Bridging the gap: stories of Eugene queer life across generations

From the 1960s through the 1990s, lesbians from across the US made pilgrimages to Eugene, Oregon, many in Volkswagen buses. In fact, so many lesbians made their way to Eugene and began building lesbian collective businesses and group houses that it became known as the lesbian mecca.

Enid Lefton was one of those people, and her story is preserved in The Eugene Lesbian Oral History Project, an oral history collection of more than 80 stories from the heyday of Eugene’s lesbian community. That archive is on display at the University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History as part of the Outliers and Outlaws exhibit.

Through the project, Lefton met Shayna Meltzer, who is 51 years younger than her, but shares a Jewish upbringing and queer identity. They sat down to talk about how things have changed in the queer community.

Enid Lefton: I’m Enid Lefton. I think I’m a historic lesbian, I realize, which is amazing. I am 72 years old, which is also amazing. [..] I was originally from Ohio and came here in 1977 to Eugene and was very involved in the lesbian community all that time.

Shayna Meltzer: My name is Shayna Meltzer. I use she/they pronouns. I’m 21 years old. I grew up in San Diego, California and now I go to the University of Oregon.

I would call Enid my queer grandma. We get dinners and it is very lovely and very special.

Lefton: Actually, I was looking for some young bodies to help me with a garage sale like a year ago. But over the year, then we just would spend time together and just talk and learn about each other. It’s just amazing.

Meltzer: Very Special. I didn’t really know anything about other generations in terms of queerness or anything about that. I knew a little bit of history, but I didn’t have people in my life. And, I think that as I was kind of coming into my own identity and exploring who I was, I wanted to be able to have someone from an older generation who’s been there and can talk through that with me.

Lefton: And for me, I just, it never occurred to me that younger people would be at all interested in me as an old person. [..] It just surprises me how they’re really interested in, you know, what my life was like and what it is like now, and that they honor that. I just never expected that. I guess when I was young, I didn’t. So it’s been really refreshing and it’s been really, it’s just been really nice to talk about what our lives are like. And hopefully be some kind of role model, but also they’re such role models to me too. Talking with Shayna and other younger people, I’m really in awe of what they have to deal with.

They also are looking for ways to connect. And seeing through the project what we had, the community that we built in the 70s and 80s, and how there isn’t something exactly like that now.

Meltzer: I think that being exposed to social media at such a young age — There’s suddenly all of these options and all of these things, and do you have to know? How do you figure it out? I think that sometimes my generation likes to label. I think there is really that like, desire to have like your identities and what those are. And then there’s so many different ones.

Lefton: Being queer is not at all like it was when I was first coming out.

I know a lot of people my age still have a hard time using the word “queer.” I’m very comfortable with it because it really incorporates so many different possibilities that we have.

Lefton: And then coming out as a lesbian, especially through feminism ... realizing that the patriarchy was keeping us down and finding ways for women and lesbians to be able to create our own space and our own way of living. I think it’s gone beyond that now because there’s more than just the binary.

There’s more than when I was coming out. It was pretty much like, you figure out, are you gay or straight? Maybe are you butch or femme? Although that was starting to ebb a little bit. I think it was a lot, it was maybe a lot simpler for us, even though we really had to fight and there was a lot of prejudice. But it was easier to find our direction.

I grew up with crushes on my girlfriends all the time. I was madly in love with my best friend in high school. And it was pretty close. There was some physical stuff that happened, but we never acknowledged what was going on.

I was in college and I was taking a psychology class. We were on the chapter on deviant behavior, which was drug addiction, prostitution and homosexuality. And I remember walking out of class and my friend had the class in the same building after me, and I saw her there and it was like, I freaked out. It’s like, ‘That can’t be me! That can’t be me!’ You know? Homosexuality was still considered a disease at that time.

People always ask me to talk about coming out to their family and friends and stuff. I never came out; I never sat down with anybody and said, ‘oh, I’m gay’, you know? I just was myself and people figured it out and it was OK. Fortunately, my parents were very accepting and loving about it.

Meltzer: There was like a sense of shame for me when I was first kind of exploring that part of my identity. And kind of similar to you in high school. I went on a date with a girl and then just kind of was like, ah, ‘actually that was just a practice.’ Like that doesn’t mean anything, you know? It wasn’t until COVID my senior year, where I was like spending all of this time alone in my room and a lot of time on social media. I was able to kind of reflect on myself a little bit more.

So, I first came out to a friend around that time, and it was hard. I was crying. And she was very supportive.

I don’t really know where that shame kind of came from. It didn’t come from my family or anyone I grew up around.

Lefton: Well, it could have come from society, the world, you know?

Meltzer: Yes. Right. There were maybe some other messages out there, emphasizing those things. Yeah, absolutely.

My parents have always been so, like, ‘you love who you love.’ I wanted to tell them when I had someone to tell them about. I don’t know why that’s what it was for me. But a couple months ago, they were up to visit me. We were at dinner. And they were asking me about all the work that I’ve been able to do with this Eugene Lesbian Oral History Project, because it’s become my favorite thing ever.

My dad kind of said something like, well, ‘you know, you haven’t told us that there’s any other reason that you’re interested in that.’ And I was like, ‘OK, well maybe I will tell you’. And I officially like came out.

Lefton: Because I never came out to my family or anybody else. Actually. I’m curious, how do you say it? What do you say? How do you communicate it? What does it mean?

Meltzer: It was kind of hard because I don’t feel like I’m defined by any one label. And then, once I’m like putting something out there, then I feel like that’s kind of, that becomes it. That’s how people see me, or like, that’s what I am. So, finding the right words to express that part of my identity was challenging.

At first, I think they were kind of like bummed that I hadn’t told them sooner. I kind of had to reassure them, ‘it’s not because of you, you know, you’ve been incredible always.’ It was more just my own journey coming to wanting to talk about that part of myself. But I guess that was the language I used.

Lefton: But, I think part of it is that people, especially younger people are realizing there’s lots of things that are OK and they’re just experiencing it. It doesn’t mean that they’re like a raging dyke like I was.

Meltzer: But they could be.

Lefton: Well, we could only hope. You know, as a community, we are constantly redefining ourselves and moving in different directions. And change is always hard, but when it comes down to it, people should be what they wanna be and who they wanna be.

I always felt as far as sexuality, when I was first coming out even, I really felt honestly that there was a spectrum and that people were in different places in it. And that was, most people should be in the middle. And I felt like I was definitely at one end. Not that I always felt comfortable being around people at different places in that spectrum, but I knew that it seemed like that was the ideal.

Meltze: I think that highlights a real barrier that sometimes exists between the younger and older generation.

I think with two different experiences and two different dialogues around what does it mean to be queer, and different ideas about sexual identity and gender identity.

I think sometimes, it’s really hard for, like my generation for who cancel culture is really big. I think sometimes there’s a kind of shutoff, because they see it as like, ‘oh, well you’re being disrespectful,’ or ‘you’re not, like being open to it.’

It doesn’t allow maybe those conversations to happen. So, I think that that’s a really big thing that we can try to push through, is being able to have conversations like past the different vocabulary we use and the different definitions we use.

Lefton: Especially in retrospect, realizing that in the whole AIDS crisis, which was horrible. But, the positive thing out of it is got us all to work together. Lesbians were there helping the gay men. And the allies coming out. It really did change, really moved forward, the gay rights movement, in a kind of sad way, right?

Meltzer: I think I can mostly only speak from, you know, my own experience and context. But, I think that I would want your generation to know that, you know, we’re really proud of the history and seeing how far queer people have come. Because I get to live the way that I live now because of things that your generation did. I just hope that in the future there’s a lot more dialogue between our two generations because I think that there’s no need to reinvent the wheel, right?

There’s so many things that you all went through that, unfortunately in some ways, we’re seeing it happen for our generation as well as yours again. So finding community and, and working together towards just all being accepted. Yeah.

Lefton: Just keep doing that. I mean, there’s so much more beyond who knows what comes next, you know? And love yourself. I think that’s important.

Meltzer: I think I love myself more genuinely because of the relationship I have with you

Lefton: Aw.

Meltzer: And getting, getting to see what my future could look like or, or what existed before me. It’s very meaningful to me in my life.

Lefton: Thanks. And it’s been so meaningful to me to have your wonderfulness in my life. But also because I was going through a major change in my life, losing my spouse of 34 years. And to find, this new energy and love. It’s just been lifesaving for me.