We couldn't be more pleased to feature two excerpts from the just published MILK: A PICTORIAL HISTORY OF HARVEY MILK. Tomorrow, one by Milk screenwriter and Oscar nominee Lance Black. But first, author Armistead Maupin offers not just another look at Harvey Milk, but also another man. Maupin is, of course, best know for his Tales of the City.
Foreword, by Armistead Maupin
It's not hard to imagine the joke Harvey Milk might have made about being the subject of an "oral history." He was a bawdy and unembarrassed guy--"sex-positive," as we now so tiresomely call it--so he never missed a chance to send up his own libido; he was part satyr, part Catskill comic, and both instincts energized his political career.
Maupin I can't say that I knew Harvey well, but we were brothers in the same revolution. In the late 70s while he was campaigning for supervisor in the Castro, I was across town on Russian Hill cranking out "Tales of the City" for the San Francisco Chronicle. Since both efforts were predicated on the then-radical notion that queers deserved a voice in the culture, Harvey and I often found ourselves on the same bill, headlining events that ran the gamut from pride marches to "No on 6" fundraisers to jockstrap auctions at the Stud. We had come of age in a time when homosexuality was not only a mental disease but a criminal offense, so to be oneself and make lemonade from such long-forbidden fruit was exhilarating beyond belief.
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