Bad news: I'm fed up with Instagram. It deliberately won't let you publish posts from a desktop computer, only from a smart phone. I don't plan to get a smart phone. If I can't publish posts, I don't need Instagram. I've disabled my account. Tootsie, good-bye.
World Pride Day: Hope or Hype?
Yes, today is World Pride Day, with thousands of visitors
expected in the city, and I ask myself, is this hope or hype? A bit of both, I think. Let’s consider.
The brouhaha has been brewing for a week. Last Wednesday, while walking down
Christopher Street to a podiatrist appointment, I passed the storied Stonewall
Inn, and in front of it were visitors taking photos of each other with the
Stonewall as the backdrop. The whole
West Village has sprouted rainbow flags; hardly a shop or store or restaurant
fails to have at least a bit of rainbow posted in its windows, and police
barricades line Bleecker Street under my window, even though the parade will
start uptown in the 20s, come down to the Stonewall, and then make a U-turn and
go back uptown to dusband. Just a block
from my building, the Philip Marie restaurant, where I often lunch, has a whole
bunch of flags out in front, while across from it the legendary White Horse
Tavern, where Dylan Thomas quite literally drank himself to death, shows not a
patch of rainbow.
Is this an oversight or intentional? My deceased partner Bob told me long ago how
he and his good friend Rose, a Brooklyn-based lesbian, once went there. The moment they set foot inside, they felt a
palpable chill: gays were not welcome.
So Bob and Rose left, and Bob never set foot there again. Nor have I, though things may well have
changed. But the lack of a shred of rainbow
is curious; today, to display rainbow flags or bunting during Gay Pride Week is
just good business. If all goes as in
the past, even though this year the parade won’t come down here, later today
all the restaurants in the area will do a roaring business. And yesterday, in the sidewalk dining area of
one restaurant on Hudson Street, I saw two brawny guys at a table, both
stripped to the waist. Granted, it was
hot (and will be again today), but I sensed in it a touch of gay presumption
and, to be honest, I didn’t like it.
Liberation can be messy.
Gay presumption? Yes,
Gay Lib, while it meant freedom, also involved a bit of presumption. I remember reading, probably in The Village Voice, of “liberated” gay
men strolling the Village streets and leering without shame at the young sons
of families walking by. This disgusted me. But for the fast-track gay crowd, gay lib
meant more than this. It meant wild
partying with lots of drugs and liquor, multiple sex partners, plenty of action
and not much sleep. But Nature –
whatever that is – has its ways. The
result: AIDS.
Which is not to deny the positive side of Liberation. The veterans of the Stonewall riots of fifty
years ago, when drag queens bared their claws and took on the police, are
coming forth once again to tell their story, as in a whole special section of
the Times of last Sunday (I haven’t
seen today’s paper yet) that I intend to read, or at least scan. (It takes me at least a week to read, even
selectively, the Sunday New York Times.) Usually the tone of these reminiscences is
heroic and uplifting. But let’s have a
look at the account of another veteran of those days, my partner Bob, who left
an archive of gay history, including journals from the mid-1950s on, of which I
have scanned 21 to date, with several more to go.
So what does Bob say of the Stonewall riots of June
1969? Not a word. Not out of indifference, but because he
wasn’t yet in the habit of recording his daily thoughts and experiences. After a high school journal of the 1950s, he
doesn’t record much until March of 1977, and even then the entries are spotty,
with only random entries. But I can
safely say that for him and me and our friends, all over 30, the Stonewall
riots were a distant and puzzling event.
Fight the police? Are those kids
crazy? Only with time did we come to
grasp their significance, and the fact that Gay Lib was here to stay. Then some still held aloof, but many of us
joined the parade. (Me, literally, in
1994.) We had to, for we remembered only
too well what it had been like before.
To get the flavor of those days, and how it was even long after the riots,
let’s have a look at Bob’s journal.
July 29, 1977. With my parents last night. Strangely, against my will, I reacted to the
subterfuge of my life. They don’t know
all of me, and sometimes this concerns me, affects my mood. My veneer was, as usual, perfect (so I
think), but the effort to maintain a composure takes its toll, as it did last
night.
October 29, 1987. AIDS continues and casts an awful sadness on
gay life and, for me, the Village. This
is a different West Village from 10 years ago.
As I write this, the fact is that there isn’t a glimmer of a REASON for
the horrible disease. It remains an
awesome mystery. Cliff and I stand apart
from ever acquiring the disease, insofar as we’ve remained monogamous
throughout our relationship.
June 23, 1989. Sunday is Gay Liberation Day and commemorates
the 20th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion. Oh, how I’ve aged. [He was now 49.] I see myself surveying the Stonewall Bar in the
days following the event -- there were strands of lights outlining the sign
over the entrance – there was an excitement on Christopher Street as tangible
as a heady wine.
September 27, 1990. [After being moralized by an old friend
turned Christian fundamentalist.] I will
not be viewed as a degenerate. I have an
excellent realization of my worth as a person.
I do not want to know anyone who cannot accept my gay nature. I’m proud of all that I am, and that “all”
includes much that is intelligent, sensitive, and kind.
February 19, 1992. Dr. Fox [his doctor] expressed his anguish
over the impending death of his friend.
AIDS. A horrifying, wracking end
period in cruel progress. I held him and
expressed my deepest concern. Incredibly
sad.
September 8, 1992. [Following a Newsweek cover story, “Gays Under Fire,” inspired by anti-gay
statements at the Republican presidential convention.] The gay community is now a known factor, it
isn’t going to disappear, it is substantially large (larger than I ever
realized, say, 30 years ago), and it is politically, legally, artistically
active. It blazes across the landscape,
becoming more and more vivid.
August 10, 1993. Sadism.
There has come to light recently a possible case of serial murders of
gay men, middle-aged, over the last two years, where the unfortunate victims
were brutally dismembered, with body parts stuffed into plastic bags. Most of the murdered were last seen in gay
bars both in the Village (the Five Oaks) and mid-town. Frightening.
So much for now. The
testimony of a sensitive and observant gay man, usually scribbled in a favorite
Chinese restaurant, while sipping wine, a Manhattan, or a cognac on the
house. His entries give a flavor of how
it was like back then, the ups and downs, the pride and the fear.
Coming soon: Descent into Darkness: Revelations, Fecundity, and Death.
© 2019 Clifford Browder
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