O ver the next couple of weeks—besides getting ready for auditions at The Haven and reading The Mattachine Review and ONE and supervising the last of the building of the hanging balconies I had a few phone conversations with a man named Sam Morford, a psychologist, who was a pervert like me. I never expected to find that combination in one person. He was one of the guys who’d been hiding out at secret meetings in Soho who didn’t want to be secret anymore. Before I arranged for renting a theater space I had to protect myself by meeting him to make sure he wasn’t some kinda weirdo or commie. We met in person for the first time in his Park Avenue office an hour before I had to run off to the Haven audition. I introduced myself to him as ‘Jody Barnes.’
Dr. Morford was a distinguished looking guy with gray hair peppered with strands of black throughout. He was extremely serious about building a Mattachine Society Chapter in New York. He said the San Francisco and Los Angeles chapters was always fighting with each other. “They’ll never get a darn thing done. I envision a New York Mattachine Society with goals it can actually achieve and not a bunch of sissy ideas that get scattered all over the place with no changes happening.”
He went on to tell me about a research study a psychologist he knew in San Francisco had done using mentally heathy men from the San Francisco Mattachine Society. The study found that except for their choice of ‘love object’—Dr. Morford’s words—those men were no different than heterosexual men. The researcher was Dr. Evelyn Hooker. A woman! I nearly jumped out of my skin. I wished she’d do a study like that for girls. Of course, maybe she’d find that we actually were nuts and I’d rather not know that.
After our first meeting Dr. Morford wanted to introduce me to another man who’d been meeting in secret with him, but now also wanted to emerge outta the shadows. We made a date to meet the following week at Lindy’s for lunch.
I dashed outta his office, down the elevator and grabbed a cab while my watch ticked away precious moments. I had to get to the auditions. We were beginning them today and the last thing I wanted was to be late.