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DICK LESCH’S GUI TO SEVENTI GAY SLANG
) Whereas a beard is a female ed to ver a mal homosexualy, a motache is a slight tert shown, eg sual lookg along wh other mal, ually at jt one had a motache. The only gay person hler ever liked he had killed (Ernst Rohm), see night of long knivby Gumba Gumba June 1, 2004FlagGet the motache mug. 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.
#TBT: THE GAY MTACHE
” 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.