Last week was my annual Baxter Boys camping trip. We are a group of 5 guys, all close friends, with whom I’ve been camping (without spouses) once a year since the early 1980s.

In earlier years, we camped in Baxter State Park in Maine, most often at the South Branch Pond campground. This campground is my heaven on earth.

As we got older, we needed cellphone service to support our families and aging parents. Thus we moved our annual trip to Acadia National Park, where we have camped in both the Blackwoods and Schoodic Point campgrounds.

This year, for the 7th time, we camped in Blackwoods Campground. This campground is close to the scenic oceanfront, has easy access to some of the best hiking trails in the park, and has a free shuttle bus to the nearby town of Bar Harbor.

We were there for five nights. It was sunny and pleasant at the beginning of the week and later clouded up, with only a few daytime sprinkles. So, we have no complaints—another great trip for the books.

I lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in the late 70’s and drove a taxi for most of those years.

This provided me with many opportunities to do drugs.

I smoked pot almost every day from 1976 through 1980. I quit this habit when I moved back to Boston in late 1980.

I did a lot of speed in the years I was a full-time taxi driver. I stopped taking speed when it almost killed me.

I took acid a couple of times in those years. It was always a great experience.

I did Peyote once, and my experience was both mundane and magical. Hard to explain.

I smoked opium once, accepted as a tip from a cab fare in lieu of cash. It tasted of roses and was a heavenly smoke. I understood immediately how people could smoke this endlessly and shrivel up and die and be happy.

PS: I did coke a couple of times in the eighties, and I always enjoyed it.

I first realized my attraction to boys in elementary school. Slowly, over my school years, I discovered that my feelings toward other boys were different from my piers. It was very confusing.

In those days (pre-AIDS, pre-Ellen, pre-Internet), it was very difficult to find any information about being gay or homosexual. And some of what was available was not very positive.

Slowly, through the years up to and including high school, I was able to dig up some media that referenced my feelings in a positive way. One was Psychology Today magazine, to which my mom subscribed. Another was a paperback novel from my parent’s bookshelf, “The Harrad Experiment.” And lastly, I’d like to call out the April 1979 Time magazine cover story “How Gay is Gay?”

So, by high school, I had a name for my feelings, but I was not ready to deal with my feelings publically. I was not ready to act on my feelings or come out. I stayed closeted.

I graduated from high school in 1975. The next year, I moved to Ann Arbor to attend the University of Michigan School of Engineering. I lived in South Quad, one of the largest dorms on campus. My dorm had a population that was larger than my entire high school!