Two men, dressed in leather jackets and crotch-hugging dungarees, lean against a chain link fence. One smiles; the other doesn’t. They were once lovers, and the February 1978 special issue of Christopher Street promised an “anatomy” of their affair.
The men are Philip Gefter, a twenty-five-year-old photography editor, and Neil Alan Marks, a twenty-nine-year-old writer, and it had been two years since their relationship of three years had come to an amicable end when they graced the cover of Christopher Street, a monthly magazine that fashioned itself as the gay New Yorker. For the feature, editor Michael Denneny interviewed each man separately to chronicle and dissect the course of their romance: meeting at a writing workshop at the New School in New York City, moving in together on Crosby Street, cruising in Provincetown, partaking in a ménage à quatre in Connecticut, traveling to France, having affairs with others, and ultimately breaking up.
—From “Two Lovers,” By Jackson Davidow, The Baffler, September 7, 2023.