The National Magazine of Closeted Gay Men
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Casey Donovan aka Cal Culver is the only porn star I ever met. He was working as an escort for a service I was working for in San Francisco.


After Dark mostly featured entertainers on the cover. Particularly the male stars of Broadway. Broadway of course was gay (in stereotypeland). It gave the editors an excuse to put the photograph of an attractive guy on the cover.

Ballet dancers were also featured. I quite liked that since they were slender and smooth. It was through After Dark I learned of Rudolf Nureyev a charismatically beautiful man.

Lots of male fashion. Most of it now happily forgotten.
This was about as queer as After Dark ever dared to get. At least during the short time in the early seventies when I bought it.
I guess After Dark was a boon to artists like Robert Mapplethorpe who did the buttocks photograph below.

The faux high arts pretention and the closetedness of the magazine made it intolerable for me. Particularly the closetedness. In the days after Stonewall it seemed unforgivable.