I love New York. To me the city has a warm embrace that never sleeps. I don’t feel the emptiness or isolation people speak of. Maybe that is just me. Maybe that’s life of a bearded gay. Thinking back to the 60’s it seemed almost illegal to be gay in New York but now. Damn. This is our free love. This is our liberation.
I love the smell of the city in the morning. Stumbling out of a club be it ‘boy meats boy’, ‘the toilet’, ‘club 54’, ‘Beefy Steves’, ‘Manpole’, ‘the crowded butte’, or any of the normal spots, and smelling the sweat of men, the break of dawn and not condoms. I walk down the street to my apartment and pass a construction site. I stop to take in a few of the sites. So does one mustached worker. I could see his hammer in hit tight jeans from here. We both smile. This place is so gay. Gayer than a loading dock worker. By the way, every single loading dock worker is a grade ‘A’ fag. Don’t look any of them in the eye unless you want a fistful of man in you. Because they will get it in there. Believe me.
My father wasn’t as accepting of me as my mother. I remember the day I came out to him.
“Dad, I have something to tell you. I’m gay as shit” I said. My father was shocked and couldn’t believe it.
“I’m shocked and I can’t believe it!” he said “just because you grow a beard you think that you are a New York gay? Son, you are just confused. You aren’t gay. Just to be sure I’ll do some investigating for you.”
That was my dad. Telling me what I am and what I am not but always taking one on the chin for me. And take it on the chin he did among other places. He would come home stinking of whiskey and man. “No way you would enjoy that son. I was out all night at one of those gay clubs. Didn’t find it enjoyable in the least. ”
“but what about something like behind the bushes in central park?” I would ask
“Where exactly in Central Park?” He would ask while quickly changing and heading out the door.
This went on for months. Finally coming home at 8 one morning. He sat me down. Eyes bloodshot from booze and coke.
“Ok, I understand now. I may never fully “get it” even though it has been given to me so many times over the last few month but yes I accept that you are gay as fuck”. He hugged me and gave me tickets for free drinks at like 50 clubs. I left home the next day to seek my fortune and by fortune I mean gay dicks. 19 years old and bearded. I got off the bus and went into the bus station bathroom.
“Nice cum net” said some punk washing his hands. For some reason it offended me. I don’t wear my sexuality on my sleeve. That is if I had sleeves on my skin tight shirt that exposed a hint of chest hair and the trail leading down into my tight 70’s jeans which was visible because my shirt was cut off above my navel. Plus. I am and was well built. My dad had encouraged me to take multiple workouts with weights since I was a youth. I am not sure what possessed me that day. But I immediately shoved him against the wall.
“Fuck you. You think that leather makes you tough? You think that attitude of rebelling against everything you see makes you a boyish God?” I said. But he cut my words out of the air by pulling a switch blade.
“Maybe I think it does! Maybe you think that beard or that big dick straining and throbbing against your skin tight pants makes you desirable by a young tough like me. But you are wrong because…” I made my move.
I knocked the knife out of his hand and threw him against the wall. He was small but strong. He elbowed me in the gut and I doubled over in pain as he wrestled me to the ground. In all the commotion our shirts had come off. He shoved his cock in my mouth and began chocking me.
“Maybe this will shut you up faggot!” But I fought back. Eventually pinning him down on the bathroom floor and using my hips to pin his hips down. At this point our pants had torn off as well.
When it was all over he thanked me for some reason and I made my way out of the bathroom. I couldn’t believe stepping foot off the bus the first thing I run into was discrimination. It wouldn’t stay that way as eventually I would find my own. Sure it took a while. I remember being discriminated by the young Latino super at my first apartment. Boy did I teach him a lesson. Then there was the time the three Harlem blacks discriminated all over my face and chest in the ally. Or the time the muscular mustached motorcycle cop pulled me over paid me 20 bucks for a blow job and prostate release.
“That is exactly the kind of behavior I DO NOT want to see from you boy!” He snarled at me . “Make sure you meet me here (under the pier) next Saturday so I can show you what it would be like if you had knocked my gun away and got the upper hand in the situation and taught this motorcycle cop some of your queer street justice”.
Yea it would be a while but eventually I found my own. This is a great city. If you have 10 bucks in your pocket and a little cocaine in the other you can have a great time all the time. Nothing will ever change either. It will always be like this. Certainly no disease that changes the entire atmosphere of our subculture in the 1980’s. That much I know for sure.
-Jim “Bear” Bearman
February 1978
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