I didn’t have sex until I was already out of college, and was a social worker. I decided I wanted to have sex with men. I said, “I’ll try this and see,” and I went with hustlers who were—some of them were attractive, but it didn’t go well because they were on 42nd Street, and it was a very degrading area and it was only about money. And then I realized it’s really not what I wanted. But I started with the hustlers, because that was what was available. It was before Stonewall. So that was what you did: You went in a dark area. You can go to a bathhouse, which I didn’t do; you could go to a movie house, which I didn’t do; but you could go to 42nd and pick up people who were…that way, so that’s what I did.
I only got my information through reading gay novels like City of Night, and things like that, and I might take notes on that and use that as a reference. But that’s a novel; that’s not really historical, so it just didn’t fit when I would go to 42nd. The way I’d approach people was not…they did it in the novel—but they don’t do that in New York City that way, like saying, “Are you a hustler? How much do you want?” That’s what I got out of these books.
The first experience wasn’t very good, but I figured nobody knew about it, so… And I had some people that liked me, some hustlers that I became their regular customer. They liked me very much. They had girlfriends on the side, so, um, like once, one guy said, “You’re the only gay man I allow. I’ve broken off with this because my girlfriend doesn’t want me to do it, but I keep you—you’re the last one.” So I was sort of a privileged character.
Even if they couldn’t perform—some of them were on drugs, you know—I would just leave the money and not have sex with them. I felt good about that, that I just…the guy was so out of it, you could see. So I would leave the ten dollars and go. But we went to the shitty hotels, flea-bitten hotels. That’s where these hustlers would take you. The rent was so cheap, it was five dollars for the night, and I’d say I wanna have sex—and he’s already out, he’s on the bed sleeping, and drooling a little bit, and their noses all red from the drugs, you know. But I paid. Even where it was not dirty and filthy you could still get sick. This hustler had a beautiful apartment with fish tank and beautiful bed, you know, just like—and I caught parasites from him.
I moved to California to help my brother in Los Angeles, and I was living in Beverly Hills, and went on leave of absence from my job as a social worker. I was doing really well by the way—got very good evaluations—and I went on a leave to help my brother who was an alcoholic. He had that Los Angeles lifestyle of drugs and goofballs and liquor, and my family said, “Well, go out there and help him. He’s staying in bed all day and sleeping and drinking and drugging and all these women hustlers…whores. He had all these street girls—what do you call them?—prostitutes, those types, and he’s hanging out with call girls. Some of them were street, others were really high class. And go and see if you can help him out.” I couldn’t help him. I myself picked up on some of the laziness. I went to work at one in the afternoon. I used to go to these discos there that just opened up in 1968-69, and I went to the discos, and the guys in L.A. looked much better than the guys in New York. They took their t-shirts off, they had these beautiful bodies, and they had long hair. And so that’s when I started with the becoming a disco queen in L.A. There was a place called Zeros which, during the week, was a famous nightclub; it would become The Patch on the weekend. The Patch was an all-gay giant disco. And everyone had a car so I would drive there. I had a white Cadillac. And all these palm trees, the weather was nice. But I wasn’t happy because it the L.A. living wasn’t no love affair, it was just all pleasure orientated, you know?
I became addicted to disco, and I stopped with the hustlers because I met somebody who was walking on the street, who was very good looking, and I didn’t know he was a hustler. I thought he was a student or something, and I talked to him and said let’s have lunch together. So he went home with me to my house and we had sex and he was very handsome: blond hair, blue eyes, a hippy with the long hair. Thing was, I didn’t realize he was probably hustling to survive, and he joined the Marines to straighten out, and he became my boyfriend. He’d be in the Marines and visit me, come flying in from Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. He would fly in and I would pay for the airline tickets and we would stay the whole weekend together and then, after the weekend was over, he’d have to go back. And so that was like what I consider to be my boyfriend because he was the only one I had, and I was the only one he had, so he and I hit it off well. But in the end we broke up over money. I couldn’t keep up sending him to his family—airline tickets—he needed to go to visit his mother who was very sick, and his brother who was in a car accident. So I’d send him to Louisiana and then bring him back, then send him to North Carolina and bring him back, and I couldn’t keep it up, you know? And so he went back into the straight world, but I knew for sure he was gay because this lasted for about three years.
I was a little blue but I didn’t go back to the hustlers, I just went to the disco world, which was now flourishing in New York. Sybil’s had just come over from England. It was Sybil Burton’s, the ex-wife of Richard Burton—she took the divorce money and she opened up Sybil’s, and I used to go there with my straight friends. Then, I went to another one Andy Warhol had: Electric Circus. This is before I came out as gay, and I would go in and be dressed to kill: sequin jackets and glitter and white fur coat and large platform shoes made in Brazil, and silk pants, you know the look—the look of the Bee Gees, but all super hyped up, and I would go and I would have a good time dancing and all that. I never found Mr. Wonderful on the dance floor, but I did show up. I went to all those discos including Studio 54. After all, if movie stars go there it must be ok. Everything the movie stars did was good for me.
I went back to being a social worker—this time they needed me as a probation officer. I took the test and I got a very high score and they hired me on the spot and I started to work with teenage kids and I was very good at it—got very good reviews—and it lasted about fifteen years, and the only thing was, that at night, I’d go out cruising these gay bars and go to the gay discos, but during the day I’d be very straight with these kids, telling them that they shouldn’t go out dancing and all that. I was still a religious boy going to synagogue, but I’d also be going to the bathhouses and to the back rooms, which had opened up. (...)
When you went to the back rooms you could hardly move, your arms were just jammed against you. There were people fisting each other, there were people in swings, going back and forth naked in swings. It looked like Berlin in the thirties—it was so decrepit. Downstairs there was regular sex. That was gay men who were not necessarily addicts. Underneath there, there was another floor that was the addicts—those were the ones who weren’t doing well with, you know, normal sex, so I went there where people stayed till eight in the morning, and I was very unhappy, and I would always have trouble leaving. I’d say, “Ten more minutes and I’m gonna go,” until it’d be eight o’clock in the morning. That was when I knew I was in trouble, because I couldn’t leave until they closed the place up! We’d come out; the light, the sun would get us in the eyeballs. The sun. Like in a movie. It was grueling and exhausting, just to get somebody you think is going to make you happy, and all you got was a little more sex. (...)
I didn’t realize…I thought that was gay life. We didn’t know. We thought that that was what being gay was: Party at somebody’s friend’s house, disco, bathhouse, afterwards we’d eat ice cream sodas at one of these places on Sheridan Square, and then go to the trucks, and then go to the piers, and after the piers, go into the bushes in Central Park, and that was the gay life. It was nothing; it was just pure sex. Loads of sex, sex, sex on top of sex, but all in the dark, and I remember praying at the baths, “God, get me out!” ‘cause they’re all skinny shaved-headed guys on these bunks, and it looked just like Auschwitz, and, “Oh, God, get me out of these bathhouses, I hate it!” I thought gay and slut and addict is all the same thing, and it’s not. I realized that, in South Dakota, a backroom was where you keep the beer. I thought everything was a backroom for gay men, you see?
by Matt Siegel, The Awl | Read more:
I only got my information through reading gay novels like City of Night, and things like that, and I might take notes on that and use that as a reference. But that’s a novel; that’s not really historical, so it just didn’t fit when I would go to 42nd. The way I’d approach people was not…they did it in the novel—but they don’t do that in New York City that way, like saying, “Are you a hustler? How much do you want?” That’s what I got out of these books.The first experience wasn’t very good, but I figured nobody knew about it, so… And I had some people that liked me, some hustlers that I became their regular customer. They liked me very much. They had girlfriends on the side, so, um, like once, one guy said, “You’re the only gay man I allow. I’ve broken off with this because my girlfriend doesn’t want me to do it, but I keep you—you’re the last one.” So I was sort of a privileged character.
Even if they couldn’t perform—some of them were on drugs, you know—I would just leave the money and not have sex with them. I felt good about that, that I just…the guy was so out of it, you could see. So I would leave the ten dollars and go. But we went to the shitty hotels, flea-bitten hotels. That’s where these hustlers would take you. The rent was so cheap, it was five dollars for the night, and I’d say I wanna have sex—and he’s already out, he’s on the bed sleeping, and drooling a little bit, and their noses all red from the drugs, you know. But I paid. Even where it was not dirty and filthy you could still get sick. This hustler had a beautiful apartment with fish tank and beautiful bed, you know, just like—and I caught parasites from him.
I moved to California to help my brother in Los Angeles, and I was living in Beverly Hills, and went on leave of absence from my job as a social worker. I was doing really well by the way—got very good evaluations—and I went on a leave to help my brother who was an alcoholic. He had that Los Angeles lifestyle of drugs and goofballs and liquor, and my family said, “Well, go out there and help him. He’s staying in bed all day and sleeping and drinking and drugging and all these women hustlers…whores. He had all these street girls—what do you call them?—prostitutes, those types, and he’s hanging out with call girls. Some of them were street, others were really high class. And go and see if you can help him out.” I couldn’t help him. I myself picked up on some of the laziness. I went to work at one in the afternoon. I used to go to these discos there that just opened up in 1968-69, and I went to the discos, and the guys in L.A. looked much better than the guys in New York. They took their t-shirts off, they had these beautiful bodies, and they had long hair. And so that’s when I started with the becoming a disco queen in L.A. There was a place called Zeros which, during the week, was a famous nightclub; it would become The Patch on the weekend. The Patch was an all-gay giant disco. And everyone had a car so I would drive there. I had a white Cadillac. And all these palm trees, the weather was nice. But I wasn’t happy because it the L.A. living wasn’t no love affair, it was just all pleasure orientated, you know?
I became addicted to disco, and I stopped with the hustlers because I met somebody who was walking on the street, who was very good looking, and I didn’t know he was a hustler. I thought he was a student or something, and I talked to him and said let’s have lunch together. So he went home with me to my house and we had sex and he was very handsome: blond hair, blue eyes, a hippy with the long hair. Thing was, I didn’t realize he was probably hustling to survive, and he joined the Marines to straighten out, and he became my boyfriend. He’d be in the Marines and visit me, come flying in from Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. He would fly in and I would pay for the airline tickets and we would stay the whole weekend together and then, after the weekend was over, he’d have to go back. And so that was like what I consider to be my boyfriend because he was the only one I had, and I was the only one he had, so he and I hit it off well. But in the end we broke up over money. I couldn’t keep up sending him to his family—airline tickets—he needed to go to visit his mother who was very sick, and his brother who was in a car accident. So I’d send him to Louisiana and then bring him back, then send him to North Carolina and bring him back, and I couldn’t keep it up, you know? And so he went back into the straight world, but I knew for sure he was gay because this lasted for about three years.
I was a little blue but I didn’t go back to the hustlers, I just went to the disco world, which was now flourishing in New York. Sybil’s had just come over from England. It was Sybil Burton’s, the ex-wife of Richard Burton—she took the divorce money and she opened up Sybil’s, and I used to go there with my straight friends. Then, I went to another one Andy Warhol had: Electric Circus. This is before I came out as gay, and I would go in and be dressed to kill: sequin jackets and glitter and white fur coat and large platform shoes made in Brazil, and silk pants, you know the look—the look of the Bee Gees, but all super hyped up, and I would go and I would have a good time dancing and all that. I never found Mr. Wonderful on the dance floor, but I did show up. I went to all those discos including Studio 54. After all, if movie stars go there it must be ok. Everything the movie stars did was good for me.
I went back to being a social worker—this time they needed me as a probation officer. I took the test and I got a very high score and they hired me on the spot and I started to work with teenage kids and I was very good at it—got very good reviews—and it lasted about fifteen years, and the only thing was, that at night, I’d go out cruising these gay bars and go to the gay discos, but during the day I’d be very straight with these kids, telling them that they shouldn’t go out dancing and all that. I was still a religious boy going to synagogue, but I’d also be going to the bathhouses and to the back rooms, which had opened up. (...)
When you went to the back rooms you could hardly move, your arms were just jammed against you. There were people fisting each other, there were people in swings, going back and forth naked in swings. It looked like Berlin in the thirties—it was so decrepit. Downstairs there was regular sex. That was gay men who were not necessarily addicts. Underneath there, there was another floor that was the addicts—those were the ones who weren’t doing well with, you know, normal sex, so I went there where people stayed till eight in the morning, and I was very unhappy, and I would always have trouble leaving. I’d say, “Ten more minutes and I’m gonna go,” until it’d be eight o’clock in the morning. That was when I knew I was in trouble, because I couldn’t leave until they closed the place up! We’d come out; the light, the sun would get us in the eyeballs. The sun. Like in a movie. It was grueling and exhausting, just to get somebody you think is going to make you happy, and all you got was a little more sex. (...)
I didn’t realize…I thought that was gay life. We didn’t know. We thought that that was what being gay was: Party at somebody’s friend’s house, disco, bathhouse, afterwards we’d eat ice cream sodas at one of these places on Sheridan Square, and then go to the trucks, and then go to the piers, and after the piers, go into the bushes in Central Park, and that was the gay life. It was nothing; it was just pure sex. Loads of sex, sex, sex on top of sex, but all in the dark, and I remember praying at the baths, “God, get me out!” ‘cause they’re all skinny shaved-headed guys on these bunks, and it looked just like Auschwitz, and, “Oh, God, get me out of these bathhouses, I hate it!” I thought gay and slut and addict is all the same thing, and it’s not. I realized that, in South Dakota, a backroom was where you keep the beer. I thought everything was a backroom for gay men, you see?
by Matt Siegel, The Awl | Read more:
Image: uncredited
