David Perry recalls being young and gay in 1980s Washington D.C. and having “an absolute blast.” He was fresh out of college, raised in Richmond, Virginia, and had long viewed the nation’s capital as “the big city” where he could finally embrace his true self.

He came out of the closet here, got a job at the National Endowment for the Arts where his boss was a gay Republican, and “lost my virginity in D.C. on August 27, 1980,” he says, chuckling.

The bars and clubs were packed with gay men and women — Republican and Democrat — and almost all of them deep in the closet. […]