving.

That was the first and last driving lesson with my dad. The rest were outsourced to Coach Elko who taught drivers’ ed. I still learned things from observing my dad in the driver’s seat. For instance, whenever he drove at night on our country roads, he always used his high beams. When he saw the glow of headlights ahead, he diligently dimmed them down. But God help the drivers who failed to dim their lights! My dad blasted them with a string of expletives. Then he flashed his high beams one time as a warning shot across the hood. If the oncoming driver did not relent and brazenly kept the high beams on, my dad flipped his high beams back on—a nighttime, road rage, middle finger.

Learning Empathy

In writing the reflection of my first driving lessons and the other lessons learned, I realized how much my dad taught me about empathy. It is an important part of my performance art to step into other people’s shoes. Just like my performance has been influenced by my dad’s kooky humor, his ability to empathize with others is also present.

You can read all of my piece, Driving Lessons, for free over at The Porch. If you are looking for a magazine that provides thoughtful discussion about difficult and beautiful things, consider subscribing to The Porch. You may also want to submit some of your own writing.

Coming out an ex-gay survivor — Again?!?

Putting the past to bed

Back in 2008 I retired my play, Doin’ Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House and handed off my responsibilities for Beyond Ex-Gay to other survivors like Dr. Jallen Rix, and Gail Dickert, who were telling their stories as witnesses. I moved onto LGBTQ Bible scholarship and most recently creative responses to climate change.

And now? We have a new president with vice president who promotes gay conversion therapy and a Republican party platform that endorsed it. So what is an ex-gay survivor to do?

Bearing Witness

Perhaps I anticipated this. Back in May when creating my newest show, Everything is Connected–An Evening of Stories, most weird, many true, I decided to have a section about the ex-gay movement. I wanted to look at the lure of white male power and privilege that fed into the desire to de-gay myself for Jesus. I wanted to highlight the sexism and anti-fem attitudes in the churches where I tried to fit in. There were lots of other factors, but this idea of being “normal” was potent at the time.

I wrote about it this week in the Huffington Post. I reflected on the early 80’s, a period in history that reminds me a lot of where we are at politically right now. There were strong forces pressuring me to conform and to resist anything that wasn’t masculine and straight.

Beyond the methods, what I find more curious though arethe motivations that held me to this futile and ultimately damaging ex-gay path.

Literally coming out of the closet in my new place on Watauga Street in Memphis, 1999

Fear had a lot to do with it. I felt so much fear about the consequences of coming out gay. I felt terrified I would lose things that were precious to me: my parents’ love and support, society’s approval, physical safety, job opportunities, the possibility of having children, respect, membership in the church I loved, the love of God, and eternal salvation. I also feared for my life. HIV/AIDS had a 100% fatality rate, and at first people were unsure how it was transmitted. I lived in terror that I would get AIDS, die a horrible death rejected by my family, then spend an eternity of punishment in hell. That was a lot for a teenager to bear. So I caved under the pressure of it all.

Along with all those fears was another. In a world where rich, white, Anglo-Saxon straight, heterosexual masculine Protestant males ran everything, I was a gay, Roman-Catholic, Italian-American sissy boy from a working class family. I felt the fear of being powerless in a world that was so unlike me. In reaction to these fears I attempted to assimilate. I became a born-again Christian, enrolled in a conservative Christian college, and determined to decimate my gayness. Having felt the cabin pressure of power and privilege drop, I scrambled to win back as much as I could.

You can read the whole piece for yourself: Daring to Dream in a Time of Donald Trump–An ex-gay survivor speaks out

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Tag: Personal