While researching a new essay,
I found this anecdote:
We died in 1973, the fourth anniversary of Stonewall. That’s when we
were told we were a threat and an embarrassment to women because lesbians
felt offended by our attire, us wearing makeup. It came down to a brutal battle
on the stage that year at Washington Square Park, between me and people I
considered my comrades and friends.
This was at pride.
It was the year Bette Midler came to sing “Happy
Birthday” for us. It was happy for the mainstream community, but it was not
happy for us. They tried to stop drag queen entertainers from performing. It was
angry because I had been scheduled for many months to speak at that rally. So
I’m stubborn, and I wasn’t going to have it. Because for four years we were the
vanguard of the gay movement, and all of a sudden it was being taken away.
We
were being pushed out of something we helped create.
I remember this man telling me, a straight man who was my boss at the
time, when I was working in Jersey - he said, “Ray, the oppressed becomes the
oppressor. Be careful. Watch it.” And I saw it. And I still see it. I literally had to
fight my way up onto that stage. I was beat. I got to speak. I said my piece. And
I basically left the movement for many years. I didn’t come back into view until
the 20th anniversary. And that was with David Isay’s Remembering Stonewall.
He found me where I was in Tarrytown. I was living and working there.
And then along came Martin Duberman and Stonewall. But I was really hurt in
1974. I tried to kill myself. I had 60 stitches on this arm after that incident. And
I wasn’t ever going to come back to the movement. But you know who held fast
to her word was Lee Brewster. When she got up and spoke after I did, she took
off her tiara, threw it into the crowd and said, “Fuck gay liberation!”
What people fail to remember is, here’s another drag queen who has
not been recognized as a hero in our community. She put a majority of the
money up for the first march in 1970. Lee Brewster changed the drinking laws
for gay men to be able to be served in public at a regular bar instead of an afterhours
club. She did this. Lee Brewster, with her own money, changed the laws
on the books in New York against criminal impersonation that was held over
drag queens’ heads.
There's not much about Lee Brewster online, so I think I'm going to go on another hunt for citations once I've finished this essay.
I don't know about you, but I'm excited.
