Stonewall

Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, which is considered the single most important event in the fight for LGBT rights. The rebellion took place on the 28th June 1969, in the West Village, New York, the day of the funeral of Judy Garland. The two things were inextricably linked. Judy Garland wasn’t a gay icon simply because she sang Over The Rainbow. She passionately supported her gay fans in an era where she was effectively risking her career by doing so. When she died, there was a massive outpouring of grief from the LGBT community, and, as a result, the gay bars were due to be very crowded on the evening of her funeral. The police knew this fact, and it’s one of the reasons why their decision to raid the bar that night was so profoundly despicable.

Somewhat bizarrely, The Stonewall Inn was owned by the Italian mafia. It was an absolute dive. There was no running water behind the bar and no fire exits. It therefore tended to cater to the most marginalised members of the community, including butch lesbians, Latino and black gay folk, homeless young men, and trans-people. It was the only gay bar in New York where dancing was allowed.

Raids happened on a monthly basis. Customers were forced to line up against a wall and show their identity cards. Those without cards, or those in drag were immediately taken to police stations. Gay women were required to wear at least three items of feminine clothing to avoid being arrested. People in women’s clothing were forced to go to bathrooms with female police officers to “verify their gender.”

I would like to point out that all of this was going on just five years before I was born -

A high number of people were in the bar at 1.30am when police moved in. Some had never experienced a raid before and were absolutely terrified, trying to escape out of windows, all of which were blocked by police. 

The police were particularly callous that night and dissatisfaction spread rapidly when they started to inappropriately “feel up” some of the lesbians who had been lined up to show their papers.

But there was something in the air. Perhaps it was Judy Garland’s death, perhaps it was the wave of recent anti-Vietnam demonstrations, but those who were allowed to leave the bar didn’t simply scuttle into the shadows as normal. They hung around outside the bar. And a crowd started to gather (one of whom was Bob Dylan!)

As a second police van arrived, the crowd started to sing. At that point, a policeman violently shoved a transvestite, who retaliated by hitting him over the head with her handbag. The crowd booed the policeman and coins and bottles were thrown.

A young lesbian called Stormé Delaverie was dragged out of the bar in handcuffs. She squirmed out of the handcuffs, was re-cuffed, then squirmed out again, and so it went on for ten minutes until she was struck by a police baton. As she was man-handled into the back of a police wagon, she screamed at the crowd, “why don't you guys do something?” At that moment, the crowd went nuts, and the path of gay rights was altered permanently.

Drag queens fought in the street in their high heels. Quite why I find this particular fact so profoundly moving I’m not sure. It’s one of the reasons I get so angry when members of the trans lobby complain so vociferously about drag queens, because, let me tell you, when the shit hits the fan, you want a drag queen on your side. It was drag queens who mobilised and raised money for the early victims of AIDS, whilst the rest of us buried our heads in the sand.

Anyway, huge pieces of street furniture were ripped from the street. The police were so frightened, they barricaded themselves into the Stonewall Bar, before the angry mob used fire hydrants to batter the door down. The policemen would almost certainly have been killed - torn apart by people who had suffered such profound indignity for so long - if back up hadn’t arrived.

The disturbances went on for three days. The LGBT community used their intimate knowledge of the twisting streets of Greenwich Village, New York, where the bar was situated. There’s an account of police chasing one group of youths down a street and emerging in another with the youths chasing them! Many refer to the event as a riot. Those who were there prefer the term “rebellion” because they were defending themselves and fighting back rather than rushing around, smashing anything they could find.

What the disturbances effectively did was raise awareness of the plight of LGBT people, whilst simultaneously sending a message to the police that they couldn’t continue to treat the community with such contempt. Sympathy for the community spread as stories of police brutality were reported in the media and the struggle became a pride movement, which ultimately led to men like me being able to get married on national TV.




Men, women and other folk of Stonewall. I salute you.

Ill gotten

It’s little things which suddenly become upsetting when you’re leaving an area.

Today, whilst on my way to the tube, I discovered that my favourite footpath, the one which snakes down the ravine to the station, is closed. I subsequently discovered that the path is only reopening in mid July, so it’s possible I’ll never enter the tube via that route again. I certainly won’t as a local resident.

Here’s a question: Today, whilst on the tube, a rather large woman sat in the seat next to me, and then proceeded to invite her seven-year-old child to come and sit on her lap. The child wriggled and squirmed, as children are apt to do, and I found the entire journey incredibly uncomfortable as a result. The ruck sack of toys came out. There was a colouring book for a short while. Then a tangerine. And all the time I found myself getting more and more claustrophobic.  Should children be sitting on laps in public places? 

Of course all of this first world niggling pales into insignificance against the image in the newspapers yesterday which is being billed as the “picture which shames America.” I’m afraid I found the photograph so distressing that I was unable to read beyond the headline which related the picture to the issue of the Mexican migrant crisis. The image was of a dead father and his daughter, washed up in a river, the daughter still clinging to her father’s back. I can’t imagine what must have gone through their minds as they realised they were in trouble. How the daughter must have placed her trust in her dad as she climbed onto his back. How the dad must have struggled to keep them both alive. How desperate he must have felt to risk their lives like that. 

The picture makes me want to scream at all the people in the west who are terrified of immigration, in whatever form it takes. We are all human beings. That some of us feel we have an inestimable right to the spoils we’ve inherited purely as a result of being born into a wealthy country makes me furious. Particularly when our country’s wealth has been created by colonialism, slavery and a culture of navvies and work-houses. Everyone has a right to generate wealth by working hard. Everyone deserves a future for their children. If they’re brave enough to pack up their lives and start again with nothing, then they deserve to share our ill-gotten gains. 

Piano woes

Whoever said that moving was one of the most stressful things a person can do was not lying. I have spent all day oscillating between sheer panic and complete resentment. Just changing our address for the purpose of car insurance, council tax, electoral roll, home insurance, medical records, parking permits, banking, (the list goes on and on) takes a lengthy phone call which almost invariably involves an automated system. The councils don’t deal with information centrally. You have to call each of their countless “divisions” to get yourself out of - and to sign into - a myriad money-making schemes. Why there isn’t some central database which all of these approved organisations can join, I’ve no idea. By and large, Nathan is dealing with the admin bullshit, whilst I do heavy lifting. My particular stress is related to not feeling like I’m getting anywhere. It’s like I’m individually moving grains of sand with hopes of moving an entire beach. As we get about half way from Highgate to Finchley, a knot starts to form in my stomach because it means I have to carry scores of heavy bags up many flights of steps. Nathan wants to move the flat one room at a time so there’s a series of mini milestones. My philosophy is to chip away on all fronts because one day everything will be done. That day just seems like a long way off right now. The only thing I WILL say is that, with every emptied car load, I feel a little lighter... emotionally and physically (I have sweated gallons!) The biggest stress of all is trying to move my piano. We live on the second floor, but the stairs up to our flat twist and turn a great deal. It turns out that piano movers call each turn a new floor, so essentially, from their perspective, I live on the sixth floor. Moving the piano is therefore completely prohibitive in terms of cost. Probably £600-£1000. And people have been so rude. One person gave me a quote based on the idea that my flat had a lift! I mean, how likely is that? This particular company were really unpleasant and wrote me a really snippy message telling me I’d “wasted their time.” I told them that if they knew as much about removals as they claimed to, they’d know there wasn’t a residential flat within a mile of either of our properties with a lift in it! The piano belonged to my aunt. It’s not valuable, but I am hugely attached to it. I’ve written every single composition I’ve ever created sitting at it. The idea that I might have to give it to someone on free-cycle who has a van, or is prepared to take it off my hands, makes me want to curl up and weep, but at times like these, sentimentality is pointless. Poor people don’t have the right to be sentimental!

The table

We have spent the last two days doing nothing but lug boxes, bags and suitcases full of our belongings from Highgate to our new home in Finchley. It turns out that there is nothing more intense than the rage one experiences when lifting incredibly heavy objects, particularly when said objects get stuck in doorways and you’re trying to move them on one of the stickiest, muggiest days you’ve ever experienced. I found myself wanting to shout obscenities at complete strangers whilst rivers of sweat ran off my forehead and stung my eyes. Every time I arrive in Finchley Central, I have to remind myself that this is my new gaff. It doesn’t have the genteel quality of Highgate. I’m not sure many areas in London do. Finchley feels poorer than Highgate. Things get dumped in side streets and the area feels a great deal less cared for. Next door have a bright blue, mildew-covered tarpaulin stretched over their outside walkway. There are a lot of betting and charity shops on our new high street. People go through the bins behind Tesco looking for food and things which they can sell on. I shall particularly miss the trees in Highgate. Every view from our house is a riot of different shades of green. However grotty and rain-damaged our house got, I always knew that Queens Wood and Hampstead Heath were just around the corner. And I could escape to a Merchant Ivory world. It was Sunday yesterday and we pulled up on the street outside our new house to unload our belongings. Returning to the car after five minutes, we discovered a parking ticket, which felt outrageous. All the streets in the area have free parking on Sundays, which begs the question as to why on earth a parking warden was out and about. Our only crime was parking slightly on the pavement. The warden must have thought all of his Christmases had come at once when he found our car. For heaven’s sake! Welcome to Brent Council! I also discovered to my horror yesterday that we now live in Margaret Thatcher’s old constituency. How horribly ironic is that? It’s still in the hands of a Tory MP - albeit a gay one, although I don’t know that this makes him any better. It was actually 1992 when I last lived in a Tory constituency! That said, I’ve just read up about our new constituency and seen that it was briefly a Labour seat, and that, in the last election, the Tories had a very small majority. I’m pleased to say that I drove to Thaxted yesterday to collect the kitchen table we used to sit around when we were kids. It’s been in my parents’ shed for ten years, but I’ve longed to have a kitchen big enough to house it. It holds so many memories. We ate every meal sitting at the table. Breakfast was always accompanied by Radio 3. We played games: Escalado, Rat Fink, Cheat... We did all of our homework there. Edward used to sit there to conjugate German verbs with his friend Scott. Tammy and I made an igloo cake there. Fiona, Ted Thornhill, and I sat there to eat chocolate chip cookies, whilst rehearsing string trios. Tash died my hair purple sitting at that table. It was the place where people gathered. It was the hub. Name me a person who visited the house and I can picture them sitting at the table. We were all therefore rather relieved that the table came out of the shed in one piece, without woodworm or warping and I was able to drive home (with the thing crammed into the car, dangerously close to my neck!) I was also more than a little excited to smell the infamous ghostly smoke as I exited Thaxted. I see that as a good omen!

Women’s football

Today I turn this blog’s attention to the women’s football World Cup. This, I guarantee, will be the last time I write about football, so enjoy it whilst it lasts! Now, obviously I’ve been out of the country, so can’t comment on whether the aforementioned World Cup has had the impact of a World Cup of the male variety. I probably wouldn’t have noticed even if I’d been here. Of all sports, I feel football is the most ludicrous. It’s a game of posturing, and arrogance. What I’ve never quite understood is why the women’s World Cup can’t happen at the same time as the men’s, firstly to capitalise on a wave of excitement and patriotism and secondly to save us all from what I consider to be somewhat tragic attempts to market the women’s game by using the tropes and cliches of male football. I’m not here to make judgements about whether or not women’s football is exciting to watch. All football is boring in my view. But what annoys me is the way that it gets talked up by the media. Firstly, no discussion about the current World Cup seems complete without some sort of discussion about equality and gender identity. There’s always the implied threat that if we don’t watch it, or take it seriously, we’re somehow being sexist. ...And then there’s the advert. The one that gets played constantly. The one I can’t avoid when I’m channel-hopping to avoid watching the football. The one with the female football player walking over a moorland. She talks about “fifty years of hurt” and in a somewhat knowing way, flips that oft-trotted-out phrase into a discussion about the hurt that female footballers have endured in the process of trying to gain recognition. She speaks in a sort of “I’m-not-an-actress-I’m-a-real-person-who’s-too-cool-for-inflection” monotone and if the advert isn’t cringeworthy enough, it ends with a long list of the achievements of English women footballers. But just like one of those cheesy pundits from the 1990s, she gives all the women nicknames, the last of which is Nobsy, which is too ironic to be true! When same sex marriage was granted to us in 2014, the thing which annoyed me most was a sort of latent sense which existed within the dominant heterosexual community that LGBT marriage was all about lost sinners learning to behave like proper people. It was like we’d been let into some sort of special club with special rules. Marriage was an institution that we had to ape rather than define in our own terms. Or we’d somehow destroy it. When Nathan and I got married, aside from the deeply repugnant, oft-asked “joke” about “which one’s the bride?”, we had to endure questions about what sorts of flowers we wanted, what we’d be wearing, what kind of cake we’d like... the answer to all of these questions was “we don’t care. These are all the tropes of heterosexual weddings. Don’t assume we’ve grown up dreaming of our wedding day, because getting married was illegal for us until yesterday.” So we did things OUR way. Of course, some LGBT people want weddings which feel traditional and heteronormative, but there are plenty more who have realised that we can make our own rules regarding everything from fidelity to who makes the breakfast. The thing about equality is that it needs to be about an oppressed community finding their own way. Making their own rules. Celebrating differences, not aping the more dominant force. If women’s football is to break away from constant comparisons to the men’s game and constant misogynistic remarks about it not being as popular and therefore not having the right to be monetised in the same way, it needs to decide what makes it unique. And that, my friends, is what true diversity is about. The celebration of uniqueness.

Tory toffs

This Tory party election is a farce isn’t it? It strikes me that we haven’t had a legitimately elected Prime Minister for goodness knows how long. The fact that Boris Johnson seems to be by far the front runner, is nothing but a joke, and the idea that he’ll become prime minister whilst Trump reins supreme in America is the biggest joke of all. I was looking at the shortlist for the next prime minister a few days ago. Fortunately, the two women on the long list, who were the massive homophobes, didn’t make it that far, but it strikes me that one of the most frightening things about those who are being taken seriously is the lack of thoughts on anything but Brexit any of them seem to be displaying. And then, even when it comes to Brexit, quite how flimflam these policies are. Frankly, Johnson might as well have said “I just want to give Johnny Foreigner a good kicking.” Most noticeable of all, however, is how astoundingly middle class and toffy the short list was. We need only look towards the candidates’ middle names for this particular point to be very clearly made. Quite how we think that someone whose name is “Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson” is going to understand what it’s like to be a single parent mother on benefits, I’m not sure. Jeremy Hunt’s middle name is Streynsham. And then there’s Roderick James Nugent “Rory” Stewart. It comes to something when Michael Gove, whom I consider to be one of the most out-of-touch politicians in the country, gets the vote for the person with the most ordinary name!

Too much to do

I just have to learn that I don’t like flying. I find it very difficult to think beyond a flight. I returned to London today, but, until I landed, couldn’t get my head around what that meant, because every time I thought about the future, there was this yawning ten-hour chasm of fear and boredom obliterating any thoughts I might have otherwise been able to formulate! Flying is a necessary evil, however, and I’m nothing like as bad at it as I used to be. I used to write these lengthy and highly dramatic streams of consciousness about how I was feeling. Every bump or bank of turbulence was notated in a panicked, doomsday scrawl. The flight staff with American Airlines, with their sour faces and lack of empathy would have added a whole new layer of hideousness to the experience as they came running down the aisles, launching food like paper darts and rolling their eyes at customers. Twice now on American Airlines flights, I’ve sat next to someone who’s asked for water and been told by a hostess that she’s not sure there’s any spare. Read, “I can’t be arsed to get you any.” On my flight on the way over, as we were waiting to taxi to the runway, the hostess looked down at me and said, “who are you?” When I told her my name, she got on the radio and said, “Till is on the flight. Yeah, he’s here.” She walked away without any further comment. Not a glimmer of a smile touched her lips. Or any explanation! Whilst in LA, I became obsessed with the idea of experiencing an earthquake. Part of me feels like it’s a right of passage. They’re nothing like as rare as you might think in LA. Minor tremors happen there all the time. Despite this, I managed to royally freak out the member of staff standing at the top of one of the tall structures at the water park yesterday by asking if she’d ever been up there during an earthquake. Her face went pale as she admitted that she hadn’t. It turned out that the journey home was a British Airways-staffed flight, which made me very happy. The moment I got on the plane, the experience was entirely different to the American Airlines nonsense. There were smiles. The staff were falling over themselves to help, and be attentive and polite. It makes such a difference. The only issue is the infernal announcements by cabin staff, which include a lengthy spiel about the British Airway’s charity, and way too many incorrect uses of reflexive pronouns. The flight was long and deeply dull. I did quite a lot of work on Brass, and watched a couple of films. I saw The History Boys for the first time, which I thought was excellent and very moving in places, and then got bored rigid by the hugely indulgent Dream Girls. I genuinely thought I loved ALL film musicals. But this was something else. Plot-light. Jeopardy-light. Full of unlikable characters. Full of songs with no purpose. Full of songs written in a style I don’t particularly like. Loads of shrieking and vocal theatrics, which were impressive enough - Jennifer Hudson, in particular, has pipes to die for - but once you’ve heard one mega-bout of belting, your ears start to bleed. The film first made me angry, and then just really bored. So what happens the day you get back to London from LA after not sleeping a wink? You organise to do a shed load of stuff, all of which requires a lot of concentration! I had a meeting with a union, a dental appointment, and a quiz to prep and run! It’s probably the largest quiz I’d ever run. I think there were 36 teams and the sound system was very poor quality. The dentist was another experience altogether, but this might take a bit of explaining... For the past year or so, I have been on the NHS PrEP trial. PrEP is a wonder drug which essentially prevents the HIV virus from entering a body. It’s like a vaccine and it means that if I come into contact with the HIV virus, PrEP will kill it before it takes hold. Thousands of gay men are on the trial and thousands more buy PrEP privately. And the results are staggering. Particularly in London, where HIV is no longer deemed an epidemic and there’s been a 90% drop in new diagnoses. If everyone took PrEP for ten years, HIV would die. I am, however, often staggered by medical professionals’ lack of knowledge about the drug, and indeed all things HIV-related. Today at the dentist’s, I was asked, in the public waiting room, if I was on any medication. I told the dentist I was on PrEP. She instantly got uncomfortable but tried not to show it. Then she actually wrote on my form “patient takes PrEP for AIDS.” Firstly, there’s actually no such thing as AIDS any more. No medical practitioner would use that term. And secondly, I do not have AIDS. I am not HIV positive. In fact, it is very dangerous for an HIV positive person to take PrEP. I do not want to have to educate a medical practitioner in public. For me the whole sordid and excruciatingly embarrassing conversation was a symptom of a far wider problem, which is, for far too long, many straight people have brushed HIV aside as a gay disease. Well, let me tell you something. It’s coming your way! More straight people in the UK are now HIV positive than gay people, and new cases of the disease are still on the rise in the heterosexual world. Time to wake up and smell the coffee. A baby is no longer the worst thing you can catch!