City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and '70s by Edmund White Page A
Authors: Edmund White
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all of my shoddy adventures. He admonished me, “Here you are in the central city of Western culture and you’ve managed to turn it into some sort of kicky version of Scranton.”
I thought that the most that could be said was that in Rome I’d re-created my life in New York but in an inferior version. Like amarble statue copied in lard. I’d written a screenplay that no one wanted. I’d seen historic monuments only when other Americans visited me. I’d met Farley Granger through my Italian teacher and written my screenplay for him. I’d invested endless hours in courting Phillip but had slept with him only during one drunken weekend when we had emptied several bottles of vodka and rolled around like animals. I’d killed his two cats. I’d learned to speak a halting, broken Italian. I’d drunk hundreds of liters of white wine, many of them with Diana Artom, a painter and poet who was in love with me even though I kept telling her I was gay. I’d say, “Sono frocio,” which I guess was the rough equivalent of saying “I’m a fag” in English. She was horrified and said it wasn’t a good word, only my faulty Italian would allow me to say such a thing. I tried to tell her about our habit back home of embracing the insult but she just shook her head vigorously. She also told me that because of my unfamiliarity with Italian society I’d fallen in with some dreadful types, Phillip and his friends. They were nothing but ladri , “thieves.”
Chapter 8
And then I was back in New York and the 1970s had finally begun. Stan met me at the airport, popped something fun in my mouth, and took me on a tour of all the discos and backroom bars that had opened since Stonewall and my departure. After six or seven months in Italy, starved for sex, I couldn’t believe how unleashed New York had become.
For the first time I realized how much New York gay life had gradually been changing all along. Now it seemed as if ten times more gays than ever before were on the streets. With ten times as many gay bars. After the furtiveness of feeling up married men in the Roman cinemas, here were go-go boys dancing under spotlights and hordes of attractive young men crowding into small backrooms and abandoning themselves to each other’s mouths and arms and penises. Although people still talked about quick sex as “disgusting” and “filthy,” I thought of it as romantic. The idea that I could spot a pair of broad shoulders above narrow hips and mounted below a perfect column of a strong neck crowned by black hair and follow this prodigy into a dark room and within seconds be feeling his muscular, hot arms around me and his tongue in my mouth—that I could taste him and instantaneously know him—struck me as a miraculous but strangely easy transition. The intimacy that one would before have had to work for during months of courtship wasnow available for a whistle and a wink and a ten-step walk into the shadows.
I kept buzzing around a couple who were obviously looking for a third man to go home with them. They weren’t interested in me till I happened to see a Roman friend and started to talk to him in Italian. The two men came up to me and asked me, respectfully and somewhat timidly, if I spoke English.
“A lee-tle beet,” I said.
They asked me to go home with them, and for the entire evening I impersonated what I thought was their idea of an Italian.
The Gay Activists Alliance held a dance every Saturday in an old firehouse they’d taken over. Here the clothes and bodies were more varied, perhaps less ideal, than in the discos, but the sense of camaraderie was stronger. Men and women danced together. The middle-aged and the pudgy dared to show their faces. People who purported to be gay farmers or gay nurses put in appearances. Blacks, who had trouble gaining entry in the usual gay venues, came to the Firehouse with their black or white lovers and friends.
Not only had the number of visible lesbians and gays increased
I thought that the most that could be said was that in Rome I’d re-created my life in New York but in an inferior version. Like amarble statue copied in lard. I’d written a screenplay that no one wanted. I’d seen historic monuments only when other Americans visited me. I’d met Farley Granger through my Italian teacher and written my screenplay for him. I’d invested endless hours in courting Phillip but had slept with him only during one drunken weekend when we had emptied several bottles of vodka and rolled around like animals. I’d killed his two cats. I’d learned to speak a halting, broken Italian. I’d drunk hundreds of liters of white wine, many of them with Diana Artom, a painter and poet who was in love with me even though I kept telling her I was gay. I’d say, “Sono frocio,” which I guess was the rough equivalent of saying “I’m a fag” in English. She was horrified and said it wasn’t a good word, only my faulty Italian would allow me to say such a thing. I tried to tell her about our habit back home of embracing the insult but she just shook her head vigorously. She also told me that because of my unfamiliarity with Italian society I’d fallen in with some dreadful types, Phillip and his friends. They were nothing but ladri , “thieves.”
Chapter 8
And then I was back in New York and the 1970s had finally begun. Stan met me at the airport, popped something fun in my mouth, and took me on a tour of all the discos and backroom bars that had opened since Stonewall and my departure. After six or seven months in Italy, starved for sex, I couldn’t believe how unleashed New York had become.
For the first time I realized how much New York gay life had gradually been changing all along. Now it seemed as if ten times more gays than ever before were on the streets. With ten times as many gay bars. After the furtiveness of feeling up married men in the Roman cinemas, here were go-go boys dancing under spotlights and hordes of attractive young men crowding into small backrooms and abandoning themselves to each other’s mouths and arms and penises. Although people still talked about quick sex as “disgusting” and “filthy,” I thought of it as romantic. The idea that I could spot a pair of broad shoulders above narrow hips and mounted below a perfect column of a strong neck crowned by black hair and follow this prodigy into a dark room and within seconds be feeling his muscular, hot arms around me and his tongue in my mouth—that I could taste him and instantaneously know him—struck me as a miraculous but strangely easy transition. The intimacy that one would before have had to work for during months of courtship wasnow available for a whistle and a wink and a ten-step walk into the shadows.
I kept buzzing around a couple who were obviously looking for a third man to go home with them. They weren’t interested in me till I happened to see a Roman friend and started to talk to him in Italian. The two men came up to me and asked me, respectfully and somewhat timidly, if I spoke English.
“A lee-tle beet,” I said.
They asked me to go home with them, and for the entire evening I impersonated what I thought was their idea of an Italian.
The Gay Activists Alliance held a dance every Saturday in an old firehouse they’d taken over. Here the clothes and bodies were more varied, perhaps less ideal, than in the discos, but the sense of camaraderie was stronger. Men and women danced together. The middle-aged and the pudgy dared to show their faces. People who purported to be gay farmers or gay nurses put in appearances. Blacks, who had trouble gaining entry in the usual gay venues, came to the Firehouse with their black or white lovers and friends.
Not only had the number of visible lesbians and gays increased
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