By Perry Brass
It was 1966. I was 19 years old, and my roommate, Bob Schwiller, 42, introduced me to two of his best friends, a 30-something gay couple named Larry and Pete. Larry was beefy, butch, and loud. He was also a body builder. I had never met a gay body builder before. Ever. At that time, you didn’t see guys with muscles in the bars. You saw a lot of what we used to call “cologne queens” in cashmere sweaters and slacks, or even occasionally “hair fairies,” guys with teased, bleached or dyed hair parading down the street, especially in the Village. Hair fairies were the poster boys of fruitdom: they were blatant, wild, outrageous, and their prodigy, the street queens who’d riot at Stonewall a few years later, were actually a milder version of them. Street queens often could fake it as girls, but hair fairies were not trying to be women; they were outrageously, wildly gay.
I knew some hair fairies in California, the kind who rarely appeared in daylight, and made a living selling drugs or themselves in the dark to horny closet cases. But Larry was one of the first muscle queens I’d ever met; as you can imagine, he fascinated and attracted me. He appeared at Bob’s apartment off Central Park West (stylishly decorated: walls painted bright Venetian Red; plaster details accentuated in gold paint) in a tight white T-shirt, his glossy dark hair slicked back, James Dean-style. A pack of cigarettes was tucked into his rolled left shirt sleeve, displaying a large smooth bicep.
“May!” he called out. Bob’s pet name was May. “I needa cuppa coffee, Schwiller!”
