Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940

While a few words used by gay men were made-up terms that had no meaning in standard English or slang, most gave standard terms a second, gay meaning. Many were derived from the slang of female prostitutes. Gay itself referred to female prostitutes before it referred to gay men; trade and trick referred to prostitutes’ customers before they referred to gay men’s partners; and cruising referred to a streetwalker’s search for partners before it referred to a gay man’s

The streets and corners were crowded with the sailors all of whom were on a sharp lookout for girls. It seemed to me that the sailors were sex mad. A number of these sailors were with other man walking arm in arm and on one dark street I saw a sailor and a man kissing each other. It looked like an exhibition of male perversion showing itself in the absence of girls or the difficulty of finding them. Some of the sailors told me that they might be able to get a girl if they went “up-town” but it was too far up and they were too drunk to go way up there. [“Conditions about the Brooklyn Navy Yard, June 6, 1917,” box 25, Committee of Fourteen papers, New York Public Library:]

The story of one black gay man who lived in the basement of a rooming house on West Fiftieth Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, in 1919 suggests the latitude—and limitations—of rooming house life. The tenant felt free to invite whom he met on the street into his room. One summer evening, for instance, he invited an undercover investigator he had met while sitting on the basement stairs. But, as he later explained to his guest, while three “young fellows” had been visiting him in his room on a regular basis, he had finally decided to stop seeing the youths because they made too much noise, and he did not want to landlady to “get wise.” Not only might be lose his room, he feared, but also his job as the house’s chambermaid. [Chauney’s prose, with quotations from “Report on colored fairy, 63 W. 50th St., Aug. 2, 1919,” box 34, Committee of Fourteen papers, New York Public Library:]

”When a party of four rough looking birds tossed a pitcher of hot water at him as he danced by,” the columnist reported, “he pitched into them. After beating three of them into insensibility, the fight went into the street, with two taxi drivers coming to the assistance of the surviving member of the original foursome.” The story portrayed Malin as claiming his right to move openly through the city as a drag queen. Still, it ended on a suitably camp note. When the fight was over, Malin was said to have had tears in his eyes. Yes, he’d won the fight, he told another man, “but look at the disgraceful state my gown is in!”

Jules, being drunk, camped with them [a bunch of “straight” men:] too, and they tried to date him—even after feeling his muscle: he could have laid them all low: really it’s as wide as this paper.