As was reported in the Daily News, one of the young men there in support of Daniel Rodriguez was quoted as saying that Jack Price only suffered wounds to his body that will heal while Danny will be losing precious time from his young live if he goes to jail for this. The refrain, wounds heal, made me realize just how out of touch and cut off from the reality of this beating these kids were. The dozen or so of Danny's friends, convinced that the two Daniels did not commit a hate crime are so unattuned to the historical context of their words that it gave me pause. How is it possible, I asked myself, to say that Danny did not hate gays because some of his best friends are gay and not hear in that defense a long history of racist and ethnic animosity?
I dare say, cut off as they are from the real New York City, they are also ignorant of this history. Or to the inner forces that drove the two Daniels to beat a gay man in the middle of the night who had gone out to buy a pack of cigarettes. If they were able to articulate the ways in which prejudice, hatred and aggression can be used to stave off boredom and hopelessness, they would not be sitting in this stagnant place with no creative response to their situation other than swagger and intimidation. As an elderly resident of College Point told me, she is afraid of them, would not go out at night and when she had to walk along College Point Boulevard, and they were around, they forced her into the gutter rather than allow her to pass among them.
Finally, I left the park and the speeches and the camera crews and walked back up College Point Boulevard on my own. Between the noise and the silence on the streets, the stark contrast of life here returned. This is an odd place, I told myself and hard to read and harder still to trust that anyone would ever help me if something were to happen. (The image of that car driving down 118th Avenue while the beating was happening and not stopping did not help assuage my fear.) It was a lonely stretch walking back towards my car. Nothing of interest caught my eye or asked me to pause and explore. All that stirred in me was hunger but as I walked past one Chinese restaurant after another and one pizza parlor or diner, not one seemed at all friendly. I decided to stop at a deli instead and eat a sandwich in my car.
The interior of the deli was stripped down to its bare bones. No decorations, nothing gave it a personality or made the place inviting. While I tried to place my order, a trio of men entered. One was white, an alcoholic, whose sole purpose was to get a cinnamon bagel and to make sure we all knew that. Of the other two men, one was a short, Hispanic fellow who acted tough and aggressive toward the third man who was taller, rather stout and Indian. He seemed gay to me and when the Hispanic man started shouting at him, "Why don't you just come out of the closet? Everyone knows you are gay? My attention turned from ordering a sandwich to worrying where this exchange was going to lead.
I did not know if this was a regular routine between these two men or if it was precipitated by the rally. The counterman and I stopped and watched this drama open up before us. Their voices were loud enough that I could not avoid hearing what they said, though the man in need of a bagel seemed not to care about them at all. The shorter man moved in on the taller man until he had cornered him. The Indian fellow had nowhere to go when he bumped into the refrigerator doors. All the while the Hispanic guy taunted him, that he needed to come clean, be queer if that was what he was. The taller guy tried to ignore him or to placate him, until with what must have struck him as his only possible response, he turned to the Hispanic man and said, "I will tell you what, I will marry you then, if I am gay, and then you will be legal in this country. He laughed, waiting to see if the shorter man would now leave him alone.
The counter man smiled. The man in need of a bagel did not hesitate to repeat his needs and I wondered if this interchange was a result of the rally. Was the presence of a few hundred LGBT people and their supporters a moment of peace that could allow this joke to spring forth?
The Indian fellow had stood his ground not far from where a gay man had almost been killed a week before. I do not know what had moved this static place forward but someone had made a joke about being gay that was not pejorative.
What will happen in College Point once the media turns away? I know another march is being planned for when Jack Price comes home. All the wounds here are many layers deep. They will take a very long time to heal if they ever do. And Daniel Rodriguez and Daniel Aleman may be in jail for 15 years and when they return, they will have changed. Who will be here to welcome them home?
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