Annie, Neil, and I were appalled when we read in Gay News that the mayor-elect of the town of Trafford, Stanley Brownhill, had announced that homosexuals were “sick” and that their “sickness could be cured by a .303 in the centre of the head.” When Annie and Neil explained that a .303 is a bullet from an army-issue gun, I was even more outraged. That he made the remark in April, which had been designated “courtesy month” in Greater Manchester, was too much to take.
Annie grew up there. Her parents lived in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Salford, which, like Trafford, had merged with the city of Manchester. Neil and I went with her to protest at a gay-rights demonstration that was going to take place on the day Brownhill took office. By now I was sounding pretty English and most people couldn’t tell I was American.
We got off the train at Manchester Piccadilly. The local buses were orange. Annie navigated us through oceans of red-and-brown brick terraces to the one she’d grown up in. Her parents were reformed Jews, but they kept a kosher home because her grandparents, who lived with them, were “Orthos,” as Annie called them.
Annie’s mum and dad were lovely and welcoming. Her grandparents were rather off the grid and didn’t understand why we were there. They inhabited a world where being gay was a concept that barely existed. But they were obviously proud of Annie, the first member of their family to attend university.
Annie’s grandmum made us tea. We were standing in the kitchen chatting with her and Annie’s mum when Neil put his teaspoon on the counter. We heard a gasp and saw Annie’s grandmum point a shaking finger.
“Oh, Neil,” Annie chided, “you’ve accidentally placed the spoon you used to stir milk into your tea on the counter reserved for meat and thrown the earth off its orbit.”
“I’m so sorry.” Neil quickly removed the spoon and placed it on the dairy counter. “I’m a Catholic, you see.”
“Now, now, Esther.” Annie’s mum put a calming hand on the older woman’s shoulder and ushered her into the sitting room, giving us an amused, conspiratorial smile. “Good luck protesting tomorrow, you lot.”
Annie’s dad was a lively bloke with a humorous gleam in his eyes. He kicked around a football with us in the field behind the house as the evening light faded, all the while making wisecracks with Annie. “Her grandmum wanted Annie to marry a nice rabbi. Imagine her surprise when the rabbi was a woman.”
“You mean rabbit,” Annie said. “I’m going to marry a nice rabbit.”
“Christ,” Neil said anxiously, “I thought she was going to collapse when I put the spoon on the wrong counter.”
“Now you see why I’m a vegetarian,” Annie said. “It’s far less complicated.”
Annie’s dad was a fare collector on a bus. The next day, we rode around Manchester with him for several hours until it was time to go to the demonstration. We hopped off his bus in the city center and caught a crowded one to Trafford. BBC Radio One was blasting the new, sexist pop single from Sheena Easton. “My baby works nine to five,” her voice oozed over the seats.
“Turn off that crap music,” I yelled, weaving in the aisle and grabbing the overhead bar to steady myself.
“Oi, you.” Annie pushed me toward the stairs to the upper level at the back of the bus.
I stood with my big cardboard sign proclaiming “No .303 for Me—Lesbian and Proud” wedged in the aisle. Over the radio noise, I gave a speech to the other passengers about why we had to stop the bullet-in-the-head mayor from taking office. Annie grabbed my arm when it was our stop. I thanked everyone for listening to me. “We now return you to your regular programming,” I said, as I jumped off the bus behind Annie. The long black police coat she’d got secondhand at a surplus shop in Liverpool flapped against the ass of her blue jeans. Her grandmother had helped her sew a large pink triangle on the back.
We demonstrated in front of Trafford’s town hall where the new mayor was being sworn in. A cop from Stretford took away another protester’s megaphone as he was shouting, “A bullet in my head would make me dead, but it wouldn’t make me straight!” A bunch of people kissed to annoy the police, so Annie and I started doing it. The cops surrounded us and told us to move off. I stood in front of the one giving the orders. I only came up to the middle of his enormous blue coat, staring into the silver buttons.
I said, “There’s no law against kissing. I’ll kiss her if I want to.”
Neil and Annie practically lifted me off the ground they dragged me away so fast.
“Listen, you,” Neil said. “You cannot get arrested. They’ll deport you.”
“Arrested for what?”
“He’ll give you the riot act.”
“Like the Elvis Costello song?” I asked, confused.
“‘Insulting behavior likely to cause a breach of the peace,’” Annie said. “They can arrest you for doing anything they don’t like.”
“You mean they can arrest me for my behavior before I’ve actually done anything?”
We took a bus back to the big square near Manchester Piccadilly to get a transfer back to Salford. It started raining gray shivs. Annie smeared drops of rain off the black metal statue of Queen Victoria. “There’s no law against lesbians, but gay men can be arrested for having sex with any bloke under twenty-one. Queen Victoria refused to sign lesbians into the law making homosexuality illegal because she didn’t believe we existed. Stupid old cow.” She kissed the statue on the head, shivered, and wiped her lips.
“Like in Gay News,” Neil said. “That article about a thirty-two-year-old man getting nicked for having a nineteen-year-old boyfriend next to the picture of Prince Charles and Lady Di. He’s thirty-two and she’s nineteen, but you don’t see him going to prison for it.”
I caught Annie’s eye in a way that meant we had unfinished business.
“The police can’t arrest you for being a lesbian,” Annie said, “so they nick you for ‘insulting behavior.’ That includes kissing and anything they want.”
“Two women kissing is behavior likely to cause a breach of the peace?” I asked.
“God, I hope so,” Annie said. “I hope it causes the downfall of civilization as we know it.”