From: zwicky@csli.stanford.edu (Arnold Zwicky)
Subject: a few days at the linguistic society
Followup-To: soc.motss
Keywords: out, parties
Organization: lsa, outil, stanford, osu,...
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 07:16:04 GMT

hey, i'm back on line.  interesting to read these bits of threads
that spun themselves out while i was off in los angeles.  (mara,
you are a *very* scrupulous person; not to worry, and you can read
and enjoy and respond to *anything* i write about sex.  as for
george's problems with arne, i am killing that thread after reading
just a bit.  fwa as *mary poppins*?!  what is the world coming to?)

so jacques and elizabeth and i went off to l.a. for the linguistic
society of america meetings.  at the biltmore, an elegant 20s hotel
on what used to be pershing square but is now a mud flat over top
a forthcoming underground parking garage.

well, i was [until 3:30 last saturday] president of the society, so i
got the hotel's *serious* suite, the presidential.  (it was designed
for visiting u.s. presidents; i was told that kennedy, ford, carter,
and reagan had all stayed there.  this will be relevant.)
in-fuckin-credible: two floors, with three bedrooms (one gigantic - j
and i took this - and one very large - my long-time collaborator The
Dean and his partner Barbara The Philosopher took that one - and one
ordinarily hotel-sized, which e took while she waited for *her*
partner to arrive on saturday) and accompanying baths and dressing
rooms on the lower floor, and with a small library, a substantial
kitchen, a sizable dining room, two more bathrooms, and a *gigantic*
living room on the upper floor, with a spiral staircase (and a private
elevator) between them.  six telephones, with four lines, helping
us all to span the vast empty spaces.  four tvs, all hidden in
faux-antique cabinets.

we sort of rattled around in all these elegant spaces, plus the
vip club lounge on the lower floor, where someone was available
from 6:30 a.m. through 10 p.m. to shield us from dealing with
the outside world.

strange stuff.

meanwhile i ran all kinds of meetings.  (kept the pink triangle on my
briefcase, inked in another one on my badge, just in case any of the
thousand or so linguists had missed the news.)  the executive
committee all day thursday.  a session on encouraging diversity in
linguistics (with special reference to women, racial/ethnic
minorities, and lesbigay students).  the annual business meeting
of the society (where the only discussion of interest was about
the society's guidelines for nonsexist language).  and then, on
saturday, the presidential address.

e and j explored downtown l.a. together during all of this, up to the
presidential address, when they joined another 350 or so people in a
vast cold space (the biltmore bowl) to hear me talk about theory
construction in linguistics.  i got this embarrassingly nice
introduction by the society's secretary (who once took courses from me
at illinois), and then i gave the society's first address to mention
either john boswell or thomas laqueur (i quoted both at moderate
length), for an hour, and then i fielded questions for half an hour,
and then i went to the Committee on the Status of Women in Linguistics
tea, and then i worked with The Dean and our co-author Philip the
Belgian Muffin on a joint article about (and originally in) french,
and then most of us went to the vip club lounge for appetizers and a
drink, and then we had a party for around a hundred people back in The
Presidential Suite.

oh, yes, the party.  this was a reception for OUTIL (OUT In
Linguistics).  i announced it on the mailing list itself, here on
soc.motss, and by flyers at the meeting (the executive director of the
society took my invitation off to be duplicated, and *tried* to get it
done in bright pink, but lipstick red was the best she could do;
notice that i did not *ask* her to do this - she simply understood
what was wanted).  the invitation was for "lesbian, gay, bisexual,
queer, etc. linguists and their friends" and, honey, we got
*everybody*.

at the beginning, the theory in our little family was that there
would be a test: each person entering would have to kiss a motss.
Barbara the Philosopher (who spent some time as a lesbian separatist)
volunteered to be the female greeter, and performed this function
enthusiastically for the first few women, while i did a lot of
hugging and kissing with men, but then we were overwhelmed with
arriving linguists - they came in groups, grad students from stanford
here, former presidents of the society there, clusters of people
from the university of texas, whatever - and neglected our duties.

somewhere in the middle, arne adolphson and howard faye arrived, and
we three spent some time in the vast bedroom (sitting on chairs, i
should add), chatting, while tour groups came by to see what had come
to be described as "the jfk bed" (i.e., the one j and i were sleeping
in, which people wanted to believe was a bed that jfk had pronged
marilyn monroe on, though who knows [see, i told you it would be
relevant]), led by jacques, who verges on the unreasonably amiable.
(his memory is swiss cheese, so he didn't recognize a lot of the
people, but he quite enjoyed giving them the tour of our absurd
domain.)

i'd guess that the percentage of "friends" verged on 50 - we were
clearly giving *the* party of the season, so to speak - but it also
seemed to me that the whole place was clearly gayspace/queerspace and
that everyone understood that.  i had a great time, and everyone else
seemed to be doing at least ok.

*nowhere* in these four days did i have occasion to identify myself
and jacques as gay (or, for that matter, elizabeth and her partner as
not).  we just *were*, and everybody got to deal with that in their
own way.  very nice.

arnold