I don’t often talk about a trip I made to Key West in 1979 and how gay Florida saved me, but perhaps now’s a good time.

Florida! You kill me, you really do! From sourpuss Anita Bryant‘s campaign to “Save Our Children” way back in 1977 to pudgy Ron DeSantis’ “Don’t Say Gay” bill currently, y’all keep trying to erase us. But ya can’t.

You never will.

The Bus Trip

Back in the summer of 1979 I was 24, about to enter my oft-delayed last year of college. I’d gone to summer school a couple of years in a row to catch up to my class (never did, actually). I needed a break.

So, around that time Greyhound was touting their passes, where you could basically go anywhere on a bus if you had this pass. I had about a month off between the end of summer school and semester start, so I bought this pass and was off to see America.

I left from where I was living at the time (Milwaukee, where I grew up) and headed to the west coast, where I stayed with my cousin in San Francisco and had a great time. Down the coast to Los Angeles, which overwhelmed me so much I didn’t stay longer than even one day (I know, hard to believe since that’s where I’ve lived for most of the last 42 years).

I got the bright idea to go to Florida because of ads for gay Key West I’d seen in magazines like After Dark.

Please remember this was the 1970s when being gay in homophobic America was not easy and most certainly not very popular, especially outside of major cities like New York and San Francisco. Most gay men I knew – myself for sure – were, at the most, out of the closet just a tentative step. Which disappeared back behind that door whenever a threat appeared. Which was all the time.

Anyway, the bus headed east across the deserts. When we got to Phoenix, it rained. (I learned about the summer monsoon.) When we got to flat, hot Texas, the trip became interminable and unbearable. (Remember, it was August.) Then I got robbed.

During a station stop I’d left a camera in a bag in the overhead and when I got back on the bus it was gone. Stolen by a fellow traveler (though I didn’t know who, I had my suspicions).

If anything it was worse because the camera wasn’t even mine, it was borrowed from my newly married sister.

Next Stop Key West

So, disgusted as I was, I decided to ditch the bus at the next large city (which was New Orleans). head directly to the airport and buy a one way ticket to Miami.

From there I took a bus (still had that pass!) down through the Keys to its terminus in Key West.

I’d made a reservation at the Island House – a gay resort in Key West which is actually still operating 43 years later.

It was like walking into Paradise.

As I recall, it was a two-story wooden motel-like building surrounding a pool. Maybe I read it had been military housing in the past. Whatever it was then, it was magical when I walked in.

Drugs, Sex & Disco – and a Future

Within a half hour of my registration at the front desk, I was in the bed of one of the employees. His name was Mike, and he was from the Northeast. He was blond and handsome and muscle-y, all things I liked (and still do).

Mike was just the first of many guys and really, of many people I met that week in Key West. It was the height of what I’d call my drugs, sex and disco period and it was still at a time in my life where there were few negative consequences from overindulgence.

Most importantly, though, was meeting older gays and lesbians from the big east coast cities, primarily New York. One of the guests was a doctor on vacation. Another was a professor. I met an international and glamorous lesbian couple who owned an ad agency on Madison Avenue. Most of the rest were successful, happy adults who were living full and completely open gay lives.

So here was a blueprint. Here was something I could remember and use as a guide for an imagined future. Here were contacts who gave me their phone numbers and addresses and were rooting for me. Not officially mentors, yet adults who provided an example to someone who didn’t even know he was looking.

Gay Pride

When the week was over, I was dropped off at Miami International Airport by this beautiful gay couple from North Carolina who were driving back to Raleigh. I’d decided to forget about the bus pass and just fly back to Wisconsin. After he helped me get my suitcase out of their trunk, Reece took me in his arms and kissed me. In public and in a crowd – something I’d certainly never done before.

As I floated through the terminal, I knew I’d decided I could live this gay life I’d been given. It was so obvious. I’d no longer seek to change myself, somehow, into a straight man.

That, you see, is the part I don’t want to discuss. Because I did want to change myself back then. I wanted to find a therapist or someone like that who could make me straight so I could fit in. I had that self-loathing for so long and it took me years to destroy it. But I finally and definitively did.

Those wonderful people in Florida were instrumental. That’s why I say Gay Florida Saved Me. I’m just as sure that every day someone there has an experience like I had, where someone shows an example about the benefits of being who you are 100% of the time.

So yes, we’ll continue to say gay, loud and clear and never stop. Gay, Gay, GAY!

There’s lots of people like me who still need to hear it.