Shay

It is the twenty-eighth of June, nineteen sixty-nine. Summer heat runs rampant through all of the tired, ready bones down Christopher Street, and the yellowed lights stringing themselves from the sign Elaine stares at now, with a dimpled smile, bronzes her already brown and bare arms. She links her fingers together excitedly, and glances behind her, in wait of the others. In all honesty, she craves to go in through those doors right now, just to get her drink on ahead of time - God knows she needs it - but she promised she'd wait. She reminds herself that she needs to know that all her girls made it through the week. She reminds herself that sometimes, sometimes, someone won't meet them that week, or the week after, or ever again. This turns her excited finger-fiddlings into something spurred by anxiety, and her breath hitches, and-

Deep inhale. Slow exhale. She reminds herself that sometimes her girls just take a little longer getting ready than usual. It's no easy feat covering up the blackened eyes, or the busted lips, or a cheek split open by angry knuckles. There's no real reason for the injuries - no real reason at all, as far as she can tell from her own experiences - but horny white men often do a lot of things without reason.

Then again, she does break the law every day just by being. Being here, too, might land her in jail til tomorrow morning, where she'll finally learn whether she gets to go free - with her name in the paper - or pay the twenty dollar fine just for dressing and acting and talking and being a particular way. It's happened a few times, now. A logical person would cease coming back to this place again and again, night after night, if imprisonment and fines and humiliation were all the aftermath they'd be left with.

But her consistent return makes perfect logical sense to her. This place is all she has. It's a place of solidarity, and warmth, and compassion. Who cares that the precinct's police raid it on an almost formal basis? Who cares that there's no funding because of who it serves, that the toilets overflow and there's no running water? That if it were to catch fire, there would be no way out, because there's no fire escape? That at least once a month, New York sends its paddy wagons up to the door, and throws men who dress as women and women who dress as men in the back? Who cares? Because really, what does she have to lose?

Elaine has already been subject to disgrace and disownment; fuck, why else does she live with seven other girls, and not the ingrained image of a mother and a father and a brother and a sister all praying to their Lord and Savior just before a fresh dinner of chicken and beans or whatever else her parents must be cooking up right this moment for the family she's no longer a part of? Why else must she sell herself instead of working a stable, safer job, and risk the nightly beatings? Why else would she keep coming back to Christopher Street to wait for her girls and stare up at that sign longingly, knowing full well of the consequences?

She has been cast out. Left with nothing. Nothing but these small scraps, and anger. Oh, it makes her angry, oh so angry, and it rises as she waits, left alone with her thoughts. Thoughts are dangerous that way. They said in school, back when she wasn't twenty-six and lonely, that some thoughts were more dangerous than others, and that those who harbored them would no longer be children of God, and would be a danger to society.

But when Elaine looks at herself in the mirror, she doesn't see herself as any danger. She sees it all as unfair - but life is unfair, and she has to live with what she's been given.

The Stonewall Inn makes it easier to live with that.

"Damn, girl, you're gonna chip off the paint on those nails if you keep on digging 'em into your hand like that!"

Elaine's shoulders relax, and she loosens the hands she's been clenching into fists without realizing. A delicate palm glides over her back, reassuring and familiar, and then Elaine is trying to regain her smile again, just for her girls. "Maybe if you didn't take so damn long, Annie," Elaine says, shaking out the extravagant black curls framing her face, "I wouldn't have to go through all the worryin' about you lot." She tenses again, and glances around the street. "Josie with you? And Jed?"

Annie waves a russet hand vaguely in the air. "Jed's still getting her face on, and you know her and Josephine are thick as thieves, attached at the hip. Surprised they wasn't born twins." She lifts her carefully drawn brows and loops a particularly muscled arm through Elaine's. "Still sisters though, all of us. You ready?"

Elaine glances back up at the sign, and takes these few seconds in which it is acceptable to stay silent to prepare. She readies herself for a good night, uninhibited by the burdens of this life; on the street, she leaves behind the anger and the unheard cries, the loneliness and the pain. There's no room for all that mess between dancing bodies and feeling beautiful in the dark. So she regains her dimpled smile, takes a step forward, and says, "Yes."

As they approach the front entrance, which isn't really an entrance at all, but a small hallway built into the front, Elaine feels the excitement building yet again, and anticipates the lively atmosphere she's about to be absorbed into. There is passion lighting her brown eyes, and she looks at Annie brightly as they come to the front door and Frankie slides open the little slit to look at them. They pay the entrance fee, and the heavy door swings open, flushing out pent-up humidity and the smell of sweat. Elaine finds comfort in how it moistens her own skin, in how it makes the bright orange shirt that hangs from her shoulders start to cling to her back. This is home.

"Who are you gonna decide to be tonight, Ellie girl?" Annette asks as they walk down the hall in their heels. At the end of this hall, there's a book on a table, flipped open to today, and they're to sign it with their names.

Of course, it's not like anyone actually puts their real names.

They stop at the table and Annie takes up the pen first, leaning forward and scribbling out Marie Antoinette right beneath James Dean and Marilyn Monroe. The sweaty pen is handed off to Elaine and she taps the end of it against her chin, considering. Then she leans forward. "Marie" stares intently over her shoulder.

"Audrey Hepburn. That's a new one."

"So is Miss Antoinette," Elaine says as they start towards another set of doors.

"Missus!" Annie announces. "She was queen, after all. Can't be queen without the missus."

"Yeah, well I doubt they called her missus, missus. They called her-" She pauses to curtsey. "Your Majesty. 'Cause she, like you, was a queen."

"Your Majesty my ass," Annie says, throwing the doors open with those strong, strong arms of hers. "That's why they chopped her powdered head off. Things I wish I could do to all the fuckers who've done tried to take mine off these past few months. And not the head you think I'm talking about either, honey."

The music is loud and shakes through Elaine's skull the moment they're in, dashing away anything Annie's said. The light is dim, and the booths sit full of people chattering away, mutual sufferings shared from lip to lip. From lip to lip, two young boys in the corner whisper all too close, gripping one another tightly because they're not allowed to anywhere else in the world. A woman in a suit and a woman in a dress dance with ambition together because that ambition is suppressed everywhere else in the world. Elaine catches sight of a woman named Marsha P. Johnson across the way, conversing animatedly with the friends she's come to depend on these past few years the Stonewall's been open. Even the queens, so spat at and verbally, physically targeted on the streets, hang around the counters, the jukeboxes, barking out laughs and smiles because there is nothing that can hurt them here.

Elaine spins out onto the dancefloor, arms splayed out, and lets the swing of the place take her, lets the energy wrap her up like a hug. A big ole gay hug, at that. And fuck anyone who tries to wrench her from it. There are plenty of people who've tried. Who will continue to try. Hell, even some of the other women stare at her from across the room with eyes of fire just because she's different, because they think she's an imposter, but to hell with them and their eyes of fire, because she is a woman, through and through, and will dance in this place that will let them dance, where all other places have banned it. They ban the dancing, they ban the coming together - they call it "disorderly." But how can something so glorious and freeing be labelled as such? She is Elaine and she is glorious and free here!

The hours pass in glee and the world lifts its weight off of her shoulders for the time being. It's something she not only craves, but needs. It's as essential as a mother holding her child. When she grabs ahold of Annie's hands and spins around, and then falls teasingly into the arms of some handsome chap and dances with him awhile, it is akin to being held as a child. Necessity. Seeing people like her, in the same space, talking about the same things she's been through and still goes through: necessity. Knowing that this place, through its willpower, has remained, even though all the gay bars in New York shut down on the daily: necessity. Maybe she, like the Stonewall, can trudge on one more day.

Just as she thinks that, the lights come on, and a distant voice shouts: "Raid!"

What if this is the last day, then?

It won't be. It can't be. The bar pays off the police to keep running the way it does, and there's no way they'd stop, not with how bustling the place is. These are just routine. Still, she breathes in deeply, and feels the slow suck of panic deep in her chest as everyone else groans and boos. They're already pressing themselves to the walls, lining up to be checked. That's how it goes, usually. Cops either throw you out or line you up and ask for ID. If your appearance don't match the name on your card, you just go to jail: flat. That's why Elaine's gone so many times. That's why so many people've stopped bringing their IDs. Lacking one? Sends you right on to jail. There's no avoiding it, really.

She ain't mad about being locked up for the night. She's mad about the why. Why, why, why?

"Ellie," Annie says warningly, and grabs hold of her elbow, tight, pulling her out of the center of the room, out of the center of attention.

"They just had one of these," Elaine says in protest, but moves her feet along to follow nonetheless. That's how it goes, how it goes - you can use your words and argue all you want but your feet always follow the shepherd. Always! Always. "This ain't fair at all, Annette."

"I know, but it's just how it is."

"Why's it gotta be?"

Annie stops and looks Elaine in the eye, sternly at first, but then sadly, the natural sharpness in her face softening. She doesn't answer - she can't. They just look at each other. The both of them are prepared to give in. They have to be.

The moment the police storm into the Stonewall, it is clear that something is very different about this raid. Different from all the ones before it. Elaine's brows furrow; she doesn't recognize these officers. These ones are different. Very. Usually, those ones walk in with the intent just to do their job, maybe throw an insult here or there, rough a queen up here or there. But these ones, these ones come in with a heat, pushing and shoving. A woman cries out angrily as she's shoved to the side in the fray, and the men shout out their dissent as they're knocked back against the walls. Instantly, a fear fills Elaine - if they treat the ones who dress as society deems they should that way, how will they treat her? Or Annette? Or Josie or Jed if they're here, or Marsha over in the corner, standing far from the wall that these rough men will want to throw her against?

It escalates, and a few of the gay men are struck with merciless fists, knocked to the ground and left holding their bloody cheeks, wiping the vermillion from under their noses. Nobody is asked to line up, and nobody is asked to pull out their IDs.

The police just start grabbing at people and dragging them out.

Elaine looks to Annie in terror, not because of the arrests, but because of the new brutality invading their place. This is their place. Why won't they ask for identification? What's different? Why are they storming in, knocking poor kids to their knees and spraying the meanest of vulgarities with spittle-spraying tongues?

Why the fuck are they grabbing at her arms now, and pulling her back, yanking with unnatural aggression, out of the Stonewall?

Her first instinct is to scream, so she does. "Get the fuck off of me, you dirty pieces of shit! I've done nothing wrong here! I've done nothing wrong here! You've got no right! You've got no-"

A burst of pain spreads through her jaw and she whimpers out in agony. She blinks through burning tears to see a man with a badge on his shirt and a baton in his hand, glaring at her under the shining rim of his hat. He looks, and is, nothing but cruel, and says a whole slew of words she tries to block out. She blocks them out all the time but it's hard now, with everyone staring in stunned silence after her, or trying to push their way out ahead of her, before they can be grabbed and abused in similar fashion.

Before she knows it, the humidity is being blown out the front door, and they're in the streets, she being dragged along helplessly towards a paddy wagon. Everyone who managed to flee the Stonewall now stands observing from the outside, watching as Elaine and others are pushed around. There are no cuffs on her hands, yet, but there might as well be. There's an unluckier woman up ahead, cuffed because of the men's vest she wears. She struggles against them all the same, and seems to be the only one; she is fighting, spouting denials and dissent, screaming them, wriggling around to try and free herself from their grasp.

This makes Elaine try. She starts to wriggle, and to dissent, and to wrench away. They hold fast. They hold fast and mean to bend her arms back, to cuff her, and it is here where she thinks to herself: Not again.

She cries out and jerks harshly, to throw them off, but the baton hits her across the face again and she falls weak. There is one consistency in this life, and it's that her cries will be nothing but a celebration to those that wish to strike her down; her tears can fall on the asphalt of this street all she likes, but it will change nothing; she will be forced, again and again, to abandon who she is, to leave behind her point of view and her discourse and now her home, her home, the only place she has left because every other home she's ever had has thrown her to the dogs.

For. No. Reason.

No; she won't allow it. No; she won't let their song of hate outdo her song of being. She won't let them. She wrenches again, more violently, moved by anger. They slip up a bit. Elaine looks to the side, meaning to pull her entire body weight in that direction, but then she sees one of the women being struck over the head by an officer's fist; blood spills from her forehead, and she grits her teeth, eyes alight with fury.

"Why don't you guys do something?!" the woman screams.

And that's when Christopher Street erupts into uninhibited, unoppressed, and pure, unadulterated chaos. The crowd, once small, has grown, and it storms, storms, storms into the heat of the moment! Above, Elaine hears the breaking of glass as something is thrown towards the Stonewall. The officers holding Elaine are taken aback, and she's able to finally jerk out of their grasp and run into the crowd. The men don't try to grab at her again as she melds into the group, a group spurred, finally, by anger, pushed to their breaking point. That's when she realizes it: this is the breaking point. This is her, and everyone else's, breaking point. It's an unfamiliar sort of parade she pushes herself into.

But it's a necessary one. And, no, she hasn't pushed herself into it - the world has pushed her. Pushed her one step too far! See the blood on her face, and see how she wipes it away with a furious swipe of her hand. She will not be hit again for who she is. She will not.

She grabs a bottle on the ground and throws it, listens as it crashes against the brick that builds up the Stonewall. Glass rains like confetti; everyone, and she does mean everyone, grabs whatever they can. Rocks, bottles, bricks. And they throw. They cry out as they do. "Fuckers!" Elaine opts to use with her second throw, one that explodes in a spray of liquor against the side of a cop car.

The officers retreat back into the Stonewall. A rush of people sprint for the door, and ram against it with their shoulders, but though the doors budge somewhat, they're slammed back against the crowd. "They've barricaded it!" Someone yells.

The scene passes fast, fast, fast. Two drag queens take to rocking back and forth, back forth with a parking meter until it comes loose, and they rip it free of the concrete. Bricks assault the side of the building, bottles crash against the plywood. People united by rage ram at the door with the parking meter, and Elaine runs through the streets like it's the end of the world. If it is, she will be a woman at the end of the world, and no one will take that from her, not any longer. Sing, people, sing! Don't take their punches any longer! You are no disgrace and you are no mistake and it's time that they listen to this mere, sheer fact, that they listen to us.

I am-

She throws herself on top of a car with others, and hollers at the top of her lungs-

I go on-

"We are the Stonewall girls, we wear our hair in curls!"

I will-

"We wear no underwear, we show our pubic hair, we are the Stonewall girls!

-go on singing, singing until the end.

I will! I will sing, let me sing until the end! 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Carl- At the End, at the Start

Bells jingled all around her, echoing in a harmonious cacophony of music. Kinich Ahau sat high overhead, basking Calakmul in his glory. Sacniete squinted, careful not to let the light blind her. There'd be no point to the festival if she couldn't see it. Each Wajxagib B'atz' was a beautiful occasion, marked by expensive sheets of red fabric strewn throughout the streets of the city, dancing in the hands of the hands of priests and priestesses celebrating the gods' creation of the universe as they ushered in the new Tzolk'in. This celestial new year, however, was different. Every fifty-two years, it aligned with the Haab or civic calendar, forming the Calendar Round. At sixteen years old, this would likely be the only time Sacniete ever celebrated the occasion, and, contrary to her father's wishes, she would not miss the chance to perform in the day's honour.

"You're a noble woman," he'd told her. "It is not your place to make a spectacle of yourself for the commoners. Leave that to other women, Sacniete."

"I am a noble woman," she replied, "but I am mortal. Surely, I am not too good to honour the gods, father. Iwill perform today."

That had settled the decision. Or rather, she'd walked away before Babjide could reply. According to him, Sacniete was too stubborn to ever be marriageable, but she disagreed. She could be perfectly agreeable when she wanted to; it just so happened that, when her father was concerned, the desire to be docile never overtook her.

The problem wasn't that Sacniete didn't love her father. Babjide was a kind man, an honourable man, and she treasured him with all her heart. He had raised her by himself when her mother had died in childbirth. It was simply the differences in their opinions that made Sacniete so inclined to disagree with him. From the blossoms of her childhood, she had had her head in the heavens. Many said that the young girl spent her time communing with the gods themselves. Babjide, on the other hand, was a practical man. He believed in honouring the world as it was set out for them, in following every rule, custom, and tradition laid out by the ancestors. This led to many an argument between the realist and the dreamer, and in most cases the daughter won out of sheer force of will. Her father never could stay angry with her, at least not for long.

That day was not an exception, and so when Sacniete left the house Babjide simply sighed. She had dressed in a splendid costume ornate with bluebird feathers and jade stones encrusted along the lines of her skirt. An elaborate headdress stood on her head, light despite its extravagance. The feathers that decorated it were a bright red, brighter even than the lips for which many a man had praised Sacniete. She saw heads turn as she passed through the streets of Calakmul, but she paid them no mind. Today was not about her, nor was it about these men. It was about the gods and the universe, about time and nature. It was about the creation and the future destruction, about the world which would rise anew from it once again.

"Good morning," she greeted them. Lecherous or not, these men were the gods' precious creations, and Sacniete would treat each of them with respect. Her father had named her after the beautiful white flower that grew at the edge of the city, and as a result she'd always made sure to treat every part of the world with reverence and gentleness. They smiled at her, and she smiled back. She found the world was simpler that way. She needed no agenda, no dispute; she needed nothing but kindness and a smile.

It did not take long for the road to merge with the festival, and suddenly Sacniete found herself surrounded by a Wajxagib B'atz' unlike any she'd ever seen. Men and women of all ages crowded the streets, selling wares and gathering around stages where dancers moved with such elegance that Sacniete could feel the world's harmony flowing through them and guiding their motions. Their dances resembled a divine puppet show in which each marionette moved with a fluidity beyond what its wooden body could possibly conjure. The movements were enchanting, magical, and she found herself swaying to the sound of the music that filled the air. Her mouth salivated as she caught a whiff of the spicy scents rising from the vendors, but she hadn't a purse on her. She could return later, but for now she had a single mission: she was here to dance.

She found the high priest and apologized for her lateness, not bothering to explain the cause of her delay. Babjide was a well-known man in Calakmul, and Sacniete's presence at the festival must've been a surprise of its own. High Priest Gabor guided her towards an empty stage, and the crowd gathered around her. They watched her with a purity in their eyes she had seldom seen before. It was as though she were a flower growing in the wild, and they could do nothing but sit and admire its beauty.

Sacniete's head began to sway to the band's rhythm. The singer's voice over the flutes and drums. It was low and earthy, tinted with a roughness that gave the melody a rare sort of power. The singer was an older woman, wrinkled and grey and beautiful nonetheless. She held Kinich Ahau's light in her eyes and her warmth in her voice, and she swayed ever-so-slightly as she sang. Watching her brought a smile to Sacniete's face. Her arms and hips began to flow side to side as she let the music guide her. They were simple movements, the type that anyone could do, but her aim was not to show off. It was to honour her surroundings, to offer her what little she could give. She would never toil in the soil and care for the earth around her, she would never sweat under the sun as she took part in the harvest. But she would weave the glories of the world, she would sing the wonders of the gods, and she would dance until she blended with her surroundings. She would dance until she was little more than a flower blowing in the breeze, moved by the gods' will.

Sacniete moves, lost in the carnival around her. There are no people around her, no father waiting for her at home. There is nothing but the sun above her, the breeze around her, and the melody that sways her back and forth, that lifts her onto her toes and throws her into leaps across the stage. Slowly, the world around her is falling. She is in the latter half of the Long Count Calendar, now, and in a matter of centuries the world will become unrecognizable. It will start again and enter the fifth count. But she will not see it come. She will see nothing but this moment, nothing but the world in which she lives, and she doesn't mind. She is here at the gods' pleasure, and so she dances. She dances to honour the end of the world, dances to honour its rebirth, to honour the dance of time itself. It falls and rises, ending and rebuilding the world, and for a few moments Sacniete dances with it. They are partners, albeit briefly. They merge together; they are one.

It is the most beautiful dance she could possibly dream.