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May 19, 20182 min read
Coming Out, 1982
STORY: During my first few years in NYC, I only had one foot out of the closet. I had my gay friends, and I had my straight friends and...
May 12, 20181 min read
Pool and Garden Time
(August 1993)–After a long, hot day on Fowler Beach in South Hampton, my guests and I returned to our backyard pool for a dip and some...
May 11, 20184 min read
Louis the Cajun – Quarter Stories 12
STORY: 1981—Cajuns have a way about them, the way they move as men, the heavy beards, beefy bodies, thick hair all over em. Sexy as...
May 9, 20184 min read
Fire Island Virgin
STORY: 1979/1980—My first visit to Fire Island was over Halloween weekend in 1979, long after the resort’s summer season had ended. The...
May 7, 20186 min read
Bourbon Street Exulting – Quarter Stories 8
STORY: 1979: A thunderclap woke me up and then loud voices. I hadn’t gotten much sleep but wasn’t hungover. I felt a buzz all around me,...
May 7, 20181 min read
Group Travel, Puerto Vallarta–1990s style
1989 to mid-1990s –My husband, Ron Oyer, had a travel business in the 1990s that catered to gay men, geographically mostly from...
May 6, 20187 min read
Jewel’s and the Shah – Quarter Stories 7
STORY: 1979–Dinner at 1132 Bourbon Street at the dining room table was a daunting experience with all these handsome men, at least 10 to...
May 5, 20186 min read
Ghosts and Lovers – Quarter Stories 6
1979 – “The rules of this house during Mardi Gras are” as George South proceeded to tell all of us hung-over guys at about 11am on...
May 4, 20184 min read
Mardi Gras Mambo – Quarter Stories 5
1979: Getting to work at Café Lafitte on the second night of Mari Gras was tough, even though 1132 Bourbon Street was only a couple of...
May 3, 20187 min read
Bartender Debut – Quarter Stories 4
STORY: Mardi Gras, 1979: Clyde, Al and I began walking up to Lafitte’s. Clyde started talking about Louie Hartfield and his lover Steve,...
May 2, 20185 min read
Arrival – Quarter Stories 3
1978: Safely landed at New Orleans Airport, Al and I jumped into an airport van and headed straight to the French Quarter. As the van...
May 1, 20186 min read
Heading to New Orleans – Quarter Stories 2
1978: The stewardess gently told us to fasten our seatbelts, we were now descending into New Orleans. I thought it was part of a dream. I...
Apr 30, 20181 min read
Gay Pride 1994
STORY: NYC Gay Pride, 1994 —That’s me on Fifth Avenue in the almost-Daisy-Dukes, tubes socks and boots (with Little Tom who now lives in...
Apr 29, 20183 min read
Introduction–Quarter Stories 1
STORY: (Late 1970s-1980s): In New Orleans, Bourbon Street runs for thirteen narrow blocks, roughly north to south, a straight line,...
Apr 24, 20181 min read
Meeting Gary
STORY: Mykonos, 1985–In early September 1985, I spent a week on vacation in Mykonos. Early in the week, I spied a handsome, muscular,...
Apr 4, 20182 min read
The Queen of Disco
STORY: June 1978–The cracks in my closet appeared slowly. By 1978, I was out with my family and my college fraternity brothers, but I had...
Apr 4, 20186 min read
My David Kopay Story
STORY: I was raised in the arch-conservative Florida panhandle near the Alabama border in the late 1950s and 1960s. In those days, and...
Apr 3, 20181 min read
World AIDS Day, 1994
STORY: In 1994, I was wheatpasting posters around New York City late at night (when the police tended to be in doughnut shops, not on the...
Apr 3, 20181 min read
Jeanne Moreau
STORY: Early 1980s—I lived in Washington, D.C. and worked on Capitol Hill. In those days, a presentable young gay man who owned his own...
Apr 3, 20182 min read
Family
STORY: I’m thinking about the seasons of our lives this morning, as I lie in bed with my husband, Chuck, in our home in Chandler,...
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