Transcript of Robert Spellman

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

You’re listening to the second 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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ROBERT SPELLMAN
My name is Robert Spellman. I am, um — I wear a couple of different hats in New York City professionally. I work with a couple of organizations; one’s an HIV and AIDS organization, the other’s a gay men’s organization.

Most of my time in New York has been spent with gay organizations and, uh, I get a lot of gratification from the work. It’s not rewarding financially but it is very gratifying to know that I am helping to create an environment where gay men get some of the foundation that they need in order to be able to do greater things, go beyond me — I often say, I wonder what I would’ve been like had I had some of these things available to me as an adolescent growing up.

I mean, it was a lot of it was — hit and miss. A lot of it was mistakes that maybe, if I hadn’t made those mistakes or I’d’ve had a mentor or someone to go to to talk to, I would’ve been able to go even further than I went.

So I think I’m creating something, I’m doing something that’s really good. I work with older men, but I also have a lot of influence with some younger gay men. I really enjoy who I am and what I do.

AMBER HOLLIBAUGH
Robert, what I want to ask you is where you see yourself in 15 years.

ROBERT
Fifteen years? I really see myself as probably — God willing — running an organization, being able to take my vision of what I think should happen for gay men of African descent and being able to put that out as a direction or goal.

I don’t always agree with the people who are currently in positions of authority, and that’s understandable. Everybody has their own kinda agenda. But I think that my agenda looks beyond the immediate, maybe even ignores some of the present things to look down the road at some of the things that we will need.

AMBER
If it was an ideal world, what would it look like in 15 years for LGBT aging?

ROBERT
People, I think, would be more open and accepting. You know, a lot of the confusion in the world — I believe — is because people have been forced into roles that they don’t want to play! That they don’t want to do. Nothing is more worse [sic] than living a miserable existence.

I have a person who I’m counseling. He’s fifty . . . sixty-two. And he has a wife and he has two children and everything. And he’s just . . . just . . . a ball of anxiety about wanting to come out. All of his life he has loved men and he wanted to be with men. But he grew up in a small Southern town where they said, “Boy, you better get married.” And so he got married! “Boy, you better have kids.” So he had kids. And none of it has brought him the kind of level of gratification that looking at a man’s rear as he walks past brings him.

And now he’s like, “I’m in the twilight of my life, you know? And I still haven’t got that chance to do what I want to do.”

So I think it would be a world of much more peaceful and satisfied and gratified people. You know? Yeah.

AMBER
So . . . what do you think is the single most important policy change needed in the next 10 to 15 years in regards to gay aging?

ROBERT
Mmm, there’s so much.

AMBER
What do you think would be pivotal in the next 10 or 15 years in terms of policy?

ROBERT
I remember when the civil rights movement was happening and I remember a congressman, I forget who he was, came on and said, “You can’t legislate morality.” Well, you can. You can. You can make it illegal for you to do certain things to certain people. Aaand . . . people respond to the law, you know? And in places where you can’t win over people’s hearts, I like to see laws. And laws that are enforced.

With regard to the housing thing — I mentioned this the other day about the gentleman who had gotten sick, he was 90 years old. He was a gay man and he was the oldest member of my Sunday program, and I hadn’t heard from him for a long time so I wrote a letter to his apartment and it came back, and I was very concerned ’cause I thought maybe he had passed away.

And, um, maybe a month and a half later I got a letter from Bellevue Hospital from a social worker that said that he was in the hospital, so I went running down to the hospital to see him, got down there . . . walked into the room and — this man’s face lit up so that I was hooked for the rest of the time he was gonna be in there. I’m still with him, you know, still going to see him and taking care of him. I’ve just called up there to tell them to tell him that I’ll be home Tuesday and I’ll be to see him.

He’s outlived all of his family. He’s a gay man. And I’m not so sure that he didn’t run into some family resistance because of his sexual orientation, so I’m feeling like I can’t leave this man alone. This is me. I don’t know. Right now I have a very loving family and stuff, but I’m also up and functioning, making money, and that, you know, they can call up and say “uncle” or they can say “brother,” and I can do things for them. But who’s to say I’m not gonna be one of these people who will be gay and alone at that age?

And for the last year and a half we’ve gone through the most powerful experiences. He’s very bold, I give him credit, he’s — he has the heart of a lion. He tells people, “I’m gay. I am gay. I am a gay man.” And he’s ninety. You’re not gay! You don’t even do anything anymore, you know! But he’s bold enough to say that — they took him from his house to Bellevue, then they just shipped to a rehab and they shipped him to a nursing home, and during the course of that he’s run into — oh, just horrible kinds of staff people that would call him faggots [sic] and all that, and some of the staff people would incite the other patients, ‘Oh, he’s a fag’ and that type of stuff and I had to raise hell to get him out of there, but I raised hell and got him out of there. The only way I got him out is I told ’em I would bring every faggot in New York (laughs) out to protest the place, and they — they very hurriedly got him out of there.

They put him in another place, and he’s in a better place. There’s some gay guys there that work there and some lesbians that work there, and they kinda embrace him. You know? Because he’s 90 years old. And 90 years old, you work for the City of New York for, like, 40-odd years — if you wanna be gay you can be gay. Okay? Nobody got anything to say about it, you know?

There needs to be some significant things done around policy, too, with regard to — these kind of situations. I’m real concerned about when we get older, what kind of environment are we gonna be in? Some of us may be living at a point now where we can insulate ourselves, but then some of us will be very vulnerable. I just think that’s wrong. ’Cause we go through enough in life — you know, with rejection and hostility and alienation and all that — that we shouldn’t have to in our twilight years deal with any level of — any level of resistance. Uh-huh.

AMBER
There’s the first generation of gay men surviving with HIV. I want you to talk about what that means to you, and I also want you to talk about the implication of that for the broader aging movement, which I think is surprised that people have HIV and are 50 and above, either new infections or people surviving with HIV. I want to be sure that HIV is a part of how people are thinking about aging. Talk to me about your life, talk to me about the movement overall.

ROBERT
Working with a group at Gay Men of African Descent, all of the group know that I’m HIV-positive. That I have an AIDS diagnosis and that I’ve had it since 1990. And I’ve tried to use myself not ’cause I think I’m a glowing example, but as an example that you can be . . . open. Maybe you don’t need to be open to everywhere, but you can be open in certain situations, ’cause it’s healthy. It’s healthy for you not to always feel that way.

In my own personal life — like I said, I’ve been infected since 1990 that I knew of, probably infected before then. And it’s been a struggle, because it’s been this whole thing about whether you should disclose, it’s been this whole thing about how much capacity do you have to be able to do certain kinds of things, you know? I work full time and I have a part-time job and then I have this gentleman that I see on a regular basis, so I’ve been fortunate, I’ve been blessed that I’ve been able to continue, and that my medications have somehow not totally debilitated me.

Oh, a curious thing that I found is there’d been this kind of little back-and-forth thing about women and gay men, like who’s the priority, who — who — who is it supposed to be, really supposed to kind of concentrate on. And I, I’ve always said, I’ll say it again, there’s enough HIV to go around for both of you if you really wanna know it. We got enough energy to do both. And do both very well.

I do think, though, that one of the reasons why I’ve been able to survive as long as I have is that I’ve had incredible support. I have incredible friends — even though I haven’t had a lover, I have incredible friends who have really been there for me. I’ve had the opportunity to run into some organizations that were incredible and some incredible doctors, and that combination, I think, is a living combination. I think it’ll work.

AMBER
So I want you to talk about Griot and about why you’re a part of it and what it does. Who it serves. Who walks in the door.

ROBERT
Mm. Griot Circle was so unique — when I looked at it, I said, you know, you pick one thing that’s controversial. You pick two things that’s controversial. You pick three things that’s controversial (Amber laughing in background), you’re really out on a limb.

I mean, you pick elders, you pick LGBT, and you pick people of color. None of it fits. None of it fits. None of it’s traditional. You can’t go to traditional funding sources and, you know . . .

AMBER
Right.

ROBERT
And, and lay your cards on the table and hope that they would fund you. They’ll look at you very strangely and say, “Uh, get back to us next year.” You know? You know, that kind of thing.

But Griot Circle was all of that when I first went there. It was predominantly a lesbian organization. And it’s still predominantly a lesbian organization, and I hope it never changes. I really do. Because I think it serves a vital purpose in providing not only services to lesbian women, but also as a kind of mentorship for a lot of younger women who need older lesbian women in order to be able to say, “Well, how do you get through this maze?,” you know.

But beyond that, it has expanded now to include men and transgenders. I mean, there’s really truly a rainbox organization. It’s really trying to do work that needs to be done with everyone. But that was because it realized that no one was doing work on that level. Okay? Gay Men of African Descent, who also works with gay men of African descent, that’s controversial enough, too. But it’s just gay men.

Some of these larger organizations were very white-oriented. They were not very minority-oriented. One recently has expanded to one of the . . . minority neighborhoods and is doing some very active and good work in the minority neighborhood, but for a long time there was no one there. You know?

Now, they do a lot of work with helping elderly people remain in their homes and independent and avoiding institutionalization. They have a buddy program where they call on a regular basis ’cause they had an individual who died in his apartment and lay there for approximately a week, so they started a buddy program behind that. The organization actually really does a lot of things that are response — comes out of the community. It’s not someone sitting somewhere theorizing about what older gay black lesbians and men need, but it’s examining the neighborhood, getting an assessment from the neighborhood. What kind of things do we need?

AMBER
I want you to tell me one story that illustrates to you something important about LGBT aging.

ROBERT
I really just gave you that story. It’s the most profound story. About this man getting caught up in the system ’cause he passed out in his apartment. Once they came, he had no more say in anything that happened to him.

That’s the burning desire I have, that’s the story on my heart is about — his name is Vernon Jones, and he would not mind me using his name. He is 90 years old, he will be 91 in August the 16th of this year, and he has not a family member living anywhere. He outlived everybody kind of stuff. And that’s supposed to be something that’s really good. You know? It’s not supposed to be something that you get penalized for. Just a very basic, simple guy. But the second thing after he tell you his name, he’ll tell you, “I’m gay.” Very proud of the fact that he’s a gay man, gay black man.

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Robert Spellman 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.