This morning, DJ Robbie Leslie posted this on his Facebook page - it's from a White Party that took place in early 1991 and features some seriously pumped muscle boys getting all jiggy with each other. Photographer David Morgan created an image that would not just inspire a decade's worth of fashion choices (yes I too donned the cut off jean shorts/doc marten boots combo) but also signaled an end to the misery and sadness of the previous decade's losses and a return not just to carnality but also to a playful sexuality... and after such devastation, who could blame gay New Yorkers for wanting to have some fun again?
It was also the dawn of a new paradigm, the bulked up/roided/abs conscious gay. That gay men could be sexy again. For an AIDS ravaged city, the sexuality of the 70s was a dim memory and even so, it certainly didn't look like this.
There would be thousands of gay men over the next ten years walk up and down the Chelsea Runway (that stretch of 8th Ave. between 14th and 23rd) showing off newly minted bodies. Millions of hook ups. And you know what? You wouldn't see a stroller or a chain store within blocks. I guess those days are gone forever. Not that I think that living in a gay ghetto is the only way to live, but at the time, it was great not to have to watch out for the bulldozing parents who now use their kids' strollers as a battering ram to clear a path ten feet wide down every sidewalk in Manhattan. Do 20 somethings even know what "look, ignore, walk walk walk and look back" even means? LOL <wink>
But can this image alone be credited with the revival/return of that sexual spark? I don't know.. but I'm sure that it's not a coincidence that just a couple years earlier, ACT UP NYC had emerged as a force fighting not just for survival, but a quality of life, to be heard and seen and noticed - and for AIDS drugs to be established so that we could simply continue existing.
I myself, first visited New York in June 1991 and the scent of sex was in the air. I was 27 and headed to graduate school in Chicago. I remember seeing this image and it inspired me to fight as hard as I danced (like Mother Jones says, if I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution), and to go to the gym, not just for the obvious reasons (ie to get laid) but to get stronger in every way.
Yes, I know. For those living in New York in 1991, I know I know, Chelsea Gym wasn't exactly at a hotbed of political activity (unless you call giving a blow job to some future out gay politico in the locker room a political act), but the biggest weapon we had (and still have) is our sense of community. That got us from AIDS to Marriage Equality in 20 years. We have come a fuck long way.
So while it looks like just another circuit party poster, if you know what was going on then, you know, it was not just another circuit party poster. It was part of the revolution.
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