New York on Sunday or It's a whole new world to me.

After arriving by Amtrak to Penn Station on a Sunday afternoon in April of '76, having rapidly packed the night before and following orders from the company for which I was an Area Manager, I stepped to the curb to hale a taxi.

I had left Boston, the first city I had worked in after leaving college and my second love. We had both graduated, and were now pursuing careers. With each move up our individual ladders, we moved further apart both figuratively and actually. I had decided to accept the move up to managing the NYC stores for the young consumer electronics company I had started at only a year and a half ago. Gary had worked in Public Television in the engineering department in Springfield Mass. and had just accepted a new position, designing the new broadcast facilities in Saudi Arabia. Talk about a physical distance; we were a half a world apart.

I had decided to take up residence at SRO hotel in mid-town Manhattan until I got myself settled and had explored the many neighborhoods that the city offered. The Henry Hudson Hotel to be specific. It was ironic that NYC's public television station had offices and studios in the same building. Why had Gary decided to take such a different path?

I had come out during the summer of '69 just after the Stonewall riots. Amherst had been a very safe place to come out. With 5 colleges in a 10 mile radius the intellectual level was high and liberal (no pun intended).I had met Gary the following fall when he was a freshman and I was a junior. My first real romance had been rather disastrous. I had met him the winter before I had come out and had a rather quick romance culminating in a hot weekend at a beach cottage on the South Shore of Boston in late spring. I knew something was very wrong that Sunday when we were driving back to school. He was very distant and quiet. I discovered the next day the he had totally freaked out with our romance. I mean, he was the aggressive one at the beginning of the weekend. I was in heaven. I had finally made love to another man and boy, I really liked the feeling. I had made so much sense to me but he, on the other hand, had leaped, and then jumped, back into the closet, slamming the door after him. Well, live and learn.

Gary and I had a slowly evolving romance that lasted for 5 years but the last year had been strained. In order to find a job with growth potential, I had had to look to the east, to Boston. Well, now I was in the Big Apple, the home of stonewall, the start of the gay movement.

That first week at work was incredible. We had two stores in Manhattan and one out on the Island (Long Island). I had to find and open two more stores in Manhattan and have them up and running before the Christmas selling season. I sure learned a lot those first few months but that is another story. I had the following Sunday off and decided I needed to see where I might want to live. Greenwich Village was the place to explore on the beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon.

I took the A train down to West Fourth. I got out and first wandered over to Washington Square. It was kind of like Boston. Lots of college kids hanging. Smoke in the air and music playing. After all, it was the mid seventies, the age of pot and tunes. What better business to be in than selling the equipment that played those tunes.

I decided that I needed to venture to the west so I went up West Fourth crossing over Sixth Ave to Sheridan Square. Now I was in the really gay area. It was amazing to see so many men in many variations and all of them gay. It was like the Village people although they had not reached the fame they would achieve in another year.

From there I worked my way up to Christopher Street and wandered toward the infamous docks. The magazine “Christopher Street” would soon be standard reading for me, but it's first magazine was a few months off. Beautiful Christopher Street, the home of e.e. Cummings, one of my favorite poets. This is the, or at least, was the Main Street of the Gay community. What a change from gay night at the Quonset Club in Amherst. (I can still hear that Polka band and remember dancing with Gary.)

As I strolled down Christopher Street on that beautiful Sunday, I remember seeing men walking hand in hand, arm in arm, out, proud and enjoying the day and each other. I heard a police whistle blow and turned around in time to step out of the way of the Sugar Plum Fairy as “she” roller skated down the street, throwing handfuls of glitter as he went. You know, when your my size (very large, 6'4” and 235 lbs) you don't tend to get hassled. So I wandered, smoking a joint and cruising the men until I got down to the docks. I had seen porn that was shot on the docks but I never realized that this was what happened all the time on the weekends. It wasn't staged, it was real. I had been to Provincetown and been at the “dick-dock” after the bars had closed, but I wasn't prepared for what I saw that afternoon. Singles, couples and small groups, madly at it, totally hot and passionate sex, as far as the eye could see in the bright of day. To say that this was an eye opener is a total understatement.

That afternoon, I knew I had flown over the rainbow. Me, a kid from the sticks of Maine, here in the center of the gay world. I just knew that it was going to be an interesting life here on the island of Manhattan. Unfortunately, I had no realization of how weird and horrible that world would become in just a few more years. Yes the party would end and rather tragically. But that story,my friends, is for another day.