Not om Unrground: Gay Tale’s Office | The New Yorker

Contents:

• GAY TALE
• GAY TALE: A MAN OF RERD
• GAY TALE: WRER, SCRAPBOOKER
• NOT OM UNRGROUND: GAY TALE’S OFFICE
• GAY TALE’S OTHER PROBLEM
• ONE ON 1: NEW YORK LERARY GIANT GAY TALE
• GAY TALE DEFENDS ‘THE VOYR’S MOTEL’ AFTER SOURCE IS UNRCUT
• GAY TALE AND A CY OF PERMANENT CHANGE
• WHEN NEW JOURNALISM WAS NEW: GAY TALE ON HIS LEGENDARY ESQUIRE PROFILE OF FRANK SATRA

GAY TALE

I'm a practner of puttg up a very fe Italians, well I'm Italian, they ll la bella figura, the good name is Gay Tale.

Gay Tale is a legendary wrer who works a sgular way. Unr the townhoe where the legendary wrer Gay Tale and his wife, Nan, have lived for over half a century is what Tale lls his “subterranean thk tank.

Gay Tale’s Other Problem. Gay Tale.

GAY TALE: A MAN OF RERD

Gay Tale probably wish he’d had a ld. Gay Tale Exam His Very-Public, 50-Year Marriage for Upg Book -- New York Magaze - Nymag. It isn’t until our third terview that I notice Gay Tale has been stg unrneath a patg of a naked woman wh a rabow g out of her vaga.

It is here where they began their life together as a uple their mid-twenti, when the five-story brownstone was like a tenement and Gay lived 3F, a stud they both still refer to as his “bachelor pad”; this is where they raised their two dghters, Pamela and Cathere, and slowly took over every apartment the buildg before fally buyg 1973; this is where they have held numerable book parti for Nan’s celebrated thors; and this is where Gay has done much of the wrg—the historic Esquire piec, the bt sellers wh biblil tl—that brought him fame, fortune, and no small amount of personal agony. Gay wr his new afterword that the immediate aftermath of the book’s publitn, Nan acpanied him on talk shows “to expla that our maral love had remaed unthreatened while I nducted rearch New York massage parlors and a hedonistic nudist lony Los Angel”—which is only half te.

GAY TALE: WRER, SCRAPBOOKER

Nan and Gay elopg Rome, 1959.Photo: Courty of Gay Tale.

It seems far removed om Gay’s realm, jt a floor above, where he keeps the artifacts of his storied reer (cludg a life-size rdboard cutout of himself) along wh his untls bpoke sus and dozens of hand-bbled sho.

“Was my first apartment 60 bucks a month?” Gay asks his wife. “What are you two up to?” As slowly dawns on me that Gay has not told her that he has agreed to participate an article about their marriage, I n feel the tensn beg to rise. “Jonathan is gog to ll you,” says Gay.

NOT OM UNRGROUND: GAY TALE’S OFFICE

She turns to me and, lghg nervoly, says, “You’re wrg what?” About Gay, I say, but you too.

GAY TALE’S OTHER PROBLEM

Sudnly, Gay pip up, a stern edge to his voice, givg an orr. “So, he’ll see you alone, Nan.” Then to me: “Do you have her number?” Nan giv me the digs and then Gay says, “Good! That was when she put the A (her main name is Ahearn) to her name, as if to say wh a sgle letter: I am not jt Gay’s wife.

The fay 1980, the year Thy Neighbor's Wife was published.Photo: Thomas Victor/Courty of Gay Tale.

When I first lled Nan to schle an terview, the small talk was brief and mostly about Gay. Stuff of legend: One eveng 1972, when Nan and Gay were walkg home om dner at P.J.

ONE ON 1: NEW YORK LERARY GIANT GAY TALE

Clarke’s, Gay spied a neon sign above a buildg on Lexgton Avenue near 59th Street that read LIVE NUDE MODELS.

Gay said to Nan, “Let’s go check that out.” Nan said to Gay, “No, no, no. The rultg piece, “An Eveng the Nu Wh Gay Tale,” scrib Tale nng around the cy wh a bunch of louche swgers and livg up at sex clubs. To be fair, seemed that Gay had already been tryg Nan’s patience wh his rearch.

Nan told Gay: “It’s your book, ’s your style of rearch.

GAY TALE DEFENDS ‘THE VOYR’S MOTEL’ AFTER SOURCE IS UNRCUT

“I told Gay, ‘Don’t do . I prs a ltle further: There are a lot of people who still believe that Gay huiated you, I tell her. In the Hamptons, 1987.Photo: Courty of Gay Tale.

“Her fn of marriage up agast me—they’re not what would be the dictnary,” retorts Gay. Nan has said the past that she has not, though Gay, through y hts the prs, would perhaps like to believe otherwise. This is not a woman livg a nunnery,” Gay said an em the Daily News last year.) Eher way, their relatnship fascat people as much as troubl them.

Is Gay a philanrg bastard or a pneerg anthropologist? When I ask Gay if he is at all worried about draggg Nan and their relatnship and even their sex life back to the spotlight, he says he’s not. “You know, I jt tst Gay,” she says.

GAY TALE AND A CY OF PERMANENT CHANGE

Nan and Gay were troduced through a iend 1957 and “urted for two and a half years,” as Nan puts . Her mother, a woman who had social ambns for her dghter, was never crazy about Gay, but she sisted they get engaged if they were gog to see each other exclively. When Gay went to Rome to wre a piece for The New York Tim Magaze and bled her to jo him, Nan saw her opportuny.

“Gay has asked me to e to Rome to get married.” (She looks at me mischievoly: “A lie! He hadn’t!”) Then she lled Gay’s parents and asked them to send his birth certifite to the New York Tim bure Rome and bought a one-way ticket on Alalia. When she arrived and told Gay what she’d done, he buried his head his arm.

I’m too young to get married!’ He thought was the worst ia the world.” Gay n still work up a h outrage about what he lls the “Showdown Rome,” but ’s upled wh a dose of admiratn for Nan’s temery. “What were my choic?” asks Gay.

WHEN NEW JOURNALISM WAS NEW: GAY TALE ON HIS LEGENDARY ESQUIRE PROFILE OF FRANK SATRA

In Ocean Cy, New Jersey, cir 1968.Photo: Courty of Gay Tale.

Gay was vastated when she dumped him. Nan did her bt to ease Gay’s passage om bachelorhood to fay life. “It took me months to get up the urage to tell Gay I bought .”.