[Gridskipper]

[Shophound]

[Gawker]

[Towleroad]

- Chris Shott and John Koblin

Or maybe not. Twenty years later, on Feb. 12, an article appeared on the front page of The New York Times, reporting that doctors had detected a "rare strain of H.I.V." in a patient that seemed impervious to the drugs that have made AIDS manageable in recent year-and which, it seems, may have emboldened the unidentified man to engage in the kind of bathhouse-era sexual practices the disease was once thought to have made a thing of the past. To those who had lived through the era Before, and the first foggy newspaper reports of a mysterious "gay cancer," there were eerie echoes. And in New York's fractious gay community, the frightening discovery occasioned the revival of a debate about the demands of public health and the limits of personal freedom.

"It's reawakened people to the need to find some new way to make people better," said Charles Kaiser, a journalist and author of the book The Gay Metropolis.

No one is actually sure how to make people better-many have tried and failed, from John Calvin to Rudy Giuliani-but, in this case, ideas mooted include shutting down Web sites that cater to risky, anonymous sex, shuttering gay clubs and bathhouses that play venue to the same, and directly confronting those who choose to engage in such behaviors. This, in turn, has drawn howls of protest from some in the gay community, who warn that raising the alarm one more time-over a single, isolated case, no less-carries the danger of making those people most at risk inured and less willing to listen to education about the continuing AIDS threat.

"Fear mongering, coercion or even criminalization will not solve the problem of H.I.V. transmission," said Bill Dobbs of United for Peace and Justice, a civil-libertarian group.

"You can never be scared too much," shot back Larry Kramer, the acerbic, H.I.V.-positive playwright. "Fear is the only thing that seems to work in controlling people's suicidal, murderous behavior."

If this argument sounds familiar, that's because it's an old battle-one that seemed to have been settled, decisively, in favor of public health in the 1980's, when officials in San Francisco and other cities shut down the fervid gay-bathhouse scene.

They did so over the objections of a vocal libertine lobby, which argued that the right to have sex anywhere, anytime, with anyone (or anyones), was intrinsic to the gay experience, that gay sex itself amounted to a political speech.

"Being gay has always been a revolutionary act," Mr. Kaiser said. "Since we've rejected all convention, we don't have to observe any rules when it comes to our bodies." He added, "I think that is a disaster."

Yet in recent years, with the advent of new anti-retroviral treatments, AIDS has come to seem a less imminent threat.

"This ordeal as a whole may be over," H.I.V.-positive journalist Andrew Sullivan wrote in a 1996 New York Times Magazine article, provocatively entitled, "When Plagues End." Since the introduction of the new drug therapies, and in particular since The Times declared an end to the epidemic, "we haven't really done prevention," said Walt Odets, a prominent psychologist and author of In the Shadow of the Epidemic: Being HIV-Negative in the Age of AIDS. And that, almost inevitably, has led to a slackening in vigilance, and a rise in risky behavior. A few years ago, the change in moral temperature seemed affirmed when it was revealed that Mr. Sullivan had placed a personal ad on a Web site advertising his desire to find partners for "bareback" sex. Mr. Sullivan disclosed his H.I.V. status in the ad, and passionately defended his right to have pleasurable, consensual sex. He subsequently called the episode "one of the most homophobic and H.I.V.-phobic witch hunts in recent times." (Mr. Sullivan did not respond to several messages on Tuesday.) Yet the episode-unthinkable in the besieged era before anti-retrovirals-is one that comes up time and again in conversations with gay activists.

"Why should we allow Web sites that are exclusively for people who want to bareback like the one that Andrew Sullivan posted himself on a couple of a years ago?" Mr. Kaiser asked. "I just don't see any inalienable right to spread a deadly disease."

For more than a decade, public-health advocates have been warning of a resurgence of libertinism. (Mr. Kaiser, for instance, forwarded The Observer an editorial he'd written on the subject back in 1992.) This week's alarm about a new, ultra-virulent H.I.V. strain, though perhaps premature, seemed to vindicate the fears that gay New Yorkers had learned nothing from the past.

The patient in whom the purported new strain was diagnosed reportedly met men online to arrange crystal-methamphetamine-fueled orgies; according to one report, he may have engaged in sex with hundreds of other men. The parallels to Gaetan Dugas, the promiscuous flight attendant who came to be known as "Patient Zero" to the epidemiologists trying to piece together AIDS' emergence across America, were obvious-though it could be argued that Mr. Dugas' behavior was more understandable, since he never knew the risks. "This guy is a total and utter asshole," said Mr. Kramer, who in April will publish a book entitled The Tragedy of Today's Gays. "What happens is, this is what people think gay people are like. Now we can't move forward, we can't get to our place in the sun, because of stupid assholes like this."

On paper, the new strain sounds terrifying: It's resistant to almost all anti-retrovirals, and it seems to have progressed from H.I.V. to full-blown AIDS in about a month, "an astonishingly quick assault by an infection that often goes unnoticed for a decade," The Times said in its first day's coverage. Yet one troubling case does not an epidemic make, and some see another agenda at work. " The New York Times is starting prevention up, after it's been dormant for eight or nine years," Odets said-in other words, since around the time of Mr. Sullivan's plague-ending opus. Mr. Odets said that since The Times mentioned his name in one of the 10 articles it had written over the course of three days on the subject, he'd been busy returning "a table full of messages"-a testament to the agenda-setting power of the newspaper of record. "The stuff that was in The Times on Saturday looked to me like a series of articles putting together a story about 'The Gay Peril,'" Mr. Odets said.

"The tenor of these stories is markedly stentorian," Mr. Dobbs said. "Go tell a heterosexual like Arthur Sulzberger that he can't have penile-vaginal sex."

Mr. Odets pointed to a what he said was a deeper problem. "Fear does not motivate people over long periods of time," the psychologist said, whether or not Mr. Kramer believes otherwise. "Let me say something about Larry Kramer," he continued. "It's easy to be 65 years old and feel that sex can be reined in …. People like to ignore that part, older people especially: the fact that sex is immensely compelling for young males. You have to start there, and work from there."

Mr. Odets pointed out that today's gay elder statesmen-those who survived the 1980's-were fortunate enough to come of age in the 1960's and 1970's, an era that, prejudices of the time notwithstanding, is now recalled as edenic: a rollicking experiment in sexual liberation, free of consequences and the spectacle of rolling tombstones. Younger generations have not had to bear the anguish of seeing friends and lovers die in droves, but they have always had to live with fear, because they came along After.

"Obviously it would be a better world-and it was a better world in the 1970's-if this threat did not exist," Mr. Kaiser said. "But life is unfair. It's true that they missed out. And now they have to deal with the reality that is."

In the end, all shows close for the same reason: The audience just isn't there. But The Normal Heart, Mr. Kramer's immensely moving, groundbreaking AIDS drama that was written in blood and outrage, had every reason to believe it would find an audience when the reviews came in. "How can a show with reviews as good as this tank?" its disenchanted dramatist asked me rhetorically.

It's sobering to report that the critics who enthusiastically supported The Normal Heart-myself among them-had little or no influence. A spot check of all the critics of the play (newspapers, magazines, dot-com and radio) reveals this: Out of 42 reviews, seven were negative, 21 were positive and 14 were raves.

Among the thumbs-up were influential outlets as varied as The New York Times (a "gale force," "benchmark drama"-Ben Brantley) and Variety ("a defining work of theater," "blisters with conviction and heart"-Charles Isherwood). John Simon of New York magazine-renowned for not being too easily pleased-concluded his rave review: "In the end you will hear fellow theatergoers weeping all around you, the sound muffled only by that of your own cathartic sobbing."

Mr. Simon was honestly reporting what everyone who saw The Normal Heart felt. The production, led by the excellent Raul Esparza playing Mr. Kramer's alter ego, Ned Weeks, created an unusually profound connection with its audience, just as the wounded, heartfelt play did almost 20 years ago.

So as well as all the favorable reviews, The Normal Heart encouraged positive word of mouth-essential to building an audience-and according to its executive producer, Carol Fineman, the word couldn't have been better.

We can add another major positive: its core audience. A show with a ready-made core of support stands more than a fighting chance. Golda's Balcony, the play about Golda Meir, for obvious example, has its built-in Jewish audience. The Normal Heart is a play about gays in a callous America. "It breaks my heart to say it, but where were they?" Mr. Kramer, the uncompromising gay activist, asked when we spoke. "Where were our own? Some went, but they didn't support us, no."

He takes it controversially much further. "They don't support anything. Why did so few of us speak out about AIDS in the 1980's? To this day, I don't understand it. We're a community mostly in denial. I think we're more invisible than ever."

Really? With gay marriage on the horizon? "You don't have to do anything to support gay rights." he replied. "You can just sign a petition. Why didn't the gays go to Normal Heart? I'll tell you: They're going to see Hugh Jackman instead."

Perhaps-but it could be that today's younger gay generation want to be free of the weight of tragic history in the way that a post-Holocaust generation of Jews no longer wants to be defined by its unbearable past.

Where were the straights at The Normal Heart? (They're going to see Hugh Jackman!) But the revival had good reason to anticipate crossover support. After all, a play has no gender (and a great play is a great play). When The Normal Heart opened at the Joseph Papp Public Theater in 1985, it ran for 10 months and attracted a crossover audience for what became the longest-running production in the Public's history.

Papp loved the play so much he kept it running in spite of falling attendance. Each time it came to the crunch, he just couldn't face shutting it down.

Now consider this hard, unforgiving reality: The current production played in the Public's Anspacher, an intimate space with only 275 seats. But no performance ever sold out. In fact, box-office sales-including discounted tickets-were never higher than 58 percent, and in the final two weeks they were disastrously lower.

In today's economic climate, there was little or no choice but to close the show. This is a rare case in theater when nobody blames the producers, however. One of them, Hal Luftig, lost a reported $100,000. The show was produced by the enterprising, nonprofit Worth Street Theater Company and budgeted at about $300,000-quite low even for Off Broadway, where the costs of a production can run to at least twice as much.

Why did the nonprofit Worth Street Theater Company need outside financial help from investors? The usual budget for its modest productions is low. But The Normal Heart has 16 scene changes and nine actors, making it a big show for Off Broadway. Without outside help or private philanthropy, it couldn't have been staged at this high level. As it was, the Public gave the production a generous break on its normal rental costs.

Mr. Luftig, battling to keep the production afloat, would raise another $200,000 from supporters of the play like Scott Rudin and Daryl Roth (both quixotic producers of Caroline, or Change on Broadway). The money was used for e-mail blasts, advertising, new artwork, direct mail and a new marketing and promotion man. But the results of all that take time.

Then in a decisive blow, Joanna Gleason, who played the key role of the doctor, left the show. Serious momentum was lost when the production took a two-week hiatus at the beginning of June to rehearse the replacement actress Lisa Kron. But it was thought the show still stood a chance as Mr. Kramer publicized it in countless appearances during Gay Pride Week. He acknowledges his a miscalculation. "The gays were out having a great party!" he points out. "A serious political play was the last thing on their agenda."

There were no advance ticket sales to buy more time. The P.R. blast hadn't taken; $70,000 had been lost in the last two weeks. The Normal Heart closed on the Tuesday following Gay Pride Week.

"I've no intention of writing a play again," Mr. Kramer says. "What's the point? Who's going to come and see it? Unless you write Avenue Q."

It's hard not to conclude that serious drama in American theater is in obvious peril; the chances of good work finding a committed audience becoming harder and harder. Remember, in spite of its five Tony Awards and glowing reviews, Stephen Sondheim's Assassins closed early, too-even though Mr. Sondheim has his own core audience of Sondheimeans.

But then, Mr. Sondheim has never had a commercially successful run on Broadway. And for all the worrying conclusions we might draw from the experience of Mr. Kramer's The Normal Heart, one major reason it didn't have a long run is heartbreaking to state.

Any revival of a modern American classic relies on those who saw it the first time round coming back to see it again. We return for many nostalgic reasons: to recapture the experience, to relive a time and place in a kind of homecoming. But the young and frightened generation that first went to The Normal Heart 20 years ago can't do that. So many of our gay friends have since died, and our loved ones can't go home again.

Let be. When all is said and done, I take heart that the story of The Normal Heart was told at the Public again, that good people supported it and that everyone who saw it was glad. It may not amount to much in this cockamamie world, but it's something.

It's everything.

We're now approaching 20 years since The Normal Heart was first produced at the Public, and for those of us who were there the first time round, it's impossible to speak about it unemotionally. It would be difficult to keep cool about such a moving piece at the best of times. The famous play is raw and unashamed, and Mr. Kramer has always demanded an emotional response from us. The generous, unforgiving heart of the play is full and brimming with inconsolable tears, and our hearts are broken along with it.

The Normal Heart was, of course, the first AIDS play to be written in blood and outrage (and it became the Public Theater's longest-running play). William Hoffman's highly regarded As Is pipped it to the post by a few weeks at the Circle Rep in March 1985, but that sweeter drama had no political agenda. Mr. Kramer's magnum opus has all the flaws and rough edges of defiant agitprop theater howling in humane protest at a murderously indifferent world, and the miracle is that the world listened.

There might be superior plays, but none has been so magnificently effective. Mr. Kramer's historic achievement is that The Normal Heart remains the only protest play to have a political outcome. I can think of no other to equal it. No play, no Guernica , ever stopped a war. No works of art ever change the world. (They change the way we perceive the world.) But in those early, fearful days of the AIDS epidemic, The Normal Heart actually changed the way we thought and felt. It woke us up.

Arthur Miller once said about the influence on him of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire : "Tennessee had printed a license to speak at full throat, and it helped strengthen me as I turned to Willy Loman."

Mr. Kramer's alter ego in The Normal Heart , the furious, unstoppable writer Ned Weeks, has strengthened others to speak at full throat, too, most notably Prior and the angels of Tony Kushner's America . How pathetic our political theater has otherwise become. Look at the juvenile smugness of the "protest" against the war in Iraq going on in Embedded next-door to The Normal Heart at the Public-and thank God for the real, triumphant thing.

Mr. Kramer was never an easy fellow to get along with, apparently. Taillard's calming advice to the overzealous priest-" Trop de zele, mon frère "-doesn't apply to him. Mr. Kramer, the raging Jewish prophet in the wilderness, didn't have time to play the civilized, well-bred game of being acceptably, tactfully, respectably nice in order to receive a little pat on the back for good behavior. For him, the issues gave him and the gay community one choice: life or death. There wasn't time to be nice and polite.

The play, which takes place from 1981 to 1984, tells the fantastic story of how Mr. Kramer and a group of gay men fought for help and survival at the bewildering start of the AIDS era. It's fantastic because, to this day, we can scarcely believe how slow a callous world was to respond to the crisis.

Mr. Kramer had the courage to name names-indicting the hypocritical Mayor Ed Koch (who refused to meet with the Gay Men's Health Crisis until 21 months after the first cases were known); President Ronald Reagan (who took four years even to acknowledge the existence of AIDS); the entire medical establishment, which didn't seem competent to acknowledge any crisis at all, let alone find a possible cure; and The New York Times , which shamefully buried all reports of AIDS cases until two years after the first cases were first reported.

Time has passed, and one's blood still boils. It's almost laughable: The play lists 40 AIDS deaths. Globally, 30 million have since died. And yet that first mention of the toll took our breath away.

I see The Normal Heart from a different perspective today. Fear was palpable back then and outrage our response in the whirlwind of the times. Its inner drama of love between men and vindication of its cause strike me more forcibly now. That, and fury turned into tragedy. The friend who took me see the original production-ordered me to see it!-has since died of AIDS. And so many others we all once knew and loved.

How could it have happened? The heart cries out: How could they let it happen? At the same time, I feel enormous gratitude for this play that touches us so deeply. The entire ensemble, led by the very fine and riveting Raúl Esparza and directed by David Esbjornson, has done it proud. Special mention also of Richard Bekins' patrician Ben, tormented brother of Ned; Joanna Gleason's brilliant performance as the campaigning Dr. Emma Brookner; Fred Berman's blistering howl of disbelief as Mickey-but I see I'm en route to naming them all.

It would be a blessing if the memorable production could reach a wider audience on Broadway. After all, I have lately seen plays on the Great White Way about a marital fight over an aging gorilla who sort of understands sign language, and another saga about a self-hating Jewish baker who befriends a quite pleasant Palestinian terrorist. The Normal Heart , on the other hand, is one of the most remarkable plays of the 20th century. May it be seen by everyone.

Its eternal message, like its title, comes from Auden's "September 1, 1939" ("What mad Nijinsky wrote / About Diaghilev / Is true of the normal heart"):

All I have is a voice

To undo the folded lie,

The romantic lie in the brain

Of the sensual man-in-the-street

And the lie of Authority

Whose buildings grope the sky:

There is no such thing as the State

And no one exists alone;

Hunger allows no choice

To the citizen or the police;

We must love one another or die.

The guys-including the apparently contented couple who own the apartment but are moving to the burbs, a young actor who's recently come out, a middle-aged manager of opera singers, a sardonic showbiz journalist, a writer of a bad coming-of-age gay sex novel and a hunk with brains (sort of)-will talk about being gay . And as they do so-you know it!-stuff will happen. The unexpected visitor, the nasty revelation, the confessional confrontation …. But Mr. Tolins has anticipated our sense of déjà vu all over again.

Early in the action, Joe, the actor, is looking out the window at the parade below, fancying a shirtless guy in overalls. "Homo on the range," Michael, one of the hosts, comments amusingly. "He's so cute!" adds Joe. "He's just like a real farm boy who's been to an electrolysist."

"Wait!" Charles, the opera queen, will protest. "Look at you, sitting there in the window. You look like you're in a play …. "

"It could be a gay play," he adds. "About gays on Gay Pride Day."

"Just what we need," groans Michael. "Another gay play."

"Don't knock gay theater," Charles replies. "It's very important historically. It used to be the only way we could see ourselves."

"Well, now we're 'Must-See TV,' so get over it," argues Brad, the journalist.

"Exactly," Tom, Michael's partner, concludes. "If I have to sit through one more gay play, I'll scream …. "

To be honest, I'm with Tom, Michael and Brad, though it depends on the play. But Mr. Tolins' Pirandellian play within a play-and all plays within a play are automatically Pirandellian-raises a surprising question for a gay play. What is a gay play?

It took me back to the time I was watching Peter Brook at work with his experimental troupe of actors when, staring intently into space for an eternity, groaning slightly, he surprised everyone by eventually asking, "What is a play?"

No immediate answer was forthcoming. But as Mr. Brook later challenged me to write a play for the troupe, I thought it best to find out what one actually is. "A play," Lou Zeldis, one of his actors, explained in the tones of an oracle, "is anything with me in it."

I made sure he had a star part. By his definition, however, a gay play is anything with several gays in it. That is, anything with several gays in it on the stage . But Mr. Tolins' character Charles is more specific. He defines a gay play as "one with a bunch of gay guys in an apartment or a country house bitching and cracking jokes about what it means to be gay."

"That would never happen," says Brad-an ironist, clearly.

"And all the characters are witty and touching as they laugh through the pain of being reviled," Charles adds for good measure. "That's a gay play."

Hence the daddy of them all, The Boys in the Band. Or Terrence McNally's superior country-house saga, Love! Valor! Compassion! , or anything by Paul Rudnick. But from my point of view, all such definitions ghettoize. There are different plays-black, Jewish and gay, among them-but on balance, there are only plays.

Tom's with me on that one. "I hate classifying everything that way," he says, disagreeing with Charles. "'Gay play.' What's a 'straight play'?"

"Mamet," replies Michael.

"You see?" Charles says. "That's exactly the kind of joke that would be in the play about us."

And since the Mamet joke is made in the play we're watching, there's no arguing with Charles, or Mr. Tolins. But I thought this whole question of gay stereotypes and gay plays was long since over. Tony Kushner's 1993 Angels in America is subtitled "A Gay Fantasia on National Themes." Does that make it a gay play? It spoke to gays and straights. A bisexual play? Its sweep and ambition and brilliance spoke so memorably to everyone. A great play, then-the greatest of our time, speaking to us of a murderous era as no other play within memory.

The first major play on either side of the Atlantic to have an outwardly homosexual hero was written by an Englishman, John Osborne. The willfully renegade, politically incorrect dramatist courted homophobia in his time. But his 1965 A Patriot for Me made history for the Royal Court Theatre and defied the government censor banning homosexuality from the stage as a corrupting "inversion."

Until then, gay characters in English (and American) theater were closeted. The tortured heterosexual lovers in Terence Rattigan's renowned The Deep Blue Sea , for example, are gay lovers in disguise. Rattigan said as much, and greatly regretted it. But A Patriot for Me was no Boys in the Band .

With its 23 scenes and over 80 characters, the epic takes place mostly in Vienna, between 1890 and 1913, and is based on the true story and scandal of Alfred Redl, a spy who betrayed his country. In the end, Osborne's Redl, the homosexual, becomes a patriot for himself-the outsider acknowledging allegiance to his own sexuality. It caused an uproar at the time. Leading gay actors refused to appear in it, John Gielgud among them. The gay actors who risked being cast were encouraged, however, by the appearance of George Devine, the founding artistic director of the Royal Court, who happened to be straight, proudly dressed for the drag-ball scene as Queen Alexandra.

My point of departure with Jonathan Tolins of The Last Sunday in June is that the dated Boys in the Band definition of so-called gay plays rules his own play. He wants to move the stereotypical into the present, but for me, he's putting it to the wrong test. I wonder what that uncompromising, furious civil-rights campaigner, Larry Kramer, who was in the audience the night I attended Mr. Tolins' play, thought of it. Mr. Kramer is the dramatist of the first AIDS play, The Normal Heart of 1985, and perhaps-like the audience as a whole, myself included-he laughed a fair amount with Mr. Tolins' postmodern stereotypes.

"You should at least exchange rings," Charles announces to the cozy couple, encouraging them into a commitment ceremony. "It could be beautiful, and covered in the Styles Section in The Times . Two men decked out in Armani, standing under a floral chupa , the band playing 'Sunrise, Sunset.' A room on Tavern on the Green, with specially commissioned topiaries depicting scenes from the lyric stage …. "

But if The Last Sunday in June doesn't end happily ever after with dancing gays and a group hug, its melodrama and camp, revelations and style, remain too close to Boys in the Band . Mr. Tolins' shrewd, amusing disclaimers within the play are a device to pre-empt criticism. I wish they had. Let me add, at least, that Trip Cullman's production at the enterprising Rattlestick Theatre in Greenwich Village couldn't be better. The ensemble is perfect, no one more so than Susan Pourfar in her witty, terrific cameo as the unfortunate-or blessed-woman in the piece.

You hear the phrase so often these days. A smug

colloquialism, it holds very different meanings depending on which side of the

utterance you happen to be on. Speak the words, and you are the victor, the one

holding all the cards. Hear them, and you are the vanquished, the clear loser

on the playing field.

Last summer, to our great dismay, my wife and I found

ourselves among the latter. Our story, quite literally, concerns a shaggy dog.

After a long search, we had succeeded in purchasing a

soft-coated wheaten terrier puppy. Possessed of long, gloriously silken,

champagne-colored hair and black button noses, these pooches resemble cuddly

teddy bears. They have the added advantage of being bright, energetic,

sweet-natured and, for the nasally impaired such as myself, hypo-allergenic.

Although my wife and I were not looking for a show dog-we

simply wanted a pet-the breeder, whom we met at last year's Westminster Kennel

Club Show, insisted we sign a show contract. The contract obligated us to

maintain our dog in show condition, pay the expenses of placing her in dog

shows and, when the time was right, allow her to have a litter of her own pups

(all of which would belong to the breeder). Feeling we could live up to these

terms, and realizing she would not sell us a dog otherwise, I drove to the breeder's

house on Long Island last March, paid her $1,500 cash, signed the show contract

and picked up an adorable, three-month-old female wheaten. Back home in

Manhattan again, my wife and I fell instantly in love with the little bugger.

We named her Frankie.

Periodically over the next five months, we kept asking the

breeder to countersign the contract we'd signed and return a copy to us, along

with Frankie's American Kennel Club registration papers. For some strange

reason, she never got around to it. Nonetheless, as my wife and I bonded with

our dog, we strove diligently to meet all our contractual obligations. Regular

appointments with the vet, strict adherence to the breeder's recommendations on

food, vitamins and dietary supplements, and frequent and laborious grooming

sessions became steady parts of our regimen. Eager to be the best dog parents

possible, we also enrolled Frankie in obedience classes and purchased hundreds

of dollars' worth of crates, gates, bedding, toys, treats, leashes, collars,

shampoos, brushes, grooming scissors, combs, dematting tools, toothbrushes,

breath fresheners, ear cleaners, toenail clippers and other specialty items.

Our favorite product, I might add, was the chicken-flavored toothpaste.

Meanwhile, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood where we

live, Frankie became an instant smash. People would stop us to play with her

and inquire what kind of dog she was. Other dogwalkers would smother her with

baby talk and kisses. Japanese tourists would ask permission to pose with her for

photos in front of the Washington Square Arch. Even celebrities would pause to

offer admiring comments-Uma Thurman, Ethan Hawke, Janeane Garafolo and Edie

Falco (a.k.a. Carmela Soprano), to name but a few. Though no great fans of each

other, playwright and gay activist Larry Kramer and former Mayor Ed Koch were

both in agreement about Frankie's virtues. Mr. Kramer is a longtime wheaten

owner himself, one of the very first in Greenwich Village ever to possess the

breed. Mr. Koch, spotting Frankie in front of our building one evening,

unabashedly cooed, "She's a wheaten, right? She's beautiful."

Last summer, when my wife and I went away to Montana on

vacation, we returned Frankie to the breeder for boarding. What better person

to safeguard our beloved pup than the one who had nurtured her during infancy?

What's more, while we were away, the breeder would be free to enter Frankie in

dog shows-and we would be further fulfilling our contractual obligations. But

all the time we were gone, we missed Frankie horribly (so much so that my wife

tacked a snapshot of her to the inside flap of our pup tent in Yellowstone

National Park so she would always be within sight). The minute we got back to

New York, we didn't even bother to unpack our bags. We immediately called to

pick Frankie up.

And that's when we got the news. The breeder said we could

not have her back.

She accused us of not maintaining Frankie in "proper show

condition," ticking off a laundry list of complaints about her coat, her weight

and other aspects of her care. All the complaints seemed grossly and

suspiciously exaggerated. Then she offered us three alternatives:

1. We could agree to have Frankie placed with a professional

dog handler, during which time she would be gone for three to four months-and

we would be billed upwards of $3,000. Later on, we might be permitted to get her back.

2. We could swap Frankie for her sister, who was not a show

dog.

3. We could wait a couple of years until Frankie had a

litter, then settle for one of her pups.

The first alternative

felt like a blatant ploy to squeeze more money out of us. The latter two were

absurd. As any truly loving pet owner knows, you would no sooner swap your dog

than you would your child. So I told the breeder, "I don't want any of these

things. I want my dog back."

And that's when the other shoe dropped. " That's not an option ," she said.

After the conversation ended, my wife and I sat stunned. But

numbness quickly gave way to anger and terror. The proposition the breeder

offered made no sense whatsoever. If we had taken such miserable care of

Frankie, why in the world would she be willing to offer us her sister or one of

her pups instead?

But in the end, all our rantings and wonderings and vows of

vengeance seemed futile. She had us over a barrel. She had the dog. We didn't.

It was as simple as that.

For more than a week, as we agonized over whether we might

ever see our beloved pup again, we could barely eat, sleep or work. In

self-defense, whenever people in our neighborhood would inquire about Frankie,

we would lie and tell them she was away for training, unable to bring ourselves

to speak the awful truth. And all the while, those four words, so arrogant,

kept echoing in our brains ….

" That's not an option ."

And then finally, blessedly, we came to our senses. Those

words, which carried the ring of so much authority, were simply words. In our

desperation and fear, we had given them too much weight. Giving our dog back

might not be an option for the breeder. But it was our only option.

I reached for the phone.

My first calls, to the American Kennel Club, the

Westminister Kennel Club and the Soft-Coated Wheaten Terrier Club of America,

were a waste of time. All of these groups, pro-breeder in their sympathies,

pretty much ignored me. My next round of calls went to friends who were cops or

newspaper reporters. They offered to phone the breeder on my behalf, but I

still worried that their efforts might not guarantee Frankie's return. Finally,

I called a lawyer.

James Sawyer, himself the owner of a nine-month-old puppy,

was just as outraged by the abduction of Frankie as we were. One of his

associates, Adam Demitri, immediately went to court and persuaded a state

Supreme Court justice to sign an order of seizure. And several days later, my

wife and I staged what I now call "our Elián González." In the company of two

strapping sheriff's deputies, we carried out a surprise mid-morning raid on the

breeder's house. After the deputies slapped the breeder with the judge's

seizure order, my wife entered the house to make the identification. Frankie's

tags had been removed, her ears had been glued to her head to make her more

"showable," and her hair was a nasty tangle of mats and ticks because she had

been crated steadily for three weeks. But, with the first joyful wag of her

tail, there could be no doubt. It was Frankie. My wife whisked her back outside

to our waiting car. And home we went to celebrate her rescue.

Two weeks later, we were back in court again. Now it was the

breeder's turn to challenge the judge's order. As all of us sat stiffly in his

chambers, the breeder-acting as her own attorney-argued that she was legally

entitled to reclaim Frankie because the show contract we had signed made her a

part owner of the dog.

To which the judge, with the wisdom of a latter-day Solomon,

replied, "Well, madam, just which part is it that you own? The head? The tail?

The paw? The left haunch?"

Glancing down at the

contract, he began to read: "The first sentence of this contract states that

this dog is sold for $1,500. Not this dog's head, not this dog's tail, not this

dog's paw. This dog . Therefore, this

dog belongs to-"

Under the table, I squeezed my wife's hand tightly.

"-the Hirschfelds."

Outside the courtroom, we wept and hugged in jubilation.

Not all the unpleasantness, I should add, ended with the

judge's ruling. Both the breeder and I had sued each other for damages. To

finally settle the case and end the financial hemorrhaging it caused, I ended

up having to write the breeder a check.

But, in the overall scheme of things, the money seemed a

minor price to pay. The important thing was that, in the eyes of the law,

Frankie was ours. Forever. Letting the breeder or anyone else take Frankie away

from us, now or ever again-well, as the old saying goes …

… That's not an option .

Finding the Boyfriend Within: A Practical Guide for Tapping Into Your Own Source of Love, Happiness and Respect , by Brad Gooch. Simon & Schuster, 171 pages, $21.

Party Crasher: A Gay Republican Challenges Politics as Usual , by Richard Tafel. Simon & Schuster, 253 pages, $25.

Social gadfly Brad Gooch checked into the Chopra (as in Deepak) Center for Well Being in La Jolla, Calif., not long ago; he re-emerged to pen Finding the Boyfriend Within: A Practical Guide for Tapping Into Your Own Source of Love, Happiness and Respect . In this book we learn that at the many dinner parties the author attends, gay men approach him and tell him they find it incredible that he doesn't have a boyfriend since he is "great looking" and "a good writer" and "a nice guy" who appears in "little inch-by-inch photos … in gossip columns and magazines."

Thankfully, Mr. Gooch's is not the only gay-themed book Simon & Schuster has on its roster for June. An engaging and provocative read, Party Crasher: A Gay Republican Challenges Politics as Usual , is a manifesto whose name speaks for itself; the author is the executive director of the gay Log Cabin Republicans, Richard Tafel. And then there's Out for Good , the book that Simon & Schuster is hyping big, claiming that it will do for the lesbian and gay rights movement what Taylor Branch's Parting the Waters did for the civil rights movement.

This 716-page journalistic history by openly gay members of The New York Times ' staff, Dudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney, begins in 1969 with the Stonewall Riots in New York and the formation soon thereafter of the radical Gay Liberation Front; it takes us through to the late 80's, when the AIDS activist movement came into full swing. Mr. Clendinen, an editorial writer at The Times , and Mr. Nagourney, a political reporter, interviewed 330 individuals over a period of seven years. A theme that stitches much of the book together is the often white-hot conflict between moderate-to-conservative activists and activists further to the left. Rather than imploding due to this conflict, the gay movement has consistently advanced. "The movement for gay identity and gay rights has come further and faster, in terms of change, than any other that has gone before it in this nation," the authors note in their introduction.

Unfortunately, Out for Good is neither balanced nor objective–nor is it the "definitive" history Messrs. Clendinen and Nagourney clearly set out to write. The book is personality-driven, with subjects' physical and other attributes described in ways that are at times adolescent and at other times offensive. The authors gratuitously label various male and female activists as "ugly," "pudgy," "unattractive" and "bulky." One activist who is an albino is described as "300 pounds of damp pink flesh." Far more troubling, however, is the book's omission of any reference to the historic animosity between gay activists and the authors' employer, The New York Times , even as the authors document homophobia at other news organizations, from The Miami Herald to The New Orleans Times-Picayune .

The New York Times played a critical role in both hampering the early gay rights movement and affecting the initial national response to the AIDS epidemic, which for years was relegated to little blips in the back of the paper. Much of this was due to the bias of Abe Rosenthal, executive editor of The Times during those years. Under Mr. Rosenthal, the word "gay" was barred from The Times for much of the 70's and 80's. The Gay Activists Alliance, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, and later, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or Act Up–all groups that Messrs. Clendinen and Nagourney discuss at length–took on The Times , launching letter-writing campaigns, phone "zaps," and public demonstrations, often to no avail.

Gay staff members at The Times in those years have claimed they were mistreated and that they feared for their jobs, and coverage of gay issues in the paper for most of those two decades was often either overtly homophobic or nonexistent. Much of this has been documented in books, and reported on at length in recent years in the media. The Times ' publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., as well as former and current Times editors, columnists and reporters, have openly discussed Mr. Rosenthal's and The Times ' past sins with regard to coverage of gay issues.

Even Mr. Rosenthal, though quite defensive, has acknowledged gay activists' anger toward him and has admitted that The Times could have done more to shed light on the emerging AIDS epidemic. And in his recent memoir, The Times of My Life, and My Life With 'The Times' , former executive editor Max Frankel, who worked under Mr. Rosenthal for many years before taking the helm of the paper in 1986, devotes an entire chapter to a discussion of The Times ' dismal past coverage of gays. Mr. Frankel concludes that his newspaper dropped the ball on AIDS. Strangely, Mr. Clendinen is one of those staff members who has in the past spoken candidly about Mr. Rosenthal's shortcomings and the paper's overall homophobia during the Rosenthal regime. However, Mr. Clendinen made his disparaging remarks in 1992, during a period when he was not working at the paper. He only recently rejoined The Times , where Mr. Rosenthal is an Op-Ed columnist.

Mr. Clendinen not only seems to have lost his memory, but he and Mr. Nagourney actually float the idea that The Times had somehow become a bastion of good will toward gays as far back as the early 70's. Writing about the days immediately following the 1973 gay pride celebration in New York, the authors state: " The New York Times that Monday morning, in a demonstration of how much the attitude toward gays had changed in its newsroom and in Manhattan, featured a large, friendly story and photograph in its metropolitan report about the Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade." This was in fact in the midst of Mr. Rosenthal's reign of terror over gays in the newsroom, a regime publicly criticized by several staff members, including Jeffrey Schmalz, a reporter who died of AIDS in 1993–and who was a close friend of Mr. Nagourney. Out for Good is dedicated to Jeffrey Schmalz.

Why is Mr. Nagourney obscuring The Times ' homophobic past? Perhaps because if he acknowledged the paper's dismal record he would then have to be more generous to a prominent activist with whom it appears he has had a falling out: playwright and AIDS firebrand Larry Kramer. As Mr. Frankel discusses in three poignant pages in his memoir, and as Mr. Kramer documents in Reports From the Holocaust , throughout the 80's Mr. Kramer wrote blistering letters to The Times and had heated public and private exchanges with the editors regarding the paper's coverage of AIDS.

Mr. Kramer is an important if controversial figure in the history of both the gay and AIDS movements. He co-founded Gay Men's Health Crisis and Act Up, published articles and books that galvanized thousands, and wrote a critically acclaimed and controversial play, The Normal Heart , which focused attention on AIDS and on the negligence that surrounded it. Messrs. Nagourney and Clendinen give short shrift to Mr. Kramer, however. They portray him as an annoying sideline character whose critique of the gay sex scene in his 1978 satirical novel Faggots was universally rejected by gays. (That, of course, does not explain the book's immense success, nor the loyal following of gay men it brought Mr. Kramer.)

In the revised edition of Reports From the Holocaust , Mr. Kramer recounts arguments he had with Mr. Nagourney regarding Jeffrey Schmalz's memorial service. Schmalz's sister had happily agreed to have Mr. Kramer, who had befriended Schmalz, speak at the service. Mr. Nagourney, who was among those organizing the service, was opposed to this; Mr. Kramer told him he was going to speak whether Mr. Nagourney liked it or not. According to Mr. Kramer, at the memorial service Mr. Nagourney told the audience, many of whom were New York Times editors and staff members, that he was allowing Mr. Kramer to speak only because Mr. Kramer had threatened him with an Act Up demonstration (Mr. Kramer has denied this). When it was his turn at the podium, Mr. Kramer blasted The Times , and blamed Jeffrey Schmalz's death in part on the editors' negligence in not covering AIDS early on. Quite a few editors walked out.

Did a personal squabble shape how Mr. Kramer was portrayed in Out for Good ? Were Messrs. Clendinen and Nagourney afraid of offending their employer by dredging up old embarrassments? For whatever reason, they have consciously chosen not to report on how an influential American institution damaged the emerging gay and lesbian rights movement.