Steven Reigns | Poet, Educator, and Creator of The Gay Rub

Discover the vibrant LGBTQ lifestyle in West Hollywood through the eyes of poet Steven Reigns, the city’s inaugural Poet Laureate.

From his birthplace in Missouri to years spent in Florida, and now living in West Hollywood, Steven Reigns (stevenreigns.com) has clearly managed to live up to his name. He’s been the model gay citizen here for the last fourteen years, making his newsworthy mark on the queer community through a diversity of innovations.

“Unlike St. Louis and Tampa, it’s so nice now to be living in a place where you don‘t have to explain yourself,” he says, alluding to feeling at home where the local LGBTQ lifestyle is ubiquitous and replete with brunch, bikes, and blue jeans.

This inaugural Poet Laureate of West Hollywood, California (chosen by a citizens committee of this city) Reigns has published three books of poetry and has another one coming out within a year. Forty-eight, single and seemingly tireless, he has simultaneously been teaching poetry to seniors at the local LGBTQ Center, and its popularity means that his classes will continue. From now on, these groups will be held at the Metropolitan Community Church in North Hollywood.

A quilt for David by Steven Reigns

“I had forty-two students in one class,” Reigns explains, in case there is any doubt of the course being in demand; poetry here is currently not in decline.

Three years ago, he also published a non-fiction book about a gay dentist in Florida, David Acer, who was accused of infecting his patients with HIV/AIDS. Reigns had previously earned a masters degree in clinical psychology from Antioch University and this background qualified him to do testing and counseling for HIV/AIDS. He was able to recognize the flaws in the charges against the dentist and its sensationalistic TV coverage.

Like a defense lawyer protecting a client, he followed up with research. That included putting ads in the newspaper to find “victims,” which showed that transmission in this case was unlikely if not impossible. His determination to find the scientific facts proved the man’s innocence. “I guess that’s my most memorable accomplishment,” Reigns says of the book, A Quilt for David. Now, with a 4.9 rating on Amazon, the book is available as hard cover, paperback or audio versions.

Reigns’s creative impulse doesn’t stop at the bookstore. While living in Tampa, he noted that the local library had special events for Black History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, and National Poetry Month, so why not LGBTQ programming? There was resistance from the library staff, but he pushed back, and created the first LGBTQ literary programming, an early victory for the twenty-four year old poet.

Inheritance by Steven Reigns

His inspiration did not end with the written word: more recently he created The Gay Rub (thegayrub.com), a participatory movement that collects rubbings from around the world. This is a simple process of placing paper onto a hard surface and running a pencil or crayon against the paper until the image is transferred. Influenced by the age-old practice of the rubbings of headstones, The Gay Rub pays homage to the places and people significant in the history of the gay community. Tombstone images of people who died of AIDS, the headstones of Gertrude Stein, Adrienne Rich and other lesbian poets, the plaque of the site of the first PFlag meeting, notable gay bar logos, and so on, comprise this ambitious enterprise.

More Reigns good works continue under his busy wing: there is an Anaȉs Nin Scholarship Foundation that raises awareness, not money. Why Anaȉs Nin?

“She is considered as having lived a sexually free life, not necessarily as a lesbian, but there were recorded exploratory relationships with women.” Reigns says.

In her writing she exemplified a life that s appealing to this community of typically blue politics under blue skies, unrestricted by conformity or the strict mores of her day. A free spirit of the last century and a role model for acceptance, all reasons for the commemoration, he feels.

Her works will surely be available at the West Hollywood Library, which Reigns notes as a place worth a visit, as is the June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives, which is a repository of lesbian culture that includes preserving a great variety of documents and artifacts.

“I’m fascinated by what is in their collection, such as affirmative slogan tshirts,” the poet says and adds, “West Hollywood is geographically a small city but has a large cultural impact. Even with a small footprint there are plaques and community spaces.”

He tells me about two triangle parks at Santa Monica and Crescent Heights Boulevard that have memorial plaques for Matthew Shepard, Morris Kight, Ivy Bottini. There is also the first plaque dedicated to transgender victims of hate crimes. “Seeing that plaque for the first time is what inspired…the Gay Rub.”

There is likely to be more to inspire this poet, who won’t let us forget the struggles of the generations that preceded his, not just in this enlightened place, but everywhere throughout the world.

Here is a poem from from his forthcoming collection, Outliving Michael.

He had a large stack of the memorial cards handed at funerals, friends and lovers stolen by AIDS. I had joked once, that he might need a -recipe box to categorize and alphabetize the mounting stack.

He thought for a moment, said They are organized by course, I’ll have to make decisions!

So he began to shout out the long list of names and where he would place them:
Jose – Entrée,  Michael – hors d’oeuvre,  Susan – hors d’oeuvre,  Joey – Entrée,  Alex – hors d’oeuvre,  and for his last lover Ramón – dessert.

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