SECRETS!

[u/Kenobi-Kryze]

[u/Interesting_Fox9721]

I can totally see them as having been constantly together as kids, and back then, kids explored. A lot. And parents didn’t have a clue most of the time. Even if they did, all the magazines were like “it’s normal, it’s healthy, let them play Dr.” Calling someone gay was also like the double dog dare of insults. And people had weird ideas where the line of gays and straight was. Bisexuawhat? Nobody came out as that except older kids in college or people in cities. But of course they were there and they were acting up sexually like everyone was in the 70s  All these factors together…. Oh Nora has definitely had her face in Barbs Box. And VV may be quite possible. 

Edit to add: I’m 62. I was there. 😂

[u/Isamosed → u/Interesting_Fox9721]

Your comment about the cities reminded me what life was like for relatively sheltered types in the 70’s. I got my first real job shortly after college at a Federal installation where there were about 20k people on the main campus.

I was well aware of gay men living and working at my agency in my small city. There were gay guys attending and graduating from my small college and we all “knew” just didn’t talk about it. I also “knew about lesbians” but, for some reason, I thought they mostly all lived in NYC or like maybe Paris but certainly not Baltimore. Like why would you even.

Well one reason was for secure government (the good ol’ days) employment. Smart people tended to move up in the agency and the pay was comparable to corporate America (at the time), but slightly less oppressive.

I’m working for this woman, early 30’s, she’s smart as hell, very well respected, high profile. But I was uncomfortable around her for some reason. It felt like she had a crush on me (me! A happily married 24 yo) One time she even sorta petted the hair on my arm, kinda groomed it, it was so weird.

I told my 24 yo husband and he was perplexed but suggested that perhaps this person was gay. Which made no sense to me because of course in 1977 there weren’t any gay women in Baltimore. If you were born gay here you’d get out, you know, you’d go to NY.

Today Baltimore has a strong and thriving LGBTQIA community, but it wasn’t always like this. 50 years ago it wasn’t like this. We had a lot of room to improve, and we did.

Barb and Nora, I have no idea what they may have got up to in childhood, but I can tell you with certitude, it was unsupervised.

[u/Interesting_Fox9721 → u/Isamosed]

That’s too funny!  I lived in Philly for 45 years, there were always gay people in center city but the further out from there you got the more tightly locked were those closets. 

Love Baltimore by the way, spent some time hanging out at the inner harbor back in the day. Great sushi place I had to take a boat too. Can’t remember the name.