David Moyer Part 1, January 21, 2022

David Moyer Part 1, January 21, 2022

David Moyer recounts his early years, sexuality, and his experiences with gay community in Allentown and Atlantic City.

Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives.

Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives.

2022-01-21

Copyright remains with the interview subject and their heirs.

video

LGBT-23

Mary Foltz

David Moyer

01:42:38

5.4 January 21, 2022 David Moyer Part 1, January 21, 2022 LGBT-23 1:42:38 LVLGBT-2022 Stories of Lehigh Valley LGBTQ+ Community Members (2022 - ) Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository Support for the collection of this interview was provided by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg David Moyer Mary Foltz video/mp4 MoyerDavid_20220121_video_trimmed.mp4 1.0:|19(3)|52(7)|73(11)|92(6)|107(13)|128(5)|143(9)|158(14)|181(2)|198(3)|215(19)|228(3)|245(8)|262(12)|281(12)|296(9)|315(15)|336(5)|353(9)|372(12)|389(8)|406(2)|417(20)|432(11)|447(11)|464(3)|481(13)|498(17)|515(5)|536(13)|557(8)|576(18)|591(4)|602(11)|617(11)|634(7)|651(11)|668(10)|685(14)|698(14)|717(9)|730(10)|745(2)|760(9)|773(7)|790(11)|805(6)|822(15)|837(5)|856(2)|871(10)|890(13)|909(13)|934(2)|957(11)|978(4)|995(11)|1012(18)|1031(10)|1046(15)|1063(18)|1082(14)|1099(4)|1118(2)|1131(9)|1148(2)|1165(19)|1184(10)|1205(8)|1224(16)|1241(11)|1260(18)|1275(14)|1294(12)|1315(6)|1332(12)|1355(5)|1374(14)|1395(2)|1408(10)|1425(11)|1442(15)|1459(3)|1480(13)|1499(2)|1516(14)|1533(11)|1552(4)|1567(16)|1586(12)|1603(15)|1618(18)|1633(8)|1646(6)|1663(14)|1700(14)|1723(17)|1744(3)|1761(8)|1780(5)|1793(7)|1810(12)|1825(9) 0 https://youtu.be/Q1Wsr0F1Dbo YouTube video English 36 Interview Introductions MARY FOLTZ: My name is Mary Foltz, and I’m here with David Moyer to talk about his life and experiences in LGBT organizations in the Lehigh Valley as a part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. Our project has funding from ACLS this semester, and David and I are meeting at Muhlenberg College in the Rare Books room. The date today is January 21, 2022. So, David, thank you so much for being here with me today, and to start, I just have a few quick questions. Could you please state your full name and spell it for me? &#13 ; &#13 ; DAVID MOYER: Okay. David Kenneth Moyer, D-A-V-I-D, K-E-N-N-E-T-H, M-O-Y-E-R. 0 119 Childhood in the Lehigh Valley MF: Fabulous, all right, so let’s go ahead and get started, and, David, I thought I could -- we could begin by you may be sharing a little about your childhood. &#13 ; &#13 ; DM: Well, with all these I dos, I feel like we’re married now, so. (laughter) Well, thank you for asking me to do this. It’s my pleasure, and anything that I can help, I’m more than willing to do that. I don’t know where to start because there’s so much, so here we go. Well, it was a cold and stormy night -- no, that’s not right. 0 448 Exploring Sexuality DM: My first encounter with anyone sexually was with Nicholas, and we would do pretty much the same thing that Bobby and I did. And then later on, I kind of got involved with Gene, the Italian, and he was the older, older one, and he was the first one that I actually performed oral sex on. Now I was about eight or nine I’d say at the time, and I thought, wow, this is great, I like this, but I never said anything to anybody about it, and I just -- we always kept this to ourselves. But then Gene did say to me, he says, “Don’t you dare say anything to anybody.” I says, “No, why would I? I want to keep this all to myself, I’m not going to share this.” 0 578 Weekends in Catasauqua/First Love DM: So I guess later on, as the years were going up, I was going to school, and I would spend weekends with my grandparents up in Catasauqua, they live in Catasauqua. My grandmother’s name was Esta, E-S-T-A, and my grandfather’s name was Paul, and my grandmother had a brother whose name was Abner, and he was -- he had been in the Army, but he had been discharged, he had done his 20 years, so he was home. He took a liking to me, and I always thought that he was really nice and whatever. And I had spent a lot of time out there especially in the summer months when school wasn’t in, so I had a lot of free time. But my grandparents always liked to throw Friday night or Saturday night parties, and they had done that one weekend. 0 905 Time at Camp Greenwood /Navigating Sexual Relationships DM: So now, I’m getting into my teen years, and I had a job as a newspaper delivery boy when they used to deliver newspapers -- well they still do, but not the way that they used to. Every summer if you were a newspaper boy, you were able to get a free week at a boys’ camp up in Carbon County at -- it was called Camp Greenwood, and it was on Greenwood Lake, which was -- right next to Lake Hauto. The first two years I went up as a camper, and it was fun because it was all boys. Boys camp was eight weeks’ long and then the first -- last two weeks in August was girls. The girls always got the short end of the stick because it’s just the way it was then -- still is now when you look at things, how things are going. But it was quite interesting. 0 1662 Time in the Navy Reserves DM: Like this time now, I’m in the military, I’m gone. I went to boot camp in Philadelphia when they had a boot camp there for the reserves, and nothing happened at boot camp. I was too scared for one thing but not -- but just that what have I gotten myself into? Because I know I didn’t want to go into the -- I didn’t really go into the Army, and I knew that I wasn’t going to be Marine Corps material, and I really didn’t know anything about the air force, so I thought I had -- even though I had an uncle who was -- my uncle Abner was in the Army, I had -- my cousin Jimmy was a Navy man, and he looked really good in uniform, but he had nothing there. I had gone for my Army physical ; this is in 1962 because I was already graduated from high school, I was working up to Wilkes-Barre and we went through the whole thing, the written test, you have to do an exam, and then you always a full physical. 0 2155 Being Stationed in Gulfport, MS / Spending Time in New Orleans DM: So, I now go to Gulfport. Now, there was a guy in my A school in Great Lakes, and his name was David, the same as mine, and he and I were vying for the same guy that I wound up getting, so we were kind of like at odds with each other while we were there. I don’t know where David went. Like I said, I went to Philadelphia, and Ron went to St. Albans. So, I get down to Gulfport, Mississippi, and I’m checking in, and the first person that meets me is David, and I’m thinking, oh, no, this is not going to go well because we didn’t like each other. 0 2521 Serving in Vietnam DM: I know, I know that when I was in Vietnam, the group of us that were gay hung around together, and everybody knew that we were gay, the commanding officer knew that we were gay. But because the job that we did was important, we didn’t flaunt our sexuality, and as long as we did what we were there to do, who cares what you are. I mean we had one guy, and he was the commanding officer’s personal driver, so whenever he had this -- he had to go somewhere off the base, he was the one. He was the only one that was discharged -- not for being gay. He had contracted sexually transmitted disease six times while he was in country. Two is it, and he overlooked that, they said, “That’s it, you’re out.” So he was the only one that was discharged for -- and not even being gay but for having that many sexual transmitted diseases in the time that we were there, so... But in the time that I was in country, you were given a week of what’s called R&amp ; R, rest and recreation, so I decided to go to Japan for my R&amp ; R. 0 2888 Returning to Civilian Life / Attending Nursing School / Coming Out / The Gay Scene in Allentown&#13 ; DM: So, I come back, and now, the wild days are starting, and I am back at the state hospital and then these two women came in from Northampton County Community College and did an in-service for the orderlies, because we were considered orderlies, about a new program that were starting up with the college of nursing program, a two-year nursing, and was anybody interested. So I thought, why not? I went to nursing school. That was from ’68 to ’70. I was the first male to graduate from the nursing program, and I got a job at St. Luke’s. I was the first male nurse to work in labor and delivery. I was there for 65 deliveries, three sets of twins, and a set of triplets. 0 3610 Allentown's First Male Go-go Dancer&#13 ; DM: So, he opened up this -- the bar, and he asked me because he knew I knew how to dance and stuff like that. He says, “I want to have some entertainment in here, and I’d like to have like a go-go boy-type thing to bring in patrons,” so he said, “Are you interested?,” and I said, “Yeah, yeah.” The pay wasn’t great, but tips were good. And I got to tell you that he had been involved with -- one, two, three, four -- four different bars, okay. Every bar that he had, that he had me work at, he had sex with me on the bar after the place closed, and so... So I said, “Yeah,” so I was the go-go boy, and I was the first go-go boy in Allentown when that stuff was starting to get up because you had the go-go girl dancers and all this other, but you didn’t have guys doing that stuff. And then if there was guys, they were in the straight bars where a lot of the women would go, almost like the Chippendale type thing, but I wasn’t stripping. 0 3878 Trips to Atlantic City / Taking in the Nightlife DM: So from that time prior to all of that, we now have Atlantic City. Atlantic City was exciting ; It was like another version prior to me going to -- well no, I take that back. Atlantic City to me was like the New Orleans of the East Coast, right? The gay life down there was so much fun. Now I had graduated from nursing school, I’m working where I’m working, and I was living with a friend of mine who just passed away four months ago, he was older than me. 0 4858 Meeting Will / Death of Mother DM: So one of the women that I worked with at Olin, her name is Donna, and she had a partner who eventually became my wife but... So she would go to these different things, but they got laid off and then they moved from Allentown to Delaware, and then from Delaware they moved to -- back to New York because my ex-wife was originally from New York. Donna is from -- it’s either Pottstown or Pottsville ; I always get those two mixed up. Anyway to make a long story short, I am now -- I have now moved out of Mother Vern’s house, and I am living in Terre Hill, the trailer park ; I became trailer trash. 0 5403 Getting Married DM: So she came down, and she was with me for -- getting the arrangements and the lawyer and all that good stuff, the funeral, and she went back on Christmas Eve. We buried my mother on Christmas Eve and then her and Donna were coming down for New Year’s Eve, to spend New Year’s Eve with us, which is what they did. And Will was a smoker, a cigarette smoker, and had run out cigarettes, so he and Donna went to the store to get cigarettes and some more booze. I had just gotten out of the shower, and Betsy had given me a bottle of Calvin Klein Obsession, which I loved, loved. So I put some on, and I’m still not dressed yet, and she comes over to me and puts her hands under my robe and gets me all excited, and she drops her pants, and we had sex under the Christmas tree. 0 5695 Other Items to Cover&#13 ; MF: We’re at 90 minutes if you can believe it, and so this is typically where we’d start to wind down in the interview. I think we have a lot more to talk about, and perhaps we should schedule a second interview.&#13 ; &#13 ; DM: Oh, okay. &#13 ; &#13 ; MF: But I don’t want to stop you abruptly. So we’ve talked about a kind of first, maybe even the half of your life. And before we close the interview today, I’m just wondering if there’s anything about what you’ve shared so far -- and we’ll do a second interview, so we’ll get into more it -- 0 5828 Relationship with First Love, Robert DM: What I really wanted to talk about also was my first love -- my other first love between my uncle and William, and that was Robert. I met Robert in the bathroom of Arner’s Diner, which was in Allentown. The diner is still the diner, but it’s not in the spot that it was originally. It’s now at the corner of Ninth and Linden, and I think it’s the city something or other. But anyway, we had been in Rube’s, and after Rube’s closed, the only places you’d go to was the diner, otherwise you went home because there was no bookstores or anything like that at that time. 0 6144 Closing Remarks MF: Okay. Well, I want to say for the day, David, thank you so much. It’s so wonderful to hear your stories today. I’m so grateful that you took the time, and I can’t wait for our next interview. &#13 ; &#13 ; DM: We’ll get a date together and see what’s up, and we can do it again if they don’t mind doing it again. (laughs) 0 MovingImage David Moyer recounts his early years, sexuality, and his experiences with gay community in Allentown and Atlantic City. MARY FOLTZ: My name is Mary Foltz, and I'm here with David Moyer to talk about his life and experiences in LGBT organizations in the Lehigh Valley as a part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. Our project has funding from ACLS this semester, and David and I are meeting at Muhlenberg College in the Rare Books room. The date today is January 21, 2022. So, David, thank you so much for being here with me today, and to start, I just have a few quick questions. Could you please state your full name and spell it for me? DAVID MOYER: Okay. David Kenneth Moyer, D-A-V-I-D, K-E-N-N-E-T-H, M-O-Y-E-R. MF: Thank you very much, and will you please share your birthday? DM: Ah, oh. (laughter) April 23, 1943, I'm very old. MF: Thank you for sharing that. Before we started this interview, you signed a consent form, but I just want to review briefly some questions on that form. Do you consent to this interview today? DM: I do. MF: Do you consent to having this interview being transcribed, digitized, and made public available online? DM: I do. MF: Do you consent to the LGBT Archive using your interview for educational purposes in other formats including films, articles on our website, conference presentations? DM: I do. MF: And do you understand that you'll have 30 days after the electronic delivery of the transcript to review the interview, to identify parts that you might want to delete, or to withdraw the interview from the project? DM: I do. MF: Fabulous, all right, so let's go ahead and get started, and, David, I thought I could -- we could begin by you may be sharing a little about your childhood. DM: Well, with all these I dos, I feel like we're married now, so. (laughter) Well, thank you for asking me to do this. It's my pleasure, and anything that I can help, I'm more than willing to do that. I don't know where to start because there's so much, so here we go. Well, it was a cold and stormy night -- no, that's not right. MF: (laughs) DM: In the beginning, it was the -- no, that's not right either, uh-uh, anyway, my little humor there just to get me going. Like I mentioned, my name is David Moyer, I am 78 years old. I was born in the Allentown Hospital at 17th and Chew, which is now Leigh Valley Health Network -- something or other, I don't know, they keep changing their names. My mother's name was [Alma?], my father's name was Kenneth. We lived in -- originally in Fullerton on Quarry Street -- Fullerton is now part of Whitehall -- and we were there until I was approximately four years of age when we moved into Allentown. Prior -- well [Linnie?] also. Other than the names there, I need to give you a little disclaimer here. For a lot of things that I'm going to be saying with names, the names may or may not be the real names of the people that I'm talking about, and some of the things are not meant to have a shock value, but some of the things that I'm going to say are pretty out there. So, I just want to get that out there in front so that there's nothing, yeah, because I have nothing to hide. But anyway, my first encounter with another male, I was approximately the age of four. I don't remember a thing -- anything up till four. But I had a friend Bobby who lived in the neighborhood, and he and I would play a lot together, but for some reason one day, we had built a fort over the back of our sofa at the house, and one thing led to another, we had our pants down, and we were looking. And I thought this is interesting, and he thought it was interesting because our penises looked different. One of us was circumcised, one of us was not, and we thought that was interesting, so we didn't know. But all we did was just touch each other, and we would get erect, and I'd think, this is really cool without knowing what that all meant. And that went on for about six months or so and then we moved from Fullerton into Allentown into a single house. We were in a single house in Fullerton, but we moved into another single house, which is four stories. And I was sad to leave because I didn't know if I was going to see Bobby again, and I didn't know what to expect moving into a new neighborhood with the people. I knew that I liked people, that like -- I was an out-there kid. It wasn't long and then I met -- made some friends with the neighbors. There was a lot of boys in the neighborhood, and there were some girls. My best friend then, the first person I met back then was Nick and then he had a brother Danny who was younger, and then there was my friend Jim, and Jim had two older brothers and a sister. There was Tony and Gene, they were brothers, and they had a sister Grace. Now, Nicholas and Danny were Irish, Jim, his two brothers and his sister was -- were Irish, Tony and Gene and his -- and their sister Grace were Italian. And then there was another neighbor that lived next door to us, they ran the corner luncheonette, [Herb's?] Luncheonette, and they had a daughter Lucille, and they were Italian. My first encounter with anyone sexually was with Nicholas, and we would do pretty much the same thing that Bobby and I did. And then later on, I kind of got involved with Gene, the Italian, and he was the older, older one, and he was the first one that I actually performed oral sex on. Now I was about eight or nine I'd say at the time, and I thought, wow, this is great, I like this, but I never said anything to anybody about it, and I just -- we always kept this to ourselves. But then Gene did say to me, he says, "Don't you dare say anything to anybody." I says, "No, why would I? I want to keep this all to myself, I'm not going to share this." So was it was Gene and Nick were the two that I would become involved with over the years. I never did anything with the Gene's brother, I never did anything with my other friend Jim, although we had talked about it. We were the only non-Catholic family in the neighborhood, everybody else was Catholics, so everybody went to Sacred Heart down in Center City there. And my first inkling about something not being as it should be was Jim had called the priest at the church and wanted to know about what masturbation was, and if it was a sin or not and any other type of thing, and then of course the priest says, "It's a mortal sin, you're going to go to hell if you do these things." So that scared me, and then of course, Jim and I never did anything. So I guess later on, as the years were going up, I was going to school, and I would spend weekends with my grandparents up in Catasauqua, they live in Catasauqua. My grandmother's name was Esta, E-S-T-A, and my grandfather's name was Paul, and my grandmother had a brother's whose name was Abner, and he was -- he had been in the Army, but he had been discharged, he had done his 20 years, so he was home. He took a liking to me, and I always thought that he was really nice and whatever. And I had spent a lot of time out there especially in the summer months when school wasn't in, so I had a lot of free time. But my grandparents always liked to throw Friday night or Saturday night parties, and they had done that one weekend. Everything was done, cleaned up, and everybody was in bed. My grandparents were in their room, and my uncle Abner was in his room, and I was in my room, and something just said to me, you need to go over and talk to your uncle. So I was very quiet, I crept over to his bedroom and crawled in bed with him, and he was -- he gets a little startled somewhat. And he put his arm around me, I had my hand in his chest and just listening to him breathe, and I was getting excited, and my hand just started to move from his chest down to his crotch. I was, I guess, amazed that when I got down there, he was already erect. And I started massaging him, and he was moaning and groaning, and he started playing with my penis and put his finger around my anus. And the more I'm massaging him, the more he's groaning, and I went down on him, and then all of a sudden, this liquid came out -- I wasn't sure what it was -- and then he kind of sighed. And I felt the urge to ejaculate, but of course I couldn't because I was still too young, but I had felt that. So that was my really first experience with an adult, and it was my uncle. And I know a lot of people are going to look at this and say that he should have been arrested or it was child abuse or whatever, and for me, I didn't see that at all because it wasn't him that initiated this, it was me that initiated it. And they were going to say, well, he should've known better anyway, but I knew -- and my response to those people is that you love who you love, and I loved him. He was probably my first love, I knew that he loved me. And then he got rushed to the hospital with appendicitis, and complications had set in, and he developed a condition called peritonitis, and that killed him, and he was 49 years old, and I was devastated. I thought my world had ended because the person I loved has now died, and I never got over that. Still to this day, I miss him, and I still love him, I mean I always will. So that was my first experience with an adult, and again a family member, but he was just so handsome. He had been an Army cook. I don't know where he worked when he was discharged, but I know that when he cooked, he would cook for an Army. There was only four or five of us eating, but there was always so much food. And he was just so handsome, especially when was in his uniform, it was just -- I have -- I really only have one picture of him in his uniform with three other of his people that he was in the Army with. So that's my first part. I knew I was different, but I didn't know what as yet. So now, I'm getting into my teen years, and I had a job as a newspaper delivery boy when they used to deliver newspapers -- well they still do, but not the way that they used to. Every summer if you were a newspaper boy, you were able to get a free week at a boys' camp up in Carbon County at -- it was called Camp Greenwood, and it was on Greenwood Lake, which was -- right next to Lake Hauto. The first two years I went up as a camper, and it was fun because it was all boys. Boys camp was eight weeks' long and then the first -- last two weeks in August was girls. The girls always got the short end of the stick because it's just the way it was then -- still is now when you look at things, how things are going. But it was quite interesting. I had some activity but not a whole lot until I was brought in as a counselor, and I was given a cabin with seven other kids, and I was the leader for that group. But anyway, we would go up for two weeks prior to the camp opening up so that we could go and get the camp ready. So that when it was time for the campers to come in, everything was set. They'd come in, they were assigned cabins, so we had -- the upper cabins where the older kids were my age and then the lower cabins were where the littler kids were. I think they were under 10, 10 and under. Everybody else was up in my area. There were six upper cabins and six lower cabins. The lower cabins were two cabins and then in this -- there was a center section, and that's where the counselors were. So there was three sets of those two of two, then the upper cabins were all single cabins, and they were all double-bunk beds. You got to know who you were going to be able to have fun with and who you just wanted to let go. So, there were times where we would get together, and we would just masturbate together or touch each other. There was no oral going on, there should've been, but there wasn't. And that went on for about four more years. I started getting up there when I was in late junior high school into high school year. Like I said, I was a camper for two years, and I think it was three or four years I was on staff. The way that I got on staff is because I had gone to the Red Cross and got my swimming certificate as an instructor and how to do a canoe, so I was hired for the waterfront staff. And we went down in the morning, and we would brush our teeth and wash our face in the lake because there was nothing -- you couldn't shower, there was no showers for any of us up there. And then in the evening, you went down to the lake. You had your morning thing and then you would go down again after breakfast and have swimming lessons because you could get your swimming lessons when you learn how to swim. And then you went back again later in the afternoon for an afternoon swim and fun time and then you went back down again, and that's where you took a bath in the lake. That's how we did it back then because there were no showers. But like I said, that went on up until I think the -- my last year was the year after I graduated, and I was -- by that time, I was working. When I graduated from high school, I was working at the Allentown State Hospital. Of course, then, I went into the military, but that's coming later on down the road here. So, the activity was going on for -- every time we went to camp, and there was two guys. When I would go up for the pre-opening season, I would stay either with my friend Art and they -- he lived in Lansford, I never did anything with him. And then his friend Bob who lived in Coaldale, Bob and I would hit, we'd connect, and we would have sex every chance we got. I think from there, I was having -- still having sex with Gene and Nick, and I was also having sex with -- even though I was a newspaper boy and had my own route, we had to have a newspaper boy deliver our newspaper -- go figure why was, but that's how it was -- and that was Frankie. And Frankie and I would get together, and that went on for a while until even after graduation. There was another guy that I went to school with, his name was Jim, and Jim lived in this south side of Allentown, but I would go down because -- and his parents worked, but he had younger brothers. So, I would go down there sometimes on a Friday night during school and stay with him while he was watching his brothers. And then once his brothers were tucked in and were asleep, he and I would get together and have sex. So, I was very, very promiscuous at an early age. From there, I was -- and I started working at the state hospital after I graduated from high school. My mother worked there, she was an LPN, and I got a job there as an orderly, and I was there for -- from '61 until '65 and then I had to go into the military my -- Navy, Navy reserve part. There was a guy that was our -- we had -- on the ward that I worked on, I worked in the male violent ward, but we had a charge nurse, and we had a charge attendant, and the charge attendant's name was Bruce and then there was Jim. Bruce and I were going up to Tamaqua to do something at night. I thought we were going to look for something, I'm not exactly sure what it was, and on the way back, he said, "Let's get some beer," and so we got some beer and parked somewhere, and one thing led to another, and he and I had sex. Bruce was married, as was Jim, and Jim lived in Bethlehem, Bruce lived in Allentown, and there were nights where I would go over to Jim's house. And usually, his wife was up for a while when I would get there because I would see her, but their son was already in bed, who I've never seen, I've never seen his son. And then Jim just started putting the make on me and, oh, okay, let's do this. So that went on for the whole time that I worked there. There was a neighbor in Allentown who was married and really good-looking, and he lived in that apartment complex right across the street, he, his wife and his kid. And he asked me to help him with something down in the basement, which is what I did, and again, one thing led to another, and I said, "You want me to go down on you?" and he said, "Sure," so I seduced the neighbor. I did a lot of seduction in my days. And then I get into the military. Now -- oh, before I go back to the military, all these years from early on to where I was then, it's only been sex with men or boys. I never had sex with a woman, so I was still a virgin, yet. There was a woman that worked at the state hospital, her name was Darlene, and she was a very attractive blonde, young, and was married. And she had asked me, she said she wanted to speak to me, but she wouldn't talk to me there, and did I know a place that was more private that we could go and talk to, and I said, "Yeah.". And so we made arrangements to meet, and I was kind of hesitant, but why not? So, I went to this parking place where I used to go to park with the guys. It was very secluded, and there was never anybody there. And we started talking, and again, one thing led to another, and before you knew it, we're naked, and I was just so excited that something's going to happen with a woman that I was so excited that I had a premature ejaculation. And I thought to myself, ah, this is not the way I want my first encounter with a woman to go. So, we never really did anything, I never penetrated her, let's put it that way, cleaned up and took her back. And then I found out -- this is just before I had gone into the Navy -- that her husband had found out that she was doing something with other people. And if he ever found out who it was, they were dead, and I thought, okay. Like this time now, I'm in the military, I'm gone. I went to boot camp in Philadelphia when they had a boot camp there for the reserves, and nothing happened at boot camp. I was too scared for one thing but not -- but just that what have I gotten myself into? Because I know I didn't want to go into the -- I didn't really go into the Army, and I knew that I wasn't going to be Marine Corps material, and I really didn't know anything about the air force, so I thought I had -- even though I had an uncle who was -- my uncle Abner was in the Army, I had -- my cousin Jimmy was a Navy man, and he looked really good in uniform, but he had nothing there. I had gone for my Army physical ; this is in 1962 because I was already graduated from high school, I was working up to Wilkes-Barre and we went through the whole thing, the written test, you have to do an exam, and then you always a full physical. So, I passed the physical, and I failed the written test. I thought, oh, I'm safe, I'm not going to have to go anywhere. So I said to the person, the recruiter, I said, "Well, I guess that's it," and he says, "Oh, no," he says, "just because you fail the test doesn't mean that -- they'll retest you again and then they'll put you where they want to put you." And I thought, oh, no, I don't really want to go in the Army, and that's when I decided to go in -- well, I came back and I thought, okay, I'm going to join the Navy. Well, we're in the height of Vietnam here, so the quotas for the Navy were full, and like I said, I knew I wasn't Marine Corps material. Air force was -- quota was full, and I know didn't want to go into the Army, I know I didn't want to do that, so somebody said, "Well, why don't you try the Navy reserve?" And at that time, the Navy reserve was over on Vultee and Lehigh Street ; now there's a CVS there. So I went, walked in, and I said what the circumstances were and they says, "Yeah," they says, "there's openings here. We can test you now and then if then if you pass the test, we can bring you back in the evening, get your physical exam, and we can swear you in that same night." This is all done in Tuesday. So I took the exam, I scored like 30 points higher than what I had in the other one. So I went back that night, I got my physical exam, and I was sworn in, and that was either September or October of 1963. And I stayed there for 30 years, so I did, but most the time was in the reserves, but then I had several years of active duty, I retired in 1993. I had gone to boot camp, which I mentioned earlier, come back, and did some time at the reserve center, and then I went for two weeks -- it's actually three weeks, and I was still working at the state hospital. My first ship that I went on was the sub tender in Key West, the USS Bushnell, and I went down with our commanding officer and two other guys and so there's four of us, we all took turns driving down and driving back, and I still hadn't -- I still was not given a billet, what am I going to do? Well, I was an orderly at the state hospital, so there's medical there, and fortunately when I was -- did the written test, I had qualified to be a yeoman. A yeoman really is a clerk, clerk duties ; I thought, I don't want to do paperwork and that stuff. One of the lieutenants that was in the unit was a -- not physical therapist -- was a therapist at the hospital, and I used to talk to him. I said, "Is there any way that I can become a corpsman?" because that's really what I wanted to do. And they said, "Well, you're --" I didn't have enough points to qualify, point-wise, but he did a letter of recommendation as did the commanding officer, and they accepted that. So, I get into my A school, which was in a Great Lakes at the station there. So, in '65, I go to Great Lakes for my A school and still not having any sex with anybody. I met Alan, and he and I became good friends, and we went into Chicago one Sunday, we had gotten a room or it was Saturday. Saturday, went into Chicago, got a room for the weekend, and bingo, we had -- he's the first person I had sex with, and that went on while we were in our A school, then you graduate from A school and you're going to go somewhere. So, he got stationed at the Naval Hospital in St. Albans in New York, and I get stationed at the naval hospital in Philadelphia, so there was still a distance there. And I was in Philly for -- I was there for about six months or so and then I had gotten orders to go to Gulfport, Mississippi, to the CBs, that's the construction unit of the Navy. But while I was in Philadelphia, there were several gay bars that I would go to. I didn't go with anybody else because nobody knew. Back then if you knew, you were out. If somebody outed you, and you were court-martialed, you were out, and you lost everything, so I was secretive about my sexual activity. But there were a couple of bars that we'd go to. There was the Allegro, there was the Zebra, there was the bus -- Bike Stop, there was a lot of bars there. There still are in Philly, but I don't go to Philly. So, I now go to Gulfport. Now, there was a guy in my A school in Great Lakes, and his name was David, the same as mine, and he and I were vying for the same guy that I wound up getting, so we were kind of like at odds with each other while we were there. I don't know where David went. Like I said, I went to Philadelphia, and Ron went to St. Albans. So, I get down to Gulfport, Mississippi, and I'm checking in, and the first person that meets me is David, and I'm thinking, oh, no, this is not going to go well because we didn't like each other. Well, as it turned out, we became best friends -- again, David and I never did anything -- we said, "Hey, it's all water over the dam, this is a brand-new start, okay." I had a friend that lived in Quakertown who had moved to New Orleans, Louisiana. He was gay, and his daughter he was gay, and she opened up a -- what she called a Christmas store. All year-round it was Christmas stuff like ornaments and knickknacks and all that that crap that we have lying around all over the place. Anyway, so I knew that he was down there, and I contacted him, and I said, "Hey, I'm at Gulfport at the base, what's going on in New Orleans?" because I had never been there, and he says, "Come on down." So, I went down, and I stayed with him, and he had a couple of roommates, again nothing with them, and they were older than I was. He showed me around to the different bars and, oh my God, it was like whole new world, yes it was just -- you had sex everywhere. You could go to a bar and grab a drink whether it was a bottle of beer, or it was a margarita or whatever, and you could leave with it and go to another bar, you could drink on the streets in there. I guess that's how New Orleans was and still is to my knowledge. I haven't been there in -- for a very long time, but... So, I did my tour. My unit went, did a tour in Vietnam for a year, so my... I had two guys that were in my unit that I was hooking up with, and David had his own guys that he was with and so we never -- we stayed friends that way. There was Benny, and he was a good old southern boy, and there was Joe, and he was a badass, and he was from Pittsburgh. I mean they were both secretive about what was going on, but Joe was really -- he was more of a risk taker, and we almost got caught once or twice, but it was all smoothed out. But Benny was the one that I really, really liked. My time with the unit was almost up, and I was going to be shipped back home. The unit still had another I think, like two months or so before the whole unit was coming back. I said to Benny, I says, "I really like you, and I'd like to stay in." He says, "I like you too, but when I get home, I'm going to get married, I'm going to have a family, and this is all going to be behind me." He says, "This is -- it was good while we were here, and we had fun," and he says, "I love the way you work my body and --" which was -- made me happy but. So, I said, "Okay," so home I came, got off active duty, went back into the reserves. I stayed with the CB unit just about my entire 30 years with the exception of my A school and my time in Philadelphia, the naval hospital, and a year and a half with all the medical MASH unit, everything was with the CBs. And by that time, we had had -- Don't Ask, Don't Tell was in place, so a lot of the guys knew, suspected that I was gay, but nothing was ever discussed. I know, I know that when I was in Vietnam, the group of us that were gay hung around together, and everybody knew that we were gay, the commanding officer knew that we were gay. But because the job that we did was important, we didn't flaunt our sexuality, and as long as we did what we were there to do, who cares what you are. I mean we had one guy, and he was the commanding officer's personal driver, so whenever he had this -- he had to go somewhere off the base, he was the one. He was the only one that was discharged -- not for being gay. He had contracted sexually transmitted disease six times while he was in country. Two is it, and he overlooked that, they said, "That's it, you're out." So he was the only one that was discharged for -- and not even being gay but for having that many sexual transmitted diseases in the time that we were there, so... But in the time that I was in country, you were given a week of what's called R&amp ; R, rest and recreation, so I decided to go to Japan for my R&amp ; R. Me and my other friend, we went together, we shared a room, and he was gay also, but we didn't do anything, and he was from Connecticut. We went to this bar, a bunch of us, and all of a sudden, all these women are lined up behind us in the bar, and they all come over to each one of us that was there and picked us up. They were hookers, so okay, that wasn't my plan, but I went home with this Japanese woman, I believe her name was Judith, she had an American name, Judith, spoke very good English and also very good Japanese. But I thought, okay, one night ; I was with her for five days. She hid my clothing ; I was naked the whole time I was there. We had so much sex, I was -- I hate saying it, but I was sore, I was sore, (laughs) and I know I needed to get back because I had to get back to my unit. Fortunately, she had to go out and do -- meet somebody or something and so I was able to retrieve my clothing, got myself dressed, and got the hell out of there, and I got back to the hotel that I paid for that I didn't have any time to spend there, so... The other crazy thing about that incident is also that her pimp lived in the same apartment building but on a different floor, and he wanted... Of course I paid her yen or however much it was, and he wanted to learn how to play poker. I know some poker but not very good at it, so I'm teaching what I know, and of course, I'm winning, so I got all my money back. (laughs) That's just a side story for that, so... So that was my real first, full sexual encounter with a woman. It was good, I'm not going to say it wasn't, it was good, it was different, but it was good. So now I'm back in country, and we're out on patrol, and this little village that we were going to, some of the guys that were within patrol wanted to get laid. So they find a whole bunch of willing women and says, "Come on, Doc, come on Doc, get in this, get in this too," so I went, "ah, I really don't want to." But I did get this one girl -- woman, a Vietnamese woman, and we went into her hut, and I gave her some money, and I says, "I don't want to have sex," so she was okay with that. We just laid there, we cuddled with each other and talked, and I think she was fine with that -- we didn't do anything -- and I was definitely fine with that. So that was my sexual encounters there in country and in there. So, I come back, and now, the wild days are starting, and I am back at the state hospital and then these two women came in from Northampton County Community College and did an in-service for the orderlies, because we were considered orderlies, about a new program that were starting up with the college of nursing program, a two-year nursing, and was anybody interested. So I thought, why not? I went to nursing school. That was from '68 to '70. I was the first male to graduate from the nursing program, and I got a job at St. Luke's. I was the first male nurse to work in labor and delivery. I was there for 65 deliveries, three sets of twins, and a set of triplets. One of my best friends who happens to be a lesbian, her name is Froggy, and then she would not care if I'm using her name or not, she's still in the area here. She wanted to have a baby, and she got pregnant, and I was there to help deliver her daughter [Tanya?], and Tanya is a grandmother, which means that Froggy is a great-grandmother. This could be another story maybe for another time, unless we have time during this time, but how I met Froggy, that's another interesting story, which I may get to because it happened in Atlantic City, which I haven't even gotten to yet, so... And that's where this is taking me now. The early days for me of gay life really occurred after I had come out. So, my coming-out story is -- I graduated from William Allen High School in 1961. My best friend there was Tommy, and Tommy is -- unfortunately, he is dead, and there was a tragic story for that too, that's another story. But he and I would eat lunch every day together, it didn't matter if it was snowing out or raining out, we would sit on [Mrs. Souter's?] porch at 17th and Linden Street. The place is still there, but I think she's long gone. Anyway, so we graduate, I go to work at the state hospital, Tommy goes to work for what was then the Globe-Times newspaper in Bethlehem. And he calls me up, and says, he and a friend Eddie were at this bar in New York, and they thought that I would like it and would like to go sometime. I said, "Yeah, sure." So, we made arrangements, they picked me up after work, we went up to New York City, we get out into the Village. The name of the bar was the Cherry Lane, it was in an alley. The place is no more, also another tragic thing there, that place burned down. But you went into the bar, and it was very dimly lit, a long bar, a lot of people, mostly men, in fact I think it was all men, but it's just not clicking with at the time. And I'm hearing the music and -- but I don't see a jukebox anywhere around. So, there was a big, dark velvet curtain that was alongside of the bar, and if you paid two dollars more, you could go behind the curtain, and you could dance. So, we paid our two dollars, we'd go back, people are dancing, again the guys. Still, it's not resonating with me. Duh, I'm still naïve, and we're having a good time. We're dancing together, guys are dancing with guys, guys are dancing by themselves, just really good. So, we leave, and on our way home, Tommy says to me, "Well, how'd you like the bar?" I said, "Oh," I said, "it was really fun," I said, "we should come back again." He says, "You know it was a gay bar," and I thought, okay, what did they know about me? Did somebody say something, or did I say something or whatever, I had no idea, I said, "Oh, okay." So back in Allentown, we used to get together Fridays and Saturday nights, right, Eddie, me, and Tommy. Sometimes Tommy would drive, sometimes Eddie would drive, sometimes I would drive depending, whatever it was. And we would just be cruising down Hamilton Street and up and around the streets, just doing the loop because that time Hamilton Street. -- up and around the streets just doing the loop because at the time Hamilton Street was both ways as were all the other side streets and that. So we had parked the car, and we were walking at Ninth and Hamilton where Hess is, Hess Brothers used to be. And they had these huge windows -- display windows and, oh, the mannequins in there, and it was always whatever time or the season it was, that's what they were dressed up for. So we're looking at the windows, and we're posing like the mannequins in there, doing goofy stuff, and across the street was this restaurant, it was called Rube's. It was the only Chinese restaurant in town, and it was owned by a Jewish man, (laughs) best Chinese you'd get anywhere other than Chinatown. And these two women were over there in front of the place, and they're yelling at us, "Hey, what are you guys doing?" and we said, "Oh, no, stuff, just fooling around." They said, "Hey, you want to come into the bar?" and we said, "No, we're not 21 yet." And that was the reason why we went to New York because you could drink at 18, so we were old enough to drink in New York but not in Pennsylvania. And we said, "No, no," we said, "we're not 21," they said, "Ah, don't worry, we can get you in, not a problem." So, in we go, and they introduce us to all of their friends, and all of their friends were gay, and we thought, oh, this is good. And Beverly said, "Well, welcome to Rube's, it's the gayest spot in town," and it was the gayest spot in town because at nine o'clock every night when Hess is closed, everybody congregated in Rube's, and a lot of the male workers were gay, and that was the only place they could go, so that's how it was. So, I had met my friend, Ron -- I'm not sure if Ron's alive or not yet -- another stunning guy, and I went home with him, and oh -- well, anyway. But not that night, that was another time. So, we leave the bar, I go home, I'm living -- at this time, I'm living with my grandparents because I'm kind of estranged from my mother. We had an outing, and I didn't want to -- even though we still worked at the same place, I didn't see her, she really didn't see me. I go home, I'd go into my bedroom, I took all my clothing off, I stepped in front of the full-length mirror, and I said, "Welcome, you're gay," and I never looked back. It's who I am today, so I accepted the fact that that's who -- I knew there was a reason why I like boys, men, it's who I like, yeah. That's my outing of how I -- two straight women, but three of us out. I'm still friends with Eddie ; Eddie is still alive, Eddie is a little older than I am, and he lives in Quakertown with two other older friends of mine that are friends of his. I see them every once a while, but I get emails every once in a while, from Eddie. So now, we have... I'm out of the military, and this is before or -- this is just prior to me going into nursing school. Let me jump back a little bit. There was a bar on Six Street -- on Sixth Street in Allentown between Hamilton and Linden, it was called The 23 Bar. A lot of people went there, but it was mostly women and mostly lesbians then. Three of the women that I worked with at the hospital were lesbians. One, her name was [Ronnie?], again I don't know if she's alive or now, she -- if she's alive, she's got to be in her eighties or nineties. The first time I seen Ronnie at the hospital, I thought Ronnie was a guy. Oh, my God, I mean I looked at this person, and I immediately got aroused. I thought, oh, wow, this guy is so freaking good-looking, so... [Gina?], who was the other lesbian, now her sister also worked at the hospital, and she was a nurse, but Gina was an orderly, and she said, "Let's go to the -- let's go to The 23 after work." So we went to The 23, and who's in there but Ronnie. I said to Gina, I says, "Oh, my God, who is that guy? He is so good-looking." And she said, "David, he's a lesbian," I says, "No," I was so brought down, but anyway. So that was that bar and then you had Rube's where the guys went. Now, I'm out of the military, and prior to starting nursing school, there was a new bar that was opening up, and it was called The Rendezvous, which was The 23 Bar, and I think I had mentioned that you before. And [Larry John?] who is deceased, he and a friend of him who was a German and spoke very little English, opened up this bar because we needed something more than Rube's, right? So, he opened up this -- the bar, and he asked me because he knew I knew how to dance and stuff like that. He says, "I want to have some entertainment in here, and I'd like to have like a go-go boy-type thing to bring in patrons," so he said, "Are you interested?," and I said, "Yeah, yeah." The pay wasn't great, but tips were good. And I got to tell you that he had been involved with -- one, two, three, four -- four different bars, okay. Every bar that he had, that he had me work at, he had sex with me on the bar after the place closed, and so... So I said, "Yeah," so I was the go-go boy, and I was the first go-go boy in Allentown when that stuff was starting to get up because you had the go-go girl dancers and all this other, but you didn't have guys doing that stuff. And then if there was guys, they were in the straight bars where a lot of the women would go, almost like the Chippendale type thing, but I wasn't stripping. So, he had that bar for a while and then the co-owner, the German guy decided that he didn't want to be any part of this, so he got out of the business. So somehow, Larry gets hooked up with the owners of what was then the LeHiKhai, and that was on Hamilton Street between Eighth and Ninth -- no, Ninth and 10th, Ninth and 10th, and he asked me to go-go up there, which is what I did. Now the pay was increasing a little more, and the tips were really good too, and then he again had sex with me there after it closed. And then now around '69 or so is when you had the Stonewall riots in New York. So he decided that he wanted to do something to keep the spark alive of the bar, so he -- and now he has a partner, Frank, and they open up the Stonewall on 10th Street, the Moose Lodge, that's what it was, the Moose Lodge, four floors. The top floor was apartments, the... There was the bar, and then there was the Moose Lounge, and then above that was the apartments. So you had the basement, he converted -- the basement had a bowling alley in it, and he converted that into a bar. He wanted it to be like a leather-type bar for bikers and that stuff. Well, it lasted for maybe a year and a half, two years, and that fizzled out. Then you had the regular bar where you would come in, then the second floor was the Moose Lounge with a big bar and then a dining area because they used to do breakfast after the bar closed. And then you would go-go up, and there was a go-go -- you could go-go upstairs or you could go-go on the main floor, either in the corner of the bar or they had -- they also had a stage where the deejay was, and money was really good. Of course, the bar closes, Larry has sex with me there. I lose touch with Larry after X amount of years, and so let me revert back. So from that time prior to all of that, we now have Atlantic City. Atlantic City was exciting ; It was like another version prior to me going to -- well no, I take that back. Atlantic City to me was like the New Orleans of the East Coast, right? The gay life down there was so much fun. Now I had graduated from nursing school, I'm working where I'm working, and I was living with a friend of mine who just passed away four months ago, he was older than me. I lived with him for 10 years, again nothing between the two of us, but I thought of myself as a whore, he was a real whore, let me tell you. He would pick up -- there was a place in Pembroke, it was called the [Rainbow Luncheonette?]. It was a straight place, it was owned by a married couple, an older couple, and they had pinball machines in there, and a lot of young guys would come in there. And we were in there one night, it was him and me, and he -- we called him Mother Vern. He drove only Lincolns, big Lincolns. His parents lived in Freemansburg ; they're gone. And so he would pile in all these kids in his car, and we'd drive down to his parents' house. His parents were in bed, they were very sound sleepers, we'd be entertaining all these guys in the kitchen. Vern would be in the living room with one, he'd finish with that one, and he'd yell, "Next." The next one would go in. He did all 10 guys in one night, I didn't do any of them, I was just -- I was the entertainment. But I said we lived together for 10 years until I moved, and that was in 1980 when I moved from where we lived to the Trailer Court, which is another part but we would go... Now I was no longer working at the hospital, I was working for Olin Corporation in their medical department. And Memorial Day weekend, Fourth of July weekend, and Labor Day weekend were our weekends in Atlantic City. We would go the day before the weekend started, and we would come back the day after the weekend was over, and we would stay at different places down there. Mostly the travel lodges where you had your own kitchen and that little dining area and two beds and a shower and all that good stuff, balcony. We would go down there, and we would get all set up, we get changed around, go out to what was -- the first bar we would go to would be the Lark Inn. The Lark Inn was right on New York Avenue, but it was right off the Boardwalk. It was the first bar if you were coming off of the Boardwalk, and New York would be on the left-hand side. And above the Lark Inn was the Cell Block, that was the leather bar. But you would go in there, and it was just -- it was almost like a peanut bar. They had big things with peanuts, and you put it and you just throw the shells on the floor and that stuff. So, we would go in there, we'd have a drink ; I'd have a beer, he'd have a highball. And then he would go his way, and I would go my way. And there were weekends when we were down there, we didn't see each other at all until it was time to go home because he was after the young ones, okay, and I was the dance queen. I needed to hit the discos and all that good stuff. Also, the Lark Inn was the place to go to for tea dance after the beach. Everybody was -- the place was packed, and they had stadium seating in the back, then they had the dance floor, then you had the bar and the peanuts, and all that other good stuff, so... But that's what we would do. And then I would go either to the M&amp ; M disco, and I'd be dancing there for -- till maybe 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, and then I'd leave there and I would go to the Grand Hotel. The Grand Hotel had -- for lack of better words, it was like a porno shop, movie house, and you paid five bucks, you could stay long as you want. You'd go in, and to the left was like a corral where you just stand around and guys will be having sex standing up, somebody would be on their knees, or whatever. And then to the right was like a theater -- seats and then a huge screen. They'd be showing porn 24 hours, it didn't matter, 24 hours. And then to the back, there was lofts, there was three levels of lofts with cushions, and big cushions and pillows. And you could go up, and that's usually -- I went up there, and I'd lay down, and I'd be naked, and guys would come up and just have sex with me or I have sex with them, you could smoke pot. I wasn't introduced to poppers there. I was introduced to poppers with the first black man that I had sex with, and that was in The Drake Hotel. But anyway, so I would be in there for a good 24 hours, didn't eat, didn't do anything, just have sex. I'd come out, and it's daylight, I thought, oh, my God. That didn't happen all the time, but some of the times, we would go -- we'd go to the bars together and then we'd go to dinner. We would take food with us, and we could cook in our area. If you're looking down New York Avenue from the Boardwalk, on the left side was the Lark Inn and the Cell Block. You went down, and there was Ruby's. Now Ruby's was kind of like a drag show bar, and the bartender just happened to be Larry. So he says, "Oh my God," and we're talking and that, and I said to him, I said, "I need to go to the bathroom," he says, "Well, I'll show you where it's at." So he took me back, he had to and I had to, it was like a thing, but then that was that one. And then you went down, further down the street, and you had on the same side, left side, you had the Cameo. Cameo was a hotel, restaurant, disco. They had the original stainless steel dance floor, ah, it was wild, and they had an in-ground pool. It was the only one in the area that had an in-ground pool, and then next to that was the Grand Hotel, which was a hotel, and then the porn shop. On the other side of the street looking down again from the Boardwalk was the Chez Paree. The Chez was three or four stories, and they had a dance floor that would raise up to all three levels, it was pretty cool, and that was the lesbian disco. That's where I met Froggy, okay ; I won't go into that story. And then you go down a little further on the side was the Saratoga. The Saratoga was -- they had the laser beam, the show, and then you went to the Holiday House, which is one of the places that we would stay. It was just a room and then you had a communal bathroom, you didn't have a private bath in that. And then the Rendezvous that was two floors. The downstairs was a big bar with just people just milling around, then you went upstairs, and there's another nice-sized bar, but it was more quiet up there. The music was downstairs ; there was no music upstairs. And then at the end of that block of New York and Atlantic Avenue was [Corn Finds?]. That was the restaurant that was open 24 hours, and they had served the best breakfast, and it was cheap. It was like two bucks for bacon, eggs, and all that, whatever you wanted. Now, if you're next to where Ruby's was on the left side, it was called Snake Alley, and you went that way, and on the right-hand side was Luisa's. Luisa's was a piano bar that was really more for the older crowd, which would be my age now. So if you were young and good-looking and you went in there, your drinks were always free. And then down a little further on the same side as Luisa's was the Frat House. That was a house-type thing for college kids, college guys that were gay that stayed there, and across the street was The Drake Hotel, but it was the back entrance for the M&amp ; M Disco. You walk in through there, mirror just all over the place, and then you went to the piano bar first, and then if you took a right and went down some steps, then you went into the disco, dance floor area. It wasn't a huge place, but that's where they had the fog machines, so sometimes you couldn't see who you were dancing with, and it really got... But part of that was the hotel itself, The Drake Hotel, and that was a very cruisy area. My first experience with poppers -- and for those who may not know what poppers are, they're something that you inhale, and it gives you an instant high. And it's something that you do on the dance floor to make your dancing more intense, or if you're having sex, to make your orgasm really out there. So, it was the day that we were leaving, but it was earlier, it was early in the afternoon. We usually didn't leave there till about 5:00 or 6:00 at night. And I'm walking through the hall, cruising the halls and this tall, black -- sorry, this tall black man spots me, and he says, "Hey, you, come here," so I thought, okay. So I went into the room with him, and we're having sex. And he knows that I'm getting very close to climax, and he breaks these ampoules because it was -- that's what they were at that time, they were ampoules, and he stuck one on one nose and one at the other, he's not taking it, deep breath, and I went [inhales], and -- I didn't think I was ever going to stop coming, sorry. It was just so intense, and that was the first black man that I had -- ever had sex with, it was great, it was fun. So, then we come home, but -- oh, and then off of Atlantic Avenue in the alley -- I can't remember what the name of the alley was -- was a place called the Brass Rail. That was the true lesbian bar. You couldn't get in there if you were a guy, it was girls only, girls only, so, which is fine, I mean I'm a girl, so. So that was really Atlantic City. There were some other little places here or there that you could go to, but basically, everything was concentrated in that, on New York Avenue -- New York Avenue and Kentucky Avenue. And then that all went down the hill when Trump opened up his casino, so all gay life -- the last bar that closed was -- actually was the Brass Rail, and they only closed maybe two years ago. It's either prior to or right in the first year of COVID it got closed, so there is nothing, nothing there anymore but, uh... Everything then moved to Rehoboth, I mean Rehoboth is nice, but there really isn't anything going on in Rehoboth, hardly anymore, which is sad. So that's the Atlantic City story. I was working at Olin, I worked at Olin from '72 to '87, and we all lost our jobs because the company was sold to somebody else, and they didn't want to keep any of us, so... At the time I was working there, I -- now all these times I was still in the reserves because I didn't retire until '93. I would go to military events, but I always took a woman with me, and then of course, the women that we went with me were lesbians, so, and they were always the -- what we called the lipstick lesbians, the glamorous, all that stuff. Sorry, I don't mean to offend anybody, but that's how it was back then. So one of the women that I worked with at Olin, her name is Donna, and she had a partner who eventually became my wife but... So she would go to these different things, but they got laid off and then they moved from Allentown to Delaware, and then from Delaware they moved to -- back to New York because my ex-wife was originally from New York. Donna is from -- it's either Pottstown or Pottsville ; I always get those two mixed up. Anyway to make a long story short, I am now -- I have now moved out of Mother Vern's house, and I am living in Terre Hill, the trailer park ; I became trailer trash. But the reason I moved there was because I was dating a guy who was the bartender at The Rendezvous in Atlantic City. His name was Don, and I thought this is going to be great, wow, I'm finding somebody, it's going to be good because all these years was just willy-nilly. And it just turned out to be not a good situation, so -- I don't want to get into that. So here I am, I have a trailer that I thought was going to be for the both of us, and now it's just me. January twenty-third, two days from now, I was at -- Froggy's grandmother had died, and I was one of the pallbearers, so I was with her all the afternoon till the early evening. And I said I needed to go because I was going to this Christmas party because at that point, I was starting to pledge for a leather club, and it was the Reading Railmen that were out of Reading, and it was being hosted by a friend of mine, Steve. So, I went home, I get changed around, and I go to Steve's place, and he lived at 16th and Turner in an apartment building. He had the second and third floor, but you had to get his place on the side and you slung. So, I ring the bell, I open up the door, and there's this cute guy standing at the top of the stairs. I didn't think anything, just that he was cute. So, I went up and said hello to him and then I went and put my coat where it had to go and start milling around. I get myself a drink and then I ran into my friend Kevin who I had known for -- since he was a teenager, and he was there with his boyfriend at the time Michael. Kevin had worked at the Hotel Traylor prior to that. I'm not sure where he was working at the time that I met him, he wasn't working there anymore when they had a restaurant there, and Michael worked in Philadelphia somewhere, but anyway. So they introduced me to this guy that was there at the top of the stairs, his name was Will, and I thought, okay. So I talked to him for a little bit and then I went to mill around again. Now there was another guy there, his name was Keith -- no, Kenneth, Kenneth. He was quite drunk, and he was coming through the narrow hallway, and Will was still standing at the same spot as he was, and this guy bumps into him, spills his drink all over Will. So I see this, I said, oh, this poor guy. So I went and I got some towels and some paper towels, I brought it to him and helped pat him down and got rid of that stuff, and I started talking. I got him a fresh drink, because his drink was spilled too, and myself a drink, and we started talking. And I said, "If you're not doing anything, if you want to come home, come home," and he did to the trailer park. That was January 23, 1981, and he never left. When I met him, he was working for what was then the Holiday Inn out on 309 and 78. I'm not sure what it is now, but anyway, he was working as a painter, and he was quite a drinker and quite the druggie. And I had just gotten over -- January seventh, I had gone into the hospital for a hemorrhoid operation, okay, so I had all kinds of drugs in the house that were not helping me. The only thing that was helping me was pot, and I didn't have any pot, but anyway. So he started taking some of the drugs, but anyway, he wiped out my entire drug thing and all the alcohol that I had too, but of course, I was a drinker back then too. So we were there at the trailer from '81 until '84. And my mother had to move from where she was, I'm talking about -- by this time I'm back with -- I'm okay with my mother, we're friends, and all this other good stuff. Because the landlady where she lived had died, and she needed to go somewhere, so I said, "Well, we're looking for house, so we found a house," I said, "you can have the trailer if you want it." So we moved us out into where -- the house that I still have, we moved my mother into the trailer, and the rest was history from there on, but she was there until 1987. Now, my ex-wife prior to her being my wife, we had gone to a couple of military functions, and we had, over the course of those years, intercourse. I guess I was kind of in a bisexual phase, I don't know. So, anyway that being said, December 21, 1987, Will gets a phone call from my mother to wish him a happy birthday, we were having a birthday dinner at the house, and she hung up, and we started eating dinner. We're just about finished dinner and then I got -- I was on the phone with somebody else -- I don't know if it was somebody else -- and I get an interruption from an operator saying you have an emergency phone call from the woman that lived down below, the trailer girl who was friends with my mother. So I talked to her, I said, "What's up?" She says, "There's something wrong with your mother, what should I do?" I said, "Well, call 911, I mean, duh," which she did and I said, "I'll be right out." So we flew out, and by the time I got there, she was gone, but she was the last person that talked to Will on his birthday. And that's still difficult for me because I lost her, and of course, I lost my husband, but... So I didn't know what to do, and I had called my ex-wife and said, "I need help, I've never had to do any of this before." So she came down from New York. She had a job that she could -- she worked for an insurance company, so she was able to do what she needed to do. So she came down, and she was with me for -- getting the arrangements and the lawyer and all that good stuff, the funeral, and she went back on Christmas Eve. We buried my mother on Christmas Eve and then her and Donna were coming down for New Year's Eve, to spend New Year's Eve with us, which is what they did. And Will was a smoker, a cigarette smoker, and had run out cigarettes, so he and Donna went to the store to get cigarettes and some more booze. I had just gotten out of the shower, and Betsy had given me a bottle of Calvin Klein Obsession, which I loved, loved. So I put some on, and I'm still not dressed yet, and she comes over to me and puts her hands under my robe and gets me all excited, and she drops her pants, and we had sex under the Christmas tree. So we got cleaned up just in time for them to come back, and we had New Year's Eve, okay. Mid-January, she calls me, and she says, "I'm late." I said, "Yeah, late for what?" She says, "I'm late." I said, "Oh, you're late?" She said, "Yes." "What do you want to do?" I said. "I don't know" because we had -- the four of us had talked about having kids and a family and who was going to do what. So I said to her, "Well, let's get married," which is what we did. We had a military wedding, a full military wedding at the Chapel at Lakehurst, the naval base. We were only supposed to have a total of a hundred people there, but it wound up that I was there -- it happened that I was there. Our wedding was on our -- a weekend that my drill unit was there, and they all knew that I was getting married, and they all crashed the party, (inaudible) not the wedding but the reception stuff, but anyway, all is -- it was -- all is well. The only thing that I had to pay for was the rings, the marriage license, that was it. Her sister and her brother-in-law paid for the entire wedding, the food, open bar, everything, and the honeymoon, the entire honeymoon crew or the whole wedding party went to Atlantic City for our honeymoon. Betsy and I had the bridal suite for the honeymoon suite and then Donna and Will were going to have the other room. Well, my ex-wife didn't want to have anything to do with the bridal suite ; the deed had already been done. So Will and I had the bridal suite, a big, heart-shaped, bubble the --ah, God, it was so gaudy -- and they had that, so... We met down in the -- at the -- we were -- we sit at the casino, and I can't remember what the name of the casino was, it wasn't Trump's. But my ex-wife and Donna wanted to go gamble -- well, Donna really didn't want to go gambling, but she went to gamble, so they went to gamble, and Will and I went to the bars, so... That was how that happened. MF: We're at 90 minutes if you can believe it, and so this is typically where we'd start to wind down in the interview. I think we have a lot more to talk about, and perhaps we should schedule a second interview. DM: Oh, okay. MF: But I don't want to stop you abruptly. So we've talked about a kind of first, maybe even the half of your life. And before we close the interview today, I'm just wondering if there's anything about what you've shared so far -- and we'll do a second interview, so we'll get into more it -- DM: Okay. MF: -- but if there's anything about what you've shared so far, that you thought, oh, I wish I would've shared this or I missed this story. And I just want to give you the opportunity to -- DM: I need to go back -- MF: -- have something that you feel is really pertinent to what you shared so far? DM: Oh. ANTHONY DALTON: While you're doing that I'm going to switch this card out real quick just in case. MF: Okay. So we'll just -- DM: What we may need to redo is when I -- when I looked at myself in the full-length mirror, I said, "Hello world, I'm gay," that's what I wanted to say, and I don't think I've said that. MF: I love that story so much. And what a powerful coming-out story because of -- it's not in the public way. I mean certainly you were out in a public way at the bars and with your friends and then with Will. But what a personal coming-out story, like to see yourself and this is me. DM: This is me, yeah. I didn't look back and I just -- I'm me, take me as I am. MF: Yeah. DM: Well I didn't get to talk about my first love after my uncle's death, and that would've been Robert. MF: Do you want to share some about Robert now before we close the interview? DM: Yeah, we can, yeah, because I -- yeah, we can do that if we want to. MF: Okay. DM: What I really wanted to talk about also was my first love -- my other first love between my uncle and William, and that was Robert. I met Robert in the bathroom of Arner's Diner, which was in Allentown. The diner is still the diner, but it's not in the spot that it was originally. It's now at the corner of Ninth and Linden, and I think it's the city something or other. But anyway, we had been in Rube's, and after Rube's closed, the only places you'd go to was the diner, otherwise you went home because there was no bookstores or anything like that at that time. So we went to the diner, and I was -- I had gone into the bathroom, and my friend Tony was in with Robert, they were talking, there was nothing going on between them. But he introduced me to Robert because he didn't introduce me to him at the bar at Rube's because it's -- Rube's is where we were all at. And I looked at Robert, and Robert looked at me, and -- now it was just the two of us. His hands went right down my pants, and my hands went down his pants. I thought, oh my God, this is a Marine, and he is so good-looking. So I wound up taking him home because he didn't have a car because he was still in the Marines. We had mad, passionate sex in the back seat of my car in front of his mother's house. (laughs) And we were together for almost seven years and then he had finished his tour and came home and had gone to -- there was a business school in Easton at the time, I can't remember what the name of it, but it was a business school. And he decided this was not the career path that he wanted to go on, he wanted to go back into the military. So he asked me if I would take him down to Washington, DC, because he was going to re-up again, and I said, "You're choosing the Marines over me?" and he said, "Sorry." So I dropped him off, I cried all the way home, went to see some friends, and they were consoling me, and I thought, oh -- I was just so down. I didn't talk to him for a while and then I had heard because then he was -- he went back to Vietnam, and he is the recipient of three Purple Hearts. He should be dead, should've been dead, not that I'm wishing that, but he made it through. We are best friends now, and I remind him all the time, Bobby we've been together 60 years. He has a husband who is Mexican, lives in Palm Springs, so I go out to Palm Springs every year during -- usually the first week of November because it's the last Pride in the United States for the year was in Palm Springs, and I stay with he and his husband. Will and I when we were married, we were married in their living room. He is my best friend, he is going through -- he has prostate cancer and Agent Orange, and he is still going through chemo treatments for over 10 years. He goes every other Monday for chemo. He is the only living member of his clinical trial group that's still alive, and they don't know why he's still alive, so... But I love Robert to death, and he loves me. We talk at least once a week on the phone, and he wants to come back to visit because he has not been to -- he was not able to get back here for his mother's funeral years ago, but he wants to go back for that and go up to New York and do some traveling there but... So I'd just like to leave with that for now. MF: Wonderful. Well, I want to say for the day, David, thank you so much. It's so wonderful to hear your stories today. I'm so grateful that you took the time, and I can't wait for our next interview. Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=