Spine Intact, Some Creases. Victor J. Banis
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makes it puzzling that many, many years later I found myself sitting at a table next to Mister Touchdown, only to have him start to play “kneesies” with me under the table. What fun—except that our dazzlingly handsome hero was now older. Lots older. The years during which I had “laughed at time and defied the years” (I just know you will remember the source of that remark) had not been kind to him. Fat, flabby, balding, he was not likely to arouse passion in my heart. “Where were you,” I wanted to cry out, “All those lonely nights when I could have used you?” There had surely been in those years plenty of fires that he might have put out had he been of a mind. At this stage I had my doubts about the condition of his hose.
I should perhaps say that, if this experience were mine alone, I would not have included it here—face it, with the exception of a few of my old classmates, who would know the man in question or care?
But it is a classic, isn’t it? Haven’t we all, when we were young, wanted some classmate’s love, friendship—oh, hell, his body in the back seat of a car—and been spurned, often cruelly; only to have the self-same come back years later, when we are taller, heavier, thinner, blonder, pimple free, dripping with poise or money—which is to say, when “who-needs-you”? And aren’t they always astonished that we no longer want them?
Of course, gays often think this is their story alone but, sorry kids, it happens to straight boys and girls too. It’s what Tchaikovsky’s opera, Eugene Onegin, is all about, if you didn’t know, which has a near perfect ‘serves you right” ending. It is surprising, is it not, how often we share the same stories in our lives and yet how seldom we recognize ourselves in one another? It remains for the artist—the painter, the story teller, the composer—to help us understand our kinship.
On this Halloween night, however, Mister Touchdown was still entirely desirable, at least under other circumstances, still young and handsome—and all too frighteningly macho. I tried to slip by this little group unnoticed but apparently my sisters and I had done a better job of dressing me up than I had realized. The boys all thought I looked plenty desirable and proceeded to flirt with me, if you could call it that. It was along the lines of “Hey, Baby, have I got something for you!” The cool, sophisticated approach in other words.
Needless to say I did not reply. They might not recognize my shapely legs from gym class but there was surely a risk that they might recognize my voice and I felt certain they would not be happy knowing that it was I with whom they had been flirting so outrageously. At the very least I was, in the then current vernacular, “cruisin” for a bruisin’.”
The problem was, the more I tried to avoid these boys, the more excited they became. It was like playing hard to get. It only fanned the flames.
As it happened I had the means at hand to put out the flames. By this time I was fairly wetting my pants. And I didn’t dare go to the john. Which one would I have gone to? The men’s, giving the secret away? The women’s, where I might be recognized as an imposter (who knew, at fourteen, what mysterious rituals went on in those places anyway?)
With each passing moment my situation seemed to me to grow more perilous. The more ardently they pursued me, the angrier I realized they would be if they discovered the truth. In their minds I had no doubt they would look upon it all as a case of a queer trying to come on to them, never mind that I was wracking my brains for an escape plan.
I finally ended up slipping outside. My intentions were twofold—relieve my bladder and get away from my admirers.
Alas, it was not to be so easy. Someone raised the cry and the chase was on—literally. In my panic I no doubt only worsened the situation. I hiked up my skirt and ran, galomphing over lawns and about houses, leaping fences in a single bound, spilling trash cans and in a twinkling pursued by the neighborhood dogs as well as my erstwhile Romeos. I felt that I was running for my life—I had no doubt they would kill me if they caught me.
I was fast. I was used to making tracks. Indeed, if we had had track when I was going through high school, I might have been one of the jocks. I knew from lots of experiences that none of them could catch me. I had had plenty of practice outrunning some of these guys.
This was different, however; I was in a dress and pumps for one thing. I even worried about the weight of the stuffing in the bra. Anyway, I was a short distance runner, not a long distance one, and I was tiring. It was only the adrenaline of terror that kept me out in front for so long but I knew from the hue and cry behind me—and the barking of the hounds from hell—that they were gaining. I now knew exactly how much fun the fox could have at a hunt.
“Lord,” I prayed, “Get me out of this and I swear I will never again put on a dress.”
I rounded a corner, by now nearly back at the armory where I had begun—and there, in shining armor—well, a black Chevrolet convertible actually—was my earlier escort. I leaped into the car and we were off, before the hounds came into view.
A tawdry little story and I tell it neither to amuse nor enlighten but only to make a point—that when I speak of drag, of its successes and its failures, I speak from a perspective of some experience. I have been there. I have run in those pumps.
There is a postscript to this tale, too. At school the following Monday I heard tales of a mysterious beauty, reportedly from one of the towns down the road, who had appeared at the Halloween festivities on Saturday night and who, like Cinderella, had inflamed the passions of all the young men present before disappearing, leaving behind no glass slipper but a bevy of disappointed suitors.
I never revealed her identity. And I never again put on a dress. A promise is a promise.
* * * *
The reality is, drag queens have always been on the front lines. A gay in civilian garb, even an effeminate gay, had some chance of passing. You could, as Quentin Crisp recommended in The Naked Civil Servant (1968), simply try walking faster; “It might help.”
It was ironic that if a man was wearing a dress he was automatically going to be taken for queer even though in fact he quite often, perhaps most often, might not be. And the ones who are gay are usually, in my experience, tops—I suppose a corollary to all those macho macho marines with helium in their heels, so beloved of many gays.
I would be surprised to learn that there were very many, if any, drag queens in the fifties and sixties who hadn’t been the target of physical violence, and the situation is not greatly improved today. Through the years drag queens have earned a reputation for being tough. They have to be.
Which explains in part why it was largely drag queens who stirred up that hornet’s nest at Stonewall.
Greenwich Village in New York had always been one of those places favored by gays, though it would probably have been an exaggeration to describe it in the sixties as a gay mecca. It was a place where alternative lifestyles were, if not embraced, generally tolerated. Uptown, there were bars and restaurants and certainly apartment buildings where gays were pointedly not welcome, but no one bothered much in the Village and there had always been a few hangouts.
One of the oldest was the Stonewall Inn on Sheridan Square, where Seventh Avenue intersected Christopher Street. The bar had been around for years and though its decor was decidedly tacky and you didn’t want to look too closely at the bar glasses, it was nonetheless probably the most popular spot in town, packed to the rafters most nights with an assortment of drag queens, leather boys, lesbians (both butch and lipstick), frat boys and the occasional tourist—bars in those days weren’t as specialized as they would become later. You were so glad to have one you didn’t want to be too particular.
The Stonewall was Mafia run, which meant the owners made pay offs regularly to ensure that the bar was left open by the police. Nevertheless it was necessary that the police made token raids from time to time, to save face. The usual procedure was for the police to provide advance notice to the bar’s proprietors. ID checks were made of all the patrons and one or two ordinary gays might find themselves arrested for public drunkenness or lewd behavior, but it was usually only the drag queens, regarded as the most vulnerable of the helpless, who were detained.
For whatever reason