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Prologue 1960-1968
In the years of knowing Andrew Fleming, in the many different ways of knowing Andrew Flemming, Nick Russo had had to readjust his interpretations numerous times. Once he had thought Andy childlike in his inability to take care of himself, but it wasn't childlike, not really. Sure, some of it was a learned helplessness; a process that probably molded itself in parental neglect and inefficient child care, but it wasn't as terminal as Nick had supposed.
Nick discovered that when Andy was passionate about something, about someone, there wasn't anything he couldn't accomplish, nothing he wouldn't do to realize a goal, to make the world surrounding that passion a little easier to live in, to live with.
And because he didn't grow up with the trauma of poverty, the trauma of immigration or even the trauma of homophobia and the fear of violence and arrest associated with it, he could be braver than Nick could be, could take stands that Nick just couldn't. Unlike Nick, Andy hadn’t come into this queerness and its dangers in the height of the witch hunts of McCarthyism and his ”Lavender Scare.”
It took Nick a long time not to resent him for it, not to feel a little jealous of what his privilege afforded him, even now. He's gotten better at it, but not with the anxiety that comes from watching Andy do things that would have 100 percent gotten Nick arrested, or worse. Watching Andy take stands that Nick would just never be able to, no matter how much he wished he could, had stopped making him angry, but it never stopped filling him with dread, his heart thudding out of his chest.
So, Andy promised to use his influence, his position, and his money to fight the cause. He'll keep himself out of it, he promised.
And he did. He backed progressive politicians, endorsing them on his pages. He donated to organizations that offered legal services to those charged with the bogus charges of vagrancy and indecency. He joined the Mattachine Society and supported their part in the Homophile Movement.
He even got his Merry Band of Queers and Misfits involved-- as Andy called them, though secretly, and only in his head, Nick called them family.
They all had their “Passion Projects,” the gigs they did to connect them to their community (and yes, Nick, it was a goddamn community, the only one you'd ever known, the only one that ever knew you).
Nick and Mark Bailey wrote columns under pen names for The Village Voice and sold pieces to the queer magazines that were popping up in California and Chicago. Andy, Mark and Eddie-- who, after retiring from playing, stayed to manage The Robins when Ardalino finally retired for good-- bankrolled a number of independent presses. This allowed the new voices of queer liberation to get their headquarters out of back alley slums that were constantly being raided and into slightly smaller office buildings in slightly less seedy neighborhoods where they could hire a few staff members and publish more than their own circular opinions and nonsensical rants. They made them matter. They were making a difference where they could.
With all that, they never put themselves, never put their family or the things they loved-- The Chronicle, The Robins, their careers and livelihoods into any danger.
Until they came for Sal.
January 1969
It started with Lillian, though, maybe the desire was always there in Sal, but Lillian gave him an outlet, gave him permission.
She needed a model for a shoot she was doing on drag queens for The Factory. It was a big deal and Sal was just there, living with Nick and Andy, not yet disowned by his father, but bullied enough by him that he had left home, using the excuse of college and an easier commute to make it not feel as drastic and like a death of a relationship as it was, allowing them both the space to be relieved for the release of responsibility and the freedom.
They were sitting around Nick and Andy's place, as they often did on a Friday night when baseball season was over and the holidays and other family obligations were behind them. They were racking their brains trying to compile a list of drag queens they knew. Nick was horrified that they knew so many, while Lillian veto'd them all.
“What about Sal?” Emily had asked.
“What about Sal?” Nick asked, beating Sal to the question himself.
Everyone turned to Sal who looked like he'd rather be anywhere else in the world. The women studied him, the men studied them studying him.
“He does have cheekbones to die for,” Linda started.
“And those lashes,” Maureen purred.
“What about those pouty lips?” Mark blurted and then buried his face into his boyfriend's armpit.
“I don't have pouty lips!” Sal pouted.
There was a shrill buzzing in Nick's ears and his heart constricted in his chest, but he didn't say anything. Andy came to stand behind the sofa and placed his hands gently on Nick's shoulders and squeezed, as if he knew, though Nick didn't even know why he was reacting this way.
No one else noticed, and though Sal protested half heartedly, and looked to Nick for permission, he let the ladies drag him out of the apartment and to Emily and Gerald's one flight up. Nick had forced a smile on his face and told Sal not to let them do anything to him that he didn't feel comfortable with.
“Don't be a fuddy-duddy,” Maureen chided, as Emily began inventorying her wardrobe choices before closing the door, leaving the men, Nick, Andy, Mark and Eddie in their wake.
“Well, that took a turn,” Mark breathed.
Nick laughed nervously. “I'm sure he'll put a stop to it once they pluck an eyebrow.”
But he didn't.
He didn't stop any of it. Not then, and not ever. In fact, he never went back.
May 1969
Nick first noticed the stockings; it was hard not to. He'd never once seen a stocking hanging over a shower rod, but he'd read enough and heard enough of married men complain or be mystified by them to know.
Nick was more than mystified. But he didn't say anything, not then. He didn't say anything about the dresses, or the wigs, or even the lipstick stains on all the cups in the apartment. It took everything in him not to, but he didn't.
Andy did, though. Andy--the newspaper man through and through--wanted to know the whys and the hows. He sat with him in Sal’s bedroom, it was strewn with frilly and satiny things that Andy slid over so that he could sit on the end of his bed as Sal applied his make-up. Nick tried to pretend he wasn’t eavesdropping while he sat on the sofa. He soon gave up the ruse and got up to stand at the open door.
The room was too small for the amount of stuff that Sal had accumulated, but it wasn’t as stifling as it could be, as the windows were open and the late Spring breeze was wafting in along with a jazz record from another apartment with their windows open as well.
“Like this?” Andy asked, as he held a tiny, fuzzy stick filled with shimmering blues to Sal’s closed eyelid. With more gentleness than Nick thought Andy had--and he knew he could be plenty gentle in the right circumstances--he swiped across them, starting in the corner where the lid met the bridge of the nose, and along the bottom of the lid.
Sal and Andy both breathed shallow, since they were in such close proximity to each other, and Nick realized that his breath was mimicking theirs, only his was even more shaky if possible.
Sal opened his eye to investigate Andy’s handiwork. “Yes, just like that.”
“This color really does make your eyes pop,” Andy whispered.
Nick wondered where Andy got a line like that.
“Where do you go when you’re dressed like this?” Andy asked.
“There are lots of places. I only go to the safe places.”
“The safe places?” Andy asked.
Nick asked at the same time, “There are safe places?”
“Yes, there are. If we travel in groups, if we look after each other. If we know what we’re doing and why.”
“And you do?” Andy asked.
Nick was glad it was Andy that got that question out before Nick did, because Andy asked it like he was genuinely curious, Nick’s would have sounded more like he was genuinely hysterical.
“I do,” Sal answered in a short, clipped voice, looking in the mirror, directly at Nick by the door.
“Why?” Nick asked, trying to school his features but knowing instantly that he had failed as he saw Sal’s expression get even more determined, more defensive.
“I’m not queer, Uncle Nick, I promise. I’m a man and I like women. But there’s just something… something about the way lipstick feels gliding across my lips, the way stockings feel as I twist and slide them up my thigh, how fierce I feel when I add 6 inches to my person by slipping into these heels, but also something precious and… and delicate. I can’t explain it. But I shouldn’t be jailed for it, should I? It shouldn’t be a crime.”
Nick swallowed and shook his head. He didn’t know much and he was terrified of so much more, but he knew this much. It shouldn’t be a crime.
But it was.
Maybe that was the part that unsettled Nick, that made him anxious every time Sal walked out of the apartment, flaunting his queerness (yes Sal, it was fucking queer), with no fear. Nick had enough fear for both of them.
After Sal left, he and Andy, curled up in the sofa, Nick's head in Andy's lap, Andy's fingers in Nick's hair as he read a book, or pretended to. He seemed to be waiting for Nick to say something. Nick marveled that after all these years, this still felt precious. This time, this freedom to say to Andy what he didn't even want to admit to himself.
“I came this close,” Nick held up his hand, his thumb and pointer finger almost touching, “of saying something to him that his father used to say to me. If I had, if I'd put that on him like Michael put it on me. I'd have never been able to forgive myself.”
“Yeah?” Andy asked, putting down the book and running his fingers along Nick's brow, as if wiping the tension and guilt away.
“I stopped myself just in time, but I wanted desperately to say, ‘Sal, why do you choose this life? Why do you choose to make your life so hard?’”
Nick couldn't look at Andy, couldn't face his disappointment. But Andy's hand on his temple never faltered, never stopped telling Nick that he was loved, that he was safe.
“It comes from a different place though, Nick. You know that, right?”
Andy slides his hand along Nick's jaw before pulling Nick's chin towards him, forcing him to look Andy in the eye. Nick swallowed.
“Does it?”
“It does. You want to keep him safe. You don't want him doing things to put him in danger because you know the dangers. You don't want him to hide who he is because it sickens you. That's the difference. That and the knowledge you have that your brother never will. You know it's not a choice.”
Yes, that was true. He believed that, didn't he? Yes, he did believe that Sal needed this to make him whole as much as he knew he needed Andy to keep him together. Did he understand just what it was that Sal felt? Not at all. But he was right. It wasn't hurting anyone and no one should give a damn what was under that dress and why he needed it.
Who knows what the future holds? Kids, young people, becoming adults these days were fighting in ways Nick had never even imagined his kind would attempt. Watching other minorities and oppressed people stand up and not only get their message heard, but supported by populations far outside theirs was inspiring. It was only a matter of time, right?
Any day now they'd get their voices heard too. What would the message finally be? What would be the thing that gets them noticed?
Turned out, it didn't take long for the answer to the question.
June 28th 1969
It was just after midnight when the phone rang and changed everything.
It took a minute for Nick to make out the words coming through the line. He had been in a deep sleep, Andy mumbling, half asleep beside him, chaos in the background on the other line.
“Uncle Nick… they're…they're coming for us!”
“Coming for who?” Nick shouted, hoping to be heard.
It was garbled, but the words Nick could make out sent his blood pounding and his limbs flailing into action.
He heard “cops” and “raid” and “Stonewall” and he went running, Andy following behind.
They ran past the subway entrance, it would take too long, and Nick couldn't stand still, couldn't be underground and not know for that amount of time.
He thrust a roll of quarters into Andy's hand. “Just in case.”
“Just in case what?” Andy asked, not stopping their sprint, but staring down at the hard metal bundle as he went. “How many calls you think I'm going to need to make?”
Nick looked over at him with such fondness. After all this time, still so innocent and trusting. “They ain't for the payphone. They never were.”
It took Andy only a moment then to understand, only a moment after curling his first around the coins, feeling the strength of that reinforced fist to understand.
“You got anymore?” he asked.
Nick laughed despite it all, reached into his pocket and pulled out more rolls. “Always,” he answered, giving Andy another while holding his own in each fist.
They followed the crowd.
The mob.
And it was a mob. Nick couldn't even make sense of the scene they found themselves in the outskirts of. He only knew, for the first time in his life, he didn't have that itch to pull out his notebook, didn't have that overwhelming desire to stay on the sidelines, to play witness, observer.
There were so many people. People like him, like Andy. But there were also so many openly and blatantly queer people, and there were just neighborhood people too. And they were intermingling, some shouting about police brutality, about justice, about how being queer isn't a crime or a condition.
“Stay close!” Nick shouted behind him to Andy as he wove through the crowd. But Andy wasn't behind him. He was beside him. He was there next to him, pushing people aside, fighting to get to the front to find Sal.
They slid their coins in their pockets and clasped hands and intertwined their fingers as if it was nothing, as if men could just do that out here, in public.
They got to the street in front of the Stonewall.
“What's going on?” Andy shouted to a man in leather standing next to them.
“They raided the bar, took in some trannies,” he pointed to a paddy-wagon that people were pushing against, trying to bust it open. “There was a scuffle. Cops are holed up inside the bar.” He pointed to the closed door and shuttered windows of the Stonewall Inn.
Nick had never been in the Stonewall, it hadn't been in business during his cruising years. It was one of the cropping of mob-front gay bars that had sprouted around the Village and Time Square in the last few years. This wasn't their first raid, Nick knew that, knew how these things usually worked. The cops would call the bar, tell them they were coming, the bar would turn up the lights, the crowds would disentangle themselves and it would all be over with a small fine and a handful of arrests.
Not this time. Something changed. Someone had had enough. By the force of the crowd around the paddywagon, a lot of someone's.
Nick found himself one of them. If the vehicle was full of “trannies” as they'd been told, then Sal could be in there. They needed to get him out, and they needed to do it before the cop's reinforcements showed up.
It was only a moment after they joined the operation, Andy right there beside Nick still, that someone picked up a brick and used it to smash the window of the wagon. Someone else scrambled in and pulled the keys to the back out of the ignition.
It was Nick and Andy who pulled the doors wide. Transvestites and drag queens poured out.
“Sal!” Nick called out when he saw the familiar wig and eye shadow. They embraced, but then pulled away when someone, obviously seeing how successful it had been on the wagon’s window, picked up a brick and threw it at the window of the bar, where the cops were hiding.
“Come on, we got to get out of here!” Nick shouted.
He went to pull Sal and Andy away. They both stood their ground.
“No, Uncle Nick.” Sal said.
“We can’t,” Andy said.
Nick looked pleadingly at them. Looked around at the chaos. The screaming.
But it wasn’t just that. It wasn’t just fear, it wasn’t just anger.
It was…
It was… joy
It was triumph. It was had enough and it was fight back and it was…
It was winning.
Nick wasn’t sure who started it. It might have even been him, but soon, the sky was filled with coins. Raining down and pinging off the windows and the facade of the Stonewall.
Something else fell, something else rained down. Nick’s fear, his anxiety. All the things he couldn’t do, couldn’t say. All those things that the rolled coins in his pocket, in all the pockets of queers like him represented.
He gave Sal another hug before he pulled Andy into his arms, kissed him deep and long, bending him down like he was a goddamned sailor and Andy was his long awaited war-bride.
And the world continued to turn, and the pennies continued to fall.