The director of Call Your Father says his attractn to olr guys exposed a rarely discsed universal tth about gay men.
Contents:
DICK LESCH’S GUI TO SEVENTI GAY SLANG
While hazg the lennials durg a meetg today, several of them nfsed to not knowg the basic lexin of gay slanguage. This is for them and everyone else who needs a reher. * gay old time saying *
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.
OUTRAGE OVER THE FLTSTON “GAY OLD TIME”
Defn of a gay old time It's a very old fashned way of sayg "a great time" * gay old time saying *
”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.
GAY OLD TIME
“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. 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.