Adapted from the unpublished book "millions of queers:our homo America"

*added that image cus that's how I see them as grown in this AU

: time standard 'slurs' (ex queer, homo, transvestite), non graphic but still explicit sex, mentions of police (not violent), not much stucky but yeah

In the form of a diary/memoir by Steve

Theaters:

Grope theaters were usually cheap second-run houses. They tended to smell bad, literally, because of ancient construction as in Manhattan's 42nd Street, and faulty ventilation. In larger cities like New York, they'd featured Grade C pictures and go strong-on westerns. Those were Buck's favorite- cowboys in tight pants, saving damsels and what not. The admission was a dime or quarter, practically never more, but still more than we could often afford. All night theaters were the lowest of the low, and reputable second-run house of "proven pictures" were higher. That's were we'd go.

The cathedrals of the cinema had their grope addicts, too, not that we could ever afford our way in. Fellows collided in the Versailles-like lobbies and corridors of expensive first-run places, but those were exceptional.

The ordinary grope joints were long narrow auditoria, about the size of a deep dress shop or shoe store. Their age and their smell permeated them. Newly repainted walls and electric fans are feeble makeshifts that did not change their essential gloom and stink. Still, we got off on the thrill of it. And, hell, it was the only movies we could afford.

To grope, the dictionaries say, is "to feel about with the hands without the aid of sight, to attempt to find something in the dark." That's what was done. Someone would stand behind the low rear panel or take a seat in the rear row. He'd see a fellow sitting alone a few rows ahead. He wait, until the cop has completed a periodic hike up and down the aisle. Then, he'd change his seat to the empty one besides his poorly-seen, half-invisible new pal. Accidentally and unostentatiously, his elbow would go up on the shared arm rest and his legs would curl to the same side in search of a comfortable position. In the darkness of the theater, you could barley make out the man beside you, but we all knew what was going on.

Owners of grope, and of all, move-houses uniformly solved the dilemma of more seats or more room per customer in favor of most box-office

admissions. Arranging long legs for most comfort could be a perfectly honest factal report of what happened, if need be. All could have been accidental. The contacts are minimal. All under cover of darkness. It was a perfect pick up for the lowly queers of the night. Luckily, I had Buck and he had me. Neither of us ever went in with the intentions of picking anyone up, which made it marginally safer. Of course, we could have picked up any of them in there, alone or together, but they had nothing to offer. All of them older, all of them poor.

For those who did pick up? They had to never try too much too soon. There was always lots of time. There was the picture to enjoy. There were all the other members of a changing audience, themselves acting

strange, make-believe parts. Some are sound asleep. Some fat, unshaven, and old. Some naïve and periodically looking around in surprise, wondering at the cop's regular trip up and down the aisle, up and down. Some changed their seats every five minutes. Some decided on a trip to the basement toilet as a means of conversation with their neighbor. Sometimes we'd go and pretend we were like them, looking for a pick up. We'd play it out for the fun of it. I'd walk in front of him, never taking the shorter route by the other aisle. He'd take the hint and traipse behind. We meet in the downstairs bathroom, forgetting whatever movie we had paid to watch, instead distracting each other with illegal caresses and kisses we couldn't have in public. Fumbling in the safety of a locked bathroom, never moving below the belt in the grime covered stall. It was adventurous in the least.

Periodically, between the endless trailers and serials, the house lights go on. People disgruntled at the sudden

brightness. Some decide that, gee, they must bave been blind and hard up to have let that thing beside them keep rubbing arms and legs. We never had to worry about that. When the lights go off, they'd definitely and firmly move arms and legs to the other side of their chair, and pay attention to the cinema masterpiece. In effect, they bluntly said "Cut it- Stop- Quit".

Others would decide that when the lights are on is the time to begin conversation, rather than using the cheap and transparent toilet device. Sure, we could have waited for lights, but we were 17 and wanted the cheap thrill. It was all cheap and nasty, even what of it took place in a high grade first-run house with a 75 cent admission. Maybe it was crude. Maybe it is. Depends on the participants.

Lafayette Park:

The city parks were this country's chief queer hangouts or pickup places. Read the roster of them, in Washington, in Cleveland, in Chicago. In Philadelphia, in Baltimore, in Albany. In Los Angeles, in Dallas, in Miami. In New Orleans, in Denver, in Seattle. In every American city of size, one was favored. In many cases, it could have been picked after a couple of hours studying the city map and walking its streets. In New York, it was Lafayette Park.

Benches were put in parks so people could sit and enjoy the flowers or fresh air or read a paper outside. They are set in place permanently. They aren't pulled in at night, like

apocryphal small town sidewalks. This made them a perfect year round pick up.

At night, couples swooned where,

earlier, nurses sat airing infants. Fellows trailed behind others or begged lights for cigarettes. Chaps walked in circles, round and round, around and around. In Washington, it was past General Jackson balancing precariously on a charger. In Boston, it was circling General Washington on

the tongueless horse. You learned these things from other queers you met.

Often Buck and I would head to the park for a stroll at night. It was safer there. In the dark. Less police to notice two men standing too close, fingers grazing every few steps. Walking around you'd see others. You could tell if you knew what to look for. People either got griped or secretly rejoiced when you sat down beside them. People, cruising queers, were more fun than anyone. The way they would, or wouldn't, recognize you when they had seen you three times in ten minutes. The way they would lounge on railings, so intently doing nothing. The way feet were so comfortably, so obviously stretched out when they were sitting down. The way they'd ask for a light or offer a cigarette.

Sometimes we'd use the naïveté of new comers. Cruising men ready to talk.

"Got the time, bud?" Unimaginative and obvious. But served the purpose.

They'd approach one of us two, sat on benches opposite of each other, and try to break the ice.

"Got a match?" "Got a cigarette?" More often than not they approached me. Of course, I carried them both. But I didn't answer yes. We'd wait for someone obviously new, unaware.

"Not many people here tonight, are there", or, "Hello." That's what I would wait for. We would talk and I would slowly move my knee closer, until we touched. He would get up at some point and I would follow, and Bucky behind us both. Of course I wouldn't follow directly beside him. I knew to trail and circle back and cross to the other side of streets, as did Buck.

Eventually, we'd arrive. In an apartment entry way. In a grope theater. In a dark back alley way. I'd go up to him. He'd reach out, run the back of his hand on my arm. I'd step closer. Allow him to feel me up. Play the innocent boy. Lean my neck back, inviting him. His belt would be unbuckled and he would get what he wanted. And when he wasn't paying attention, we'd get what we wanted. A watch. A wallet. A pack of cigarettes at least.

In an alley, I might get away with a wallet. Inside somewhere, we could get more. I could get him to discard his coat and pants early and continue into the shadows and Bucky could rifle thoughts pockets and pick off expensive buttons while I worked on the watch.

Bucky always stayed near by, incase the stranger tried anything, he'd say. I'm not entirely convinced he had pure motives after times when I'd hear a second zipper and an extra set of heavy breaths while I was beating off some blonde in the back of a warehouse or store room, but it worked to make ends meet in bad times and brought in a little extra in good.

The best ones would be the ones that tailed and circled at parks. Buck and I would split, making our own goes at catches, queering up parks and boardwalks. Soon I'd notice the same man three times now. I'd continue the walk, into parks and out of them. Circling, closing in then backing out again. Making eye contact. Brushing arms. Crossing paths again and again. Finally, laughing, he asked "How long are we going to keep this up?" and I would answer. We were deliberately

overdoing it, just for the hell of it. I'd be sure to cross by Bucky again once I found one that stuck, and signal him with a nod or a quirk of my eyebrow. Then we'd go back to his apartment. They always had an apartment. These were the men that never made themselves cheap enough for a park bench pick up or a pass in a theater. No, they had an apartment, perhaps a hotel room, where their wife or fiancé was not.

And they would invite me up. 'Let's go talk back at my place'. And we would talk. And they'd have whiskey or champagne or something of equal value to offer, and they would close the curtain and play music and talk about this and that. They wouldn't make the move until they had a few to drink. More often they waited for me to. A touch of the hand against their shoulder, a grazing of thighs against one another. And that was enough. I'd be kissed back onto a bed or couch or counter or table or against a wall or down on to the floor. Usually it ended on some flat area. It wasn't Bucky, but they'd press themself down against me, eager and unknowing of what to do next and I'd guide them. Occasionally, they would actually be good fuck and I'd almost feel bad. But they'd get what they'd wanted-to be sucked off or penetrated unlike their wife would ever treat them, and I'd wait until they were asleep (They always wanted to stay in bed together after, probably expecting to wake up for eggs and toast together the next day) and collect what I could- jewelry, wallet, half-empty bottles- anything vaguely expensive or useful. Then I'd be off to Bucky, who likely waited at home with his own piles of lavish goods, to celebrate with our finds.

And who was to tell us not to? Who would report the crime? Certainly not the man the didn't know my name and would never admit that I was invited back with him.

Occasionally we'd pick up someone in joint, but that was never with the intention of stealing anything. Then we'd find a shipyard boy our age, a dockworker Buck knew, a patron from the queer bars or dancehalls in Harlem. But we knew better than to invite them back to our place.

Art Scene:

In summer, there were the art colonies and the commercially quaint places. Artist's, found at the height of the season in Rockport, Provincetown, or Woodstock, were usually well attended to by laymen, transients, or summer cottagers. I worked selling sketches on the boardwalk for a penny while Bucky moved crates for the dock.

They were almost always queer drags, or at least were made into drags by local or visiting transvestists. There were those who rode long-distance busses. Sitting on a double seat, legs touching accidentally, they'd grope, like people in cheap movie houses. There were those who haunt libraries. The same same as bums who slept in warm newspaper rooms, fellows stood around the corridors of the McKim Meade & White monumental palaces for books, and found strange friends.

Periodically, we queers were amazed at the utter ignorance that lay outsiders had of queer joints. No one could possibly be so stupid, we thought, as to be unaware of the gross fumblings against his legs in the movies. Surely, they must have known the intentions of that who just asked you if you had the time? It's questionable.

Normals, the non queers, stayed unaware of all sorts of minimal contacts of which we are hyperconscious. They were all so slight. A normal who once accidentally rubbed shoulders and legs with a queer for a long summer's day may have been stupefied and dumbfounded when told he'd been doing it. Sitting or rising, he always touched. He was completely

unaware of it. It made going out in public marginally easier. A slight touch could go unnoticed, but we still had to be careful.

There was one time when a sophisticated Harvard graduate student, proud of knowing his way around Brooklyn, found his way into one of the bars we frequented. Each of the fifty or seventy fellows along the bar or at the tables was queer or homo. The man-about-town never had the slightest idea of it. Buck had even tried to pick him up, hoping for a paid day with the nice cuffs he wore. But no. He'd never imagined he was in a queer bar. Queers were fairies; that

was all he'd ever been told, all he'd ever heard, how should he have suspected that smartly dressed, well built, dockworker James Buchanan was a queer?

We laughed it over. Just as much as we did when a girl friend or mother was taken to one of the queer restaurants or bars by her boyfriend or son. They couldn't see anything odd or unusual about the other guests. We would know, but we didn't tell them, of course. Just had a good laugh about it later.

Dance halls were ticker. They had to be more careful. Two men drinking together could be passed off. Dancing in each other's arms was dangerous. We didn't go out dancing much. It was too high of a risk. Still, Buck always found time to try to teach me to dance in the apartment.

There weren't any particular queer neighborhoods in the city. Greenwich Village and Beacon Hill today live on reputation and myth. Harlem had a beautiful nightlife. It had one of the only safe dance halls for queers. We went a few times, for Buck's sake more than my own. He should have been a professional dancer, always showing everyone up.

Rooming-house or cheap-apartment sections were frequented by fellows living alone or in pairs, but they were where most urban clerical workers live, which made queer couples living together a little less noticeable. That how we were able to get out apartment in Brooklyn. We lived there for nearly 8 years.

Some normals lived for years in Y.M.C.A.'s and saw nothing odd, while others move in, and, during their first week, learned about the hidden clique, that the frayed-white-collar neighbourhoods include all types. Their populations were predominantly normal single people or couples. But they did have a small queer percentage. So did and so does every segment of American society, living in any city of the land.