Pennsylvania Station

by Patrick E Horrigan

  Only near the end did Hepburn seem suited to the role. Eliza, now a “lady,” has found her tongue. She’s abandoning Higgins, for now she knows he will do anything, say anything not to admit the depth of his devotion to her. Frederick felt the power of Shaw’s myth accumulate over his head like a thundercloud ready to burst. I shall miss you, he tells her, not knowing the half of it. I’ve learned something from your idiotic notions. I confess that humbly and gratefully. She is defiant. I’ll marry Freddy, I will, as soon as I’m able to support him. He lashes back. Freddy! That poor devil who couldn’t get a job as an errand boy even if he had the guts to try for it! Woman, do you not understand? I have made you a consort for a king! And for the first time in the film, Frederick didn’t notice the inadequacy of Hepburn’s voice (he’d always had a weakness for musicals—indeed, he often worried he came across as “too musical”) when she sang how the country would still be ruled, how Windsor Castle would continue to stand, how they would all muddle through without him.

  Frederick drifted west toward the Port Authority after the movie let out, feeling how great an opportunity had been squandered. A great director. A fine star. All the resources and good will of the studio, of audiences across the country and around the world, all except for the most important thing, the one essential ingredient (he didn’t believe a word of Curt’s letter—I know you are the only man—not a single word of it).

  On the corner of 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue a group of seedy young men, their hair oiled, loitered near the subway entrance. Frederick lit a cigarette, leaned against the railing along the stairs, and watched them. Eventually, a boy with doe eyes separated from his companions after sharing a private joke, glanced almost imperceptibly at Frederick, and went down into the subway. Frederick followed, extinguished his cigarette, and hoped his bandaged fingers wouldn’t interfere with sexual pleasure.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Frederick hadn’t felt so excited in months. The sensation, however, was disagreeable in the extreme. He stood by the base of the statue of George Washington in front of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall amidst a handful of spectators. Facing north across Chestnut Street, he watched as Curt, along with thirty-three other men and ten women—for he had taken a precise head count (counting always helped to calm his nerves)—marched silently, solemnly, in a wide circle on the lawn. The men wore suits and ties, the women wore skirts and carried purses. All but Curt and one other man wore sunglasses. They carried neatly-printed signs whose blunt messages belied the apparent decorum of the proceedings.

  HOMOSEXUAL AMERICANS DEMAND THEIR CIVIL RIGHTS

  STOP DISCRIMINATORY PRACTICES AGAINST HOMOSEXUALS

  GOVERNMENT BY THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED

  SEXUAL PREFERENCE IS IRRELEVANT TO EMPLOYMENT

  HOMOSEXUALS ARE AMERICAN CITIZENS TOO

  15,000 HOMOSEXUAL AMERICANS ASK FOR EQUALITY

  OPPORTUNITY

  DIGNITY

  Small groups of men and some women congregated near the picket line. One of the protesters mingled among them, handing out leaflets. A reporter and camera crew arrived and stationed themselves at the edge of the lawn. But this blasted afternoon sun! It was starting to bother Frederick’s eyes. He pulled a pair of sunglasses from his breast pocket and put them on, maneuvering to keep directly behind two men, tourists apparently, who had stopped to see what all the hubbub was about.

  “I still don’t believe it! Somebody’s got to be kidding!”

  “If Negroes can do it, why not sexual deviants?”

  They chuckled and walked away, leaving Frederick an unobstructed view of the demonstration, at which point he noticed a somewhat larger group of spectators congregating beneath a tree at the other end of the plaza, near Sixth Street. He headed towards them (more comfortable, he thought, in the shade), but before he could reach his destination the protester handing out leaflets, who had crossed over to this side of the street, intercepted him. It was Harold.

  “Hello there!” he said, offering a leaflet. “You made it after all.”

  “Well—no, I—” Frederick began, feeling obliged to accept. “I was visiting my mother in Reading and thought I’d stop on my way back to New York—I have some friends in town and—”

  “The more support, the better,” he said reassuringly, as if he knew Frederick was merely coughing up excuses. They exchanged small talk about their respective journeys to Philadelphia. Then Harold bid him good day and proceeded with his task.

  Frederick disliked using his mother as an alibi. He hadn’t seen her in over a month, even though he’d promised to come back before the end of June. But she’d probably forgotten his promise by now, along with everything else they talked about. “Say hello to this nice young man,” she crowed to the residents and nurses at the Phoebe Home, and he covered up for her confusion, saying, Yes, I’m Clare’s son, Frederick, but suspected she just as soon forgot who he was. He unfolded the leaflet Harold had given him.

  FIRST ANNUAL REMINDER DAY

  July 4, 1965

  The Declaration of Independence says: “ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL.” But in no walk of life, and in none of his dealings, whether with his fellow citizens or with his governments (federal, state, or local) is the homosexual American citizen treated as equal to others; he is always placed in a status of inferiority. Systematically and unrelentingly, he is placed into and kept in the category of a second-class citizen. That the homosexual American citizen is a homosexual is always noted; that he is also an American citizen, with all that goes with that status, is always forgotten.

  Discomfited with what he considered the pamphlet’s exaggerations (“no walk of life, none of his dealings, always placed, always noted, always forgotten”), he merely skimmed the rest—

  …denied the equality of opportunity which…denied jobs which…given a less than fully honorable discharge…denied a security clearance…subjected to unceasing official harassment…hunted down and ferreted out…feels himself disowned and outcast…we now try to bring our case directly before the public…

  Not what you expect on a sunny Fourth of July, he thought, watching Curt and the other protesters, hoping, as he stood among the mostly silent witnesses, that anyone looking at him today (“They look so normal,” a teenage girl with a beehive hairdo said to her companion as they passed by) might think he was just another ordinary American.

  “You should all be married and have a family!” a woman shouted as she pulled a child along by the hand.

  “Hold your nose, it’s dirty here,” an elderly man said to the woman he pushed in a wheelchair.

  “I can’t read this filth,” a man muttered as he tossed a leaflet to the ground.

  Curt as yet seemed unaware of his presence. Frederick wondered when they might have an opportunity to speak. He daren’t approach him on the picket line. But at some point he would have to risk association with the group if he wanted a word with him. But what would he say? Why, indeed, had he come?

  Harold was back on the other side of the street again. Mighty awkward moment that was. He thought of their recent evening together. He’d forgotten himself, about two weeks ago, while heading up Fourth Avenue toward the subway. Harold summoned him as he passed by the antique shop and invited him to dinner. Frederick assumed he was “interested,” and though his feelings weren’t reciprocal (he half expected Harold to answer the door dressed in kimono with fan, then proudly show him around a junk-filled apartment—really, he had no tolerance for homosexuals like that)—nonetheless he thought the acquaintanceship might be worth exploring if only to get a good look at one of those Victorian doll houses. But when the door opened, there stood a tall, rather fit, not unattractive younger man. “I’m Marshall, we’ve been expecting you.” All night it was “we” this, “we” that: “we” like to go for walks on Sunday mornings, “we” tend to watch television before going to bed, “we” sometimes visit my nephew and his family in Rochester or Harold’s favorite sister in St. Louis. And the apartment was nothing like wh
at he’d imagined. It was in surprisingly good and surprisingly modern taste. He didn’t know why, by the end of the evening, he felt quite so alone—after all, he reminded himself, I am not nor have I ever been interested in Harold in that way, and Marshall, while a perfectly nice enough fellow, wasn’t exactly his type either (what is my type, he asked himself, watching Curt on the picket line. He looked adorable in his suit and tie, his hair cropped short and neatly combed. The look really became him). It was Harold who’d told him about the protest of military policies against homosexuals in front of the White House in May, the thrill of that experience, the belief they were doing something no one had ever tried before, the feeling they’d made a real breakthrough in consciousness, and the discussion afterward at the restaurant in Chinatown, how everyone was sorry the protest was over, everyone, that is, except Curt, who was still buzzing from the event (small as it was—just thirteen of them altogether). And then suddenly Curt stood up, right there in the middle of the restaurant, absurdly holding a pair of chopsticks, and said, “It doesn’t have to be over!” He proposed a picket in front of Independence Hall, every Fourth of July, “and we’ll call it the Annual Reminder, like a gay holiday,” to remind people there exists a group of Americans who still do not have the basic rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

  “And you know Curt,” Harold laughed confidingly, “there’s no stopping him when he gets an idea up his bonnet.”

  “I didn’t know you knew him so well,” Frederick said.

  But so what if he knows Curt better than I! he muttered as he walked home from dinner that night. So what if they’re lovers, for that matter! Something must have come over Curt since their breakup in Venice. He hadn’t disappeared, gotten sucked back with the tide of young people crashing every day onto New York City’s shores. He had survived. More than that, thrived. Didn’t seem to need Frederick’s apartment or money, his intelligence or wisdom, his concern or care, anymore. Maybe a trip to Society Hill, he thought suddenly, in Philadelphia, would give him some fresh sense of the kind of apartment tower they were designing on Park Avenue. It was meant as a sort of homage to the Federal-style townhouse—all red brick and white trim—and Society Hill, of course, was a treasure trove of such houses. He wouldn’t tell Harold, though, for he had urged him to come with them to Philly for the Fourth of July picket. The more support, he said, the better. Frederick wouldn’t cause further friction between them by saying he felt uncomfortable joining a picket for homosexual rights—indeed, that he quite disapproved of such an idea as homosexual rights. Let Harold think—let all the radicals think—he shared their point of view. No one need know what he really thought. But he would go to observe, and if someone asked, he would say he was stopping off on his way to New York—had been to Reading for the weekend—had some business to take care of in Philly—he’d think up some excuse.

  And so here he was. How could he not have anticipated how uneasy he would feel attending a homosexual rights demonstration, in broad daylight? And yet he wanted to speak with Curt—say something to him—though it wasn’t clear what he should say. Perhaps he only wanted to hear the words from Curt—the words he wrote in his letter—You are the only man who has ever really mattered to me. The rest of it (“What I want is not ‘marriage’ but something more free, I don’t belong to you, you don’t belong to me,” and so forth)—the rest of it he only wanted to forget. And maybe Curt had forgotten it too. Maybe that was just a young man’s protest in the face of onrushing maturity. In the face of reality.

  “When you’re as disliked as homosexuals, it takes a lot of guts to stand up for your rights.” Frederick realized the man who spoke was directing the comment to him, apparently assuming he was not homosexual (thank God). “I give them credit for what they’re doing.”

  “Yes,” Frederick said half-heartedly but turned away without further comment, heading toward Sixth Street. He’d had enough. Just when he reached the corner, however, thinking he’d hail a taxi to the Museum of Art, end this mad escapade altogether, he heard a woman’s voice call out his name.

  Bev came running across Chestnut Street. He hardly recognized her in a dress and heels. Trying not to show discomfort at being seen in the company of one of the demonstrators, he embraced her. He asked her whether the protest was going well.

  “I’d say so. The drill is, you smile and you smile and you offer a leaflet to everyone, whether they take it or not. We’re getting the message out, that’s the most important thing. How do you like my dress?” She swiveled her hips.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were a girl.”

  “You’ve no idea how much we fought the dress code. Curt especially. He kept saying, ‘we have to tear off our ugly frog skins and release the beautiful Fairy Prince underneath!’ I think they were ready to expel him from the organization.”

  “Well, the man in the suit is still the overwhelming norm in this country.” He said it without a trace of irony.

  “We thought sheer numbers of all kinds of people were more important,” she said a little combatively, “than projecting an image of ‘quality folks,’ but the conservatives won. And, brother, did they lay down the law: they said, ‘Picketing is not an occasion for an assertion of personality, individuality, ego, rebellion’”—she laughed gently—“‘generalized non-conformity or anti-conformity. The individual picketer serves merely to carry a sign. Not he but his sign should attract notice.’” Again she laughed. “‘No smoking or talking on line. If you’re interviewed by the media, you’re supposed to say ‘homosexual citizens’—”

  “I don’t see how you can make fun. Don’t you realize” (now his blood was starting to boil) “you run the risk of finding your picture in the paper, losing your job, getting arrested, winding up on an FBI list—”

  “I don’t like to picket, but we have to, we just have to. And the truth is, a weight has fallen off my shoulders. Today I think I lost my last bit of fear.”

  Frederick was sure it was a mistake to have come, the whole event a tactical error. And yet he couldn’t deny, there was something sweet about Bev. He’d always thought so. “How is Kay?” he asked.

  “She’s fine. Doesn’t she look cute in her dress? She can get away with it more easily than I. God, we’re so conscious of appearances, aren’t we?”

  “You have to be.” Now he was speaking imperatives.

  “Have you seen Curt?”

  “Yes—right behind you in the picket—”

  “No, I mean have you talked to him?”

  “No—I’m in Philly on business.” She looked skeptical. “Something I’m working on—a building—I wanted to see some houses in Society Hill, and I thought as long as I’m here—”

  “I think you should talk to him.” He wanted to ask why, but she made to leave. “I’ve got to get back. Come to the next Mattachine meeting in New York.”

  “We’ll see,” he said and thought, almost for her sake, it might be worth doing. Seeing her now was a good reminder of how fond he was of her. It was too easy to put people out of sight, out of mind. He looked at the leaflet still in his hand. “Annual Reminder.” People needed to be reminded homosexuals were persecuted. That homosexuals existed. But it wasn’t just homosexuals, he thought. Sometimes we need to be reminded our own loved ones exist. That was what had brought him here in the first place. Not that he wanted to talk to Curt necessarily. He had nothing to say to Curt. It was over between them. It ended the day they drove to Naples. The day he realized he might be Curt’s “home base” but never the one, true love of his life. No, now he just wanted to see him, be reminded of his presence. Even if only from a distance. For he has been part of my life, he thought. Things have changed, of course. I’ve changed. Gotten back to normal. And in the end it’s probably better this way (he scratched his thumb with his middle finger and began peeling off the nail). But when Harold told him about the demonstration, and that Curt was one of the main organizers, Yes, he felt, I have to see what my young man
has accomplished for himself.

  Bev had returned to the protest. She and Curt were standing to the side of the picket line, talking or arguing, it was hard to know. He wondered if she was telling him of their conversation just now. Curt still wasn’t acknowledging his presence. Either Bev wasn’t speaking of it, or, if she were, Curt wasn’t interested. He wondered if what he’d said in his letter was still true (“I know you are the only man who has ever really mattered to me”). But why did he care? That was almost a year ago. He retraced his steps towards the plaza in front of Independence Hall. There was something foolhardy about the protesters, he thought. But also heroic. And the two things, no doubt, went hand in hand. Me, I’ve never been that kind of person. Never belonged to any party, subscribed to any creed (Catholicism?—he’d abandoned it years ago—now he just went to Mass on Sundays in tribute to the past—“once a Catholic…”). No, my contribution to society is in the things I make. I do what I can do. He took off his sunglasses. Anyway, he added, I’m here to show my support (the more support, the better—that’s what Harold kept saying). Isn’t that enough?