Although it might have been missed by the people walking between bars out on the street and those inside them, there was something about that night that any careful observer would have noted. It wasn’t big. It wasn’t ostentatious. It was not announced. It made no noise.
It was a poorly timed action on the wrong night.
It changed the world
As she sat on her chair outside the Stonewall Inn watching out for her boys in all her Marlene Dietrich splendor, it was approaching the final hours before the bars closed and Storme’s earlier activities as a Drag King in other venues had been completed, and, perhaps, as her evening wound down, as she often did, she took her spot like the owner of the shop and greeted passersby, conversed with regulars, chatted with the many street kids, and saw the detail that should not have been there that night, police officers quietly entering the bar.
It was illegal to sell or serve a “homosexual” an alcoholic beverage outside a private location in New York City at the time and bars were not that. This created a system that benefited organized crime who made money and the local precinct so long as the owners made their protection payments.
Homosexuals needed places to gather and this meant money to be made even if it was on the fringe of legality because Homosexuals had money to spend spend. It is easy to try to explain that a lack of knowledge led to certain abuses, but there were some players whose benefits were enhanced by keeping things as they were.
The bar was nothing fancy and nothing like the image in the minds of those born long after, who may not want to accept that it was just a glorified garage with the cistern in the rear only covered with a piece of wood to serve as a table or bench, no running water so the tub of water to wash used glasses was the same water all night just getting dirtier, making bottled beer the better and safer choice. Such bars were the norm in those days. They were not attractive places.
It often served as the last bar you went to at the end of an evening in harder to find but a little less rustic bars more up town, or the soirees limited to the various mini-communities within the greater one.
Homosexuals had a place to go. Organized crime had a good cash flow. The local precinct had a low crime area, certainly the Homosexuals were not going to bring too much attention onto themselves, and some extra cash however it was dispensed back at the precinct.
There was nothing out of the ordinary going on that, although Judy Garland lying in state uptown had a lot of fans out that night as they had either been to the wake or were just out toasting an icon which helped increase the people in the area. There were no signs of violence, no raucous action emanating from the bar in sound or deed. There were no fights on the street.
Nothing but the typical crowd milling about in the final two hours as the bars were getting ready to close all over the city.
Storme would have noted this appearance of police, as anyone observant would have, and perhaps thought as there was no obvious reason for police presence this was because, while the payment schedules for protection were like clockwork and discrete, the police showing up so openly on a busy night could mean that a payment was missed and not likely to be paid anytime soon and some sort of reminder had to be given. How big the debt and how serious the offense in delinquency could be assessed by what followed which, in all probability, would have been a warning, a few dirty looks, perhaps an extension, and a promise to return at an appointed time, with, I would assume would be standard, a warning that further delinquency or non-payment could mean trouble and perhaps a change in ownership.
If there were any problem, it was not with the patrons, but the owner.
Once the message was delivered, there should have been an exit after the outwardly calm tet-a-tet, but it went wrong because there had just been a bar raid a few days earlier and this one was noticeably too soon no matter how discrete it might have been intended to be.
Nothing was happening that would have called for the police, but the questionable nature and timing of the “visit” and the patrons’ objection to the untimely raid created the atmosphere that had the police call for back-up, not that there was activity that needed immediate addressing but perhaps just in case. Their entering the bar as they did, assuming the worst, and, perhaps, as I was to learn from a co-worker whose brother-in-law was one of the the second group of police, relishing the chance to “Bash some Queers”, and the arrival of the police wagon set whole thing off because someone in the bar, perhaps more than one person had had enough.
The blind-wall at the entrance of the bar common to all Gay bars (the usual L shaped wall that kept the people on the street from seeing who was inside unless they too entered because being in such a bar was enough of an excuse for society to ruin your life) kept anyone on the street from seeing what was happening inside.
After the additional officers showed up and entered the bar, the door was closed, perhaps, not so much to keep people in as the people inside were going through the standard procedures those who have been in routine bar raids know, but to keep anyone walking in on what the additional officers had thought would be a scene much worse than it was. It was when the door closed, which was new, that it became clear this was different.
Someone inside, a police officer or a patron, took a deliberate action or even an accidental, unintended one that set off the brawl. It could have been an unintentional or deliberate push, a punch, or an accidental bump. The police were tense as they entered an unknown situation. Quiet patrons, about their normal activity went from dealing with an annoying routine “raid” to a SWAT team-like event when they had been following the procedure of showing IDs and the Drag Queens additionally displaying their three articles of mens’ clothing.
Finding the person in a poorly lit bar with the last patrons of the night packed tightly together with the usual mix of alcohol and other recreational substance and the “demons” they would conjure who was the person who began it all would be like attempting to determine who fired the “Shot Heard Round the World” at Lexington.
Inside the bar, whereas common practice was to mingle with whoever was there while maintaining a safe base for further security in an unsafe world by having your group with whom you most identified, be it because of race, language, longtime friendships, and the like, on this night it was Community as, regardless of anything other than that you were one of us, and even if I absolutely abhorred your very existence on every other night, that night we were on the same team.
I have a Puerto Rican friend, a Newyorican, who saved a White stranger from Long Island who had been knocked to the floor, by stopping to take the time to bend down to help him up and out the door when he would have been out the door quicker and not have been whacked on the head with a nightstick if he had not helped that stranger. The stranger from Long Island then went on and scooped up another person and got him to the door
The blind-wall and closed door guaranteed nothing was seen from the street.
Meanwhile, out on the street, Storme had to yell to the crowd on the who either had not seen any of the activity at the entrance of the bar or just didn’t care, to do something and it did.
The exterior rebellion erupted as the interior one was in full swing and it was one community-wide swelling of action in both places as people began to act with some becoming more prominent than others as the evening wore on.
We know of some people as they had a presence and could easily be seen in the crowd. We do not know of a potentially more heroic person because they were on a side street with little lighting and fewer fellow rebels. The greatest hero of the evening might be totally unknown.
The amazing thing about Stonewall was that it was not organized and no one gave directions or usurped the power of the community by becoming a self appointed leader who would control the night.
Although the raid could be seen as a dark comedy of errors with a positive ending, it was the last straw of a fed up community and every participant took their part according to whom and what they were with everyone equally fed up with how the people in the bar and out on the street, all of them, and those like them all over, were being treated.
The community, regardless of any differences, race, color, creed, national origin and known gender variants acted spontaneously as one, not in groups.
This was a time, when it came to ice cream, that we thought Howard Johnson’s with its 28 flavors was the pinnacle of ice cream variety until Baskin and Robbins blew us away with 31. Then, if it can be believed, along came Ben and Jerry and all ice cream hell broke loose. These flavors were probably around when the world had known only chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla, but they had to come out of the freezer, and, as that happened, no new flavor diminished that of the existing ones or of any being or to be introduced. it was 1969 and even Gay people had a lot to learn about gender variants.
Stonewall was during the Howard Johnson days of gender.
On that night, though, that was irrelevant. A Community was acting as one.
My Puerto Rican friend attended a gathering of those who were there that night in June a few years later and got to meet the person who he had only known as some kid in a wide-striped shirt he helped get off the floor and who had only known him as some guy who helped him up and out when the door opened.
It had people helping people, strangers helping strangers in a total act of Community with no one leading but all knowing that the Community was tired of it, would have no more of it, and acted accordingly.
That is what makes the real Stonewall more amazing than it is allowed to be seen as people fight over who started it as if they just cannot accept that the Community started it and Communities can act as communities.
Stonewall was the Big Bang that started a movement, and, like the Big Bang, it happened in a moment as one singular event with all elements equally involved. Whoever, whatever, whether there was a name for it not, or even if the known names were correct was irrelevant because WE were there.
Us.
There were no credits at the end, just more work.
The Rebellion was spontaneous and united.
During the time after the Stonewall, there was a demand and attempt to create community, which we saw we could be that night in June.
We had a flag based on shared virtues regardless of any differences among us. Every person can have those virtues regardless of race, color, national origin etc.
Now the flag represents groups within the community, and not the complete Community as one as I do not see anything for Asians or Indigenous People unless they are not considered as important or someone decided they fit into one of the other stripes, a subcategory if you will.
With each generation Storme gets pushed into the shadows for the hero du jour and has gone from her Drag King self to a young Lesbian, then a Trans woman who was not there that first night, next a young Black person of ever changing gender, finally arriving at the apex of the rewriting as a young white boy from the Midwest who came to town just in time to meet everyone who would be at the Stonewall that night and be the one to throw the non-existent brick that set the whole thing in motion.
The truth is shouted down by those who prefer what they have heard over what they could know and people are creating, modifying, and defining events according to how they would like them to have been and erasing what actually was.
In this endeavor we do to ourselves what the greater community had been doing.
We cut up the community and demand separation and thus we divide ourselves for the convenience of others.
A Stonewall veteran was told by someone in the audience born way after 1969 that his account of his experience that night could not be true as it did not match what his equally young friend had texted. The speaker had explained that, although people may have been at the same place at the same time, their experience depended on where they were and what was happening around them in the bar at the time, and, even if much of their stories would be the same, their individual role would control the details.
A famous Non-Binary author speaks at the city’s Lyceum. It may have been advertised as a community coupe, but, not only was the lecture poorly attended, embarrassingly so with a low Community turn out, but the only response to the scant coverage of it was not about the substance of what was presented but that the person who did write about it confused a pronoun or two and was castigated for that, not thanked for presenting to the public coverage of the event and lecture nor was the substance addressed .
Regardless what the person had said, it was easily brushed aside by those who chose to comment on and condemn the person for the pronoun error when, as essential as the proper pronouns are for Trans and non-Binary people, allies dispensing advice and sermonettes about pronoun usage which distracted from what was important, the message they would have received had they gone to the lecture.
When I was young the word Queer was a weapon. It was the thing you did not want the kids at school to use to label you. It was chosen by others for its negative connotation and used accordingly to deny employment and housing, publicly humiliate people, and was the word most often heard while getting beaten and for some it was the last word they heard as they were beaten to death.
It was a word we had to live with and through, whose resulting treatment we were supposed to just endure.
I was 19 when Stonewall happened and was as far removed from it at the time as anyone could be, but when I found myself and became who I always was, I had the word “Gay” because WE had chosen it. It was not assigned whether we liked it or not, and I could leave Queer and all its baggage in the past as I moved forward.
I have been called divisive now, out of touch, part of the problem because I ask those younger than myself who have never dealt with the word as older people have, to call me “Gay” and not Queer” only to get a Ted Talk about my disrespect for the community and my being a detriment to progress.
I have been re-assigned a title other than Gay by people who are not me, disregarding what the word means to me.
Those younger than I demand that I once again accept an assigned term, not the one of my own choosing that I had spent decades erasing because it was not a chosen title but a one-sided assigned term that dehumanized us enough to clobber us with and justify treating us like dirt so the future would not be treated as we had in the past and could build on battles won.
I have been told that I have no option.
The word was justification for the attempted genocide by inaction of the 1980s.
Just let’em die, then we’ll be rid of’em.
I am being told I must again accept the word being applied to me and that my objections are obviously not worth consideration as there is either acceptance of the term or being a pariah for violating my keepers’ rules, while at the same time being prevented from quietly sipping my drink because after 38 years teaching middle and high school English, I used a standard pronoun and earned a living podcast.
There are enough elders in the Community who are seeing history rewritten and their own roles erased when the young members of the community could be learning real history.
The common approach to learning history seems to be to ask an older person about the past for the sole purpose of having an excuse to interrupt and wax eloquent with faulty information or to correct the old guy and impress friends who have no idea how wrong the info is.
And sadder, they see what had been a Community fracturing as people fight for their stripe to be the star.
I recently was corrected for the supposedly faulty information I had added to a conversation about someone from many years ago that a small group was reminiscing about. I was kindly forgiven because, as I was visiting from out of state, my sources could only be secondary. The topic of the conversation was actually me doing something 15 years before when I lived in that state and when that person was a mere child and I, more than anyone, would know the details.
For me, a giant irony is that those attempting to reclaim a false history or replace the real one with it like to dress up the statues in the park across from the Stonewall because they symbolize the white-washing of the event because the statues are painted white. The statues get painted various skin tones, are dressed according to who wants to make a statement about exclusivity, with some wanting the white men removed entirely and replaced with what will be impossible to settle on as there will not be enough space for all the required statues.
However, if those being vocal took the time to actually research, they would find the statues were made by a Portuguese artist known at the time for his solid white statues, using Portuguese friends as models.
It has been decided, apparently, that the Portuguese were not there and Portuguese are not considered to be a real minority or even worth recognition and inclusion, and, like the Asians and Indigenous People are left off the “Progressive Flag” because they either don’t fulfill some arbitrary requirement or aren’t in vogue at the moment.
More exclusion in search of the star.
I miss the Community.
I wish the need to fracture was not so strong.
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