Subtle Settles Stonewall

"Sister in Gold" by Doug Sandelin

Subtle Settles Stonewall

Donald Gallagher interviewed by Robert Woodworth

Donald Gallagher, aka Subtle, was invited to speak on his memories of the Stonewall riot at the Google offices in New York City for the Stonewall National Monument Archive. Here is a section of his musings down memory lane that pertain to this event, beginning with an experience of another bar raid he had also witnessed.

Robert: Were you in a bar when there was a raid?

Donald: Oh, very much so, yes. Just a few months actually before Stonewall. It was the International Boy Bar I think it was called? Or was it the International Club? It’s a restaurant now, it’s on Charles and Greenwich…It was a very hot bar. It had one of the first back rooms where they actually just had a big black curtain…you just went in, it was totally dark and anything would go on.

And they [the cops] came in, they rounded up the whole joint. And marched us all over, and it was a big crowd. It was a lot of people. They marched us over to the Ninth Precinct, which is now a condo. It’s on 9th Street, but it’s down further. But it was just down the street in an oldfashioned precinct house. Everybody standing up front, waiting on line to go in and get booked!

People were all talking about what’s…like god what’s the wife going to say? What’s the job going to say? You know, anything. Say about anything. People are really upset, and really nervous. In fact, that one went so badly in that there was a young man from Columbia [who] actually jumped out the window and killed himself! And we’re standing on line. This happened right in front of us. And why? It turns out he was the son of the ambassador to the UN, I think it was Colombia, I’m pretty sure it was. Robert: Argentina. Donald: Yes! Okay I’ll buy it. Robert: He impaled himself. Donald: Yes! Robert: But he did make it, they had to cut him out. Donald: Yeah, but there was blood all over us.

Cuz’ we’re under it. Robert: You were nearby? Donald: Four feet away. Robert: Holy shit.

Donald: No, it was one of the most shocking things ever in my life. And you ask: why? What was the point of this? Why? Why do they think they could do this to anybody? And like threaten, and make you feel just so belittled, and so terrified that they’re going to tell somebody. This is going to ruin your life, or just make your life really, really difficult. And who knows what that poor child was thinking. He was just a young guy. And I bet kids from his culture, Argentina. I’m sure this would not be acceptable!

I’m sure he felt like he was dishonoring his whole family, and his country, and whatever you know. But yeah, dreadful experience you know. I think that had a lot to do with what happened at Stonewall. Cause I never went there, I never went to that bar ever.

Robert: Well then, using that you were booked then?

Donald: This is how bad it was with the cops. There was another night, we got hijacked. We didn’t have any money, as we’re poor as dirt. I mean—we had no money at all. And I think maybe we had a dollar? Maybe. Between us, you know; in change. And two guys get us with a gun. They approached us with a gun. Right on the corner of Judson. Third and Fourth you know, right by Washington Square. Right there. With a gun, a real gun.

But we didn’t have any money. So we didn’t get robbed, but it was scary. It was really scary. We went and we found a cop, and we just told him that. So he takes us in, he takes us in. He doesn’t even go to look for the guy. He just takes us in, and like gives us the fourth degree about like what were you there, what were you doing, what were you looking for? Did you make passes at the man? That kind of like questioning. It was so disgusting and enraging, enraging. Just such a rage, I was in such a rage. It was amazing I didn’t get arrested because I was in such a rage. Cause I could get very loud. My training is such that I could become quite grand if I wanted.

Robert: Well let’s move this into the summer of ‘69 and Stonewall: where were you? What did you hear?

Donald: At this time, we lived over on Saint Mark’s Place late ‘66. We got a beautiful apartment

there that was a sublet. Very frequently after the day we would walk all the way over to the West Village and go to the trucks, go to the piers and whatever. We knew the route, we knew a lot of the people to be walking back and forth between the West Village and the East Village. It was like a migration, from one to the other, people going back and forth.

[That night] I got a call from a good friend of mine who lived on Sheridan Square, in an apartment right across the street. He calls up saying: “you gotta come over. You won’t believe this riot that’s going on. There’s like all the drag queens are fighting the cops off. And they’re winning.” I was like WHOA—what’s that about? How’s that happening?

Immediately got on the phone, called several people, I think probably eight, right off the bat. Just called people that I knew might be interested. And then [I went] out in the street and ran into close neighbors. So I had three people with me. And then as we were walking down the street, anybody new, or anybody who [we] thought might want to do this. Be queer and just like... and we’re also just pissed off at the cops, and just tired of it. So many, many people jumped in. Each one would tell other people, and other people would tell other people. And this wasn’t just me doing this. This is like all over downtown. This is people calling each other up.

You should know, I’m not taking any kind of credit here you know. It’s midnight by the time we get there; we were going down Waverley Place, and

I think the cops pretty much thought it was over. Because they were just kind of hanging around and talking and relaxing. And there wasn’t really anything going on. But then suddenly, this huge crowd of people come surging in; yelling and screaming and throwing “dirty coppers” (pennies) at the cops.

“Donald” Photo by Keith Gemerek

There was a chant of course. Probably will come to me at some point, but I don’t recall now. Anyway, so we go in. Then they were pulling parking meters out of the sidewalk. Oh geez, and like cobblestones and throwing them through the cop cars. It was very liberating.

Robert: How did it feel?

Donald: It felt great, it felt great. We didn’t feel scared at all. I didn’t give a shit. I shouldn’t say that right? Robert: No— Donald: I don’t care, I don’t care what they say. I mean I’m mad, I’m up to here with these cops. I’m up to here with them. And thinking they run us, and they run the place, and we can’t have anywhere. We can’t have anywhere to go, even though we know it’s all mafia run and probably the cops are getting a cut.

It’s not even honest of them to be like really on our case. It was just like a very emotional, exciting thing. It went on until it petered out, just faded, went home. And then, it happened the next night again too. Then way more people showed up. And it became this circle. It became this wonderful building thing, and by Sunday it was as if you couldn’t even get to there. The whole area was closed off with humans. At one point there was a rush out onto Seventh Avenue, and everyone just sat down and closed Seventh Avenue down. It was thrilling, it was absolutely thrilling.

It was kind of like okay, we’re not gonna put up with this anymore. And this is what you can expect. This is what you can expect from us,W if we have more incidents like this, this is what you can expect. You can expect this to happen, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Because you’re not gonna know where it’s gonna come from, or where it’s gonna happen. And that’s just what happened. That’s just what happened. It took a while, it took more than one of those kinds of incidences. There were several. But it took a while.

The other thing was like they got all kinds of disparate type people together, all kinds of radicals, and hippies, and you know lawyers, and just all kind of people. All layers of society were getting together and talking to each other for the first time. Instead of just going down to the trucks and having a good time. Where the piers never really discussed talking, or the bars you know. This loud. But this here was, we could really talk to people and find out what was going on.

And so, the organizational type people organized. And got to the fire house, and GLAAD, and GLIDD, and all those other little organizations that occurred. It was quite an extraordinary moment of consolidating forces, realizing that we’re not going to be able to do this on our own. We can’t do this just as individuals; It’s not going to get us anywhere. And all this had probably a peripheral

experience with either the civil rights movement, or the anti-war movement. We were already kind of prepared for how to go about doing this. How do you do it?

We make telephone trees with those you know, you communicate with others, you write essays, you write pamphlets, you write to the papers, you write. You read, you call people up, you talk to people. It was really the spark. They really kind of pulled it all together. It was quite thrilling, it was really exciting, you know?

It was so clean, and honest; I mean it was political. But at the same time, it was more personal than political. It was political in the sense this is my life, and I’m taking charge of it. In a way that I wasn’t before because I didn’t feel I could. It’s not because I didn’t’ want to. But it just felt like how am I going to present myself to the cops, how am I going to stop them from belligerent behavior toward me? I can’t do that by myself. It’s never going to happen. But if there are people together, then it all works.

Robert: Did you think at that moment, that this would continue on? Or it was blip—

Donald: From my point of view, and like most of the people I knew—my closest companions and friends, straight and gay were absolutely behind us. This is a new beginning. This is new. This is not going to change. We’re going to go further, and we’re going to get things that we haven’t had before. We’re going to be able to have our own bars. We’re not going to have the mafia bars, we’re going to have our own bars. We’re going to have that.

You’re going to keep your hands off the baths, you’re going to get out of there. You’re going to let back rooms occur, you’re going to leave them. You cannot stop us at the trucks, Acceptable! But you’re not going to stop this at the pier. Once they got that message, hands were off then. For quite a while you know. Hands were off until like ‘85 really.

Editor’s Note: After this interview, Donald found out that the “International Boy Bar” police raid actually occurred in 1971, two years after Stonewall; yet his memory had conflated that horrible memory as part of the rational for queers being angry with the cops—leading toward the Stonewall riot. Interesting how memory serves to create a story, or not!