Note: This is an excerpt from a conversation between Scott and Nicolas about his volunteer outreach work. Scott describes his raisin slingshot game, a fun way to get people to see condoms in a new light.
N. In terms of your outreach stuff. When did you start organizing that?
S. Outreach stuff. God I don't know. Uhm, I think it all started actually when we were having the [Gay Men's Health Collective] training after mine, and I took on the task of getting the posters put together and doing the recruiting for that and what we had done in the past was we put an ad in something and we put an ad in something else and that was it, and what I did was I put signs all around campus and, around different places around the White Horse and different places around SF uhm, in different neighborhoods in SF, uhm, that had on the top, GAY MEN, uhm, because you never see anything in Berkeley on a telephone pole that says GAY MEN and has a tear off thing on the bottom and it's really neat putting these up cause I was putting them up on the North end of campus up by the gate there and I'm taping something up and I realize, it was also kind of a challenge for me to do this because that's me.
N.Pretty risky.
S. Yeah me putting up a big sign that says GAY MEN on it
N: Football team could come along
S: And they're cute, [laughter] and so I'm putting this up and I you know, I don't know if it's a reflection of my glasses or what but I know there's someone standing right behind me reading the sign as I'm putting it up and I'm like oh [expletive], am I gonna get my ass kicked or what, so I just keep doing it and I turn to go to the next pole and just kind of look out of the corner of my eye and it's this kid and he is reading this with a passion and I'm like, this is so cool, this is so cool that someone can see a sign that he's identifying with it and he's gonna read it here. And uhm, that made me feel really good, just that we're putting that out there and that we're also getting some publicity saying that we're gay men providing these services and we also are looking for more gay men to get involved, so it's not just to the gay men but it's to everyone else, so that's part of my idea behind doing the queer youth outreach stuff. Why I'm doing with youth is because there are no young gay images out there, in the East Bay, and mostly in SF what you see is the Castro, and you don't see a lot of gay young people doing things. Uhm, and the, getting a gay visibility out there I think is really important, and is just as important in HIV prevention as getting supplies and stuff out there I think. Because people can go and get supplies and they can be self motivated to do that, but if they don't feel good about themselves, uhm, or don't see themselves reflected in the society in which they're living, it's not very good, and it's not very likely that they're gonna follow through. Uhm. And they're gonna end up in the Steam Works, so [laughs]
So, then I was doing these little things where, I was getting more and more involved and going to meetings to represent the BFC, because it was a thing I was interested in also thinking we're doing way more work than any other agency that's getting huge amounts of money in the East Bay, uhm, we're doing the Steam Works and no one knows that we're doing all this work. Uhm, and so I thought you know, I'm gonna go to Contra Costa's meetings, I'm gonna go to Alameda County's meetings, I'm gonna go to the Berkeley meetings, I'm gonna go to San Francisco, and just let people know that this is going on, and plus, I'll be learning a ton and making more connections for referrals and stuff like that and it's been great, and I've met some really good people working out there whose programs I had never heard of, uh, but we still are doing the most amazing work of anyone that I've come across. Uhm, and I guess that's biased huh? [laughs].
So then, I started getting asked, could you come and do this at this event, and we, I put together, I got called by Peter from the Pacific Center, uhm, and we had done several things already, little outreach things. I had done some stuff down at Berkeley High and spoken to classes uh on being gay and then also done some stuff for their health department on doing HIV testing and counseling and stuff down at East Campus and stuff and so, Peter from the Pacific Center, who's in charge of their HIV prevention stuff, calls me and says you know, we're supposed to do the gay prom and I was wondering if you could come and do this, and I thought oh, I'll call Celia and I'll call Don who was new here and I'll call a few other people and we'll get a good group of people and they had no idea, like Peter had no clue of what to make. The theme was Coney Island, and we had to fit something in, I said oh, we, like immediately, I was like we could be cigarette girls. Peter's idea was we could do it in drag and I thought oh we could be cigarette girls so we could come in drag and go as cigarette girls with boxes like cigarette girls would have but have them filled with condoms and stuff. And I said, we can do a shooting gallery, like Coney Island game thing, where they're shooting to try and shoot something and instead of using guns or sling shots or whatever they're using the condoms in their mouths, so one we're getting them to unroll the condoms, you know how to do that?
N: No.
S: Oh this is really neat. You unroll a condom. I had a basket of condoms that I left in here the other day.
N: I should have thought of that before we began, I knew you'd need some condoms.
[Scott runs to get some condoms and raisins and demonstrates his amazing marksmanship]
S: So the way it works Nicolas, and I'm glad you asked me here, this could be an infomercial, [laughter], Uhm, the thing, the idea about shooting, and Jon Ladar showed me this, someone told him that you could do this with a dental dam, and so I tried doing it with a condom and it worked great. Uhm, but uh, the thing that is really neat about making the sling shot out of it is you're getting the kids to want to open the package. You're getting them, well, I guess the first thing is they're thinking of it as a game, they're having fun with a condom, uhm, they're touching a condom, they're opening the package, they're unrolling the condom, touching it, they're then combining food with it, putting a raisin or something inside, so that they're getting other ideas that you can put other things in condoms, you can use other things with condoms, you can use other things other ways, and then they're putting it in their mouth, which is REALLY hard to get people to do, uhm, and shooting it, so stretching it, touching it, tugging it, playing with it, and you're teaching them that they can put a condom in their mouth or other parts of their body and uhm, when they're using a condom not to use their teeth, and [laughs] it also gives them some good techniques for blow jobs too, cause more suction, uhm, and you use more tongue and lips than you do teeth, so.
N: Alright.
S: It really is a wonderful learning thing. So I've done this at several places and made complete messes. Uh, the gay prom had carpeting on the floor and raisins got shot every direction you could imagine and these raisins I'm sure are still in the carpets there. And probably a few stuck on the walls cause we had a few stuck there. And we get, we get mobbed with people wanting to do it too. It really is something that's fun.
N: And this is across age groups?
S: Yeah, and it was really funny cause then after the gay prom, three weeks later, I went out to a bar in Walnut Creek and dropped off some condoms with the BFC sticker on the back and this guy comes up to me a little later, I was up in the bathroom, and says, "Hey, have you ever tried shooting a raisin out of a condom?" I said, "Actually I did that at gay prom," he says "Yeah I know, you were in drag." And I thought, my drag must have been so bad if he could recognize me.
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