By Angie O'Sperm

Speaking freely from the heart to my brothers.
Representing noboby but himself and a family gaggle of pixies.

I had gone to the Wolf creek Radical Faerie Sanctuary to be with my boyfriend Randerella and help the land prepare for a truly busy gathering season. My stay began with the official business of Great Circle where the operations of the church of Nomenus meet the needs of maintaining this cultural/spiritual sanctuary for radical faeries and their friends to gather in harmony with nature, for renewal, growth, and shared learning. That is from the Nomenus mission statement, which was adapted years past to include others in this vision of of a gay male Sanctuary, as the vision of the church of Nomenus was to create a sacred and safe space for gay men to explore the history and potential of gay male spirituality.
Oh, as we know, the debate about this has at times been most lively and spirited over the years. Many compromises have been reached. Many have been disheartened by the radical process of consensus that is at the core of the decision making process of both the church of Nomenus and the Sanctuary that it created and manages.
And there is a lot of physical work needed to maintain the Sanctuary infrastructure, such as pulling poison ivy and hauling out garbage and recycling, as people do tend to bring and leave a lot of garbage at the Sanctuary.
I offered to help facilitate the special needs aspect of Garden house, an interior space set aside for those with health or mobility concerns that inhibit them from roughing it in the wilds of the woods. As a lot of the Sanctuary founders have died from the ravages of AIDS, keeping Garden house access able for those in our community journying the rivers of life and death has been an important practice of maintaining the aspect of Sanctuary.
Recently Garden House was beautifully expanded to better the stay of the beloved sick and aged members of our community, whom it is important to include as often they are our living history.
For several years a group of individuals including many closely associated with the Sanctuary and it's history have hosted an event called the "Naraya".
This has been an Ernest attempt to adopt native American Spirituality into the Radical Faerie vision, as the two spirit and third sex, the berdache, the shamans, many of these native traditions included and embraced those who walk the different paths in this life we all must travel. Harry Hay and others heavily borrowed from many native traditions in helping organize the Radical faeries many years back, a vision that bore the fruit we today call the Wolf creek Radical Faerie Sanctuary.
As it should be the hosts of this event prepare and present it most seriously with respect. A circle of gatekeepers have been established to quiz each participant thoroughly about their spiritual intent and focus, and if the gatekeeper determines that you are not spiritually focused enough, or that is not the place for you, you are excluded from the event. These decisions are not to be questioned, as the gatekeepers are given ultimate authority to decide who can stay at the Sanctuary during the time that they rent it for their private event. The word is a lot of people get turned away by this seeding out process. It all feels pretty safe, as most everyone knows each other, sorta like a faerie gathering with the crusts cut off.
I volunteered to help with the kitchen and cutting the firewood for the main ceremony and the needs of the elders who were set up in Garden House. My boyfriend Randerella was involved with Naraya, and I wanted to stay with him, and as I'd been at the land living and helping the community there, helping out in the kitchen for the Nayraya felt natural.
I had to go through the process of being interviewed by a gatekeeper to question my intent, my spirituality, and if I met the unstated standards expected of those included in this private event.
The night before the first day of Nayraya cold showers pelted the Sanctuary and those setting up the event. The electrical circuits kept getting tripped by too many people plugging into the pump house in the parking lot, and through the grapevine I heard a person with advanced AIDS was staying in the parking lot. I wanted to know why he was not in Garden House, and was told Garden House space was filled up with the elders brought in for this event, and that this individual was set up o.k. in his vehicle for the night. Since special needs is an important commitment to me in creating sanctuary, and as I've much personal experience dealing with the needs and concerns of those affected by H.I.V., I decided to Gage the situation about this individual with a life threatening illness who was forced to stay out in the parking lot.
The next morning in the back of the Barn sitting in a section of funked-out couches I started speaking across to someone whom I'd seen about and recognized, but could not quite remember the context of how we had met before. I knew those eyes, those beautiful, deep eyes that showed right to his heart.
I asked him his name and he said of course I knew him, that years back we had sex upon a shear cliff face in the Columbia river gorge during a hike, as the winds howled about our bodies clinging and moving on the rock that dropped hundreds of feet below us, at one point almost falling backwards into the great expanse of sky. For this story I'll call him "Star", a shortened version of one of his many names.
My jaw dropped in utter shock as several friends had told me Star had passed years back, and I had believed him to be dead.
Back when I had first moved to Portland in the late 80's Star had been close to both me and my partner Gidget. Gidget and I had been together for close to eight years before he had died in 1994. Gidget and I first made love in the back seat of Star's black 1969 Cadillac as we drove north late summer 1987 as wildfires burned in the hills beyond the freeway, after looking to create a faerie artist colony near Wolf creek. The Sanctuary then was fresh and newly minted, Gidget and Star both were there at the creation of Nomenus to ensure the Wolf creek Sanctuary's survival and future as faggot sacred space, as the land itself had a long history of faerie events, inhabitants, and gatherings.
This was when a lot of faeries were dieing of AIDS, and many left their estates with the intent of preserving the Wolf creek Sanctuary as a place for their brothers to safely hold ritual and space in a world openly hostile to the needs and history of our community.
And Star had lived there at the beginning, and helped lay the foundation that has grown into the community that tends the Sanctuary and the needs of it's visitors today.
The poor thing was even President of Nomenus once.
At the point my partner Gidget first became sick with a series of high fevers we faced homelessness, and in my circle of friends then it was Star who made sure there was a roof over our heads till we were able to find an apartment. That is the sort of kindness that saves lives, and forever will I love Star for how he was there for Gidget and I in our dire hour of need.
Star is a free spirit who shines upon many pathways, and I had lost track of him, then heard that he had died.
Imagine my elation at finding him back home, as back when I was a boy and first set foot in the parking lot by the sweep of the meadow, he was there.
Then he told me why he was there. Two months past his lover Peanut had died in his arms. A grotesque misplacement of breathing tubes led to Peanut filling up with black mold, and my brother Star held his lover as he passed from this world.
Star cleared out their things, saw that Peanut was buried in the grove of trees where he had wished to be buried, (ironically across from Charles Shultz's tombstone, with "Peanuts" characters inscribed upon it)
and had a vision that he needed to be with his community at Wolf creek, as Star also comes from a Native American tradition, and knew many of the Naraya participants. Star had left several messages with the Naraya organizers, and was prepared to meet with a gatekeeper that would decide if he could participate.
We shared some history, then I had to be off to facilitate the gathering of firewood for the opening ritual.
I found Star later, crying. He had been told to leave, told that this was "not the place for him to be".
In his time of need.
With his friends and family.
In sacred faerie space he helped create.

"Not the place for him to be."

He was told to leave and come back later. I found a Sanctuary caretaker and told him what had happened, and he said the decision was totally that of the gatekeepers, then he through his hands up in the air and walked away real fast.
I went to one of the honored elders, an individual whom I had shared many giggling ecstatic rolling-off-the-bed sexual trysts back in the heart of the eighties, and told him. Star had also been intimate with this individual, who had given him his spirit name. Star had given him the first drum that he made.
Well, about the most that he said was that the decision of the gatekeepers is final and not to be questioned.
I went to the gatekeeper who was over me in the kitchen crew and told him my concerns. If this gatekeeper thinks you are in the wrong spirit in the kitchen, you will be asked to leave. He was prickly to me asking questions, but did offer to speak with this particular gatekeeper who had told Star to leave. I said that I had conflicts preparing food for people who would turn away our brother, a beloved member of our community, in his great time of need. I could tell from the gatekeepers body language that I had clearly crossed the line, and I felt marked for daring to ask about how my friend was treated. I was again reminded that this was a "private event"
I found Star, and we spent a lovely afternoon next to the spring on the hillside, picking through the spring-smoothed rocks as the years fell away.
Close to dusk we parted and I went to talk with the gatekeepers, but first was reminded that I had offered to chop the firewood for the elders in garden House, as several people who had promised to bring firewood did not deliver the goods.
Chop chop chop.
I found the Kitchen gatekeeper, who said the decision that Star must leave was final. I told him the conflict that this created with me, and he shot back"Do not bring conflict into the kitchen!"
I told him I would leave.
Walking back to the parking lot the evening ritual was beginning down at the bridge memorial. Back in 1996 when the current bridge was constructed, faeries pledged money for this work to include the names of our deceased brothers and lovers that had been taken from us during the bad days of the AIDS pandemic upon a memorial. My friend Judy Jetson designed the alter, and I made the tiles and scribed into them the names of the dead. My deceased lover Gidget had made the many tiny porcelain vases that decorate this memorial that has become the focus of many a ritual upon the land. Star also knows many of the names intimately that are inscribed upon this memorial, those of his brothers and lovers, people we still share stories about. Myself I believe that a person is not truly dead till the living memory of all they have touched has also passed. Writing my lovers and brothers names upon this memorial involved an obligation from the rituals to create this memorial to honor their memory, for a while to keep their memory in spoken history, and to look after those whom they had also personally loved. Their brother and lover Star was there, and had been told to leave.
The ritual was a blend of Native American and voodoo traditions, the dead were called out into a little boat fashioned of twigs, and led in a candled procession towards the North star, to the firepit where the main ritual commenced.
It was heart rending for me to watch, to watch my dead lover Gidget called out as his close brother Star was told to leave alone in the night by the callers of these dead.
I found Star, shaken, crying, trying to pull himself together, unsure where to go to stay.
I helped ground him as best I could, to clean up the psychic garbage dumped upon him by this "gatekeeper".
I went to the Barn, fixed Star some coffee, and helped him prepare to leave. we were alone there, as the Narayans drummed and sang into the night in a ritual involving our dead brothers.
Oh, I forgot, "private event".
I held Star as he sobbed, I wonder how long it had been since anyone had held him, maybe this was the first time somebody had truly held him since his lover, his star, had died in his arms.
Star composed himself, and drove off the land in the middle of the night to sleep alone in a battered down car at a rest stop on the side of I-5.
Alone.
"This is not the place for you to be."
Alone at a rest stop.
Sick.
Crying.
Cold.
Denied Sanctuary at faggot sacred space in his great time of need.
I know a lot of good people are involved in Naraya with the best of heart, but where is the heart, the compassion, in this cold dead machine that turned away my brother in his great time of need from faerie sanctuary?
What the hell is the good of your little dance if those gatekeepers are so dead in their hearts that they would turn away our brother to shiver alone sick in a rest stop in the cold of the night?
An interesting historical first is that the gatekeeper who told Star to leave is a woman, the first time in the history of a gay male radical faerie Sanctuary, of creating a safe space for our brothers for Sanctuary, that a woman ordered a gay brother to leave in his greatest need for community,
to leave crying,
in the night.