Men who knew him painted the barkeep as a pioneer who embodied both stud and sissy. Like many American revolutionaries, Damron worked in the alcohol industry. Courtesy of the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries. It pinpointed thresholds leading to family, community, sex, and love.
His guidebook told where to find doorways flowing towards danger and joyful possibility. Each one was bound by unique affinities whose siren songs went muffled. His list confirmed that a gay America existed and that within this quasi-nation, many smaller gay Americas proliferated. The guidebook’s author, Bob Damron, gave gay readers hope by fleshing out worlds that would’ve otherwise remained unknowable. Butterflies must’ve fluttered in many a hopeful reader’s stomach as they skimmed the guidebook’s list of restaurants, bars, and nightclubs: these addresses offered potential antidotes to sadness. The baedeker advertised via mail order, in-the-know bars sold it, and the initiated flung their bedraggled copies into the hands of the desperate. Find a friend,” hinted at the exact nature of its readers’ appetites while skirting the particularities.įriends of Dorothy, and Sappho, turned to The Address Book, which debuted in 1965, to map their pursuits. This guidebook, like all guidebooks, was written for the hungry. “He who is everywhere is nowhere.” – Seneca the Youngerīefore there was Grindr, there was The Address Book.
