Here’s how Lanford Wilson found the Caffe Cino, where his long and distinguished playwriting career began.

It was July of 1961 or ’62. ’62. I was living at 25 West 83rd Street, right off Central Park West, with my lover (that is what we gay men called our partners in those days), the composer John Corigliano. We had been living together for about five years. He was programming classical music at radio station WQXR and feverishly composing music. I was working at Hill & Wang, noted for publishing plays. My boss Arthur Wang had made me their drama editor, for some reason. I had no particular interest in drama, having graduated from City College with a degree in Latin. I considered myself a poet.

Our apartment building was almost entirely gay, and we were almost entirely in our midtwenties, which made for a comfortable atmosphere of safety in those pre-Stonewall days. So when we decided to throw a gigantic summer party, we opened up the whole brownstone. I would guess as many as 300 men turned up. Don’t let anyone tell you that there was no freedom for gay people until the Stonewall Riots of June 28, 1969. Anyone who might possibly have complained of the noise, we invited to the party.

Our upstairs neighbor was Ken Something-or-other (I’d check out his last name, but John doesn’t remember it, and I believe that all of our neighbors died of the plague years ago). Ken had met two great-looking guys in Central Park the day before, and he was eager to show off his catch to his neighbors. Such was the competitive spirit of 25 West 83rd Street that hot July Sunday afternoon of 1962.

So I remember two tousled-looking guys, who looked like they hadn’t slept for a few days—Lance Wilson and Michael Powell, with definitely non-New York accents. Lance was glad to meet a real composer and a poet who spoke Latin (I could in those days). Lance was always in awe of learning he didn’t possess, too much in awe in my opinion, sometimes. I could tell he was very smart, even through the thick cloud of desire and alcohol enveloping us. 

I believe I fell in lust on the spot with Lance—with his Arkansas drawl, his uncut hair sweeping half over his face, his magnetic hazel eyes, and most of all his passion for the theatre. He and Michael Powell had come to New York for that sole reason. I was bored out of my mind working as an editor. His passion ignited mine. 

We chatted about The Bacchae of Euripides, which I had studied in Greek. Lance didn’t know the play. Little did I know that I was speaking to a reincarnation of Dionysus who was imminently going to turn my life upside down. (I would eventually leave John, move to SoHo, and, inspired by Lance, become a playwright.)

Now, the previous winter, in 1961 or ’62, John and I had visited the Caffe Cino, a coffee shop hidden in an obscure side street in Greenwich Village, to say hello to Billy Mitchell, an old boyfriend of John’s, who was a waiter there. (The importance of lovers and ex-lovers and friends of ex-lovers cannot be overstated when recounting the history of gay men in the era I have been talking about.)

That night at the Cino, they happened to be performing a musical, The Boyfriend, which we thought was terrific. So at the party it occurred to John and me—in overlapping dialogue, of which Lance was soon going to become a master—that Lance might want to go down to that coffee shop.

My memory is cloudy on how Lance got down to the Cino, or how Joe Cino, the bear-like proprietor with an almost psychic ability to spot theatrical talent, came to ask Lance to write him a play to produce, but I do remember the play, So Long at the Fair, which Michael Powell starred in, and which Joe produced in August. It was only then, from the poster, that I found out that Lance’s real name was actually Lanford. I never liked that name.

So he remained Lance to me. When I saw him that last time in Weill Cornell Medical Center, in February of this year, where I myself had been a patient just weeks before, I held his hand, and, unconsciously trying to summon up the beautiful and charismatic young man I remembered from 25 West  83rd Street, I called him Lance. Lance.

William M. Hoffman is the author of As Is and other plays, and the libretto to the opera The Ghosts of Versailles. He is currently completing Memoirs of an Ex-Boy.