Cowley's insatiable lust is the torch that allows us to navigate this web of gay infrastructure and celebrate the period for inculcating authentic and uninhibited sexuality. Nine gay newspapers were set up, two gay charitable foundations, and three gay Democratic clubs, one of which grew to be the largest Democratic club in California. With leaders like Harvey Milk, the famed gay District supervisor, the Castro community established some ninety gay bars in the city and a further hundred and fifty gay organisations, a catch-all for church groups, social service groups, and business associations. By recording the spectacular details of his indulgence, Cowley gives us a sense of the vibrancy of the gay liberation period.Ĭowley's pursuits seem effortless, self-manifested, however what his actions conceal is the might of self-organisation that had taken place in the relatively isolated Castro District of San Francisco to give rise to his sexual freedom. The diary's writer and intended sole confidant, Cowley, is known as the pioneer of Hi-NRG, disco's electrified successor, for his extended remix of Donna Summer's ‘I Feel Love,' and for his collaborations with Sylvester, the gender-bending, falsetto-singing disco mainstay.
Spanning the liberation period from Stonewall in 1969 to the dawn of AIDS in 1981, record label Dark Entries' publication of Cowley's private journal, Mechanical Fantasy Box, captures without concession one man's proud and unabated expression of sexual freedom. We're left celebrating gay liberation as a period that empowered homosexual men to self-govern without restraint. This might just be a bit of tongue-in-cheek humour, but by adopting religious language in descriptions of conventionally irreligious exploits, Cowley shatters our expectations of gay freedoms in the 1970s. Having just indulged in the pleasures of a "golden idol," Cowley offers sacraments to show his appreciation, and if religious offerings were not enough, he sends thanks directly to the Father. With his panting breath and dripping sweat infused in each page of his memoir, Patrick Cowley describes himself on his knees, bending over and "worshipping Phallus." He touches the ground beneath a much-used glory hole and with complete sincerity calls for it to be consecrated territory.