Pink Triangle: The Feuds and Private Lives of Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, and Famous Members of Their Entourages (Blood Moon's Babylon Series) Read Free Page A

had—all of us except Truman—won the great Imperial War, and, thanks to us, the whole world was briefly American.”
    Since 1910, the Astor Bar had become legendary as a pickup spot at the “Crossroads of the World.” On its rooftop, beginning in 1940, Frank Sinatra had made early appearances with the Tommy Dorsey Band.
    During the War, with so many U.S. military men in town, the Astor Bar experienced its greatest fame, welcoming thousands upon thousands of gay patrons in uniform—with the expectation that they be discreet, based on the standards of the time.
    At the Astor, hundreds of men would be sardined, packed six deep around the long oval-shaped black bar within whose center bartenders ruled the sea of men on the make for each other.
    A love object did not emerge for either Gore or Truman that night at the Astor Bar.
    “The competition was too great,” Truman later recalled. “All the queens from Manhattan, the Outer Boroughs, and New Jersey, too, were making off with all the ‘seafood’ that night.”
    After a quick hamburger at a joint on Times Square pushing papaya juice, Truman and Gore journeyed to the notorious Everard Baths, a place aptly nicknamed “Everhard,” which was said to operate because of frequent payoffs to the police.
    From 1888 to 1985, these baths, housed in a former church, were the gay mecca of New York. Many great artists such as actor Emyln Williams, composer Ned Rorem, and even Truman himself, have written about their experiences cruising these baths. Other patrons have included Rock Hudson, Alfred Lunt, Lorenz Hart, Rudolf Nureyev, Dana Andrews, Montgomery Clift, Leonard Bernstein, Zachary Scott, and Dan Dailey.
    In a memoir, Gore had nothing but fond memories of the Everard, even though it was mildewed, grungy, and dingy. “Military men often spent the night there because it was hard to get a hotel room in New York right after the war. This was sex at its rawest made most exciting. Newly invented penicillin had removed fears of venereal disease. Most of the boys knew that they would soon be home for good, and married, and that this was a last chance to do what they were designed to do with each other.”

    Gore once published a paperback original under the nom de plume of “Katharine Everhard.” Although it was a straight romantic novel, the pseudonym was an inside gay joke.
    Truman and Gore rented a cubicle and changed into the skimpy, knee-length white cotton robes offered as part of the entrance fee.

    The Everard Baths, NYC
    In The Gay Metropolis , author Charles Kaiser wrote: “You usually wore the robe loose with your cock hanging out. I guess you could have sex with as many as a dozen people. There were group scenes. There was a very impressive steam-bath room down in the lower level, as well as a swimming pool and a big sort of cathedral-like sauna room. It was very steamy and you could hardly see. You could stumble into multiple combinations.”

    Like two voyeurs, Gore and Truman trolled the hallways, visiting the steam room, but finding nothing particularly appealing.
    On the way back to their cubicle, they spotted an open door three down from their own cramped quarters. A well-built young man had just entered and had taken off his robe, lying nude on the bed with only a dim light illuminating his muscled body.
    Both Gore and Truman surveyed what they called “a Greek God.”
    “Adonis” accepted their request to enter. Both of the gay men came into the cubicle and fastened the latch on the door behind them.
    Gore later told Stanley Haggart, his friend, what happened. “Truman and I devoured this handsome bit of man-flesh. But it led to our first major feud. I did a lot of the work myself, and we took turns sharing the riches. But at the last minute, Truman popped down on him and drained him dry to the last drop, although it rightfully belonged to me.”
    After their communal sex, the young man was invited out to dinner at a restaurant in Greenwich Village.
    He