Andrews Inn
Photo by Jeremy Youst. Collection of Andrews Inn Oral History Project.
Photo by Evie Lovett
Yeah, it was Thanksgiving weekend, 1978. When Thom and I went up to this gay club, this kind of seedy gay club, but, you know, we were like, "let's go check it out." John Moisés, and the building and everything was owned by his dad, Andy. And John was like the perfect innkeeper who is kind of person, and he said, "well, you know, as a matter of fact, it's for sale. Do you want to buy it?" And Thom and I looked at each other like, uh, and, "Why not? Let's do it." It had been an interesting time. In the 70s, was, foof. You know, for us it was Stonewall was still, was kind of like memory of the battlefield. So Thom was the big—he is the Leo, I'm the cancer. He's the sun I'm the moon. He was the big cheese. So it was it was, I was the perfect queen and as long as I kinda played that role—which I did, I thought fairly well—we had an unstoppable team. First, we started with this group foster home, and then we bought the inn on a wing and a prayer. We started with a thousand dollars and we raised $350,000. It was, you know, that's Thom. He could sell a three-legged horse with two broken legs. And, you know, he was my man. I mean, he was it. He was, you know, he—I met him when I was 18. So, and I was really messed up at the time. And he literally pulled me back from the edge of the cliff and said, you know, "don't give up yet. There's there's more to life than this." And it was a life changer, literally a life changer.
So we were, you know—in addition to just our lifestyle that, you know, the rural gay couple, we were also very interested in healing. It was the bottom line, the main mission was to get publicity, was to get out there, to get normalized, to say, you know, we're just two nice boys—"Oh, yeah, they're not—oh, yeah. Yeah. Two nice boys run that." You know, we were the two nice boys. We wanted two things at once. We wanted people to heal from their wounding and heal from their addiction. But, you know, unfortunately, and just as we got into 82, 83, as we got into it, we realized that the thing that's going to economically support, that is the only thing that's powerful enough to support this thing: sex, drugs, rock and roll. And that that was, unfortunately, was the thing that kept us alive for so long, made the statement. But eventually it was not sustaining. I think if I were to do this again, obviously I would do it more from a therapeutic standpoint, you know? But then, you know, we were 20s is about having fun and holding hands and just one step at a time. And I think there was a number of people who that was enough, just coming in, and those big doors closing, coming into the lobby, you know, in that brick building, it's like, "wow, I haven't felt this safe in a while." He was like, OK, this is what it feels like to be standing with my husband leaning up against the front desk. Arm in arm, arm around each other, looking out, going, "wow, how about this, huh? Yeah. And we, we can do this. We can make a difference." — Jeremy Youst