Transcript of Bill Serpe

From the Long View: LGBT Elders and Experts Speak, Episode Four

You’re listening to the fourth in a five-part series of interviews conducted by Amber Hollibaugh at the National Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Aging Roundtable in February 2007. Amber Hollibaugh is the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s senior strategist and LGBT aging expert.

For transcripts, photos and more, check out www.theTaskForce.org.

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BILL SERPE
My name is Bill Serpe, I’m the executive director of SAGE Milwaukee, I’m 62 — well, I’ll be 62 next month. So 15 years from now that puts me at the end of 70s. If I still have my health, at that point I hope that what I will be doing is acting as a consultant in the LGBT aging field. Um, I don’t see myself as being the executive director of SAGE Milwaukee that much longer. I think it needs a younger, stronger person to do that kind of work.

But I think the experience that I will have gained by then will be invaluable to the LGBT aging community. And the mainstream aging community as well.

AMBER HOLLIBAUGH
In an ideal world, what would you want things to look like 15 years?

BILL
Well, what I would like to see, what I think in a, what it would be like in an ideal world is that the LGBT people would be treated as if they were another ethnic group. And — whatever way you would de — if you’re a Native American, if you’re a Mung American, if you’re African-American, Mexican-American . . . gay American. Just another ethnic group. A, a subset of what makes this melting pot the melting pot that they claim it is.

AMBER
What is unique in LGBT aging?

BILL
Well, I think the most unique part of LGBT aging has to be what’s happening with the transgender people. Because their physical needs, their health care needs are actually very, very important. Most lesbian, gay, bisexual people don’t have the, the hormonal treatments and the physical body changes that need special treatment to deal with. So that’s the primary uniqueness of the LGBT community.

But we have a lifestyle — the gay community has a lifestyle — that makes us a little bit different. And I think that’s something that needs to be recognized and dealt with, especially when you talk about nursing homes and assisted living facilities where a gay man or a lesbian woman comes into that facility to live, to spend the rest of their life, and it has to be recognized that the partner is not of an opposite sex, that the partner is the same sex, that one of the partners, if they’re male, may be wearing women’s clothing.

Those are the things that make the gay aging community unique. And finding ways for the professional aging community service providers to understand that those uniquenesses need to be recognized and somehow or other dealt with, so that . . . so that a gay person doesn’t have to change who they are. There’s no point in us having to go back in the closet just because we got old.

I think of the example of the gay guy who’s into wearing leather. And he has to go into a nursing home. But how does he invite a group of his buddies to come for an evening of whatever, you know, just an evening of get-together, and all of a sudden all of these quote-“leather queens” walk in the door, maybe one of them in a collar being led by another man. How do we get the mainstream professionals to understand that this is a part of what the gay culture is all about?

It has to be looked at as if it were just a group of mainstream people walking in and one of the women just happens to be very eccentric and wearing this plumed outfit that’s just outrageous to look at. It’s the same kind of thing, it’s just for the professional aging service provider community to understand that this gay ethnic community, this is what we look like, this is what you’re going to have to recognize as we get older and start to use the facilities that are available to everybody.

AMBER
What do you think is the most necessary policy change that we need in the next 10 to 15 years in regards to aging?

BILL
It’s gotta be health care. You know, let’s start with prescription drugs. There’s absolutely no reason why in this country of great wealth people can’t afford or can’t have the medication that they need to keep as healthy as possible until the very end. If we can spend billions of dollars in a war that we have no right to be in, those dollars, if you translate them back to how much each individual American human being could get if you split it up over the 300 million of us, it’s — it’s embarrassing. We would all be just fine.

AMBER
For you as an LGBT person, what are you most concerned about in terms of your own aging issue?

BILL
Hmm. That’s a toughie, because I think I’m not any different than anybody else, I really don’t think I’m going to get old. (laughs) Even though I am already. You know, but mentally I’m 22.

I think my biggest concern is going to be having enough courage to ask people to help me to do things. You know? The gay community, especially the men, have gotten used to just doing it themselves, no matter what that is. You know, moving into a new apartment, taking out the garbage, bringing in the groceries, you know, “I can do — I can do this.” And every time I come home from the grocery store now and I have to walk up just those measly little 10 steps to get into my apartment with five bags of groceries . . . the bags are getting heavier, you know?

And I hope that I have the courage to ask the 36-year-old guy who lives next door, “Hey, Doug, could you carry in my groceries please? I just can’t do it.” Because I — I believe that I’m a valuable asset to the community I live in. And if I have enough courage to ask the people around me who are stronger to help me do what I need to do to stay alive, I’ll stay alive longer and be that asset for a longer period of time. So that’s my biggest fear, is just having the courage to ask people to help.

AMBER
What are you most concerned about then in terms of broader issues in our community?

BILL
Again, it still has to be health care. And affordable housing.

And being able to age in place and whatever that means for each individual person. Or finding a way to make it possible for a person to age in a place where they feel like they haven’t changed, where they haven’t gone from this wonderful apartment that they lived in for 30 years to this dinky little room in a, you know, in a — in Milwaukee we have a nursing home that has accomplished exactly this. It’s very expensive, not many people can afford to go there, but they’re changing the way that nursing homes are starting to think about people moving into those kinds of facilities, where you bring your own belongings and you help design how that room or that suite is gonna look.

You know, my concern is that that’s not happening fast enough. That we’re not thinking in terms of housing for the elderly or how to take care of the elderly so that they can feel like they’re aging in place. So that they can in fact “leave where I live feetfirst.” You know, I hear that all the time. “I’m gonna leave here feetfirst.” And then the next thing I know they’re kind of being wheeled out in a wheelchair or on a gurney. That’s my biggest concern is that we’re not — we’re just not attacking that problem quickly enough.

AMBER
Tell me one story that illustrates for you something important about LGBT aging.

BILL
We have a member of SAGE Milwaukee, a woman named Donna, who was living in an apartment building and two years ago the owners of the building decided that they were gonna change it to a condominium building. And Donna had to move out. And Donna felt like her only resource was her daughter, who’s not real happy that her mother’s a lesbian. So her daughter convinced her to move way out into a suburb of Milwaukee into an apartment building that’s all straight, where the only communication she now has with her gay friends is by telephone.

She gets sick if she rides on a bus for a long period of time, so for her to get from that suburb to where all of the gay action is . . . she just can’t do it. And we had a small event a couple of weeks ago and she was able to get a ride to the event, and just the look on her face to be back in her community said so much. And it — it made me feel so bad that she felt like she had to give up her life because she had gotten old. Because she didn’t have the resources anymore.

And as it turns out, two months after she moved into this apartment building, a senior housing complex in the neighborhood where most of the gay people live had an apartment for her that was subsidized, and she could’ve moved in there. But she didn’t have the resources to wait that extra two months. And now she’s stuck. She’s stuck out in Brookfield.

That shouldn’t be. You know? We, we should have the resources that we need.

Old people are treasures. In Japan, they’re considered national treasures. And lots of times when I talk about the elderly community in Milwaukee, I talk about, “These are the treasures of our community; this is the history of the community.” And the founder of SAGE Milwaukee now is probably on his deathbed. And we have a project called the Oral History Project, and no one has taken Eldon’s history. And he was the founder of the first STD clinic in Milwaukee for gay people, he was the first person to recognize the need for AIDS care and started the Milwaukee AIDS Project, he founded SAGE — I mean, his name is everywhere in the history of the gay community in Milwaukee and no one has written it down.

So now we’re all scrambling: “What did Eldon do? What have we got? Let’s put this all together.” Because we don’t know if he’s written it down.

So we, you know, we just have to protect our treasures. And that’s what we are, we’re treasures, and these are our future treasures, so what we have to do is make sure that when they get to our age they won’t have to deal with these problems.

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Loree Cook-Daniels being interviewed by Amber Hollibaugh. Produced by Rebecca Fureigh for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

Check out www.theTaskForce.org for photos, transcripts and resources from the National LGBT Aging Roundtable.