New York Diary

This diary, written in Tim Dlugos’ first six months in the City That Never Sleeps, is a record of his immersion in the downtown poetry scene and a gay lifestyle that was then relentlessly promiscuous. From the very beginning, when he “gobbles up” some chocolate mints left behind by Joe Brainard, Tim is like Alice eating a cake that changes her size; he’s off and running in a Wonderland of art openings and late-night escapades at the baths. In the forty-four years that have elapsed since Tim wrote this diary, the world has changed several times over: AIDS, 9/11, Coronavirus. The New York that Tim captures in these pages is long gone. While it gives us a few precious glimpses of that lost world, his diary is a reminder of how quickly a world can disappear.