Diversity Rules Magazine

3 Diversity Rules Magazine May 2015 David-Elijah Nah- mod is a film crit- ic and reporter in San Francisco. His articles ap- pear regularly in The Bay Area Reporter and SF Weekly. You can also find him on Facebook and Twitter. David developed Post Traumatic Syndrome Disor- der (PTSD) after surviving gay conversion therapy as a child and has found that many in the LGBT community suffer from severe, often untreated emotional disorders due to the extreme anti-gay traumas they endured. This column chronicles his journey. I could never imagine hating someone I don't know because someone else told me that I should, or hold- ing a grudge for thirty years. Mostly, I couldn't imagine judging or ridiculing a disability. In the world of Dark Shadows fandom, such behavior is commonplace. Dark Shadows was a short lived 1960s daytime soap opera that became a pop culture sensation about a year into it's five year run. For the next three and a half years, Dark Shadows was one of the most talked about shows on TV, daytime or primetime. It's popularity was due to it's unique, sometimes bizarre (by daytime soap standards) collection of characters, which included vampires, witches, werewolves, ghosts, mad scientists, and even a Phoenix, a woman from ancient Egypt who drew her life force from fire. ere had never been any- thing on TV quite like Dark Shadows. Watching Dark Shadows was a pivotal part of my childhood, and remains a beloved fixture of my DVD viewing to this very day. It was therefore with great ex- citement, in 1983, that I attended my first Dark Shad- ows Festival. Similar in structure to Star Trek conven- tions, Dark Shadows Festivals were a chance for fans to mingle with each other and get to know attending cast members for a celebration of the show. At the time, Dark Shadows was enjoying a resurgence in popular- ity, as reruns of the show were airing on PBS. e PBS showings served to firmly established the series as a cult phenomenon. Little did I know that in choosing to attend these Fes- tivals, I would be subjecting myself to behavior which ultimately rivaled the anti-gay religious abuse inflicted upon me by my parents two decades earlier. I was en- tering an unhealthy world which would prove to have a lasting and dangerous effect on my PTSD symptoms. e first few Dark Shadows Festivals I attended were enjoyable. I met many of the cast members, got them to sign photos for me, and made a few friends, some of whom I kept in touch with throughout the year. My first indication that things were about to go wrong came in 1985, when Dark Shadows cast member Joel Crothers died after a brief illness. He was 44 years old. I had known that Crothers was gay, having seen him in gay bars in New York City a few years earlier. 1985 was the year I'd moved to San Francisco for the first time. e AIDS crisis was escalating, and death was all around me. Imagine my shock when a fellow Dark Shadows fan called me on the phone to laugh about the fact that Joel Crothers had died of AIDS. at fan was a gay man who ultimately died of AIDS himself. I soon found out that other Dark Shadows fans thought Crothers' death from AIDS was hilarious. By 1990, these events were losing their luster. Many of my fellow fans, I soon realized, were a mean-spirited bunch. Cliques were rampant, and the members of each clique were feuding with all the other cliques. It was not uncommon to be told that you "had to choose sides, prove that you're a true friend, or else...." My PTSD had not yet been properly diagnosed at this time, and I'll admit that I didn't respond well to this Nahmod - Con't on page 7 If You Could Read My Mind A PTSD Memoir: The Darkest Shadow By David-Elijah Nahmod

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