![]() ![]() ![]() According to editors Ellis Martin and Zach Ozma in a preface, the entries they’ve chosen to include are not comprehensive, but a “touchstone” for presenting Sullivan’s archive to new readers. We Both Laughed In Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan, 1961-1991 presents a selection of these diaries. Lou Sullivan kept journals long after his own coming out-8.4 cubic feet of them now archived at San Francisco’s GLBT Historical Society-in a rigorous practice of self-documentation and discovery that he pursued unflaggingly from his childhood in Milwaukee right up until his AIDS-related death in 1991. It was an extensive rewriting of the self, and I’ve rarely journaled with the same intensity and regularity since. I was surprised by what I found: references to feeling different in my gender presentation far predated what I’d considered my ‘coming out’, and there were numerous instances of trying to talk myself back into being a girl. It seems obsessive now, but at the time I needed to edit-not to erase, but to provide commentary and make sure that all traces of self-delusion or wishful thinking were acknowledged as such. When I was 21 and newly out to friends and family as a gay transgender man, I began the project of transcribing and annotating every single one of my journal entries written since I was 13. Writing constructs the self, but it’s not foolproof. ![]()
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