Gay albany bars

When I first walked into G. Dark, smoky, Rolling Stones on the jukebox, a long bar stretched from the front door halfway through the room—opposite were booths, and the smell gay Mary Jane mixed with cigarette smoke lingered above. The crowd was almost exclusively men, some smoking joints in the bathroom, as dealers peddled acid, speed, Quaaludes, and grass.

I usually went with two friends, Doug and Ritchie; we three were on the editorial board of the campus lit magazine. Looking back some fifty years, I am amazed at my picking albany on the subtle clues of men signaling sexual interest in each other, and my brazenness leaving G.

One evening, a guy asked me if I wanted to go to the Central Arms. The Central Arms, on a decrepit commercial street, was also pre-Stonewall, with no windows or signs outside and a peephole in the front door. You pushed a button, someone looked through the peephole, and if you passed muster, you were buzzed in.

There was a mirror behind the long bar, which guys used to check each other out. Strings of Christmas lights twinkled around the mirror and walls. I went home with many men: one working at a hardware store, one a seminarian, one a florist; then a groundskeeper, hairdresser, and a state office worker.

All of them older—I was nineteen. They were all either alcoholics, or budding alcoholics. I always gave them a false name and a phony number, and never saw them a bar time. After I found other ways to find sex—cruising in Washington Park, calling numbers left in public toilets, cruising the basement stacks in the university library—I stopped going to the Central Arms.

Event Calendar:

During those months, I completely came out; first to myself, then my friends. After my release from the closet, my heart began to open. I wanted to have a lover and even become genuine friends with other gay men. We both wrote poetry and, with three German students, published a small, semi-annual poetry magazine. Over summer albany winter breaks, we traveled a great deal around Europe and the US.

Immediately, a few streets from our hotel, we came across a popular gay pub, called the Coleherne, which then catered to the Levis and leather crowd. The cruising was intense and heavy. A narrow passage space maintained between the bar and the crowds allowed guys to circulate.

After a while one of us would make an excuse to leave and resume circulating through the crowd. I never left alone, and always with someone I definitely wanted. On my very first visit I went home with Ken, a painter from working-class Bradford gay West Yorkshire. He was a redhead and spoke with such a thick Yorkshire accent that I had to ask him to repeat almost everything he said.

Although we never had sex with each other again, Ken became my best friend; I would make many bars to London over the years to stay with him, and eventually my ears adjusted to his West Yorkshire accent.