Billy Ordynowicz and Lawrence Degley have a gay obsession.

Over the past few years Ordynowicz, a 38-year-old theater technician and Degley, a 43-year-old claims adjuster, have developed a fascination for vintage gay-related periodicals, especially those of the second half of the 20th Century.

“We can’t forget what our community had to go through to get to where we are now,” says Ordynowicz, who compares their ephemera pursuit to modern hipsters collecting vinyl records to better appreciate and honor a past culture.

There was an air of danger, he says, for gay men and women during that subterranean era when deep secrets, knowing glances, and coded words were de rigueur in order to keep jobs, families, and reputations intact while still being able to connect with other LBGTQ persons.

Degley and Ordynowicz, who live in West Haven, are especially intrigued with After Dark magazine, published from 1968 to 1983.

“After Dark was as closeted as the gays had to be then,” says Degley. “Still, if you were a closeted gay man, you just knew the magazine was for you. But for others, it usually went right over their heads.”

Secret Selves

Degley’s and Ordynowicz’s passion for the publication brought to mind my own love of the glossy magazine. I remember spending 50 cents and picking up its first issue in May 1968 at a Boston newsstand. It was as if I just shook hands with my secret self.

That magazine and the 168 that followed (all of which I‘ve treasured like old friends) reflected all the things I love: theater; dance; television; cabaret; visual arts; film; fashion; opera; pop music; and beautiful, sexy men. It was a champion of experimental art, cutting-edge theater, and up-and-coming artists. It embraced sensuality on any kind of stage, be it Vegas clubs, circus tents, ice rinks, or bullrings.

“It was a lifestyle and celebrity magazine as seen through a gay male lens,” says New York-based Eric Marcus, creator of the podcast Gay History. “It was clearly a gay magazine, but it could pretend that it wasn’t.”

Yes, there were plenty photographs of handsome shirtless men; gay icons like Liza, Bette, and Rudi; sexy spreads of Andy Warhol; stars and glamour gals from an earlier era like Mae West, Ginger Rogers, and Veronica Lake – but there were also stories about hetero cover boys such as Burt Reynolds, Robert Redford, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, too.

As for the ads in the back of the magazine for mail-order fashions by Ah Men, Parr of Arizona, and International Male – and curious places like the Club Baths – one could always plead the Playboy magazine defense, “Oh, I just buy the magazine for the stories.”

But After Dark wasn’t beloved by the entire LGBTQ community. Says Patrick Pacheco, a former writer and editor of the magazine: “Gay activists had some disdain for the magazine and its closeted staff and its lack of political action and activity. They saw us as dilettantes.”

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