Author Steven Gaines Pens Revealing First Memoir

Over the years, author Steven Gaines has built his literary reputation by exploring the private lives of the rich and famous. From biographies of Halston, the Beach Boys and Calvin Klein, to exposés of excess detailed in “Philistines at the Hedgerow: Passion and Property in the Hamptons” and “The Sky’s the Limit: Passion and Property in Manhattan,” Mr. Gaines is a master of uncovering truths—sordid or otherwise—and sharing them with the world.But in his new book, “One of These Things First,” which has an official release date of August 9, Mr. Gaines shares something completely different: the unvarnished truth of his own life.

And the truth isn’t pretty.

This is a memoir—a first for Mr. Gaines—and in it, he offers readers an honest, unflinching glimpse into a very difficult period in his private life.

The year was 1962 and Mr. Gaines was a Jewish kid living with his parents in an apartment above his grandparents’ bra and girdle store in Brooklyn. Though his Borough Park neighborhood was in one of the largest cities in the world, for Mr. Gaines it was a cloistered environment where he struggled with school, his father’s frequent fits of rage, and, most alarmingly for him, a strong sexual attraction to other boys.

In the early 1960s, to be gay was to be a freak. When two neighborhood bullies recognized Mr. Gaines for what he was, they tormented him mercilessly. Ashamed and humiliated, shortly after his 15th birthday Mr. Gaines attempted suicide by slashing his wrists on a broken window pane in the back of his grandparents’ store.

He ended up spending several months in Payne Whitney, a private psychiatric clinic on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where Marilyn Monroe had been a patient just the year before.

Mr. Gaines, who will soon turn 70, has kept this story secret for 55 years. When asked in a recent interview at his East Hampton home why he felt now was the time to put it all down in book form, he candidly admitted, “I was compelled to write this. I had to get it off my chest.

“I’m embarrassed by this story. I never talked about the fact I was in a psychiatric clinic at age 15,” Mr. Gaines explained. “The whole time I wrote this, I kept thinking people are going to say either, ‘Oh my God,’ or ‘I knew it all along.’

“So I’m embarrassed. It’s going to be hard for me.”

Admitting to time spent in a psychiatric ward is not easy for anyone at any age, and Mr. Gaines readily notes that his stay at Payne Whitney had a profound impact on him, not only because it was where he first started dealing with his homosexuality (more on that later), but because for the first time in his life he was exposed to a cultured and sophisticated crowd—patients who made their living in theater and film, read fine literature and had experienced the world.

In short, they were the kind of people he had never encountered in Brooklyn. Mr. Gaines soon realized he was in his element.

“At Payne Whitney, they were intending to hate me, but they took me under their wing,” he said. “These were people who were from a different world and they opened it up to me. Especially Richard Halliday.”

Richard Halliday was a theater producer and the husband of actress Mary Martin, best known for her role as Peter Pan on Broadway. The impressionable Mr. Gaines, an avid film and theater buff, was immediately swept up in his persona.

“Mr. Halliday was key. I think that was a major turning point,” Mr. Gaines recalled. “He said, ‘Don’t dress like that, wear this, and get a crew cut,’ and he gave me books to read.”

At Payne Whitney, Mr. Gaines also met architect Harold Kellogg, an intellectual who had designed libraries for Ivy League campuses. He once took Mr. Gaines on a clandestine jaunt for tea at the Plaza Hotel while they were supposedly taking a walk in the neighborhood near the clinic. Mr. Gaines also came to know a bona fide contessa, as well as a fashion editor who once had an affair with John F. Kennedy.

“I felt like Eliza Doolittle in the psycho country club,” he said. “Then I met Wayne Myers, who gave me hope.”

In 1962, it was believed that homosexuality was a disorder that could be reversed. Dr. Wayne Myers was Mr. Gaines’ Freudian psychiatrist at Payne Whitney and for the next 12 years of his life. His therapy included the notion that Mr. Gaines could be “cured” of his homosexuality by having sex with as many women as possible.

But that’s another story—one that Mr. Gaines shared in “I Used to Be Quite the Ladykiller — Especially for a Gay Guy,” which appeared in New York Magazine this past May.

For now, Mr. Gaines is happy to shift the focus of the events in his life to those contained in “One of These Things First” and let the book stand on its own, come what may.

“It’s just this story right now and I’ll end it there,” he said. “I’m so nervous about what people will say. Even people who write memoirs I don’t think expose this much. A big question is how are people going to react.”

As far as being gay is concerned, Mr. Gaines came to terms with that long ago. He noted that years after the fact, Dr. Myers even apologized for subjecting him to his misguided therapy.

“It’s not a choice. There’s no way to rewire it,” Mr. Gaines said. “It taught me such self loathing and pain. Then in 1973, the [American Medical Association] declared it was not a disease. I was furious, we had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on therapy.”

“It’s great how healthy attitudes are now, after all the torture I went through,” he added. “If I was 20 years younger, I would definitely get married and have children.”

But deep wounds heal slowly, and when asked about his old Brooklyn neighborhood, Mr. Gaines admitted he has gone back to revisit some of the places seared into his memory, including the bra and girdle store where he tried to end it all and the apartment where he endured feelings of shame and his father’s rage.

“They renovated the building and were renting the apartment,” he said. “All those horrors I went through there—I thought, ‘I’ve got to rent this apartment,’ but it’s so expensive now. Rents are ridiculous. I could have a pied-à-terre above the old bra and girdle store.”

Then a few years ago, Mr. Gaines learned that the old building had burned.

“I saw pictures of the building in flames. To me, it’s so significant,” he said. “I stopped going back there … but I can’t stop thinking about it.”

Steven Gaines will speak about “One of These Things First” at the Hampton Library’s Fridays at Five program on August 12. (2478 Main Street, Bridgehampton, 631-537-0015). He will also take part in East Hampton Library’s Authors Night on Saturday, August 13, from 5 to 7:30 p.m. (159 Main Street, East Hampton, 631-324-0222). On Thursday, August 18, at 7 p.m., Mr. Gaines will speak at BookHampton (41 Main Street, East Hampton, 631-324-4939). He is also scheduled to speak at Southampton Books (16 Hampton Road, Southampton, 631-283-0270), Sunday, August 21, at 5:30 p.m.