âI would get up at one or two a.m. and I would call every gay bar I had the number to from the 1940s. I wouldnât say anything. I would just stay on the phone and listen to the sounds in the background. I would stay on until they hung up, and then I would call another one of my numbers, until I had called all the numbers I had ⊠That phone. Those numbers. That was my lifeline ⊠It meant there was a place somewhere â even if I couldnât go there â that place was out there. I could hear it. Freedom.â She called the bars two to three times a week like this â for fourteen years.
From an interview with Myrna Kurland in Baby, You Are My Religion: Women, Gay Bars, and Theology Before Stonewall, by Marie Cartier (2013). Myrna passed away in 2014, at age 86. A video of an additional part of her interview may be viewed here. (via debbyfriday)














