Summer and Sex in Seventies Philadelphia

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When I first came to Philly in the early Seventies, the city shut down in summer. Air conditioning was rare. You'd go to a movie theater and watch a bad movie just for the temporary respite. Almost all the restaurants closed. During the dog days of August, you'd lie naked on top of the sweaty sheets of your bed, panting like a dog.

Not in a sexy way.

I remember, one Sunday morning in August, walking up the dotted line in the center of Chestnut Street, arms out as if it were a tightrope. There wasn't a car to be seen, from river to river.

 All big cities have sexual accommodations peculiar to them. In Philadelphia, the custom was for affluent businessmen to rent a summer house "down the Shore," for the family. The wife and kids would stay there all summer. The businessman would spend weekends with them and during the week have an affair with his secretary.

When I first came to Philly, it was the custom for wealthy families on the East Coast to park their gay scions here, where their activities wouldn't cause scandal in their social circles. So there was a large and vibrant community of young men sowing their wild oats before being called back, when older and more discreet, to take up the reins of their family businesses. When I was out, late at night, I always walked home on Spruce Street, which was the spine of what later became known as the Gayborhood, because it was always filled with respectable young men who'd have come to my aid if somebody tried to mug me.

There was also an arrangement, the name for which I've forgotten, wherein wealthy older men sponsored respectable-and-presentable young women. "Mistress" overstates the emotional component of the relationship and "escort" goes too far in the other direction. Let's say "companion." Sex was involved, but the main purpose was for the man to have a young and presentable companion on social occasions. I had a friend who companioned herself through art school. She had a regular salary and was allowed to have a boyfriend (in my friend's case, many boyfriends, none of them commercial arrangements), but when her sponsor called, she had to drop everything, glam up, and hurry to his side. The rich have similar arrangements elsewhere, but I've never lived anywhere where it was openly expressed as here.

So that's my city back then. What sexual arrangements are peculiar to your city right now?


And speaking of summer...

I spent the summer working hard on The Iron Dragon's Mother. So I'm only now spending my summer vacation in a beach house down the Shore.

Secretaries most explicitly  not involved.


Above: There's another thing that's changed. Back then, people joked about how bad weather prediction was. "They predicted no rain, so you'd better bring an umbrella. Har har har." But now, with weather satellites, radar, and the like, AccuWeather delivers predictions that are, well... accurate.

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