A Night at the Ariston Baths

by Michael Murphy

  Martin glared at him. “He sent you in here, didn’t he? And you’d take his side over mine? After all we’ve been through together?”

  “Yes, Martin. He has made every effort to provide you with a safe place to hide out, to heal, and to figure out what to do next. But you’ve not done any of those things. You are mired in mud and moving nowhere. For your own good, you need to let the past go and move on.”

  “I don’t know how to!” he yelled at Theodore.

  “Then figure it out. We’ll figure it out together. But it has to happen.”

  “I hate you,” Martin said.

  “No, you don’t. I’m the only friend you’ve got left. And you know that.”

  For half an hour they talked, eventually moving past Martin’s anger at being confronted.

  It did appear that Theodore’s conversation with Martin had done some good, even if it was mostly superficial. For several weeks, Martin behaved civilly toward Jasper. He still never left the apartment. He never even went downstairs to the store. Theodore and Jasper often talked about what Martin did upstairs by himself all day long.

  Toward the end of the year, after Martin had been with them for five months, everything changed with one simple event. Martin had been corresponding with someone on a regular basis since he’d arrived. Finally one day Theodore asked him, “Who are you writing to so regularly?”

  He half expected Martin to snap at him as he so often did, but instead he answered Theodore’s question.

  “Do you remember that night?” Martin asked.

  “You mean the night at the—”

  “Yes,” Martin answered, cutting him off.

  “Of course,” Theodore told him.

  “Do you remember the man that I was with that night?”

  “Yes,” Theodore said.

  “I think I wrote you that his family used their personal connections to get him freed from prison.”

  “Yes, I recall you saying that.”

  “It turned out that move cost the governor. There was a great deal of public outcry and backlash. The governor was ridiculed in the local New York newspapers for going against the wishes of the people of New York State with regard to the jury decision on his case. But it didn’t matter because my friend was long gone by then. He served barely thirty days before the governor acceded to the President’s request and granted the pardon. He was released immediately, and as soon as he was out, his family spirited him away from the city.

  “But apparently life wasn’t easy for him with his family constantly monitoring him and watching his every move. He somehow survived with them for about a year, but they were all fed up with one another, so they pulled another string and got him a position in Panama as part of the administrative support structure for the work on the big canal project. I guess they thought that if they sent him off to some faraway foreign land, he wouldn’t have sex with men anymore. Ha! Little do they know that men like us are everywhere in this world of ours.”

  “Is he in Panama now?” Theodore asked.

  “Yes. And it’s where I’m headed soon too.”

  “What?” Theodore was convinced he hadn’t heard Martin correctly. Had he really just said he was going to Panama?

  “I’m going to Panama too. He’s got me a job there, and I’ll be leaving soon to join him. Would you perhaps be able to make me a loan so that I can get myself to Panama? I’ll pay you back. You were right, of course. I need a new beginning, and living somewhere else is a good step right now.”

  “Of course,” Theodore readily agreed.

  WHILE MARTIN busied himself with sorting out arrangements to travel to Panama, he was more upbeat than he had been since his arrival.

  A few days later, Theodore retrieved their morning mail from the post office and found two envelopes addressed to Martin. Without opening either of them, though, Theodore immediately knew that they had a new problem to contend with. He didn’t want to give either envelope to Martin, but he had to do it.

  It only took one quick glance at Theodore when he walked back into the store for Jasper to see that something was wrong.

  “What’s happened?” he demanded.

  Theodore held up one of the envelopes for Jasper to read. When he heard Jasper’s gasp, he knew that he’d read it accurately. The envelope was a letter that Martin had written to his friend in Panama some weeks earlier. Someone had drawn a sharp line across the name and address of his friend and written in bold letters “Deceased” across the envelope.

  “Oh no,” Jasper whispered, instantly understanding what that single word meant for Martin.

  Theodore nodded solemnly.

  “Are you going to give it to him?”

  “Of course. I have to.”

  “When?” Jasper asked.

  “I might as well do it right now and get it over with.”

  “Do you want me to go with you?” Jasper asked him.

  “No. This is something I need to do alone, I think.” Theodore marched slowly up the stairs, then returned in under five minutes.

  “What happened?” Jasper asked him.

  “Nothing. I gave him the letter he’d sent, he saw the word written on top, and he opened the other envelope. It was official word from a coworker of his friend in Panama that his friend contracted malaria and died several weeks ago.”

  “How did he react?” Jasper asked.

  “He didn’t,” Theodore told him.

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “That doesn’t sound good,” Jasper told Theodore.

  “Too true,” Theodore agreed.

  Several times during that day, Theodore spoke about needing to go check on Martin, but they were beyond busy that day, and he simply was not able to get away to do that. When their workday ended and they went upstairs, neither knew what to expect. While Jasper started dinner, Theodore went to check on Martin. He returned a few minutes later. “Will he be joining us for dinner?” Jasper asked.

  “No. He said he’d rather just be by himself tonight.”

  “Understandable,” Jasper commented.

  The remainder of their evening passed quietly.

  The following morning was busy again. Even so, Theodore was uneasy for some reason. Had they not been so busy, he likely would have felt more on edge than he had. When Martin didn’t appear for lunch, the worry that had been half hiding in the back of Theodore’s brain blasted full force to the front of his mind.

  Knocking on the door to Martin’s bedroom, Theodore called out, “Martin? Martin? Are you awake?”

  He paused a moment, listening for Martin’s voice. But all he heard in response to his question was silence. Theodore knocked again and reluctantly reached for the doorknob. He hesitated for a moment before deciding to be a man and just open the door. He was trying desperately to convince himself there was nothing wrong, that he was simply allowing his overactive imagination to create worry that wasn’t really there.

  The curtains in Martin’s room were still drawn, making the room dark and difficult to see clearly. Theodore walked across the room decisively and pushed the curtains aside so he could see what was happening.

  “All right, Martin,” Theodore said, turning back toward the bed. “Don’t you think it’s time….” The remainder of that sentence would remain unspoken. Martin lay on his back in bed, propped up on several pillows. For the first time since he’d arrived, Martin looked peaceful. His hands lay one on top of the other in his lap.

  But while Martin looked peaceful, Theodore was not. He wanted to step to the bed and shake Martin, to wake him up, but he couldn’t bring himself to cross the short distance. He stared at Martin for nearly a full minute, finally managing to move himself forward. He reluctantly reached out. Martin was cold.

  Theodore quickly backed away from the bed until his back slammed into the wall. He stopped his retreat and started to slide away from the bed. When he finally made it to the door, he turned and ran through the apartment and down the stairs into the s
tore.

  “Jasper!” Theodore yelled.

  “What’s wrong?” Jasper asked, immediately turning away from a customer who had come in while Theodore was upstairs.

  “Quick. Go get the doctor… and the sheriff. Hurry.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Fast. Go.”

  “Theodore?” he heard the customer ask. “Are you all right?”

  “No, ma’am. I’m not okay. I’m afraid we’re going to have to close the store. We’re got… we’ve got a major problem we have to handle. I’m terribly sorry for the inconvenience.”

  Everything was a blur after that, with one man after another coming into the store and immediately upstairs. Theodore was numb with shock and eventually with grief. He and Jasper closed the store but remained near the door.

  When his father came in, Theodore hugged him and shed a few tears in the comfortable embrace of the man who had first and longest loved him.

  His father was there when the doctor delivered his opinion.

  “It appears he took a fatal overdose of some sort. He went to sleep and drifted deeper and deeper into unconsciousness, eventually ceasing to breathe without a struggle. He expired peacefully in his sleep.”

  When the doctor left them, Theodore’s father turned to his son and asked, “Theodore, why didn’t you tell me he was back? How long has he been here?”

  When Theodore did not answer, Jasper offered the answer, “For five months.”

  “Five months?” his father sounded incredulous. “Oh, my poor boy. Please don’t keep secrets like that from me again. I would have helped you in some way if I’d known.”

  “No. I don’t think you could have. I don’t think there was anything anyone could have done to help. He was a broken man.”

  “I might not have been able to help him, but I could have helped you and Jasper while you dealt with him. You are my boys.”

  Those four words caused both Theodore and Jasper to look up at Theodore’s father. “Yes, I mean exactly what I said. I may be an old man, but I know what I see. I know a few things about the world. You are my boys, and I love you both, and I will always be here to do whatever I can for both of you. All you have to do is talk to me.”

  Theodore cried on his father’s shoulder for some time after that. The remainder of that day was a bit of a blur. His father and Jasper made all of the arrangements necessary for Martin to be laid to rest the following day beside his parents in the local cemetery. There was no public ceremony.

  Theodore hoped that with Martin’s body, he could bury a lot of his own personal pain, but such was not to be. For many weeks, he was in deep pain and filled with remorse over Martin’s death.

  “You need to stop blaming yourself,” Jasper said to him one night over dinner.

  “What?” Theodore asked, having missed what Jasper had said.

  “You are clearly blaming yourself for what happened to Martin, but it is not your fault. You did everything you could for the man. I hate to see you hurting like this.”

  “I should have seen it coming,” Theodore said with a sad sigh.

  “No, you couldn’t. The man was such a total wreck.”

  Theodore touched his hand to Jasper’s face, giving him a gentle smile. “I love you, you know that, don’t you?” Theodore asked.

  “Yes, I know. And I love you as well. And will until the end of time.”

  “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “You never have to find out so don’t even think about such things,” Jasper told him.

  Epilogue

  THE FIRST part of 1969 was especially difficult for Theodore. He had been hospitalized a couple of times due to simple things that his aged body could not fight off as effectively as it once had. Those episodes took a toll on him and left him feeling quite tired and defeated by age. On more than one occasion, he felt captive to his own body.

  But in late June of that year, Theodore had a remarkable turnaround. A very confused newscaster was reporting on an incident that had started in New York City in the early hours of June 28, 1969. Theodore had paid rapt attention as the newscasters described the melee that ensued from yet another police raid on a gay bar in lower Manhattan, and how stunned the cops had been that the queers didn’t meekly follow orders as they always had. They hadn’t hung their heads in shame and marched into custody, obeying every order as the cops tried to destroy their gathering places and ruin their lives.

  Theodore laughed with joy at the bafflement of the newscaster as he reported on the strange story. Theodore had never heard of the Stonewall Inn and doubted he would have enjoyed visiting such a place, but he knew the word “Stonewall” would go down in history as a watershed moment in gay American history.

  This was what Theodore had been waiting for since 1903. He had known it was coming. It wasn’t a question of if, but of when and where. Theodore had known the time was close at hand, and he’d hoped he could last long enough to see it happen.

  That night his wishes were fulfilled and his dreams became reality. That night a band of drag queens and dykes and “deviants” who had been pushed once too often, boldly said they would not take the abuse any longer. Someone snapped and said, “Enough is enough.” Others joined in, and together, for the first time, they fought back; they were not going to let the police bully them ever again. The long awaited revolution had started.

  Theodore actually laughed out loud after the newscast ended. He clapped his aged hands together with delight. He hadn’t felt so happy in years. He had done it. He had survived long enough to witness the beginning of something brand-new.

  After years of contending with a body ravaged by time, that night Theodore felt something other than pain. Theodore, as much as his health allowed, felt excitement. He laughed, he was upbeat, he felt alive. And most important of all, he felt hope for the future. Not his future, since he knew his days were limited, but hope for the futures of the hundreds of thousands of others.

  That night, with Jasper, his partner of more than sixty years, by his side, Theodore lay back onto his pillow and sighed with great satisfaction. He was so damned proud of those who had had the courage to stand up, to say no more, and to fight back. Theodore was overwhelmed with pride. He hadn’t been brave enough to do what they had done. But it was a different day now from when he had lived in New York City in 1903.

  He fell asleep with a smile on his face, excited to have lived long enough to see one era end and another one begin.

  Author’s Note on Historical Events

  THE POLICE raid on the Stonewall Inn in 1969 was a pivotal event for gay folks no longer buckling under antigay police raids, but it was far removed from the first raid on a specifically gay establishment or gathering. Police had been singling out gay men for especially harsh treatment for decades by the time Stonewall rolled around in 1969.

  Shortly after the turn of the century, in a time when gay men were commonly identified as degenerates and perverts, the first acknowledged raid of a business establishment targeted specifically at gay men occurred in New York City on February 21, 1903. At about 1:45 a.m., police descended on the Ariston Baths, a Turkish and Russian bathhouse, and detained seventy-eight men who were customers along with a number of bath employees. Housed in the basement of the Ariston Apartment building at 1730 Broadway, at the northeast corner of Broadway and West 55th Street in Manhattan, the Ariston Baths, by all accounts, was a very nice establishment.

  The only reason the police were interested in the baths and what happened there was that members of one of the many local morality societies who felt it their duty to safeguard the virtue of all New York residents somehow had learned that during the wee hours of the morning, men who frequented the Ariston Baths were engaging in sexual activities with one another. They took their complaint to the police, who sometimes worked hand-in-hand with these groups and at other times tolerated them. But these groups were typically organized by very well-to-do men, men to whom politicians listened, so the police
were forced to listen to them as well.

  There were a variety or morality societies or social purity societies in operation in New York City during those years, most famously the Committee of Fourteen, the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, and the Society for the Prevention of Crime. Excellent records from these groups survive to the present day and provide fascinating insight into how the focus of the groups shifted frequently from one issue to another.

  The Society for the Prevention of Crime was the driving force behind the raid on the Ariston Baths in 1903. At that time, the Society had the ear of the mayor’s office, which they put to good use in their campaign to enforce moral regulations. With its power and influence at its greatest, they targeted the Ariston as a hotbed of homosexuality.

  An unspecified number of police officers were sent to the Ariston Baths as customers for up to a week prior to the actual raid. One of the officers testified in the later trials that he had been posing as a customer several days in the week leading up to the raid on February 21st. The arrests made were all for acts allegedly committed on that particular Saturday night. I have often wondered if those undercover officers might have engaged in any activities themselves during the weeklong undercover investigation. It would not surprise me if they had, but this is something we will never know for sure.

  At about 1:45 on the morning of Saturday, February 21, 1903, an army of uniformed police moved in and raided the Ariston Baths. It was a Saturday night so the place was busy. When the police took over, they blocked all of the doors and went throughout the entire facility rounding up all of the men, including those who had tried to lock themselves in their private rooms. From all accounts, the police were especially homophobic in their jeers and taunts as they rounded up the many bathers in the facility that night. When everyone was corralled, there were seventy-eight customers plus six staff who were detained.

  With a table set up in the middle of the facility, one by one they had the customers who had been detained marched in front of them. Each time a man appeared, still wrapped in just a sheet, the inspector looked at his undercover officers. If they could positively say that they had observed the man engaged in sexual activities with another man, he was placed under arrest. In other cases, where the undercover officers were not sure or did not have any recollection, the men were released, but only after their names and addresses had been taken down and they had been sternly criticized for frequenting an establishment such as the Ariston. From information reviewed, a number of men gave fictitious names and addresses.