1980S | Bammer 2021

A Typical Manhattan Evening

STORY: 1981—After my intense three-month affair with Bill Masi, a successful male model, had run its course in early 1981, we became...

BAMMER and Me: Cliff Morrison, The First AIDS Ward (Part 1)

PODCAST—EPISODE 10: Cliff Morrison arrived in San Francisco as a nurse in the late 1970s, as AIDS was about to erupt. In 1983, while...

If You’re From Baton Rouge—Quarter Stories 15

STORY: Stories about my adventures bartending in New Orleans in the late ’70s and early ’80s. To read them all, click #quarterstories....

The Torch – Quarter Stories 14

STORY: 1982—Max was at work at the point station, his head down deep into the jockey box scooping up ice in the cups taking orders three...

A Tribute to Jackie Yordan

STORY: Jackie Yordan was, according to many who knew him, an “incredible sweetheart and an amazing person… He was truly one of the...

Cajun Sweat (Louis Pt. 2 )- Quarter Stories 13

STORY: Louis had vanished. I looked for him, but he kept out of the bars, strange hours, whatever jobs he picked up. Saw Jeff again, who...

Full Circle

STORY: 1976 – When I first moved to NYC in 1976, as far as the world knew, I was a 24-year-old straight guy, former college jock, and...

Group Travel, Rio—1990s style

STORY: 1989 to mid-1990s—My husband, Ron Oyer, had a travel business in the 1990s that catered to gay men, geographically mostly from...

Fire Island Virgin

STORY: 1979/1980—My first visit to Fire Island was over Halloween weekend in 1979, long after the resort’s summer season had ended. The...

Meeting Gary

STORY: Mykonos, 1985–In early September 1985, I spent a week on vacation in Mykonos. Early in the week, I spied a handsome, muscular,...

Willie

I’ve described how, in 1976, I met Willie Wilson, who introduced me to the passionate joy of infatuation between men. While visiting DC...

Summer in the Pines 1981

STORY: 1981 – In this photo, I’m with my housemates and my weekend date from Boston (John Shade, with our arms around each other) on the...

Eighties Envy

STORY: May 1983: From the moment the discovery of a “gay cancer” (GRID, or “gay-related immune deficiency”, later renamed AIDS) was...

Hidden Costs

STORY: 1981-2017: If I had to select one photo from my archives which personifies the devastation wrought upon my generation by the AIDS...

We Are Family

STORY: 1979-2017: My first relationship with another man began when I met Jim at the YMCA in 1979. I was 26, about to leave a job I...