Oh What a Night!

A St. Louis and New York Story of the 1970s

Manhattan, needlepoint after a watercolor by Gene Charlton.

In those heady times that “everyone old has dreamed of all their lives,” (thanks for the line, Philip Larkin), old and gay, that was, some seemed satisfied with only sex. I wanted sex, certainly, but I also wanted so much more. More enough to make a long-term that might replace a life of one-night stands, whose glitter had begun to fade. A long-term like I’d fooled myself into thinking I might have found with him.

“Fool” is such a chastening term when you at last accept that it describes yourself.

My lover and I had been seeing each other for a while already. Spring had turned into summer, and then fall, and hardly any clouds had darkened our sunny skies. Well, not too many. I’d begun thinking words like “love” and “forever.” And, still young and naive, almost believing them. Almost.

Then, as though out of nowhere, like a late-season hurricane, the clouds whirled and the winds blew wild. Our atmospheric pressure took a plunge: for him, a plunge right into the bed of another man.

That other man.

In my endless reliving of the pain my lover’s leaving left me, I wouldn’t even think the other man’s name, though I knew it well enough. Too well. I replaced it in my mind with other words: “bastard,” “Jezebel,” “FAGGOT!”

Such a plunge had precedent in our time together, but only in the early days, that I knew of, before we’d discussed either understandings or love.

And after we’d discussed them? Well, it appeared that “understanding” can be a relative condition – and “that I knew of” the relevant phrase in our understanding.

So the evenings stretched out long and lonely in St. Louis now that the buns I’d been loving there had gone home with someone else. New York, New York seemed like the better place to be, to keep the tears at bay.

And now, here I was, in New York, Gay Paradise, eying the prospect of a plunge into this hot blond man’s delights. Or he into mine – a prospect no less delightful.

Oh, what a night! I could hardly believe my luck – good luck. With him I batted so far above my average (take that, cheating St. Louis lover) that I almost wondered if he’d really said “No,” even though I thought I’d heard him say “Yes.”

So handsome, so blond, so NEW YORK. Porn stars hardly fluffed to bigger baskets. So blessed with such a firm round butt (soon to be mine for the night!).

And still he’d said “Yes,” to me, a bumpkin from the provinces – from a suburb of the provinces – who couldn’t have fluffed to anything more than average if his provincial butt had depended on it. Proof positive that miracles really happen, even to the likes of me. And it not even last call, that desperation time for any still without a trick. So he must have picked me because he wanted ME, not just because his dick demanded some last minute anyone.

For a young gay bumpkin in the Gay 1970s, as I was then, a young gay bumpkin with a broken heart, a fling in New York City could be grand. Like a kid in a candy shop; or perhaps more to the point for those like me, a bun shop. Men. Gay men! Beautiful sexy gay men!! EVERYWHERE!!! Buns. Buns EVERYWHERE!!!! And I wanted, not a baker’s, but a bugger’s dozen. Make that two bugger’s dozens, so the numbers come out even.

Not that St. Louis, where I lived back then, didn’t boast its share of men – and buns. It did, but I’d been bun shopping there for some years already, and had come to know a good many of those River City buns almost by heart (ok, by hard, forgive me for my coarseness).

So I hopped on a flight to the Big Apple lickety-split.

After many New York jaunts, I had it down to a science:

get on a TWA jet at Lambert Field, in St. Louis, by six;

down two drinks right away to slip into that alcohol haze which always makes dreams better – until it no longer does (Note: this is life foreshadowing);

land at LaGuardia at nine;

catch the bus to Grand Central – just a carry-on, no waiting and pacing at baggage claim.

What an incomparable rush, that first sight of Manhattan through the mud spattered windows.

Get a taxi for the short ride to the Vanderbilt Y (I was travelling on a budget, so no grand hotel for me; and besides, the Y! In New York in the 1970s, no place could be GAYER!!);

check in, shower, change into the bar clothes I hoped wouldn’t have gone out of fashion since last time – only a few months back, but things moved FAST in New York City;

step back onto the sidewalk by 10:30, a different person: no longer a provincial, a hick from the sticks: now a New Yorker as native as any of the millions rushing through the streets on important missions – because only important things happened in New York.

Julius’ - New York City’s oldest gay bar!

First destination: grubby, clubby Julius’ in the Village, said to be New York’s oldest gay bar, where a new boy in town could be sure of adequate attention from those who’d been new boys themselves now long ago. Or Uncle Charlie’s South – not far, and even that early, always full – when I wanted close, lively, a drink in a hurry so the glow wouldn’t fade for lack of fuel. Sometimes I didn’t get any further than Uncle Charlie’s that first night; I always found it to be the best place in New York for tricking.

But sometimes, running late, I didn’t go to Julius’ or Uncle Charlie’s either one. Sometimes, what with delays in takeoffs or landings or traffic or dressing for disco, I didn’t get back downstairs till almost midnight. That’s what had happened this time.

So I’d had a couple at the bar on the corner to keep the glow going (and to keep the tears from flowing), and then headed straight to paradise, straight to Le Jardin. I knew it would be paradise, even though I’d never been there – I’d read about heard about thought about nothing else for weeks; heartbroken weeks (Note: more foreshadowing) – and you don’t want to postpone a trip to paradise. I was ready. I was ready.

And, praise be to whatever disco gods look after cheated-on bumpkins like me, he was ready too.

Like two slightly tipsy, and slightly tarnished, angels in Paradise, we discoed till the wee hours.

After a sufficiency of tripping and teasing, drinking and, yes, drugging (though nothing heavy; just standard 1970s Gay party stuff), he took me back to his apartment, on the upper west side, a small, dark, whopper-jawed space on a lower floor in the back of a building, one of three or four hacked out of what had been a single place in grander days, just blocks from the Natural History Museum.

He – my New York boy of the night – let’s call him …

… but no, why dull his magic with a name? It’s enough that he should forever be my Golden New York Boy …

… who worked with Scavullo, photographing the famous, and hoped to make photography his own career. My Golden NY Boy of the night took me back to his NYC apartment! And though his place could not have been more drab, could not have been further from what I imagined as a backdrop for those just one degree of separation from the famous names I knew so well, such a detail didn’t matter a whit, as my eyes, wide open or shut tight, saw only him that night – and shooting stars and fireworks.

Of course, I’d thought I saw shooting stars in St. Louis too, not so long ago, before those fireworks fizzled. That’s the trouble with fireworks of that variety: they don’t stand up well to tears. My New York Boy wouldn’t want to hear about the tears, of course – at least not till after; or over coffee in the morning, if my good luck held out.

And I didn’t want to remember them – not at just that moment of blond New York delight. I hadn’t flown half way across a country, put my already battered ego (and my spurned – that’s right, NOT sp***ed) bumpkin buns in play, to drown my hope of forgetting by remembering mid-west tears. Sometimes I too might make do with only sex. What happens in youth and New York, stays in youth and New York! Especially so in times of broken hearts.

But the drink, and the hour, and the … yes, drugs (though nothing heavy; just standard 1970s Gay party stuff) … proved as fatal to the fireworks as broken-hearted tears ever could. And so there was no sex for me that night. His beautiful blond New York butt retained whatever tattered remnant of virtue it might still have possessed – not much, I have to think, as I longingly remember the beauty of its alluring curve these decades later. But who am I to sidelong glance at the lost virtue of others’ butts? Pot (though not the kind you smoke) – kettle – black.

He was a son of the south, like me, but so unlike in so many ways. First, in the “blond and beautiful” thing. Then, in springing from a refined and moneyed Olde Virginia, not the tattered Southern fringe that my un-moneyed Texas Panhandle of childhood had been. And then the gay New York sophistication. So really, unlike me in every way that mattered then to me, 25 and insecure, and longing to prove a rejecting lover foolish for rejecting me.

The morning after the night before that fizzled, my New York Boy listened patiently as I poured out pails of tears to accompany his cups of coffee. He tried not to seem too eager for my departure.

He invited me for a romp at someone else’s Fire Island beach house; offered me his apartment for a weekend in the spring (he’d be out of town, but I could crash there, no problem); said he’d buy tickets to Bette Midler’s Clams on the Half Shell Review on Broadway for a later visit (but he forgot, even though I sent the money, so I had to buy my own and go without him); stayed in touch long-distance for a year or two. All big of him considering our somewhat tenuous connection.

In a few days I caught my flight back to St. Louis. After so many NYC jaunts, I knew the science of the return trip too. Not quite so exciting, but the way life is.

And sometime later I had a card from my New York Boy, air mailed from Canada:

Dear Randy,

I too enjoyed the time we spent at the island (and in N.Y.). … I am now in Canada’s North Woods at my parents’ summer place, having a fantastic time – tennis, skiing, sailing – after the indolence of Fire Island I am a bit worn out from the constant activity. Let’s keep in touch – I’ll be back in N.Y. soon, so write me there.

Of course we didn’t keep in touch. Not me and my New York Boy, now long dead: the gorgeous die too, though perhaps more beautifully than most of us (or not?). Nor my cheating St. Louis Lover either, now dead too.

As taunting life so often has it, I did run into that other man in a St. Louis bar later on. He wondered how OUR former lover might be doing – to which I said I didn’t know – and could not care less – which wasn’t true, which I’m sure he knew, which we both agreed to let pass undisputed. (But I confess: That Other Man and I did find a way to console each other for the dirt done both of us by that cheating SOB – only once. And maybe mostly out of spite.)

No, we didn’t keep in touch, none of us. Though wouldn’t it make a nice story twist if we had? But we didn’t. That’s the way life is too, it seems.

Still, Oh what a NIGHT! A NIGHT to remember.