March–April 2024 19 not to be missed! At the Civic Center rally, it was difficult to hear all of Harvey’s speech, given the hubbub of the crowd that overflowed onto Market Street, but I did catch these words: “We are coming out to tell the truths about gays, for I’m tired of the conspiracy of silence, so I’m going to talk about it. And I want you to talk about it. You must come out. We will not win our rights by staying quietly in our closets.” THE MOMENTUM OF THE PARADE carriedus through the summer to the November election. The Briggs Initiative lost by a million votes. 75% voted against it in San Francisco. We were on top of the world! All that came crashing down on Monday, November 27th. That morning, I called in sick to my employer. My throat was on fire. I gargled, slurped chicken soup, and suffered asleep on the couch. My dream became a persistent knock. It wasn’t a dream. Someone was at my front door. I gathered my lap blanket around my shoulders and eased open the screen door. It was Steve. One look at his face told me that something awful had happened. He put his arm around my shoulder and sat me down. “I know you’ve been sick all day and haven’t heard the news.” He hung his head. “The Mayor and Harvey Milk were murdered at City Hall. Another Supervisor, Dan White, killed them both. Why he did it isn’t clear, but that doesn’t matter.” I dropped the blanket and rushed to turn on the TV. It couldn’t be true! My young life had unfolded in a time of assassination—Malcolm X, JFK, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy. I remember the ominous silence in the streets, the helpless grief that moved some to helpless fury. The unthinkable must be happening again. A grave-faced TV announcer filled in the details. Dan White avoided the City Hall metal detectors by climbing in a basement window. He went to Mayor Moscone’s office. Witnesses heard shouts followed by gunfire. Then, White walked down to Harvey’s office and shot him five times. This madman had killed someone whose hand I touched, someone I admired. Our gentle hero. I sobbed in Steve’s arms. “I’ve heard there’s going be a vigil in the Castro,” Steve murmured. “I want to take you. Let me be your buddy tonight.” He produced two long church candles with little foil handles. “Get dressed and wrap up good.” I nodded, even though my throat was simmering in hell. Before we left, I ran to the garden, where I cut off the last of my purple asters. I tied them together with a string, then climbed into Steve’s old Jeep. We found a parking spot off Dolores Street. A mass outpouring of grief awaited us at Market and Castro. We threaded our way through the crowd, which grew by the minute, to a makeshift memorial topped with a rainbow flag. I lay my asters on top of a heap of flowers, pictures of Harvey and the Mayor, and handwritten notes. Steve and I held hands. Backs and shoulders in front of us heaved, voices hushed to a whisper. As the sky turned dark, thousands instinctively coalesced into a line headed toward Market Street, a spontaneous march of sorrow. The police didn’t hinder us. They stood back to let everyone go. “To City Hall.” Word passed like a rope from hand to hand. Someone yelled: “If you don’t have a candle, raise your hand. We have lots more.” Steve reached in his pocket for ours. He even remembered to bring matches. A tall drag queen with mascara running in a jagged line down her cheek sang in a rich baritone. I knew the song well. “We shall overcome. We shall overcome some day.” The few cars on Market Street swerved aside, disappearing on side streets, horns silent. More marchers joined, some carrying signs they had improvised at home. At nightfall, the crowd filled the Civic Center plaza behind City Hall, and more kept coming. Our candles softened the darkness and the bare silhouettes of trees. Steve and I wedged near a street pole. Steve took my hand, holding it lightly in his. Joan Baez climbed the granite steps of City Hall to a makeshift microphone. She pulled her guitar across her chest. Her familiar face, framed with long black hair, was somber. She leaned into the mike and said softly: “I dedicate this song to Mayor Moscone and my friend Harvey Milk.” She chose “Amazing Grace” to sing. I hummed the wistful melody as all of us swayed side to side. That night, it became our anthem— about what we had gone through in our lives, what we did together, and what we still needed to do. The lyrics that struck me were: “It was grace that taught my heart to fear,/ And grace my fears relieved;/ How precious did that grace appear.” Harvey Milk graced our lives, so we would never be cowed and silenced again. Emily L Quint Freeman is the author of the memoir Failure to Appear: Resistance, Identity and Loss (Blue Beacon Books). extremely conservative. During the Russo-Japanese War (1904– 05) militarism had seized control of Japanese society, and the schoolboy fantasy of nanshoku had morphed into the reality of violent gay youth gangs. As Furukawa Makoto writes in his exploration of the period: “The fashion for nanshokuled to the formation of groups of delinquent students, centered on homosexual relationships. These groups, with names like White Hakama Group and Blue Dragon Justice Group, would chase after bishōnen[beautiful boys], threaten them, assault them, and then enroll them as new members—all this in broad daylight, in public squares and streets.” The government began to crack down on homosexual activity of all kinds, applying a previously little-used sodomy statute from 1873. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that Yone Noguchi chose to marry his housekeeper and father three children with her. In all of his many published works in the years ahead, in both English and Japanese, Noguchi presented himself as strictly heterosexual. It is difficult to dismiss a poet whose work drew praise from both Ezra Pound and William Butler Yeats, yet, after reading some of his early published efforts, it is equally difficult to disagree with Dore Ashton’s assessment that Noguchi’s initial literary success came about simply because he was “a beautiful Japanese boy who wrote quaint English.” Being that boy opened doors and gave him access to the tools he needed to make the most of his natural talent. If he had remained in Japan, if he had never transformed himself into an exotic object of desire, he might not have become such an accomplished poet. At a distance, his sexuality is too complex to label, but both men and women found him attractive, and the fluidity of his sexuality was part of the attraction. That first night on Market Street, when he discovered no one could understand his English, when a complete stranger struck him and spat in his face, Noguchi felt isolated and vulnerable. Soon enough, he learned that his good looks could be used as a shield—and even a sword—and he wielded them with the practiced skill of a samurai. The beautiful Nippon butterfly could also sting. REFERENCES Austin, Roger, Genteel Pagan: The Double Life of Charles Warren Stoddard. Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1991. Marx, Edward, Yone Noguchi: The Stream of Fate. Botchan Books, 2019. Sueyoshi, Amy. Queer Compulsions: Race, Nation, and Sexuality in the Affairs of Yone Noguchi. Univ. of Hawaii Press, 2012.
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