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Starla: Got my good side?

Nasir: Yeah. [chuckles]

N: So to start…

Can you just tell me what's your name?

S: My name is Starla Carr.

N: Starla Carr.

And where are you from?

S: I'm originally from Cali,

uh West side.

I'm originally from.

Los Angeles and now I live in Kansas.

N: How long have you been living in Kansas?

S: More years than I care to admit to

probably a good 30 years.

I have come to love Kansas, um

especially small town life and I never thought I'd be this person, but

the older I get, the peacefulness, the friendliness,

I just I can't see myself living in a big city ever again.

but as a kid, it was extremely frustrating

because it was exciting being in Cali, even

though it was dangerous and violent at times.

Like it was exciting, you know, and I got I

had a really great childhood as far as like I got to do a lot of stuff

I...

am frequency.

I'm a vibe.

I am I'm a lot of things.

but it's hard to really quantify exactly

who I am because I'm still learning myself even now, at my big age. um

I

am very much about duality of a lot

of things because I'm an artist.

So there is the masculine

and feminine parts of me that

that duality that kind of bounce back and forth.

There is the artist in me that is creative

and and traumatized and

that bounces back and forth.

I am

there's this new part

of me that is chronically ill, and so, and

then there's a part of me that feels like I can do anything I want to do.

So there's there's a lot of duality

within me, but if I had to sum it up in one little sentence,

I just am frequency.

I knew I liked girls way back in, like, at seven or eight.

I had a crush on a girl at church school.

And we were like best friends.

And so she was come over to my house spend the night.

I would go to her house and I just thought she was just the most beautiful thing.

Like, I when I look back on it, I realized that that was a crush

and that wasn't that was the

beginning, but I've always just loved women

in a way that it's like, for me, is women are just everything, like,

not just the beauty or the romantic side of it, but

just the way we navigate the world, how

strong we are, like women are just

everything.

There was some conversation about Soakie's being

a gay bar, and of course that made my little spidey

sensors tingle cause I was like "ooo, gay bar" um and

At this point, were you going to other gay bars?

I didn't know of any others. Yeah, I didn't know of any others.

I would eventually come to find out that there was a

couple of gay bars in Lawrence, Kansas and I

would also sneak there on my own and go a couple times.

but I didn't know of any other place but what I

heard about Soakie's and um it

was a friend of one of the guys

that I was in [a former rap group] with that was like yeah,

they have epic fights at Soakie's.

and I was like what?

And he was like yeah, everybody just hits in the parking lot, watch the fight.

And I was like, okay, and

he and he was like I was like, let's go.

And he's like I'm not going to Soakie's,

That's a gay bar.

I was like, we could just sit outside and we don't have to go inside.

and so we went and sat

outside for like a couple of hours and it

was, which we've come to unpack is 'Parkin' Lot Pimpin''

is what they call it, but we like the parking lot

that was in front of Soakie's was pretty big,

and we sat at the back we drove and parked our car

at the back of the parking lot and just sat and watched

people walking around in out the club wasn't any fights going on.

It was just a normal night and

we just sat there looking at people and talking like the

whole couple of hours, but then I was like okay I got to get inside.

I got to get inside there.

And um

I had a friend at the time named Casey and Casey,

young lesbian, uh has dated

somebody who was coming to Soakie's.

And so

I think she was the first person that took me

and and at this point I've been out for a few years.

I'm still trying to find my own as a

lesbian, like what does that mean to me?

and I've gone all the way from femme to masc

and I think and I'm

super comfortable as the masculine version of me.

And

plus I felt like which is weird to say, but

I felt like dating was easier as a masculine lesbian.

But anyway, we started coming to Soakie's.

and then I found out by coming that uh they had entertainment.

And I was like, okay, this is cool.

Uh, I'll never forget a shout out to

[Mama Mamie], and she's gonna love to hear this, but Mama

Ma' was uh she used to sell

food outside the club and there was a lot

of times she was our door person for Soakie's and

her smile was so well–

warm and welcoming like we would chat outside

and, you know, about plates or whatever, and then there

was a store next door where they sold like sex supplies and what not.

and um she ended up working over there.

And so going in and out from bar to over

there, it was just like she became a familiar face to me and

definitely a comfortable comfortable person to talk to

and um very sweet, and uh we're still friends to this day.

And she ended up also being a show director

at a different club which I performed at but um we formed a friendship. um

um I started dating at the club, uh

came into a long-term relationship with someone who was

entertainer there and um yeah,

and then when I got with who was now my ex when

I got with her, she was more established

as an entertainer theirs.

And as she was performing and

whatnot, it's like we became the parents

of all of these younger uh gay

performers and entertainers.

And as you know, there's different houses.

So she had her own house, the House of Beauty.

The weird thing is, and this is just a very me thing because I'm very much

I'm

very much the kind of person who gets along with everybody socially,

but I've never fit in a clique.

I've never fit in a group.

So I was never asked to be in any house, by the way.

but because I

was with her, by proxy, I was in the

House of Beauty because I was her girlfriend, even though

she never even asked me to be in the house, but I was in the House of Beauty and so

as a parent figure,

I really love that role.

I to this day, I still have

gay family that call me 'unc' or call me 'pops'

or call me whatever, and I if it feels good,

it feels really good that they look at me like that, and

to be able to be that person you can come to for advice

or and that's what I became in

that role was almost a masculine fatherlike

figure to a lot of queer young people.

And I think just because of the

nature of my personality, which is I've always had kind of an old soul, um

people started calling me up for advice for

what to do or how to handle a situation or what was going on in their personal life.

And I very much clung to that role as

well as an entertainer, but

that was important to me and all of that happened at Soakie's.

Every person that I met came in contact

with had the honor privilege of performing

with or around, like all of those connections

came from going to Soakie's.

Soakie's was family. um

there there were so many people that

I had hard conversations with in the club

uh that

I needed to have conversations with people who understood me.

Um

There was dating.

There was romance. um

there was it was just

everything I needed to be in this little hole in the wall clubs,

like community um

we lost so many people and

we'd lose somebody and then we show up that night at the bar.

and you could be sloppy drunk or you could be

crying or you could be upset.

We always did benefit shows um when

someone passed and to try and raise money for the family, um

there... where else are you gonna do that?

You know what I mean?

Like I had I've never seen that habit in my life uh

where someone's love one partner

spouse, whatever's passed away,

and then this community comes together just

to give them money or perform for them.

And that was unique to me. um

there was real

hard situations um

of couples that broke up.

Like the thing about it is, Soakie's on

the outside looking in, there was always this

perception of violence from people in the club.

There was

a perception from the outside looking in that

oh, the queers are out there doing whatever,

the drag fights and what not, but what they don't understand is

when you come up

without support, without help,

without finance, you

end up in those kind of violent situations.

Like, I can talk about it maturely now as an adult,

but every single fight I ever saw was

real shit like this was not

little light hearted things.

This was I've been with this person for 13

years and were not together any more.

in in the straight world

a divorce, but we didn't have words and language for that.

It was a break up.

It happened and everybody in the club knows that no longer

you with this person now you're with this person and now people are big in sides and

yeah, it was violent.

It was raw.

It was real, but we it was still in an environment

where there was love.

It's not going to look like anybody

else's version of love, but

you knew there was safety and love there, and

yet there were fights, and yes, there

was drugs and there was everything else there just like the

real world, but we had family and

even like I'll never forget this is a true story.

There was a

a pageant that we had, and when we had the pageant

we would open up the garage area next to Soakie's so we had more room.

And there was a

group of straight guys, I'm assuming straight guys, I don't know, that came to the club.

and um one of my

gay kids uh was going back

and forth between behind the stage and the dressing room.

um, one of my best friends who

was the DJ from my group who

wasn't even gay, who was the DJ there that night.

uh, I saw one

of my kids walking past this guy who

was headed back towards the back dressing room,

and one of my gay kids, their spouse,

uh, was talking to some guy who

was trying to hit on her and I'm watching.

I'm sitting in the cut, and I'm watching.

and I see her actively like I

have somebody go away, and I see the aggression

level going up from this straight guy like you know,

"You aint gotta be with them"

and I see that my child, that's how

I consider it, doesn't see what's coming, and

I just started making my way over just in case.

and the two

the couple went through the back way to

go back to the dressing room, did not see that this

guy was headed towards them.

Their backs were turned, and I stepped in between, and I was like that's not what you want right there.

I need you to turn around and head on back the other way.

"Well, who are you?"

And by the time he said that

*motions*

it was like Gary, it was the DJ.

It was like

protection.

And they tossed him out.

But that's what we did for each other.

And and it was

in the real world, you don't have that protection.

If I'm walking down the street with my lover and we hold hands

or we kiss, Gary's not gonna pop out or

somebody else, you know, bouncers that I love and care about.

They're not gonna pop out and just be like, hey, leave them alone.

You know what I mean?

Like, so

it definitely was

something that I absolutely needed.

And the friendships,

um which have lasted well beyond the building,

um are still there.

We're still there, so it was very deep.

I don't I don't even think some some

day maybe I'll fully realize how deep it was because I'm still unpacking

uh a lot of the lessons that I learned there.

But yeah.

....that was Soakie's.