Items

• Coming out
  This novel tells the story of middle-aged divorcee Roger Thornton, and his new life as an out gay man residing in New York, in a relationship with the younger and more extrovert Michael. In addition to this central relationship, the novel features characters from the wider LGBT community including a lesbian couple and Lola, who we would now recognise as a trans woman. The book’s design is reminiscent of a pulp novel, complete with yellow edges. The blurb contains the word “sensitive” which was often used by publishers in the earlier half of the twentieth century to allude to gay men. Wallace Hamilton (1919?-1983) also wrote non-fiction and plays and was a contributor to the ‘New York Native’ paper. Like his character Roger, he was married and came out when he was middle-aged.
• New York native. Issue 82, January 30-February 12, 1984
  Published biweekly between 1980 and 1997, this is a relatively early edition of ‘New York Native’. Much of the paper’s reporting at this time concentrated on the growing AIDS crisis, and this issue is no exception, with headline statistics and an editorial concerned with a potential link between the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and the African Swine Fever virus. While a paper supporting this theory appeared two years later in medical journal ‘The Lancet’, it was later discredited. Also featured are music, theatre, film, gallery and restaurant reviews, guides to New York and San Francisco, a letters page, classified ads and personal ads.
• New York native. Issue 83, February 13-26, 1984
  The ‘New York Native’ newspaper was published by Charles Ortleb (1950?-) between 1980 and 1997. This issue contains articles, reviews, personal listings, adverts, a fashion spread and a winter travel supplement. Most notable is the range of reports on AIDS, which begin with an editorial critiquing the racism and homophobia in press reports of the crisis. Other articles in this issue focus on the first European conference on AIDS and lists of numbers of cases reported in New York. The paper first reported on AIDS in 1981, after the ‘New York Times’ broke the story on 3 July that year. ‘New York Native’ had been pioneering in its coverage, although it later fell out of favour and was boycotted by some activists when it began to promote conspiracy theories regarding the cause of AIDS.