After Lives is a production of iHeart Podcasts and The Outspoken podcast Network in partnership with School of Humans.

Just to heads up, the following episode discusses police violence, sexual assault, homophobia and transphobia, medical neglect, mental health mistreatment, and drug addiction.

Take care while listening.

Throughout this season of Afterlives, we piece together the many dimensions of Marsha P.

Johnson, the legend and the complex, radiant human behind it.

Along the way, we spoke with remarkable guests who cracked open new understandings and stretched the edges of what we knew.

These conversations were too rich to keep to ourselves, so join us as we unpack just a bit more.

They called me anege because there's so many points.

God that one of the waist.

Of every day.

I'm Markel Willis and this is Afterlives.

The After Show a collection of bonus episodes featuring unaired excerpts of interviews with some of the brilliant folks we've heard from this season.

On this episode, elder and advocate Cayenne door Show talks about coming up trans in New York during the seventies and eighties.

My boy Pink Cap, Billy Martin cowboy boots, and I'll never forget because my dad threw those boots in the garbage, and I went into garbage and I got those boots back out.

We dig deeper into Cayenne's story, from the nightclubs where she found community, to the daily challenge of navigating healthcare and finding hormones.

Just Tomfoolery, melting birth control bills, going out of the country.

Doctor Gardner was in bedsty That's where I.

Was getting my Then you'll hear from Stonewall veteran Jtool about their years surviving in Washington Square Park and finding family among.

Other queer kids the world left behind.

Definitely going into stores and picking up food and the same thing today.

You know, that's how the kids just survive them today, the same way we survived seventy years ago.

First Up Kyenne.

Cayenne is a powerhouse.

She's a performer, activist, organizer, community based researcher, and public figure in the trans and sex worker rights movements.

As the founder and executive director of Glitz, she works to provide holistic care to the community through housing and other direct services.

Magazine calls her a godmother of the black trans lives movement, and she is indeed a mother to so many.

This season, we heard Kyenne talk about the stigma and prejudice faced by the community in the eighties.

We also learned about how Glitz carries on so many of Marcia's dreams.

Today, we get to hear Kyenne's personal story of growing up in Bushwick, Brooklyn and finding herself in the New York Underground.

She also shares the story of finding her own community mother Flawless Sabrina, who you should know as an icon in her own right.

Let's get into it.

Growing up in Bushwick was nice.

Bushwick was a whole different place.

We played games as a block as a unit, like Coco Levo, ring around a Rosie, what is it when you jump on somebody's Johnny on the pony?

Something like that, And it was always a sense of family within community.

There was a guy that lived on our block named Joseph.

Joseph was the most vibrant gay person like by first that I had met, and Joseph told me at childhood ages, you're a girl.

Never knew what that meant, and to be honest, was sad with Joseph told me that I didn't realize what Joseph was trying to say, and you know, it was not a place where people would call me out for being feminine.

That only happened inside my house.

My dad drove a New York City bus and my mom taught right around the corner from our house.

So there was an element of security because everybody knew my but also there was an element of fear around who I was, who I was hiding, who could actually see through my facade of being a little boy, because in my mind I was this little girl, and how my parents really wanted to mask that, And a lot of that was masked in trauma, in fear, in pain, in thoughts of suicide.

I didn't know how to express who I was, or what I was or what I was becoming.

But clearly all my neighbors we had an Italian nanny named Flora, and Flora would let me do all the things my mother wouldn't.

I would cut up curtains and make dresses and just be a hot best in Flora's house.

And now that I looked back.

At her floora and say, you can never do this at home, You can never let them know.

And that was trying to protect me.

Wow, so you ran away?

How many times did you run away?

I ran away?

I'd say about eight times, okay.

And that's would have been between which.

Asia, between fourteen and eighteen?

And when did you meet Falla Sabrina?

Clearly at sixteen, when I knew the men'sapowerl was gone, I went to normal Kamali and I got me a hoodie and a cape and it was fabulous that it was like baby pink and blue.

And it was fabulous.

And I bought pink cap Billy Martin cowboy boots and I'll never forget because my dad threw those boots in the garbage, and I went into garbage and I got those boots back out.

At the same time.

To be fully transparent, the guy that I was dating only wanted to date me as a boy.

And you know, the guy threw me out and he said, I did not sign on to date at that age.

He said to date a crossdresser.

I was scared, and I knew of places where I could be safe.

Central Park was one of those places.

He had a spot called the Rambles, and I been through the Rambos once or twice at an early age, and it's where the community would go to sow their wildloads, and I knew I would be safe.

So I took all my stuff.

I put them in bushes and I was setting up my little fort.

I was going to sleep here, and I was going to be okay.

I hear this voice of this queen say, ma'am, what are you doing back there?

Come out?

Come out?

And I was like, I'm not coming out there.

Oh you come out, or I'll come in.

And she went to come in and she'sa to my god, you're a child.

And I said, well yeah, and she said, get all your stuff, come with me.

And as we walked, she told me her name Flora Sabrina and told me her born name, Jack dor Show.

And I said okay, And she says, I live right here.

It's right across street from Central Park.

And I said, wow, she must be okay.

She lives on Central Park.

And she went took me upstairs.

I hadn't slept like in days.

She told me to take a shower and to throw my clothes away, and I freaked out and I didn't realize I reapd and she didn't want to hurt my feelings, and she said, don't worry about clothing.

Get some sleep, I want you to eat, and she ordered dinner from the restaurant like anything I wanted on the menu, and I ate until I fell asleep on the couch, and she said, you take my bedroom.

And I think that was to see if I was a drug addict or was going to steal or anything.

And I took her bedroom and she slept in the living room.

But I slept for almost two days, and when I woke up, she ordered food again and she said, I'm taking you home.

Give me the address.

I'm taking you home because no child should be in a street.

And on a.

Saturday, we went back to my mom and here goes this old Jewish, white queen take it up black creed home to reprimand the parent about throwing a child out, and my mom let me come back.

But I think it was that of embarrassment and out of guilt.

But it was only for months.

It went right back to me being a faggot, me being disrespected and verbally abused, and me being physically abused, and it all looked ugly and scary, and I made the conscious decision to leave for good.

We'll be right back with more from our interview with Cayenne welcome back to After Lives.

Here's more from the godmother of the Black trans Lives movement, Cayenne Door Show.

So this brings us then to the eighties.

Around this time, Can you describe for younger folks today who may not have an understanding, what was New York like?

Can you paint that picture?

New York was the den of iniquity.

New York had all the bells and whistles for a young gender, expensive child growing up, getting out there, discovering places that I had never known about, going to the Sound Factory, Paradise Garage, Twilight Zone, Cisco Disco, Sally's Hideaway, seeing girls like these were real trans women like just living their best lives.

But also the height of the aidesmic when people were pointing their fingers at all queer people and all gay people that we were the impressions of HIV and AIDS.

And it was so horrible because how could just one group, one demographic, be responsible for HIV and AIDS.

And that's the way it looked throughout society when as a child, I blamed the government.

From the start, I seen this as a war on black people, a war on queer people, and a war on marginalized communities when you had stars quote unquote thriving during the AIDS epidemic living and all my friends were dying rapidly around me.

Same time of the AIDS epidemic, bath houses in New York City were thriving.

Like anytime I didn't have a place to say, I got into a bath house and I could stay there as long as I didn't have on a frog and I got to meet like some amazing nightlife icons and stars and it was a place where I could sleep all night, take a shower, eat, meet people, have sex.

But yeah, at the time of the epidemic, there were bath houses all over Midtown Manhattan, forty second Street, sex parties, you name it.

How were people accessing hormones?

And like the seventies going into the eighties.

Girl just tomfoolery, melting birth control pills, traveling like going out of the country.

There was a doctor named doctor Gardner.

That's where I was getting mine.

Doctor Gardner was in Bedstide, So I would go and get like three months worth the prescriptions.

But in the beginning I would go just for my shot there and doctor Gardner would never really identify as straight or gay, but he wore a fabulous two peg and I don't know.

We didn't talk to each other very really did a girl like say, hey, hi, how did you know about doctor Gardner?

That I was like, I had to be like thirteen, fourteen years old where I learned that one of my next door neighbors around the corner Deray Dupree.

She said, girl, come here, and I went upstairs and she said see this orange.

I said yeah.

She said you see this needle.

I said yeah.

She said, put that orange in that needle and push it and I did.

She said you're going to do the same thing to my ass and I said, oh, no, I'm not.

And she said but y'all and she said, listen, you may not know this now, but you will at a later date.

You're going to be sticking this in your ass too.

And I said why do you say that.

She said, I got a little secret for you.

And I said, oh God, what's the secret?

And she said, you're just like me?

And I said, no, you're a lady.

What do you mean I'm just like you?

And she said, I'm trends and they call us trust dresses, but I'm trends And I said, I still don't understand.

And she said, I'm not doing this because this is a past or anything.

You're going to need to know this.

And she removed the towel and I said, how did you get titties because apparently there was penis there and she said, that's all you're concerned about is the teddies.

And I said, I can do this, and she said, listen, this is no easy life.

A lot of the neighbors just think I'm a glamorous woman, but I am, in.

Fact just like you.

You are me when I was younger, and you need to be safe and you need to know that girls like me exist and you will be a girl like me.

And I said, how do you know?

And she said, the girls know.

And you know.

One day she's walking down the box and my dad was taking me to the store and he said, you see, that's a beautiful lady.

She smells good, she looks good, and a sense of pride ran through me.

I had goosebumps and everything that without knowing, he validated who she was, evalidated me without knowing.

That's beautiful.

And it makes sense that you know, someone seeing us so classy would be someone who became a part of your essence, because that's who you are to so many of us, thank you.

What would you say are some of the lingering impacts of that time on you personally?

But I think also just on community.

I know for me, a lot of younger folks will say, it feels like there would have been even more like mentors and elders to lean on if we hadn't lost so many people.

I would say, I think one of the first And that's why I appreciate you and be Hawks and so many people documenting this stuff because we lost a lot.

We lost a lot of history, we lost a lot of parenting.

And think this world would be so more impactful if we had a lot of those people here today.

Because it's a heavy cross to carry.

This road is not easy, and I think the stories of our ancestors gone before us or just legendary, I think we lose when we don't know the full story of a Princess Janney, when we don't know the full story of Miss Billy, one of Miss Major's children, and our beautiful sister now o Hawaiian sister who passed away a couple of years ago.

And so many before that.

What would Dori and Corey be like today, if we could hear the story of how fighting for herself and hiding that story, what would it look like to honor?

What would it mean to have Marsha B.

Johnson and Sylvia Rivera feel held when white Stone Wall abandoned them, both of them.

Google is sitting on the site of where Sylvia and Marshall live.

What would it mean to roll a Sylvia Rivera in a wheelchair up in that building so they could know this is a part of your history.

What would it mean?

What would it mean to know Keith Harring all of these people that lent their lives to HIV and AIDS and fundraising and Larry Levane and Paradise Garage and so many places that held our community.

These were the backdrops of my transness, the backdrops of my spirituality.

I used to call Paradesh Garage church because I could go in there in my Sunday hat and shake it up in my transness and feel held.

And we lost that, We lost a sense of our transness and our history with decades of hiding us as a people, decades of erasure, because.

We were there.

We were there when Beefsteak, Pete Mary was a hole back in the sixteen hundreds.

We were there.

You can't erase that.

Or you could go back to the Bible as they like to call them sodomites.

When we were there.

We were there at the time of Jesus and before Jesus.

So how can you erase eight people like you erased eight people in the Bible?

They call us sonomites and people of a different color and olive complexion.

But I'm black.

We're black, So erasia goes way before gender.

It was written into our transness as they called us crush dresses, freaks, fagots, and so on and so forth.

But we were here, We're still here, as Mama Major likes to say.

Indeed, we're still here.

It's true that we've lost far too many in our community, and we need to keep working to document and archive our transcestors.

But I couldnot be more grateful to Cayenne for sharing her story and all the incredible work she does.

In just the moment, we'll hear from another queer elder who came up in New York and found family and even love while trying to survive as a kid in Washington Square Park.

She has a magnificent voice, she used to sing with these bands and everything.

She sang this song when a Butcher Loves a Woman, And so every time I heard that song or you know, she was constantly all those years.

Did you just sneak into my brain?

Stonewall veteran and advocate J Tool stick with us, We're back.

J Toole was a recurring guest this season.

They talked about Stonewall and its aftermath, how they found community on the piers with trans women like Miss Major, and about their work serving unhoused New Yorkers.

Jay is an activist and a storyteller, well known by the moniker super Butch.

In two thousand XI one, Jay graduated from the Resource Training Center to become an alcohol and substance abuse counselor.

They then served as the director of the Shelter Project at Queers for Economic Justice until twenty fourteen.

They've been recognized for their tireless work by American University in Washington, d C.

The Silvia Rivere Law Project, the National Lawyers Guild, and Stonewall Community Foundation, among others.

Jay's perspective was indispensable to our show, and I asked them to paint you a more end depth picture of their life in the village during the sixties and seventies.

I my name is Jay Toole.

My pronouns are just about everything except big Mama.

Do not call me big mama.

But I'll just about answer to all the pronouns.

Tim Harshee, I'm going to be seventy seven, and I was born April twenty first, nineteen forty eight.

And right now I am in Florida.

I am living with my girl in Florida.

Happy.

That's wonderful.

So you grew up in the Bronx, the South Bronx.

Can you talk about what it was like to grow up.

Well, my mom had a severe mental health issues and she was put in the institutions a lot.

This one time she was in she did something where all the kids in the neighborhood weren't allowed to play with me anymore, you know.

She pulled some kid's hair, and I ran into this other little girl that brought me home to her family.

And she had a krazillian brothers and was like, this is my brother John, James, Jack Billy, this is my sister Florence.

And I walked past that bedroom and stopped dead in my tracks and I stepped back to look in the room and here was this person with Elvis Presley curl coming down her head, and I said, Florence.

So I went back to that fucking house every day because I could not stop wanting to see this person until she finally called me into her room and she brought me out her and her friend took me and got me a haircut and boys clothes because I wanted to be like them.

I knew I didn't want to be on the bottom, you know.

And I went home to.

My father's house and he took one look at me and threw me out, you know, threw me out into the streets.

And I was thirteen.

So these two butchers had taken me to West Village to the Washington Square Park a few times, so I knew, you know, hop a train go down to the village and went to Washington Square Park where I stayed.

In that park, I lived there in the bushes when I used to have big bushes there, and you know, I was scared.

I was a kid, and I was scared, and I was hungry and I was thirsty.

But if you walked up Waverley Street and you walked in the park that way, that whole first row going straight through was queer, all queer kids.

There was so many kids there.

And this group of kids came over to me and they said, are you hungry?

Are you thirsty?

And I said yeah, and they gave me stuff when I joined them, and I'll say, uh, family.

And what I learned was that there was a bunch of families there.

You know, everybody had their own cliques, and we were all so young man.

It was like I'd say the ages were maybe from ten, maybe up to maybe twenty.

All of us were kids and it was a family.

It was I wasn't scared anymore, you know.

I belonged to a real family.

And I used to think, you know, my father used to my brother used to rake me constantly when my mom was put away, and I used to say, oh, poor.

They used to call me junior because I was the baby butcher.

Oh, I'd say, poor Junior, you know, thrown out of the family unit, homeless, no place to go.

And it took me a while to realize it was the best thing that ever happened to me in my life, to be thrown out of that place.

That I didn't have to worry about being raped every night.

You know, I had a real family that cared about me.

So yeah, as part of my story.

Yeah, and thank you, Jay, I know that's well, that's a lot, and I appreciate your vulnerability just all these years for sharing the realness and sharing the truth.

You know, because somebody might they're going through it now, and if you hear somebody saying it out loud, you might not be so scared anymore and might go and tell somebody, you know, what's happening to you.

So if it could help somebody by me telling my truth, I'm going to do it all the time.

Yeah.

Okay, So how did you figure out where to sleep and where do you think you kind of figured out how to survive in those early days.

Well, my little family taught me how to survive in the park.

We slept in the park, right and if it was cold, we'd go into the west Ford Street station in the middle corridor.

There was a bathroom, huge bathroom, and we'd all pile in there and there was warm in there, so that we'd go there in the winter time.

They taught me never to use the bathroom in Washington Square Park and if you did, you had to go with a group because you didn't know whether you were going to be beat up, raped or murdered.

And food wise, you know, panhandling was a big thing, and you know pick pocketing.

I used to be a pickpocket.

They taught me how to do that.

Pretty good at it.

Definitely going into stores and picking up food and whatever we could get.

On McDougall.

Some of us were bus people, you know, picking up the dishes and this and that, but mostly panhandling and robbing.

You know, have we survived and the girls hustled also.

You know, this street economy was you know, we didn't call the back bend street economy.

You know, it was the hustle.

The butchers would maybe get the guys for curing the guys, and the girls would go with them.

You know.

The Earl Hotel was our main stay.

I think it was like I don't know, four dollars a night or something like that.

Nobody was pushed into a cohursion, you know, it was just everybody was good at something I guess, or knew what they could do to make money to keep the family together and survive on those streets.

And the same thing today, you know, that's how the kids are surviving today.

The same way we survived seventy years ago.

For me, the kids are surviving that way today.

You know, you're just trying to make it and stay alive for the next day.

Can you describe what Washington Square was like at that time, what it looked like, what you could find there, and maybe the types of people who were there.

So I told you the main entrance that was all queer, you know, on the outskirts of it.

I guess that was we had.

Fucking NYU owns all those building now, But the people who actually lived in those buildings and that corridor there was mostly drug addicts and drunks, not that we weren't because.

We were also, you know, drug addicts and drunks.

And where they played chess was intellectual people, which and they hated us.

I mean, they absolutely hated us.

They thought we brought the park down, the community down.

The police in the park hardly ever bothered us.

I can't remember one instance where the cops actually bothered us.

Maybe there was too many of us, I don't know.

But step out the park then it was brutal, But in the park it was pretty calm.

It was like a playground for us, you know, we could do what we wanted to do.

We slept there, we ate there, we played there, we did our drugs there.

Yeah, and what was kind of a typical day like for you during that time hustling?

You know, go outside the park.

There was a drug store, Whalen's drug Store for people who we robbed them blind, you know, and I think they knew it, but they just never stopped us.

But the candy chips, eye droppers.

One side of the street was on the corner was Educk's.

You know what the Educks is.

Educk's like a little mini restaurant.

They sold coffee, tea, Frankfurt's.

That was it.

And the owner of that place was from Italy and he knew about homelessness.

During World War two, his family was bombed out and they became homeless.

So when the cops would come around, he would let us go into their restaurant, put something in front of us so that the cops wouldn't come in and arrest us.

Everybody knew in the I'd say the lesbian community, that Whalen's drug store.

You didn't have to say meet me at h Street and sixth Avenue.

Ever, all you had to do is I'm Metchet whalings.

I found some pictures where the crowds of people were standing in front of whalens a night, there'd be so many people standing around there.

But also the.

Straight guys knew that we were there also, so they'd come in from Jersey and Upstate and Long Island and they'd pull up on their cars onto h Street and get out of the cars and leave the films alone.

But they'd beat the living shit out of us.

Butchers, they just beat us to death.

When the cops came, they'd let the guys go and some of us would be arrested, some of us would have to go to the hospital.

And I've been asked like, why did you keep on going back to that corner.

It was because it was our corner.

That was our piece of turf there, that's where we met, that's where we knew each other, and we weren't going to give it up for anything.

You know, the same thing as today, we're not going to give up our rights for anybody.

Obviously, you were facing so many different threats, and I'm wondering what fear was like for you.

Do you feel like there were moments where you were fearful or were you just able to just kind of tunnel vision through it.

I guess scared, you know, yeah, yeah, scared.

There was a cop there, a sergeant.

There's always a sergeant in the fucking stories that patrolled H Street, sixth Avenue, you know, and he'd come in his car.

You know.

One of the things.

You know, we didn't have cell phones of beepers or anything back then.

But if this cop was coming right, you would hear a whistle, You would hear a yell, You would hear something from blocks away before he even got to you, because we were all over the place, but you would hear something to know that this guy is on his way up to H Street.

So we'd scatter because and this is the truth, if this fucking guy caught you, he was going to put you in you're in his police car.

He was going to beat you badly, and he was going to rape you, and then he was going to take you to jail.

That's the truth that was known.

That was the thing.

So fearful, scared, you know, when you knew this fucking guy was coming.

Yeah, we get out of there.

Wow, okay.

And so jumping to.

How you all figured out how to make money, how to get the things you needed.

I know you talked about panhandling, talked about robbing.

I mean, you had to get what you had to get.

If I may ask, I know this is loaded, but we know that the mafia was around during this time.

That's also a piece of your story, you know, figuring out how to work around that system.

Can you talk about that part of the experience too.

Yeah.

I worked for them twice.

Once when still living in Washington Square Park, me and another butcher went to work.

They owned the pizza you're on at Google Street, which is still there.

They still loaded, but that pizza place is still there.

But anyway, we got a job running numbers, right.

So people that don't know what running numbers is.

It's like when you go into a bodega now and you buy give me number four or five, six, right, and they give you the lottery ticket.

Back then, it was we would go to people in the park.

We'd say, what's your numbers today?

We'd write it on a little piece of paper, right, and they give us their quarter dollar whatever it was, and we'd bring that back to the pizzeria.

Years later, it goes back from Cali and I ran into this guy.

He said, you want a job.

I said, yeah, you know, and he said, well, I got this bar now called the Bohemia.

You know, it's diagonally of course from stone Wall, and he made me a bouncer.

I'd never seen a place like this before, you know, I've been to Stonewall and everything, but this was something different.

You walked in the bar and it was like a regular bar, an old man's bar, and then you kept walking and you open up this door and it was like Nirvana.

It was like, holy shit, this is great.

You know, when the cops would come, or when they knew they were a raid was coming, which we very really knew when the raids were coming.

It's not like the other boars did.

There was a button underneath the.

Bar in front, and he'd hit it and the red light would go off in the back and I had to separate everybody, you know, stop the music, Separate everybody, hide your liquor.

Everybody knew if the cops came, somebody was going.

You just hoped it wasn't you, but somebody was going to be taken out of there, whether it was the way you were dressed for the three articles of clothing, or they just didn't like the way you looked or whatever.

But the good thing about the Bohemia was that I was sitting on that stage one night when this beautiful girl came walking in with her friends and sat in the front table, and I'm staring at her and staring at her, you know.

I finally got up and went down and I said, you want to dance?

And she said yes, and we danced for about two years.

Linda, she ran away from home for me and stayed on the streets.

I'd get a hotel room.

She never knew where I got money from, you know, And she went home this one time to change her clothes.

She went to her grandma's house and her mom called the authorities.

So Linda was arrested for being a wayward girl, and they put her in the youth house.

You know, she just disappeared out of my life.

I never knew what happened to her.

You know, I was heartbroken.

I'd sat on that bench for days and days waiting for her to walk through that park.

But anyway, fast forward fifty five years.

She sees me on Democracy Now and recognized my ears, and she sent me an email.

She said, are you her?

Did you live in the Bronx, and I wrote back, are you Linda?

And you know, we text and we talked on the phone for a little while and then I'm coming down, you know, I'm coming down to see you.

And it was like magic.

It was like we were kids again.

I first looked at each other.

I could see little Linda, you know, hopefully she's seen little Junior.

And we've been together going on six years.

Now.

Wow, that's beautiful.

It is.

It's like a miracle, I guess.

Yeah.

I mean, how did you feel reconnecting with Linda?

I mean that moment where you kind of had the realization of who this was.

It's funny, for those fifty five years, she'd always sneak back in my head, you know, like I'd hear this song when a Man Loves a Woman, right, and I could see her at this hotel room standing at the window with the sun shining.

And she has a magnificent voice.

She used to sing with these bands and everything.

She sang this song, when the Butcher Loves a Woman.

And so every time I heard that song, or you know, she was constantly all those years, she just into my brain.

So when I got that email.

It was like you like you know, and I even knew the last name liked.

I felt nervous at first.

You know, I'm not no spring kitten anymore.

I was a little worried that I was a little too old, you know, forgetting that.

You know, she got old with me too.

Yeah.

And I'm just I've never been so happy in my life.

It's like, this is where I need needed to be.

I'm home.

I finally got home.

Oh that's beautiful.

When she picked me up in the car at the airport in Tampa and we're driving, I said I wanted to kiss her, kiss her so bad.

I said, pull over, pull over, and she said, no, I'm taking your home.

It was the greatest line in my heart.

I'm taking you home.

Yeah.

Wow.

And I mean, I can't imagine what that felt like after so many years of all of the work that you had been doing, but of course just the struggle that even came before the work.

About how many years would you say you were homeless or houseless?

And what does your living situation look like today?

So I was homeless from the age of thirteen, I guess to fifty.

It's a long time, you know, Off and on, I get little places, get little jobs, but never never lasted very long, you know, staying on the streets worked while I was still on the streets, Yeah, a long time, maybe thirty years, you know, homelessness before I went into the shelter system and started getting all right.

My living condition now is heaven.

You know.

I'm living down here in Florida with my partner Linda.

She has two children, three grandchildren, one great grandchild.

Oh my god, and I loved them all.

These kids are amazing.

When I first came down, I was so worried, so so worried.

But the three granddaughters, the baby, now the great grandson that's come to the house with a family, I feel like I belonged.

You know.

When Wnda said we're going home, you know that's what she really meant.

You know, I came home.

Y'all can tell me if this is too much.

But I know we've mentioned Linda a few times.

I don't know.

Linda just wants to say a quick hay on the mic, just so people can kind of hear her voice.

Hey, Michael, to see you.

Nice to see you too.

What's it like hearing Jay's story.

I'm very proud of her.

I heard for her with her stories of abuse and all.

I thought she was dead.

You know, I was surprised to see her on Democracy Now because I really never thought she made it out of the sixties, and so that was quite an awakening for me.

You have to understand how overwhelming it still is to think about that we knew each other for only a short time in the sixties, and then when we met again, it was almost like a time and space warp, you know what I mean.

She's held in high regard to so many in the community, and she kind of likes just coming home and be and jay and sometimes not super much.

But I'm very proud of her, and we're both radical, so you know, we'd like to get involved more, especially in these times, and hopefully something come up that we can attach to.

Yeah, and I guess maybe the last thing I know we put you on the spot, but maybe for both of you, is what advice would you give folks right now who are struggling.

Reach out, stay strong.

There's people out here that love you.

Protect yourself and get involved.

Find an organization, a person, a group that has your same values that you can work with, you know, without feeling compromised.

You want to find the freedom to be you, and there's plenty of us out there that'll welcome you.

I'm dying to see Jay and Linda's story on the big screen, y'all.

Their romance is so beautiful and a big thanks to Linda for hopping on the mic.

Cayenne and Jay are a testament to the power and compassion in our community.

So grateful to share their stories and document our history.

You can follow the link in our show notes to learn more and donate to Glitz, as well as organizations close to Jay's hart like the Audre Lord Project, Transgender Law Center, and the Trevor Project.

Thanks so much for listening to Afterlives.

If you liked what you heard, here's a little homework to help us out.

Please share the show with others and tell them to leave us a rating and review.

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This is our last episode for now, but keep an eye on the feed.

There may just be more bonus content down the line.

After Lives is a production of the Outspoken Network from iHeart Podcasts in partnership with School of Humans.

I'm your host and creator Raquel Willis.

Dylan Hoyer is our senior producer and scriptwriter.

Our associate producer is Joey pat Sound design and engineering by Jess Crimechicic story editing by Julia Furlan score composed by Wise Murray.

Our production manager is Daisy Church.

Executive producers include Me, Raquel Willis and Jess Crinchich from The Outspoken Podcast Network, Amelia Brock, Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley from School of Humans and The Cats Company.

The image of Marsha in our show art.

Is provided by the Leslie Lowman Museum of Art Founder's gift p.

Fifteen dot six nine nine dot one oh six.

A special thank you to everyone who provided archival tape, including Marcia nineteen ninety two by Michael Casino Courtesies of Michael Casino