We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan

by Lou Sullivan

It’s amazing how people zero in on my ambiguity and misinterpret it.

For our whole lives, our bodies are the only things we have here on earth. Life here is the body. Death is leaving the body behind.

It’s not how others perceive me that matters to me; it’s how I perceive myself.

(I like to call him “her” because it reminds me where I came from and how lucky I am… how Jack Garland wanted to be Jack Garland! I wonder if I’d’ve had the strength to live full-time as a man before the luxury of hormones/surgery. I feel I want to have all the surgery—to go all the way, in memory of Jack Garland.)

Oh, this freedom is going to nurture me.

My whole life I’ve wanted to be a gay man it’s kind of an honor to die from the gay men’s disease.

I do not want to be in the clutches of mourners when I take my last breath. So how DO I want to die? In whose arms would I like to be?

I would like to die alone. Does that sound crazy? I have always envisioned myself laying on my deathbed and looking back to reassess what I’ve done on earth. I have always said that, when I’m laying there, I will be the only one that matters, and I don’t want to have to realize that I wasted my life or didn’t accomplish what I wanted to. I will be the only one laying there knowing whether I blew it or not, and when I am laying there and knowing I’m ending my time here, I want to be alone and at peace with myself. How can I make that clear to everyone, that this solitude in death—which everyone fears—is precisely what I want….

Seems a shame to buy new pants only wear ’em 40 weeks HA HA.

I guess I just feel that my body has been one big burden throughout my life, and getting this fatal disease…one that can be transmitted to anyone who loves my body…is just the last straw. Just knowing that this is the way I will be until I die is so hard to accept.

I still would like to believe that a few simple carnal pleasures can still be mine.

They told me at the gender clinic that I could not live as a gay man, but it looks like I will die as one.”

Somehow that massage, someone else touching me in a kind way, made me feel loving towards others in general.

I must also get on with editing my diaries for publication, as I fear it will never be done after I am dead. Stiff enough task for me, let alone one unfamiliar with a phenomenon such as myself.

I hugged kissed her, and told her I would see her later, and did she want to come along? She looked startled, and asked “Where?” even though she knew what I meant. I answered “Wherever we’re going to end up going.”

“Tell me! What is it like to be dead?” He whispered “Shhh…” like he couldn’t/wouldn’t tell me, but then added “Just make sure your room is clean…” and then he was gone.

we both laughed in pleasure.

A big fear of mine is that I will die before the gender professionals acknowledge that someone like me exists, and then I really won’t exist to prove them wrong.

When I hear myself tell my story, I feel I deserve more fun times, such as tonight at the Academy.

So nice to be sitting in the park, the sun shining on my face, the sweet-smelling air and green green grass after last night’s rain….

I feel so lucky to still be alive!

With each breath, I fill my body with fresh air and thank God I’m alive.

When I started you, diary, I figured you’d be my last book. But the story ain’t over yet!

Now, I hope, he has found eternal liberation.

He said he went to bed Wednesday night (Kath died Wednesday morning) and suddenly woke up after sleeping only a few hours. He said it was not like a dream, but a vision he described as like energy from a television screen. In a fuzzy apparition, he saw Kath dancing with her hands above her head and she was saying, “I’m free! I’m free! I’m free!”

When I got sick in December ’86, there were two things I wanted to accomplish before I died: to publish my Garland book, and to ensure that no other female-to-gay males would be discriminated against by the gender professionals because of their sexual orientation. This week I accomplished them both.

I feel like a sneaking spy, somehow able to observe the daily surroundings I was supposed to have missed. Often I think to myself, “So if I had died like I was supposed to, this…THIS is what I would be missing!” And it makes every little event joyfully amusing to me. So this is what I am supposed to have missed…

Each day is a blessing and a special moment. How lucky I am to be Lou Sullivan!

Saturday Kathy and I went out with the Oceanic Society on a boat trip to the Farallon Islands, 25 miles off San Francisco. The islands are a nature preserve and I’ve always wanted to take this trip, especially because it is the breeding grounds for tufted puffins, funny little birds for which I’ve named my lovebirds.

This morning answered my front door to face Maryellen, who is sobbing, saying she just can’t deal with my impending death and she’s been crying all last night and it’s so awful. She stayed a few hours while I tried to comfort her with logic and words of wisdom. Yes, I am sorry I am the one to make her so miserable.

I just feel all this violence and killing is so disgusting, I don’t need any details.

I’m not afraid. I just feel I’ll be stepping into a new plane of existence…one that, in all likelihood will be just as interesting, if not more so, than the one I’m in now.

I am reading Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ AIDS: The Ultimate Challenge and just finished the lengthy, detailed description of the death of Peter in chapter 9.

I find it too hard to believe that someone could love me enough to go through that with me…that my dying could have such a significance to someone else.

Pisses me off that this is the ONLY disease to elicit such prejudice and discrimination, and I’m sure most of it is pure homophobia. Screw all these self-righteous straight people!

Kathy Steininger took me to the grocery store and I pushed myself up and down every aisle in the chair…it was FUN!

I’m sure there’s a lot more I should be writing here, but I’m gonna sign off here now.

The contents of the archive includes extensive diaries as well as photographs, short stories, poems, essays, correspondences, medical research files, and important primary sources related to transgender history.