“My heart’s beating really fast,” I say.
“That’s normal,” Stephen says. “The first time I protested, I felt like Judy Garland playing Carnegie Hall. Just breathe and enjoy your first drag show.”
“Drag show?” I ask.
“Look at us,” he says. “We’re serving Wall Street realness.” He winks at me, because calling something realness is a throwback to a ball he took us to last summer. It was the most fun ever. “All we have to do now is act.”
When Stephen first told me and Judy about ACT UP, he said it wasn’t so strange that he had found his calling as an activist, because it was close to his first love, acting. Acting, activism, action, they’re all based on creating authenticity in an artificial world. Stephen never was an actor, though. He was a lawyer, and not the kind who got rich defending corporations and screwing people over. He helped refugees resettle into the country. But he had to stop working when his health got bad, or maybe the agency he worked at thought he’d scare the refugees. There was something ironic about a man with AIDS helping resettle immigrants, since people with AIDS are banned from entering the country. But his lawyering is all over anyway. Activism and being a rad uncle are his only jobs now.
“You loaded up your camera with fresh film?” he asks.
“It’s ready to go.”
“Remember, take some photos and then run. We made a deal, okay?” The deal is that I’m allowed to photograph the action but not be a part of it. Because he won’t have me getting booked by the cops, even if chances are I’d immediately be released.
“I don’t care about getting arrested,” I tell him.
“And I don’t care that you don’t care. Leave the risks to those of us who are going to die soon,” he says.
I hate when Stephen does this. He makes these throwaway jokes about his imminent death, which I choose to believe isn’t coming anytime soon. I choose to believe that a medical breakthrough is on the horizon and will arrive just in time to save his life. But I don’t say this. I’ve tried before, and it upsets him. He says he wants to have hope, but not too much hope. “Too much hope will just kill me faster,” he said to me once. I don’t know exactly what he meant by that. But another time he said to me, “It’s the anger that’s kept me alive, you know. Without the anger, I’d have joined José by now. I just have too much to scream about to leave just yet.”
Behind us, one of the seven men, the most handsome one, calls out, “It’s almost nine. We should go in. Here are your badges.” The man hands us fake trader ID badges, with false names but our real photos on them. I stare at mine for a moment, thinking this is exactly who my parents pray I will turn into one day. Something else hits me hard—that when I strip away the punk hairdos and the alternative style, I look so much like my dad. I think about how easy it would be if this were who I was, a person who liked his red ties, and his boring haircuts, and his trades and deals and golf games. A person who didn’t like boys, who didn’t hate convention, who wasn’t so angry. For a moment, I even wish for this, for an easy life. But this wish just makes me angrier, fuels me more. It reminds me that what I want, what I truly want, is to be loved and accepted for being me.
“We’re going in through the west staircase. As soon as we make it to the trading floor, we need to move fast. We need to do this before security realizes and stops us. Does anyone have to use the bathroom? Best to use it now.” Everybody shakes their heads. “Okay, let’s do it. And remember why we’re doing this. Burroughs Wellcome’s stock has risen forty percent since they started selling AZT, and the drug is still unaffordable for even a person with above-average income. We will shame them into lowering that price even if they throw us in jail for it again.”
We enter the building without a hitch, flashing our fake ID badges to a bored security guard. I feel like I did when Judy and I snuck into Danceteria once, except this time what waits for us on the other side isn’t a live performance from Grace Jones. It’s the New York Stock Exchange. As we walk up twenty flights of stairs, the men all joke with each other. “Nice ass,” one of them says to the one in front of him, as he gently spanks it. The one in front shimmies a little. “Now remember,” another says, “do not cruise the traders, no matter how much they may resemble Christopher Reeve.” I love this about these guys, their ability to laugh through their anger, to find light even in injustice. When we reach the top, Stephen turns to the group, and in his most dramatic Joan Crawford, he says, “Don’t fuck with us fellas. This ain’t our first time at the stock exchange.” The men all nod to each other in solidarity, and then we open the door.
I momentarily freeze when the door opens to reveal the trading floor. There’s something majestic about it. All those people in their muted colors, all those computers, all those lights. People moving so fast that they barely notice each other. You can almost hear the numbers crunching. You can almost feel bank accounts getting fatter, and land being destroyed, and people being taken advantage of, and the stink of greed and death being spritzed into the air like those perfume samples in the Bloomingdale’s lobby. Everything about the energy of this place says that what happens here changes life, for the better if you’re one of the chosen few, but mostly for the worse.
“Art!” I hear my name being screamed and I snap to attention. Stephen and five of his friends have already chained themselves to the balcony of the stock exchange. “Art!” Stephen screams again. I realize I haven’t taken a single photograph. My camera is dangling limply from my neck. I raise it up to my eyes, closing one of them, my eyelid twitching nervously, my hands shaky. I snap one photo, then another. Behind me I hear voices: “Hose those faggots down. They like that,” one says. “Throw ’em in jail. They like that more,” responds another. It’s just high school, I think to myself. It’s all high school. This is just another locker room, another safe space for straight assholes to spew their hate. I point my camera at the homophobes and snap. I imagine the click and the flash are bullets, plunged DEEP into their hateful asshole hearts.
“It’s almost nine,” another voice says. In the chaos, I can’t tell if it’s an activist or a trader. I move my camera toward the activists now. It’s almost nine. It’s showtime.
The bell rings. The opening bell, marking another start to another day of financial corruption. Except this day, nobody hears it. What they hear, what we all hear, is the sound of foghorns. Loud and invasive, they take over the space. I snap away as the activists blow those foghorns, and I see the hint of a smile on Stephen’s face. I wonder if he’s also thinking about that time he told me that Cher’s voice is like a foghorn, calling all the queens to her shores and warning them of the many navigational hazards ahead. Probably not. He’s probably thinking of how he’s changing the world, righting its wrongs. And it’s more than a smile on his face now. It’s a look of sheer exhilaration. He’s LIVING right now. It’s like he’s the most alive person in the world. And then I realize I am LIVING too, and it feels amazing.
The activists unfurl a banner that reads “SELL WELLCOME,” a message to the traders about the pharmaceutical company that has jacked up the price of AZT. They’ve shut down trading. They’re my heroes.