Features

Rendezvous in the Ramble

But outdoor sex is not the only thing that draws gay people to that part of the park. Kenneth Sherrill is a Hunter College political-science professor, author of a widely used college poli-sci textbook, and a Democratic-party district leader. He and his lover, Gerald Otte, dance captain of the Alwin Nikolais Dance Theatre, live in their own brownstone, which they are renovating themselves on West 81st Street, an integrated block. (Ken was president of his block association for two years.) "I met Gerald in the Ramble," Ken remembers. "I always went there to relax, meet other gay people, talk. To have sex? Not me. Anyway, I met Gerald as he was walking back from Sunday services—his brother is a Baptist minister, and Gerald still tithes, you know. It may sound corny, but it was love at first sight. We've been together for twelve years."

Over on the north lawn—the Fruited Plain of the twenties—where scores of men are reclining, chatting, catching the day's last rays of the summer sun, there is a spirited softball game in progress. Eight men, four women, and three children take turns dividing into five-person teams.

Leah, one of the women waiting for her turn at bat, is a 26-year-old computer operator who is there with her lover, Janice, a 35-year-old schoolteacher. One of the kids—a seven-year-old boy—is Janice's, and the three live together as a family on West 82nd Street near the entrance to the Ramble. "Frank and Norman are lovers, and so are Bill and Tom," says Leah, pointing out the players. "Those other two guys in the outfield are married to the other two women, and those two girls are their kids. The two infielders we just met—they were playing Frisbee, so we invited them to join us," smiles Leah, sitting on a large plaid blanket spread under the tupelo tree, as she starts unwrapping sandwiches from a wicker hamper. "We all live near here. Sure, it's mostly gay guys, but they love the kids, and the straights who live around here get along with the gays fine. Matter of fact, Bill met Tom at one of our kids' ball games, and they've been living together for six months!" Tom strolls up. "Yeah, it's like a big outdoor living room here," he says, "a family of people even though you don't always know their names. I feel free here."

All that is indicative of a kind of traffic Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux never envisioned when they designed the Ramble a hundred years ago as a horticultural display, planned with detail to show off unique plants in an intimate setting. In Olmstead's day, you could see clear from Bethesda Fountain to the Belvedere Castle. Now, those trees Olmstead never lived to see grow up—more than half of them wild pin-cherry trees—have obscured the view, creating those secluded spots used by gays for trysting and socializing, and by birds for nesting. The bird watchers are the Ramble's other main constituency, but their tenancy is primarily confined to two months—April and October—when migratory birds flock to the sanctuary. Those are also the only two months when there is much police protection in evidence.

"My god, I never knew there were so many gay people! For the first time I didn’t feel like a freak. I was shy but people were so open I got over that."

In the wake of the most recent gay beatings, there was much bitterness voiced against the police by gays—and straights—who frequent the Ramble. "They said only five gays were attacked, and that's bullshit," said Don, a young, straight doctor with a large gay practice in the neighborhood. "I've already heard about three other guys—one of them came to me—who were beaten by that same bunch. But at least they could walk." Why don't they go to the cops? "For what?" snorts Dr. Don. "If it happened on Central Park West, okay. The guys at the 20th Precinct are pretty good. But the cops in the park have seldom given gays anything but harassment. Go to them and you, the victim, are made to feel like a criminal."

"We're always caught between the mob and the cops," complained Jerry, the United Nations translator. "In 1970, when the Knapp Commission raided all those gay bars that had back rooms where you could have sex, there was a tremendous increase in the amount of outdoor sex in and near the Ramble."

Morty Manford recalls that in 1974, when he was president of the Gay Activists Alliance, "there were 45 guys arrested along the Bridle Path and in the Ramble for sodomy, all in one month. Dick Kuh was the D.A. then. We went to him and said how can you do this to people who are hurting no one? After threatening some demonstrations—he wanted to run for something, we knew—we got the charges reduced to disorderly conduct for everybody. But the basic attitude hasn't changed."