We met at a coffee shop and talked for awhile before I went to his apartment. I did not visit him then, but I wrote down his phone number and eventually called him back. Down below the hand-written ad someone had scrawled, 'Watch out�this guy's a fag.' I called the guy and we talked he lived in a building down the block, and he mentioned that there was only one bed in the apartment. So my first gay experience, in August of 1969, happened because of a roommate ad I saw on the bulletin board in my graduate dormitory. There were no gay organizations of any kind that I was aware of. NOTE: In this special issue devoted to 1968 see personal stories of the year at the links below.

But I was very ready to come out in fact, I think I spent more time thinking about that in 1968 than I did studying for my classes.

I had known, in some way, that I was gay since I was 8 years old, but had not come out yet and had not had any gay experiences other than 'fooling around' with a couple of fellow students when I was 13 years old. I was new to the city and was living in Hyde Park. In 1968, I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, in a masters degree program in international relations.