Also pretty much around the various corners near my live-in closet were about a dozen gay bars. Yes, I was "under-aged," having just turned 19.* But I didn't let that get in the way. Looking back, I wonder how I pulled that off. In my numerous theatrical ventures through my teenaged years, I was always cast as the juvenile. Baby-faced Bear with cheek of tan. Maybe because I was tall and, as I've mentioned previously, rather precocious, but I wasn't ever carded. And I never had a fake I.D. I also wasn't much of a drinker. But hormones, oh yeah. *my friend Natasha pointed out to me that drinking age in NY was 18, not 21. Now I'm wondering why in my memory I got that wrong?
Early on in my stay, in late June and late one evening, I was hanging out on Sheridan Square with another teenaged pal. In California, when the sun goes down it tends to cool off rapidly. But -- as many of you no doubt know -- out East it can stay warm or even hot well into the night. There were lots of people, mostly gay men, cruising up and down Christopher Street. Don't you love watching humanity pass by?
With all that was going on up and down the street, the fact that a few police officers entered the Stonewall Inn to do one of their fairly regular busts of a gay bar didn't look like much of anything .... until the place began to empty and the queens found their voices. What eventually got dubbed the beginning of the gay liberation movement seemed at first just a melee. Patrick and I got up on our feet, first moving toward the sound of angry queens at their "we're mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore" Waterloo --- and then, I must admit, we backed off. But everyone who quickly converged on the spot knew this was more than a melee. Excitement. Adrenaline. And then a crowd with a purpose. The air was electric and the police were sorely outnumbered. So much pent up fed-upness, first from the street people and the drag queens up front, and then from what rapidly seemed to be a mob unleashed.
The sirens wailed as NYPD descended on the West Village en masse. I ended up in the ever-increasing crowd, temporarily lost sight of Patrick, and moved as one first toward the west on Christopher, then up the Avenue. I was both thrilled and scared. I didn't get arrested. I didn't get billy-clubbed. There were so many of us. And we were making a lot of noise.
I ended up with Patrick and some older guys (yeah "older" as in, 20 something) in a pack. Three of those brave fellows turned out to be prime organizers of the Gay Lib movement that got such a kickoff from the Stonewall riots. I'd found my place in the Village. Twink no more. I was an activist! The gay rights movement I tried to get going at Stanford when I was a freshman was happening in a big way in the Big Apple.
And the rest is history. No, actually, the rest is what I'll tell y'all about in coming posts.