Let me tell you a little story about Eric DeLeon. Eric is a software engineer, vintage record collector, and an unapologetically queer man from 2025 who accidentally (don’t ask how; it involved a glitchy smart speaker and a suspiciously humming lava lamp) traveled back in time to 1975.

He arrived in bell-bottoms and a Pride-themed crop top, confused, barefoot, and clutching a now-useless phone that refused to connect to anything but disappointment.

Eric quickly realized he wasn’t in Kansas anymore. Well, he was, but it was Kansas 1975, and Kansas 1975 wasn’t exactly waving rainbow flags. The world was different. Less open, more cautious. Gay bars were hidden behind unmarked doors. People whispered instead of posted. There were no dating apps; only glances, coded language, and the occasional classified ad that read like a Cold War cipher.

He found a job working at a diner in Lawrence. “Just until I figure out how to get back,” he told himself.

But life, as it does, got complicated.

There was Dorothy (yes, really), a 50-something waitress who chain-smoked Virginia Slims and clocked Eric’s fabulousness within seconds. She took him under her wing like an aging diva adopts a lost backup dancer. She had stories. And secrets. And a gay son she hadn’t spoken to in ten years.

There was David, a Vietnam vet who drank black coffee and fixed jukeboxes. He rarely smiled, but he always looked twice at Eric. And one night, after too much whiskey and too little inhibition, Eric asked him, “You ever think about what life would be like if we didn’t have to lie so damned much?”

David stared into his drink. “All the time,” he replied bleakly.

David was kind, complicated, and deeply closeted. He carried the weight of a war, of secrets, and of a father who’d taught him that love was only valid if it looked a certain way. And yet, somehow, they found each other in stolen hours. They danced – once – alone, in the dark, to a Fleetwood Mac record playing softly on a player that skipped on the word “dreams”.

It wasn’t perfect. David couldn’t walk down the street with him, couldn’t hold his hand at the county fair. But he listened when Eric talked about the future; about marriage equality, about Pride, about drag brunches and chosen families, and men in love walking freely in the daylight.

“Sounds like science fiction” David sighed.

Eric peered deeply into David’s eyes, “Feels like home”.

A year passed. Eric had almost stopped looking for a way back.

But, one night, while reorganizing Dorothy’s attic, he found something: a strange humming lamp he swore he’d seen before. Its glow was so familiar. He touched it. Time flickered.

And, suddenly, the choice was in front of him. Stay in 1976 with David, in a world that was beginning to change but still dangerous. Or go home, to a time where he could live out loud, but where David would exist only in memory.

David took his hand. “You’ve got a world waiting for you. I want you to live in it.”

Eric kissed him goodbye. The kind of kiss that holds a lifetime in it.

Eric returned to 2025. But he wasn’t the same man. He wrote David’s story. He marched with a photo of him at Pride. He helped build a center for LGBTQ+ veterans.

Every now and then, he’d play Fleetwood Mac, close his eyes, and remember that love, real love, doesn’t need a timeline. It just needs a chance.

For more time travel stories, get over to Amazon, or your favorite bookshop, and order your copy of New Yesterdays. I promise it won’t disappoint!