Progress

A thick blume of smoke left the old man’s wrinkled face, and he once again took a long drag from the long cigar that hung from his mouth, too old to care about his deteriorating lungs. A myriad of newspaper clippings and word photographs filled the walls. He coughed hard. A weak, wrinkled hand beat his chest as he cleared his throat before he spoke “it never felt like we were making history you know?” his eyes fell before bouncing left and right. He shuddered. It saddened me how weak he seemed, I almost spoke to break the silence as thick as the smoke that filled the tiny room, peeled wallpaper and old, damaged furniture was all there was. He continued before I had the chance. “I just wanted to give a Fuck you to the man” he flipped the bird at the air with a shaky hand for a moment before it fell in exhaustion. “So, what was it like?”

He shrugged “fun, liberating. I got to kiss him in public, hold him, I ain’t never been that nervous or free before or since.” He pulled a tattered photo out of a draw, it was black and white with small tears along the edges “that’s him.” he shoved the photo of two young men stood next to each other towards me “on the right, I’m the left.” They were beside each other his hand on his lover’s shoulder they didn’t just look like friends, the tension was palpable even Through the photo. “He had high hopes for the future, he always told me how one day wed be married, how we would watch dumb romantic pictures of men falling in love, ‘when pigs fly’ I used to tell him.” He sighed peacefully; a whisper of sadness crept beneath it. I breached the point softly “if you don’t mind me asking, what happened to him?”

“He passed, ’86.” He sighed again this one mournful “AIDS, a... a woman forced herself on him,” He looked at my recorder on the table and I moved to turn it off before a shaking of his head stopped me “She... discovered that he was with me, he told her we were together, and she decided she wanted to fix him.” His fists were bawled, and his teeth were wired shut, then he continued “he cried, so much after. He told me a few days after it happened, he had been off and I kept buggin him to tell me what was wrong, and then he.... broke down in front me and I held him while I listened and told him it would be ok.” He swallowed hard, “I cut her tires and burnt down her shed the next day. He I couldn’t let her get away with hurting my baby, he was so precious, and delicate, like good china, and she broke him.” He spat out the word ‘she’ with true hatred, “I wanted to kill her. I almost did, I would have if he hadn’t told me it didn’t matter, and that he just wanted me to be with him. “eh, so. Stonewall.” He said quietly after a minute of silence and a soft apology for his loss from me.

“yeah, where were you when it all started? Were you in the bar?”

“No, no. I never liked the place.” That surprised me, it was evident he could tell as he began to explain. “It was run down and vile, the mafia had there claws on and the beer was always watered down, not to mention it had been raided just the week before, heh, no I was in a different bar at the time before a buddy of mine barged in and grabbed me to take me.” He smiled as the images flashed through his mind, I watched him relive the smell of people smoking and the stench of beer before being dragged onto the cold street with the biting wind “I was looking for something to do anyways. So my buddy Eric pulls me and tells me to follow, darting off towards stonewall, I was wonderin’ whether there was some kinda fight or summat, but he seemed too excited and...” he took a moment to search for the word before saying “bubbly.” With a clear lack of certainty. Once again he zoned out, reminiscing over the past “so anyways it was all going down when I got there, i saw my boyfriend, he was already there throwing bottles. I’ll never forget the way his eyes lit up and how he ran to me and embraced me, hit took a minute just for him to spout how this was amazing and that the future was going to be so great, I laughed it off, call me pessimistic but it is what it is. Shortly after others started showing their affections and he look at me and them and just became as red as a tomato. Then I kissed him.”

“That’s beautiful.”

“yeah,” he smiled

“So, you didn’t see who threw the first brick?”

He shrugged “bricks? I don’t remember any bricks. People embellish tales all the time, whose to know whether there were even any bricks?”

“That’s surprising to hear. Everyone always talks about who threw the revolutionary first brick.”

He chuckled at that “I mean, my memory ain’t prefect and this is going back almost 40 years so” he shrugged, revealing for a moment his frail form “And it sure as hell wasn’t a revolution, plenty of our folks had been fighting for years for rights, some weren’t even asking for hand holding, thinking it was too far” he laughed again, his body shaking. “but look at where we are now,” he smiled for a moment before his face dropped. “It’s better, but there’s still a ways to go, folks are still dying. However now I’ve got hope and I know It’ll be right one day, it’s getting better and I know he would be proud of how far we’ve come and how far we’re going to go.” Our eyes met and a felt a fierce determination burn through me like the Angel Azrael himself was on our side and was going to ensure our freedom, but we wouldn’t need him. We will take what we deserve ourselves and we will fight for every right that has been denied us, that is our future and it will be glorious.