Read The Mayor of Castro Street for Free Online

that night. Joe did not remember seeing the athletic older man at the bus depot either, or on the bus. He does remember their first dance, the warm moist spot that spread near the man’s zipper, the embarrassed apology, the next morning when the man virtually ordered Joe to have sex with him, and the quick decision that Joe Campbell was the lover he was looking for. A few weeks later, Joe left home and moved into Harvey Milk’s apartment in suburban Rego Park.
    Joe, nineteen, had at last found someone to take care of and protect him. Harvey Milk, twenty-six, found someone who needed him. “It was a selection basically,” Joe Campbell said later. “Harvey selected me and I was in the market to be selected.” That was how Joe and Harvey started what would be the longest relationship in either of their lives.
    Harvey taught math and history at Hewlitt High School near Woodmere, coaching basketball every day after school. Joe painted gold leaf on the ornate furniture with which gays of the 1950s liked to decorate their apartments. Even after they were living together, Harvey courted Joe with gushy love poems and impromptu gifts. Notes were addressed and signed with “-san” suffixes to both names. They spoke baby talk to each other, adding strings of nonsense syllables like “-uminimuns” to every word, as they cooed away their evenings in front of the television.
    They quickly settled into a safe middle-class marriage. Harvey accepted nothing short of complete monogamy. Their outings were to the opera, ballet, and museums—not gay bars. Harvey was accepted into Joe’s family. “We had a Jewish man here in this house once, standing right where you’re standing,” explained Joe’s grandmother hospitably when the lovers took a trip to the Campbell family hometown of Veto, Alabama. “Of course,” she added, “he was invited in by my father. That must have been, well, fifty years ago.”
    The topic of homosexuality of course never arose during visits to either Joe’s or Harvey’s families. Joe Campbell still thought that Bill Milk seemed uncomfortable around him. But Minnie was concerned that the young man looked skinny, so she cheerfully made sure Joe kept eating when the new couple visited the elder Milks’ household.
    For all the stability Milk gained in his domestic life, he remained unsure about what to do professionally. He quickly tired of teaching. Besides, that was a risky career that could easily be destroyed by even a rumor of homosexuality. He had never liked New York’s cold weather, so, by June 1957, Harvey told Joe they would be moving to Dallas. Joe spent that summer working as a Good Humor man. Harvey hawked fruits and vegetables for a cousin’s business. They saved up enough money to buy a push-button Plymouth Savoy in September and they were on their way.
    *   *   *
    â€œY’know here in Dallas, you won’t find a Baptist firm hiring even a Methodist,” businessmen counseled Harvey as he started applying for jobs. “Either change your name to something like Miller or go to work for a Jewish firm.”
    The advice startled Harvey, but he did wrangle a job as an assistant credit manager—at a Jewish-owned department store. He lost the post when his boss’s son graduated from college and needed a job. The best employment Harvey found after that was selling used sewing machines to families who couldn’t afford them. That way, the buyer made a couple payments, defaulted, and the machine was repossessed to sell again.
    The scam disgusted Milk. He complained that it was the only job they’d let a Jew have in Dallas. Joe told him he had a persecution complex. After Minnie’s first heart attack, Harvey talked more about going back to New York. Finally, at a performance of Swan Lake, Harvey announced his decision: They were going back east.
    Harvey got a job as an actuarial