Perry Brass: Lost Gay New York: Love at First Sight & The Walk Between the East & West Village

Peter Orlovsky & Allen Ginsberg, mid-60s.By Richard Avedon 

About six weeks after I moved into Jerry Borensky’s apartment in the East Village (still trying very hard to escape Borensky’s constant efforts to get into 19-year-old pants), I was at Julius’s one very packed Friday night. Suddenly from the depth of the crowd in the back of the bar, a young man emerged uttering the oldest pick-up line in the human race:

“Don’t I know you from some place?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. I looked at him. He was about six-foot-one, handsomely built, with very sweet regular features, blue-green eyes, dark silky hair, and a deep voice. I didn’t care where he knew me from; I smiled and he smiled back. But his next question was more direct.

“Can I go home with you?”

I did a slight double-take. I was used to men trying to pick me up—when you’re nineteen and been sneaking into gay bars since you were seventeen, you expect it. But this was fast. He was slightly older than I, maybe twenty-three.

I just shrugged. “Sure.”

So we left Julius’s, and I realized that I didn’t know his name, so he told me.

 
“Dick.”