Recent Reading: Rapping Paper
An annual highlight of Toledo’s Old West End Festival is the yard sales. The point of the festival is to advertise the historic homes of this Edwardian neighborhood (and boost property values), but who can resist tables of junk/goodies lining the sidewalk?
This year’s find was a box of old newspapers. To be exact, a nearly complete (I think) run of Rapping Paper from January 1975 to issue #24, sometime in 1977. What culture shock over how much the Gay Community has changed - and how disappointing over how much it has not.
Rapping Paper was a gay bar rag. In its first year, the editor was Michael Jameson; after that, Jay French, who expanded it to more of the Midwest. I moved to Toledo in early 1979, so it gives me a perspective on an era of Gay Toledo that I only saw the end of.
Rapping Paper was quite a different bar rag than we see today. For a start it was comparatively literate. Today most bar rags have pictures of patrons and bar owners partying and not six coherent words to rub together. Rapping Paper had text, all right. Tacky … catty … vicious … quick to attack local gays and organizations, especially PRO/Toledo [Personal Rights Organization]. Gay Toledoans are still quick to attack their institutions, one thing that hasn’t changed. Over time, Rapping Paper mellowed, and the editor mended fences with PRO. Under the second editor, Rapping Paper became more literate, political, and ventured into actual journalism.
And one other difference from today’s bar rags. Rapping Paper had nude photos. And pictures of guys having sex. You don’t see that on top of cigarette machines anymore. Or cigarette machines, come to that.
Toledo’s gay infrastructure then: Bourbon Street Show Bar, Camel Lot, Club Baths, 828 Club Restaurant, Fantasy Bookstore, Freudian Slip-Up, Open Closet, the Scenic. All gone today. Five of those were closed by the time I moved to Toledo. PRO is gone too. What does remain? PRO’s Tuesday night coffees (“cookie parties” we called them), now held as “MISC” [Men’s Information and Social Club].
Much of the discussion in Rapping Paper revolves around “cruising.” I remember that from the early PRO coffees I went to. In those days people talked about ”tricks” like they do the weather - all talk but nobody ever did anything about it. Is it just that I’m Old and Married, or do gay men no longer talk like that? Are today’s young men less obsessed about sex than my generation was? That seems hard to believe. Or is today’s society more accepting of gay bars, so cruising has moved indoors, off the streets, and onto the internet?
Early issues of Rapping Paper talk a great deal about the best places to meet hot guys, the doings of undercover vice cops, and the going rates for specific hustler services(!) Good locations mentioned: Penney’s at Franklin Park Mall, and the corner of Ontario and Monroe. Hey, I know those places. You could stand there for a week and the last thing you’d get would be sex. Is this the same Toledo I know?