MORE PRIDE

The top photo is the late DC poet Ed Cox and me around the time we did a poetry reading at Catholic U. in DC in Spring of 1972. Ed had just come out a few weeks before me. We both read poems about love and relationships between men, mine more sexually graphic, for what we were told was the first time at that institution and maybe in DC. The young poet Tim Dlugos afterward introduced himself and said we were his heroes. For a while Ed stayed at the commune I lived in with my first wife and our kids and where I would challenge him and myself to try poses neither of us ever had, like letting a wrist go limp (a la the second photo).  I went on to wear ribbons in my hair and mismatched clip-on earrings and sometimes dresses, but unfortunately have no photos of that.