This Day in Gay History
It was on this day, January 15th, 1981, that the first gay man played Pac-Man. Pac-Man had been the hottest thing in American culture for a year by that time, but due to various anti-gay legislators, gay people could not play video games in public. This law, which was enacted during the Great Depression (for obvious reasons), had been ignored before Pac-Man because all games pretty much sucked. Once Pac-Man arrived, however, gays wanted to eat little balls and chase Inky and Blinky like the rest of the country.
The man who played the Pac-Man was from Hicksville, Long Island. Strangely, he was a closeted gay man and it was only known that he was gay by the fact that he kept his pinky out while holding the joystick. After two years in jail, Jimmy Cutler was freed on the condition that he never play video games again.
In an inronic twist to the story, years later Jimmy and his partner Rob adopted a Japanese boy who later went on to invent the videogame blockbuster, Grand Theft Auto.
