Digital Transgender Archive

Lou Sullivan diary, 1973

Content Warning: This item contains potentially sensitive material related to sexual assault and suicide. Lou Sullivan's diary for 1973, detailing his life as a 22-year-old, his self-recognition as a trans man, and his complex relationship with his long-term boyfriend. This was a pivotal year in Sullivan's life, in which he began extensively researching cross-dressing and medical transition, making friends with a stone butch and a lesbian trans woman who opened his mind to different models of gender and sexuality, and attending meetings of the Milwaukee Gay People's Union (GPU). In the early months of 1973, Sullivan began visiting straight bars in masculine clothing, flirting with women, and introducing himself as "Lou Reed," his current musical hero. He explored, and then rejected, a possible lesbian or bisexual identity which allowed him to express his masculinity but ultimately didn't account for his exclusive attraction to men. By the end of the year, he had come to a fuller recognition that he felt like a gay man; he had found a new gay male lover, and he was open with some people about considering medical transition. 1973 was also the year that Sullivan's longtime, non-monogamous partner began exploring a queer identity and expressing a more feminine style. Sullivan enjoyed this, and it rekindled the couple's relationship. Louis Graydon Sullivan (1951-1991) was a gay trans man from Milwaukee, WI who lived much of his adult life in San Francisco. A diarist, amateur historian, and administrative assistant, Sullivan is best known for the detailed and thoughtful diary he kept from childhood until his death from AIDS at age 39.