Glory Days?

As I just happen to be browsing the channels on the television into the wee hours of the morning the other night, I came upon a documentary entitled Gay Sex in the 70’s. Naturally, my interest was peaked, so I sat and watched as half-naked men filled the screen along with stories and recounts of the glory days of gay life in New York before the days of HIV and cautious sex.

“Must have been nice,” says a dear friend as I recount the film over a telephone call. What stuck out at me from the film most prominently was the pure freedom and uninhibited abundance that surrounded sex at that time. Over and over during the hour, men admitted to sex at all hours, in all forms, anywhere and everywhere in the city from the abandoned piers or the inside of dark 18-wheelers, to the back room of clubs, public parks, or bath houses that never closed. Sex three, four, five times a day, often with complete strangers, often with several men at once. “Life was like being in a porn,” said one man. It seemed almost an obsession for some, sex came before everything else. And there was no worry, no inhibition whatsoever as everything you could possible catch was treatable. As the film states, men would take penicillin before a long weekend out on Fire Island or stop by a trusted doctor’s office whenever anything unsightly occurred. Everything was a quick fix, and he was off again to the races, often cruising in the waiting room while waiting for his shot. He may even get laid in the doctor’s office itself, by a staff member or the doctor himself. It’s just another shot, right?

Perhaps it would have been nice to have that freedom, to not worry about anything or anyone. A sex that is purely recreational, purely without consequence, and available in incredible abundance. Perhaps the essence of it is that freedom to be who you want and do what you want with whoever it suits you to do it with at that moment. Of course, we know that there were consequences, consequences that stay with us even today. It couldn’t last, and perhaps it shouldn’t have lasted. However you look at, when you indulge in anything to such a vast extent, it is gluttonous, it can become an obsession, and it can take over your life. But in the overall scheme of things, in the ever evolving history of gay men, I think that perhaps this period of pure gluttony was a necessary evil.

Perhaps I am just playing devil’s advocate here, but the idea brings up a lot of complicated issues. One man in the film stated that he felt like every young man needed such a time to explore this sense of freedom of flesh, to explore his physical sexuality. Perhaps young gay men are robbed of that today with the reality and consequences of promiscuity and drug use that was not present in the 70’s. Although, it would seem that the warnings are not heeded by many of today’s youth as I have discussed previously in this forum. One might even go so far as to state that the current generations of gay youth are still paying for the sins of our predecessors. It is hard to say.

I digress. Returning to the idea of the necessary evil, I ask you to look at it in a broader perspective. This period of free love and abundant sex (which was not purely a gay phenomenon, but shared with much of the youth of this generation) created a place in society where gay men felt comfortable, could be themselves, did what they wanted without fear of persecution or backlash. It created a community. If you were in the presence of another gay man, there was an immediate sense of brotherhood, and shared respect. One of the most memorable lines from the film involved the idea that when the AIDS crisis began, it was the gay community that stood up and fought back. “It was the first time that the people inflicted by the epidemic took control of trying to stop it.” Community is what we need in order to have a voice, in order to protect and assist each other, and if it took a decade of overabundant genital exposure, then I can’t say that it wasn’t worth it. The sad thing is that that sense of community seems to be lost on current generations, but that’s a topic for another day.

One of the men interviewed for the film relayed his experiences from that time. He had participated heavily in the promiscuous sex of the day, but relayed a deeper desire through the whole experience to find a special someone, to find ‘the one’ to share life with, to be close to. I find it a common thread among most people, whether gay or straight. It seems to be the essence of some people, from that time and now, regardless of how much sex or how many partners they have until they find it. Perhaps it would have been nice to be alive at that time, to experience such freedom and know so much flesh; but if I had to choose between that and a special someone, I’d pick the special someone every time.