LGBTQ Oral History Project Introduction to LGBTQ Studies (Spring 2018) Northern Kentucky University Destini Edwards (interviewer 1) (D.E.) Sarah Mohammed (interviewer 2) (S.M.) Rachel Oskins (narrator) (R.O.) S.M. Alright, I’m Sarah. R.O. Hello Sarah, I’m Rachel. Nice to meet you. S.M. Nice, to meet you as well, and we have a couple of questions for you so… R.O. Okay. S.M. We are going to start off with where you are from originally? R.O. Okay, I was born in Omar, West Virginia. I was born in a coal mining camp. I was born at home. I too am a coal miners daughter, just not the famous one! S.M. So, how long did you live there? R.O. Well, I don’t know for sure, we moved outside of Ashland, Kentucky. Probably shortly after the time when I was six to eight months old. My mom and dad followed my grandfather, her father. I guess he got the job up there in the mines. And then he got another job in Ashland, and my dad and mom followed him to the Ashland area. D.E. Alright, next question we are going to ask you is; How do you self-identify, in the terms of your sexual orientation? R.O. Lesbian. D.E. Okay. S.M. If then, you would describe your first romantic relationship? R.O. Okay, um, that would have been when I was in college, and this women keep coming up to me, I was working the desk in the dorm and she kept coming up to me when I was working and she wasn’t someone at that time who that I thought looked gay, but I don’t know what that really meant. But we started talking and we would talk for hours while I was on duty and then we would go up to her room, and then it just kind of lead, one thing leads to another. D.E. When did you realize that you were LGBTQ? R.O. I don’t remember not knowing. As a young child I was a tomboy. So, I think that was probably more acceptable for girls to be acting like boys, than for boys to be acting like girls, which was sissy. I remember wanting boy toys, and I remember one Christmas in particular. I really wanted a football and a baseball, I don’t know maybe something else like cowboy guns or something like those things. But I got a doll and cried. And then after that I started getting the toys that I wanted. When they realized that I didn’t get, then my brother had the toys that I wanted. S.M. So, do you think that you always knew? R.O. I think I kind of did. I think part of that being a tomboy was the early stages of it. I early on had a name for it. So, it wasn’t so mysterious. I would go to the library and do some reading and do some checking trying to find out as I got into junior high probably started around 8 or so, I was noticing the women’s softball team. And as I was growing up, my best friend who was in my class, I had a crush on her older sister. But her older sister was just old enough to where we were just pestering her when we tried to hang out with her. And of course, she wouldn’t have anything to do with me or her sister, she would often pick us up and take us to practice, so we had that time. But then she was dropping us off and going and doing whatever she was going to do. D.E. So, when did you officially come out as lesbian? R.O. Probably would have been in college. Explored a little bit in high school but where I grew up, other than the softball team, which were older women because most of them were already out of high school, as I was coming into middle school and high school, there wasn’t, I don’t remember anyone else in high school that was actually gay. Because it was so closeted back then. Even as I got older in the bars and stuff you would walk down these little dingy alleyways and you would go in and knock on the door and someone would open it up and I don’t know how they were assessing you before they let you in. so, it was all that kind of scary, spooky kind of closeted kind of way of trying to meet people. S.M. Can you give me like an era, what time was this? What years maybe? R.O. Let’s see, I graduated from high school in 1970 and then went to college. That was five years at college. So, I graduated in ’75 from college. So, it would have probably been late 60’s early 70’s. S.M. What was going on around that time, when it came to the LGBTQ community? R.O. Well, not a lot of people were out. I mean if you found someone that was gay they could tell you other people that were gay. But they could tell you where they would be or some of the things that they might be doing. But it wasn’t something just like today if I wanted to do something with the LGBTQ community I would know several places where I could go and do that. It wasn’t like that way as I was growing up. you know even some of the bars had names that you had to figure out or someone had to tell you what kind of bar it was. And you also had to be careful coming out because there were a lot of the gay bashers that would wait outside. D.E. What did your parents say about gay or lesbian people? R.O. Well, it really wasn’t talked about in my household, because we just didn’t have those kinds of conversations. I don’t know that my parent even knew anybody that was gay. Do I think that they suspicioned it with me? Yes, because I was that tomboy and I think mom had some suspicions that I might not grow out of that. but she died when I was eleven, so I don’t know what she would have really thought. So, she was in a car wreck. She was hit by a drunk driver and it killed her and my dad had a closed head injury. So, then I grew up raising myself, my brother, my sister and my dad who was more kid like than he was adult like. He remarried shortly there after to and alcoholic and then quickly became one. So, I didn’t do a lot of running around with anybody because I was the only kid, that I knew, was going home and fixing dinner. So, as far as trying to search some of that out, I didn’t have those opportunities, nor did I have a way to get anywhere if it wasn’t in the little town of Flatwoods where I grew up S.M. Did you eventually tell him? R.O. I think he knew but we became estranged. It was just a lot for me, an eleven-year-old. I had pretty much the full responsibility. He would leave money in a coffee cup and sometimes he was gone for two weeks at a time. And I wouldn’t see him or even know where he was. Often times they were in jail, because they were drinking. So, I, at twelve was going up to the store that mom had sent me to, and often times I didn’t have enough money so I would just went up and would say “Dad wanted to know if I could have bread and bologna or whatever for supper until he gets paid on Friday?” so, they would let me have the food that I could take back so that we would have something to eat. S.M. Did they know? R.O. I think that they knew, it was hard to tell at that time because I didn’t really have all the problems, but they had to have known that mom had died. I’m sure that they knew that dad was injured but I don’t have a sense of that. That’s part of what I try to figure out now, is there were just somethings that went too smooth. And of course, we didn’t have child protective services like we now or I wouldn’t have been able to stay at home. S.M. So, another question since you know your dad wasn’t there, did you have someone you looked up to? Was there an idol or an icon that you followed? R.O. Well I had crushes on some of my female teachers, there was one that was a physical education teacher. So, I decided I wanted to be a Phys. Ed. Major. I was into sports they were kind of the break for me. That was one thing that dad would let me do, because he was very strict, and so if I was out playing sports he was pretty much okay with that. He also had a guy that he worked with that was one of the coaches and would tell him whether I was doing what I was supposed to be doing or not.