Personal Narrative: The Stonewall Inn

Imagine your parents not loving you. Imagine the people that were supposed to provide for you, kicking you out onto the street to fend for yourself. Imagine your friends being too disgusted to talk to you. Imagine living your life constantly afraid. Imagine being terrified of the police, people that were supposed to protect you. Then you’ll know what it’s like to be someone like me. By someone like me, I mean homosexual. That might not sound that bad to you, but in New York City, 1960, it was one of the worst things someone could be. Queer. Fag. Dyke. You name it, we’ve been called it. But being gay in the 60s wasn’t so bad. Thanks to a beautiful and magical place. A place where anyone can be themselves. The Stonewall Inn.

“Get out! Get out

I’d lived there my whole life, yet somehow looking up to it from the dirt made it seem so much bigger. Scary even. I listened to my mother’s cries out the open window as I picked myself up off the ground. I grabbed my suitcase and turned my back on the only life I’d known. As I walked towards the bus stop, if that’s even where I was going, I thought about what had just happened. The love of my life, he’s also male if you haven’t put that together yet, had been caught by the school making out with some random guy behind a dumpster. When he was brought into the principal 's office and threatened with expulsion, he decided to out me as well. Word got around to my parents, and here I am. A disgrace. Mentally ill in the eyes of my peers. I hadn’t planned for it to be like this. I planned on living out my life as a straight man. I planned on marrying a woman, having kids, and living a comfortable life. Sure, it would be miserable, and a lie. But in this day and time it’s what had to be done. By the time I reached the bus stop my mind had wandered away from how I got here, to where I was going. I’d heard rumors about places filled with people like me. Places filled with homeless, hungry, but fun loving people that just wanted to be accepted. Downtown New York City. I wandered aimlessly around the sidewalk of a small neighborhood in New York until I walked up to a run down coffee shop with a sign that read, ‘All Welcome’. Perfect. As I walked inside my

All of the sudden my thoughts were interrupted by the lights being turned on and the music turned off. It was time for another police raid. Right on schedule. In 1969 it was illegal for a bar to serve gay people alcohol or for gays to dance together. Therefore making gay bars, like the Stonewall Inn, prime targets for police. In a typical raid, everyone would be lined up against the wall and required to show identification. If you didn’t have identification or if you were not dressed appropriately to your birth gender, you could be arrested. Or worse, beaten. But for some reason. Tonight was different. There was around 200 hundred people in the Inn and they weren’t just rolling over and pulling out IDs. The people refused to cooperate. When the police decided to arrest everyone that wasn’t cooperating, many people that weren’t waiting to be arrested gathered outside the Inn, waiting for more police to arrive. I was one of many people waiting outside. Waiting for something to happen. I watched as more and more people filled the streets of Greenwich