Where the Pulse Lives

For a generation that has seen the legalization of gay marriage, increasing numbers of families with two mothers or two fathers, and the respected presidential candidacy of an openly gay man like Pete Buttigieg, the 1960s - 1990s can seem a time remote in every regard. Yet the present grows out of the past, and understanding the ways in which life was different in another era deepens our thinking about the present and the future.

Where the Pulse Lives is a personal memoir, the author's account of growing up in Connecticut at a time when gay desire represented an unspeakable shame, experiencing in New York City the highly sexual and politically charged climate of the 1970s, and coming to terms with what it meant to be a gay man in the years dominated by the tragedy of AIDS, the empowering activism of gay men and lesbians in ACT UP, and a growing interest in gay history. These were the years in which gay men no longer wanted to be defined by the values of the dominant culture. Self-definition proved more complicated than expected, however.

John Loughery is the author of six books, including Alias S.S. Van Dine (winner of an Edgar Award), John Sloan: Painter and Rebel (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography), The Other Side of Silence: Men's Lives and Gay Identities, a Twentieth-Century History (winner of a Lambda Award), Dagger John: Archbishop John Hughes and the Making of Irish America (winner of the Lehman Prize from the New York Academy of History), Dorothy Day: Dissenting Voice of the American Century, and most recently a self-published account of his uncle's World War II experiences, An American at War: Surviving Bataan, Mukden, and the Trauma of Recovery. He lives in Berlin, CT.