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  WINDY CITY TIMES

David Boyer marks 40 years serving the community
by Gretchen Rachel Hammond
2016-05-11

This article shared 3117 times since Wed May 11, 2016
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"Hey bartender: Pour 'em hot tonight. 'Til the party and the music and the truth collide. Bring it 'til his memory fades away."

Such was the 2014 wish of country music band Lady Antebellum in the band's song "Bartender."

Memories are saturated into the hardwood walls of Chicago's North Side bar Touche, founded in 1977. They cannot fade any more than the man who holds so many of them in a flesh-and-blood trust.

For on most nights, those who enter the oldest leather bar in the city will be fortunate enough to find David Boyer as much at work behind the bar as he is at home there.

He might have a drink with them and, even as he takes absolute joy engrossed in the story that brought them to the bar, he will share a few of his own—each dripping with history and related with candor and equally sharp jokes. They are a testament as to how change can occur and the kind of people it takes to forge it.

Both Boyer and Touche have been rooted in the Chicago LGBTQ and leather communities through four decades of unity and organization, turmoil, activism, loss and hard-won victories through the power of the bar event and fundraiser.

Then there were the armies a bar could amass to fight against epidemics such as those of the hatred fueled by Anita Bryant or the annihilation unleashed by HIV/AIDS.

Boyer's life and the institution of Touche have been braided so tightly over the years that when, on April 15, Boyer was honored for "40 Years Behind Bars" and received the 2016 Jon-Henri Damski Award ( named for the Chicago journalist and community activist and in honor of those who have furthered his legacy of service to the community ), the ceremony took place inside the bar.

According to Windy City Times writer Kirk Williamson, Touche was "transformed into a complex, with each section paying homage to certain locations from his career. It featured a dance floor a la Bistro days, as well as elements from Gold Coast, Cheeks and more."

As she has done on so many occasions, Damski's friend and Open Hand Chicago co-founder Lori F. Cannon presented the award to Boyer ( Open Hand is now Vital Bridges, and is part of Heartland Health Outreach ). In a Facebook post following the event, she described both Boyer and Damski as "icons."

It was an honor appreciated although Boyer is no fan of titles. He has no patience for those who demand to be called "Sir" as a matter of assumed etiquette rather than earned respect. He can see through such feigned convention just as he instantly recognizes and dismisses those who want access to Touche's back room in order to gawk like an excitable tourist at the power exchanges which occur there in an artistry of torment and euphoric release rather than be respectful witnesses or participants in them.

So no titles.

Besides, "Sir" makes Boyer feel old. Just David is fine; an unassuming and immediately approachable man with a love of country music and whatever your personal story may be.

When Windy City Times reached out to him for a feature interview about his life and work, Boyer replied that he would rather the newspaper promote "the smaller events that go on in the community week after week."

He acknowledged that, sure, there was a party in his honor. But of greater import to him was that "it was also a fundraiser for our Ride for AIDS bike team"—they raised more than $1,300 that night.

After he finally agreed, Boyer sat down just before noon at Touche as he was engaged in his routine of preparing the establishment to open. The bar around him was dark and uncommonly silent except for the continually ringing phone—the caller insistent that she had reached a hair salon.

As he hung up for the second time and sat back on one of the stools shaking his head, Boyer's character filled the entire room.

"Manager of Touche" was the only title he wanted for the article. He politely declined the activist wreath.

"I'm not an activist in the sense that everybody else thinks I'm an activist," he said. "In 1976, I'd gone through a lot of changes in my life. I'd been outed. I left home, school and everything else and eventually ended up in Chicago."

That home belonged to a large family from a small town, at the time, 10 miles of farmland from downtown Columbus, Ohio.

"When I left, my mom was in tears on the phone," he recalled. "She was a Catholic and she wanted to take me to the family doctor. I said, 'Mom, there's nothing wrong with me. I'm not sick'."

Her reply was something Boyer acted out, breaking up each word with melodramatic sobbing. "'Well, go ahead and have yourself changed into a woman!' she told me. And I was like, 'You have no clue what we are talking about here'. That was the crap I was dealing with."

His mom's phone call occurred while Boyer was pursuing a degree at Ohio State University. He went to gay bars in Columbus, always with a nervous eye on both the times in which he was living and the proximity of his family.

"In 1975, homosexuality was never talked about," he said. "You had to know where bars were and, even if you did, you never used the front door. You would go down an alley and look for a door with a little red light over it."

The police were usually never far behind.

"I would stand at a bar and the cops would come in, drag people out and arrest them," he said. "Then their names would appear in the paper the next day; 'this bar was raided and these perverts were there and this is who they are, this is where they live and this is where they work.' I lived with that fear."

Although he had begun higher education with no idea what he wanted out of it, the fun he got as a peer-counselor helping the school's incoming international students acclimatize to their new lives gave Boyer an immediate sense of direction.

"I talked with the State Department and asked them, 'What are you guys looking for'? He said they wanted experts in the Middle East, so I jumped into that. I spent that first summer just learning Arabic, then I went into studying the region's history, culture and religion. I was in my final year of school when I got outed. The State Department said, 'We can't use you now. You're a security risk. You're a homosexual and homosexuals can be blackmailed'."

That and the reaction of his family was enough to make Boyer pull up stakes and leave prior to graduation.

With no idea where he was going, Boyer journeyed as far as Albuquerque, N.M., where he ended up homeless and starving. Friends enticed Boyer to come to Illinois. A brief job in the faculty center kitchen of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign eventually led to a position at the Evanston campus of Northwestern University.

In April 1976, Boyer settled in the Edgewater neighborhood. One of his colleagues told him that a local pizzeria, Dion and Company, was looking for a bartender at its newly opened Clark and Diversey location.

"That was a learning experience because Clark and Diversey was a very notorious corner," Boyer said. "If you were in the mood, you could shop and buy about anything you wanted. You could sit there at the [restaurant's] tables and watch drag queens giving people blow jobs. But that's the way Chicago was when I came here. I think our community was coming into its own then. There was a concentration of bars, bathhouses, bookstores on Clark Street. A lot of that was controlled by the mob. You didn't run a gay bar without some kind of protection."

There was a reason it was needed.

"When you said you wanted to work in a gay bar, the first question was, 'Are you okay to be arrested?'" He recalled. "'Because it will happen to you. They're going to come in here and either arrest you or harass you or your customers.' That was the world then."

But Boyer was already tempered to that kind of fear. There was no one from whom he needed to hide and he was done running from judgment.

"I was 22 years old and I didn't give a fuck who knew I was queer or not," he said. "I was not going to make an excuse for who I was. But that was liberation. We were going to put it in people's faces just to declare our freedom. It was this wild abandonment because we didn't have to worry about who we were. We didn't have to duck into bars in alleys. It didn't matter. I was like, 'Go ahead. Put my name in the Tribune. I could give a fuck. Because if anyone reads it and has a problem then it's their problem.'"

Boyer remembered the Pride Parade of 1976—his first and one which took place down a single lane of North Halsted Street. "Traffic is going by us, we were getting pelted with rocks and eggs and the police did nothing to help us," he said. "Even if there was a red light, we had to keep going."

When a clamp that once tightly compressed flesh is suddenly removed, there is a moment of elation that immediately washes over the searing pain.

Despite the euphoria in the midst of those free to give their legitimate feelings sovereignty, Boyer recalled a sense of mutual care that reached the kind of zenith he said is not in existence today.

Community was being forged and there was no finer illustration of that than in the work of The Tavern Guild, founded shortly after his arrival in Chicago.

"It wasn't tavern owners, it was employees of the bars," he said. "There are people who had worked this business their entire lives. The Tavern Guild was a statement that this was a profession to be proud of. We also recognized that we were in the unique position of leading our community. We communicated with each other. If there was a raid at a bar, or a bathhouse, we got the word out. There were some other organizations out there, so a coalition was formed to bring the community together and we would discuss things that were going on. I was selected as a representative of The Tavern Guild."

Some of those coalition meetings were, to Boyer's recollection, "raucous." One of the primary issues he had to address in those early years was racism.

"There were bars that felt if you had too many Black clientele, the whites wouldn't come," he said. "Some bars wouldn't ID white people but would make people of color produce five forms of ID. We were the bartenders. Not the owners. So we couldn't dictate the policies of our places but we could make suggestions. We established at Touche, and then when I managed at Carol's in the '70s, a uniform policy of only one piece of ID."

The Tavern Guild also engaged in the kind of work that would forever alter the Chicago LGBT landscape.

"A lot of us were politically involved," Boyer said. "Just by being there we were able to lead. Things like Gay Horizons and the medical services at the Howard Brown cost money. So we would do fundraisers for them."

Those fundraisers often involved a bar employee standing at the entrance collecting a dollar from each patron.

"Sometimes we would organize so every bar did the fundraiser on the same night," Boyer said. "No matter where you went on a Saturday night, someone would ask you for a dollar. But we also made people aware of places like Howard Brown. You'd talk to some kid who came into town, just like I did, and you'd recommend places for them to go. To this day, one of the things that we can do behind the bar is get the word out."

Bartenders were so effective at pouring information and motivating people to leave their woes in the remnants of their drinks, and instead go and do something about them, that Chicago bars were one of the principle forces behind the 5,000 people who showed up to protest anti-gay agitator Anita Bryant at the Medinah Temple in June 1977.

"We knew she was coming for weeks beforehand," Boyer said. "So we were telling people, 'You must stand out there and let it be known that we don't like what she has to say.' That night, it was my night to work and there was an empty bar. Everyone was at the Medinah."

The bartender was never more essential when, in 1981, the first cases of Pneumocystis Carinii Pneumonia ( PCP ) were reported. One year later, the disease was termed Gay-Related Immune Deficiency ( GRID ). By the fall of 1982, another name had been assigned by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ): AIDS.

"In Chicago it hit right within the leather community," Boyer said. "We were all very active sexually and people started suddenly getting sick. At the time, I would spend every Friday and Saturday night behind the bar at [Touche's] old location on Lincoln Avenue. I was working with my buddy Sudsy [Glynn Sudberry]. He got sick and, all of a sudden, he was gone. His passing was really hard."

Boyer cleared his throat and pointed toward the back of the bar. There the colors that belonged to different groups of the leather community which are no longer functioning are reverently displayed.

"There were so many in the scene," he said. "Second City, Pride, Trade Winds, Chicago Mob and so on. They each had 20 or 30 members. One by one, they started dropping dead. At first, people pointed fingers at us and said, 'It's because of all you creepy guys doing all those kinky, perverted things.' Even those guys who lived with it here were shunned.

"There was a guy, Michael, who would come to the bar and then he got sick. When he felt healthy enough, he would come to the bar and have a drink. People were upset that we allowed him in the bar to begin with and that we didn't give him a special plastic cup so we couldn't spread it around. I was angry with them. It was a terrible way to die. I watched too many people go through it."

HIV/AIDS also wiped out most of The Tavern Guild's members. Boyer noted that it was the women in the community who stepped up to help even as the bars tried to pick up and rally around each other.

"Chicago House got started as a place where people could live until they died," Boyer said. "The bars worked hard to raise the money that made Chicago House happen. It didn't come about because of a government grant or anything."

But for every step bars took to cuff its effects, HIV/AIDS cut another 10 of their patrons down.

In 1984, Boyer had a partner, Steve. "We had parties in our home and 40 or 50 guys would come," Boyer recalled. "Within a year, all but two of those guys were still alive. Everybody we knew was gone. I had to cope with it because we'd go to a funeral and then we'd come back to the bar and I'd have to turn this all around. You know, stop crying, get out the J�germeister and celebrate."

They were together for 18 years before Steve succumbed to the disease. As he remembered that day, Boyer shifted slightly in his seat, his head dropped momentarily and his deep voice softened for a moment. "Watching him go through that was hard," he said. "You cry but you can't just sit there and keep crying."

HIV/AIDS took many people from Boyer—people whom he is looking forward to seeing again, although not in any great hurry.

But their loss is tempered a little by the job benefits unique to being a bartender. At each legendary venue where Boyer served up drinks or organized events, such as Carol's Speakeasy, Trianon, Buddy's and Opal Station, he collected on those benefits.

"In this job, I keep making new friends," he said. "There are people who came to my 40-year party who never heard of the places I worked."

Boyer has watched four decades of change displayed from his place behind the bar and in the faces of his regular customers whose memories will never fade or those who shared momentary stories during a few of hours of any given night.

There has been a significant difference in the leather community—one all but wiped out by HIV/AIDS, but that has since flourished into the kind of record attendance numbers seen at events like the Cleveland Leather Annual Weekend ( CLAW ) or International Mr. Leather ( IML ) in Chicago Memorial Day weekend.

"When I came into leather it was a tight little group," Boyer said. "People had no concept of what leather was all about. I fit in with them, not just because of the sexual activity but where they were coming from personally. I don't know as many bars that do as much fundraising and support as much as leather bars. I went to the very first CLAW weekend. It was one bar that housed a party. When the bar closed, we went to the bathhouse a few doors away and carried on all night long. Now it takes up one or two hotels and you don't know everyone there. You can't make the connection."

In its own way, Touche has also grown far beyond the perceived restraints of its beginnings.

"When I started at Touche maybe 75 guys were in the bar on a Friday night and you got to know each other," Boyer said. "You got to have sex with most of them and it was like you really knew who everybody was. Nowadays, I have people who come in and I don't know them. I try to get to know them all but some want to get their drink, stand in a corner and cruise."

Some of the other changes at Touche have been out of necessity.

"In the second room, we enforced a strict dress code of 'put on your leather or you don't go in'," Boyer said. "I can't afford to do that anymore. People are doing their cruising on the Internet. So we have a dress code once a month."

What used to be a men's only space in Touche now allows women. But there are limits.

"There's an atmosphere that the backroom is trying to create," Boyer said. "There are men who bring these girls in and they come up to me and say, 'Can we go back there and see what these guys do?' And I'll be like, 'If you want your girlfriend to see two guys sucking dick, take her home with your trick!' The folks back there are not here to put on a show. If people can respect that, then they are welcome."

But, to Boyer, most of the individuals who stand in front of his bar and ask for a drink are family and he's not ready to leave them or relinquish events like Leather Eye which he started in order to introduce a new person to the leather scene by outfitting them and taking them to IML. He also routinely helps Lori Cannon by raising $200, which, he noted with admiration, she can turn into three times that much in food bargains for her clients.

"I don't feel like an old guy yet," Boyer said. "Besides, I like what I do. Sitting over the bar talking. That's what my world has been. I've got to meet some incredible people; big stars, average Joes, young people trying to figure out what they're going to do with their lives. I don't have kids, so I'm watching [clients] grow up and I'm very proud of them."

"I could have gone through college and been a therapist. I can do it just as easily over a beer," he added with a contented shrug. "At the same time, I can affect what's going on in the community. I can support things. When I came here I didn't know anybody. I had an apartment with a table and a chair. To this day I work Christmas Eve because this is my family. There's always more to learn. There's always someone new to meet. I haven't done it all yet. There's more to come."

For information on Touche, see ToucheChicago.com .

International Mr. Leather is Memorial Weekend in Chicago. See IMRL.com .

For a 2007 video interview with Boyer, on the Chicago Gay History website, see ChicagoGayHistory.org/biography.html.


This article shared 3117 times since Wed May 11, 2016
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