November 3, 2012.
This is from an email exchange between Billy Glover, Paul Cain and Dr. Don Kilhefner on 11-2-2012 regarding Harry Hay and John Burnside and whether they participated in nudism in their various communes.
Dear Billy and Paul:
Greetings. I hope you are both well.
As far as I know, Harry and John were not into nudism or it was very marginal to their lives. Harry talked a liberationist line when it came to sex and nudism in public but was rather prudish in that regard in private.
I lived at the La Cresta Court commune in Los Angeles with Harry and John for over two years (1979-82), and there was no nudism there. But there was no anti-nudism either—there was mutuality and reciprocity, and we respected each other’s boundaries and proclivities. From time to time a guest might be nude, but it was no big deal to us. Harry, John, Michael Fleming and I tended to be clothed even though scantily clothed sometimes—it was our home.
From the very beginning of the Radical Fairies (1979) to the last gathering I attended (1985), in Southern California, clothing optional took many forms including being nude with bells, glitter, feathers and so forth being used imaginatively. But nudism as such was not an ideology that was practiced. It was more liberation in whatever form we personally needed to be liberated rather than nudism as such.
Nudism always had a little 19th-century and early 20th-century smell to it by 1969—once daring, but by the late 20th century somewhat ho-hum to Gay Liberation Revolution. Nudism was never was never on the agenda of Gay Liberation in any significant way—Sexual Liberation, however, was.
It is late for me and now I’m off to bed.
I’m moving nicely forward on a book, tentatively called “You’ll Never Be Alone Again: Gay Liberation, Self-Identity, and Community Creation in Los Angeles, 1969–79,” in which some of this gets fuller treatment.
Thanks for thinking of me.
Pacem In Terris,
Donald Kilhefner, Ph.D.
