American Experience; Stonewall Uprising; Interview with Danny Garvin, 1 of 3

Rick No you don't My man can go a lot more than that's more than neutral. This is, that's beautiful. Okay. That's a little bit of actual work. Eric? Can you tell it much more if you want it? These are his marketers. Ha ha ha ha. Okay. Gosh, so. Yes. Can you let me know, buddy? Yeah, we are. I think why he's the one. Yeah. We're really gonna speak. Okay. Put yourself back in time. We'll back back in time. What was your upbringing like in terms of sort of discovering who you were or what your sexuality was and how did you handle that?

It was very suppressed. I grew up Irish Catholic. My parents came here from Ireland. When I was told the facts of life, my sister said to me, now sometime when you were sleeping Danny, you may get this sensation. What you do is immediately get out of bed, get on your nails and get on your knees and say, hey, Mary, and stop it, right? And then I was always told it was better to put your seed into a belly of a whore instead of masturbating. So I was so heavy, I had the Irish Catholic right, so I would never masturbate. And my other friends, my other teenage kids, when we were like 13 and 14, talked about masturbation, I would try it, but of course I was gay and was so suppressed to allow that to come forward. I could never reach the point of ejaculation. So when I was 17, I was stationed in Brooklyn, I was in the Navy, I was going to meet some guys down on 42nd Street and did meet them and I met some guy, he came up to me and he

offered me a blowjob and I said, I'm sorry, I only go women and he said, you know, well the same thing, we both have 32 teeth in a tongue and I said, no, it's not the same thing. So he walks me down to 28th Street where all the prostitutes basically gather time, there's a woman, she must have been like in her 20s and I was 17, she was a heavy set woman and she said, you know, hey, action, baby, and I was like, you know, I was looking for Irma Lajous, shelling me clean and there's nothing like this, the cops came, the prostitutes were all ran, they kept me, the cops, you know, instead of ready to see you go home with a playboy magazine and a masturbate, then somebody told me about this new club called Chita that had opened it up town and he said, you can go up there, the girls are free, you know, because the pill has now come out now, so women are now more free with themselves. So he said, let's go up there.

So I said, all right, so I'm to the Chita and I was in uniform and I felt entirely out of place and I left there and I met some guy so I was walking back 40 seconds to ESL, walked one more time around the block and he asked me if I was of USS Enterprise and I said no, I'm stationed in Brooklyn, he asked me what I was doing there and I said, I was going looking to get laid because I thought it's sterile, you know, that means I can never have kids. So, you know, I want to move the mic away from your foot and also when you lean forward, we still hear you. Okay. Am I doing anything to the frame, but I mean, you seem a little far away that you're going to be a little longer. Well, the thing is, you lean forward and when you do it, the voice pitches down some, it is a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very clear. I guess, right. Go to get intimate, I guess, I mean, for you. So, to summarize how you felt about yourself, what did you think you were and what we were looking for? Straight game.

I really had no idea what my sexuality was, right? Because to be gay, represented to me, either very super-refeminant men or older men who hung out in the upper movie theaters of 42nd Street or in some way T-rooms would be masturbating. There was no such thing as a positive gay role model. There was no place to point, hey, you're gay, you know, you're 16, here's where you can go get help. Here's where there's other kids like you. So there was nothing. I mean, so to find out anything like that would have had to be through word of mouth. Like, that's how the bars were years later. So, your first experience you were saying, somebody said something about a bar, and then? For a experience, the guy was, he brought me back to the department, right? He said, I'm in uniform, and he said, do you want to see some movies? And I thought he made home movies, that's the only kind of a seven. So he brought out these black and white movies, you know, where people have the socks

on and they're nude and they're having sex and I have an erection and he goes, let me see. And I said, okay, and he started going down on me and I felt the sensation and I kept holding back because I thought I was going to urinate and he kept going and I kept holding back and he kept going and I kept going back and finally I exploded and he jumped down and it goes, this is the first time I've ever got fucked in the eye. And I said to myself, thank God, I'm not sterile, I can have kids. So the thing was I didn't get to see it, you know. So I had to go out two nights late, it was back down to 42nd Street because that's the only place I knew where gay people gathered, okay, and I had some old guys, some big fat guy picked me up and I had a lot of SRO standing among the occupancy places there at Times Square those days and he brought me there and he was giving me a blowjob and when I felt that sensation again, I pulled his head off and he kept going, no, no, no, and I kept going,

no, no, no, no, no, and I kept going, no, no, because I want to see what it looked like and that was it, did you, why did you think you were sterile, I thought I was sterile because I never had a what dream, I had never climaxed so I figured there was something wrong to me and it's not something you mentioned to your parents, you know, there was no real sex education in school. And what did your Roman Catholic background tell you about yourself and you felt these things for men? To help, you know, oh God that, you know, how the church condemned, you know, burned for ever. So can you tell me, and I'm sorry that my voice won't be in this, to begin a sense, it was something like, you know, when I really first confronted these feelings, when I really first confronted it about being gay and saying, this is it, I broke, I was a guy, I broke

down crying in his arms, saying, I don't want to be this way, this is not the life I want, I'm losing everything that I have, you know, I'm losing what I had known as spirituality, what I had known as society, what I would know as family, you know, there was so many things that all of a sudden it was going to eject you. So yeah, I broke down crying, I didn't feel them. When the finally helped me feel better, it was a love or a feel that I had years later. And I went through a guilt trip, we were making a love one night and I said, I can't do this anymore. He said, why is it? We can't have kids. So he's a dan, he goes, well, I was a woman and I couldn't have children, he goes with the church marries and I said, yeah, he's a dan, I can't have kids, he's like, oh, okay, you know that, it was some like, that's all I had to hear and that like cleared up in

my mind. How about in words, what were the words you had for gay people back then, what did they know, what did they make you feel? Oh God. I was growing up when you were 17, when I was growing up, cocksucker, a faggot. Can you tell me a second for the words that we used to have? Okay. Okay. Basically, there we have, oh, he's a motherfucking cocksucker, he's a faggot, he's a sissy, queer. There was very big, homo, homo was big. My last name being Garvin, I'd be called Danny Gave and, you know, there's a little things like that, you know, dug into him. I read something, I read about something that you said about, there was a term Nancy boy, what was that?

Oh, Nancy boy, Nancy boy is more of an Irish term and an English term. You know, he's a real Nancy boy, you wouldn't hear that in this case, because of my father being from Ireland, you know, but a Nancy boy is an English and an Irish expression. And vulnerability, how vulnerable were you as a gay kid, was there something, did something happen with somebody paying you a 20 bucks, do you want to tell that story in a short way? Uh, see, well, the first time I ever got paid, there were many times, okay, the first time I got paid was, I had, I was down in 42nd Street and there was this misscook and this misscook said he knew of a madam, right, that he could hook me up with, right, I was getting paid

30 dollars a month as a misscook and I was helping supply my family with income. And he told me that I could make extra money by doing this, by hustling. So this guy, he pulled me up to a guy's apartment, had me get on a dress, right, had me dance naked, I had no idea how to do this, you know, we've never danced naked before in front of somebody, he had no idea. He was real impressed when my clothes finally came off and he saw my service number, my underwear. Oh, wow, this is real, real GI, you know, and then he wanted to give me a bath and put me in the bathtub and then he rubbed an air roll over my ass and started burning, wiping off the air, the air and he said I like to, I don't like to rim my own boys with hair on their ass. So then I went and had sex with him and the madam and they wanted to play a game called

Slave of Master, I had no idea what this was, it was a slip of coin and you saved Slave of Master and I got Master and had to tell the guy what to do and I didn't know what to do because I didn't even know what I really liked, you know, I mean, the first time a guy kissed me, I gagged, right, so what, what did you, before you move on, you talked about people using all these words, when you answered the question, you know, cocksucker and how did that make you feel, the young guy growing up? Faggot have different meanings, faggot have different meanings, okay, fag could be gay or are you're a faggot, you gotta go home, faggot, different, queer, queer was queer, you know, faggot could go either way, cocksucker could either be an anger or cocksucker could

be a gay, so it could take either side, it's like, it's like, yeah, you can be gay, be homosexual, you can be gay, you can just be happy. We don't room for stories, but did you know anybody who got shock treatment, did you talk about that short name? Yeah, I'll give you the guys first name, Richard, Richard had, like, over 20 shock treatments, he told me years later, they try and make them straight, man, it just didn't work from, you know, he told me this, I'm just about 30 when he told me this story, Richard was in his 40s, to try to become straight. Did he describe it here to know what he wanted? He didn't describe, my new shock treatment was, the other horror story, and it was like my friend, Yui, who was very timid and walking home, got beat up by a gang with a brick and

they smashed out all his teeth and made him suffer the cock. Another friend of mine came home, I was about 21, 22, and somebody called up, you just say drop a dime, drop a dime on somebody in those days, and they called up until as far as some as a gay and a kid walked in the house, and the father had all the dishes lined up, and started throwing them at him, screaming, I'll have no cock suckering off my plates, and then my friend Wendell, Wendell was a school to be a doctor, and father got worried his son was gay, and said that's it, I just own you, you have no more scholarship, you have no more nothing, you cut off, and Wendell ended up becoming a wine owner drug addict. The bars were a social outlet, it was the only place we had to go, it was the only place

where you could meet, where you could date, it was more social, I mean, it was very easy to get laid, because if you walked down Greenwich Avenue and you walked down Christopher Street, you could pick somebody up to get laid, you didn't have to go into a bar, but in the bar, you got to meet other people who are your age, and you got to hang out with you, some kind of social interaction, just a chance to find love, you know, those were the good things, the bad things, the bad things in Wendell lights would come on, and you was a raid, I'm pray that you had your ID on you, we talk about the good things, at first time you had a nice story, so it was the first time you went to the Stonewall, and then, well, first time I just got out of the Navy, this girl, when I had Diane, had died, when

I came back from Blue Camp, but I really couldn't deal with it, there was a big sea, paint down a rock at the end of Manhattan, and we used to go drinking up there, and Diane went drinking up there, and she slipped, because she went to go to the baths and pulled down her underwear, and she couldn't get her legs together, and felt 350 feet to her death, and all the guys got pulled in, because they thought it was rape. And I guess Diane's death, for me being 17, kind of brought up at my mother's death, plus of my first real death as a teenager, and like I said, my father lived in Ireland, didn't have a great relationship with my assistant, my family, so I didn't have to deal with this. Got drunk at somebody's apartment, I lost my ID card, I was scared to go back onto the base, and I was going to camp myself, and I'm sorry, Eleanor, we need you to keep the phone on, you can grab it, whatever, call him once in a second, is it rude, seated, and you

can please talk to Katie, I know the tendency, it's really unnatural, not to mention it. Yeah, okay, sorry, yeah, I mean, about my role, you know, Wally Cox, you know, Nelson Riley, you know, always the very sissy man, man in the film in Hollywood, that's what being gay was, let me know, let me know that gay was normal, you know, so I didn't have any of that. Oh God, it was a song, Bert Flack even sings it, all the sad young men, sitting at a bar, it was a pathetic, even Bob Dylan's song, something has happened, but you don't know what it is to you, Mr. Jones, you know, all these other different meanings to it. I remember a song in the Stonewall, that I loved when I used to dance to it, it really

felt free, I think it was probably the association, and it was, I think we're alone now, you know, I think we're alone now, you know, the beat and the bar, it's the only sound now, as weird, these two teenagers finally get off to be alone, and not be harassed, you know, that had a whole different meaning, you know. So just the feeling that the world, I mean, all these places you felt more safe in, do you want to talk briefly about the adjuries or the old Vic? Well, the old Vic was a trip, okay? Old Vic was the very first gay bar I went into, under the 59th Street Bridge. I'd been hustling in Port of Authority, and I met this guy, and I started hanging out with his crowd, they were in their 20s, so this was the first young group of young people I knew, and they brought me to the old Vic, right?

And I hadn't ever seen anything like that, I had no concept of what a gay bar was like, the dance floor was very, very small, very tiny, and it was mostly a long, long bar. It didn't impress me that much, Julius's, Julius's, I went into, I didn't know it was a gay bar, because I used to go to Cardinal Spellman's dance floor for servicemen, and this mess cook, who worked for me, said, come on, I know a barbie can get served in, so he went down there, and I walked in there, here's all these guys standing in the bar, and now you gotta realize, I grew up in an Irish neighborhood, so it wasn't uncommon for a barbie to be packed with men, and so I didn't realize I was in a gay bar, and this guy came over to me and said, let me read you a palm, he said, I read through you a promise, and he

says, all I can tell you is that one of you here are gay, I don't think he'd use the gay normally, he's gonna get a homeless sexual, but I'm not gonna tell you which one is, so I'm gonna write my phone down, and give it to each one of you, and the one who's gay will never call me, so we're going back to the base, and one guy asked me if I have a smoked pot, and I said no, and I said, I'm gonna try something, so I said, yeah, I said, where can we smoke it, let's go to this guy's house, so we're going back to this guy's house, smoked pot, let's use three young sailors into his apartment, these two guys decided to get A-walls, the first time I have a smoke to join to my life, this poor Queen's apartment is a wall-to-wall red carpeting, and I'm sick, and I don't know where I appear to be, and I'm vomiting all over the place, and he's screaming, and I'm not going to the base, couldn't deal with it, I was petrified by being thrown into the break, and decided to cut

my wrist, I wouldn't find any way out, I went to the one gay guy who I knew, and I said, what do I do? He said, check the box, and I'll tell him you're gay, which meant I'd be 4F, and I wouldn't be able to get any kind of employment, and I said, I can't do that, so he says, well, listen, he says, Danny, he goes, you're 17, you're A-wall, and you're US government property, you got to get out of here, I can't have anything to do with you, so even in any sense of the gay community turned their back on me, so I went and I ripped the page out of the yellow pages, caused a psychiatrist, we have too much noise back there, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I either can stay in or come out, I know you're trying to be quiet, but it's impossible with the creaky floors, they come in too loudly, as the National Chair is very creaky, this chair, so take a different seat please, we have to do that again, let's go back,

yeah, you know, let's make it even worse, yeah, that's good, yeah, yeah, that's good, yeah, a little too tight, man, do you say what the box was and then what happened, and what did it mean, too? The box was what had been the end of my life in society, gay people could sit mentally ill, and whenever you applied for a job, you showed them your W2, you showed them your draft card. We all had to carry them, you know. In 1965, if you didn't carry a draft card with a $5,000 fine or one year imprisonment for burning it. So, you always had to carry

on it. I couldn't afford having no future in front of me, meant homelessness, meant. And how bad did you feel about yourself to cut my wrist? I tried to. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. So, I ended up going to Bellevue. Bellevue put me in St. Oldman's Naval Hospital. I didn't talk about it. And they discharged me on March 17, 1967. And so, which I was lucky, since it was St. Patrick's Day. And, staying at my sister's house, I went down to Judas' because it was the only gay bar in the news. Other guys would take me there. And when I was staying at the bar in Jesus, the bartender tapped me on the corner, a shoulder. And I was like, I like this, I don't have a beer. And tapped me and said, could you please turn around? And I said, why? He said, you know, we could be closed for soliciting.

So, you have to stand there and you have to drink and look that way and cruise that way of sideways. And then some guy came over to me and said, what are you doing in here? Why aren't you around the corner? And that new bar would all the chicken. And I didn't know what chicken meant, you know? When you're coming out and you're new and you're gay, it's so confusing because it's a whole different language. I mean, they were saying, I did him for trade. And I didn't know what that meant, right? He's a chicken. And I was getting so confused with the pronouns that him being called her and she, I couldn't follow the conversations or he dropped a hairpin, you know, or you're a friend of Judy's, you know? So, all these, a whole different, a whole different, are you butch, are you fem? You know, are you a top, are you a bottom? There's a whole different language that you have to learn coming out. That's kind of dying out now, which is kind of sad. So, did you then go to the... I walked around the corner, I walked

into Stonewall, signed the book, walked in. It was a long bar. There was a big dance floor, bigger than what they had up the old Vic. And then a huge dance floor on the back. I never saw so many gay people dancing in my life. And I said to myself, oh my god, this will not last. It also kind of freaked me. It did. I was kind of like... There's others like me, but you know, it wasn't like all of us, and I feel elevated and joyful about this because I still had to deal my homecoming out in process. You know? It was like there are those like me, but would I fit in? What was it that you were struggling in the Stonewall? Excuse me, how many? You can't... Everyone's just got to be still. You can hear every breath. Yeah, I know it's a little bit too much. Oh, and now we'll see one quick thing.

Just... There's something about the Stonewall that was different I gathered, and we have it on as well, so it's stuck to you. Oh, yeah. Hold on a second. We're getting sound from the back. Clamp down the absolute rule of silence, or close the door, and go to a room with the door closed, but I think I can hear Eleanor's voice moving. Do I get to pass past your cell, sir? Yeah, let's do that. Okay, there you go. Yeah, I just want to go back, and we'll see if you can go to the other room.