Love was not unimaginable, though I didn’t yet have the hang of it. Sex was already easy to find, though it unnerved me. Marks Place, and I clung to someone I knew named Debbie who was temporarily lesbian. But contrary to so many narratives of relief at finding a gay context, my initial experience was primarily of anxiety, because to be where the least acceptable aspect of myself was the explicit topic made me feel more naked than the go-go boys.
By the time I was old enough to enter such an establishment, I had my own tight jeans and inchoate prospects. I haunted them, promenading back and forth with our family dog, whom I had to walk after dinner, and trying to see past the darkened windows and curtained doors, simultaneously hoping and fearing that one of those men in tight jeans would want to strike up an intimacy as he exited. One was Uncle Charlie’s Uptown, the other had a punning name I didn’t understand at the time: Camp David. There were two gay bars in the neighborhood where I grew up. Matthew Eisman/Getty Images Andrew SolomonĪuthor, “The Noonday Demon,” “Far & Away”
