THE CLOSEST I GOT

      I just missed any possibility of meeting Marsha Johnson in person by a matter of hours, but, in a sense, we formed a loose, posthumous bond.

       I had had a very interesting life in Southern California having had much success in my professional career and my life within the greater community as an activist, cartoonist, and member of various social groups. I, however, becoming a known person was not prepared for all that came with what fame I had, and  it was due to a series of errors in judgment centered around a classic case of unrequited love influenced heavily by my own naivete, that I spent part of the summer of 1992 in Greenwich Village in New York.

      I had arrived in the early, predawn hours at the bottom of Christopher Street by the Hudson River within hours after the body of someone had been pulled from the Hudson River and people were gathered in groups talking about it. All I saw when I came upon the scene was one of those shrines that pop up after someone is killed and friends mark the spot, in this case, with some forty ounce beer bottles filled to different levels and a few baubles with a rainbow motif that told me the person was on some stripe of Pride Flag and must have had some of importance judging by the swiftness with which the shine was erected and how large it was to grow overnight.     

      I was there in anticipation of meeting up with the person with whom I had arrived in New York City after an odd road of migration from California and his running off for some unknown reason at the time that would later be made clear was the first sign of an unhappy truth and so unnoticeable, I planted myself on a nearby park bench thinking I would take a nap while waiting which, as it turned out, would become a multi-day wait with all the fear and trepidation when, after two people, arriving in a new city after an odyssey, one goes missing with no way to even begin knowing where to search if that person had become someone’s victim.

     I was woken up by the sound of children laughing and bottles being scattered around the area as they, not seeing it for the shrine it was, but just saw empty bottles left after a party by the river in a convenient grouping to run through and kick around like a pile of leaves. Having nothing else to do for the day but wait until my friend showed up, I collected the scattered remnants of the shrine and reassembled it a little more orderly than the original. It was while I was putting the shrine to whomever back together a third time that I figured that, if it was all assembled artistically, it might not be taken for granted it was just a pile of trash left after a keg party. Based on my experience as a cartoonist, designer of stage sets, and an arranger of flowers, I assembled the shrine so it faced the river with the largest items, the tall church vigil candles, in the back, and in front of them the forty ounce bottles, pouring a small tribute out of each one when it was put in its place, with the flowers followed by all the baubles at the front. It appears this was the right approach as the only further adjustments I had to make was occasionally moving an added feature to have it fit into the artistry of the shrine. 

     I did this unaware that each time I arranged the shrine there was a different person watching me from among the passersby and those who came to the river walk to stand silently as if in prayer and then walk away. 

    That night, the young people gathered along the Hudson at the end of Christopher street to socialize. Eventually I was to meet and befriend many during the times they gathered and on this first night it was from eavesdropping on their conversations and their words as they poured some out of the Forties they eventually added to the shrine, doing so carefully after they saw me first wait for a lull in the activity around the shrine and then put some order to the additions, that my assumption that this had been an important person to the area seemed to be confirmed.

     The next morning I rose from my bench and began reassembling the shrine when someone I had seen standing a little off in the distance suddenly seemed to appear next to me and, after making some personal heartfelt comments directed toward the shrine, asked how I knew Marsha as he had never seen me before.

    I had to explain that I was new in town having arrived from California just the other morning and only knew someone, apparently a beloved member of the Community, had died and deserved a shrine in the minds of the locals and, as a Gay activist, out of respect to this person who seemed to have a degree of importance from the comments I had heard sitting quietly and listening, if I saw it was messed up would fix the tribute.  

      He thanked me for this small act done by a stranger and invited me to his nearby antique store for coffee and, as we walked, told me the history of Marsha P (Pay Her No Mind) Johnson. Upon arriving,  others there told me about their friend Marsha, and the role she had played in the Stonewall Riot and her work for homeless youth after. It was beneficial to me as I was learning about a local celebrity while also getting some behind the scenes stories and speculations about how Marsha actually died and who, and their suspicions would shock those who accept history while not learning history, might bear the greatest responsibility for it, while these people could tell stories to a person who was in this regard a Tabula Rasa waiting to be written on, an open vessel waiting to be filled, and they let a lot out that made little sense to me at the time as I was the stranger, but had them happy they could talk and discuss without fear of audience push back and being able to use names instead of codes as they knew who they were talking about, the heroes and villains,  while I had no idea, until years later, who some of these people were.

      Just as the shop owner was surprised I was taking care of a stranger’s shrine so too were the others with whom I was having coffee, and one stood up, walked over to a fancy small, bejeweled box, and after requesting I put out my hand, placed a small sandwich type bag containing a pink powdery substance, and with this nestled in my hand introduced me to Marsha P. Johnson.

     Needless to say the reaction to this was mixed as this person seemed to have acted in poor taste especially with the owner of the shop having given shelter to Marsha when she was just a generic Street Kid and helped him become the better person he would become, so there was a little drama until it was established that, as unfeeling as this seemed to have been, in his grief that he was still getting a handle on in light of the death just days ago, although poorly executed, was actually being thrilled he could introduce his friend to a new one and saw his action as that. 

       The awkward moment passed, some went into their neutral corners and took time to pull their overwhelmed selves together, and Marsha returned to the box and we to our coffee and history lesson. 

       According to Marsha’s friends, her standout role the night the Stonewall Rebellion was her pulling people out of the police wagon which had arrived when those officers inside the Inn called for backup and while the people on the street were still unaware of the inside activity. She may or may not have been in the Inn at some time during the open hours, but her being active on the street would have been impossible if she had been inside when it all began. As soon as the officers, who had just put a person in the wagon went to get another person,  Marsha would pull the new arrestee out so that when the police returned with a new addition, the wagon was empty. This action frustrated the arresting officers and resulted in Sergeant Pine’s sending the wagon away as it was obviously becoming a focal point and the mayhem might be reduced if there were not such an obvious sign of a negative police presence. 

     In their conversation they had related that Marsha had arrived on Christopher Street when the explosion of people had already been set in motion and immediately went to get a friend who did not return with her as she was passed out in a nearby park having taken part in consuming some of the "product" she was supposed to be selling. Their anger rose when they explained that, while Marsha was there and participating during the remaining time of the first night’s activities, it was only on the subsequent nights that Marsha had been accompanied by her friend who had not joined her the first night.

     Later, after Marsha’s murder, this person would assign to herself the title "Mother of The Gay Rights Movement" in spite of her initial absence and contrary to what those who had been there knew.   

    They told me that Marsha’s hating the water and always avoiding getting too close to the railing on the River walk led them to believe that what the police were content to call a suicide was more likely a murder, not just because there were many ways to commit suicide that would not have required her going to the water which she hated, but as the back of her head had been severely stove in, had she jumped and hit a submerged piling from an abandoned pier, as the police believed, the force would not have been strong enough to cause the amount of damage that a blow from behind with a blunt object would have. They also had a concern about a limo Marsha was last seen entering alive and so they  suspected this might have been part of a set up for whatever goal that either went wrong intentionally or otherwise with the body being dumped where it was assumed a person like Marsha would be present often. 

      Because of my care for the shrine and whatever rapport had been built during the conversations over coffee, I was invited to attend the funeral which would take place at a church a little uptown followed by a procession to  where her body was lain when she was taken out of the Hudson, and from where her ashes would be spread over the river. I declined attending the funeral choosing instead to insure that when everyone arrived the shrine would be beyond presentable. The morning after my arrival there had been a news crew covering the death and retrieval of the body and I noticed they had done an establishing shot using the shrine, so, assuming there would be coverage of the funeral I wanted the shrine to fit the occasion and not look like trash if they used a shot of it again.

     I was among the gathering by the spot where she had supposedly jumped along the railing overlooking the river. The railing was a few yards above the river at the top of a concrete retaining wall, and after some prayers, as the presiding clergyman tried to scatter her ashes into the water, the steady breeze from the river deflected upward off the wall blowing the ashes up into the crowd so that we, and not the river’s surface, were covered in Marsha’s ashes. She was in our eyes and mouths covering whatever part of the mourners’ body was hit by the wind. The day before the funeral, I was holding all the ashes in my hand, at the funeral I was attempting to get them out of my mouth, eyes, hair, and ears.

     The detective, who had been on duty the night of Marsha’s death and was spared from any investigation by the murder being declared a suicide, was standing at the back of the gathering, and in that off-beat dry Gay humor, as the crowd turned toward him as he, too, was brushing Marsha off his suit coat, someone yelled, “See? It had to be murder. She won’t even go into the water now.”

     The hastily declared cause of death was changed from suicide to undetermined, and in later years an investigation into her death began. I spent the rest of that summer taking care of the shrine and hearing more stories about Marsha.

     When I ended up in Oklahoma and began my advocacy for GLBT students in the Oklahoma City Schools, considering her work with homeless GLBT kids in The Village, Marsha was often on my mind. I based a cartoon for the local Gay rag in Oklahoma City on Marsha that used the terms applied to her during her life, terms she embraced in interviews, only to have the language attacked in later years as so incorrect, according to those who only know modern terminology, that it was obviously proof I know nothing about Marsha, her history, and her place in ours, and nothing about those I have met while they have only heard  what happened to the history in a game of "Telephone".

     I know my past and it does not change because others either do not know it or choose to dismiss it as it is nothing like their experiences.

    History of the Stonewall Rebellion and the stories of those who were there have morphed a little over time, usually more to match people’s need to have things the way they want them as opposed the way things were. Sadly in the process, those in that history become more what people would like them to have been and more who people would have liked especially because of some commonly shared traits which results, too often, in the erasure of the real person in favor of the myth. 

     After many years of advocating for Gay students where I taught in Oklahoma and being successful at it with the usual associated costs, I returned home to Massachusetts where, at the age of 61, I got the rights that I had been fighting for my whole Gay life and now had them merely by moving there, just as the opposite had occurred when I went to Oklahoma and lost all of whatever few rights I had won along the way before my arrival.     It was then that I met someone who had been in the Stonewall Inn the night the Rebellion began and who, in the telling of his tale without knowing any of my conversation in 1992, described people and events as they had been told to me then, as if he had been listening in on that conversation over a great cup of coffee which would have been impossible as he and his spouse were living in California at that time. These were conversations and meetings that were at the time of the recent meeting, 20 years apart and three states away.

   These are the histories I rely on.

    The people who where there