The Old Spaghetti Factory was a must-see for visiting foodies, and nearby Hibernia Bank had a clock that hung over the sidewalk and kept time for the neighborhood. Castro Street in 1971 looked much like it did at the end of World War II. I wish every gay man could have the experience I had in San Francisco. He didn’t change who I was, he changed what I was as a person.

My first boyfriend, Clay Grillo, seduced me with the city’s beauty and wonders. Arriving in 1971, I was a bright Ivy League graduate and a father. For me, being made love to on a San Francisco waterbed by a naked man of staggering good looks opened me to life. Before leaving for San Francisco in the early 1970s, I had been involved in the Civil Rights struggles in the South and protested against a senseless war in Vietnam, and I was about to find out that gay men in San Francisco were changing the way America thought about sex.