1974He sits in the middle of the running track at Riverdale Park, reading a small magazine. He is 23 years old. If anyone comes toward him, he will be able to see the person a quarter mile away. That will be enough time to jump up, stuff the magazine into his bag, and head off. He looks at the pages, but maintains his peripheral vision. The breeze blows on the cool, spring afternoon, the grass slightly damp underneath his jeans. He can’t be seen with this magazine. It is a magazine about gay liberation. About homosexuals. Nobody has spoken to him about homosexuals. Not his mother or father. Not his church. Not his school. Only briefly and vaguely did it arise on his wanderings across Europe and Asia, in a glance from another man at the hostel; he looked away. There was also the invitation to join another man’s shower, and that could really only mean one thing, but he wasn’t ready. He was desperate to touch another man, but that doesn’t mean he could do it. The only homosexuals he’d known for sure were the ones from TV. During his last year of high school, backlit shadowy figures appeared on screen when [former prime minister Pierre Elliott] Trudeau decriminalized homosexuality. It wasn’t a crime anymore, but that doesn’t mean it could be fully seen, fully visible to upstanding members of the community. It doesn’t mean he could be seen with this magazine. He looks up again but nobody is coming.It wasn’t so easy to get his hands on the magazine. He had to find a store that carried it. He had to find a way to buy it without drawing too much attention. Just because you have the money to pay for it, and just because they’re selling it, doesn’t mean you’re not still doing something wrong. Something illicit. But one can be clever about such transactions. There are Popular Mechanics and Maclean’s to shield his small gay magazine. The magazine itself can hide for almost the whole time. It emerges just for a moment, for a glimpse at the price by the cashier before it is deposited into a bag. And if he waits until there are no other customers nearby, then only the cashier would know. And the cashier might not know for sure that The Body Politic is a gay magazine, or if he does, he might forget it, or feel confused by the Popular Mechanics. Homosexuals wouldn’t buy Popular Mechanics. He flips through his magazine. There is an ad for a march. A Gay Pride March. He could do a march. He couldn’t do a bar or a bathhouse. He grew up in a dry town, without bars of any kind, and he’s not sure what a bathhouse is. He couldn’t be that kind of gay man. Those places are too terrifying. But he could be a gay man in a protest. He knew how to pick up a sign, yell slogans, and march with a group of people down the street. He had been a part of many marches and protests. He is an activist. He is a Marxist. Marching is possible.
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