It’s June 27, 1969. New York City. You’re a drag queen, dapper butch, high femme or a fag, and you’re all revved up as you apply the finishing touches to your best look before heading toward the bar on Christopher Street down in the Village.

You walk into the Stonewall Inn and feel that familiar blurring of sensual lines that prevents you from separating the music’s pulse from the steamy, scotch-scented air from the welcome sight of hundreds of non-vanilla people swaying toward, leaning on, flirting with and touching each other. The laughter and intimacy are so intense, you nearly swoon.

Before catching up to the friends you came here for, you go up to the bar. You’re about to order a drink when the lights signal that someone suspicious has arrived. All touching stops. The laughter gives way to cautious conversation. The music plays on, but nobody’s dancing, as cops file in the door, shooting dirty looks and checking IDs.

They end up loading a handful of people into a paddy wagon and driving them away.

You’re not sure what triggers it all, but right after those arrogant police drive off with their terrified prey, holy hell breaks loose. Rage sweeps through the crowd like an open flame chasing gasoline fumes, and you seriously don’t know who’s more afraid of the anger, the queers or the cops.

But once their reinforcements move in, the police get all full of themselves again. One of them decides he doesn’t like your looks (or maybe he likes them too much) and he yells right at you for the others to hear, “Was you the one that hit me? Huh? I’m talking to you!” Then a couple of the others help him punch you five or six times and finish off with a hard smack in the face before slamming you into one of the paddy wagons at the curb.

In the span of two hours, you’ve gone from spiffing yourself up for a wild night out to lying crumpled on the dark, cold floor of a police van. Just forty-five minutes ago, you were surrounded by eyes so full of energetic anticipation, you could barely contain your excitement, and now you’re sobbing uncontrollably and the eyes of the guard looking down at you hold nothing but disgust and contempt.

During the hours that follow, you’re booked and subjected to more humiliation than you’d have believed you could actually live through, until when they finally lock you in a tiny cell all alone, you’re almost relieved at first. Then the spatial and temporal claustrophobia start to set in, and you panic at the thought that you’re powerless to break free from this room, that you have no idea how long they can keep you. Can they hit you some more and get away with it because you’re homosexual?

And then, amid the exhaustion, pain and mortification, a single steadying thought makes its way through. Briefly, you wonder if all political prisoners reach a similar emotional plateau. You hope they do. There’s not much to base it on, but the thought is that maybe what happened on Christopher Street last night will somehow spark a change that will someday lead to a world where people like you can hold hands out in broad daylight, proclaim their love before all the world to see, and walk tall among their peers with nothing to hide.

You truly believe that those images are what got you through the hours before your release.

When they set you free, it doesn’t take you long to learn from your friends that everybody’s going out again tonight in a show of solidarity, to demand equal rights. It’s a terrifying prospect, but now that you have those images in your head, nothing’s going to keep you off the streets.

*****

Forty years later, we are those images come true – holding our lovers’ hands out in broad daylight, proclaiming our love for all the world to see, and walking tall among our peers with nothing to hide.

A friend of mine recently told me that the “scene out of Desert Hearts where the two women are driving down the highway in their big-assed car – nothing on the road but them and some roadkill – full sky of shiny, bright stars – an arm slung carefully over the back of the seat, convertible top down, wind racing through their hair” always reminds her of our history.

That movie was set in 1950s Nevada, long before the Stonewall Riots, but in the brief scene below I swear I can see our pre-Stonewall selves cautiously peering at the exuberant, out and proud people so many of us are today. You’ve seen it a million times, but watch it again and let yourself fill up with pride in who you are and gratitude for the brave queers who dreamed up our liberation and took to the streets for us 40 years ago.