BOBS WORST KEPT SECRET

This may well be the first person to suss out Bob's secret. The note was written on the back of this photo around the time he graduated from high school. This is the note from a fag hag, beard, foil, or whatever you choose to call girls who are best friends forever with gay males and often serve as cover by escortng them at public functions.

OKAY, so I did warn you.

BOB and JACK

Bob was a practical man and determined early on that compartmentalization was needed so established his livelihood in the suburbs of San Francisco, strictly by the book in a traditional business venture as an optician. But that's for a different page you can find here.

There is no doubt that each generation of gay people played a role in where we are today. Bob's generation brought us Stonewall which was an obscure gay bar in new york until it got raided one night and the queens decided they weren't going to take it anymore. And thus to Bob's generation fell the task of establishing places, generally pretty out of the way bars mainly and specific areas in public parks and the like where gay people could hang out with each other out of site of the world.  This ultimately culminated in what became the sex palaces of San Francisco. Not necessarily a bad thing, those places were actually quite amazing, but despite being just a fraction of a percent of the overall infrastructure that now represented gay America in 1979, those places did take things over the top, and everything came crashing down under the weight of what took another 7 years to figure out was HIV.

Throughout my young life thanks to Bob's generation there were gay bars in every large town that were not too hard to find which provided my generation a stepping off point, a ledge of sorts from which we could take the next step. It fell to us the endless task of being in your face gay. In every social circle in day to day life, Bob's generation stayed hidden, except in places like the bars where they made my generation feel welcome and at ease with who we were. Where Bob's generation was always looking over their shoulder, because of raids and arrests, they had successfully thrown off those overt manifestations of homophobia, so we never considered the possibility of getting arrested for being ourselves. This emboldened us to bring it back to the family and the day to day living environment and begin the long process of education.

Through my life, I had to go through the process of "coming out" in every single new circle of friends, school, and place of employment. People continuously assumed I was straight and I came up with a million ways to let them know I was gay. Every time it required that after revealing this aspect of my life there was a question and answer period and a kind of prolonged period of reminding and educating. This kind of one on one grassroots activism was 2nd nature to a healthy percentage of gay people my age, and by the time I turned 50; the job was essentially done. We were normal people who were gay, and we were there beside friends and family continuously gay. The number of people for whom this was now the case hit critical mass, and it seemed like an overnight phenomenon that the country accepted us but it wasn't.

  The illusion that it occurred suddenly makes many fear that it is a tenuous change but it’s not. They may be able to scare some younger kids back into a closet of sorts though I doubt it, but my generation of gays will never relent. It's amazing how kids today hang out together and know in high school who's gay and straight. That's what my generation missed. We generally had our first affairs well into our twenties and only then would we experience the incredibly immature behaviors typically displayed by teenagers. One surprising result of complete assimilation has been the disappearance of gay bars and “cruise” areas.

<-- thumbnail left click will take you to actual picture

As noted elsewhere in this website once pictures take on these pseudo 3D frames, it indicates they have been auto thumbnailed meaning what's in the frame is just a low resolution representation o the actual picture which can be accessed and downloaded by first clicking on the thumbnail and then right clicking the actual photo that comes up and selecting "save as". Also onec again the disclaimer that if you are using an (shudder) apple computer then figure it out yourself. I'm a card carrying Microsoft Supremacist and why Steve Jobs could only imagine one button on a mouse is a mystery to all.

Also, most of the pictures that are thumbnailed have only been scanned, not cleaned up but easily can be with photoshop or other editing software. The main issue will be dust and scratches which is easily fixed on a photo and if you have a particular photo you'd like me to clean up for you just email me at Dan@robertadamich.com and I get it done whenever I actually check that mailbox.

right click, select "save as" to download   actual picture --> 

meanwhile back home  .  .  .

anything typewritten on photo was originally handwritten on the back

This is Jack, I think.

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