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BAR DYKES, from p.24
bar in New York, it was raided
by the police — except instead
of throwing everyone into paddy
wagons and taking them downtown,
nobody got arrested!,” she
recalled. “I was astonished.”
She’d make the city her home
for more than a decade.
A butch mainstay in bars named
things like Sea Colony and Cookie’s,
she drifted from that scene
after a Village Voice ad for a play
lured her to Caffe Cino, birthplace
of Off-Off Broadway and très gay
acting-out. (The title was “Only a
Contessa May Dance When She
is Crazy but Not Demented.”) She
met Bob Patrick, who was waiting
tables there, and became a regular,
producing and writing theater,
bringing leftovers from her
public school lunch lady shifts to
feed starving artists like Patrick
and neighbor Lanford Wilson.
Ms. magazine published her
fi rst mainstream piece in the early
’70s, about making wine from
fl owers. A prolifi c period followed.
To score free copies of publications
she hungered to read, she wrote
lesbian-themed stories; donning
her professional hat, she tackled
Special Ed, ahead of her time on
environmental and other causes
of ADHD and autism in children.
Discovering a friend had made a
fortune writing for trashy magazines,
she followed suit, bringing
readers of Modern Romance and
True Confessions tips on feminist
enlightenment and community
outreach. In her spare time, she
sold handmade crafts from an
East Village store that provided
free food and clothes to needy
street kids.
But New York was starting to
feel “used-up,” and after “a great
big huge acid trip” with some fellow
psychedelic advocates she
traded city life for sustainable
back-to-the-land country living.
In the unusually queer-friendly
Dowelltown, Tennessee, she became
an active proponent of its
nonconformist traditions.
“I live not too far from a Faeries
sanctuary that’s been going
on for about 45 years,” Mushroom
said. “There are several other fairly
large collectives, a lot of young
kids in their 20s, a lot of trans
folk or gender-nonspecifi c.”
The house she’d built with gay
guy #2 had minimal plumbing
and heat, requiring rough sacrifi
ces.
“It was great when we were 35,”
said Mushroom; not so great after
70. As luck would have it, she’d
bought a space nearby, seeking
privacy from the ménage who’d always
fi lled her house — and closed
on it two days before the fi re.
“I was going to clean out all my
stuff, because I didn’t want my
kids to be left with everything,”
she said, “but it got cleaned out
for me.”
Finally living on her own has
brought other changes: “I have a
fl ush toilet for the fi rst time in 40
years! And air conditioning and
heat that work by pushing a button
on the wall.”
Too “tired” and rooted in her
community to join “Dykes” at the
Flea, she hopes audiences will enjoy
the experience. Warnock says
today’s viewers will be surprised.
“Young gays have grown up
with some form of civil rights, and
a lot of them didn’t know there
were things like people getting arrested
and having to wear three
items of sex-appropriate clothing,”
she explained.
A twist that drives the piece will
shock them, Warnock said, and
the “window into 50 years ago”
— revived in period settings and
costumes by Ben Philipp, from
“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” —
will resonate.
“They’ll recognize the people in
that time and place who have the
same needs we all have, humanly,”
Warnock added. “They want to be
with someone, they want to have
fun, they want to love, they want
to laugh. It was a very diffi cult
thing for gay people to do in that
time. These are all women mostly
in their 20s — young people who
just want to live.”
Much has changed since then
— and too much hasn’t.
“I hope they maybe get into
some discussion among each
other,” said Mushroom of the new
generation to discover her play
and the world it conjures. “But
mostly, I just hope everybody has
a good time.”
BAR DYKES | Flea Theater, 20
Thomas St., btwn. Broadway &
Church St. | Through Aug. 3:
Wed.-Sat. at 7 p.m. | $30 at thefl
ea.org | Seventy-fi ve mins.
GayCityNews.com | July 18 - July 31, 2019 25
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