Wouter den Haan Denhaan

COMING OUT, Apollo, & GALA
& books that gave comfort

Two bits of history shedding light on what it meant for me to come out in the first half of the 80s when AIDS had also reached Rotterdam. These are two issues of the monthly magazine of Apollo, an independent organisation for young gays and lesbians; "jong? homo? Apollo". Some articles are about serious topics such as safe sex (then new and not without controversy) and getting tested (early advice was to stay away from it). Others are a bit gossipy. They are in Dutch and just two snapshots.

I was Apollo's treasurer but my last name is spelled "de Haan" instead of the somewhat less common "den Haan" in these issues' lists of Apollo's board members. I didn't point this out so I could claim it was somebody else (consequence of growing up in a very conservative and narrow-minded environment) and was a bit disappointed when somebody fixed the spelling in subsequent issues.

We spent quite a few evenings plastering this poster all across Rotterdam. Every single time somebody sent the police after us. Now we did have a permit! But the codes on it indicated we only could put up posters in the one street where we had our meetings and just on very specific objects. So strictly speaking we were breaking the law, but the police didn't understand those codes and were actually quite polite and always let us continue doing our thing except that they made us remove them from places where it was pretty obvious we were not allowed to put them. We also handed out flyers in the city centre during the day which actually made me much more nervous because then you encountered so many people and virtually no positive responses, but quite a few negatives ones.

And I was always a bit worried about running into friends who I had not come out to or (much worse) members of my large family. Nevertheless, it was worth it, because I was with my new friends and afterwards we would go to Mateloos (which was a new gay pub and the first in Rotterdam with windows to the street).

In 1986, Apollo obtained its very own, spacious, modern, premises in the city center; truly spectacular for a youth group. I am still very proud of this accomplishment which I achieved together with André Steffens, Jacob van de Vorm, Peter Zwaal, Remko van Leeuwen, and René van Krimpen. To be honest, my task was to have repeated tedious conversations with Rotterdam city hall civil servants which we knew was going to be fruitless, whereas the others knew how to create media attention and lobby politicians at the right moment, that is, just before we would be on the street because the city (our landlord) was closing the building in which we were renting a (terrible) basement on Friday evening. Unfortunately, the dream didn't last long because harassments of the locals forced Apollo to move (after I had left for Pittsburgh).

More on the history of Apollo, the oldest independent organisation for and run by young lesbians and gays in Europe (and perhaps in the world), can be found at Coen Martinus' website: Apollos Geschiedenis by Coen Martinus and Twintig Jaar Jong Homo Apollo by Peter Zwaal.

After Rotterdam came Pittsburgh. After Apollo came GALA, the Gay and Lesbian Association of Carnegie Mellon University. GALA was quite a different organisation. It was just for CMU students and smaller. It did happen that just a handful of students showed up. Also, we had no money; the school just provided space for us to meet. In terms of tolerance and gay life this was all a step back. In my second-year, our biannual dance was even threatened by a bomb threat. In terms of "promoting" homosexuality, GALA was not as active as Apollo but we did have several actions to put posters up all over campus. While I was going through my memoriability box to find some fun pics of my CMU days to add here, I found a misplaced letter to a Dutch friend in which I describe one of these actions. I don't believe in fate, but it was quite a coincidence. It is also an interesting time document in how it makes clear how I experienced doing this. And the letter is also quite interesting since a big part is about a pop concert in a small lecture hall on campus that got out of hand and led to the police having to forcefully stop the band from playing and removing the audience. Letter to Joke. Besides such campus actions, I also participated occasionally in demonstrations and during one of them my pic showed up in the news paper.

We had one little protest on campus. CMU had an ROTC program and this was before "Don't Ask Don't Tell." In those days you were kicked out of the army or the ROTC if they discovered you were gay. And this happened to a young undergraduate GALA member. And this meant being out of CMU as well. In fact, they threatened to send him a tuition bill for the education he had received so far. I'm ashamed to admit that I have forgotten his name. But he was this sweet handsome hispanic kid. Twice a week I participated in this lunch exercise program in the gym. And in the middle of the hour, he and his fellow ROTC buddies would walk past us when they were done with their gym activity. Since I thought he might be embarrassed if I said hello, I just sought eye contact. But he couldn't care less and always acknowledged me with a friendly hello, accompanied by a wave of his hand. I didn't know him well and I had just casually met him at some GALA meetings. But I can still remember this brave soldier walking by with his friendly hello.