The Family

Several weeks ago, a new friend was in town, and, as is my habit with friends old and new, I took him for a walk on the Christopher Street piers, but is that what one calls them anymore? When I think of the piers of yore, let’s say during the “Paris is Burning,” era, and before, my mind’s eye blinks with memories of: old broken wooden pylons, a scummy river, cruisy, sometimes mustachioed men who did and did not look like Al Pacino as they took up the hunt once again—what would exhaust them? That would come later, with AIDS, and then again with crystal meth, and then again with the galvanizing effect of hope, and real love, and the acceptance of life’s true companions—and then there were the various queens of both sexes and all races who could not afford a room at the Jane Hotel, and who could not bring their lovers home to their parents. So, they hung out and made love and cursed one another and had each other’s backs on the Christopher Street piers, which, during the late nineteen-seventies, and all through the eighties, always looked as though it was about to sink into the river. I am drawn to water—it’s my favorite element, right up there with the smell of bodies I like, or like to admire—and there is no better way to get to know someone than to take them to see some water: it makes people reflective, and when people are reflective, you can hear their innermost thoughts, even if they don’t say them. My young friend wanted to know about the people on the pier, and I told him that while some of the players may have changed and clothing styles had changed, along with certain verbal expressions and some self-protective viciousness or long suffering silence, it had always been a predominately gay world, the only place some people could afford to make a family in, and feel safe in, and looked after, and it’s my hope, in this new world, I’m telling my friend now, that public pockets of declared queer love and freedom like the Christopher Street piers, won’t be eradicated in the inevitable rush to feel less than different.