All events leading up to 1995 suggested that the Up Stairs Lounge had fallen by the wayside—a sad but seemingly isolated incident that spoke more to fire codes and public safety initiatives than to human rights in America. That the fire occurred at a gay bar, where homosexuals met and pursued each other sexually—as if the Lounge were a bathhouse where men paraded in towels and sodomized each other in stalls—seemed to diminish its power as a metaphor of injustice.50 Some New Orleanians, of course, had made valiant efforts to revive the story.
Just a year before Brecht memorialized the dead, in 1994, the site of the fire became a stop on a “gay heritage” walking tour of the French Quarter, led by historian Roberts Batson, but it was hardly a point of pilgrimage or reflection for most who knew the story, much less the uninformed who passed by unaware. Between 1989 and 1991, Johnny Townsend, a local author, had heroically interviewed more than thirty Up Stairs Lounge survivors and then written a chronicle called Let the Faggots Burn. In conducting his research, he encountered widespread caginess and determined that there was still “such a strange feeling about the fire.”51 For example, Floyd Getchell, the brother of victim Horace “Skip” Getchell, sent Townsend a letter declining to speak about the fire. As explanation, Getchell expressed that he had no wish to “open an old wound” for himself. Townsend couldn’t get a local book publisher, much less a national press, to take on his completed manuscript—“these people aren’t very interesting,” one editor told him—so copies of it circulated about town, passed from friend to friend like a message moved along an underground network.52
The deadliest blaze on record in New Orleans history, as well as the largest mass killing of gays and lesbians in the United States until the 2016 massacre at Pulse, had become so downplayed that a 1991 exhibit at the Louisiana State Museum about historic fires in New Orleans managed to exclude the Up Stairs Lounge entirely.53 When Up Stairs Lounge survivor Stewart Butler and activist Rich Magill saw this display, they immediately brought the omission to the museum’s attention. “Rich and I picked up on that and said, ‘We’ve got to do something about this shit,’ ” recalled Stewart Butler. “So we started bitching and complaining.” Museum curator Wayne Phillips now characterizes the interactions more diplomatically. “The curator of the time, who put together the exhibition, and the museum director were both terribly embarrassed and ashamed,” he recalled. The museum’s solution was to place a small, text-based placard on the wall until the exhibit was taken down.54 No announcements or public apologies were forthcoming or considered necessary.
The Up Stairs Lounge was a tinderbox,55 calling to mind the days of home hearths and fire lighters so unstable they had to be hid away in metal chests. The tragedy proved to be a literal tinderbox, an inferno that destroyed a location, as well as a political tinderbox in the repression it exposed, of a nation refusing to acknowledge the very fact that homosexuals existed, and, finally, a psychological tinderbox in its spotlighting of an underclass of closeted gays who feared defining themselves as a minority group, lest they attract attention. By degrees, some survivors of the fire faced a fate more scandalous than that of the deceased: outed after their names were published in newspapers, shamed into silence by straights and fellow gays wishing to hurry past the event and hobbled by post-traumatic stress.56
In 1988, The Times-Picayune dedicated just one-quarter of one page, in an interior section, to an article about the fire’s fifteenth anniversary which included this blunt assessment from survivor Stewart Butler: “A tragedy that, as far as I know, no good came of.” On its twentieth anniversary, in 1993, there were no public events memorializing the Up Stairs Lounge, and again the Times-Picayune had a single story.57
Admittedly, a strange and polemic history surrounded this event. In the twelve months before the fire, beginning in June 1972, the death penalty had been halted by the U.S. Supreme Court, abortion legalized through Roe v. Wade, and American ground troops withdrawn from Vietnam, at least in principle, at the Paris Peace Accords. It seemed like a time of fundamental change, and, in a coup for the free press, The Washington Post won a Pulitzer Prize for its unfolding coverage of the Watergate break-in.
Dexter Brecht had been in high school in small-town Iowa when all this unfolded.58 Questions reverberated in his mind. How come he had never heard of the Up Stairs Lounge? Why hadn’t everyone? Gaining momentum, he implored those gathered to bring the story to the attention of the wider public, just as Christ had revived Lazarus, a man dead and entombed in a cave for three days in the Gospels. “We demand that the stone be rolled away,” proclaimed Brecht. “We must demand that it be unbound and set free.”59 The image of Lazarus emerging from the tomb in his burial shroud, foreshadowing the Resurrection, epitomized the journey of many MCC congregants—or gay Christians of any stripe—out of the darkness of the closet and into the light.60
With these words, Brecht announced the creation of a church committee to honor the fire victims. Its primary goal was to place a plaque or memorial at the site of the Up Stairs Lounge by 1998, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the tragedy. Such an initiative would elevate the legacy of the Up Stairs Lounge by making it one of just a few events in gay rights history to receive some form of permanent recognition before the millennium. Such a commemoration would also signify the attainment of an objective set forth by Troy Perry, the founding pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church, for a “living memorial” to ensure that the fire victims would never be forgotten—a call for public acknowledgment that had gone unanswered since 1973.61
As Brecht offered these views, he considered whether he wandered too far for his people to follow. Was he just refighting old wars? He wondered if his own deacon, Courtney Craighead, would abandon or support him in front of others. “He really didn’t feel like he wanted to bring it all back up again,” recalled Brecht. When the young minister had first come to New Orleans, he’d assumed “everyone involved would want to acknowledge and claim the significance of the event.”62 However, he met with reticence when he suggested the idea of memorializing the tragedy and rekindling its memory, an act that could potentially embarrass the city and its now vocal and tourist-friendly gay community. Every Labor Day weekend, tens of thousands of homosexuals poured into New Orleans to celebrate the festival of Southern Decadence.
Yet, unable to remain silent, the minister had chosen to speak his piece. “And let us hope there won’t be another fire,” he concluded. The man fell silent. The congregation was silent at first, too, then burst into applause. The St. Roch church was suddenly filled with a newfound energy, as well as the paradoxical euphoria that can flow from the venting of grief. Brecht ended the service with a blessing. Elated, he hugged Deacon Craighead and walked toward Mark Thompson of the Times-Picayune. The reporter had many questions. Although he had been born within days of this event, in July of 1973, and raised in New Orleans by liberal parents, he had never heard about the Up Stairs Lounge until this day.63
People crowded in, impeding Brecht’s progress as they suddenly felt compelled to share stories and memories. Courtney Craighead reached Thompson ahead of Brecht and pulled him aside. “I spent most of that first night at Charity Hospital,” the deacon volunteered, his voice soft, “consoling those who were alive and identifying the dead.” He told Thompson that he would probably chair the committee to commemorate the fire victims. “This is really the first time it has been brought out,” Craighead continued, reflecting on the novelty of discussing the tragedy in public. Curiously, Craighead used the word “out” as if the bar fire itself had been closeted to this point. Yet, even with this change, Courtney Craighead leaned in and asked Thompson not to publish his name in a story about the fire, for fear of harassment.64
: ACT I :
FIRE
CHAPTER 1
Brotherhood of Men
June 24, 1973
Sunday started late that day, as Sunday mornings in New Orleans—then, and still now—tend to be annexed as part of Saturdays. Douglas “Buddy” Rasmu
ssen, manager of a popular Iberville Street gay bar, didn’t leave home much before noon. The day was roasting in a way distinct to the region, the sun beating on the clapboard Creole cottages of the Lower Garden District.1
Buddy’s lover, Adam Fontenot, roused himself as his beau showered and shaved, preparing for what would be the busiest day of the week. Sundays had become madcap occasions at Buddy’s bar since the establishment of a “beer bust” from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. That drink special—two hours of unlimited suds for one dollar, plus a refundable fifty-cent deposit for the mug—had proven an irresistible affair for a certain cadre of gay men. Adam usually accompanied Buddy to beer bust night, but he tended to eschew draft beer for the harder stuff.2
Although both Buddy and Adam were in their early thirties, in many respects they were a joining of opposites. Buddy was tall and winsome, with a basketball player’s physique. Adam, on the other hand, was short and a bit fey, as one said, more of a genteel Southern dandy. Their upbringings could not have diverged further. Buddy had left an abusive household in Houston at age eighteen and enlisted in the air force, while Adam hailed from landowners with a lineage that went back to the original French Acadians of Louisiana. Adam was university educated and spoke six languages fluently, while Buddy had managed a 7-Eleven. Buddy was out of the closet, while Adam remained conflicted about revealing his private life—even though Buddy had spent holidays with the Fontenot clan as Adam’s “friend.”3
Buddy always seemed to have a job, while Adam appeared, paradoxically, too smart for his menial work, which never lasted. Buddy made friends easily and told it like it was, while Adam was more of an acquired taste, a character who spoke with a faux-English accent to impress. Nevertheless, through some alchemy, the two men had met and fallen deeply in love. They were nearly inseparable in their four years of being together, buying a home and wearing rings to mark their commitment.4 Other gay friends aspired to a love like Buddy and Adam’s, even if their couplehood was not without risk. The boot heel of the law loomed as a constant threat to their acts of tenderness; either could be reported and arrested as sex criminals through various methods (for example, local ordinances made it unlawful to rent, lease, or buy a house for “homosexuals, lesbians or sex perverts”).5 Buddy and Adam’s cottage on St. Andrews Street could, therefore, be declared a house of ill repute and repossessed, if anyone cared to do so.6
Their home was what was called a “double,” with two front doors and two street addresses for the postman. Buddy shared half of the residence with Adam; they rented the other half to a redheaded welder named Linn “Rusty” Quinton, who was openly gay and wont to show off his work-hewn muscles in mesh T-shirts. Quinton, in fact, made extra cash by helping out on Sundays as a busboy for Buddy. The three housemates gravitated around the same scene—one that was sexually liberated if also community-minded, with singles and couples respecting each other’s monogamy, if so declared.7 Friends commonly used the word “lover,” as opposed to “boyfriend” or “partner”—the latter coming into vogue in subsequent decades—to signify a committed relationship. The terms “husband” and “fiancé” were not used except in jest. In an era when same-sex marriage did not exist, mainstream society perceived gay commitment ceremonies as make-believe. By 1973, Buddy had started noticing the overtures of a bar regular named Bill Duncan, but he and Adam had remained true to their promises.8
Theirs was a close-knit brotherhood of men, what Stewart Butler jokingly called a coterie of “friends, tricks, and associates,” in which almost everyone was gay and went by a nickname or slightly altered pseudonym to start fresh—away from their painful pasts.9 Most saw one another regularly and dined at each other’s homes. Many, as it happened, were also members of the nearby Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), but those who didn’t cotton to the image of a gay-friendly Jesus still made their way to the French Quarter to raise a glass to the Roman god of parties, Bacchus.
Buddy and Adam’s neighborhood boasted a protected society of gay men, whose proximity created a sense of family in a larger world dominated by prejudice. Just down the street from their home lay the cottage the MCC was then operating out of and, on the side, the rectory of gay pastor Bill Larson: a clean-cut, fatherly sort of fellow. A few blocks beyond that, MCC parishioner Ricky Everett—blond and petite, said to be precious-looking—was crashing at the apartment of Henry Kubicki, a proverbial tall, dark, and handsome sort. However, as only friends like Ricky knew, Henry’s “quiet cool” disguised serious hearing and vision impairments, which frustrated and confused admirers who sought him out solely for his looks.10
After a sudden breakup, Ricky had moved in with Henry on Coliseum Street until he could find more permanent digs, and the two shared a queen-size bed platonically.11 Ricky made the most of being unattached and had invited a twenty-year-old suitor named Ronnie Rosenthal to fly in from Atlanta that weekend. Ricky and Ronnie had hit it off at an MCC religious conference and wanted to explore their connection. They arranged for Ronnie to stay in a New Orleans suburb with Ricky’s mother, who seemed to be oblivious of her son’s sexuality. “It was no big deal,” recalled Ricky. “My mother just took it as a friend of mine visiting.”12
About a block away from Ricky and Henry stood a house on Prytania Street rented by Stewart Butler, the outspoken hippie of the group who grew hydroponic weed in the second story of his residence and listened to the Grateful Dead. “The shit that we’ve done, Lordy!” exclaimed Stewart’s longtime friend and partner in crime Steven Duplantis. “We used to make a hobby of going out and seeing how many we could pick up and bring back to Prytania Street, who got all of ’em first or how many each one of us got.” As a man who had only embraced his gayness in his late thirties, Stewart Butler was, in his own words, “making up for lost time.” Stewart could often be seen, as they said, on the prowl with his lover, Alfred Doolittle, and joined by their dog, a mix-breed terrier.13
The home of Mitch Mitchell was also close to Stewart’s domicile. A boisterous man, Mitch served as a deacon assisting Bill Larson at the MCC. Mitch had a garrulous, if not irascible, personality. Larger than life, he weighed about 300 pounds and proudly wore a necklace to notify medical personnel of his diabetes. Mitch’s lover, Horace Broussard, was a barber and a confirmed “chubby chaser”—for him, someone like Mitch was a rare and ravishing catch.14 In the promise of a new gay world in the early 1970s, Mitch and Horace made a nest like Buddy and Adam.
Living a bit farther north was MCC parishioner Herbert “Hugh” Cooley, who was probably still asleep in his apartment as the sun climbed to its apex. Hugh took over as bartender at 8:00 p.m. on Sundays, at the end of Buddy’s shift.15 All together, these men formed a makeshift family—singles, duos, and third wheels who conspired to hide one another’s sexualities from biological family members, who drove each other to doctor and dentist appointments, who loaned one another money, and who even, when necessary, retrieved each other from police lockup.
IT WAS STILL before noon when Buddy and Adam ducked into their car, rolled down the windows, and left St. Andrews Street behind as they headed downtown. The scaffolding of the Superdome, a crown of a public works project for the city and state, immediately came into view.16 About halfway finished, the football stadium’s skeletal frame looked like a cross between a UFO and a mushroom.
Soon glass towers of the Central Business District loomed, the largest of which was One Shell Square, a business center for Shell Oil.17 Fluorescent signs and department stores materialized as Buddy and Adam’s car crossed Canal Street, a major thoroughfare with a center-laid walkway that once housed the streetcar tracks memorialized in movies, brochures, and Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire. Canal Street dead-ended near the river and a recently installed statue of Joan of Arc, a gift to the city from Charles de Gaulle, the legendary leader of Free France. When the statue was unveiled in October 1972, Mayor Moon Landrieu hailed it for transforming what had been a “rundown area” into a “landmark showcase.” This was but one instance
of a city constantly slapping a fresh coat of paint on itself, lest it give in to decay and return to the state of nature; alligators would occasionally return through the drainage canals when the sluices were opened.18
Past Joan of Arc was the International Trade Mart, a riverfront tower and headquarters for the Port of New Orleans. Perched near the mouth of the mighty Mississippi, New Orleans had long been an entrepôt and the gateway to America’s breadbasket. The busy port, where casks and bales had floated south on barges and were transferred to oceangoing cargo ships before the river split into a delta and ran into the Gulf of Mexico, was a major source of revenue for the city.
The International Trade Mart building had been erected in the 1960s under the direction of Clay Shaw. A man of aristocratic bearing who wore seersucker suits and lived in a French Quarter mansion, Shaw had counted himself among the New Orleans elite. Years earlier, he had organized the 1953 sesquicentennial celebration of the Louisiana Purchase, an event that had attracted the newly elected President Dwight Eisenhower. Shaw’s position in the city seemed assured, having accompanied New Orleans mayors on trade missions. However, as only his close friends knew, Clay Shaw lived two lives: conservative businessman in public and homosexual bon vivant in private. His feat of compartmentalization had come crashing down when Jim Garrison, the Orleans Parish district attorney, bizarrely arrested him in 1967 and charged him with colluding to assassinate President John F. Kennedy.19
This would be the first and only trial brought against a living suspect for the killing of the president, and District Attorney Jim Garrison worked the limelight, as prosecutor, to his full advantage. Garrison postulated to the press, using defamatory tropes of the era, that Shaw’s involvement made the assassination a “homosexual thrill-killing.” The prosecutor loudly declared that an individual associated with the presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, named “Clay Bertrand” by the Warren Commission, was none other than New Orleans resident Clay Shaw. Garrison’s claim that Bertrand and Shaw were one and the same person, an apparent break in the case touted by the press as the final reveal of a “mystery man,” ultimately turned out to be a dubious connection, at best, and a knowingly baseless one, at worst. In fact, Garrison happened to be a man with his own set of demons: during his crusade, Garrison was concurrently investigated by an Orleans Parish grand jury for allegedly molesting a thirteen-year-old boy at the New Orleans Athletic Club.20
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