floating in a tin can

Lee was still asleep when they got on the plane, and only began to stir when they stepped off. It's hot in New York in the summer, a close, thick heat that smells like cooking garbage. Los Angeles is hot too, but there's a breeze coming in from the ocean.

She's been sleepwalking the past couple of weeks, more zombie than human, but whatever quiet drama is going on in her head has been vastly overshadows by the riotous one going on at Sterling Cooper Draper Whatever it is now. Lee's not sure what's going on exactly, only that Michael didn't have a job for a week, and now he has a job waiting for him back in New York at some new firm, with some fancy title and no guarantee as to how long it will last. It could tank within a year. No one knows.

Given that, now is the only time they could have fucked off to California for two weeks.

Lee is happier out here, that much is obvious. She woke up, she's active and engaged. She spends a lot of time out by the beach, though after Michael turned an alarming shade of red she finally agreed to start doing other things, other indoor things, as well. When she's on her own she still spends most of her time outside, sunning herself like a lizard, until her skin has a lingering warmth to it like a baked stone. The sun baked her skin brown and bleached her hair white, and she always has the briney, salty smell of the sea clinging to her.

She still sleeps late, though, often not getting up until noon, like today. Michael's gone to walk off some of his continuous overabundant energy, but she stirs when the door opens again and even sits up, blinking blearily from a ragged curtain of her hair. “Michael,” she murmurs sleepily, reaching one hand for him and opening and closing her fingers. “Neshama, come here.”

Lee is doing better, now — there was a while there where it was frightening, the way she withdrew. For three days she didn't speak, didn't eat, it was a struggle to get her to drink water. She was sort of present, mentally, but distant, distracted, like she was half somewhere else the whole time, lost somewhere inside her own head. Lee has always been depressed, he knows this about her, that she gets blue for no reason, but this is different. When it passes, she won't talk about whatever it was. She doesn't seem to understand that anything was different.

She talks to people who aren't there. She listens in on the walls. She regards the front door with suspicion, and complains about hearing footsteps above them — nobody lives in that apartment. He catches her scrutinizing her teeth in the mirror, then acting like she wasn't looking. She keeps trying to guess what he's thinking and failing, and she plays it like a joke or a game but she seems suspicious and disturbed afterwards. All of that is bizarre, but it doesn't stop her from living a regular day-to-day existence; it's the things she doesn't do that are hurting her.

She's finding it harder and harder to work, because it's hard to get out of bed. At the Chelsea she lived with a photographer, he'd wake her up at 3 in the morning if he had a brilliant idea he needed to shoot right then, and he was always dragging her to parties. At Michael's, nobody is there to force Lee to socialise. Nobody is there to drag her out of bed for a 2 o'clock shoot, or throw a party around her so she's in the middle of it anyway. She's frequently late or absent altogether, and how difficult she is to get a hold of is becoming a problem, particularly given that there are days when Michael comes home from work and Lee has still not even gotten out of bed. She's tired. She can't focus. Brushing her hair and getting up to go to the bathroom are difficult tasks for her.

She can't hide it the way she used to, where she'd disappear somewhere else for a few days and say she was ill. Sometimes it worries her. Sometimes she doesn't even notice that something is wrong. Her social withdrawal and lack of passion and motivation are just typical to her. Everyone knows Lee is shy and sensitive, so being sad a lot and not wanting to talk to a lot of people seems like it should be normal.

But she's fine now. She's awake and active and present. She woke up around ten and got out of bed. She brushed her hair. She ate breakfast, all of it, and did the dishes still left in the sink. She remarked wryly on something in the news and climbed out on the fire escape to smoke a cigarette. She was reading a book earlier, another thing she doesn't do when she's ill, and now she's on the sofa with him, writing and doodling in her journal. It's like whatever was going on before just never happened.

Michael is sitting bolt upright beside her, eyes glued to the TV where Walter Cronkite is covering the Apollo 11 landing, but it's not going to happen for another fourteen minutes. Lee is laying horizontally like she likes to, draped with her head in his lap, glancing at the television sideways sometimes to make sure she doesn't miss it. She still can't quite believe this is really happening; it seems like the stuff of science fiction still, men putting their feet on the moon. Eventually she pokes Michael in the leg. “You're tense.”

For two days there's no word from Lee.

She told Michael earlier that week that on Friday she had a thing to go to, a friend's birthday. She came for Shabbat dinner like she always does, then left around eight or nine. He decided to stay. He had work to do, hates bars, sometimes she goes to these things without him, they're not that codependent. Lee said she would be back in the early morning, maybe one or two, he'd probably still be up but he shouldn't wait up for her.

That was two days ago.

In the early morning hours on Saturday, the riots started. Living in the Village, it was impossible to miss them; word started spreading even before they'd reached a fever pitch that could be heard blocks away. Saturday evening on Christopher Street, it happened again — people gathering, at first just to talk, but it soon led to shouting, protesting, jeering the police who showed up. Bystanders and tourists surrounded the area, mingled in the crowds. Everyone staring at the burned-out remains of the Stonewall; it looks like they dropped a bomb on it. People are saying they had agent provocateurs in the crowd, trying to goad people into further violence so the police had an excuse to let loose again with their batons. The first night the police were taken off guard, they didn't expect a bunch of homeless kids, street hustlers, and drag queens to fight back; the next night, they come prepared. People are saying they had seventeen people arrested.

No sign of a blonde head towering over the crowd. No hint of a Middle Eastern accent shouting with the rest.

Finally, finally, Monday evening, someone called. “Hey, man — hey, is this uh, Michael...?”

The address he was given is on the other end of the neighbourhood. It's one of those pay-by-the-hour fleabag hotels, the kind where the walls threaten to come down around you as you stand there, God forbid you should breathe too hard and blow the asbestos out of the walls. Someone waits to meet him outside, just to make sure he's cool, he's not a cop, and then leads him upstairs into a small rented single room with a crappy stained bed that is wall-to-wall packed with people milling around, some still in the remnants of Friday night's drag, most nursing some kind of injury.

There's Lee, finally. Her back to the door, laying on the bed. There is an impressive rust-red stain on her back, leaking down from the neckline, but her hair is clean, her head unbandaged. When she turns around, her pale face is clear, no contusions, no dark marks, no bloody wounds. Her slightly unfocused eyes fill with tears. “Michael,” she says. People quickly clear a path.

Lee is still in bed when the door opens. It's about noon, this is usually about when she wakes up, has in fact been waking up by degrees over the past fifteen minutes or so, so it's no surprise that the creak of the door opening is what finally draws her completely out of sleep. Her eyes open slowly in degrees — even with the curtains drawn, it's very bright in here, a sharp stab of pain behind the eyes — and it takes a moment for her senses to unfold around the room. Bright light. Warm. Footsteps in the other room.

That's not right.

She can't bring herself to get up and do anything about it, so if it's a burglar, they're just going to make off with Michael's television and refrigerator or whatever burglars steal. Her pseudo-paralysis has mostly worn off by the time he walks into the room and sits on the bed, his back to her; Lee is on her side, knees bent, one hand still on the pillow in front of her face. She opens her eyes again, waits to let them adjust.

"Michael?"

She's momentarily disoriented; this is unusual. It's too bright for him to be home, it's still nearly dark-ish by six this time of year, the light is just different. She strains her eyes at the clock: twelve forty-eight. Her hand reaches out, seeking his. She can feel that he's upset, a kind of sensing of tense energy, knows it by the way he's not looking at her.

"Did something happen, neshama?"

March 4th, 1969

Despite Lee's well-known distaste for parties, she has been looking forward to this one for a long time. Purim is her favourite holiday and all the people here are people she already knows, even if only as passing acquaintances; if there are strangers to deal with, they'll be there with someone she knows. This significantly reduces her anxiety, though it's not gone entirely. It is never gone entirely, she just worries less.

Also, one is religiously obligated to get roaring drunk, so nobody is allowed to judge her when she does exactly that. She's going to have the world's worst headache in the morning but does she care? No.

It's a costume party, of course. Lee agonised forever over what to be — she thought about Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby but worried people wouldn't recognise it. She ended up in Marilyn's iconic pink gown from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, having managed to tease her hair into approximately the same shape. The jewelry is borrowed from a friend. Michael as James Bond is slightly less convincing; Lee had left it to him to acquire his own costume, optimistically assuming he would find a tuxedo that fit. Oh, well. She still thinks he looks handsome, but Lee is a little biased.

All that said, this is certainly one of the more unusual gatherings in New York — which is saying a lot. Lee did not exactly explain to Michael what this is all about, only said they were "people like her," and there are indeed several people "like her." In 1969 getting hormone treatments is not impossible but it is a challenge and Lee's androgyny is a bit of an aberration — most people do not pass as easily as she does without help and don't have the resources to get that help. Most of the people here, though, aside from a couple of drag queens, are just gay (the word they are increasingly coming to prefer), both men and women, slightly more women couples than men. In a couple years this group will go on to become Beit Simchat Torah, the first all-queer Jewish congregation in New York, but in '69 they're mostly just loosely organised friends and acquaintances.

They're well into the night, everyone is drunk and happy, and the noise level is teetering on the edge of 'public nuisance'. Lee flops on the couch next to Michael and narrowly avoids spilling red wine all over herself. "Cursed is Haman. Oops, I'm not drunk enough," she says cheerfully before taking another enormous swig. Her head lolls onto Michael's shoulder; for all the good-natured complaining she does about him and his clothes she sure spends a lot of time rumpling him further.

February 10th, 1969

When Lee wakes up, she does not immediately recognise her surroundings. This doesn't alarm her very much. This happens all the time, she gets blackout drunk, passes out, and wakes up somewhere she doesn't remember. She's not drunk, though, she's not even hungover, which is different. What else is different - when she forces her eyes open, she sees the room is only half-furnished. Not like a hotel room, but not like somewhere anyone lives, either. It's confusing and makes her sit up and peer around. No. She stayed over at Michael's last night. That's what this room is, his bedroom.

That's right. It had been too late for the trains and she didn't want to call a cab. She hadn't worried about propriety, because who would know or care?

That said, the rejection by Michael's father still stings. It's strange, Lee has never had to think about her reputation before, she's had more immediate concerns like finding money, food, and a place to sleep, and fleeing the terrible madness that rears its head occasionally in order to ruin her life. Back home she had a different set of circumstances and among her circle with Rich's friends or at the Factory, nobody cares what she does with her time or her body and in fact they encourage depravity. Be a slut, do whatever you want, Rich says all the time. But now, elsewhere, with other people - they see her as a woman and suddenly her reputation is a problem. Suddenly it's relevant, people care who don't even know her, and it matters more than anything else - more than her character, her political opinions, whether she's kind to children or animals. Who she's screwing and who her friends are screwing is the most important thing now. Suddenly she's the one parents don't want around their sons.

Strange.

It's daylight outside, but a pale grey light. Must still be overcast. It makes it hard to guess the time, but Lee figures it's late morning. Monday. The bed is empty, she just figures Michael already went to work and she slept through it, which is typical for her, she could sleep through a cyclone. She hears the door open, and footsteps, but still half-asleep, doesn't connect those noises to any thoughts. Instead she rolls over and pulls the sheets over her head, moaning her flat refusal to acknowledge the morning. She doesn't want to get up. She's sure out of bed it's going to be ice cold again, and if her feet touch the floor before it's heated she will actually literally die.

January 6th, 1969

Lee is not having a good week. He's been cagey all week and everybody knows why, and the fact that they find it funny only makes him more irritable. He sulked about it for a few days, but he is so tired of worrying and fretting and going in circles of indecisiveness that, after yelling and throwing something at Rich, nearly missing his head (he seemed more entertained than angered by it), Lee has got it in his head to do something about this.

So.

Near as he can tell, they have two major obstacles keeping them from being together: first, location. It's the trickier of the two to solve. They can't go to Michael's place, mostly time reasons, Lee vaguely thinks. Michael's father lives there, neither of them wants to be walked in on like that. And Rich's suite at the Chelsea is always teeming with people, whenever they get a moment really alone without people in the other room talking, something's always come up. Lee isn't able to fully relax, expecting at any moment for someone to barge in through the closed door. If they'd explained the situation to Stanley, he probably would have just given them a key and told them to go to town, but when they tried in another, random hotel room over New Year's, Lee had hated it. So, location. He's still working on that one.

Second obstacle: logistics.

Frankly, Lee just does not know what to do. He understands in the broadest terms how sex works between men and women, and what its purpose is for, and generally what happens. But two men? Homosexuals? What do they even do? Lee's not a man, not any more than he's a woman, which means neither of them are really homosexuals, but those are the bits God gave them and he doesn't think there's a word for what they are. His first idea is the library, where he goes one morning and looks at every single book they have - health, anatomy, human biology, even psychology. They are all either frustratingly unilluminating or infuriating or both. If they even mention homosexuality at all, it's only in vague terms and they never mention what actually happens. He shuts the last one with a decisive, angry thud and gives up.

Okay, so books don't have every answer. He sulks about this, too.

His next option is the Stonewall Inn. A squat little building in Greenwich Village, it's the place in New York where Lee feels most comfortable with himself: there are people like him there. Drag queens, transsexuals, young hustlers, the homeless. It's also the only bar in New York for people like them where dancing is permitted, which makes Lee considerably less comfortable. But nothing's perfect and it's not like he has to.

One gets into the Stonewall through presenting themselves through a peephole in the door. You either look gay, or they have to know you, or you have to be with someone they know. They know Lee, he never has any trouble getting in, and the bouncer claps him on the back as he shuffles in quicker than strictly necessary. Lee is shivering and accuses the bouncer (his name is Roger) of leaving him out in the cold longer than necessary, which he doesn't deny. (Why is everyone always teasing him?) There's a book you are supposed to sign your name into for some reason Lee is uncertain of, and like everyone else, he uses a name that is faker than his current one.

Lee looks like a handsome young man today, his hair twisted up and pomaded to keep it in place, making it look much shorter. He's wearing a sport jacket and trousers that would be scandalously tight anywhere else. He still smells like L'Air du Temps, though, and there's still something feminine about his face he can never hide well enough. The Village and Chelsea are the only places he can do this really - play with gender like this - and it's still in a limited area. He can't afford to be outed anywhere else.

He makes a beeline for the bar, downs three shots of vodka in a row, then takes a glass of terrible red wine with him and sits alone at a table. He raises the glass to his lips as he scans the bar, unusually dark due to the dim lighting and the black walls, looking for a familiar face. Any familiar face.