AS A CLOSETED TEENAGER in the late 1960s, I came across a glossy 50¢ magazine at a Boston newsstand that spoke to me in a coded language I intuitively understood. It was called After Dark and marketed itself as “the national entertainment magazine.” It could just as well have been labeled “the national gay entertainment magazine,” assuming you could connect to its subtext, which wasn’t all that “sub.” If you were gay the magazine practically winked at you. But you could also place it on the family coffee table and, as a friend once remarked: “It’s the perfect magazine when you don’t want to de-gay your apartment.”