Add the suffix ‘in New York City’ and you’ll have it. This documentary takes a look at the period from the Stonewall uprising in 1969 to the first cases of AIDS being identified in 1981. If you ever though that New York had become a place with tons of drug-enhanced, anonymous, multiple-partner, public sex on abandoned piers, in the back of trucks, in the backrooms of bars and in the famous St. Mark’s bathhouse then you’d be right. A life much like a porn movie where homosexual activity could be found anytime and anywhere with anyone simply with a glance or a hello. I think that many homophobic people still see gay men in this context and haven’t matured past these views – and perhaps some gay men are still stuck in this fantasy world. But it does make the AIDS epidemic in the US make a lot more sense to me – especially when you consider the delay in incubation, illness and the lag in research into the disease. I will admit I’m glad I grew up when I did and came out when I did so this all seemed to be happening to other people. The only men with AIDS in our community in Indiana were two gay closeted music teachers. Such a shame they had to leave us – very talented men who had to remain under the radar so they could do the work they loved to do. Or a friend in high school whose dad was caught in ‘pickle park’ down by the river where the men used to cruise – he said he was taking a piss and charged with indecent exposure. The idea of anonymous rowdy sex in public places is a great fantasy but I’m too prudish and high-strung to act it out. First of all, Chicago is a very dirty city and the piss and rot smell of our alleys is not very erotic.
Anyway – a valuable piece of history for people to know. Up there with Paragraph 175.
I’d like to see a documentary on how the gay/lesbian liberatin movement moved through Europe – was it spearheaded by developments in the US or was it an independent rising?
I look forward to the day when people realize that gay men and women are just as boring, exciting, beautiful, ugly, rich, poor, smart, stupid, pious, sinful, healthy, unhealthy, open-minded, close-minded, giving, selfish, sex-obsessed, asexual, stylish, worst-dressed, skinny, fat as pretty much everybody else. We just like to cuddle with our own gender.
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