Muscle on the Rocks
(Mine)shafted

OCTOBER 1979: Shortly after I returned to Manhattan from my cross-country road trip spent trying to find my “gay self,” Bo, the guy I had been seeing in San Diego, and three of his friends (two of whom I’d also slept with) came to NYC for the Mr. Blueboy Contest (Blueboy was a Playgirl-like magazine with stories and male nudity that was popular then.). One of the San Diego crew was representing that city in the nationwide contest and was put up in a nice hotel in midtown Manhattan. The others stayed with me.
Summer in the Pines 1981

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 beach in Fire Island Pines (August 1981). It was the first time I had taken a share for the summer. It was an innocent time. But, the discovery of a “gay cancer” had just been announced the month before in a front page article in the NY Times.
Remembering Luis
Luis Eduardo Quiros (1948-1986) was invited to a weekend at the Tuna Walk house of Jacques Haran, the Chairman of my employer Revillon Furs, in Fire Island Pines where I was on my virgin visit, over July 4th 1980. We fell in immediate lust, a more exotic man I’d never met. Not just an acclaimed artist, he owned a men’s clothing store on 3rd Ave near Gramercy Park called Lugini. Within 3 months I’d quit my job managing Revillon Furs at Saks in Houston and moved to NYC to be with him. I learned my way around the city running from place to place for art supplies. Burnt ochre anyone?