Our guest at our June GIA meeting was Scott Walton, Executive Director of The Pacific Center For Human Growth, headquartered in Berkeley. Your editor wrote about the "PC" last month, and most readers know I do volunteer work there, so we hoped to find out about the "other angles" of the PC which I don't see at the Monday Night Men's Raps. We weren't disappointed.

I originally called Scott with some trepidation. Scott's a busy guy. I needed to talk to Scott, but Scott's always in Board meetings, or returning phone calls, and it seems like he's there about twelve hours a day, and weekends too. Scott spends a lot of time behind closed doors in a makeshift office which sometimes doubles as a minority rap group session room, handling the incessant paperwork of running things there, and listening to people like me who want something from him.

When Scott returned my call twice and missed me, and I finally reached him, I made it short, and, I hoped, not too glib. We're the GIA, a such-and-such engaged in so-and-so, and we wanted a speaker to tell us about the Pacific Center. Would this be a Speaker's Bureau function, or could he recommend someone, or steer me to the right person to contact, or, or - ?

Scott lives nearby, and he instantly volunteered to be the speaker. Focusing on the personage, I felt like I'd scored a coup, and when the Main Event finally transpired, I wasn't disappointed.

The Pacific Center is into far more community services than I realized. Yes, we have the Switchboard and crisis referral service, which alone is worth my United Way donation. A phone call inquiry to the Sexual Minority Switchboard, placed once upon a time by a very wonderful lady, is responsible for my debut into the real world, and, very possibly, for my existence today.

The Center is on the west side of the street at 2712 Telegraph Avenue, between Derby and Parker, less than ten minutes' walk south of the UC Berkeley campus. With its florid purple and grey paint job, Victorian airs and artsy-craftsy handpainted sign, it looks every bit its part of the traditional, hippie-dippie Berkeley of the seventies.

The sign says, "Pacific Center for Human Growth." Human Growth? What's that supposed to mean?

The "PC" is best know to most readers for its Monday Night Gay Men's Raps. On a typical Monday night, 60 to 80 men in their teens to seventies meet on the back porch for Welcome, Announcements, the "Money Rap", and Groups. We break up into five or six topical rap groups led by the facilitators. Topics tend to focus around the perennial issues: meeting others, dating, breaking up. The sexual identity, integrity and self-esteem issues are woven in with plain wrappers, like the popular "Coming Out" groups, or with dashing titles like "Meeting Mr. Right", "Becoming Mr. Right", "Getting To Know You", and "Saying Good-Bye." AIDS groups are done at intervals, and, on any given Monday Night, you never know whether the specter of that topic will be alluded to at all, or dominate the discussion totally.

Beyond the time-proven "generic topics" we also run groups ranging from the deep or thoughtful to the seemingly frivolous: "Planning for our futures", "Religion", "I Hate My Parents and That's OK", and the non-sexual Touch Groups. Topical groups like " `Yes', I'm Glad To Be Gay" (responses to the recent Ann Landers column) are always popular.

Lest we trivialize these topics, never forget we ourselves may feel well-adjusted to our circumstances and an environment by now largely self-made, but it hasn't always been this way, for each or any one of us. A magic is always present at the "PC": of communicating these feelings and experiences with others who are hearing it, or going through it, for the first time. In this way, we learn more about ourselves: who we are, how we got here, and where we'd like to go from there. For those of us tired of re-inventing the wheel, we discover experiences and values we can relate to which may help or even guide us on the way. For those of us who've "been around", it's an opportunity to witness again that life isn't an end result or state of attainment, it's a continuing process. (For some of us, it's been a wonderful kaleidoscopy, an Odyssey, of re-learning how to learn from both ends of experience.)

The Pacific Center has a place or a group for just about every conceivable combination of ethnic and/or sexual minority, as Scott Walton so well explained to us. There are (or have been) groups for men, women, men and women, people of color, older gays, teens, transgendered people, Asians, Hispanics and other cultural and target groups. Experiencing firsthand this fact of life helps dispel the many myths of the "stereotypical gay person" better than any ethics class or sensitivity training course. Understanding "Differences Between Us" (another popular topical) is an integral part of what the PC is about. This understanding is often an important part of the "coming out" experience, in which differences among ourselves, which were once seen as making us "special" and "different from everyone else", become part of the dawning realization that our feelings do not make us unique, and that we're not alone.

The "PC" has a branch for gay teens in Contra Costa County now, serving a dual role: in helping young people find dignity in coping with the challenges of growing up gay, The Pacific Center provides an important community function in teen suicide prevention. An office is also maintained in San Mateo, to help train workers from United Way and other charitable organizations to understand and work effectively with the needs of the Bay Area sexual minority organizations to which they donate funds.

Counseling services are available at the Pacific Center for members of the gay, lesbian and bisexual community on a sliding scale fee basis, staffed by trained volunteers and professionals. There are also "closed groups" for those working out feelings and experiences still too intensely immediate and personal to share. There are none of us, in the "open" rap groups, the readership, or elsewhere, whom those kinds of issues and experiences have not touched -- sometimes, harshly.

Human Growth? The Pacific Center is supported mainly by private donations and charitable contributions. The "PC" is non-political and non-ideological. It discourages "pushing" one's own personal agenda. It doesn't promote or even discuss a philosophy of human growth explicitly, but then we're a little more involved with the process than just abstracting about it. In our groups, we talk about ourselves and our own feelings, hopes and experiences. We don't talk about you, him, her, they or "them", except as their actions are experienced by us, and so we don't project our opinions about "the others". We aren't a "pronoun" group; we're a first-person-singular organization. It's all about the individual, both as independent human being, and as member of society and its various communities.

The "PC" doesn't provide or offer a fixed view of what the relationship between the individual and the community ought to be. It is logical that one who is comfortable with "self" and with his or her own sexual identity is better able to "deal" with divergent community views. It does seem that the Pacific Center probably also serves well a function of integrating individuals into the "General" community. We rarely discuss that, either.

The Pacific Center services include the Sexual Minority Switchboard. Its number is 510-841-6224. The staffers on the other end of the line provide information, support or contacts for anyone who needs it, including access to emergency services. No matter who you are, no matter who you think you know, this is a number you might think about storing away for an emergency. At least once in a lifetime, just about every tenth one of us alive urgently needs access to services such as this one.

Many of us never even find out when someone close to us, in our own family, school, church, office or circle of friends, may need the important and even life-saving information which this service can provide. When we do find out, this is the referral that should come to mind and fingertips immediately. (I had to call it recently, to get referrals for both the Portland and San Diego areas, for a family member of a friend of a friend. And I got the referrals.)

If you want to know more about expanding your own envelope of personal growth, drop by the Pacific Center For Human Growth. To participate, you still have to be a sexual minority (so far). It helps to have an earnest desire to learn how to listen, in that certain way which makes those things which we share a positive experience for all of us. That's 2712 Telegraph Avenue, just south of the UC Berkeley "bookstore row". Look for the artsy-craftsy sign and the garish paint job. The real growth starts on the inside.

Thank you, Scott Walton. Thank you, Pacific Center.

© Alex Forbes , La Parola July 1992

[ This online article has been adapted from the original July 1992 editorial in La Parola. The Pacific Center is still serving the community in the same location. Scott has since moved on to other challenging assignments. The present Executive Director, Board, and paid and volunteer staff continue to provide a high level of support for new friends and old. Some volunteer facilitators have passed the decade mark leading peer groups. But the need for these services has not diminished, and the spirit and message reported above is as strong today as it was when this editorial was originally written.]