1981-My Gay American Road Trip: A Slice of Our Pre-AIDS Culture

by J D Doyle

1981. Rich with promise and possibility, the post-Stonewall era saw queer Americans standing up for themselves and each other like never before. With the rise of gay newspapers, bars, clubs, and businesses in cities all over the US, it was a time of hedonism, activism, pride, and community. A scene ripe for exploration and documentation, and journalist JD Doyle hit the road to do just that, traveling through 27 states to create a playful, intimate, profusely illustrated, one-of-a-kind record of gay life, love, lust, and liberation in the heady days before the devastating crisis that would change everything.
This is the trip he took.
"A remarkable journey through gay male life in the early 1980s...gay bars, restaurants, sports associations (who knew Houston had 55 gay bowling teams in 1981?), strip clubs, and easy hookups, just before AIDS cast a shadow over everything. Doyle takes us beyond the coasts to highlight the vibrant gay scenes in large cities and small towns across the South and West. From close encounters with Grace Jones and Diana Ross to even closer encounters with the men he met along the way, this book is full of insights and vivid sketches of people and places."
George Chauncey DeWitt Clinton Professor of History, Columbia University Author of GAY NEW GENDER, URBAN CULTURE, AND THE MAKING OF THE GAY MALE WORLD, 1890-1940

Genres: Queer, LGBT, Nonfiction

344 pages, Hardcover

Published June 23, 2023

Reviews

[Larry-bob Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have followed JD Doyle's radio show and website Queer Music Heritage for a long time. With this book, he turns the history lens on himself, with the publication of this journal from a road trip he took in 1981.

Before going into the content of the journal, he writes about his life growing up in Ohio and his late-blooming coming out at age 30. He moved to Norfolk, Virginia and got involved in a gay community newspaper there. In 1981, he was laid off from his day job and decided to take a road trip to the west coast of the United States and back.

As the second subtitle says, this is "a slice of our Pre-AIDS culture." JD visited almost 200 gay bars and picked up quite a few guys. He also attended the Southeastern Conference of Lesbians and Gay Men and the conference of the Gay Press Association, and he also met up with other people involved in gay media. Along the way he also saw some divas in concert, saw Sylvester judging a dog contest in San Francisco, and visited Leonard Matlovich at his pizza parlor in Guerneville, California. The book sent me down a couple research side-trips, such when JD saw a work-in-progress screening of a film by Peter Adair (of Word is Out) which didn't get its expected screening on PBS and isn't listed in IMDb. JD has a page of links related to the book on his website, and also a couple of playlists of music mentioned in the book, one of dance music he heard in the bars and the other of country songs he heard on the radio while driving on the road trip.

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a truly wonderful read. Like JD Doyle, I am also a gay baby boomer and remember what pre-AIDS life was in the gay urban community. I found this to be was a wonderful trip down memory lane, well documented with ephemera and Doyle's acute observations of the bars and guys he encountered. This should be required reading for anyone interested in gay history. 1981 was truly the year before the AIDS storm descended and this written journey takes us boomers on a nostalgic trip and at the same time, clearly shows people who came after what gay life was like.

[Larry C · Rating 2 out of 5]

A semi-uninteresting journal from 1981. The author (at the time) comes off as cheap, unlikable, and extremely judgmental of others. As history goes, it tells of the easiness of cruising (author has one type only and looks down upon others of different types), the multiple bars where one can go to drink-dance-cruise (author hated dark clubs, empty clubs, and rates clientele with low-starred reviews and descriptions such as “piss elegance” whatever that means).

[Jeff Stookey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve never read a book that had this peculiar personal effect on me. I have to thank JD Doyle for this trip down memory lane, his triggered my own. We are close in age—he was born in 1947 and I in 1948. We grew up and lived through a similar era of LGBTQ+ history, so I could easily identify with his early memories growing up in a rural setting in the 1950s.

But Doyle did not “come out” and begin having sexual relations with other men until he was long out of college and approaching his 30th birthday—in contrast I was in my early 20s and still in college. Once Doyle begins his road trip in April 1981 and chronicles his experiences cruising bars and other venues across the USA, the book became very nostalgic for me. It brought back my time engaged in similar activities in the late 1970s, an exciting and lusty time in the gay community in the Pacific Northwest, an area of the country that he never visited. But judging from his astonishingly frank and honest account of his particular sexual attractions, partner preferences, and pick up tricks, the same was true across the country.

I didn’t spend as much time in bars as Doyle did, and I didn’t have near the number of hook-ups. But then I was NOT a former editor of a gay newspaper—his entrée into various aspect of gay society. He claims to be an introvert, but he sure outdid me in interacting with all kinds of men—journalistically, socially, and intimately—in numerous American cities.

Besides the nostalgia, though, this book is an important record. Doyle’s journals, kept in real time as he traveled, describe “a time of our culture just before AIDS hit us. This is a slice of that time, the last days of the ‘candy store’…then AIDS stopped us.” His writing is sharp, conversational, and observant—like an astute old friend telling stories from his past. He documents gay culture, fashion, music, and graphics with his own special good humor and wit. In addition there is something of a dramatic story arc to this episodic journey, but no spoilers here—you will have to read the book.

I met my life partner in 1980 and that was the end of my cruising days. Doyle continued to have a variety of relationships, some long lasting, even after AIDS became epidemic. But he survived to see many of his friends die and, now years later, to tell his story.

If you were a young gay man in the 1970s and early 1980s, this book should interest you. Younger gay men today, and those outside the gay community, should find this book illuminating regarding the time before AIDS, a time worth celebrating.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

There was a specific time in gay culture when cruising bars, traveling to gay neighborhoods, picking up men and counting them as “numbers” was commonplace. With “1981,” the award-winning historian and music collector JD Doyle has shared yet another historic item for the LGBTQ community and its history.

In his extensive months-long diary entries through his American travels from the East, through the Southwest, West, and doubling back, he includes hundreds of entries and descriptions of bars, with a modest yet tabulated number of men he meets and has sex with. It's not a memoir per se as much as it is a thoroughly transcribed diary that has become, without his knowing it at the time, a historical document.

As a staff member of a Norfolk, Virginia gay and lesbian newspaper –yes that's what they called them then– Doyle not only documents descriptions of multiple bars throughout multiple states, most of which no longer exist. He also records the multiple publications that served the LGBT community then. A few dates include some of the earliest media conferences, and his brief descriptions of many people either being friendly or standoffish.

He also judges a lot of the bars by their decor and attendance, and rates the attractiveness of men in the bars according to his particular tastes, that of mustached “clones.”

Also throughout the accounts is his attempt to have a long-term relationship with a guy named Clark whom he meets in Houston. The couple reconnect in various cities and travel together for a while. All of this is blended in with his gradual coming out and his becoming more comfortable and various communities.

Doyle bravely keeps the diary entries intact and doesn't try to revise them to fit today's more polite standards of describing people and places. In fact, he pans several cities as boring or unfriendly, and some bars as being dark and tacky.

There are multiple highlights. If you're wondering about the higher than normal price for a book, it's because he has included dozens of photos and scans of bar logos, ads and matchbooks as well as photos of friends of his.

Since 1981 was a pivotal year just before AIDS started becoming more publicly known and started decimating -at the time- mostly gay male communities in America, it stands as a fascinating historical document. The author also includes an extended epilogue, and an appendix of friends and lovers who died of AIDS, as well as music playlists from bars. It all adds up to quite a road trip.

[Steven Albrecht · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn't find the stamina to finish. This book catalogues the writer's cross-country tour of gay bars in 1981. Each entry reads as a diary description of the bar, the area, and the patrons. There's little narrative to hold the reader's interest. If you need a conflict-driven plot, this isn't the book for you.

[Roger · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great gay snapshot of the United States in 1981, sprinkled with humor throughout!
The book also introduced me to new-to-me music, slang, and perspectives. Highly recommend.