Robert StGenis Voice empowered

The Hudson River waterfront in the 80's was nothing like it is today. There were piers that were collapsing into the river, others in varying states of decay. The Intrepid was a new attraction and I believe became part of the Smithsonian while I was in high school. I recall a handful of years later attending a huge Gay Pride event that included I believe my first foam party. This doesn't sound like a big deal now but it was hugely symbolic at the time we were fighting for the right to serve in the US military. Hell's Kitchen in Midtown Manhattan was mostly still hellish with gentrification in its early stages. I lived there for a brief period in 1990 and will write about it in a future entry. Crime in New York City was also on another planet. There were 1,907 murders in New York City in 1986 vs. 562 murders in 2018. The homeless population was out of control and the smell of defecation and urine in subway stations sometimes made it nearly impossible to not vomit before...

Please be sure to read  AIDS 1. Junior year  and  AIDS 1-Senior Year. Part One  prior to this entry. It brings my story all together. You may also want to watch my short  It Gets better  video which is also a blog post on here as well. Then, you will have my years as a teenager, the fun, the sad, the good and bad. The collection of these posts bring together a formative part of who I am, as it is an important period of growth for all of us. You will likely find some of my story shocking, some entertaining, interesting, doubtfully boring. I didn't overall spend time writing about time on swim or soccer teams, or even much about going to school except a bit more in this last one. I wrote mostly about what you aren't expecting to hear from a teenager. My girlfriend Laura and I will also spend a great deal of time in New York City. Because Laura lived down the shore in Toms River, she was about 90 miles away. Getting together was never running up or down t...

If you have not yet read, please go back to  AIDS 1-Being a Junior  and read prior to this entry. Since I had moved to Morristown, New Jersey I was living two lives, in two ways. There was Robert the suburban high school student with a girlfriend down the shore and simultaneously Robert the closeted gay man and in many ways a recent arrival to New York City. Most people around my neighborhood at that time lived and worked in New Jersey and went into the city at best a few times a year for a play, for a concert or game. They might once or twice go in the course of a decade to a museum. I was there almost every weekend and any other time I could find a chance. My Father was initially commuting into the city everyday. I had to use bridges and tunnels, I was a not a bridge and tunnel boy. I was sneaking off into Manhattan on a fairly frequent basis and going to happy hours at Uncle Charlie's and popping into Julius in Greenwich Village; sometimes, well, often, that leading t...