Mary O’Shaughnessy

This conversation was recorded on Tuesday, September 29, 2020 at 1pm by phone from Brooklyn, NY to the Bronx, NY.

Gwen Shockey: It’s always so exciting when people reach out with new information about spaces and lesbian bars! I’m sorry it took me so long to get back to you! I’ve been in sort of a craze – I work at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and our back to school plan has consumed my life! So, I’ve been a little slow to respond to email. 

Mary O’Shaughnessy: I don’t know how you’re doing it! I don’t know how anybody is doing it. (Laughing)

GS: Yeah, it’s been wild. But, you know, luckily they closed the dorms so there aren’t that many students on campus, which is good. But yeah, it’s been crazy. Do you still live in New York Mary?

MO: I do! I live in the Bronx now but I was born in Manhattan and lived in Manhattan until last July when I moved into this house that we bought.

GS: Amazing!

MO: We love our neighborhood! It is not what most people expect – it’s just great! We have a detached house with a detached garage! We have a patio and a little front yard and we pay less than… Well if you added in everything for the house like the water and the gas and the solar – the mortgage is less than we paid for our combined rents.

GS: I believe it! What neighborhood are you in?

MO: We’re in Wakefield in the far north. We look out our kitchen window and there’s a train yard.

GS: Wow! Well, congratulations on the move! I’m sure it was nice to have more space during the pandemic!

MO: Oh yeah… It’s been a godsend! So, you wanted to talk about Peachstreet!

GS: Yes! It’s always great to find out about new places. I would love to add this to the project map.

MO: What I remember is sitting in the front of the bar. I had enough nerve to go in and have a drink but not enough nerve to sort of go further because I was afraid my father – my parents – would come out of the house across the street and see me. (Laughing)

GS: You mentioned you grew up across the street – how old were you when you discovered the bar?

MO: I was sixteen! I was in high school – in Catholic girls high school – which at the time was taught by wildly liberal teachers, which basically kept me alive. There was a girl in the year behind me who was out. We got hold of the Gaia’s Guide, which you’ve probably seen a copy of in the archive. So, we were looking at the bars that were listed in New York and there was Peachstreet! We had heard of Peaches, which was in the ‘80s, and we knew about the Duchess. We had already been to the Duchess. I knew the Sahara was there but it was intimidating and I couldn’t figure that out because if I went in I might have gotten caught and I didn’t have the right clothes… So, we looked up Peachstreet and it was on 64th Street! And I told my friend: There is no bar on 64th Street! Because I lived on 64th Street all of my sixteen years and there are no lesbian bars on that street. So, one day I’m getting on the crosstown bus to go home and get off and walk east looking for the bar! I walked passed Lexington, 3rd, 2nd, 1st and then I thought: You know, I’ve never walked down the side of the street opposite my house! I’m right across from my house and I see this tiny little sign… And I thought: It can’t be! But it said Peachstreet! This was also at a time when nobody had their own phones so the phone was in the living room. We only had one phone for our three-bedroom apartment… So, I went upstairs and I called Moira and I said: So… I WAS WRONG! (Laughing) And, you know, we had to talk in code! So, fine, now here’s this bar. What do I do about it? At the time I was a nurses aid. Today people would say, “You couldn’t have a sixteen-year old do that!” Well, teenagers are a lot more resilient than we give them credit for and I needed money anyhow. So, I had a white uniform – nurses and aids had white uniforms then. So, who looks at a white uniform and thinks you’re not old enough to drink? So, one day after working – which was probably like four o’clock in the afternoon, which is early to be drinking now that I think about it – I walked inside and up to the bar! There were two other women there. I ordered a gin and tonic – I don’t know why I ordered a gin and tonic, but I did! I didn’t take the stirrer out, I was drinking out of the stirrer, and this woman leaned over and said, “What, are you going to put yourself in the ___?” I don’t know whether she thought I was already really drunk or… (Laughing) But then I was really embarrassed and I didn’t know what to do. But I had this drink I had just paid for so, I thought I’m just going to drink the drink. I didn’t even know how to start a conversation. All I remember is that I drank the drink and I think the bartender said something like, “You must have had a rough day!” (Laughing) So, that was my first trip into a lesbian bar by myself!

GS: Do you remember what the interior looked like?

MO: It was dark! When you walked in you came up a couple of steps and there was a stoop area and when you went in the bar was roundish. I was sitting at the end of the curve, close to the door. I was afraid to go in. I didn’t know what else to do! (Laughing) And it was pretty empty. Maybe more women came later in the night. It had a bar smell!

GS: I know that smell well! (Laughing) So, it was just a little bar? There was no dancing or…

MO: I don’t think there was. It was below an apartment building on a quiet street so I would suspect not.

GS: And do you remember what kind of women were in there?

MO: Older women! Well dressed… You know.

GS: And sorry – you said this would have been the early ‘70s?

MO: 1979!

GS: Did it feel sort of butch/femme or was it more androgynous?

MO: I think it would have been more butch/femme. I later wound up going out with somebody who lived down the block who I met I think at a dance and she was very, very butch and she told me she had been in that bar.

GS: Do you remember how long it would have been open?

MO: Not all that long because by the time I was old enough to drink I think it was closed. Probably by ’81 it was closed.

GS: So, you went in that first time and it sounds like it was a bit of a nerve-wracking experience…

MO: Yeah! (Laughing)

GS: Did you go back with your friend?

MO: Well, most of my friends were down in the Village. I didn’t have any friends who lived uptown expect for that one high-school friend and I think she actually lived in Brooklyn Heights! So, I didn’t really have any friends in the area and I knew I wasn’t supposed to be in there. It was just the age thing. I didn’t want to get them in trouble.

GS: Did you start going to other lesbian bars after that?

MO: Um, the Duchess. Um, at the time I was very involved in politics and our meetings were Tuesday nights and we would go out afterwards. Then… I was so shy… I went to an NYU dance at one point and I went to Gay Youth, which was at 339 Lafayette. It has been since torn down. We were too young to go to bars so we’d go to diners. We also didn’t have any money! So many kids were homeless.

GS: What kind of things were you involved with at Gay Youth? Was it mostly social?

MO: Yeah, it was social! It was a lot of talking! Boys talking about their sexual conquests and girls talking about what it was like to deal with body issues. I just wanted to be around kids but I also worked on the weekends so… 

GS: Do you feel like Peachstreet was kind of a pivotal time for you?

MO: Oh yeah, that was like this moment in my life. Yeah… Part of it was understanding how people saw me and what they thought of me and that I could go do this and there was this world! Later on when I started hanging around older gay men through church we went to piano bars, which is a totally different world. Part of it too was that later on I started to get involved with church stuff. At that time saying you went to church and were a lesbian were two things that did not make any sense. I still have people react… Oh man. I haven’t actually been yelled at in a couple years. It happens! People say, “Oh, I can’t believe you do that!” I was at the Dyke March and I said something like: Oh, my church blah, blah, blah… And this woman says, “Oh god. A Christian.”

GS: Tell me about your involvement!

MO: In the ‘80s it was my social group. In the early ‘80s it was a complicated time too. People would say, “All heterosexual sex was rape.” And there was a lot of man-hating. If we were into diversity it just felt like this wasn’t where we were supposed to go. I felt the emphasis should have been more on the content of character. You know? So, I got really set off and sort of folded on that kind of community and wound up dating a guy for about three months. (Laughing) We shared a joint at a something convention? and fell to ground high and I ended up sleeping with him! We were friends until he died last June.

GS: Oh wow! That’s amazing! I’m guessing from your last name your family is Irish?

MO: Oh, yeah! It’s interesting actually, my parents were not into that whole Irish American thing. They thought the St. Patrick’s Day Parade was stupid. My father called them the “Order of Ancient (not sure what you said?).” His parents were born in the 19th century. They got here in 1902 and they were married here. All my father’s sisters went to college except one. For eleven (is that right?) kids that was unusual! My grandparents were of the belief that in a new country you do new things and that’s what they prioritized! So, highly educated women. That small-town Ireland thing? Done! My grandmother as I later discovered from census records in 1900 was the first woman in her family to be able to read ruin (also not sure if this is what you said?)!

GS: Wow! That’s so cool! It’s wonderful to be able to find things like that out about family.

MO: That’s how I was able to get my Irish passport last year! After a year of waiting.

GS: Oh nice! Just in time! (Laughing)

MO: Ireland has to let me in! The cats are old enough though that they would not survive trip. So, right now it’s not happening but depending on how bad things get… We hope they get very good after November 3rd. But we have an out.

GS: Yeah. Let’s hope for the best!

MO: How did you start working on this project?

GS: I started working on it in 2016 recording oral history interviews with some friends I had made at Identity House where I was volunteering – do you know it?

MO: Oh yeah! I remember hearing about it as a kid! I didn’t realize it was still around! That’s wonderful.

GS: Yeah! So, the project kind of developed out of these conversations but of course COVID really threw a wrench into my plans because what I love most is to talk in person but this works too and it’s always wonderful to hear someone’s stories even if it’s over the phone!

MO: Ahhh do you know this softball league…? I had a massive crush on this woman… God what was her name. I was never an athletic person but that was like where everybody went. The softball games. Do you remember “It Gets Better” through the Trevor Project a few years ago? When that went viral I just went through social media and found as many women as I could who were lesbians that I knew as a teenager. Because I was a teenager! I also suffered from untreated depression and I remember a couple of major meltdowns I had… But I wrote to every woman I could find and I said: You’re a part of the reason I’m alive today, my life did get better and it is due to you.

GS: That’s so beautiful!

MO: I got hold of about eighteen women. I also actually made contact with the high-school teacher who took sleeping pills away from me. Notre Dame – this Catholic girls school in ‘70s – people have this image of it, which it wasn’t. When my mother found out I was gay she had a total meltdown and told me she wished I was dead… Well, she said, “I wish god would take you.” Which was basically the same. I left the house and took the subway to a teacher’s house who had left Notre Dame the previous year. She lived in Brooklyn and this was 1978 I think. I was wearing a catholic school uniform at night. The teacher took me in and asked me the right question, “Are you being abused?” I wasn’t, but we had a conversation and she called the principal and the principal called my parents and her husband drove me home. By the time I got home it was, like, silent. The next day I went to school and the principal – who is a nun – said, “For Christ’s sake if this happens again come to the convent. We will put you up.” It was on 78th Street at the time. And then she said, “We’ll take care of you. We’re going to work with you on it.” The catholic school system had a crisis center so they took me and the center took me to talk and my parents went separately and the social worker called the principal and said, “Well, the kid’s fine but oh my god, that mother!” It was a way of getting my parents into counseling.

GS: Wow! That is wild! So, what you’re saying is that your catholic school initiated a counseling support system for both you and your parents to grapple with your gayness?

MO: Yep!

GS: And was it supportive of your queerness or…?

MO: Very supportive!        

GS: Wow. How unbelievable. Do you think any of those nuns were queer?

MO: Oh god yeah. (Laughing) I’m sure some of them are no longer in the convent. People assume that celibacy is a cop out. It is not. For the people who choose it, it is not a cop out. It is wrong to shame somebody for that or to assume dark motives or unhealthy motives. Those women’s communities had a purpose. In a way they were the product of several centuries of (couldn’t hear what you said here). Intentional communities of women have a lot of integrity.

GS: Were you ever involved in any women’s communities?

MO: No, not any residential or collective communities. I got tired of the “You’re wonderful!” or “You’re bad!” gossip. Unhealthy is unhealthy. I haven’t thought of that counselor in years. She was really great. Now she’s probably dead!

GS: I hope you don’t mind me asking all of these questions! It gives kind of a context!

MO: Not at all! It’s nice to look back on it.

GS: Well, man, Mary – you have quite an interesting story and I had never heard of that bar so I’m just so grateful you reached out! And if you ever have more memories of other spaces I’m always down to talk and add stuff to the map and the archive and everything.

MO: Apparently there was a bar in the far Rockaways in the ‘30s or ‘40s and my Uncle Frankie supposedly brought a horse into the bar and gave it a beer. This is one of those family stories… Like Uncle Frank? Who knows… In the ‘80s, one of my cousins who is an insurance broker was at some conference and they were out drinking afterwards and somebody said to him, “O’Shaughnessy… I heard a story once about this guy who was a bartender with that name someplace in New York City and he brought a horse…” And my cousin was like, “Yep.” So, yeah! (Laughing) We think that’s probably why my grandfather and father died before they were sixty… They all drank.

GS: Yeah, that’s another topic I’ve been interested in talking about relating to the lesbian bar – with lesbian community and bars – is all the alcoholism that is connected to these spaces. It’s something it is… Challenging to talk about. And sensitive to talk about. There are so many wonderful memories of coming out and finding yourself in these spaces but also really challenging associations I think too.

MO: That was part of it too. Being young, it was a reason for me to not really want to be around a bar but it was all there really was. 

GS: Yeah! Makes sense. Some of these spaces – being the only spaces we have access to, it’s like we go because we don’t have anything else but they’re far from ideal.

MO: Right!

GS: Well, thanks so much for this Mary! It was lovely to meet you over the phone! I really appreciate your time!

MO: You’re quite welcome! Take care!