No. 1: Roller skate in disco shorts. Do not obey in advance.

Acts of rebellion are nothing new in America. Just ask the homos.

The Old Truck on Tyranny.

Old Truck Good Coffee started during the Biden Administration and the run-up to a most uncertain election. We wanted to tell evocative stories of the interchanges (we avoid calling them “divides”) we see between America’s urban and rural spaces.

Now, we find ourselves…here. OTGC is called to speak to this moment from the human hearts all across these interchanges. This week kicks off a series inspired by Tim Snyder’s 2017 book On Tyrrany and the “20 Lessons” derived from his study.

Lesson 1: Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.

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In 1981, one of the few visible signs that homosexuality might exist in Billings, Montana, was a handsome young office worker, with feathered blonde hair. He roller skated downtown most every day, during lunch, wearing nothing but hot pink satin disco shorts. The first time I spotted him, I was fourteen. I wondered what his Sony Walkman was pumping into his ears. Probably Donna Summer. I had heard of her.

He looked sexy, gay, and dangerous.

Roller Disco will never die - Nieuwsbredene.de

The first time I watched him spin himself around a lamp post in front of J.C. Penney’s, the image stayed in my closeted pubsecent mind for days. Men simply did not move or dress like him, certainly not in public. There were rules to behaving like a man, most of which—beyond showing muscle—this guy refused to obey¹. I could not look at him without imagining possibilities.

Now, in 2025, it is hard to accurately communicate how it felt to be “in the closet” as a teenager in the 70s and 80s. For most of Montana’s history, no evidence was required to convict someone of “sodomy.” An act also known in old case law as “the crime against nature.” The mere accusation of being alone in a room with another man was enough to seal a conviction, if a judge or jury found the circumstance suspicious, or just did not like you.

The original and longstanding sentence for one man making love with another man (aka, “sodomy”) in Montana was five years to life in prison.

Because of such laws, and the pastors and politicians who made them, homosexuals floated in a world in which everything appeared “normal,” except for the secrets you kept. Secrets you very carefully protected, because they could get you shunned, beaten, banished, fired, evicted, excommunicated, imprisoned, or killed.

Until the law was finally declared unconstitutional, “deviate sexual conduct” (formerly known as “sodomy”) remained a felony crime in Montana until 1997, punishable by up to ten years in prison, if enforced. This law was not actually repealed from the criminal code until 2013.

Apart from dark corners in large cities, homosexuality did not visibly exist for most of America’s history beyond rare caricatures in books, movies, or television. Caricatures now seen as brave signals from the margins. In my own American childhood there was no internet. No search engines. No websites or text chat of any form. We did not even have cable television until I was in high school. Nothing existed at all remotely like a man in hot pink disco shorts defiantly skating past the Yellowstone County courthouse several times a week.

Then, at some point the mid-80s, a widespread cultural tremor exploded closet doors open nationwide. Lesbian and gay couples began holding hands in public outside of just the historically safe zones, like The Castro in San Francisco or Greenwich Village in New York City. An ambient sense of rebellious solidarity began spreading beyond the once-a-year big city Pride parades, and out into the sticks. Lamp posts in smaller cities and towns were occasionally claimed by bright fluoresecent ACT UP or Queer Nation stickers, brought back from city visits. Boy George swished his defiantly sissy ass across the global stage on MTV. Small town gay bars became a thing, even in Billings, Montana.

With this change in the weather, you could be walking around pre-grunge Portland, back when it was still more of a dock town than the scene it later became, and see two young women or men strolling along, hands gripped tightly between them. Often, these pairs would look like tourists in for the weekend from someplace like, well, Billings, or even smaller. Their hair a bit plain. Their outfits lacking the on-point flash and tattoos that were becoming the new normal on homo-friendly urban streets. Gay and Lesbian Tourists were enjoying tastes of life outside the closet and bringing them home. Traveling anywhere we found some safety in the numbers needed to reveal ourselves outside of our traditionally dark bars and potluck dinner networks.

The hand grip resting between such young couples always looked a bit anachronistic. Straight couples had largely stopped holding hands after the "liberated” seventies sloshed around. So, to see two women or two men window-shopping, while also quietly but visibly declaring their love using an intimate, old-fashioned hand gesture, felt … good. It felt brave and cute and heartening to see people refusing to obey the ancient oppression that had banned us to the margins for so many, many centuries.

By holding hands in public, these couples risked an assault by any nearby bigot. They risked refusal of service in any (cake) shop or restaurant. Still, they refused to comply. They refused to play it safe and obey in advance, despite the obvious threats. Threats which often became painfully real, and still do, if not so pervasively nor so often.

There was no clearly marked end to the very long era of “the closet,” just as there was never any clear beginning. Legal and cultural oppression is like smog. Some days are worse, some better, but it is always there at some level. You quit noticing it so much after awhile. We humans are dangerously adaptable.

Hiding from straight people was self-preservation. It was a natural survival response to a widespread set of abusive religious beliefs, backed by sodomy laws and a pervasive threat of social and physical violence. Beliefs spread by those who felt their views on human breeding should be forced on everyone else. Beliefs that some natural human traits they happen to dislike should be gaslit as “unnatural.”

So, one part of society criminalized another part’s hearts. Pastors and their politicians made love punishable for any who refused to obey their thoughts on sex. Yes, the quiet and compliant might be tolerated by the dominators, so long as we bribed the cops and kept to our dark bars and secret potlucks. But, life in the closet was not much of a life at all, just a form of survival.

We are all in the deepest danger when dominators have their laws in place, but promise not to use them.

When historian Tim Snyder advises Americans to “not obey in advance,” what he is saying is to never step willingly into a cultural closet². Even if oppressive cultural beliefs get forced back onto American society, defy them. Do not stop noticing the smog rolling in. Do not be a handmaid. Be all of who you are. Strap on your headphones and go spin around a small-town lamp post wearing nothing but hot pink disco shorts.

Because being yourself is contagious. Someone might be watching. You might be giving some kid hope, and never even know it.

1. Many years later, I learned his name was Karry Brekke. His skating apparel evolved over the years from tight, high-slit disco shorts towards tutus, and even more elaborate outfits of his own construction and design.

2. For a chilling experience, catch John Lithgow’s dramatic reading of the 20 lessons.