Very Old Stories

I recently went through a lot of old discs (only five of 50 survived), and found some of my essays and articles when I first started writing. They sure have a different feel and tone from what I do now. I suppose the difference then was that I was writing for pure enjoyment.
Here are two from 1993 and 1994:

2/13/93
We spent the day in San Juan Capistrano. As we were getting ready to leave we came across a VFW rally. There was a politician speaking, we believe it was Ron Packard. He said that he was introducing a bill that would make the ban on gays in the military permanent. The crowd applauded. I felt like a nigger.

STONEWALL: THE JUDY CONNECTION OR HOW I LOST MY VIRGINITY
I remember it clearly. I was thirteen years old that summer. My boy scout troop was camping out at the entrance to Anaheim Bay in Huntington Beach. The car radio was set to a news station and the announcer said that Judy Garland was dead.
For some reason, this news affected me, but I didn't know why. I didn't really care that much about Judy Garland. My only memories about her from that period were that she was in The Wizard Of OZ. Suddenly she was dead and for reasons unknown to me, I felt the loss.
I don't remember hearing anything about the riots in New York just after Judy's funeral. Riots were becoming fairly common in the late 1960's. I don't think it was even reported in The Los Angeles Times. I certainly didn't know the riots could possibly be connected to Judy Garlands death. I wouldn't know that until many years later. I also had no idea how those riots would affect the rest of my life.
What I do remember from that summer was losing my virginity to another member of my scout troop. For years I told people I lost my virginity to a woman when I was sixteen. At the time what we had done in the summer of '69 seemed like no big deal. As my mother said years later, "lots of boys do that sort of thing at that age," which is true, but they don't spend the next seven years obsessing over it, hoping it would happen again.
To paraphrase Theodore White: one never realizes history when one is experiencing it. It's odd looking back on that summer, how it all fits together: Judy Garland's death, the stonewall riots and a hot summer day in my best friends bedroom.