KRJY Announcer 0:02 KR JY St. Louis Charles Koehler 0:17 Hello, I'm Charles Koehler. And this is Lambda Reports, a program by and for the St. Louis lesbian and gay community. Our guest today is St. Louisan and author and composer Jerry Reed Rabushka, author of the book Vandeventer Nights. It's a racy look at the gay life in St. Louis, and has some rather colorful characters and situations in it. Jerry, welcome to Lambda Reports. Jerry Rabushka 0:42 Hello. Charles Koehler 0:42 HI. I understand that you've lived in St. Louis all of your life. Can you tell us what inspired you to write a book about your own hometown. Jerry Rabushka 0:51 Well, first of all, it's easier than writing a book about Pittsburgh, which I have tried before and never have been there. Um, it's kind of neat to include things that are your hometown. It gives you a base, and it gives people who are gonna read it some kind of familiarity. It's kind of a lot of fun to do something like that. Charles Koehler 1:10 Great. Well who were you writing for? Was it basically yourself or the gay and lesbian community or a general audience? Jerry Rabushka 1:18 Well, it's been mostly, the audience has been mostly gay obviously, but I wrote it for everybody to read, kind of someone who's not gay or not from here could get and idea of what's going on if you are gay and you are from here. Charles Koehler 1:30 So it gives someone who is from outside the St. Louis area a view of what, perhaps, the gay life is, like in St. Louis, or at least in West? Jerry Rabushka 1:44 Yeah. Charles Koehler 1:44 What was the inspiration for your characters? And some of the let us say, rather unusual situations in the book? It has quite a few of those. Jerry Rabushka 1:52 Yeah, well, a lot of the characters are based on I wouldn't say people, but on behavior that I've observed, kind of hanging out in bars and just meeting people around and some of the incidents are real, well, you know, I've rewritten them, but they've happened to different people that I've heard about over the years. Charles Koehler 2:12 Would you care to share with us which ones? Jerry Rabushka 2:16 Probably not? Because I know exactly who it is. And they will do. It's been a while, but I just kind of basically, that kind of thing. Charles Koehler 2:24 I see. So. So it was the people that that you know, that you ran into in some of the places and based loosely or strictly around some real life situations, then. Jerry Rabushka 2:38 Kind of, and a lot of it, I just made up that thought it might be fun to do. Charles Koehler 2:43 Great. I noticed that in the book that for instance, you refer to actual street names and places and bars, and you even do a kind of rating of the St. Louis gay and lesbian bars and of the Central West End as a whole. What's been the response of your readers to this kind of realism in the book? Jerry Rabushka 3:02 Well, they really like it? People that I've talked to think it's kind of neat to read about their own stuff? I've sent it to a couple of friends overseas. And they've enjoyed reading it as well. Charles Koehler 3:15 He's are in St. Louisans? Jerry Rabushka 3:16 No, they're just people that I kind of write to. I've accumulated a host of friends around the world. Charles Koehler 3:24 Have, have you gotten any feedback from let's say, some of the St. Louis bar owners or any of the other establishments in St. Louis? Jerry Rabushka 3:31 Well, you Charles Koehler 3:32 I think you mentioned for instance, what, Balabans and some of the other other … Jerry Rabushka 3:37 Not anybody ever written about. It seems like the Magnolias crowd seems to have all read the book and kind of look at me like, "Oh, he wrote it." when I go in there, and they've all been kind of nice about it. But they weren't in there either. Charles Koehler 3:55 The main character's name is Terry Starks. He's an interesting kind of guy, to say the least. How much would you say he's like, Jerry, Raushka nd Jerry's view of the world? Jerry Rabushka 4:08 Well, pretty much actually. I would say a lot of the things that he does and says are things that either I would do or I would have liked to do in certain situations. Terry cheats on his lover and I don't so we're not totally the same. And I wouldn't say that I am him or he is me or any fruto thing like that. But yeah, a lot of his outlooks on the way people are treating each other and how you can maybe fall in love, fall out of love, or try to maintain relationships, that kind of thing. I think a lot of it's me. Charles Koehler 4:40 What would you say is something that you've discovered about the whole issue of falling in and out of love and relationships, in particular with being a gay person? What would you say was what you discovered from writing the book? Jerry Rabushka 4:58 Well, one of the points in the book was, I wrote the book a few years ago, kind of when everybody was changing over from kind of hanging out in the bathhouse to actually trying to find a lover. It's very hard to respect either yourself or anybody else when you can knock them off in a night, and go out the next day and find somebody else. And you know, why bother falling in love if there's 50 other guys waiting for you the next day? I guess it's one of the things that I tried to bring out that maybe with a little more respect and understanding and realization that you're not the only person that needs to be imperfect that maybe there can be actually some hope. Charles Koehler 5:36 So in other words, you're talking about the characters being very human. Having all the pluses and the minuses and the and the strengths and the failures of virtually everyone else. Jerry Rabushka 5:56 Oh, yeah. Charles Koehler 5:56 Very human characters and very believable ones, I might add, from having read the book. Can you tell us a little bit about your favorite character, favorite passage of your work? Jerry Rabushka 6:04 Well, Terry's lover's name is Jeffy Travers, and anybody who reads the book always seems to bring up Jeffy. Jeff is about 22. And he's kind of cute. He's missing a tooth. And he's slept with, you know, everybody in the park. Everybody at the bars, everybody at this party that they're at that the book is about. And he basically thinks that as long as somebody will love him, he's going to be happy. And Terry kinda loves Jeffy. But Jeffie is so Jeffie-oriented, that Jerry can't get anything back out of him. He kind of you know, he takes but he doesn't really know how to give it back. Charles Koehler 6:39 He sounds rather self centered, in other words. Jerry Rabushka 6:42 Yeah, self-centered, but he doesn't know it, because he's just kind of too stupid to figure it out. And he's been hurt a lot by people kind of trashing him all the time. So he thinks of himself as trash to begin with, and behaves like it. Charles Koehler 6:56 That does come out in the book rather, rather strongly. Any any favorite passages in the book? Jerry Rabushka 7:02 Oh, I think some of my favorite things were actually descriptions of the house where the party is taking place about … Charles Koehler 7:09 That was wedding party, by the way. Jerry Rabushka 7:12 Yeah, it's, the basic story is this guy named Jack, who lives in a big house in the West End, is getting married to some guy from Houston. And he's throwing a party inviting all of his friends and trying to turn his house into a disco for the evening while getting married at the same time. He's got one of … Charles Koehler 7:29 the best results, too. Jerry Rabushka 7:35 Yeah. So it doesn't work. Charles Koehler Not at all. Jerry Rabushka Most of it doesn't work. But I think some of the descriptions of his decor, I really went out of my way to try to be as tacky as I possibly could. Charles Koehler 7:43 And Jackie, you were. No. One of the things that I noticed about the book is that it has a kind of melancholy ending and had you considered any other endings or approaches? Jerry Rabushka 7:56 Well, actually, I didn't even consider that ending until I got there. It was kind of like, well, okay, that sounds, you know, I had a basic idea of what it was going to be. But the actual ending that happened, which is kind of shocked a lot of people just kind of came to me as I was working on it. And most of the stuff I ride does have a melancholy ending, it seems to me that too much of art wraps itself up, just everybody's happy, no matter what happens. At least somebody has to be happy in the end. And life has to go on for these people. And it's just, you know, they're not gonna live happily ever after. Charles Koehler at least not all the time. Jerry Rabushka But it's not all the time. I mean, but nothing I don't think happens, it's going to be that earth shaking that people are gonna live the rest of their life like it's a Greek tragedy either. Charles Koehler 8:45 What did you find to be the the most difficult part of the whole process of writing this book from the initial ideas that you had to the actual writing process to then finally publishing and then the marketing process? What was that like? Jerry Rabushka 8:59 Well, it's hard to say. All of it's not that easy. I can write pretty fluidly, the whole book was actually written out longhand, and I wrote it on the bus on my way to work. And I take it out of my drawer and write a sentence here and there when the supervisor wasn't looking. Finally got it all done, typed it in the computer and marketing, we put it out to a few stores, and it's sold a lot better than I thought, actually. Charles Koehler 9:23 What sort of market are we talking about? Basically, the St. Louis market, I understand that you've had sales outside of the St. Louis area on this. Jerry Rabushka 9:32 I have it out in about five cities. And I know I've talked to the guy from New York at the Oscar Wilde bookstore. He said they sold a couple, that people in New York kind of don't consider St. Louis anything they're excited about. So they pass it by even if they shouldn't. But I don't know it's going in a few places. Charles Koehler 9:52 You had sales on the on the West Coast also. Jerry Rabushka 9:55 Yeah, it's out in a store in California and Minnesota. Just out around. Charles Koehler 10:00 Great, great. Well, what advice do you have for aspiring writers in your audience having gone through this yourself? Jerry Rabushka 10:08 Well, one advice is don't write it and stick it in a drawer, if you want someone to read it, let them read it. Another is don't write for your parents. You know, don't be worried that your mother is going to find out that you're gay, or that they're going to be upset or that somebody's going to find something out. I was kind of when they take my picture up to the door of Our World, Too, I'm like, you know, oh, my God, you know, someone's gonna come by and nothing has happened to me and yet, and I mean, so no time at all on that. Yeah. You know, be yourself and come out. And if something happens to you, that's okay, too. Charles Koehler 10:42 That's part of your life. Jerry Rabushka 10:44 yeah, but don't hide. Charles Koehler 10:45 Well, aside from writing the printed word, something that our audience might not know is that Jerry is quite a talented musician and composer. And as a matter of fact, he wrote the theme music for this series, the Lambda Reports series. What can you tell us about your work in composing and performing music? Jerry Rabushka 11:09 Well, I've been writing music, probably since I was 10. I've been writing good music since maybe I was 20. I play keyboards. I've written few things around town. I've done a lot of people call it New Age, I do pop music as well. Classical and dance music. It sounds a lot more ethereal, I guess, from the writing I do, which is real kind of earthy. The music I write is perhaps kind of more lofty sounding than you might think, from reading Vandeventer Knights. Charles Koehler 11:45 But a few talents there. Yeah, I understand that you recently wrote a score for a ballet. It sounds like quite an ambitious and lengthy undertaking. What can you tell us about it? Jerry Rabushka 11:55 Well, I'm working with a dance company called Dancers. And it's basically a group that tries to promote the male dancer as a, you know, instead of the female dancer not instead, but just kind of that's what they do. I wrote a ballet about 30 minutes long, based on Prometheus, Greek guy who gave fire to mankind, and mankind, of course, screws things up. But I worked with a few local musicians. And it sounds real good. A lot of different kinds of music in there. And it's going on second and third of June up at the Center of Contemporary Arts should be publicized around town. Charles Koehler 12:33 Great. Great. And how did you come about such a project like this is the first time that you've written music for a ballet or a dance number. Jerry Rabushka 12:44 I've done it a couple times. Nothing quite as gargantuan as this has. But I just thought, when you're looking for somebody to notice you, you do everything you can and I kind of thought, well, I'll write dance music. And I asked a lot of dance companies around and these guys thought it was a good idea. And they liked what I did. Charles Koehler 13:03 Great. And the rest is history. Well, let's hope. Well, it sounds like you have quite a promising future ahead of you, with your writing of your novel and other works and also your your musical writing. I believe that's all the time we have for right now. I'd like to thank thank our guest today St. Louisan Jerry Raushka, his book Vandeventer Knights, is available at Our World, Too, Left Bank Books and Alfanci's Bookstore or through writing post office Box 16844 at St. Louis 63105. And as we listened to Jerry's music at the end of this program, I'd like to remind you that you've been listening to Lambda Reports program, buy and for the St. Louis gay and lesbian community. We hope that you'll be able to join us again for future editions. This has been Charles Koehler. Transcribed by https://otter.ai