Remembering Michael

In 1988 I wrote a remembrance of my late friend Michael born June 10, 1953, who died of AIDS on December 13, 1985. I found the pages typed on a manual typewriter with clumsy grammar and many whiteout corrected typos, in an envelope with photos of Michael. Looking at those photos and reading the words I wrote over thirty-five years ago reminded me of how selective memory can be. What I wrote so long ago contains details surrounding events during the worst months of my life and expresses emotions that I had compartmentalized or forgotten.
Among the headshots and resume photos from his career as an actor and musician were many black and white tastefully posed nudes of Michael. Looking at the photos fills me with sadness and longing, but they also make me smile. I had removed the photos from Michael’s house because his parents were coming to stay there. Michael was in the hospital dying. They were coming to put his affairs in order and would be going through all his papers. When I told Michael that I had taken them so that his parents would be spared the embarrassment of seeing them, he smiled at me from the hospital bed and assured me that my concern was unnecessary because he had shown them the photos long ago. His smile also seemed to indicate that is was okay that I had taken the photos. It was okay for me to have them because I wanted them. That was the last time I saw Michael’s smile. That was the last time I saw Michael.
The following is a revised, fermented remembrance filtered through the haze of an old man’s memories of his youthful self during some of the best and worst of times long ago.
I've included some of those nude photos here. Michael was proud of his body and even appeared in an off-broadway show that featured full nudity from the whole cast.

I first met Michael when I was twenty years old in the fall of 1970. I had enrolled as a design and production major at North Carolina School of the Arts (NCSA) in Winston-Salem. I had initially applied to be an acting major, but was rejected. During the summer while I was working as a carpenter in the scenic shop at the Cape Cod Melody Tent in Hyannis, I on a whim, reapplied to the design department and to my surprise was accepted. It was my third year of college as well as the third college I’d enrolled in. I had wanted to be an actor, but the theater programs in the two small colleges in Indiana that I had been attending were a disappointment and I struggled with the academic classes.

At twenty I was at a crossroads in my life with many anxiety producing decisions to make about my future. I was passionate about working in the theater, but perhaps not psychologically prepared to deal with the struggles of an actors life full of constant judgment snd rejection. Being rejected by NCSA after my audition was a major blow to my confidence. The technical skills to work behind the scenes came easier to me and presented an easier path forward. I’d had a fun summer on Cape Cod. I had even started a relationship with a local boy to whom I was introduced by my closest friend from college, who had also helped me get the job at the Melody Tent. If I had been rejected by NCSA a second time my plan B was to stay in Massachusetts and find a job. I didn’t realize how much the young man I was involved with wanted me to stay until I told him I was going. I remember the sadness in his eyes as we tearfully said goodbye. He gave me a keychain fob engraved with “love forever” which still sits in a box on my dresser along with a gold ring that Michael gave me a few years later — my ephemera box of broken promises.

NCSA was founded in 1963 and was uniquely the first school dedicated to the performing arts outside of the Juilliard School. When I arrived in 1970 it was relatively new and small with about four or five hundred students, all aspiring actors, dancers, musicians, and designers. It was also unique because along with the college level classes, there were also classes for high school students, many of whom lived in dorms on campus like the college students. The school has been in the news in recent years because of accusations of sexual abuse by faculty of former students dating back years, including the three years I was there. I was not the victim of or witness to any sexual abuse by faculty or staff. In retrospect, however, I can say that the campus was boiling stew of teenage sexual energy and activity that was bound to be exploited eventually by some adult predator. There was little adult supervision of the college dorms and although there was a curfew and bed check in the high school dorms, they were easily circumvented.

It was in the high school dorm that I had my first intimate encounter with Michael. He was seventeen and in the high school drama program. I had met him first through another high school student, Gregg, who was in the design and production program. They were all part of a mixed group of gay and straight boys who congregated together in the cafeteria and in dorm rooms for booze and pot parties. I don’t remember exactly my first meeting or impressions of Michael. I’m sure I would have noticed him. He was compact and quite boyish looking. With shoulder length brown hair and a large face that was not too conventionally pretty with slightly aquiline nose, large brown eyes, and full lips on a perfect oval face. Everything fit together just right. His body was smooth and hairless at that most appealing stage between man and boy. There wasn’t immediate mutual attraction between us that I remember. I wasn’t looking for a new boyfriend. I had one back in Cape Cod, but I was certainly open to new possibilities should the opportunity arise as it did with Michael. I came to learn later that Michael soon after meeting me, considered me an attractive challenge.

I was tall and lean with long brown hair and blue eyes. I wasn’t obviously gay in my speech or demeanor, but I was definitely not broadcasting any heterosexual markers as many long-haired hippie-looking straight guys in the seventies did while in the company of gay men. I was at a new school with no close friends yet and keeping a low profile. I had started becoming sexually active in my first two years of college, but much of it was very tentative and exploratory. My summer fling on Cape Cod was the first real adult sexual relationship I had experienced. All my romantic experiences before that had been furtive one-offs or unrequited crushes. At twenty I wasn’t particularly aggressive or outgoing when it came to sex. I didn’t have to be, as it was the peek of the sexual revolution in 1970 and the spirit of “free love” was everywhere. I was attractive enough to guys and girls that opportunities for sex would just present themselves to me and I would usually say yes. As a result I had a fair amount of casual sex, but not a lot of good sex that made me come back for more. Michael changed that.

About age 14 before I met him.

Michael was born in small southern Illinois town of Murphysboro many years after his two older brothers, probably a surprise to his parents. He had been a precocious high achiever as a child. The local newspaper published articles about him; once when he was twelve that listed his many interests that included science, music, and performing in a college production of “Flower Drum Song” – then again when he was fourteen as an accomplished musician getting accepted to Interlochen Arts Academy playing the bassoon. It was at this boarding school for aspiring young artists that Michael had his first sexual experiences at a much earlier age than I. So even though Michael was younger than I, he was years ahead of me when it came to sex. He was much more aggressive in his erotic pursuits than I. By his mid-teens he had made a sport of seducing “straight” guys mostly by “servicing” them. Later in our relationship he would often he would casually and rather proudly point out straight guys on campus to whom he had given blowjobs.
He wasn’t sure of my sexual orientation the night he invited me to a little drinking and toking party in his dorm room with his buddies. I later learned that the horrible “Sangria” made from a combination of Boones Farm and Roma Rocket that I was served along with the fat joint, was part of an elaborate scheme to loosen me up for a seduction. He had arranged for his roommate and buddies to leave the room when the time was right for him to make his move on me. The scheming was totally unnecessary. I didn’t need to get high to be seduced, but Michael didn’t know that at the time. I went along with the routine and pretended to be surprised when his intentions became clear. I actually was surprised at how aggressive and sure of himself he was. Once the clothes came off it became quite clear to me he knew what he was doing and my eager response removed any doubt Michael may have had about me.

Fifty years later I can conjure in my mind the flickering hazy light on smooth flesh in a room smelling of weed. I can remember the joyous, frictionless way we engulfed each other in a swirl of arms, legs, lips and tongues just for the pure pleasure we could give each other. Fifty years later this memory arouses me, saddens me and pleases me all at once. I can look back on that year and I can say to the late Mr. Shaw, you were wrong. When I was twenty, youth was not wasted on me. I met Michael at seventeen.
The rest of the semester that first year at NCSA, I hooked up with Michael several more times, although he was not the only one. Getting together with Michael for sex was a little tricky, as he was in the high school dorm with a curfew and we both had roommates. I would have to sneak into Michael’s dorm after curfew or hide in the closet until after bed-check, both of which I did, fortunately without getting caught. I’m not sure if there would have been very serious consequences if I had been caught. As I noted the administration at NCSA was either unaware or just turned a blind eye to the amount of casual sex on campus.

Toward the end of that first semester my music major and presumably straight roommate John, came to my bed late one night and whispered “May I join you?” I had thought he was asleep and I was discreetly pleasuring myself and too startled to answer his question as he immediately ducked down to expertly finished the job I had started. I liked John. He was a very amiable fellow who introduced me to his friends and invited me to his family home one weekend, but I was totally unprepared to deal with this rationally. I should have said, “Thanks, but no thanks” and told him to go back to his own bed, but I didn’t. I let my erection get it’s way. After the unexpectedly intense orgasm, I was dazed and confused. Was John going to expect reciprocation which I had no desire to do? How many nights had he been quietly listening to me wanking off wanting join me? I put on some pants and fled from the room without saying anything. I went to the room of a dance major I knew had a single room and asked to spend the night on his floor. I don’t recall exactly what I said to John after that night. I probably avoided any significant conversation about what happened between us, but at some point I decided that the possibility of the occasional blow job, however pleasurable it may be in the moment, would be too complicated for me and I couldn’t continue to be his roommate.

It was near to Christmas break and I started asking around about off-campus living arrangements. One of my teachers offered me a room to rent in his house, which I accepted without much thought. Mr. Reiser was a single man in his late thirties or early forties. He taught lighting design and other theater tech courses for the Design and Production department. He was an ordinary looking man with a dry sense of humor. There was nothing in the way he dressed, spoke or interacted with his students that would have made me think he was gay or had any ulterior motive in offering me a room to rent. However, I found out years later that he had indeed gotten in some trouble with a male student and left the school. I only stayed a few weeks in Mr. Reiser’s house or I might have been one of the NCSA students taking part in the current lawsuit over sexual abuse by faculty. It was because of Michael that I moved out of his house.
Soon after the Christmas break and my first weeks saying in Mr. Reiser’s house Michael signed himself out of the dorm for the weekend using Mr. Reiser’s name and address, so that he could spend the weekend with me. Mr. Reiser allowed him to stay that weekend, but later told me I couldn’t stay there any longer because of how it would look for him to have under age students staying in his house. I was turning twenty-one in a few weeks, but that didn’t matter. The real reason he didn’t want me in his house was probably because he decided I wasn’t going to be receptive to his advances whatever his intensions may have been. I soon found a tiny room in the basement of a house my fellow Design & Production student Susan Summers, much closer to campus.

I continued to see Michael regularly after Christmas break into 1971, but I didn’t really consider us exclusive. I had just turned twenty-one in January and Michael wouldn’t turn eighteen until June. Also I was still in touch with my summer boyfriend John from Cape Cod with whom I had made plans to see over spring break. I must have had discussions with Michael about John and how serious I was about my relationships with both of them. I don’t remember the exact details, but at some point I decided I would break up with John when we met at spring break. I’m not sure if it was because of Michael or that I just didn’t want to deal with the complications of a long distance relationship. I was to meet John in Richmond, VA where mutual friends were now living. I don’t remember the details of my break-up with John. There were some tears and probably a lot of “It’s not you, it’s me” and “We can still be friends.” I think I was a bit insensitive about John’s feelings for me then. In any case we moved forward with the plans we’d made months earlier to drive to Florida to visit a former classmate from my previous school. In retrospect it seems incredibly stupid that I drove from Winston-Salem to Richmond, broke up with my boyfriend, drove to Florida and back to Richmond with my very sad ex-boyfriend, and then returned to Winston-Salem — about 2,300 miles of driving in ten days.

When I returned to school Michael was relieved that my break-up with John took place as planned. This was probably when I first started to realize that Michael considered us a some kind of a couple even though there had been no discussion. We were just two really young horny guys having lots of hot sex together and without really considering what that meant, we became a couple. Even so, I was a little bit taken by surprise when Michael announced he was going to quit school and assumed he could move in with me. I knew he had been unhappy with his classes, but this was his senior year of high school and quitting now meant he would not graduate. The prospects of having this horny kid in my bed every night was very exciting and also extremely frightening. My underdeveloped twenty-one-year-old brain had enough rational good sense to consider that maybe this was not a good idea. However, my overstimulated twenty-one-year-old libido overpowered those rational thoughts easily. I let him move in with me. It also never entered my mind that technically I was in jeopardy of statutory rape charges in the state of North Carolina since I was twenty one by then and Michael would not turn eighteen for several months.
So for the rest of the semester it was me, Michael, and a stray cat who showed up one day. We named him Speed. I don’t know how I got any school work done after that. Michael talked about getting a job, but he never did and I don’t remember how he explained his situation with me to his parents, but whatever it was, they accepted it and kept sending him money. We were together and that’s all that mattered.
The room was tiny, but we didn’t need much space. The bed took up most of it and that’s all we really needed. During that time we were either getting high or fucking. It didn’t matter what time of day it was, if we were alone in that room we ended up in the bed devouring each other. The details of these days are a bit hazy to me now, but I do recall vividly the smell of him after sex and the way your bodies fit together perfectly when we slept. We would lie on our sides my my arms around him nestled together touching from head to toe. We never needed a double bed to sleep comfortably together. We were two people so involved with each other that we only took up the space of one.

Those days were not entirely carefree. I was still going to school and Michael was alone and bored much of the time. We would argue about silly things and have a lot of fun making up. The worsts fights were when he would confess to me about some sexual escapade he felt he could not refrain from. Usually it was some sordid tale of a stranger he met in the park, but of course it did have anything to do with “us”. I think he made some these stories up just to add a little drama to our lives. If that was the case the he was very successful at it. I would react with overbearing jealousy. We would come close to blows, but inevitably ended up on the bed where the passionate anger would morph into almost competitively passionate sex. We were in young stupid love.

The school year of 1971 ended and Michael, me, and our closest friend Gregg packed up my ’63 Chevy and headed to South Bend Indiana for the summer. Some former classmates and a teacher from the school I went to before NCSA were opening a summer theater there. I was going to design the scenery, Gregg would be the lighting designer, and Michael would be in the acting company. We would all live communally in a huge old run-down house in town and work for nothing putting on shows. There must have been around fifteen of us in all and in retrospect I don’t know what made me think this was going to be a successful venture. The director of this enterprise was a teacher who I didn’t really respect from the school I had dropped out of and very much disliked. I liked my former classmates but they were modestly talented inexperienced college students. The theater was a big corrugated steel shed-like structure next to a farm on the outskirts of town. It had been built to replace a tent “straw hat” summer theater in 1966 called the Country Playhouse. It had shut down sometime in 1969 after years of financial difficulties. My former classmates and teacher rechristened it The Oldenburg Playhouse after the farm it was built on and thought they could revive it. I don’t recall how they managed it financially, but no-one was getting paid. The first production of the summer “Camelot” was quite awful and I soon came to the conclusion that this ragtag group of amateurs was doomed to fail. I wanted to quit and leave. This brought the first major fight between Michael and I that wasn’t about his sexual escapades.

I remember chasing after Michael through the corn fields adjacent to the theater as we yelled at each other about the situation. Michael wanted to stay because he felt he was sure to be cast in the leading role in the next production. I felt the whole situation was hopeless. Michael was the only actor in the company with any talent and the communal living situation was not great and some of the group didn’t quite know how to deal with such an overt gay couple in their midst as Michael and I. We eventually came to a compromise and decided we would stay only if Michael got that part he wanted. The next day he was told he didn’t get the part and we left soon after. Our friend Gregg stayed on a while longer, but as I predicted the theater didn’t last. They managed to mount two more shows that summer, but that was the first and last season of the Oldenburg Playhouse.

We had the rest of the summer to get through and we wanted to be together, so we headed to Michael’s home town, Murphysboro to stay with his parents Earl and Margaret. The plan was that we would work for Earl, who owned a florist shop and a car wash. Michael would study for and take a high school equivalency exam so that he could come back to NCSA with me as a college freshman in the fall. Michael’s parents were good solid people, and accepted my presence there as his “good friend” with surprising warmth. Like my parents they avoided discussing things that might cause discomfort or conflict. If they suspected the true nature of our relationship, they never discussed it with us. I think it would have been impossible for them or anyone who spent any time around Michael and I together not to sense what we meant to each other.

In fact, not long into our stay in Murphysboro, Michael’s father came to know we were more than good friends. The room where we stayed in the house had one single bed and cot. We never used the cot. Early one morning before we were up Earl came into the room to get something from the closet assuming we were still asleep. Michael was but I was not. Earl looked at the bed where I was lying with his son cuddled beside me. Our eyes met and without a word he got what he was after from the closet and left. If he was concerned or upset he never showed it to me or Michael. In fact both Earl and Margaret made me feel at home and continued to treat me like one of the family. I felt even more like a son-in-law or the accepted boyfriend when Earl decided my old Chevy would not make the trip safely back to North Carolina and suggested we needed a better car. The Chevy was really my father’s car so like in-laws helping out the newly-weds, Earl and my dad arranged trade in the Chevy for something better that we were to own jointly since we were going to be living together back at school.

In retrospect I’m astonished and deeply thankful for the extraordinary acceptance that Michael and my parents acted toward us during this time. I learned years later when I finally came out to my parents that it had been difficult for them during this time, especially my mother. She told me how she had suspected the nature of my relationship with Michael, but didn’t know how to talk to me about it. She could only suppress her fears and hope for the best. I didn’t have the maturity then to talk to my parents about it either. If they had asked me directly about my sexuality I probably would have lied to them. I had an awkward conversation with my father around this time when he cautioned me about not getting into a serious relationship that would interfere with my studies. He didn’t mention Michael directly, but in retrospect I know that he was the reason we were having the discussion. The fact is that even though it may have confused and distressed them, our parents stoically kept any misgivings they may have had to themselves. After that summer I saw Michael’s parents the following Christmas, but after that I had no contact with them until fifteen years later when I called to tell them they better come to New York to help put their dying son’s affairs in order.

In September of 1971, we headed back to North Carolina and found an apartment near campus. We had some time before classes started so we decided to drive up to Maine and get our friend Gregg who would coming back to NCSA as a college freshman. In those days we would drive great distances at great speed without a second thought. A quick trip to Maine to bring our best friend back to school seemed reasonable, so that’s what we did.

After classes started it wasn’t long before the problem of Michael’s roving eye would again intrude on the blissfulness of our young relationship. This time it wasn’t some stranger in the park. Michael was becoming infatuated with one of his teachers and he told me that he wanted us to have an open relationship so that he could pursue this guy. I can’t recall exactly what was said, but I do remember that we had a very loud argument and that I flew into an irrational jealous rage. There was window that swung inward on a hinge for ventilation in the bathroom and in my anger I smashed it with my bare hand, cut my wrist severely, and made a real bloody mess. Michael had to drive me to the emergency room. For the first time I was the one to create real drama and it scared the shit out of Michael. It scared the shit out of me too. Seeing the blood gushing from my wrist so profusely was very sobering. I still have permanent numbness in part of my hand because of nerves that were severed. The bandages on my wrist afterward drew a lot of stares and questions from my classmates. I made up a story about slipping in the bathroom. This would not be the last time that Michael and I would argue about having an open relationship, but it was the last time I would ever lash out so violently in anger.

In the meantime, it seems our little drama had upset the neighbors, one of whom was a teacher at the Piedmont Bible College. As the landlord explained, in somewhat less than polite terms, he and the neighbors were now aware of the nature of our relationship due to volume of our argument and the things we said, so we were summarily invited to leave. We were fortunate to find another apartment in a more hospitable part of town. There were other NCSA students living nearby our new place and the other neighbors were more inclined to mind their own business, so we had no problems in that regard for the rest of the year. Our place became one of the off-campus gathering places for parties and dinners. We were back to being a couple and there was no further discussion of having an open relationship for the time being.

Michael’s sexual creativity continued to surprise and delight me during this time. Once after getting very stoned, he put Bach’s Cantata and Fugue on the stereo and proceeded to use his woodwind musician’s tongue all over my body in time with the music. He was a talented musician and as the music crescendoed to a climax, so did I. To this day the opening chords of that cantata gets me aroused. There wasn’t much that we didn’t do sexually. We tried many things together, acquiring intimate knowledge of every square inch of each other, and I think we learned things about ourselves that made us both more versatile in bed than we had been before. The sex couldn’t have been better for me, but it wasn’t enough for Michael. His sexual appetite would not be satisfied by one partner for very long.

After several weeks of contentment, Michael’s roving eye instigated another episode of jealous teenage drama. One night I was supposed to meet Michael after the rehearsal for a play he was in. When I went to the rehearsal room it had already broken up and Michael was gone. Someone told me that had gone off toward the Student Union building with a guy whose name I don’t remember. For the sake of this narrative I’ll call him John. John was a straight guy who was in the play with Michael. He was tall and thin like me, but not at all attractive from my point of view. At the Student Union someone told me that Michael had headed toward the dorms about half an hour earlier with John.

Little warning bells were going off in my head, but I told myself it was just an innocent case of two friends getting high or having a beer together. The guy was straight and not very attractive. Michael had even talked about what a fool this guy was. So why was this guy suddenly Michael’s buddy? I found John’s room and knocked on the door. John answered, but he didn’t open the door. He said he didn’t know where Michael was. I started to leave but halfway down the hall I started remembering all the stories Michael had proudly told me of the straight guys he had seduced. It was like a big game to him that he boasted about. All of a sudden suspicion and irrational jealous rage swelled in my young brain. I became certain that Micheal was in that room fucking around with that creep. I went back and started pounding on the door and yelling like a fool. It was pretty late but now anyone on the floor who might have been asleep was now awake. Many doors opened down the hall as heads popped out to check out what the commotion was about. There I was in a blind rage pounding away and yelling brilliant things like “open the door, I know you’re in there!” I was making so much noise that they had to open the door. I was right, Michael was in the room and the state of their clothing or lack thereof, left no doubt about what they were up to. By this time Michael was just as mad as I was. He was embarrassed and angry at the scene I was making over what to him was just bit of insignificant fun for him. He stubbornly refused to leave with me. No amount of pleading or threats on my part was going to get him to that room. At some point I gave up and stormed out. I don’t know what happened between Michael and his new conquest after I left. Knowing Michael and his determination, after a bit of awkwardness he probably convinced poor John to continue what I had so rudely interrupted.

I sat in the courtyard between the dorms for a while with the green eyed monster still raging in my brain trying to decide what to do next. I’m not sure if the jealous fog that was guiding me led me to the place I went next with a specific plan in mind or not, but decided to go to the dorm room of one of the guys in our social group, who was a fellow design student in my class. I woke the poor guy up and he let me rant about Michael and cry on his shoulder for a while. He was sympathetic and at some point his soothing words were followed by soothing caresses which turned into a tepid sex. In retrospect I’m not sure if I had gone there with the intention of having revenge sex with our mutual friend, but that’s what it was.
The next day our drama continued with much arguing and threats. I told Michael of my little dalliance with his friend and was gratified that because it involved this particular friend, it made him more jealous and angry than I had ever seen him be. He slapped me hard across the face, and I just sat there and let him hit me again and again, the tears streaming down my face. I’d hurt Michael very badly and now he was hurting me back. We were both sobbing and looking for some kind of dramatic catharsis comparable to my bloody window smashing, when all of a sudden we heard a loud splash and thrashing about coming from the bathroom where Michal had left a tub full of water. Our cat Speed came running out of the bathroom soaking wet. Speed was a funny looking cat to begin with, but soaking wet he was hysterical. That was the end of the fight. That damn cat was the funniest thing we’d ever seen. We started laughing and couldn’t stop no matter what. The harder we tried to keep from laughing, the funnier it would seem. You just can’t have a good dramatic scene in a room with a wet cat. Thanks to Speed we ended this episode as always in bed.

We managed to function reasonably well as a couple and as students and have pretty good time for the rest of the school year. Our friend Gregg had left school and moved the New York and we went visit him on spring vacation. Before that, however there was one more incident of infidelity with Michael that was unique from the others because it was with a woman. He had been cast in a children’s play that the school was being performed at elementary schools throughout the state. He was away overnight several days and when he returned he told me all about this girl that he had been having sex with on the tour. It was the first time he had been with a woman and the novelty of it seemed to addle his brain a bit. He told me that it might have been more than casual sex and that he wanted to pursue this relationship further. I was surprised and upset about this new complication, but this time was more thoughtful and dignified in my response. It probably would upset me more if it had been another man. I think my refusal to believe that Michael could have a serious relationship with a woman made him even more determined to prove that he could. We argued about it, but I remained surprisingly calm and much to Michael’s dismay I told him that I was going go find this girl and find out for myself how serious she was. Michael refused to tell me her name, but NCSA was a small school and it would be easy to find out from asking around campus which I set out to do that same evening.

I discovered that her name was Joyce and she lived in a house off campus. I found the house, but she wasn’t home. Her housemate, Tinga, was gracious enough to let me in to wait for her. We had a nice chat while we waited. When Joyce came in I also had a nice chat her as well. As it turned out, she was very quick to assure me that what had happened between Michael and her was just a casual little diversion and that she had no intention of taking it any farther that that. In fact she had a steady guy already and had no desire to jeopardize that relationship over Michael. She found the whole idea of a serious thing between herself and Michael to be pretty funny. Needless to say I was relieved.
I don’t recall exactly how our discussion played out when I told Michael about my conversation with Joyce. Somehow we managed to talk it through and return to our version of a committed relationship feeling bit more mature and sophisticated. In fact Joyce and Tinga became good friends after that. We got along so well that by the end of the school year it was decided that Michael and I would move into the house with Joyce the next fall. Tinga was moving back to New York. Joyce liked the the idea of having two gay guys as housemates. Before we all left for our summer jobs we moved some of our furniture into Joyce’s house which she was subletting to some other students until the fall. Things did not turn out as we had planned.

Michael and I had summer jobs in separate places. I went to do summer stock theater in New Hampshire and Michael was off to act in a historical drama in Kentucky. When we said goodbye the understanding was that we would resume our relationship with the new school year in the fall. After all we had been through in the last two years, it seemed our partnership was solid and would survive a brief hiatus. We had even exchanged gold wedding bands which we wore on our right hands opposite of tradition.
It wasn’t long into the summer before I received a phone call from Michael to tell me that he had found someone else and it was over for us. I was devastated. There were lots of tearful phone calls back and forth between Michael and I that summer, but I finally came to terms with the fact that it was over. I was working with Gregg who helped me get the job. We were sharing a place for the summer and he endured a few nights listening to my drunken jilted lover woes. Our crazy work schedule left little time for me to mope about and I was soon getting over Michael by pursuing solace with several other members of the company, including a couple of woman and a very young local boy. My efforts to replace Michael with a new love were not successful, but I did gain anew life-long friend.

After the summer Micheal stayed in Kentucky with his new partner, a photographer who produced some of the photos included here. I went back to school in the fall and moved into the house with Joyce and Tinga who had decided to come back to Winston-Salem even though she wasn’t going to school anymore. It was my last year at NCSA.

I saw Michael a few times that year but it was always a little hard for me to be with him. Over Christmas break was the first I saw after our breakup. My family lived Louisville Kentucky and Michael was living there and had broken up with his photographer and was on his own. I went to visit him and we took some kind of halucignin and and attempted to have sex. It was all too weird. I guess I never quite gave up on a reconciliation for us, but this last attempt only proved to us that the passion we had once shared had faded.
I moved to New York the fall of 1973. Michael was also in New York then and called me to suggest we become roommates because he had found a great apartment that he couldn’t afford by himself. I turned him down, because I knew I was not ready to bury the past live with him platonically. We saw each other occasionally because we had so many mutual friends, but our lives converged less often over the next years as we pursued different careers in the theater, he as an actor and I as a designer. There was still a lingering bit of jealousy or perhaps envy when Michael found a steady partner who stuck with him while I remained single. He lived with Ron for over ten years. He was a decent guy who I later learned first-hand, shared Michael’s ideas about sexual freedom in a relationship. It took some time but eventually Michael and Ron became an important part of my social circle and our tumultuous history was a distant memory that we could talk about with nostalgia and humor. I was pleased when Michael found professional success as a founding member of a musical trio The Manhattan Rhythm Kings. By 1983 the group, which had started out busking on the street that was finding an audience for their brand of musical nostalgia from the 1930s and 40s. Their act, which consisted of lively arrangements in three-part harmony mixed with some tap dancing, a bit of snappy banter while wearing period suits and fedoras were getting steady gigs on cruise ships, small clubs and concert venues. Michael was a standout in the group with his tap dancing and proficiency on the saxophone and bassoon he was central to the groups success. He was also responsible for the musical arrangements and choreography. They made some recordings and were starting to get bookings as the opening act for major stars like George Burns. Sometime in 1984 Tommy Tune started talking with them about working together on a show. The future looked good for the Rhythm Kings. Then Michael got diagnosed with HIV.

I don’t know the exact circumstances of Micael’s diagnosis and how his bandmates became aware of it. In 1984 little was known about AIDS. There were no effective treatments yet and immense fear surrounding a diagnosis. I first learned of it later in 1985 when its affects were becoming noticeable. I imagine Michael’s energy started to decline in the last performances he did with the group in the fall of 1984. All of Michael’s friends and I were so excited when we learned that they were going to do a show with Tommy Tune. It was going to be tribute to Fred Astaire and the little known songs he wrote that was going to open in Atlantic City. Before rehearsals started Michael left the group and the show went on without him. His replacement didn’t last. It took a few more months to find someone who could fill Michael’s shoes, but they did. The Manhattan Rhythm Kings continued on as a group for more than twenty years after replacing Michael – performing in larger venues like Radio City Music Hall, recordings, a broadway show, and a movie. It was very painful for him to see the group go on so easily with out him. However, while he was bitter about it at first, later on when I was with him in his last months, he told me that he was really happy that the group would continue and do well. During his last days his bitterness turned to pride that his creation – his child – would survive and continue to grow and thrive after he was gone.
I only felt anger that his former bandmates who were all so close over the years dropped Micheal so quickly and offered him so little emotional support or sympathy when he first became ill. Neither even came to visit him in the hospital and cut off all communication with him. An entertainment column in the Daily News ran an item about the Manhattan Rhythm King’s with the headline “After A Tragedy” announcing their new member replacing the one who was “hit by AIDS” and how sorry they were for him. Michael’s name was not mentioned nor his importance to the group’s success and even though the group was doing well, I don’t think replacing a member would have made the news without the AIDS angle. The article appeared the day of Michael’s death. I’m glad I didn’t see the Daily News that day.

After Michael quit the Rhythm Kings he and his partner Ron decided to move further into upstate New York from their place in Yonkers. They had moved to Yonkers from Manhattan a few years earlier so Ron could be closer to the Westchester Medical Center where he worked as an X-ray technician. Since Michael spent so much time performing away from the the city, living in Manhattan wasn’t as important as before. They found a little house near Peekskill, New York further from the city, but still an easy commute for Ron. The house was somewhat isolated and had a basement apartment occupied with a tenant when they bought it. At the time I thought Michael was the only one who was sick, but I found out later that Ron had tested positive for HIV as well, only he wasn’t showing any symptoms at that time. With the inevitable prognosis ahead of them it was a very impractical move for them. It put them farther away from friends and the resources of the city. It wasn’t until I started spending more time with them that I came to understand just how impractical their plans were, but I also came to understand their reasoning. It was an act of optimism in the face of a grim future for them. They wanted to create a little world unto themselves where they could spend their last days together but they were in denial of how long that might be. The fact that Ron had kept his diagnosis a secret until his first hospitalization was another indication of their delusions about what the future held for them. Making more practical plans would have meant facing the reality of AIDS in 1985.

At the time they bought the Peekskill house in the spring of 1985 I was between careers and not sure what direction my work life would take. I had been working for some other friends helping them renovate an old house in Brooklyn and Michael and Ron asked me to come to Peekskill and do the the same for them. I tore down a wall, and sanded floors, and did a lot of little odd jobs for them. During this time I was able to see first hand Michael’s rapid decline as his illness took over. They were both beginning to rely on me more and more to help with the simplest household tasks. That summer first Michael, then Ron started having extended stays at Westchester Medical Center where Ron worked. At one point they were both in the hospital at the same time. Our friend Gregg from NCSA were now sharing a two bedroom apartment in the East Village and was Gregg or I that they would call to come and take care of their cats, or bring them things in the hospital. Once Ron called from the hospital and asked Gregg to invite Micheal to come and stay with us because he didn’t feel Michael was strong enough to take care of himself. Gregg’s mother and sister were due to visit us that week so he had to say no to Ron. Gregg was in tears after he hung up the phone with Ron. He just couldn’t cope with the guilt he felt. Soon he would to have health problems of his own and dealing with our rapidly weakening friends was becoming too much for him. After that Michael and Ron Became to depend on me alone. They were losing weight and becoming weaker. Throughout the summer they were in and out of the hospital many times. If they were both in the hospital I would go up and get the cats and bring them back with me and check on things at the house. Or if one of them was home alone I would do the shopping or the laundry. I knew eventually the time would come when they couldn’t be left alone at all.

Then in August they were both hospitalized again, and when I visited them where they were in the same room together, it seemed Ron’s condition was so bad that he would probably not recover enough to ever go back home. It was then that I told Gregg that I was prepared to do whatever was necessary to help Michael even if it meant bringing him to stay with us. Ron did leave the hospital for a few weeks, but was back again soon. Michael clung desperately to the hope that Ron would get well enough for them to be together again, but by the end of September the impossibility of that started to became clearer to him.
Michael began to make peace with himself. He began to accept the fact that he and Ron didn’t have much time left and an aura of calm resignation replaced all of his optimistic delusions. Now he could forgive the way his former partners in the Rhythm Kings had dumped him and take pleasure in the success of the group he had helped create. We could talk about the “good old days,” when we were young and foolish kids. It was almost liked we jumped ahead in time and we were two old men recalling another era. Michael even looked the part since by this time he was very weak and had difficulty walking any great distance. I watched this 33 year old man who was once my teenage lover, turn into a shuffling old man with sunken cheeks who was barely able to dress himself in just four months. My eyes would regularly well up with tears while I was with him, but Michael’s peacefulness kept me going and I kept my emotions in check most of the time. Michael didn’t given up on life completely. He insisted we go to movies and on shopping trips where he would buy records and silly gifts to take to Ron in the hospital. I found emotional strength in myself that I didn’t know I had. There would be time for tears when it was all over. For the time being I would just be there and do whatever needed to be done.

There was one day when I did loose control for a while. I had brought Michael to the hospital to visit Ron who was so ill that he couldn’t speak, but he was conscious. Michael decided he wanted sit in the bed beside him and just hold him. With difficulty I helped Ron sit up a bit, and then I had to help Michael get up on the bed. When I looked at the two of them on that bed so thin and weak clinging to each other, I had to leave the room. I stood out in the hall of the hospital sobbing uncontrollably for about fifteen minutes before I could go back into that room.

Late in October I got a call from Michael in the hospital. He was crying because he had just come to the realization that Ron was near the end. I hadn’t been up to see them for a while because Ron’s mother had come to stay with them which had allowed me to take a break from my frequent trips to Peekskill. Michael wanted me to come up and stay with him because Ron’s mother was staying at the hospital full-time and he just couldn’t stay in that house alone anymore now that he knew Ron would never be coming home. I came up the next day. Michael drove to the train station to pick me up, he was so frail and weak I don’t know how he made it. He looked to me like he needed to be in the hospital, but he had just been released from there a few days before. I stayed with him a few days, but I had to get back to the city to take care of some business. It was obvious that I couldn’t leave Michael alone now, so I drove him home with me in his car. He was so weak now that he could hardly dress himself. Gregg helped me take care of things for a few days, but he just couldn’t deal with it. He went up to Maine to visit his family and left me to take care of Michael on my own. He could have stayed to help me take of Michael, but he didn’t. I have since forgiven Gregg for abandoning med back then. Gregg died form AIDS less than a year later. At the time, however I was very angry with him.

Michael got steadily worse while he stayed with me. He started falling down a lot and the beginning stages of dementia were appearing. It was at this time that I called Michael’s parents and told them they better come. He hadn’t seen them for almost a year and until this point he had not been totally honest with them about how sick he was. He resisted my getting in touch with them at first, but I managed to convince him that he could no longer spare them from the reality of his illness. He needed them to help put his affairs in order. I don’t recall the exact conversation I had with them. It had been years since I seen them. I managed to make them aware of the gravity of the situation without breaking into sobs, even though the anguish in Michael’s father’s voice was palpable as he realized what I was telling him. Earl was grateful that I had called and they would be on their way from Illinois in a few days.

Also at this time there was another friend of Michael’s in the City, who I had not known before that had been helping him out a bit (also named Michael I’ll refer to him as Michael L). He came to help me out when I brought Michael to stay with me. It was this Michael L who helped me to find a doctor in the city that Michael could see while staying with me. I had no contact with Michael’s doctor upstate, and the falling incidents were becoming more frequent and beginning to scare me. When we took Michael to this doctor, he was appalled that Michael was not in the hospital and advised us to get him into one as soon as possible. He told us point blank that he felt there wasn’t much time left and asked me if I was prepared have your friend die in my apartment. He suggested we go the emergency room at Bellevue Hospital telling us that it might not look look like a good place, but they would know what to do. We went there that night, but when Michael saw the place he insisted we take him back to Westchester Medical Center where he had been before and that’s where is partner was still clinging to life. So that’s what we did.
It was late in the evening by the time we got there, the doctors in the emergency room there were reluctant to admit him. Technically he wan’t sick enough as far as they were concerned. It was the worst night of my life. We were furious that the stupid doctors didn’t want to admit him and took hours for them to find his his records while we just waited not knowing what to do. On the one hand I didn’t want to leave him there, but on the other hand I was terrified because of what the doctor in the city had told us. I didn’t feel I could handle the situation any more. The prospect of taking Michael back to die in my bed was too much for me. He needed round the clock nursing care and the only place to get it was in the hospital. I felt like shit dumping Michael there, and he was so tired and weak that he just lay there willing to let Michael L and I decide what was to be done. By the time that we convinced the ER doctors to admit him by basically threatening to just leave him and walk out the door, it was three o’clock in the morning.

I still have misgivings about what we did that night. I sometimes feel that I should have taken home home with me. I don’t know if I could have provided a more dignified ending for Michael, but maybe I should have tried. In one respect it was good that we took Michael back to that hospital. Ron was still there and he died a few days later. Because Michael was there he was able to say goodbye to him. Ron had worked at this hospital before he got sick, so the night he died a friend from the x-ray lab where he had worked took Michael in a wheelchair to sit with Ron’s body for a while before they took him away. Michael’s parents arrived the next day, and two weeks later Michael died.

It was December 13, 1985. Michael’s father called me at six in the morning. The first thing he said was “It’s over.”

It wasn’t over for me. The AIDS crisis would take many more friends from me over the next few years. Like many gay men my age this plague would cause much reevaluation of my personal and professional life. It caused me to become much more aware of and active in the gay rights movement, but that will be another chapter in this memoir.

NYC and Me: The Swinging Seventies

Clockwise from upper left: me at my drafting table in Maine, Ogunquit Playhouse, Royal Poinciana Playhouse, Jim, my taxi license, the GAA Firehouse dance, me on a set for the Actor's Unit. Center: me in 1978.

This sad summer of 2020 as my city slowly stumbles toward some kind of resolution to the nationwide pandemic only to be further disrupted by protests against racial injustice triggered by the brutal murder of a black man in Minnesota by a police officer, I felt powerless to do much more than bear witness and cheer on the young people from the sidelines. However recently my much younger dear friend Ian persuaded me to take part in a protest march. As I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge I took in the diverse crowd around me and felt the energy and righteousness of their faces as they chanted and held up their signs. Feeling very old, I envied their youth and knew that my old feet would be hurting the next day. I wonder if the 23 year old I was 47 years ago would be marching with them — in all honesty, probably not.

In my sorrow and anguish concerning my city’s current crisis, I find myself looking back and trying to remember who I was and why I stayed in New York even though the city had been a harsh mistress. The City was seductive, beautiful and the source of great joy, but also unforgiving, dirty and the location of much heartbreak. Most all of the dreams I had as a young man about what my New York life would be were consistently unrealized but I’m still here and that is the only dream come true I need now. During this forced shutdown of my social life I can take the time to reflect on my first decade in New York and the 23-year-old me who came to make his mark in the fall of 1973. There are very few people still in my life who knew me as a young man. I have only the faulty memories of an old man and boxes of old photos, papers and the stories I’ve told about my twenty-something self many times over the years that have become less detailed with each recollection. Looking through the ephemera I’ve kept and trying to organize it like I’ve learned to do from my time as a volunteer archivist at the LGBT Center has helped me be more objective in my recollections as I piece together a view of New York City from 1973 to around 1984 through the eyes of my younger self. 

My arrival and first year in New York was facilitated by a close friend, Bruce Martin who let me move in with him and his partner Rob. They had moved to the city a year or so before I did. They had a small spare room in their fourth floor walk-up on west 86th street. Bruce also helped me get a job working with him as a stagehand at the Kaufmann Concert Hall in the 92nd Street YMHA across town. I was very lucky that with very little effort on my part I had a job and a place to live. Also the summer theaters where I had worked and other friends from college who had moved there before me provided me with an instant social and professional network. At the time I was clueless as to how lucky I was to have all this when so many in the city were struggling.

The City was politically transitioning from Mayor John Lindsay to newly elected Abe Beame. The Lindsay administration had been plagued by all the political unrest of the 60s along with teachers strikes, sanitation strikes and police corruption. A huge financial crisis was about to come to a head brought on by “white flight” and the demise of small manufacturing businesses throughput the city. Adult “bookstores” and X-rated films took over Times Square. Central Park was a mess and dangerous after dark. The sidewalks were a mine field of dog shit. The poorer neighborhoods all over the city were pockmarked with empty buildings abandoned by their owners, left to squatters and junkies. The subways were filthy and so covered with graffiti inside and out that often you couldn’t see out the windows. I knew nothing of the city’s politics. I was moving too fast and had too many things to do to pay attention to politics. The glaring headlines on The Daily News and The NY Post weren’t about me. I would reach past them for a copy of Backstage or The Village Voice. Only the Arts & Entertainment section of the Sunday Times held my attention for very long. My world was all about the theater and enjoying the burgeoning gay social scene that exploded in the years just after the Stonewall riots of June 1969.

My first year living in the City was full of new experiences and cultural shocks that I assimilated hungrily. Working backstage at the Kaufmann Concert hall exposed me to music, dance and lectures that I would not have sought on my own. I learned what a “shabbas goy” was when I set up the sound and lights for an orthodox jewish high holy day service booked in the hall. I had to be at work early many Saturday and Sunday mornings when traveling children’s theater troupes were booked. Many of those mornings I would be badly hungover from a long Friday or Saturday night out having fun. 

My job at the 92nd Street Y had very flexible hours, often in the evening, that made it easy for me to pursue other things during the day. I found plenty of opportunities to work on various “showcase” theater productions and various odd theater tech jobs. There were empty commercial loft spaces all over Manhattan that were taken over by artists and little theater companies. The City was teaming with aspiring artists, actors and designers like myself who took advantage of the cheap housing available in the sketchy neighborhoods of the Lower East Side, Chelsea, Soho and Hell’s Kitchen. Actor’s Equity had very lax requirements for their members doing “showcase” productions which usually paid nothing or provided just subway fare. I designed several shows (which I also built and painted myself) in Chelsea in a former sweatshop at 682 6th Ave. I was thrilled when one of their shows got reviewed in the Village Voice with a favorable mention for my work. 

There was an abundance of creativity going on in the arts in the 70s and in retrospect I can see that I may have missed a lot of chances to network in the creative circles that might have made me a more successful player in the arts scene of the time. At the time there were so many choices dropped in front of me. It was all very random. There was no way of knowing if collaboration with a certain director or producer was going to lead to fame and fortune. I would occasionally seek out a job from an ad in Backstage, but most of my jobs came from referrals from friends or people I’d worked with in summer stock theaters.

In the years immediately after the Stonewall riots police harassment diminished significantly and gay activists were beginning to have an affect and a small amount of political recognition even though real political power and equal rights laws were years away. The Gay Activist Alliance was the first gay activist organization in the city to take up the tactics of the anti war movement with acts of civil disobedience and protests. I wish I could say I had gone to their old Soho firehouse headquarters for their political meetings, I didn’t. I only became aware of the GAA because of their Saturday night fund-raising dances. They were fantastic and so popular that you had to get there early or wait in a long line to get in. The energy and pure joy in that crowded firehouse filled with queer people celebrating their youth and freedom in a totally queer space is a sweet memory that I cherish. The GAA firehouse dances ended in 1974 after the building was damaged by arsonists. Many gay bars noticed a decline in their business on GAA dance nights. A segment of the business community, including some gay entrepreneurs also noticed and were realizing there was money to be made from this newly enfranchised community. I believe there is a direct connection from the popularity of the GAA firehouse dances to the countless gay clubs that sprang up over the next decade — queer spaces filled with shirtless young men in a joyous tribal dance immersed in a throbbing fog of sound.

Those first months as I was rushing through life like most twenty-somethings do, I had become a bit of a self-centered asshole toward my housemates who had helped me so much. I became a very squeaky third wheel in their household. I was told they would prefer to be living alone as a couple and I was kindly asked to find new living arrangements. I decided to return to a summer theater in Ohio, Kenley Players, where I had worked the summer before. In May 1974 I moved out of Bruce and Rob’s apartment, put my belongings in storage and returned to Ohio for the summer as a scenic painter. During the summer one of the set designers quit and I was given the unexpected opportunity to design the sets for three of the shows that season. Kind of like the classic show-biz story of the understudy stepping in for the star. The highlight of that summer for me was designing the set for “Oliver!” starring Vincent Price. I was able to expand my portfolio with big productions that included “star” names and I thought I was now on my way to becoming a big-time designer on my return to New York that fall. It turns out the New York world was not that impressed with my new portfolio.

After the summer I returned to New York and took an apartment in the East Village east on 6th Street with an old friend from school, Gregg Marriner. The East Village in ‘74 was years away from becoming the trendy neighborhood it is today. In fact Gregg and I had initially intended to have an additional roommate, our dear friend Linda, but she didn’t feel comfortable with the east 6th street location between Avenues A and B and decided not to join us. To say that the block was a bit funky is an understatement. I wasn’t the worst block in “Alphabet City” but there was at least one abandoned building on the block occupied by crack addicts. I never felt threatened walking around the area, but I would find myself crossing town to the West Village most evenings when I was seeking entertainment. I didn’t stay long in the East 6th Street apartment, but the East Village would be my neighborhood for the next 42 years. 

The fall of 1974 into the winter of 1975 I worked a series of odd theater tech jobs and designed a few showcase productions. Many evenings I went prowling about the Village bars. There was a palpable fog of sexual tension and energy permeating the bars, streets, parks and other areas where gay men would gather in those days. A night out could be a silent game of hide and seek on the dark streets of the empty meat packing district or abandoned piers along the river for anonymous hook-ups. I was moderately intrigued by these places, but I didn’t find them as seductive as some my contemporaries. I didn’t become obsessed with sex as it seemed many gay men were then, but I did participate in the newly open sexuality of the 70s. I preferred to find my hook-ups in bars and more ordinary social situations. I wasn’t particularly outgoing or aggressive when I was out cruising the bars, but I was young and attractive enough yo have plenty of sex without much effort on my part. It was the 70s and the sexual revolution was peaking for gay men with a vengeance. We didn’t have Scruff or Grinder, but in the bars, on the streets, deserted piers and dark corners of public parks there were rituals and signals that were easy to interpret — a backward glance, a leather vest, a certain color hanker-chief in the back pocket of a tight pair of jeans — many variations depending on the place. If you were young and gay New York in the 70s was a smorgasbord of sex and not getting laid regularly would take more effort than being celibate.

The Ninth Circle was a particular favorite bar of mine at the time and a place I was most likely to find hook-ups. I went there alone on the night of my 25th birthday and got picked up by two guys who became the nucleus of a small circle of close friends that sustained me for the next five years or so. The group included some aspiring actors and a black woman who was the epitome of the pejorative “fag hag,” but we loved her. She had a voice that sounded a bit like Butterfly McQueen. One of them Jim Dozmati, became my boyfriend for a while. In the fall of 1975 I moved into a small walk-up apartment with Jim, who I had been seeing since January. He came to visit me in Ohio where I had returned to work that summer for a third season at Kenley Players. I asked Jim if I could stay with him when I returned to NYC. My roommate had moved us out the apartment on 6th street while I was away after it had been burglarized and I would be homeless when I returned to NYC. In retrospect I’m not sure if I was proposing we become a couple or just wanting a place to land while I looked for a place of my own. In any case we did become a couple and after several months I persuaded Jim to sign a lease with me on a one bedroom apartment at 170 Second Avenue in the East Village. Also I had decided to go back to school and took out loans to attend NYU’s Graduate Theater program for design. To pay the rent I got a taxi license and worked the night shift driving a cab for several months. The night shifts soon became too tiring, so I went back to taking odd carpentry and theater tech jobs to support myself.

In February 1976 My mother came to New York with two friends and I was able be a tour guide for them. They stayed in a hotel and I think I impressed them with my ability escort them around the city on the subway like the seasoned New Yorker I had become. I don’t recall introducing Jim to my mother at that time and if I referred to him I would call him my roommate. My mother still euphemistically referred to me as a “confirmed bachelor” to her friends and while in most aspects of my life I was not secretive about my sexual orientation, with my family there was a tacit understanding that it would not be discussed. At one point this year I do recall my parents did meet Jim when they went out of their way to stop by NYC while on one of their road trips somewhere to drop off some furniture they were giving me. They would have seen my one bedroom apartment with one bed and met my “roommate” then. No questions were asked.

The summer of 1976 was the beginning of a cycle that lasted for the next eight years working half the year outside of New York mostly for one theater producer, John Lane. He ran a summer stock theater in Ogunquit, Maine and in winter produced a season of plays in Palm Beach, Florida at the Royal Poinciana Playhouse. In retrospect I feel that I may have limited my chances of becoming a more successful designer in the New York theater world by working outside of the city so much. Nevertheless that’s the path I took. The first summer in Ogunquit I was a scenic painter. My closest friend Gregg was the lighting designer. I didn’t think much about leaving my boyfriend/roommate on his own for the summer. He had his job as gardener in the City and I had to go where my theater jobs took me and without much discussion I just left him on his own. The status of our relationship and what we meant to each other wasn’t discussed. I was too self-absorbed to notice if Jim was upset by my leaving him on his own for the summer. Also I was beginning to be concerned about Jim’s drinking. When he came to visit me in Oqunquit I was very upset that on the first night of his stay, after weeks of being apart he was too drunk have sex with me. There was bit of drama and I was petulant asshole. 

Other than Jim’s visit my summer was great. A lot of hard work and lot of hard playing. Ogunquit had a vibrant gay scene that coexisted with more traditional family oriented New England beach town vibe. It was a microcosm of all that’s picturesque in a New England fishing village and had attracted artists and tourists since the early 20th century. Where there are artists there are bound to be some gay people as well. Ogunquit wasn’t equivalent with Provincetown or Fire Island but many of its businesses were gay owned. I would spend every summer there (with one exception) for the next seven years. Working away from the City every summer prevented me from participating in any New York Gay Pride parades until 1986. I wasn’t connected to gay activism in any meaningful way partly because of my absence from the city for work so much and partly because working in the theater there was little need to be in the closet. I was protected from the kind of discrimination that was still prevalent in other occupations. In fact being gay in the theater could actually be beneficial as there were so many gay directors and producers. In fact in retrospect I can admit that there may have been a bit of casual flirting involved in some of the jobs I got. In my twenties I could express sympathy for someone who had to hide their sexuality in there work life, but it was not something I had experienced. My self-centered 26-year-old self remained only superficially aware of gay activism and politics.

I returned to New York in the fall of 1976, grateful to be home. I resumed classes at NYU, but it was a struggle financially and there was more personal drama with Jim. I was not mature enough to tolerate or help with his alcoholism. Before the end of the year John Lane offered me a job in Palm Beach not only as a scenic painter, but I would also design the set for two of the shows. The choice was to stay in gloomy cold New York with my alcoholic boyfriend, taking classes that were putting me in debt or spend the winter in sunny Florida designing and getting paid for it. I couldn’t pack my bags fast enough. 

Florida was successful for me professionally, but not otherwise. It was actually quite cold there the first month. When you're under a palm tree in an apartment with no heat, fifty degrees feels much colder than it should. Also I found Palm Beach oppressively pretentious and Florida in general a pastel colored cultural hodgepodge where people with varying degrees of success, live their tropical fantasy on a paved over swamp. I was never so happy to return to New York after that winter in Florida. It would be a new beginning. Over the winter my boyfriend/roommate had found someone new. I would keep the apartment and find a new roommate. These were my “snowbird” years. I would return to Ogunquit the next summer after three months of unemployment checks and odd jobs for cash. This time as set designer for the entire season. Then back to New York in the fall to more unemployment checks, only to head off to Palm Beach for the winter. My apartment in the East Village became my anchor to New York. All those many times in a cab from the airport crossing the Williamsburg Bridge I would look at the Manhattan skyline with a mixture of awe and gratitude that I could claim it as my home. Those years while in Maine, Florida and one summer in Lake Forest Illinois I would design over eighty productions. The few shows I designed in New York were all low budget off and off-off Broadway shows. 

There’s and an old song titled “There’s a Broken Heart for Every Light On Broadway.” This became true for me in 1980. The summer of 1979 I was hired by a director I had worked with in Palm Beach to design a four production season for the Academy Festival Theater in the affluent Lake Forest suburb of Chicago. One of these plays got picked up by New York producers for a run on Broadway. The director and producers both assured me that I would be hired along with the rest of the creative team for this production and I was ecstatic for several weeks that my name was going to finally be in a Broadway Playbill. My excitement didn’t last long and shortly before the first production meetings were to start I was informed without explanation that I would not work on the Broadway production after all. It was a huge disappointment and since the costume and lighting designers all were kept with the show. I never had a chance to find out from the director exactly why I was dropped. It was also a considerable blow to my confidence in myself and every job I had after that seemed like a step backward. I did four more summer stock seasons in Ogunquit and a few more productions in Palm Beach, but this path was seeming more like a career dead end for me. I didn’t achieve real success in the New York Theater, but I feel privileged to have been a part of it even on the fringes as I was. I feel I am a better and more interesting person for having tried and failed than never having tried at all.

I turned thirty in 1980 and the swinging seventies were winding down. As I was starting to have doubts about my career choices there were also signs of the looming dark times to come in my personal life as well. I had a few close friends and fell in and out of many casual intimate relationships that became progressively disappointing and often ended with a STD and a course of antibiotics. My evening jaunts to the Village became less rewarding, less frequent and each year more fraught with the first signs of the looming health crisis that would change everything. I have many fond memories of experiences that were so unique to New York in the 70s. I’m glad that even though the next decade of my NYC life would bring more heartbreak, it didn’t make me leave New York. 

The current health crisis in NYC in 2020 echos fears and emotions that began to challenge me and my community in the 1980s. This third decade of my life would change me and will be the subject of my next post.

NYC and Me: The Beginning

This spring of 2020 while the Covid-19 pandemic has shut down my city preventing me from doing most of the things I love about my life as a New Yorker, I have spent a lot of my time anxiously thinking about how the city will be changed when the pandemic is over. There is some comfort in reflecting on the resilience of the city throughout its history and its ability to overcome crises and be changed for the better. Having made it my home for the last 47 years I have lived through some of those crises and seen the city undergo drastic changes. With this post and others to follow I’m going to look back on my experiences of New York City and try to explain how I came to be here and why I’ll stay as long as I’m able.

I first visited New York as an adult my first year of college in 1969. At least I thought I was an adult at nineteen. It was spring break and for the next four years spring break meant a trip to New York for me. That first visit was the one I remember most. Those four days in the city were a kaleidoscope of sights, sounds and experiences that overwhelmed my still developing teenage brain. The unlimited opportunities that a New York life could offer for living an exciting and interesting life were a revelation. My desire to work in the theater would have lead me to New York, but this trip showed me many other aspects of urban life that I found very enticing, especially for a young gay man.

My roommate, Bruce Martin, (left)
and me in 1969

I came with my then college roommate, who would five years later pave the way for me to move to the city permanently when I moved in with him and his partner. We had the same first name so when we were together so I called him Bruce and he would refer to me as Monroe. Bruce was a couple of years older than me and had been a mentor to me that first year of college. What I leaned from his mentoring though had little to do with my college classes at Butler University’s Theater program in Indianapolis. He introduced me to the real world of gay culture which in 1969 Indianapolis was surprisingly vibrant but very much underground. I had certainly been aware of my sexuality before college, but only in a very fuzzy teenage way. My experiance of the gay bars in Indianapolis and that first visit to New York with my friend opened up a whole new world of urban gay culture that would along with my ambitions to work in the theater lead me to make New York City my home.

I have a letter that I wrote my parents dated March 13, 1969, asking them to send me some money for my trip to New York. I had cobbled together some extra cash ushering at the concert hall on campus and working backstage for the dance school’s recitals, but I wouldn’t get some paychecks in time for my trip. I asked them to advance me $72.98 for my plane ticket and emphasized how the trip was going to be an important addition to my theater education. I don’t recall if there was much resistance from them about my going on this trip, but in retrospect I know it was an important milestone for them toward accepting my need for independence. It was something that my parents (particularly my mother) had struggled with the summer before. See my post from Jan. 2016. They sent me the money and I set off on my first New York adventure.

I was nineteen and unaware of the many financial and political problems that the city was experiencing in 1969. The post-war boom was waning. The working class population that had grown around the manufacturing and shipping businesses and benefited from years of New York City’s extensive liberal public education and health services was decimated as those businesses declined. New York had been the vanguard of the labor movement that lifted wages and safety regulations for the whole country, but by the mid1960s the political winds were changing. The garment industry and other manufacturing businesses left for states with cheaper non-union labor. Many of the city’s liberal institutions that had helped narrow the opportunity gap between the rich and poor were losing public support. The tax base started to evaporate as the “white flight” to the suburbs left once thriving middle and working class neighborhoods to the next wave of immigrants. Native New Yorkers were becoming fearful of large swaths of the city. I only knew that New York was still where the most creative and interesting people working in the most glamorous business were and I wanted to be part of it.

New York can be intimidating for some. The noise, grittiness and constant motion of people and traffic in the manmade canyons could be overwhelming to an unsophisticated teenager who grew up in small towns and suburbs in the Midwest, but I was too mesmerized by all the fascinating new sights and sounds to be intimidated. It also helped that I was with my good friend and mentor who knew his way around. We stayed with a friend of Bruce’s who worked in the office of Broadway producer, David Merrick. His apartment was in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, then very not gentrified, but easy walking distance to the theater district. In 1969 it was called the “Dance Belt” because so many aspiring broadway dancers occupied the inexpensive apartments there. It was thrilling to be able to walk a few blocks from our host’s front door to the bright lights of Times Square. The city seemed filled with so many interesting people rushing off to do important things.

I saw real broadway musicals for the first time, 1776, Hello Dolly and Dear World. The night I saw Hello Dolly was especially memorable because it was a new production of the long-running show starring Pearl Bailey and Cab Calloway that had recently opened. I don’t remember why, but I was alone one afternoon and walking around the theater district with no plans and as I walked by the St. James theater just before the matinee was about to start, a man offered to sell me a single ticket he was stuck with. I was in the third row, center orchestra seat which I think I paid him $14 for, very expensive. Ms. Bailey was spectacular. She was known to do a “third act” during the curtain call where she would banter with the audience and shake hands with everybody in the first rows. This day happened to be her birthday and the cast presented her with a cake and sang happy birthday. I felt very lucky to be there. Dear World, a musical adaptation of The Mad Woman of Chaillot, was not a great show and didn’t run very long, but Angela Lansbury was spectacular and I became a big fan.

In a letter to my parents after my trip I listed all the Broadway musicals I saw and the one play we saw, Boys in the Band. I pretentiously referred to it in my letter as “a very important and significant off-broadway play.” Reading my letter now I think I must have been dropping a hint (or a hairpin) about my queerness for them to discover. As Boys In the Band had received a lot press for it’s unabashed portrayal of gay men nationally, it’s possible my parents may have seen something about it, but they never mentioned anything if they did. I’m sure that I probably hesitated before including it in my letter. I was deeply in the closet about my sexuality where my family was concerned and I could easily have omitted seeing the play in my letter. Including it indicated how much the play affected me. Seeing the original cast of this play in New York was a revelation to nineteen-year-old me. Boys In the Band by contemporary standards is full of gay clichés stereotypes and tragedy, but in 1969 it was an unapologetic portrayal of a group of sophisticated gay men. It exposed the internalized self loathing that was very much a part of many gay people’s lives, but it also realistically portrayed the humor and strong friendships that were also part of our culture. This was us, warts and all. Seeing it so artfully displayed on the stage was strangely moving and empowering. Amongst the angst and sadness, there was a glimmer of hope that perhaps if more people actually see the humanity of these men and the world they created to protect themselves from a society that hates them, things could change for the better.

Greenwich Village was particularly fascinating to me and I often found myself shyly looking away when my curious stares were met with confident smirks from beautiful strangers on the street. We went to several gay bars in The Village. Our host was very generous in showing us around. I recall him taking us to a very small neighborhood place called Bricktop’s. I’m not sure if it was in his neighborhood or downtown in the Village, but I recall he was friendly with the staff and they were kind enough to cash a check for $50 that my grandmother had sent to me for my trip. It was very cozy place, different from the gay bars in Indianapolis that were hidden away on grungy side of town. The Bricktop must have been named after or possibly even owned by a jazz age performer, Ada “Bricktop” Smith, who I now know was the queen of “cafe society” in Paris from 1924-1938. I’ve been trying to find out more about this bar named for her that I visited in 1969, but I haven’t found any reference to it yet. However, I’ve I’m happy to learn of Bricktop’s fascinating life. She did move back to New York around 1964 and lived in Harlem until her death in 1984. I don’t recall if I was told of any of this at the time.

We went to a leather bar called the Tool Box which was also a very new experience for me — a bar with all men dressed in variations of bluejeans and leather where I felt very conspicuous. I must have looked like a frightened deer in my white hip-hugger bell bottoms surrounded by so many butch men with lots of facial hair. This inexperienced nineteen-year-old was not ready to fully embrace all the many intriguing facets of the culture I was being exposed to on this NYC visit, but I was certainly primed to make being part of this new world a goal.

After the theater one night we went to the Stonewall Inn bar in Greenwich Village. I wrote about this in an earlier post in 2016 when Stonewall was declared a national monument. I wish I remembered more details about that night, but of course I didn’t know that the Stonewall would become a symbol of gay activism after the protests that would occur there three months after my visit. I don’t recall having to sign my name in book on entering to maintain the pretense that it was a private club, but I must have. There were two large rooms inside divided by a brick wall, with a bar on one side and a dance floor on the other. There were some disco lights and a mirror ball, that didn’t illuminate enough to show anything that could be called decor. I don’t recall seeing any women or anyone dressed in drag. The crowd was almost entirely young, white and male — a new experience for me as the gay bars in Indianapolis had both men and women of various ages. No one asked me to dance and there seemed to be a protocol for "cruising" of which I was ignorant. The flashing lights created a confusing swirl of confident smirks, pouting lips and curious glances on beautiful faces which was mesmerizing but also very intimidating for me. My companions knew the protocol, left with companions for the night and I was on my own to figure things out for myself. I didn’t. I left alone. Outside the bar the sidewalk was crowded with more men smoking or posing against the wall. Under the bright streetlights they were even more intimidating. I had no idea how to get back to Hell’s Kitchen on the subway and took a cab.
 I didn’t know it at the time but the sophisticated gay culture that grew and thrived just under the surface of New York society in the post-war boom was about to change radically. The Stonewall rebellion that would galvanize a movement to bring this extensive underground society out into the open was just three months after my visit. I think that many younger people view gay culture as divided into two periods, pre and after Stonewall. The former being a shadowy world exploited by the mafia, rife with fear and self-loathing — the later, the beginning of activism, pride and gay culture being recognized as a valid component of American society. Certainly the Stonewall rebellion was a significant event, but there were protests, demonstrations and gay activist organizations before Stonewall. A lot of New York gay culture before Stonewall did exist in the shadows, but there were bars, restaurants, publications, arts institutions, performance venues and entire beach communities where gay people found each other and lived their lives and expressed themselves without shame. Gay men and women were deeply imbedded and influential in the New York’s art and culture institutions. I feel lucky I had a brief taste of this pre-Stonewall New York. This was the world I was setting my sights on joining, but by the time I moved to New York permanently things would change radically.

In 1969 I was unaware that this would be the beginning of a decades long arch of history that would see unbelievable changes in the city and the lives of its queer community. Working in the theater was relatively safe place for gay people and my sexuality may have been part of why I was drawn to it, certainly New York in 1969 beckoned me because of my sexuality. However I like to think, that even as clueless as I was, there was something I sensed about the city. Aside from all the practical reasons I decided to move New York, I feel that there were more ethereal reasons. Intangible voices obscured within the constant low rumble of city sounds telling me this is where you should be — voices that told me the party is about to start, don’t wait too long to get here.

For the rest of my college years, I would spend every spring break in New York and with each visit it in those first years after Stonewall the city would seem more like my destiny. The years 1970-1973, were a major transition period both politically and culturally in New York. The city’s financial problems reached a peak, the rising visibility of gay activists inspired by Stonewall and the relaxing of obscenity laws converged to make New York much more gay friendly in a relatively short time. White flight opened up a lot of inexpensive apartments in declining neighborhoods. Many of those neighborhoods attracted large numbers of gay men and women who weren’t concerned about the public schools or living next door to people of color. After Stonewall police harassment of gay establishments declined and Greenwich Village became the center for many new bars and businesses that openly catered to gays. Much of Times Square and 42nd Street area was taken over by x-rated movies and bookstores, but many of them were for the queers. While there was still a lot queer sexuality happening in the dark of abandoned industrial buildings and run-down city parks, there was also a lot of it happening in daylight. The 1970 Chistopher Street Liberation Day Parade started with hundreds and grew to thousands by the time is reached Central Park. Every year after it grew exponentially in size and began its transformation from a protest to a celebration.

I moved permanently to the city in the fall of 1973. I was a self-center twenty-three year old mostly ignorant of the challenges and sacrifices of all activists inspired by the Stonewall riots that had created the fabulous new gay New York that welcomed me. I only knew that I was finally ready to start my life. Everything was possible in New York and it was going to be fabulous.