![]() Lawrence Mass, a co-founder of Gay Men’s Health Crisis and Noemi Masliah, a relative of Mr. Nathan told about the relationship: Leonard Bloom, a former city health official who befriended both men Frederick Hertz, a close friend of Mr. ![]() Rothenberg and Arthur Schwartz, the boyfriend of a senior Koch aide at the time, as well as four people whom Mr. Nathan, a high-achieving, Harvard-educated health care consultant, according to on-record interviews with six people who knew about the pair. During this time, he was involved in a sustained romantic relationship with Richard W. Koch to cordon off parts of his identity. To them, some facts will always be best left unconfirmed.īut the life of a congressman in the 1970s - shuttling between Washington and New York with minimal media scrutiny - allowed Mr. Koch and feel compelled to protect him still, the topic remains uncomfortable. Their failure disheartens them to this day.įor the loyal lieutenants who protected Mr. Koch for years to come out, suggesting he might be happier for it, that the city might be better for it. Koch confided, during and after his time in office, completing this record of his life is something of a collective unburdening. “You can see how much pain he’s in,” his first deputy mayor, Stanley Brezenoff, told another aide once the mayor was out of earshot.įor the gay friends in whom Mr. No one in the room had asked about this subject. Koch stunned senior staff members assembled in his City Hall office one day with a sudden declaration: “I am not a homosexual.” That he seemed to share so much of himself with his constituents - blustering, badgering, letting few thoughts escape his consciousness unsaid - only magnified the tensions around what he did not reveal, an unyielding conflict that could lead to unsettling moments.ĭuring a particularly stressful time in his third term, aides remembered, Mr. Through his death, in 2013, his deflections endured. He denied as much for decades - to reporters, campaign operatives and his staff - swatting away longstanding rumors with a choice profanity or a cheeky aside, even if these did little to convince some New Yorkers. It was an aching admission, shared with only a few, from a politician whose brash ubiquity and relentless New York evangelism helped define the modern mayoralty, even as he strained to conceal an essential fact of his biography: Mr. “I want a boyfriend,” he said to one friend, Charles Kaiser. ![]() Did they know anyone who might be “partner material?” Someone “a little younger than me?” Someone to make up for lost time? Koch described to a few friends a feeling he could not shake: a deep loneliness. He urged new acquaintances to call him “judge,” a joking reference to his time presiding over “The People’s Court.”īut as his 70s ticked by, Mr. He dragged friends to the movies, pursuing a side career in film criticism. Koch could seem as though he was scrambling to fill every hour with bustle. Glad-handing well-wishers at his favorite restaurants, gesticulating through television interviews long after his three terms as mayor, Mr. Koch looked like the busiest septuagenarian in New York.
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