I had my house painted, including the garage. Everything had to be pulled out, and in the garage I had the old boxes stored from a long time ago. One box, labeled Sam, I had kept from my days living in Dallas. Sam was a one legged photographer who lived down the block and I helped him out from time to time.
He got sick, turned out to be stomach cancer and passed away. But before he passed, while he was still aware, he asked me to take these old pictures in a cabinet and put them in a box and take them out of the studio. He didn't want them found after he died. I have kept them all these years, not forgotten, but respected. Until now.
I took the box upstairs to a work office I have and opened the box and laid the pictures out on the work table. These were all studio pictures, in black and white. No labels, no names. Some 8X10 and others 4X4. All, everyone of them, were pictures of naked men. Based on the age of the pictures, earlier than mid 70s, some had to have been from the late 60s. Naked men, posing in the studio. Naked men, with other men posing. Naked men performing anal sex, men performing oral sex, men displaying what they had. Naked men, hundreds of pictures of naked men. One in particular caught my attention, it was a picture of Sam kissing with another man. It had to have been before he lost his leg. There was that tattoo on his hand.
I realized that some of the pictures were pictures of Sam, obviously not taken by Sam. It was a revelation of a long time ago, Sam was gay in the days that gays were hidden away in. I kept the picture of Sam kissing with that man, a sensuous kiss between the two men. I had it framed and I have it in my office now. A memory of days gone by, when I was still working my way through college.
The other pictures, all anonymous men, I had destroyed. Private pictures of men being men when it was against the law to be men with other men.
