Contents:
DICK LESCH’S GUI TO SEVENTI GAY SLANG
Dick Lesch, an early gay-rights activist, who is now his eighti, arranged to donate his old workg fil to the archiv of the New York Public Library. ”In 1959, when Lesch was twenty-four, he left his fay home, Kentucky, for New York Cy, where he found work as a pater, a bartenr, a rator, a journalist, and as the unpaid print of the Mattache Society, one of the first gay-rights anizatns.
When the Stonewall rts broke out, three years later, he was the only openly gay reporter on the scene, verg the event for a new gay-focsed magaze lled The a recent Friday eveng, Lesch’s buzzer rang. In 1959, he left Kentucky for New York Cy, where he beme the print of the Mattache Society, one of the first gay-rights anizatns.
A py of a 1976 gay guibook, wrten by Lesch, along wh his origal typewrten mancript. “This rd file is great, ” he said, flippg through a set of four-by-six x rds on which Lesch had neatly typed out gay slang terms om antiquy. ” Some of the fns were more nuanced: an “ntie, ” Lesch had wrten, was “an ageg or middle aged homosexual, offtim effemate character, ” or “a person of settled meanor who utns agast temperate acts.
GAY SLANG OM THE 1970S
Lesch ed to llect mentns of the “homophile movement, ” a term that preced the morn gay-rights vobulary. Lesch holds up a plastic toy school b, ma the neteen-sixti by the Gay Toy Company. Photograph by Rebec FudalaNext up was Lesch’s llectn of magaz and newsletters, cludg After Dark (“Oh, bls you—they’re real llector’s ems, ” Bmann said); Christopher Street (“We have the archiv”); Female Mimics (“That’s fabulo”); the 1969 Time issue on homosexualy (“Cute”); and the monthly bullet for the Mattache Society.
A 1971 issue of Gay featured an terview that Lesch had nducted wh a twenty-five-year-old Bette Midler. While browsg recently through the available back issu of Oz magaze I noticed a gui to gay slang that I didn’t rell seeg before. The unrground magaz and newspapers of the 60s and 70s were a lot more tolerant of the nascent gay rights movement than their “straight” (ie: non-eak) unterparts.
Oz magaze published piec about gay rights, notably so issue 23 which ran an extract om The Homosexual Handbook (1969) by Angelo d’Arngelo among a uple of other featur; the UK’s first gay magaze, Jeremy, advertised regularly Oz and IT; later issu of Oz rried ads for another gay mag, Follow Up, and there’s a letter one issue om a gay eak plag about the state of the few gay pubs London where the clientele was apparently not eaky enough. The gay slang gui was extracted om The Queens’ Vernacular: A Gay Lexin by Bce Rodgers (1942–2009), published the US by Straight Arrow Books 1972.