“Listen for me. It’s not just an echo”: Something about the Last Week in June, between Drag and Dyke marches of friends
I walk through the Village, thinking of techno parties in Berlin, shows at Loophole, parties to go to Saturday at New Wave City, after the Dyke march.
For a second there before I left Berlin, all five of us were together, wife, kids, and aging Shannon, the last of our kittens from years ago, fleeting moments. The other two zipped off. And the teenager and I ran to catch a plane to New York, arriving a few hours later.
One conversation after another followed:
Stumbling into Aunt Caroline on Hoyt Street back in Brooklyn, chatting about movies and her mom, RIP Jane. Maybe we’ll all go to Asteroid City or just have bagels?
Talking with Al about what happens when the music's over.
Sometimes, everything.
Arranging for secret meetings of friends with a bonfire.
Neighbors screaming down for us to shut up.
Chatting with Catherine about how we became so ridiculous.
I guess there’s no answer to that.
And Bear about friends from Berlin to New York, ever ghosting each other, appearing and disappearing.
Brennan about summer travels, Max and Jenn about our adventures in Durban.
And Emily about what happiness could look like. Sometimes it's about the strangers we meet, the friends we know, the books we read, the sermons Billy preaches, the angel dust and secret places, meeting Elijah, greeting with a stranger at a time.
And Greg about surfing and public space.
And walking to the park with the Bear. Running into teenagers converging at the Hare Krishna Tree at Tompkins, where they found solace and broke isolation during the pandemic. That experience shaped their high school years, leaving them estranged, sometimes out of touch. We said goodbye to Bendy Tree to the left years prior. Still ran into friend after friend. I think about Steven G and Tim and Elizabeth M when I walk by... The hero's of my city of friends past, celebrating birthdays and passings, along the way, cycling through it all... Old generations of Tompkins Park goers graduating, new punks and scruffies arriving, meeting under the Hare Krishna Tree, the Elm in the middle by the benches. No one really knows how old she is. Some say it was here before the park was in 1873.
I scroll through pictures, stumbling into a memory of Tim and Mel from five years prior outside the ICE detention center uptown, two iconic AIDS activists making connections between the abuses of the state and individual lives. Mel and Tim presente. Here and there.
Al’s birthday, we chat all afternoon, thinking about plants and the absurdities of technology and Brooklyn and the joys of two step computer confirmations and the history of music. Story after story.
And Mom tells me about her travels, stories of her trip to see the Bayeux Tapestry. We talk about the tree of life, aging and illness, art that inspires. Thanks for sharing your home and sharing a glass or two of prosecco. Cheers you you.
At the train station, I stumble into Tim D, who I was thinking about moving to Big Sur, in the bathroom at Penn Station. Like an apparition, still alive and smiling.
Gene tells me about tunes he’s spinning for Jeremy, still reeling after Keith’s unexpected departure.
And Kara about work and fun.
Up to Lincoln Center and back to Washington Square Park, to explore the T shirts and blondie posters at Gen Records.
Through the Park to have a coffee with Ray in Tompkins, before Colin drops by.
After a woman calls the EMT because someone is turning blue in the park.
Someone stumbles into us,
Watch out, I say.
A new generation of Tomp Heads are arriving, they lament.
Our generation is graduating.
The pandemic generation? Yea, you mean the kids who got into school and then spent the first year at home online, the next in fear, the next in Berlin or parts unknown, and the last back here, not quite home, shuffled off into the next step before they figured out where this one was taking us.
Walking down Ave A, I think I see Elizabeth Meixell in a dinner, where we ate. She no longer lives here, Neither does Stephen or Mel or Tim.
Lost in the seaweeds, the Ditchdigger meets me at Sophies and the International Bar, where we run into Peter Rouge.
He pulls out the novel by Annie Ernaux. "When I write I do not have the impression of looking inside me, I look inside a memory."
I guess we all do.
Be the glitter you want to see in the world, says the sign outside of Judson.
Micah probably wrote that says the teenager, walking by.
We stop for a taco and talk about it all, the friends who are disappearing, those who are arriving, the ghosts, the apparitions, those who reappear, those who fade away.
Brian isn’t at the drag year.
I try to talk him into it, to no avail.
Too much beef with the others.
Benjamin, you are way into the scene drama, Bear laments.
We survive without Brian.
Old friends and new, the drag march extends into the city, stories of asteroids and a possible coup..holy shit. Somewhere over the rainbow, I run into one friend after another, shaking and dancing and chanting ... Telling stories about novels, remembering the stone butch blues, sharing memories of old comrades and new, remembering legends, recalling the odd, the queer, when we didn't want to get married, stonewall was an uprising in the social imaginary, trying to make it a more abundant city for us all to share.
One chant after another, rejecting assimilationist models.
“We don’t want to marry, we just wanna fuck!!!”
“10% is not enough, recruit, recruit, recruit,”
“coming for your children” chants in reference to the hateful Anita Bryant “Save Our Children” trope from the 1970’s that queers represented danger to children.
Didn’t they get over that years ago?
I guess not.
“Don’t Say Gay!”
It returns, the myth of eternal returns, bad ideas worth recycling again and again.
Restrict drag performance, legalize assault weapons.
The US has lost its mind.
The contradictions don’t hold. Madness.
Little do we know, the next day, a whole new culture war will be raging around the drag march’s bad taste, still offending all of these years, with millions of hits.
The guardian loves us for it:
Well, I didn't see any widespread revulsion.
Recall, the homophobic stigma that marked countless lives over the years, scarring, furtherring suicide, suspension from jobs, the military, homelessness. A counter to this, the drag march includes everyone. It's important to point out that the same people aiming to curtail drag story hour to protect the children are unwilling to place the slightest restrictions on firearms that kill kids in schools every day in the USA.
An April 2022 letter to the editor in the New England Journal of Medicine titled, “Current Causes of Death in Children and Adolescents in the United States”
Sitting after the march, JC and Babs, Pee Wee and Jack, Machine and new friend Alex, who likes to read Howl, chat about the abundance of it all.
There’s a coup in Russia, holy shit. History is alive.
See at the dyke march!!!
Here come the lesbians.
Where should we go dancing afterward?
Go to Jeremy’s party, says Gene.
You gotta convince me, says Greg, about my article.
I’ll never convince you Greg.
Meet the Church Ladies on 5th and 30th.
The marching is taking forever. We wait, watching the moving amoeba, making its way to us, thousands with signs, messages of interconnection care and fun, abortion rights, free Palestein, on and on. The intersections abound. Amazing show of solidarity in the streets, singing along, applauding our friends, thousands strong. Waves of lesbians march down fifth, the Church Ladies serenading them on, no Broadway Bob or Elizabeth this year. Wash your ass, we chanted after Bob died.
Back to Brooklyn, walking down Pacific Street, to Jeremy’s birthday, thinking about Ms Maisel and Susie and the plunger. Gonna miss Abe and company. “I'm going to Paris,” said Rose. “I don't feel like I have a life here anymore. I'm unhappy and I'm tired of being unhappy, so I booked myself a flight for tomorrow night.” Gonna miss you Rose and Susie and Lenny.
Beer costs more in Brooklyn.
But it's still home.
We still miss Berlin.
Sunday, off to L Train Vintage, to a bookstore to pick up a graphic novel and run into friends, where we talk about our friend’s books, dad’s going, new friends coming, running into Al on Hoyt street, and friend after friend. Through the old hood, we walk through pride weekend, the city in flux, our worlds ever changing, ever evolving, through the Gowanus, down Degraw Street, where the rezoning has robbed us of secret places, identical details looming, condos rising on the polluted waterfront, encroaching, bulldozing memories. We used to meet down there by the Canal, said B. Before the condos and construction crews arrived, taking out the E recycling and old casket shops. It's a rite of passage to watch the bulldozers take childhood meeting places.
Still the bookshops and thrift shops abound; graphic novels remain, Alison Bechdel stories of Dykes to Watch Our For, as the city turns into a rainbow. ·
“Happy Pride, dear ones!” says Micah Bucey “Here’s a little prayer to remind you to keep queering yourself…. Any kind of Heaven worth the trip requires clear, queer, passionate aplomb. I’ll follow the arc of the ovation and join you there. Listen for me. It’s not just an echo. It’s a spreading spark. Those things you think are weighing you down are wings. Our forequeers fought so that we could unfurl. And the angels look like fairies and they shimmy and shout: Stay lit.”
Back from L train, we zip up to Hoyt Schermerhorn and jump back on the train, to JFK on the way, Williamsberg Brooklyn well represented, Heathrow to London City train, on our way to Berlin by 1 PM.
Drag and Dyke Marches, history is alive and with us.
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