American Experience; Stonewall Uprising; Interview with Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, 1 of 3

I would come a little bit closer into that. Now, is it ruin your shot of I suddenly cross my life? That's on the other side of it. The guy was in ten seconds and said, uh-huh. OK, it's just fine. Now, you do whatever you want. You get everything I've just said, honestly. OK. I just want to start from a place that I'm happy with. They look really to terrorize me as much as I like. OK. Well, just, just, just said a scene to go back and hide and think about what it was like growing up in the 50s and 60s, um, as a gay man, did you know you were gay? What was your whole conception of being gay? I knew I was gay, always, but not with a word attached to it. It was attached to people, desires, pretty much the same as a heterosexuals are. You see someone you think is sexy, they're sexy.

And so, uh, when I was a teenager, I fell in love with people, uh, two different people I even told them that I loved them, and actually they were OK about it. They didn't put out, but, but at the same time, uh, they were, they weren't. They weren't in any way ridiculing. They were actually two nice kids. One name was Frankie and Albee. They tried to teach me how to play basketball, which was kind of funny because, uh, it didn't work. So they were happy to watch, have me watch them play basketball. What was their place to go where they're organized organizations? No such thing. There was no organizations existed back then. Uh, there was no mention of anything positive. There wasn't a negative bombardment and say like a family life because it just didn't exist as far as people were concerned, uh, so, so that the, the world, uh, my world was felt mostly through, again, people and, and music.

It's like that today for, for younger gay people too. And if they feel it first through movies and, and then songs all at the same time, it's, it's a, it's a kind of articulation that happens when they don't even know it's happening. We're, we're still like that. How about the Madison Society when you talk about what you do about that? Well, the Madison Society. I don't even know what exists until I come to New York and it's, it's, it's, the Madison Society is incidental to the point of inconsequential because it was, I was a teenager in the Madison Society. It was a bunch of stuffy Republican types from what I could see from my perspective at the time. I was a, a street kid. It sounds crazy to say that now he's an old man, but, um, but I mean someone who doesn't die lives to be old and, uh, so being in the street back then and being a, a teenager, they were as, as strange as, uh, I don't know pink unicorns. I don't know.

They, they were just far and it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it holds in, in, together with like any way a teenager thinks, grown-ups have all the power back then and, and, and Madison Society people were just these strange creatures that didn't connect to my reality. Did you, what did you perceive your future to be if, did you imagine change social, where there were all these social civil rights groups around you fighting for change? The civil rights movement at the time affected everyone because it was so much a part of, of life. So, so you would automatically perceive it through life and apply, I applied it to myself, although I wouldn't have said that sentence. It just rights. People deserve their rights. That's the message I came through the civil rights movement was everyone deserves their rights. So coming to New York, I actually didn't perceive anything except where I was getting away from and that I was looking for my rights and to say I was looking for my rights,

I automatically assumed I had them. So, I had assumed I had my rights when I went off to the one year of college I went. No one else assumed it, but I did. What was it about New York and in particular the village that there were always articles in like Life magazine about how the village was liberal and people that were called homosexuals went there and then the other place they talked about was Port Authority bus terminal. So and then there were always priest-ranting in church about certain places not to go. So you kind of knew where you could go by what you were told not to do and things that were talked around, it was figuring out a kind of equation from what was given and then you aimed at the conclusions that you saw mapped out by that. How old were you? The first time I had sex. When did you come to the village and what did you hope to find out?

Oh, I started coming into the village in my teens. After the articles in Life magazine I decided I had to go out and have sex and so I did. I met someone that was in my teens but I didn't leave home yet. I didn't leave home until after the first year of college then the first year of college there wasn't any money to go back or I was studying art. My father decided it was time to make a man out of me so I was put on, this is Mafia Linda New Jersey. So I put on a road crew construction job that was supposed to kind of go toward the construction union but it was so I'm not built for that. It was all about I guess straightening me out, turning me into a straight person whatever that would be. And so the day that I registered for that job in Lyndon I went home and my father said

go out and get the newspaper I just turned around and left I came to New York and I came to New York with nothing for real. It's not like people say I came to New York and then they have a lot of people they know which is the usual thing. Oh, they were broke, they were the same. I really was, I had less than a dollar in my pocket. The first people I met were different to other gay teenagers in the street. The measuring survival that I used was basically if they weren't murderers if they were just like a shoplifter or something like that it was fine. I know that sounds amoral but you have to draw the line and position yourself somewhere. And the ones that were physically harmful I kept away from there were a few psychopaths here and there and had to know when that came along and hang around the people that were

not going to kill you because I was lucky where I grew up. I learned how to be around the tough kids would protect me, the good tough kids from the bad tough kids. So it just kind of came right into New York that way and there's this huge variety of other gay teenagers. The street kids are very hard to describe because they're not going to fit in an easy package because they came from every class background. There was one kid who always wore a suit, but the suit was dirty and I think maybe he had gone nuts or something. He had perfect teeth that kind of thing. And other people had had boiling water thrown on or thrown through playclasters. Most people were running from parents and situations where they had been, people didn't use the word abuse back then, they were treated horrible. They were beat up by their parents, they were beat up by their families, they were told they were hated, they were no good.

Some of them had already become people that had like hairpin triggers with how they reacted to people. You couldn't even touch some of them on the shoulder without them like punching in the face or something like that and there's a very iffy thing. So there's whole variety of all kinds of people that are, I could, I sum up quickly, I would say they're all very interesting, but that short to change is each one of those individuals because each one was a fascinating, the unique person with the music they liked, with the way they dressed and the way they dressed was all over the place. It was whatever people could find in the garbage mostly because people would throw dresses, shoes, all kinds of things. And so it was actually, and when I look back, it was kind of like beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time because everyone's sitting in the park across from the snow wall on a rainy morning with the summer with the rain hitting the ground, with the turning to steam immediately with with someone in a pair of broken down high heels they found in the garbage can with

their ankles, like not their ankles, they're heel, like bleeding, but they're heeled at the same time, like all kind of like crusty from just the street and then singing a song like second hand rose and jump and this is like a, it's a 16 year old doing this with a bunch of other people that are arranged from 14 to like in their maybe early 20s. And so we all kind of like would keep each other laughing and at the same time it was, to say it was rough, it is hard to explain because I don't want it to sound self-pedient, it was rough just because it was rough and it was what you had to get through. And there was, there was no one there to like make you feel like you could feel sorry for yourself.

You either hung around and didn't die and that was, that, or did die. What, can you mention, I think I remember reading that you, at some of these kids do that fingers, or, what, well, there was a few kids, there was one kid in bunny who had lost the, because like, different things from different places, what, one kid lost city, lost fingers. Well, when I was a kid, this had nothing to do with being gay. People lose their fingers in ringers on washing machines. That was fairly common when back when washing machines had ringers, ringers of those wheels that turn you push the wash through and someone's mother would say, push the wash through and then the brothers and sisters might say, see if you can stick your finger in there and the thing just keeps turning and gone are the fingers. And so there was, there was, one kid, the bunny that had to, like, two fingers missing, there were, I'm sorry, I'm confused, why would they do that, just to teach, if they know they're not there. I don't, I, why would kids stick their fingers in ringers on washing machines, because

they didn't know any better, no one told them not to. I mean, just like, why would a kid stick their finger in a lightbulb socket, they're, they're hanging out with their brother and their sister and, and like, they're doing stupid things. What, what were their names, what were their names, what were their names? Well everyone picked new names, it was like, you, you were the given a name, are you picked a name? It was a lot like becoming a monk or a nun. Your pulp, this wasn't ever talked about, no one ever said we're leaving our past behind and entering this new bright, shiny world of, of this, this sparkly, broken glass streets of New York. No, you were either given a name based on some characteristic that you didn't know you had when people like either made fun of you or, or thought was cute or something like that, or, or you might have a name, like there, there were a few different, Sylvias and one of them was cross-eyed Sylvias, because cross-eyed Sylvias had cross eyes and the other one, the other Sylvias didn't know, but, but, and then people would talk about

Sylvias, I assume they meant cross-eyed Sylvias, then there was a, a queen whose real name was Nelly, Nelly was Puerto Rican and, and then, then we ended up, Nelly's named, named Betsy for Betsy, Betsy, Betsy Mecullo, which, which is Spanish for like a, kiss, kiss my behind, and so the, the names always had like a sense of humor or a sense of craziness and they would evolve, sometimes very mean-spirited, sometimes very, very funny and nice, they, they were all over the place. When what made your life different, good, the bad and ugly, then, let's say, homeless, straight, straight kids, what was it? We overlapped, homeless, homeless, straight kids and homeless gay kids overlapped, but usually at the homeless, straight kids and overlapped were the ones that were hustlers, they interweaved and hung out with each other, but only in a situation where they were both there.

I didn't know any gay people that would hang out in a place that was totally straight, but I knew straight kids that would hang out in a place that was mostly gay. So where did you go for money, could you get jobs, could you live in a decent apartment in the village of, or? With jobs, I, I did a lot of panhandling, there were people who did a lot of, hustling, but also there was back then, there was all these, like, agencies where, for like a two weeks salary, you'd pay them over, there was, there was no email or things like that, so you get messenger jobs are very easy to get, and, and there was also some messenger jobs where you could walk right in or off the street and, and get them a half or a few days. So people, if they had a job, it would be like a job like that, but most people were into, like, going in the grocery store and stealing a pack of baloney or whatever food they could put in their pants or something, and, and then sharing it with their friends.

And it was, and people could be very nasty in the, meaning among each other. There were people that would steal baloney and then someone else would steal it from them. Well, well, it was, there was, there was, sometimes there was a sense of sharing, sometimes there was this kind of, like, doggie dog thing that would go on. It was a continual balance you had to figure out about how you're going to stay alive, where you're going to be around, the less nasty is a, is a recurring theme, but as it leads up toward the stone wall ride, it's that hairpin trigger thing that makes the riot happen. It's a vital part of it, to have a bunch of people that are, are ready to go, because there's nothing in their life to worry about losing. I mean, I, back then, I, I, I thought about the, the future, but the future in a very idealistic way, like, oh, art, I'll learn about art. And it was, it was never thought about in any practical way.

And there was, there was no sense of anything practical, except where your next, next meal came from. So, were you worried about any laws were you aware of in terms of, like, what, how you could dress, put you in drag? Back then, you kept away from the police, because whether, whether you were in drag or not, just the fact that you were faggy, fag acting, gay-ish acting, and generally teenagers, we were marks, so, so we avoided the police always, and, and, but the police would sometimes, zero in on us, because sometimes they would, they would be in plain clothes. And sometimes they would even, and trap, like, kind of like, come on to you more or less. And, and you, usually they would just scare you and then let you go. But there was a continual threat that went on from the police and from a kind of people

who felt like it was their right to go around starting trouble with gay people. That was very common back then, for, like, groups of kids, our own age, like, would come from another state, or just New York or somewhere, and maybe have baseball bats or something like that. We just had to learn to run, hide. And then it was funny with those kids. Sometimes we actually made friends with them. When would the cops think of them? Oh, the cops would pull crazy kind of in trap, and it's like they would, like, you'd be walking down the street and some very handsome, young man would start looking at you and following you. And then you'd go and you'd sit down on a stoop and talk and suddenly you'd bring it pull out his badge and everything. That was, and then there was, like, entrapments in, like, subway bathrooms, all kinds of things like that, too. But the street one was pretty common, and I mean, I heard about people being entrapped in gay bars, you know, but I wasn't going regularly to any place except the Stonewall in the 10th of all, though.

Let's talk about the Stonewall. Before we get to the riots, what did the Stonewall even mean to you, right, did you go often, did you like it, or not? What was it? I loved the Stonewall, because the Stonewall reminded me of a CIO dance, so the 10th of always, but the Stonewall even more CIO means Catholic youth organization. And because I, again, I was a teenager when I first started going there, when the ride happened, I was 21, so it could be my ride of passage, was the Stonewall. What was so good about the Stonewall was that you could dance slow there. At the 10th of always, you weren't allowed to dance slow. The 10th of always had a tiny dance floor, was more lit up than the Stonewall. The Stonewall was very dark, so that I really couldn't tell. I think it had a low ceiling, but I don't know how low, because you didn't look up at the ceiling. Our main concern was the music and dancing, and the music was the music, mostly Motown. Music we had known from high school that was still popular, so it just clicked right

in to our romance and everything. But that's the key word, is romance, because we could feel a sense of love for each other, that we couldn't show out in the street, because you couldn't show any affection out in the street. I mean, it's still dangerous to do that today, but you definitely couldn't do it then. But in there, we could dance with each other, and the whole thing of just going up to someone, because back then people asked people to dance, saying, will you dance with me, or someone asking you, that you can say yes or no. Just the whole ritual of this gives it a scope that, like, it wouldn't have had without that. Again, it was like the CYO. What was it about, how did it feel to slow dance at someone, and what was it on slow dance? Slow dancing, well, the type of slow dancing that was done then, was back then people danced

in pairs. There wasn't this thing that didn't exist yet, where someone just jumped up and act like a nut dancing all over the place, and if someone did that, they were usually like, took a few tabs of LSD or something. That was because there was a hippie overlap happening at the time. But generally, people danced in pairs, and the slow dancing was where you really got to embrace, as the best word, but to be embracing in a sense that's with the music playing and you're dancing, again, it just carries over from the regular teenage thing that the rest of the society was doing back then, in a way that, like, still today, if most day kids can't go to their prom or go to a dance and dance with the same sex, so the same sex dancing, it took me no time to, I wasn't ever surprised by it, I was just glad it

was there. So it gave you a certain sense of it, did you change your own personal feeling of yourself? It didn't change, any of you think, the dancing centered you and who you already are with the other people that are already you with yourself, it becomes, but you singular, you plural at the same time, and it does the exact same thing it does for straight people. It romances the moment, and without that, someone would be a psychopath, I mean, if they'd never have any affection in their life, they might want to kill everyone, because I mean, people need affection, so it was like, I mean, I'm not going to say there was a government conspiracy per se, but to separate gay people from their affections for all those years, and make us feel like we were some kind of inferior brand of heterosexuality, was really

very nasty, and I'm so glad I was a teenager when I was a young guy, because I was managing society and some of them, as brave as they can seem in retrospect, back then they just seemed to me like a bunch of flat tires, I mean, again, probably they accomplished something in their own way, but through my teenage eyes at the time, they were like a one-way ticket to nowhere. When I ask a question, which I made, I'm going to try to do as little as possible, answer Katie. Oh, so when you ask a question, you're going to ask a question from your mouth, but I'm going to look at you, yes, I will respect your craft, yes, mm-hmm.

You know, I always thought the village was true to you and other gay men, because we're supposed to be such a hospitable Mecca and a great place to be, but is that a bit of a myth or a touch, really? We'll just go on an exception. of a truth at the same time, because it drew us and the village divided up into sections. There was a section over near McDougal Street that we referred to as straight sitting. That was right behind NYU, that's where the straight kids went, but it was interesting about those straight kids, where those were not the straight kind of straight kids who were going to kill us. They were the kind of straight kids who thought we should have shock treatments or be put in mental institutions as they were the nice ones. So we would go over there and make little friends our own age and hang out with other teenagers who were happened to be straight. Generally that would be okay, but we always had to be careful, just because their perspective

on us was that they were feeling sorry for us, because we were mentally ill. That was the consensus of liberals at the time. And so when we would get over near where the Christopher Street was, because back then most people hung out mostly on Greenwich Avenue, Christopher Street was a sideline that went down towards 7th Avenue, there was much more darkly lit, and there we felt more at home, because there was more gay people, and a great variety, a really good variety of gay people. There's going to be old queens that had somehow got through the fifties, God knows how outlooking their poodles, and actually those are the people that I felt more solidarity with because they were so visibly present. They would have like liberati hairdoes that were like a not a foot high, but pretty high on their head, where makeup and just not care what people thought of them. And then there were those madashine society people that were kind of running around, I

don't know, be suited with bow ties, I don't remember the way of bow ties or anything, but like they have, my brain sees them as being wrapped up in bow ties, and they were just a disaster. But most of all, we had each other, and everyone hated us, except us, and that we felt had no problem with being hated by everyone, because we were already hated by everyone. So it wasn't that lucky for the part of our time of our life that it was, I guess, in the years of age being an adolescent, being a young adult, that you always think the older generation doesn't know anything. So like nobody knew anything but us, and we were right. Did you see expressions of free love, did you see, like, hippies are like a big contradiction back then.

I mean, in retrospect, hippies will always be represented as like the love people, the love generation. These were a sour note in my year, because they were, again, they were onto that, it's like today. If you hear, like, I mean, God bless Howard, Zen, and those historians, but whenever they get to gay stuff, they go, I mean, they can't deal with it. That's the beatniks that segway into the hippies. I mean, if we didn't define ourselves, they would have kept turning the shock treatments on. Hippies would be okay until they found out you were gay, because they wanted to define the limits on their total free love that you weren't included in. Later on, they got more inclusive, but only when it was like pushed upon them, and also when younger hippies came in, that were more accepting. Hippies were not, except for a few hippies that, like, smoke a joint and put out and forget about it later.

They were just like everyone else. Going back to the Stonewall Inn, did you, I mean, okay, you said you had a dollar in your pocket. How did you buy drinks? How did you buy drinks? I didn't buy drinks at the Stone. I never bought a drink. I would go, I would run in there in a long, whole way, like, kind of place where you win. That was kind of like a cave, like, maybe entering the church and the activity in Bethlehem or something, and then you go down this hallway and sneak past the guy that's, well, first, well, wait a minute. First, first, you got to get past the door. Okay. Now, this is, it's loaded with stuff, because it's a speakeasy, it's a juke joint, and it's a gay bar, all in one. That's, like, three places it's coming from, there's a little door that slides open with this power hungry nut behind it that you see this much of his eyes, he sees that much of your face. And then he decides where you're going to get in. That doesn't mean you're out for the night. It just means you'll walk around for 10 minutes, you come back, and then he decides to bestow his grace and let you in.

Okay. Then you go past the speakeasy part, which is a little door that slides, you go down, then you go past the guy who's supposed to be the balancer or something, and then you run in to the, or go through the people at the long bar, which was right on the right, and go into the front room, the front room, and then there was another room, there's two different jukeboxes, and right away I just go in and start dancing with my friends, whoever was there, because you went in one at a time, you never went in in a group, because we were considered pieces of trash, and so we would not go in a group. And then you find generally a can of beer, like this can, but it's not beer, and then because it's a can, we go in the bathroom, fill it with water, and then it always smell like beer, so the waiter who was like a capo in a concentration camp would come around shake the can, and listen, and then to, and smell it to see it was beer, and then give you a look like, didn't catch you this time, and then move on, so we decided to keep

dancing and moving, dancing and moving, dancing, but it was a different class, it's so funny there's a different class, but a different class was at the bar drinking, that was where the museum curators are, and the people that had houses on Park Avenue, all the people that were going to put us on easy street, they were there, and, and, but if you hooked up with one of them, which I never did, you're stuck with them, it was better to keep dancing, I never bought a drink at the Stonewall, never, never, never, there was always empty cans of beer that I filled up with water, and walked around home, and that was, that was the trick we arrived at, because they sold the beer, these are cans, are in glasses, and I was real funny, the people got the beer in the glasses, that was like, piss, because

it was like the weakest, they said it was the weakest beer in the world, because it was mafia house beer, I mean, does anyone know what that is, that's like beer mixed with like, I guess a lot of water from the faucet or something, so people would get the cans of beer if they got any beer, because at least they, you know, it just, it fell off the truck somewhere in New Jersey, and, but it must have had real beer and that originally, not the one I was carrying around, that was an empty can, that's just such a, that's just