Interview with Douglas Seymour, January 3, 2020
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- Title:
- Interview with Douglas Seymour, January 3, 2020
- Date:
- 2020
- Interviewer:
- Greene, Harlan
- Interviewee:
- Seymour, Douglas
- Description:
- Douglas Seymour (pronouns: He/Him/His) relates the story of his abusive childhood, growing up and attending school and college in Charleston, SC, his life as an adult, and his work as a peer navigator for people with HIV, often speaking forcefully on the corrosive impact of homophobia. He was beaten by his father for not liking sports and cars, and, although he adored his mother, she told him “being gay was worse than being a child molester and a child murderer.” He always knew he was attracted to men, and if “there hadn’t been the hitch of being told it was wrong...it would have been a natural flow into adulthood.” He graduated First Baptist High School, and due to his father’s demands, attended the Citadel, terrified that he would be picked on for being gay. There, however, he found acceptance among upperclassmen for his knowledge of pop music and found other gay cadets. Having started frequenting the bar Basin Street South as an underage teen, he began going to the King Street Garden and Gun Club, and Seymour recalls his times there and that era of the late 1970s and early 1980s as one of the happiest periods of his life. After college, he worked as a journalist in Summerville, SC, and he describes the cliquish nature of Charleston gay life at the time. His lack of self-esteem, he says, prompted his alcoholism and his settling into personal relationships that were often abusive. He lived in Washington, DC, from 1982 to 1991 and returned to Charleston with a diagnosis of AIDS, told by physicians to prepare to die. After living with his parents, and coming out to them, he moved into his own apartment and received health care from his physician and Lowcountry AIDS Services. Facing health crises, he quit drinking and quit smoking, hired a personal trainer and was in the best shape of his life in his fifties. He began to work for the local Ryan White program as a peer navigator for people newly diagnosed or those long-term survivors like himself. Seymour describes some of the social support programs he set up and notes the quandary of “a whole bunch of us gay men...[with] no career, no retirement...because we weren’t supposed to be here, and now we’re older, we’re isolated...[and] it kind of feels like nobody wants you.” The interview ends with reflections on the lack of a variety of specific spaces for LGBTQ people and how Charleston has changed over the years.
- Collection Title:
- South Carolina LGBTQ Oral Histories, Archives, and Outreach
- Contributing Institution:
- College of Charleston Libraries
- Media Type:
- Oral Histories
- Personal or Corporate Subject:
- Citadel Academy (Charleston, S.C.)
- Topical Subject:
- Coming out (Sexual orientation), Gays--Social life and customs--South Carolina--Charleston, AIDS activists
- Geographic Subject:
- Charleston (S.C.)
- S.C. County:
- Charleston County (S.C.)
- Language:
- English
- Shelving Locator:
- Mss LGBTQ-OH-063
- Date Digital:
- 2020-01-03
- Digitization Specifications:
- Mp3 derivative audio created with Audacity software. Archival masters are wav files.
- Format:
- audio/mpeg
- Copyright Status Statement:
- Copyright © College of Charleston Libraries.
- Access Statement:
- All rights reserved.
- Access Information:
- For more information contact Special Collections at Addlestone Library, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, 29424.
- Admin ID:
- 292588
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