It was a Friday night and I had a date. I was at the bar getting drinks for both of us. We
had just finished dancing. The music was blaring. It was a combination of beer and cigarettes and cologne.
Suddenly, as I’m handing money to the bartender, a deafening silence occurred. The lights went up, the
music went off and you could hear a pin drop, literally.


My boyfriend rushed in from the dance floor. He walked over and said, “Put the drinks down. Let’s leave.”
We go out onto Christopher Street and there are what look like a hundred police cars all facing the entrance,
and crowds of people looking at us. The kids coming out of the Stonewall, the onlookers, the police –
everyone was just kind of standing there.


It was not a riot in the sense of people breaking furniture and police hitting people over the head. It was
just an enormous crowd of people. And then the police started to say, okay, everyone leave. And the drag
queens, they’re the ones who said to the police, we’re not leaving. And they formed a chorus line outside in
front of the bar. And they stood there dancing in the street. They were all Puerto Rican drag queens and
Irish cops. It was a funny, funny confrontation.


When we came back on Saturday night, we stood there on the street and held hands and kissed—something
we would never have done three days earlier. It made me feel wonderful. I stood there with chills. It was
like when you’re watching a parade and the flag goes by and you see something you’re so proud of and
you see your troops and you get that chill inside of you. I got a chill. I got a chill seeing guys on the street
holding hands and kissing.
In the week that followed I got phone calls from relatives—cousins, my brother, my aunt. We’re just calling
to find out if you’re okay. We know you go to places like this. We want to make sure you’re all right. That
means they knew all along. It was like I was wearing a sign on my back. They knew. We never discussed it.
I never had to once say to anyone in my family, I’m gay.


Interviewer: How did you feel about yourself between the beginning of Stonewall and after Stonewall? Did
you feel that you were a different person?


No, I didn’t feel that I was a different person. I was the same me. I was a homosexual
person coming from an old fashioned Jewish neighborhood living in Greenwich Village on my own. I felt
the same, I felt comfortable. But I felt the world now is more comfortable with me. And Stonewall did that
for me.