The long, strange trip to recognition.
Last night I attended the world
premiere of “Upstairs: The Musical,” a dramatic musical tribute to the 32
victims of the tragic 1973 fire at the Upstairs Lounge, one of the most heinous
hate crimes in the history of the American gay rights struggle. As I sat there waiting for the show to start,
just amazed at the excited, positive vibe pulsating from the audience, I couldn’t
help but recall the day I jumped on this strange wonder train that has been the
story of the Upstairs Lounge.
I grew up in New Orleans and I
vividly remember the ghastly images shown on the news in the aftermath of the
fire. Charred forms, grotesque
mannequins that were once human beings, frozen in the throes of death and protruding
from the scorched, barred windows were the images seared into my young mind at
the time of the tragedy. When, later in
life, I became involved in paranormal research, the “old Upstairs” seemed a
natural place to want to investigate.
The stairs to the old Upstairs Lounge.
I encountered the “old Upstairs”
more personally when, during my meeting with Jimmy Massacci, building manager
and owner of the Jimani Bar (located on the ground floor just below what was
once the Upstairs Lounge), I got to tour the site. Massacci pointed out charred bricks and wood,
a third floor that had barely changed since the days of the Upstairs, and the
very window where the charred mannequin body had been. Yet the story had only just started to sink
in.
About a month later, in July of
2010, members of Louisiana State Paranormal Research Society and I assembled at
the site of the “old Upstairs” to begin our investigation. It was miserably hot inside, and in some
areas stiflingly silent, and during a solo EVP (electronic voice phenomena)
session I reached out to the Upstairs dead; though I did not know whether or
not I had any replies, I remember my words exactly: “I promise you I will do the best I can to
tell your story,” I said. “I’m not gay,
but I will find a way to get in touch with the gay community and to make them
aware that you are still here.” A
chilling EVP response was captured saying:
“Promise me . . .”
Almost exactly a year later,
after my story about the Upstairs investigation and our findings had been
published on the web, I was still puzzling over how to get the attention of a
community whose members I didn’t know and who weren’t paying any attention to
me. Then one day, out of the blue, I was
contacted by a woman named Misti Ates.
She broke the ice immediately by telling me, “You’re going to think I’m
crazy, but since I read your story two weeks ago I have not had a minute’s
peace! We have to do something about
this!”
Misti Ates (right) and wife Catherine Gaither.
Well, imagine my surprise when I
learned that Misti Ates had been voted Lesbian of the Year and was Grand
Marshal of the New Orleans PRIDE parade that very year, and that further, she
was actively involved in organizing in the gay community! I would say she “came out of nowhere” but, as
I was shortly to learn, “the guys” of the Upstairs have a way of bringing the
right people together at the right time.
Throughout the remainder of 2011
and 2012, Misti and I, supported by her wife Catherine and several of their
friends, made deciphering and telling the Upstairs story a genuine
priority. Admittedly, I took a little
bit of a back seat to the powerhouse organizer that is Misti Ates – I had
discovered that the dead of the Upstairs were still waiting to “come down” from
their closeted hiding place, and Misti readily accepted that knowledge as truth
and just ran with it! She accompanied me
on a return visit to the Upstairs where she and Catherine met Jimmy Massacci
and went on a tour of the place; she immediately reached out to friends who
might be able to help her rethread some of the skeins of this almost
forty-year-old story.
Gravesites were
found – from those in the anonymous fields of the Holt Cemetery to, most
recently, the last resting place of Reverend Bill Larson, the burned man of the
window who became a mute, but powerful symbol of the journey as a whole; relatives were found and Misti would always reach out to them tactfully and
compassionately; and survivors and other members of the gay community who remembered the event were located and asked to share their stories. In
the early summer of 2012, Misti and I, together with LSPR Society founder
Bernadine LeBlanc, and my daughter, who was an eyewitness to some of the
unexplained phenomena at the location, were filmed for an episode of SyFy TV’s
“Ghost Hunters” series. Although some
might frown on this as grandstanding, it must be understood that the show’s
producers had already happened on the story through mining of my website: we
stepped in and agreed to be filmed in order to keep these “reality TV stars”
from turning the story into a complete sideshow.
Then on June 24th, 2012, I joined
Misti, Cat, and two of their closest friends at the Upstairs site for a tiny,
private memorial where we simply laid flowers and read the names of the dead,
and renewed our promise to tell their story to the world.
Photograph of plaque commemorating the Upstairs Lounge victims.
Fast forward to last night and
you can imagine, then, some of the emotions going through me. It had been, very definitely, a long, strange
trip, sometimes a roller-coaster with dark tunnels and dizzying heights – and last
night was one of those heights as “Upstairs: The Musical” deftly rose to the
occasion. Each of the performers in the
ensemble cast knew the weight of the responsibility they carried in attempting
to translate such a tragic, hateful event into musical theatre. But instead of dwelling only on the tragedy
and the hate, the performers took the high road and fulfilled both the audience’s
desire and the requirement of history to know more about whom these men were
that died so brutally. So what we saw
weren’t just doomed gay men – indeed, one of the dead, Willie Inez Warren, was
just a mother who stopped by the club to pick up one of her sons – but amalgamations
of an “everyman” that combined all the possibilities that might have been true
of every man in the bar that tragic day.
Lost love, faded dreams, true love, commitment in the face of hate and
prejudice, ferocity, and above all, humanity were all aspects of the Upstairs
dead; pick anyone that you like from the list of victims, they were all
represented last night.
Scene from "Upstairs: The Musical"
Certainly there were standouts
among the performers: Katrina McGraw as
Inez, Garrett Marshall as Buddy, and Patrick Dillon Curry as Mitch all turned
in powerhouse performances. The musical
score and lyrics of show creator Wayne Self provided the perfect vehicle for
the telling of the Upstairs story, with one song in particular – the plaintive “I’ll
Always Return” – destined for anthem status.In fact, the only detractions worth mentioning are a sound system that could
use some improvement and uncomfortable metal chairs in portions of the audience
seating.
Speaking of the audience, there were several
representatives of the Metropolitan Community Church present, of which the
Reverend Larson was a member, as well as representatives of St. George’s
Episcopal Church, St. Mark’s Methodist Church, and St. Anna’s Episcopal Church,
all of which opened their doors and their hearts in the aftermath of the
Upstairs fire. In a moment when even the
families of many of the deceased would not step up to claim the bodies of their
own, these congregations stepped in to do the right and honorable thing. So it was with interest that, occasionally
during the show, I would glance over to the reserved seating area, where the
congregation representatives and their friends were sitting, just to gauge
their reactions.
Members of several churches who stepped up for the
victims at the time of the Upstairs fire watch intently.
What I saw there were a group of
people enthralled by what they were experiencing; watching a performance that
certainly must have transported them back to the awful day and the weeks that
followed the fire, their faces were a mix of enjoyment, a few tinged with sadness,
perhaps some others stung by regret. Yet
over all there was a prevailing sense of one emotion: pride, the pride of
having at last done right by the Upstairs dead.
Show Creator Wayne Self addresses the audience.
As for me, I took away a kind of “mission
accomplished” satisfaction and not a little contentment in having kept a
promise. “I promise I’ll do the best I
can to tell your story,” I said to Bud Matyi and the other victims when they
were still waiting in the darkness of the “old Upstairs.” I am content today because I know, I can feel
it: the dead have come down, they have come out of the closet of obscurity that
was the fire and death and the past.
They have come out to join the vibrant proud community that they hoped
for and gave their lives for. They have
come out at last.
LISTEN TO THE MOVING "I'LL ALWAYS RETURN" AT THIS LINK:
No comments:
Post a Comment