There is a classic torch song called "The Lush Life" which has been recorded by many jazz vocalists. It has a 1940s or even 1950s sound, and it extols and laments the life of big money, sex and parties. (It is rather odd that one of the best versions of this song was put out by Donna Summer of all people in the early 80s -- done in a very traditional fashion and plunked down incongruously in the middle of a pop/disco album. Look for it.) I would characterize gay life in New York in the decade from 1975 to the mid-80s as the Juicy Life -- something beyond lush. It had the quality of being swollen and overripe. It was an era which probably proved that More isn't Better ... it is simply Never Enough.

In the beginning of this period gay life in New York fed off of black-originated entertainment before it gathered its own driving force. It is tempting to say that "everyone" did this, or "everyone" did that, which would be a gross exaggeration, of course. However, what can be said is that a certain lifestyle was so predominant during this period that many gay men in New York who perhaps did not participate in the thick of it, nevertheless were influenced by it and considered themselves a part of it even if they were only "passive" consumers of it, and those who were disinclined to be part of it often exhibited a hostile defensiveness about this fact -- such was the extent of its influence among gay men.

Perhaps the most obvious characteristic of this lifestyle was its sound and its inescapable presence in any gay milieu. The sound of the new music was everywhere that there gay men. One of its most salient characteristics was its seeming endlessness. Long playing records which in the past might have contained twelve or more songs now sometimes had only three. An example of this was an early hit disco album by the unheard of Gloria Gaynor -- it contained three songs, each one an extended dance number. All three songs were hits and the lady became a national star overnight, and probably launched disco as a national obsession. Not long thereafter came Donna Summer with an album of a new style music with one long cut called "Love to Love You, Baby" -- a song which as much as any other demonstrates why disco and drugs went together. It was a long, lush, relentlessly beated moan about love-making and it cried for drug enhancement.

The FM radio station WBLS grew from a tiny low-rated station with a small audience to the number one radio station in New York City, and having one of the largest audiences of any station in the nation. Its style was smooth, flawlessly "cool" and a flow of seemingly never-ending music, and the commercials began to be designed to blend in with the musical entertainment. They became, in fact, as much disco as commercial advertisements. The station's DJs were themselves becoming celebrities. This station presented its music, its commercials and itself as a Total Package --- it was theme music for life. Twenty-four hours a day it made your life a movie.

There were still a few call-in programs in which listeners could request song dedications or since this tended to break the flow, more often listener's requests were read -- from both of these formats it became clear that the listening audience was getting to have a large number of white males in heavily gay neighborhoods. This was a phenomenon that the station management had a bit of difficulty dealing with. The station did have one female DJ (Lamarr Renee),and she had one of its two most popular time slots. Gay men were wild about her. However, the station manager (also a DJ) and the black male DJs were a bit ill-at-ease. I suppose it must have taken some doing on their parts, as black men often very much look down on white gay males. However, it was clear that gay men were fueling the popularity of disco music and thus of the station as much as young black people were.

Many, many years ago there was a cartoon in The New Yorker magazine of two women leaving a movie theatre. One was saying to the other, "You know, that's what's wrong with life. No background music." By the late 70s that was no longer the case. Not only did gay bars and discos play unending disco music, but so did straight ones, and every gay retail establishment and many straight ones also played tapes from opening to closing. With the spread of the Walkman, it was possible to have a life with complete background music.

WBLS did accommodate itself to its gay listeners though. Subtle gay-oriented references in their patter began to crop up, an increasing number of commercials for items and services clearly aimed at gay males were aired, references to gay events and clubs multiplied. In a few years when disco music and dancing had clearly swept all before it, the station began a feature of commercial-less taped music program called "Disco Party", once a week which featured music mixed and taped by the DJ of some popular disco.

Amazing as it seemed to everyone gay who listened, the kick-off night of this format was "brought to you from the Crisco Disco". The Crisco Disco was one of the wildest, low-life discos in the city and it was not only famous for its good DJs and their music, but notorious for the heavy, open drug use and the raw sexual atmosphere of the place. This was a clear acknowledgement of the fact that gay men were becoming the trendmakers in disco music and dance.

This was the era when the link between Crisco and Mom and apple pie was broken and Crisco took on whole new erotic image. In 1975 Phoebe Snow, a non-disco vocalist, but one who wrote her own peculiarly off-beat lyrics and music, had a rather weirdly melancholy song entitled "Two-Fisted Lover". The lyrics contained rather easily decipherable references to drugs (several plaints of "Oh help us, MaryJane" and "He's in his space craft") and the ambiguity of some of the other references ("He gives me two-fisted love") led gay men to make the song a sly ballad to fist-fucking, which was becoming more than a curiosity.

Perhaps the prototype for discos had been a place called The Sanctuary. It was opened before the disco era, as such, really got underway -- in the late 60s. Too bad, because the place was definitely an idea that arrived before its time. If you ever saw the movie "Klute", there is a scene where the prostitute, Jane Fonda, is in a dance club -- very brief -- this is The Sanctuary. Unfortunately, they cut all the scenes which show how huge the place was and its rather unusual decor (and customers.)

The place was "gay" but with a very large straight clientele, and also a very small but conspicuous clique of transvestites. It had once been a large Protestant church and its interior was kept intact. The huge pipe organ still filled the front of the church and the pews had been ripped out to make a dance floor where the congregation used to sit, and had then been reinstalled in tiers running parallel to the length of the dance floor. Over the arch at the rear of the church a huge mural had been painted which showed the Devil fondling a naked woman sitting on his lap and some priapic goats or whatever on either side of them. Below the arch was a bar and a small palm court with tables on one end of the dance floor. The entire space was lit with chaser lights and flashers and strobes were used.

The crowd was probably 60% gay and 40% straight -- very unusual for the times, but never a problem. This was a sign of things to come a few years later in the "real" discos. The transvestites stayed around the bar area dressed in outrageous evening wear and were constantly fluttering between there and the loo.

The Sanctuary did not last all that long. They had problems with violating the liquor laws, but it had nothing to do with having gay people there. There was dope being sold (and used) on the premises -- heroin, I think, and that contributed to whatever other illegalities were kept under wraps. From a customer's point of view, the place was better than the dance music of the time. This was before the definite re-emergence of black music and certainly before disco music as such. This place was one of a kind for the late 60s, and it attracted a smattering of curious socialites and celebrities.

However, by 1975 there were many large established discos -- and smaller ones which were usually operating on the far side of the law in one respect or another. One of the most famous, Studio 54, opened in 1977 -- it had a crowd which mixed straight and gay people, and by this point many straight people were venturing into gay discos as being the best places in the city to dance to new music and be in on whatever was trendy. As disco become a craze with straight people as well as gay, many discos for straight people opened up and Studio 54 became a mostly straight place after a time.

In Greenwich Village most of the legitimate cruising bars, restaurants and gay shops were clustered along Christopher Street and ran down to the river and the pier at its western end. Then turning north on West Street and running north for a few blocks more were more bars and shops. The abandoned Pier 48, which served as a surrealistic palace and the scene where many musclemen were photographed for gay greeting cards and post cards, burned down in the late winter of 1976. There had been several vicious muggings there and knife attacks there recently and rumor had it that some gay people set fire to the place to get rid of it. Three or four blocks north the area became a series of dilapidated warehouses and meat-cutting and packing plants. At 14th Street, the northern boundary of the Village, the character of the area changed abruptly.

In this northwestern area were a scattering of "clubs", places with names like The Zoo, the Underground, Alex in Wonderland and others, which served alcohol after hours and most of which had "backrooms", which were rooms for group sex. The three places in this area which remained open for the longest stretch of years were:

12 West, was a favorite disco for gay men for many years. It was in a shabby warehouse building but on the inside had been renovated in a fashion that rather resembled a high school gymnasium. It was not typical of the rest of the gay entertainment in the area as it was a totally legitimate establishment in every respect.

The Anvil was the northern outpost of this area. It was a very sleazy bar that sold alcohol after legal closing hours till dawn. It had a tiny dance floor. (In the 80s it also had a downstairs room for having sex.) It was on the ground floor of a small building, the upstairs of which was a rundown hotel where many drag queens lived. The Anvil was one of the few places that featured an interlude of brief drag acts as entertainment. The mix of customers was beyond imagination: clean-cut prep school types, leather men, "clones", petty crooks, a few drags -- all ages, all races. During its early days it acquired such a reputation that celebrities used to drop in to slum. It was loud and had a tense and frantic atmosphere from the amount of alcohol and drugs which its patrons had consumed and were intent on consuming more. I rather liked it for the first four or five years.

The Mineshaft -- which I slowly became aware of, enjoyed a worldwide reputation. The movie "Cruising" was supposedly set here. It was on the second (maybe the third) floor of another dumpy warehouse building on the West Village waterfront. If I remember correctly it had once been the site of an illegal after-hours bar in the "old days" of the 60s. It was an after-hours place whose sole purpose was for sex and drugs.

While initially The Mineshaft started out with a juke box full of pop records, they came to develop their own special style of tapes which went with the environment they were trying (successfully) to create. By the 80s their tapes did not feature disco much, unless the songs were extremely erotic in orchestration or lyrics. They became an eclectic mix of music and subtly incorporated sounds and voices calculated to accommodate and enhance the drug and sex fantasy. I have a copy of the last tape made for the Mineshaft and it is not music you would want to just sit around and listen to, there is a vaguely discomforting quality about it when you are listening to it stone sober in the bright light of day.

The decor made no effort to be slick or attractive but concentrated instead on sexual fantasy. The bar area had a small bar, tables to sit on (tables provided major seating during the late 70s and the 80s -- no one ever satat a table, only on one.) and a pool table. Pool tables cropped up in most bars during this era and were an obligatory part of the macho atmospherics.

Off to one side was an open archway which disappeared into blackness. Once beyond the arch you were into an S&M/sexual fantasy trip. The lighting was minimal, shadowy with only a few dramatic spotlights. There were stalls simulating johns with glory holes cut in the walls; a row of shoeshine chairs mounted on a platform complete with the stanchions for putting your feet on; in the center of this room under a bright spot was a sling and a can of Crisco, there was also a completely empty room lit in blue lights off to one side, a totally dark closet-like room and an alcove with two benches tilted head downwards with cans of Crisco beside them. Below all this was another room with accoutrements for S&M and also a bathtub for watersports. While everyone arrived clothed of course, as the hours wore on people drifted in and out of the sex rooms and back into the bar in greater and greater states of undress ... not to mention slick with sweat and grease.

The place was open seven days a week from about 11 p.m. to dawn. Wally, the owner, was an affable guy who had had a very straight career in advertising in the 60s, before he discovered drugs and kinky sex and also discovered that there was a world waiting to be served the same thing.

The drugs used here were ludes (methaquaalude), grass and all sorts of hallucinogens, and, of course, amyl nitrite. Drugs were almost obligatory if you were going to be able to stand the incredibly intense atmosphere of the place. To use a phrase more recently current, it was awesome, totally awesome.

Completely in another world was Flamingo, which was in another part of the city, an area known now as NoHo. It was the hot dance club of the 70s. It remained the disco throughout most of the decade. The music played here was what was heard everywhere else, and what eventually fed back into what was played on the radio. But it was disco for gay people and it had departed light years from what people saw in the movie Saturday Night Fever. The men who controlled the door where encouraged to be selective about the appearance of those they admitted --- looks, body and attitude were everything. Among the regulars who never had a problem getting admitted were a number of superbuilt, gay bodybuilders who were essentially admitted to be part of the decor.

Flamingo was one end of an axis, the other being the disco at The Pines on Fire Island. So much so, that Flamingo was almost literally The Pines in an urban winter setting. The same music, the same clothes, the same men. Dance clubs made no concession to season. Inside it was always summer at the beach.

One of the big early dance hits was "Found a Cure" by Ashford and Simpson, and it was a terrific song of infectious exuberance. Thelma Houston sang "Don't Leave Me This Way". A group with a very peculiar sound of their own had a strong of five hits from their first album, "Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Dance Band" with Cory Daye. The movie Saturday Night Fever capitalized on the disco mania and two of its songs became hits, "Staying Alive" and "Night Fever." And another movie, Car Wash, a lousy film, contributed its title song to the sounds of the early disco era.

During the first part of these years much of the dance music and its lyrics still ran the gamut from a fairly tame sensuality to just plain upbeat fun, but toward the end of the decade music increased the beat and the lyrics often seemed to display a strident and unsatisfied urgency.

Sylvester and his two big heavy-set back-up women (who later became The Weather Girls) had a steadily unrolling string of hits in 1979. Gloria Gaynor reappeared with the tough sound of "I Will Survive." Donna Summer unleashed "Hot Stuff' and "Bad Girls". A series of hits from big stars gave the music an overall sense of unity. But in a night of dancing they were only punctuating notes to the steady stream of new dance music from a profusion of formerly unheard of black performers (mostly women). A couple of popular women whom I remember were Sarah Dash and Loleatta Holloway, the latter a big, belting engine of a woman who managed to produce at least one hit of deep, deep black music about every two years. No matter who came and went, Loleatta Holloway's biennial hits would bring everyone in a club to the dance floor. Even into the mid-80s the opening measures of "Love Sensation", one of her early hits, would fill the floor, though the DJ's would pump it for extra bpms. Despite variations in lyrics and tempo, all of her songs began with a slow steady delivery which built and increased until she reached a point at which she seemed to be challenging you not to dance by the intensity with which she sang. It was a virtual contest of energies and emotions.

The Village Voice described Flamingo:

"The throbbing lights, the engulfing sound, the heightened energy, and the hyperbolic heat of Flamingo give me the sense (which I have heard others share) that the world is enclosed in this hall, that there is only now, in this place and this time. It can be extra-ordinarily assaultive. I have felt trapped forever in a theatre of sound, of flesh, like a character in Bunnel's The Exterminating Angel, unable to leave a party even after its positive appeal has fled. But what is worse is the prospect of a chill gray Manhattan dawn outside. Leaving is more depressing than staying: the disco beat is like a life rhythm, and to stop would be to create a killing thrombosis."

The Sandpiper in The Pines outgrew itself quickly, and the patience of its neighbors as well. It was a typical beach place with wide open windows making up one complete wall for ventilation. While the alcohol was not served in these big legit clubs after the closing hours, they stayed open until dawn or beyond, so there was no relief from the noise. Finally the Sandpiper tore itself down at the end of one season, gave up its restaurant business and rebuilt as a totally enclosed two story disco. This probably doubled, if not tripled their capacity and solved the problem of the complaining neighbors. At this time the Tea Dance shifted in large part from the Boatel a short way down the harbor to the Pavilion, which was the Sandpiper's new name. It probably gathered at least 500 men on a very average Saturday for "Tea", and this using only its upper level decks ... the inside was only for evening dancing.

In the early morning hours, until dawn, the sandy stretch between the west end of The Pines toward the east end of The Grove was a meat rack where large numbers of guys enjoyed each other and any other. This meat rack had been dubbed "Judy Garland Memorial Park" by some joker after Judy Garland's death in 1969, the same weekend as the first Stonewall riot. I have actually seen this bit of black humor cited seriously once or twice as a "tribute" to her ... it was never meant or taken as anything other than a put-on.

As a counterpoint I should mention that various conventional sorts of gay social and political organizations did manage to take root and grow during these years. The first kick-off benefit for SAGE (Senior Action in a Gay Environment) took place in The Pines. SAGE was the only organization oriented to gay senior citizens and sought to provide gay-oriented counseling and events for them. Groups such as the National Gay Rights Association and Gays and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination grew and put pressure on the media and elected officials. And early in the 80s in New York City the Gay and Lesbian Center was founded as an umbrella organization to provide meeting space for the various gay and lesbian organizations in New York City. Groups of gay Catholics, Jews and various Protestants formed worship groups of their own and lobbied for acceptance in mainstream denominations. The Catholic church actively opposed Dignity, the gay Catholic group, but a Jesuit parish in Chelsea still allowed them to use their church for worship and meetings. Gay Jews founded their own synagogue. Two independent gay congregations of Protestants were founded and acquired spaces for services -- the Metropolitan Church and the Church of the Beloved Disciple. The Episcopal church found itself able to accommodate Integrity, their gay group, into existing church congregations.

The Gay Pride Marches took place on Fifth Avenue and drew very large numbers of participants and observers -- and it grew into a larger and larger event each year. Christopher Street from Hudson Street down to the river was closed off as the site of a street carnival. The street was virtually impassable with pedestrians. The crowds were so impenetrable that clusters of onlookers would form around guys having sex in the street.

However, the New York Times still was chary about reporting gay-related news in its in the regular news section of the paper, and tended to relegate such stories to the inner pages. It still did not use the word "gay" except as it appeared in the title of a book or organization. The New York Times magazine section which was included with the Sunday edition had a different editor than that of the newspaper itself, and it tended to be more liberal and to feature occasional gay-related stories as major articles. In 1977 when former beauty queen/singer turned "Christian", Anita Bryant, started a campaign to have Miami's gay rights legislation overturned in a referendum, the Times rebuked homosexuals for the tenor of their opposition to her.

Gay magazines ranging from the homoerotic to almost hard-core were now found on almost every newsstand in Manhattan to some degree and and were heavily represented in gayer neighborhoods. After Dark, the quasi-gay entertainment magazine folded in the early 1980's as openly gay magazines made it obsolete. Christopher Street, an attempt at a serious gay magazine, with quality essays, short stories and feature articles, struggled on for some years without every becoming a commercial success. What were referred to as "bar rags" flourished. These were cheap little magazines given away to bar patrons in gay bars around the city and featured "news" about bars and their customers. "Michael's Thing" was probably the best known and longest-lived one. They were considered a joke by most people and read mainly as ludicrous camp.

The famous Everard Baths burned late in May 1977. A year later Andrew Holleran used this event as the closing of his famous novel Dancer from the Dance. Most people, especially, after events of the next few years took his book to be something of a celebration of gay life in the 60s and 70s. The author is upset, as he intended it as a put-down of the lifestyle.

Pornographic video films catering to every imaginable sexual taste were widely available, and film houses specializing in gay porno -- sometimes with stage shows -- were able to operate openly. Female prostitutes and gay hustlers advertised in sexually oriented publications and were not usually harassed.

Marijuana was cheap and plentiful and many gay dealers prospered throughout the city. Some dealers actually set up what were referred to as "drug stores" and took credit cards and had regularly scheduled hours -- this was unusual, but there were a few very successful and rather daring gay drug dealers who conducted their business this carelessly. The varieties of LSD were becoming less popular and in their place "Designer Drugs" arose, e.g., Ecstasy, Special K -- these had less hallucinogenic effects and more pronounced physical ones. Cocaine was increasing in popularity, but still considered expensive and most people were suspicious of its reputed highly addictive nature.

In the Village, bars called Ty's, Boots and Saddles and Rawhide were popular, but there were many, many more. On the Upper West Side three bars located within half a block called The Piccadilly, Boot Hill and The Candlelight Lounge had been doing a brisk local business for years and were known by some (affectionately) as the Pig Circuit ... a tongue-in-cheek on the old Bird Circuit, I guess.

In the fall of 1978 the mayor of San Francisco and a gay member of the city's Board of Supervisors, Harvey Milk, were shot to death at City Hall by another angry supervisor who had just recently resigned. At the conclusion of his trial in the spring of 79 the gunman was found guilty of the lesser crime of voluntary manslaughter, not murder. This unleashed a wave of violence by gay people in San Francisco which resulted in a million dollars damage as rioters burned police cars and stormed City Hall in anger.

Late in the decade I tricked for a few weeks with one of the regulars from from a neighborhood bar, Billy. He had been rather stocky when I had slept with him, but in a year or so he began to lose weight, and after awhile I saw less and less of him when I went out. The last time I saw him he told me he was sick and going home to live with his sister. A friend who knew him told me after he left that the doctor had told Billy that he could not ascertain what was wrong with him specifically, but that he could not find a way to reverse his diarrhea, wasting and fatigue and that he was not optimistic of the outcome. No one ever heard from Billy again and sometime afterwards his lover disappeared from the local scene too.

Somewhat surprisingly less liquor seem to be consumed at bars and more and more people drank soft drinks or wine spritzers served in beer mugs. This change probably had little to do with a desire for moderation. Rather the contrary. The heavy use of grass and cocaine raised a fierce thirst, which if you were drinking liquor or alcohol was likely to make you quite drunk, thus ruining the drug high and producing a very negative impact on sexual performance.

Life spun along toward the end of the 70s, and what were at first subtle nuances developed in new trends and dramatic changes. Perhaps the music only reflected these changes and catered to them, but while it is too romantic to assume that it produced them, it certainly propelled them.

Good DJs just mixed their music by ear, but as more and more people got involved in being DJs or making tapes for sale and pleasure a "bible" was produced to make it easier. It gave the beats per minute (bpm's) of for all dance records and was updated every few weeks. Music began to strip its gears. Sylvester the sometimes drag always outrageous black queen had begun with "Don't Stop" at a decent 131 bpm, moved the energy to 140 bpm to "Take Me to Heaven" and destroyed the floor and the decibel meter with "Hard Up" at 150. And the bpms went higher and higher and higher. Early disco music while emphasizing sex and sensuousness was still often light-hearted and even more saucy than sleazy, but toward the end of the decade and into the 80s it turned in direction and dived heavily into sexuality, sleaze and raw energy.

Some of the old bars and dance clubs closed and straight people, by and large, had ceased to go to gay places. Gay life had developed an inward-turned intensity that was threatening to outsiders, and it began to influence the development of non-black dance music. Gay life had become raw and voracious and insatiable and it frightened straight people.

In the summer of 1979 a friend of mine and I took a place in Cherry Grove on the Island. While we were out there we met a group of guys that we liked and saw occasionally in the City during the following winter. In that winter one of them became ill with "a rare cancer", which a close acquaintance of his said gave him "spots". The doctors said that it was a very rarely seen disease, but hardly ever a fatal one. Quite unexpectedly he died within a very brief time. The doctors were quite puzzled.

In October 1979 the first Gay Civil Rights march was held in Washington, D.C. Though over 100,000 marched, it got very little media coverage.

In the fall of 1980 there was a horrible incident which briefly frightened many gay people. One Saturday evening when the gay area at the end of Christopher Street was at its busiest, a car sped down West Street and when it was opposite one of the most popular gay bars it opened fire through the windows with a submachine gun! Two men were killed and another six were injured. This was a miracle as the bar was jammed with customers. The assailant turned out to be a very homophobic lay preacher, who it later turned out had evidently had liaisons with several boys and was guilt-stricken about these acts. This was a frightening event; however it did not presage any general wave of anti-gay hatred (that came later) but was the act of one very tortured man. Life regained speed without missing more than a beat.