Celia looked at me, with compassion for all I had been through when I lived there, for all I had done for myself since then. And then she calmly, confidently took my hand. I bristled, unsure if we should be touching in public, scared of what people would do. But the rest of the people on the street just kept on walking, kept on living their lives, almost entirely unaware of or uninterested in the two famous women holding hands on the sidewalk. Celia and I spent our nights together in this apartment. Harry spent his nights with John at their place. We went out to dinner in public, the four of us looking like two pairs of heterosexuals, without a heterosexual in the bunch. The tabloids called us “America’s Favorite Double-Daters.” I even heard rumors that the four of us were swingers, which wasn’t that crazy for that period of time. It really makes you think, doesn’t it? That people were so eager to believe we were swapping spouses but would have been scandalized to know we were monogamous and queer? I'll never forget the morning after the Stonewall riots. Harry was at rapt attention, watching the news. John was on the phone all day with friends of his who lived downtown. Celia was pacing the living room floor, her heart racing. She believed everything was going to change after that night. She believed that because gay people had announced themselves, had been proud enough to admit who they were and strong enough to stand up, attitudes were going to change. I remember sitting out on our rooftop patio, looking southward, and realizing that Celia, Harry, John, and I weren’t alone. It seems silly to say now, but I was so... . self-involved, so singularly focused, that I rarely took time to think of the people out there like myself. That isn’t to say that I wasn’t aware of the way the country was changing. Harry and I campaigned for Bobby Kennedy. Celia posed with Vietnam protesters on the cover of Effect. John was a vocal supporter of the civil rights movement, and I had been a very public supporter of the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But this was different. This was our people. And here they were, revolting against the police, in the name of their right to be themselves. While I was sitting in a golden prison of my own