Sandals at the Gate

Assunta Femia, a gay male San Francisco poet, actor, andpolitical activist who admired nuns, died at a friend's home in Oregon onSaturday, November 4, from liver cancer, secondary to hepatitis B. He wouldhave been 59 next month.

Assunta was born Francis Thomas Femia in December 1947, theson of an Italian-American father and a West Virginia mother. After growing upin modest circumstances in West Virginia and Philadelphia, and later servingtime in federal prison for an anti-war protest, he arrived in San Francisco in1975.

Assunta started walking about the city dressed as a nun,which was a novel sight at the time, and began using the female pronoun forself-reference. Eventually, she changed her name to Assunta, which means"Taken Up," a title referring to the Assumption of the Blessed VirginMary.

Assunta loved the nuns and the Catholic liturgy that sheknew from childhood. However, she rejected the church's male-focused theologyand scorned priests and the pope. She created her own special spiritualitybased on a sense of service to the divine feminine, traditional Catholicveneration of the Blessed Virgin, and fierce independence of spirit.

Assunta's eye-popping spirituality struck a responsive chordin San Francisco's gay community in the 1970s and 1980s. She helped inspire thefounding of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a group that continues to thisday. However, she was too independent-minded to spend much time with theSisters, and she never adopted a mocking posture toward nuns.

Assunta had made waves before coming to San Francisco. In1968, at age 21, she was arrested, along with two other Catholic peaceactivists, for pouring black paint on draft files in Boston, to protest the warin Vietnam.

As a consequence, she spent two years in federal prison inKentucky, where she came out as gay. She said she preferred prison life inKentucky to parochial high school in south Philadelphia: "Prison was a lotless brutal than high school. I never got beat up in prison."

Starting in the 1980s, Assunta spent much time in southernOregon, going back and forth between there and San Francisco. When in Oregon,she rented a small house in a wooded area outside the town of Wolf Creek, whoseowner lived in San Francisco. A local homophobe firebombed the house, butluckily Femia was absent at the time.

She became the butt of taunts and threats from redneck menin rural Oregon because of her feminine appearance. But her tormentors alwaysbacked off, sensing on some level that she was not someone to mess with. Theywere right. Tucked away in her colorfully knitted Guatemalan handbag, next toher favorite rosary, she carried a big handgun.

During Assunta's tenancy, the Wolf Creek property was oftenvisited by gay men seeking alternatives to urban life, and the land graduallytook on the nature of a country refuge. Eventually, a collective of RadicalFaeries from San Francisco, including followers of the late Harry Hay, cameinto possession of the property and turned it into a faerie sanctuary.

A bitter conflict soon developed between the swarm of newfaery landlords and the longstanding tenant. Things got off to a rocky startwhen Hay rebuked Assunta for including Catholic elements in her spirituality.The turning point came when one of the new faery occupants erected some stonephalluses on the land. Assunta regarded the phalluses as glorifications of malepower in a place sacred to the divine feminine. She destroyed them all with ahammer, celebrating the feat with an triumphant poem, "i smashed thephalloi."

Assunta proved to be too radical for the Radical Faeries,and a parting of the ways followed. She abandoned the land she had made safefor the new dwellers and the home that she and some friends had built toreplace the one that was firebombed. "It was easier with one landlord than200," she later quipped.

Assunta performed in plays and musicals in both Oregon inSan Francisco. In 1984, at the former Valencia Rose cabaret in the Mission, sheplayed the lead role of the god Dionysos in The God of Ecstasy, a rendition of Euripides's play Bakkhai. When asked at a rehearsal by other members of thecast how she landed the lead role, she announced to all, "I slept with thedirector" (which was true).

She was active in Bay Area Gay Liberation and also theButterfly Brigade, a civilian foot patrol organized to combat anti-gay violencein the Castro. When the AIDS epidemic hit, she spent much time caring for thedying, both in Oregon and San Francisco, drawing on skills she had learned froma stint in nursing school.

Although appearing to be in the peak of health, Assunta wasunexpectedly diagnosed in the winter of 2005 with advanced liver cancer. Thecancer grew rapidly, despite surgery performed at UCSF Medical Center inFebruary, in a last-ditch effort to save her life.

Her initial disbelief and anger eventually gave way toacceptance. "I'm ready for the transition," she said shortly beforeher death.

At press time, memorial plans had not been announced.

technorati tags:assuntafemia