136. Closets & Cocktails: The Secret History of Gay Speakeasies (with Chris Holcombe)

Snarky Opener (0:00)

Chris Holcombe

It was not as big a secret as you would think. It wasn't quite as a hidden, closeted world as we would think.

Episode Introduction (0:28)

Rob Loveless

Hello, my LGBTQuties, and welcome back to another episode of A Jaded Gay. I'm Rob Loveless and, today, I am a jaded gay because my neighbor's smoke detector, I guess the battery is low, so it keeps chirping.

And obviously, me being in a row home, I can hear into their house and hear the chirping. They actually moved out, they were renting that house, like a couple weeks ago, so nobody's living there.

And literally, for the past week, it's just been chirping nonstop. And the guy who owns the place keeps coming in, and he has workers coming in the house and doing this and that.

But I guess none of them have decided to change the batteries in the smoke detector. And today I even, like, knocked on the door, because I saw somebody was in there to ask if they could do that, and no answer.

So, I'm gonna try again today, after the podcast recording, to see if we can do that.

Because literally, anytime there's silence in my house, I just hear the chirping, and it feels like I'm in an Edgar Allen Poe novel like I'm gonna just lose my mind from it.

Gay Speakeasies (1:22)

Rob Loveless

But anyway, from chirping smoke detectors to Roaring 20s, today, we have a very special guest joining us to talk about a really interesting topic.

So previously, we talked about the Mafia's involvement in the Stonewall Inn and how the mafia in New York City owned quite a few gay bars.

But you may not realize that the history of gay establishments goes even further back than the 60s. So, we're going to get into it today.

But before we do, let's pull our tarot card.

Tarot (1:52)

Rob Loveless

So, the card for this episode is the King of Pentacles in reverse. Pentacles is tied to the element of earth, which is feminine in energy. So, it's asking us to reflect and meditate.

However, the King is viewed as masculine energy, which is action-oriented. So, we're getting a blend of the two energies here. And Pentacles, it's very nurturing and stabilizing.

It's representative of putting in the hard work, reaping the fruits of our labor, and prosperity.

Also, the King is the final card in the suit of Pentacles, which represents the end of a cycle and the beginning of a new one. However, the King is also the 14th card in the suit.

So, when we add it together, we get five. And in tarot, five is sometimes referenced as the conflict number. In numerology, it's also tied to change, instability, and loss.

And specifically, when we draw the King of Pentacles in reverse, it's telling us that we may be in conflict with someone who only cares about superficial aspects like wealth or tends to be very self-centered.

This card can also appear when we're feeling stuck in a rut. And while we want to remain grounded, it's important that we also allow ourselves to change up our routine and experience something different. 

Maybe dabble in something fun and new in order to keep ourselves from feeling stuck in a monotonous routine.

Guest Introduction (3:06)

Rob Loveless

And with that in mind, I am very excited to welcome our next guest. He is the author of the Hidden Gotham series, an LGBTQ+ historical crime fiction series. Please welcome Chris Holcombe.

Hi, Chris, how are you today?

Chris Holcombe

I'm doing well. How are you?

Rob Loveless

Doing well, thank you. It's, you know, a cold day here in Philadelphia. I know you just said, when we were catching up beforehand, that it's pretty cold in New York City as well.

You just got out for the first time recently. So cold, but good overall.

Chris Holcombe

Yeah, yeah. It's, we've been, we've been dealing with some really frigid temperatures. We're a bit annoyed.

This usually doesn't happen until the end of January, and it's been starting since about mid-December. And so, my husband, who is a lifelong New Yorker, is like, where are we? North Dakota?

This is, this is nonsense. But on the plus side, though, we've had some nice, wonderful snow. So Central Park turns into a winter wonderland.

And if you want to picture it just all these like dogs, for all you doggo fans out there, like all the dogs have been in heaven, just playing in the snow.

So, it's been, it's been beautiful to see in that regard, but could use a little more warmth, I think.

Rob Loveless

It's like a double-edged sword because the cold can be brutal, but it is pretty to like, see the snow and everything outside.

So, I guess you win some, you lose some, you know?

Chris Holcombe

Yeah.

Rob Loveless

Well, I'm very excited to have you on today to talk about your books, which we're going to get into shortly.

But before we do, can you just introduce yourself to the listeners? How you identify, your pronouns, career, background, all that fun stuff?

Chris Holcombe

Sure thing. Well, my name is Chris Holcombe, and I go with he/him pronouns, and I identify as a gay man. And I am the author of the Hidden Gotham series, which are a queer fiction that takes place in 1920s New York.

There are three novels, The Double Vice, The Blind Tiger, and The Devil Card. And there are two short stories, The Red Fox and the recently released holiday short, The Naughty List.

And they all take place in the same world with the same kind of cast of characters. The two short stories are dealing with some side characters that are giving, given a little bit more of a starring role this time around.

But it's the same universe that all takes place in Greenwich Village in New York City in 1926.

Rob Loveless

And for all the listeners here, obviously, you can't see it, but Chris is ready to go because he has a beautiful display of his books in the background and his fedora on.

So, he is just all ready for the neo-noir 1920s here.

Chris Holcombe

Indeed, indeed. You gotta keep up with the branding. You know?

Rob Loveless

Absolutely, absolutely. Well, I like to ask all my guests: today, are you a jaded or non-jaded gay and why?

Chris Holcombe

I'm probably in the middle but leaning more towards jaded gay, but I've always been a little cynical and sarcastic, my life. And I think you have to have a little bit of cynicism to write noir fiction.

But I did marry an optimist, so I'm starting to get a little bit lighter and a little less jaded and trying to embrace the more happier, positive aspects of life. So, I'm in the middle.

I'm skewing more towards non-jaded as I get older, which is ironic. I think it's usually the other way around. But...

Rob Loveless

Yeah, I was gonna say I feel like people usually get more jaded and bitter as they get older, but I'm glad to hear it's the reverse. You're slowly moving in, in the good direction.

Chris Holcombe

Yeah, yeah. Well, we'll see what happens at the end of this year. We, I may go right back to jaded again, but. Well, fingers crossed.

Rob Loveless

It changes based on the day I get it.

Chris Holcombe

Indeed, indeed.

Rob Loveless

Well, let's jump right into it. Can you start off by telling us a little bit about your career as a writer?

Chris Holcombe

Yeah, absolutely. I've always wanted to be a writer. I was when I was very young. I was just obsessed with books and I was obsessed with mysteries, which, for a 6,7, 8, 8-year-old was a little odd, particularly in the south, where I grew up.

In the Southern Baptist South of all places. So, they're like, your kid's reading about murder? Yes, and he loves it. And I was just fascinated with just the genre, and then I just wanted to write it, to emulate it. 

You know, I think a lot of us start off, those of us in the artistic fields, we start off kind of mimicking the things that we like, before we eventually find our own voice.

And so, by the time I hit the age of eight, I wanted to write mystery novels. And I actually was obsessed by that point with Murder She Wrote. Rest in peace, Dame Angel.

And I asked Santa Claus for a typewriter when I was eight years old, and God bless my parents, but they gave me one, and then I just wrote everything on that.

I mean, just Agatha Christie knockoffs, starts of novels that never went anywhere. I think I even wrote a King Solomon's Mind knockoff, like, I mean, I was all over the place, but I loved it.

I just wanted to write, and I loved writing. And I, it took a back seat for a couple of years, you know, I, you know, went to school, and actually, I was more of a musician back in those days.

I got into songwriting, so I was still writing, but writing with, you know, with music and melody. Went to Berklee College of Music in Boston, and then went out to LA, went into Nashville, did that for a long period of time, and then songwriting at that point was taking a big shift.

It was taking a big hit because of iTunes Music Store and changing business platforms and yada yada yada. Long story short, I went back to grad school, and it's funny, you and I were chatting about, you know, finding time to read while doing grad school.

Well, while I was doing grad school, I thought it was a great idea to be like, you know what? I want to finish a novel for the first time in my life. I'm going to do it. I'm going to write a novel while going to grad school. Do not recommend that, by the way, but I did it. I did. I wrote, I finally completed a novel.

I've completed a mystery novel. It will never see the light of day. It's terrible, but I completed it. I rewrote it for years because I was teaching myself kind of how to really do this in long form.

And then I just kind of kept on going and I wrote, I wrote another one that a novel that took place in present day, that I always like to joke, will never see the light of day.

And the reason being is, when I was six years old, my parents were like, talking to you was like talking to an old man, like I was just kind of always the epitome of the old soul, and I could not write contemporary dialog to save my life.

Like I didn't know how to, like by the time I figured out what on fleek was, it was already out of, out of circulation, so I'm not hip at all. And so, and when you're trying to write, you know, contemporary fiction, that that can be a hindrance.

And so, I was watching one day just a Bette Davis, Lauren Bacall movie marathon, you know, all these old noir movies and and I remember loving the dialog. And I thought, I think I could do that, but I wanted to make it queer.

Because one of the things I was doing when I was writing these first couple of novels was, I wanted to put queer people at the center of a mystery story. And there really aren't that many detective series, private detective series, amateur detective series that star gay men or lesbian women, and any other spectrum of the rainbow.

And so, I thought, all right, well, I want to, how do I, how do I make this like, if I wrote like in the 30s or the 40s, or whatever decade, I hadn't figured out the decade yet. I was like, how do I, how do I get this to be in a queer world?

And then I stumbled upon the Pansy Craze of the 19, late 1920s early 1930s which was in New York, Chicago, Paris, and Berlin. And so, then I kind of just fell down this rabbit hole of just this research, of all these clubs, of all these figures that, you know, we had kind of painted over in history.

We just kind of pretended that they weren't necessarily there. And, you know, it was fascinating to see this thriving queer community in places in New York and Chicago.

And then once I learned that the mob also controlled their clubs as well as they controlled all the other clubs, I was like, Oh well, there's my crime element. Here we go. We're, I'm all in.

So, from there, a lot of the characters that are in the final novels, the three Hidden Gotham novels that I was mentioning, they just sprang to life like right then and there, like I saw them all. I saw our protagonist, Dash Parker. I saw his hunky Irish bear of a bartender and part-time lover, Joe Shaughnessy.

I saw Finn Francis, who was their puckish friend, who was always getting into trouble. Once I learned about Gladys Bentley, who I'm sure we'll talk about at length in a moment, I saw the fictionalized version of her as L train. And so all these characters just sprang to life.

And so, then I just needed a plot to put them in. And then once I found that then it was, we're off to the races. So, the first Hidden Gotham novel was published in the thick of the pandemic in March of 2021. 

That was quickly followed by The Blind Tiger. The second book, which was released on 2/22/22 because I'm cheeky that way. The third novel was not released in March.

Sorry, I couldn't, couldn't make it, make that deadline, but that was released in June of 2023. And the fourth, Hidden Gotham novel I am editing right now, and that will knock on wood, be out June of this year of 2025.

Rob Loveless

I love that you hit upon all those topics, because to your point, when you think of gay culture, queer culture, you're not necessarily going to think of, you know, Mafia associations.

And I think that's kind of a piece of LGBTQ+ history that gets buried down there. I personally wasn't aware of the tie-in between the mafia and gay bars until I read a book in, I think it was 2022 about Pride and the Stonewall Riots.

And it kind of broke it down like police files. So, you you know, one chapter would be a case file where we talk about this topic, like Judy Garland, or, you know, a specific person who was involved in the riots.

And one piece of that was, you know, how the mafia owned the Stonewall Inn. And through that discovery, then I got interested in learning a little bit more.

And as we talked about before we started recording, previously on this podcast, I've done two episodes, one about that the affiliation between the mafia and gay bars in New York City in primarily the 60s and 70s.

So, a little bit more recent than the 1920s. And then also touched upon it in the Stonewall Riots episode. So, I think it's a really interesting connection that people don't recognize.

And so obviously, being an author, fiction is fun, because you can make things up as you go along, but since this is historical fiction, obviously you want to make sure certain elements are factual.

So, what kind of research did you do for the Hidden Gotham series? 

Chris Holcombe

Yeah, I did a lot because I funny, funny story. I never really read historical fiction until I started writing it. 

So I really didn't quite know what I was getting into, and I resisted it for a while because I was, I was justifiably intimidated by it, because there's so many things that we take for granted that, you know, are like modern day, like, you know, appliances or just modern-day kind of everyday life flows I guess, that, you know, you we have to think that that is not necessarily the case in like, something like, say, like the 1920s.

Like I had to do research. Like, did buildings have buzzers? Did everyone have a telephone? Which they didn't. So, you kind of look, look at these, you know, common things that can kind of trip you up.

And I was like, I don't know if I'm going to be able to do it, but I did find a great set of resources and a great set of books, which I do reference a lot of these materials at the end of each of the novels and the acknowledgements.

So, George Chauncey's Gay New York: 1880 - 1940 was a seminal work that I used a lot. He really did a lot of research just showing how the gay male world were, kind of how it gravitated into Greenwich Village, where it kind of came from.

This book was published, actually, in the mid-90s, and he was able to do interviews with people who, you know, who are still alive, who were around in like, the late, you know, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s.

So, you have, like, first-hand accounts, along with, you know, the research that he did. That was a great work. There was another fantastic book by a man named James Frank Wilson. And he wrote a book called Pansies, Bulldaggers, and Chocolate Babies.

And it was all around queer Harlem. And it was centered around the performance world of queer Harlem. So, we started to talk about Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters, and, of course, Gladys Bentley, and those two kind of started to really paint a great picture of the different parts of Manhattan. 

So, for those who are not familiar with Manhattan, Manhattan is it's a it's a very tiny island, but it's a very dense Island, and there's pockets, and there's neighborhoods everywhere, and it's always been that way. And so, you know, one part of Manhattan can feel completely different than the other half, you know, and neighborhoods have their own histories and whatnot.

But I started with those two books, and then I found just a bunch of other sources. There was a great book which was less about the queer world and just more about New York history.

It was called The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Bloom, and I got to learn all about Charles Norris, who was one of the city's first medical examiners that actually created the processes that we now follow in forensic crime medicine before forensic before that kicked in, medical examiners were basically paid by the body.

So, they didn't really care how people died. They just processed them and got paid. He was the one who was like, wait a minute, you're saying that this victim was stabbed, but he fell out a window? You know, like, so he was the one who started to come up with, along with his lab partner, Alexander Gettler, they kind of came up with this whole kind of crime-solving process about trying to figure out what was happening.

And all, of course, all the poisons that were happening during the day. Arsenic was big. Anyone who's read Agatha Christie knows that arsenic and cyanide were very big in the 20s as a murder weapon.

And then just, you know, I used the New York Times archives, I can go all the way back to like, the 1800s. there's also the New Yorker archives. You know, my protagonist, Dash Parker.

He comes from a very upper-class background before he was, you know, cast out because of his homosexuality. And so, I used the New Yorker to really infuse a lot of his personality and what he's interested in.

And the New Yorker archives scanned all of their magazines and digitized them so I can page through it, so I can get to see all of the advertisements, all the letters to the editor about what people were complaining about. Spoiler alert, it has not changed.

Everyone's complaining in the 1920s about how expensive New York is, how none of the subways work, and how, you know, like, rich people get it easy, and everyone else is getting screwed. This has not changed in 100 years. So, so it's just fun to kind of see that, and then just to see kind of what the op-eds were written about at the time.

And one of the things that I really try hard to do, speaking of research, is I only research as much as I need for the story that I'm writing, and that's for a couple of reasons. One is just for time. I'm also working full time, so I don't have, you know, all of the free time to really devote to just getting lost in research.

But the other thing is, I don't want to know more than what my characters would know at the time when it happens. So even if we know later, like, a month later, like, like, say, if I reference a trial case or an event, and we think this is the cause of the event, and then, you know, we learn with historical hindsight that something else caused it, I'm not going to correct it, because that's what they know.

And so, I'm trying to keep it, even though it's in the past as present as possible, so that way we don't have any, what I like to call kind of cute winks at the audience, like, well, we know how this is really going to turn out, wink, wink, nudge nudge. I don't do that.

So, and that kind of is, is really nice, because I get to just experience, kind of what my characters would experience as if I were living back then, like, well, this is what they said the cause of the accident was so and let's debate it and what have you. So, but it's very, very extensive.

I also do research a lot of slang dictionaries to try to figure out what was some of the slang that people used. I looked up queer slang to see kind of what coded language there was. And some of this, you know, is documented, some of this is, you know, probably word of mouth.

And so, you know, the the decisions that I kind of have to make is like, well, what's going to be an extrapolation? Because when we talk about, in particular, queer history, a lot of it's incomplete, right? It was either destroyed or it was sanitized or it was completely kicked over.

So, you take the pieces and the morsels that we have, and then from since I'm writing fiction, I can go, well, I can assume that human beings, being human beings, that we could extend it or extrapolate it into into this direction.

But it's a fair amount, and I have a lot of trouble actually fitting a lot of it into a singular book. In fact, actually, someone said to me once, when you do research, you use 10% of it in a novel, 90% gets cut, which is true.

And I have actually had to cut entire plot lines out of some of these novels, because there was just so much richness to work with, but they were competing.

So actually, an entire plot line that was in the first book is actually the fourth book. An entire plot line that was in the second book went into the third book, an entire plot line in the third book is probably going to get kicked into like the fifth book. So, I don't have a shortage of material to work with.

There's just simply so much, and it's so fascinating, and it's so funny in places, and it's so heartbreaking in other places, and it's and frightening because there's a lot of overlap with what happened then that's what's happening now.

So, it may history may not necessarily repeat, but it is rhyming a lot.

LGBTQ+ People in the 1920s (21:02)

Rob Loveless

Well, clearly, you've done your homework for putting these books together, and it looks like you have a lot of great work to show for it. And you mentioned that your main character, Dash Parker, was cast out due to his sexuality.

So, can you tell us about how LGBTQ+ people were treated during this time?

Chris Holcombe

Absolutely. So, it's it's interesting. I went into this research and went into this time period thinking very much the narrative that we kind of have, which was we were the LGBTQ+ community, was mostly in the closet.

They were heavily policed. They were heavily harassed. And then, you know, and then we had Stonewall, and then we all busted out of the closet. And then, you know, now, we're known and we're seen.

That's not necessarily true. The closet as we know it, and understand it was really a late 1940s, 1950s construct. Past World War II, there was a huge push for strict gender norms and a huge push for normalcy. We it also coincided with the Red Scare and McCarthyism.

You there was a Lavender Scare that was wrapped into that, and that forced kind of what we know as the closet into kind of existence.

When you go back earlier, it's not to say that it was accepted, but it was not as heavily policed or enforced as it would be what we see in like the 40s and the 50s and the early 60s, and in many cases, depending on the neighborhood and depending on the cop that was patrolling your street, it was an open secret.

Now, the thing you have to understand coming into the 1920s was there were a big key events that shaped kind of the mindset of that decade, the decade that roared, the decade of ballyhoo, and all of that is, first of all, there was World War I, which, at that time was known as the Great War.

It was known as the war to end all wars. You know, this is, I believe, when they had the headline, you know, the war has begun. God is dead. That's now referenced in, you know, Elton John's Levon song. So, like everyone thought that that was going to be the end of the of the world, you know.

And the and the death and the destruction that happened, it killed half of Europe's population. Like it was immense. Coming out of that there was an influenza pandemic from 1917 to 1920 and in a weird kind of behaving in a way that most influenza viruses didn't and don't operate.

It killed the very young as well as the very old and so, and actually, I should correct that. Not the very young, as in, like infants. I'm talking about like teenagers and early and people in their early 20s.

That typically doesn't happen, right? It's a very it's like the infants and they and the elderly. But here you had a generation either wiped out by war or they were wiped out by influenza. So, then we enter into the 20s, and we have this era of mass technological advancement.

The telephone was taking off, right? As a common device. Automobiles were taken off as a modern-day device. Light bulbs were now being used everywhere we're getting rid of gas lamps.

There was just this feeling, probably similar to what we're feeling now with AI and everything, of just like being in this innovation Super Storm, or just all of a sudden, we went from an agricultural economy to an industrial economy like just changes across the board.

We kicked off the decade with women getting the right to vote, or at least most women, white women, getting the right to vote. And then also with prohibition, where the selling of alcohol was illegal. And then, you know, all of that is to provide context to say that there is this attitude of, you know, If not now, when?

That's why there is this sense of parties and decadence of the 1920s that we kind of get a sense of is because people were like, well, we survived death barely. Let's just live it up. We have now, like, modern technologies coming in. We've got modern fashion, like, let's just go to town.

But with prohibition, a lot of that partying was driven underground, right? So that's where we have speakeasies. And speakeasies could be just someone's, you know, back room, like in their apartment. It could be listed as speakeasy, or it could be a more formalized club.

The number I have seen of the number of speakeasies operating on Manhattan Island alone were in the tens of thousands. So, it was very much across the board there. But there were also open secrets. 

Everyone knew that everyone was drinking alcohol, and everyone knew that people were buying and selling it. And with these hidden clubs, the more taboo your club was, the more taboo of something that you could see or experience, the better.

So, this is when we started to see a lot of downtowners, as they were called, our white population, going and exploring the Black clubs of Harlem. And then this is when we also start to see interracial mixing in clubs, which was often not the case. We also got to see women smoking cigars and drinking, oh my gosh, how, how could they? Single woman with us with a drink and a cigarette?

Like, I mean, it's, it's wild to think about, but like a woman walking down the street smoking would have been, like, highly taboo.

And so there was this kind of curiosity around and at that point, you know, we had the gay community kind of creating these clubs because, you know, we've always been good at carving out safe spaces for ourselves, and so now you have these speakeasies with protection or with hidden entrances.

So okay, we'll do that for us. We'll have lesbian clubs, we'll have gay clubs, we'll have drag clubs. And so, you know that that that world was starting to be built.

Now that to answer your first question in a very long-winded way, and I do apologize, but I am Southern. We go on tangents. But that also meant that you know you were, you were at risk of the policing of just speakeasies in general, but then you were kind of at risk of also being charged with what they would call degeneracy.

And that was the the law, which is similar to an obscenity law at the time. So, you know, it was policed in some areas, it was not heavily policed in other areas. There were a lot of anti-vice organizations because prohibition was a gigantic failure. By the mid-1920s everyone knew it.

It was just a big, big failure. So, you had certain organizations like The Committee of Fourteen, which is all about the stamping out of vice. Included in vice is, of course, acts of degeneracy or acts of homosexuality. There was also, I think the anti-vice League of New York was also kind of trying to target clubs and what have you.

So, if you were caught, you were arrested, you would be charged with an act of degeneracies. You'd probably spent a night in jail, and then that would probably be about the end of it. Depending on the judge, you might have to do a year or two in a work yard, which is kind of a work prison.

But I think it all depended on how much money you had, so privilege played a role, and then which beat cop got paid off to look the other way. But you know, at the same time, we also had some really interesting things where performance was not as policed, not until later, and I'll get into that in a moment.

But like, for example, we had on Broadway stage performer known as Barbette, who now has a documentary out. I highly suggest everyone see it. Barbette was a drag performer that performed on Broadway as an aerialist.

And he was from Austin, Texas, and he created this persona where get all glammed up, and so that then he would become she, with ostrich feathers and spangles and the whole bit, come out, strip down to like a leotard, and then do the rings and the trapeze.

And everyone was like losing their mind, completely made up. Then would land, then would take off their wig and completely change the mannerisms to more masculine mannerisms, and then walk off the stage that way. And it blew people's minds at that point.

And this is about 1924, 1925, and was playing to 3-, 4-, 5,000 people a night. Took the act to London, took the act to Paris and Berlin. And so, you would have performers on stage who were, you know, in drag, drag queens, drag kings. You would have queer content on stage at the time too.

And those weren't necessarily arrested, not until Mae West. Mae West kind of screwed it up for everybody. But I can say that as a separate story.

But all that's to say is, it was there. It was somewhat in the open. It all depended on which neighborhood you were in, which cop came across, you know, where you were and, and just kind of the tolerance of your neighbors.

But it was, well, it was, it was not as big a secret as you would think. Maybe I should I should I'll sum it up with that. It wasn't quite as a hidden, closeted world as we would think.

Queer Speakeasies in the 1920s (30:07)

Rob Loveless

And I know you said that a lot of the speakeasies were kind of an open secret. So, with that in mind, how did patrons typically find out about and gain access to, specifically, the LGBTQ+ speakeasies? 

Chris Holcombe

Yeah. So, a lot of that will be word of mouth, obviously, you know, it's not necessarily something that's going to be published, per se, but there were a couple of maps that you could buy.

I actually have one map that shows it's not, it's not specific to just LGBTQ+ speakeasies, but just to all the clubs and who you could find where in Harlem. One of which was a queer speakeasy, The Clam House, which is where Gladys Bentley performed.

And I actually have a drawing of her, and like a man's tuxedo and top hat and tails, which is what she performed in. And so, a lot of it would be word of mouth, some of the speakeasies, you would have secret knocks that you would have to give on doors.

Sometimes you'd have secret words that you would have to say, you know, sometimes you'd have to be invited by one of the regular patrons if they were a bit more exclusive.

But it's just your, your it's, it's kind of like before the internet. If we could think back to before the internet, for those of us who are elder Millennials like myself, there was a time when people would just, you would talk to people like, hey, what's the, what's the, you know, hottest club that you've been to, and someone would answer you.

And that's kind of how it worked back then. And, and, you know, especially if you're looking at a neighborhood like, say, Greenwich Village, you know, which is Bohemia, which is where all the artists and and the weirdos, and I use that term affectionately, would be, they would share information all the time. 

So, it's, it was a lot of word of mouth, very little of it was likely written down for obvious reasons. Now, this is not related to just LGBTQ+, although I think she did recommend a few clubs that fell into that category, but there was a New Yorker writer. Her name was Lois Long.

She wrote a column called Tables for Two, and it was about all the hottest clubs and speakeasies in town. But she wrote it under a pseudonym, and she wrote it under the moniker Lipstick, which is just fabulous, by the way. I mean, just your code name Lipstick, like, good grief.

She's hilarious, by the way, I'm gonna, I'm gonna work her into a novel at some point. I haven't. She's actually one of the ones that got cleaved out of book two, that's probably going to end up in book five. But she was, she was hired to go and find all the clubs.

And so, she would go up to Harlem, she'd go to Times Square, should go down to The Village, and she'd go and find these, and she would write about them, about how to find them, what's at, what's at the club, what kind of band, what kind of drinks, and all that.

And it's published in the New Yorker. So, you know, if you if, if, if you know, she ran into your circle, most likely, she'd probably write about the club, and you learned about it that way.

Queer Codes and Language in the 1920s (33:03)

Rob Loveless

And what were some of those queer codes or languages used to identify other gay men that you referenced? 

Chris Holcombe

Yeah, so that's a bit trickier, because I found a couple of of queer slang, and I'm trying, and it's a bit I'm trying to figure out how, if it was used to identify.

One thing I did learn from from George Chauncey's book was, and it's interesting, we, you know how sometimes we gay men will refer to each other as she and her.

That came about because if you were in a public place and you were talking about your significant other, or you were talking about someone you were dating, you would have to code, you'd have to basically pronoun switch if you didn't think that you were in a safe space.

And then it just kind of stuck over time. So, then it was like, she and her, and what's happening with her honey? What's what's going on? But I think there was a in some cases, there was clothing would be how you would identify one another.

Now, in the 20s, and it's hard to picture, because everything we have is in black and white, but the clothing in the 20s was actually extremely colorful. Someone said to me, it actually looks more like the film Dick Tracy. If you've ever seen Dick Tracy with, it was like 90, 1990.

It was the only successful film Madonna was at next to Desperately Seeking Susan. No offense to Madge, but, you know, let's be real. And it had Warren Beatty and everything. And it was very bright greens, bright yellows, bright blues, like, you know, and what have you. And that was true back in the day.

And you know, you could have it be just a tinge brighter. You could have, like, you know, a certain color handkerchief, in some cases. Weirdly enough, in Paris, I don't know if this is true in New York, but in Paris, lesbians would identify themselves by wearing a monocle, a single glass monocle on their eye.

And if they would walk around, just wearing a monocle, that was kind of code for that, that you that you were queer. And in fact, there was a very famous lesbian club and Paris called Le Monico.

And there's pictures of it on the internet that you can find. The structure actually is still there. It's, it's an empty building. Someone needs to buy it and refurbish it because the doorway is round, like a monocle that you would enter into.

So, so there were little things like that that you could that you could kind of indicate if someone was, was, was, was playing on your side of the sexual spectrum. I do know first for certain, that the term for dropping those hints or giving those clues, was known as dropping pins, as in dropping hair pins, and seeing if someone was going to pick up your hairpin.

Then that probably means they were picking up what you were putting down. And then there to that end, there is a couple of other queer signs that if probably if you used probably clued people in, on on on which team you were playing for.

Twinks, back in the day, were called belles, which I think is fantastic. B-E-L-L-E-S, belles like belle of the ball.

Sailors were known as bell bottoms, or seafood, if you will, you know, and I think we need to bring that back.

And so, there's a couple of other terms that that are, that are like that, that I that I have found that kind of would indicate that you were in that community.

Gay Speakeasies & The Mafia in the 1920s (36:29)

Rob Loveless

And I know we touched upon this upfront about the Mafia's involvement with bars in the 60s, like the Stonewall Inn.

But what, what was the relationship between these speakeasies and the Mafia in the 1920s?

Chris Holcombe

Yes, so they were most likely going to play the role of liquor supplier. So, the you know, by this point, liquor wasn't being actively produced in the United States because you couldn't sell it.

So, you know, breweries were shutting down, and spirits and distilleries were not really in operation. There were some loopholes in the law, weirdly enough, around wine because of of religious ceremonies. So, you can get around that way. But there really wasn't a lot of that for obvious reasons.

And so, in order to get liquor into your speakeasy, you'd have to have a connection. And that's where the mob really grew as they became kind of that supplier. They would find ways to either, you know, sell you the alcohol, or find ways to get the, what they would call the real McCoy.

So, they would have rum runners coming up from the Caribbean to get rum into the city, they would be tried to smuggling in, you know, possibly gin from Europe, because, you know, the whole world wasn't doing prohibition, just, you know, the United States and so they would, you would have a contract with them about, you know, supplying that liquor.

You would also likely be paying them for protection. So, what they would do is pay off the local cops or your neighborhood cops, so that way they wouldn't necessarily raid you for breaking the Volstead Act, which is the act that made prohibition.

And then if you were operating a queer speakeasy, obviously it would be in addition, to make sure that the clientele was protected from being arrested for degeneracy as well.

So, you know, it was very transactional. They would get, the mob would get a very healthy cut of the profits, much like they would in the 60s. I think, though, by the 60s, if I'm remembering, right, but you probably know more than I would, they were also using it to launder money.

I don't think that was quite the case in the 20s. I think it was much more around selling liquor and then, and then being paid for that service.

The Legacy of Queer History from the 1920s (38:42)

Rob Loveless

And I love how the Hidden Gotham series brings this piece of LGBTQ+ history to the forefront because, like I said, until I had learned about your books, I had really never known this piece of LGBTQ+ history.

So how is the legacy of gay speakeasies remembered or celebrated in the LGBTQ+ community today, if it is even?

Chris Holcombe

Right. Well, it's funny. I think I think most people's reactions are your reactions because it was my reaction as well when I was beginning this, this journey. It's just not very well known.

You know, when I start to talk to people about, you know, like, for instances, people like Barbette or people like Gladys Bentley their eyes get really big and they just go, No way. That's that couldn't be real. 

I'm like, oh, but, but it is. And I think it's one of those things where, because of, in particular, as we get later into the mid into the 20th century, when we get to, like, the 1940s, 1950s you know, a lot of queer history by that point was pretty much covered up.

And there was in the 20s, there was very much a there was very much a war between the, what I like to call the moralists, but they're basically the social conservatives and those who were the more like the progressives, you know. And it has not changed.

This has always been throughout US history. It's always been throughout human history. But in the 1920s you see this because we see some great advancements. You know, women are moving into the city and having jobs.

They're not paid like men, but they are able to work, which was a relatively new phenomenon. Dating was a new thing. We forget this but you know, prior to the to the 1900s you know, America's culture, social structure, looked very much like Victorian England's, you know.

Your parents basically, you know, set up, set you up with the boy or girl at the farm next door, so they could grow the farms together and then all that, and and everything was very much under the guise of parents' eyes, you know. But then you have the telephone, you could have secret conversations.

Then you had the motor car, you could go and drive to a secret location. So then, like, you know, you had all of these, you had all these kind of advancements that were changing culture at the time, and so, so there was this push at the time, driven by technology, driven by urbanization and whatnot, to really kind of move society forward.

You know, the 20s really thought of themselves as very modern. You know, fashion was very modern. You know, women being able to smoke and drink was considered by many to be very modern, and yet you had a sizable population that was like, no, no, we don't, we don't want this.

And so there was kind of this war between the progressives and the conservatives. And then when the when the depression happened with the stock market crashed, actually, there were several crashes in 1929 going into 1930 and then that led to a permanent recession, or not, or, a, you know, a decade-long recession, the Conservatives won out, and so then they just kind of took over.

Because when people are worried about, you know, where their next meal is going to come from, they don't really care about progressive ideals. So, you know, so a lot of that history got painted over, but what I am thrilled to see is that history is coming back, and I don't know if it's because my algorithm knows what I'm looking up.

It's hard to tell in this modern-day age about what's what's really a trend and what's just your algorithm, but I am seeing more and more articles written and a lot more posts about a lot of these key historical figures back in 1920s. And so, for example, this is where I get to lean into my my music education a bit.

So, the 1920s was also the birth of the blues and jazz music, which is the foundation for all the music that we listen to today. So, whether that is hip hop, pop, rock and roll, country, it all comes from this. And so, a lot of the musical dynamos that were really driving this were actually in the queer community.

You have Ma Rainey. Ma Rainey was known as the mother of the blues. She was from Chicago. She kind of came about in the tents, tent circuit, what they would call where you would go. They would pitch a tent, pitch a stage, and they would perform all around the country.

And she had was known to have several girlfriends at the time. In fact, Viola Davis plays Ma Rainey in a fantastic movie, which I think is Chad, Chadwick Boseman's last film, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, which is about the seminal recording of that hit song that was her biggest hit song. But she was queer.

She actually wrote a song called Prove It On Me, which is about escaping a lesbian bar raid, and said, yes, I do it. Ain't nobody caught me, because you got to prove it on me. And has lines like, you know, I was with a crowd of people. It must have been women because I don't like no men.

So, so you have that that's on that's on record, literally on a record that was there. She also mentored someone that you might be more familiar with, known as Bessie Smith, otherwise known as the Empress of the Blues. She was definitely on the queer spectrum. Had several girlfriends at the time.

I think she probably, we don't really know if she dated Ma Rainey, but some evidence is just possibly there. But she was definitely on the queer spectrum. We also have Lucille Bogan, little less known, but she actually recorded a song in 1935 called BD Women, which is short, with short, short for bull dagger women, which is the precursor to bull dyke and and that was a whole song about being a lesbian woman.

And that's also recorded. So, you have like these three just just quick examples of how in music and in art, how open they were about their lesbianism, and everyone knew it, actually.

So, you have those figures. You have Gladys Bentley, who was the most famous queer performer in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance. In fact, Langston Hughes wrote just paragraphs about her because he loved her so much like just was blown away. She played piano.

She was a very masculine presenting woman who would perform in a men's tuxedo, top hat, cane, tails, the whole bit. She would vulgarize popular songs. She actually took a song, two songs, Alice Blue Gown and Sweet, Sweet Georgia Brown, she combined them and she made them about anal sex.

She also sang a song called Nothing Perplexes Like the Sexes, Because When You See Them Switch, You Can't Tell Which Is Which, and there are articles written about her. She performed The Clam House in the 1920s eventually going to club Ubangi in the late 1920s early 1930s where she had a bigger stage.

She got a full band at this point, and she performed backed by a chorus of drag queens, or a chorus of pansies, as we would say, in the 20s. So, you have that that was, that was there, and she's actually featured, I believe, in the African American History Museum in Washington, DC. So, she's finally getting her flowers for the queer trailblazer that she was.

You know, the men are a little bit harder to find, at least from a performance standpoint, but we had Barbette, as I mentioned before, but we also have drag balls. Now this is the thing that blows people's minds. We had drag balls, two that were very famous.

One was in Webster Hall, which was down in the East Village, and the other one was in Hamilton Lodge, which was up in Harlem at 155th. Now the Hamilton Lodge Ball dates back to the 1840s, it was known as the Odd Fellows Ball. It was made by a bunch of Black men who were free, and they created this organization.

And 1869 they had their 25th anniversary, and that was the first documented evidence we have of some of the men attending the ball dressed as women. Now, likely these were probably more straight guys who were having a goof and a laugh. But we always find safe spaces in the queer community.

So, as it became like more people would just kept doing it, like, oh well, then we can do it too. And so, by the 1880s, it was mostly a drag ball. And likely the people, the participants in it, were probably predominantly, largely queer, certainly by the 1920s and early 1930s.

Then it was the event of the season. It was now known as the Pansies Ball at this point, and it drew thousands of people. In fact, the queens made a deal with the funeral parlor owners in the town, in the town, sorry, in their in the neighborhood in Harlem, to borrow their hearses so that way they could pull up in limousines and they had their own kind of like red carpet that they would walk down.

And the only time the Hamilton Lodge was padlocked by the police was because it was at such capacity that it was considered a major safety hazard. So, they act that was the only time they actually locked the doors, because they paid off the cops and the cops, and we were like, whatever. I don't care.

But there's actually some photographs of some queens in the late 1920s early 1930s that you can see. So, ball culture was already established by the 1920s.

So, you know, we're starting to now understand, we're starting to kind of appreciate this, and I think it's good, especially as we are coming into a period, not to get too political, but there is now a push to really silence this history, silence visibility, even in contemporary much less in historical fashion.

So, I definitely feel more of a fire now to tell people who may not be aware, who may be surprised about our history in this decade, be like, Oh yes, no, no. We've always been here, and we've always been fabulous, and we've always driven culture.

In fact, something that will probably blow most people's minds is Mae West, that little troublemaker I mentioned before, she wrote a play in 1927 called The Drag.

Now Mae West was on Broadway at this point in 1926 in a play called Sex, which was about, essentially as a sex worker and and she would go, after hours, to all these clubs, and she was meeting all these, you know, LGBTQ+ people, and you know drag queens.

And in fact, she'll rightly, she's, she has been recorded as saying she stole her act from drag queens down in the Bowery in the early 1900s so which makes sense. If you see her act, you're like, yep, that's pretty much a gay man, but she's a woman and uh, and so she wrote down all the things the queens were saying, and she made this play called The Drag.

She held the auditions in the spring of 1927 in Greenwich Village, reportedly over 3,000 men showed up to audition for it, and it did its preview run in Massachusetts. Sold out, Connecticut, sold out, New Jersey, sold out. It was going to come to New York, and it was going to go to Broadway.

At this point, the social nannies, as I like to call them, were aghast that this play was going to go to Broadway. They're like, we cannot have a play about gay men and and and drag queens on Broadway.

So, New York and New Jersey actually worked together for once. And New Jersey shut down after one performance of the drag and arrested all of the cast for obscenity. They shut down and New York, New Yorkers shut down Mae West's Sex, even though had run for over 300 performances, no problem, they shut that down, locked her up for obscenity for 10 days.

And then after that, they created what is known as the Padlock Laws, which is any theater that has any homosexual content at all, however coded, that theater could be shut down and a lock will put on the door, i.e. a padlock. So, the Padlock Laws. And so that was in reaction to Mae West.

At that point, there was also a play, a lesbian play on Broadway at that time running as well, called The Captive so, so she Mae West kind of caused a big stir to try to clean up, you know, Broadway stages.

The only thing that happened was then all the queer content moved north to Harlem because it was less policed because the anti-bias organizations didn't want to go there, which is one of the reasons why, when you read the books, the Hidden Gotham novels, there are Harlem characters.

And we do go to Harlem because the Harlem community and the white queer community were actually inextricably linked at that point, because it was one, they had they had a one thing in common, which was that, you know, the majority of society didn't really want them around.

But the other bit was that then they were creating safe spaces for themselves that also then kind of turned into safe spaces for each other.

And so, it's just, it's just very fascinating, but I'm, I'm hoping to push more knowledge and expand the impact of queer speakeasies from the 20s and those historical figures because I think they should be known and they should be celebrated for for breaking a lot of boundaries back then.

The Hidden Gotham Series (52:01)

Rob Loveless

You mentioned that a lot of LGBTQ+ history prior to the 1950s tended to be kind of lost, so to speak, you know, pushed away, silenced, and that you fear that we're swinging backwards in the current political landscape.

So, with that in mind, what do you hope readers get from the Hidden Gotham series?

Chris Holcombe

Yeah. I think what they'll get is, I think hopefully, a sense of excitement around the fact that there was this kind of thriving community, you know, that isn't the trope that we've all seen ad nauseam to death, which is, you know, the silently suffering queer person.

The fact that there are people back then who were perfectly comfortable and content with themselves, you know, Gladys Bentley, I mentioned before, like, and one of the several interviews that she gave to the press, and she loved to play with the press.

She said, you know, I've just always felt more comfortable in, you know, boys’ clothes when I was a kid, that just felt natural to me. In fact, in George Chauncey's book 1880 - 1940 Gay Male in New York, one person went down to the Bowery, where there were drag queens, and interviewed one of them, one of the reporters of the New York Times.

And that drag queen was saying, you know, I don't know what to tell you, like, I've always kind of been this way, essentially, kind of saying, born this way, you know, over 100 years before Gaga put it into a song.

So I hope that people kind of read these, these books and these novels and and and feel comforted in the fact that, you know, even though there is some tension, you know, obviously it's, it's crime fiction, so there's always going to be a little bit of tension, but even though there's some antagonists that are, you know, kind of chomping at your heels a bit for just existing, that you're still able to thrive.

You're still able to have a life that is full of wonder and fun and humor and fantastic sex and fantastic clothes and fabulous friends and what have you. And and I hope that they get that piece.

I also hope that they get that, you know, if they see eerie parallels, in these novels about, you know what happened then, to what's happening now, is also kind of a resolve to, let's not sleep on this because we know how this story ends. We've seen how this story ends.

Now we can go through it again, or we could not. And I think that's, that's that's something that I hope that that is kind of a another feeling that I hope that they get from reading these books is like, let's not, let's not go down this road. Let's not have to have secret knocks again.

Let's not have to have secret language, a secret code language again. So, so there's that piece.

And then also, I think just as a queer writer, writing queer books, I am most passionate and most angry about book bans and so one of the things that I hope that readers will take away with these books is is to share them with as many people as possible, particularly queer fellow queer people who are you know, wanting you know, a queer murder mystery or just a book that has queer people in it that you know are not you know, terrible cliches or have, like, sad endings.

You know, the people in these books are going to triumph at the end. That's what happens in every mystery you know. And yeah, and just share it with as many, many people as possible.

Because reading, even if it's fiction, even if it's genre fiction, it's important to see representation everywhere and to see positive representation.

And I hope I worked really hard. I hope I've done that. I tried to show a large range of queer people, and I tried to show them in positive, but not necessarily angelic lights, but like just show them as fully fleshed-out characters.

And so, I hope that they take away that as well.

Episode Closing (56:06)

Rob Loveless

And connecting it back to the tarot, King of Pentacles in reverse. Again, this card is telling us that we might feel stuck in a rut, and while we want to remain grounded, we also need to change up our routine and have some fun along the way.

And like Chris talked about today, the Roaring 20s came about because so many people had undergone so many challenges in the years previously, from war and disease that they thought if now when?

Let's have some time and party it up and celebrate. And I think that's a theme we can relate to now as gay men. The past year in particular, was very tough, I think, for LGBTQ+ people with the election and politics, and it's a scary and dark time.

And a lot of us are putting in the work to really speak up, make sure our voices are heard, advocate for ourselves, and it can be extremely exhausting hearing LGBTQ+ rights being debated, feeling like we're putting in all this work to exist.

And while it's important work that we're doing, we still need to make sure that we're taking time for ourselves, and we really need to take those moments to find the queer joy in our existence.

Separate from our political lives, we need to find time to enjoy us as beings, and that involves connecting with others in our community because if we don't do that, it's easy to succumb to the gloom and doom and burn ourselves out along the way.

So obviously, we do want to make sure that we're continuing to advocate for ourselves and really progress forward in regard to LGBTQ+ rights, but also along the way, we need to make sure that we're having some fun and that we're experiencing the queer joy in our lives.

Thank you again, Chris, for coming on today. This has been super informative. I really applaud you for you know, one, writing is not an easy task, putting the books out there, all that.

So, congrats on your book series. But two, really bringing kind of a hidden gem of LGBTQ+ history to the forefront throughout your books, within the Hidden Gotham series. So, thank you again for coming on.

An Excerpt from The Double Vice (57:50)

Rob Loveless

Closing out this episode, can you read us an excerpt from one of the books?

Chris Holcombe

Sure. So, I'll read an excerpt from the first Hidden Gotham novel, The Double Vice. The Double Vice is introduces the queer world of New York and in particular, the characters in the Hidden Gotham world. 

So here we go:

"He is not one of us. Dash Parker tried to shut out all the noise around him and pinpoint exactly what it was the man had said on his birthday of all days to cause this hurried thought. Not an easy feat, given both the house band and the tiny dance floor of his club, Pinstripes were hitting on all sixes.

Still facing the dancing men, Dash tilted his head towards the outsider. I'm sorry? The outsider stood just at the edge of his peripheral vision, a darkened shoulder, a faintly outlined jaw, and of course, the voice. A pansy is here, and you will take me to him. Ah, it was the him. Every female impersonator Dash knew referred to themselves and others as she and her and required everyone else to do likewise.

They were Duchess, Doll, and Flossy, not James, Robert, or Alan. Then there was the belligerent tone, the brusque manner, the clipped accent, the demands, especially the demands wanting Dash to take him to a pansy, then bristling when Dash had replied he was in the wrong place and ought to try Mother Child near 59th Street, where at this hour, they'd be showing off their latest drag.

And now the him drenched in contempt. This was a man who disapproved of the recent changes in the world, a blue nose. Dash pitied those who couldn't keep up, though he had to admit, the world was flying through this decade just as fast as the drummer sticks across his snare and the dancers' feet across the floor. Why here it was, the middle of August 1926, and already so much was different.

Women were voting, telephones were ringing, radio waves and motor cars crisscrossed the country. The farms shrank, the cities grew. Jazz was quickly becoming America's music, and secret clubs popped up to celebrate the nature of Dash and many others. And yet, so much had not changed. Hate for one, fear for another. This outsider represented both."

Rob Loveless

That was an excerpt from The Double Vice by Chris Holcombe, the first book in the Hidden Gotham series.

Connect with Chris (1:00:22)

Rob Loveless

Chris, thank you again so much for coming on today. Can you please tell all the listeners where they can buy your books and connect with you?

Chris Holcombe

Absolutely. So, you can buy the books at most e-retailers, so Amazon, barnesandnoble.com. You can also request your local bookstores and your local libraries to order the print copies.

They're available in paperback and e-book. The first two books, The Double Vice and The Blind Tiger, are available in audiobook. The third book, The Devil Card, will be available in audiobook, likely around March or April of this year.

So, keep an eye out for that. If you are an audiobook fan, it is read by the incredible and multi-award-winning Joel Leslie. Joel Leslie has done over 500 LGBTQ+ books, a lot of them romance, but he really loves noir mysteries, and so he has a ball with this.

He's also a master of accent and dialect. So, if you love accents. He goes to town like it's, it's, there's, there's Irish, there's Italian, there's New Yorker, there's, it's everywhere in between. You're gonna love it. He makes it very, very cinematic.

There are three books, three novels that you can purchase. As I mentioned, there's The Double Vice, The Blind Tiger, The Devil Card.

There's also two special short stories. Those three novels have Dash Parker as your hero. The Red Fox is a short story that stars the wee Finn Francis and an action-adventure homage to early Hitchcock that's set upon a moving train.

So just picture it this very short in stature, but mighty in spirit, effeminate man and a close cap and a red fox fur coat on top of a train trying to outrun a bad guy. It's a lot of fun.

And then also, there is the special holiday short The Naughty List, which stars our queer gangster Nicholas Fife, who was Dash's liquor supplier. He turns into a Saint Nick of a different sort when he has to go around all of Manhattan to the clubs and his naughty list who still owe him money.

So instead of leaving presents, he leaves with them. And from that, he discovers a robbery and has to follow suit. I have fun with all the different kind of tropes around Santa Claus in terms of, like, you know, going down chimneys and sitting on laps and the whole bit. So it is, it is a bit naughty, and it's a bit, it's a lot a lot of fun.

You can follow me on Instagram @thechrisholcombe. You can also follow me on Facebook @chrisholcombeauthor.

Unfortunately, you likely will not be able to follow me on TikTok anymore, because I think by the time this air, it'll be gone, but I but now, in case there's a miracle that happens, I am also on TikTok @thechrisholcombe. I'm also on YouTube, I believe, as @thechrisholcombe.

And then the best way to really stay up to date on any of the books and any new information is with my email list, should probably lead with that.

But, you know, because platforms are fine and good, but algorithms be algorithm, and you may not see the news and updates. So, you can go to my website at chrisholcombe.com and then you can sign up for my monthly newsletter.

There's a couple of emails that get send out that tell you a little bit more about me and my about me and my writing journey, and then you get, like, monthly updates along with any other new announcements. 

Definitely sign up for that, because one thing that I am working on that hopefully will be available soon is that we will likely be able to sell the books directly from the website. That's still in progress, but once that happens, I can blast it to everyone.

So, another reason to sign up for the email list, so you can make sure that that you get that information, so you know that your dollars are supporting me and not a billionaire's platform.

I think that's I think those are all the places that I'm at on. And then I'm on Bluesky. But like everyone else, I'm still trying to figure out how in the world to use it.

Rob Loveless

Definitely check out the Hidden Gotham series. I am only halfway through the first book, admittedly. I love the book, but grad school, the timing did not really align, so I've been not really reading for pleasure lately.

It's mostly been just for schoolwork, but as soon as the semester ends, I plan on getting right back into it. But really, it's a great book.

Not only is it super entertaining and fun, but it really does bring a hidden piece of LGBTQ+ history to the forefront.

So as soon as you're done listening, go out and get those books, and be sure to connect with Chris.

Connect with A Jaded Gay (1:04:47)

Rob Loveless

And you know the drill. For any questions or feedback, you can reach out to me rob@ajadedgay.com.

For more information on the topic, episode resources, links to merchandise, social, all that fun stuff, you can check out the website ajadedgay.com.

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Mmm-bye.