Features

Rendezvous in the Ramble

You get a different view from Captain Peter F. Lamb, commander of the Central Park precinct. "We haven't had any arrests for sexual activity in the park in the thirteen months I've had this command," he says flatly. What about heterosexuals? "Fornication isn't illegal, sodomy is—but we haven't made that type of collar in years." Haven't there been gay complaints of harassment by police? "Not to my knowledge," says Lamb. "Unless somebody is really out in the open, out in front of the public, we don't worry about it. But that kind of stuff is so isolated, so rare here." Lamb sees little tension between gays and the straights who inhabit the borders of the park.

The Ramble is a beautiful setting for such horrors. The invitingly open lawn at the northern end was called the "Fruited Plain" back in the twenties.

Manford, who now directs a Comprehensive Employment and Training Act training program employing 500 youths, for the New York City Department of General Services, recalls: "I first went to the Ramble on a double date with a friend of mine and two girls. I was in my senior year in high school and," grins Manford shyly, "I was still in the closet then. We went into the park, sat on a rock for a smoke. There was this good-looking guy who came and sat next to us for a while. After we left, my friend Louis said, 'Morty, that guy winked at me,' " Morty smiles. "I went back often trying to re-create that experience."

"When I first started going to the Ramble seven years ago," says Neal, a 26-year-old broadcast executive, "I'd meet doctors, lawyers, West Side professional types. But then, there was only one gay bar on the West Side. Now there are six in three blocks in the West Seventies, plus gay and mixed restaurants where you can socialize and meet people. Besides, when I first started going to gay bars, they would not let you in unless you were 21.

"I was eighteen. Where else could I go but the park?"

"It's a reflection of what we call the 'heterosexual presumption,' " says Chuck Ortleb, the bright-eyed young editor of the gay literary magazine Christopher Street. "If I'm straight and I come on to some girl that I've met casually, say, at work, I might get a turndown, possibly a slap in the face if I'm crude about it. But gay men can't approach other men they encounter in their day-to-day lives without risking a serious beating, their jobs, even death.

"The discrimination, the fear and hatred of homosexuals ingrained in the culture eliminate most of the opportunities for socialization that exist in the straight world. The bars are an extremely limited form of interaction. And if you don't drink—or even if you do—a gay bar can be a very tension-filled, oppressive atmosphere. The openness of the park encourages openness among people," says Ortleb. "It's one of the few places in which this society allows us to meet each other."

There seems universal agreement that the park gay scene has changed considerably in the last two years. For more and more middle-class gays who find themselves wooed by a proliferation of bars, discos, bath houses (mostly straight-owned), and the open (if expensive) atmosphere of Fire Island, there is less need for the park. For the poor, working-class gays—who can't afford the bars or the baths—the park is not just free, it is necessary.

Tony is nineteen, an Italian kid who lives with his large family in Bensonhurst, where he works in his father's hardware store. "I can't bring my boyfriend home—it would kill my ma. So we have sex in the park. It's beautiful smelling the grass and not even feeling like you're in the city. But I can't wait to get my own pad. Still, my brother's straight, and he brings his girl friend to the park to get laid. What's so wrong?"

What's so wrong, indeed? Yet the harassment of gays by marauding, homophobic toughs continues. "I'm aware of only seven incidents this year," says Parks Commissioner Gordon Davis. "I'm aware of seven this week," says Dr. Don, "and six the week before that."

"There's a lot to be done to improve the problems here," says Bruce Kelly, a dedicated young landscape planner who heads a committee to rehabilitate the Ramble for the Central Park Task Force, a private group. Kelly's studies have been financed by a $35,000 public and private grant, but he estimates the restoration job will take "about a million dollars." "Look, gays are going to continue to use this area of the park, just like the bird watchers. Neither group bothers anybody. They're citizens too."

"We can design the Ramble to be better, safer for all, gays and everybody. Open up some spaces, thicken others. We could re-enforce certain trails so that people can have a better sense of direction and not get lost. Certainly we could put police call boxes on each of the lampposts in the Ramble. Did you know half of those lights don't even work?"