The Truth is Bad Enough: What Became of the Happy Hustler? by Michael Kearns Page B

my two Stonewall paramours I wound up in bed with on what night.
    When I discovered a pus-like discharge dripping from my overactive penis, accompanied by a burning sensation, I assumed it was God’s punishment and headed for the nearest Catholic church. Nights at the Stonewall were juxtaposed with visits to, not the Palace, but houses of God, even though the drip and the burn persisted.
    When I confessed my confounding dilemma to a brassy bleached blond queen who was a “neighbor” at the Y, she rolled her eyes and screeched, “Honeeeeey, you’ve got the claaaaap!” Not having a clue what “the claaaaap” was, I looked perplexed until he offered me a quick class in VD, punctuated by a few personal anecdotes.
    He pulled out his wallet, gave me some cash and the name of his doctor. “Think of it as a rite of passage,” he said dramatically. “And think of me as your Auntie Mame.”
    David Holiday was due in town while there were still remnants of dripping. (In those days, it took three heavy does of penicillin spread out over a week or so.) I told him the truth, almost proud of my indoctrination but terrified he’d reject me.
    “Come over,” he said without the slightest bit of apprehension. “We can have plenty of fun with no danger,” he assured me. And we did. It was, I see in retrospect, my first safe-sex experience.
    On one of my final visits to the Village, danger surfaced. I was on a pay phone, talking long-distance to my mother, when I noticed two guys circling the phone booth, tapping the glass and grabbing their dicks.
    I simply assumed they were signaling for a sexual encounter so after I hung up, I followed them down a dark street and down a short flight of stairs, which was a secluded entrance to a darkened apartment.
    One of them pulled his dick out and said, “Twenty bucks.” It took a while for me to realize that I was supposed to be paying this guy to suck his dick. The tables had turned.
    I didn’t have a cent, so he took the bottle he was drinking out of and broke it against the wall so he could slice into my lower back, right at the base of my spine, to let me know how serious he was.
    Feeling faint, with warm blood running down my leg, I managed to convince them to follow me to the YMCA, where I promised to get them twenty dollars. (Thank God for those improv classes.) I explained that they would have to abide by the Y’s rules, however, and wait outside on the corner. They believed me. With no intention of coming back with the money, I went up to my room and passed out on my bed.
    When I woke up a few hours later, the white sheet was spattered with bright red blood. I was ready to go back to St. Louis.

CHAPTER 20                
    Caroline was frantic when she called, wondering why I hadn’t met her at our usual breakfast spot. I told her some version of the story and she spent the day with me, on foot, trying to find a hospital that would treat me. But by the time we found treatment—at Bellevue, I’m not kidding—the cut had already closed and stitches were not required.
    With its Judy-and-the-Stonewall motif, that summer would foreshadow the summer that would alter the course of history for gays and lesbians. I returned to my senior year of high school; among the bonds forged in high school was an unbreakable one with Brian Clarke. Brian was (and still is) a musician with unflagging charisma. In those days of bursting pubescence, Brian ruled in a way that awed me; unlike so many of his more myopic classmates, Brian’s self-assured maleness resulted in his being open to difference. I was different.
    Brian remembered having seen me “several times in the hallways at Normandy between classes. It was impossible to miss you. Slim as a pool cue, you still seemed somehow too big to fit in the hallways. One day, I saw you coming. Only this time your path veered way off course and you were suddenly standing right in front of me.
    “I looked up. The silence was absolute,