Jay Toole and Linda Battaglia
Jay Toole is a Stonewall Veteran and former Director of Queers for Economic Justice. Jay came of age living on the streets of Greenwich Village in the 1950s and was employed by the mafia at the queer club Cafe Bohemia at a young age. Jay knows the layers of New York City perhaps better than anyone and having experienced the many injustices of being a queer person in the prison system, became a passionate advocate for social and political justice for LGBTQ people. Jay met Linda Battaglia at Cafe Bohemia. They dated briefly and then lost touch, reuniting this year after fifty-five years apart. The following conversation was recorded on February 13, 2020 at 1pm by phone from Brooklyn, NY to Florida.
Gwen Shockey: I guess I will begin by asking you two to tell me a bit about your experiences with Bohemia and how you started going there?
Linda Battaglia: I’ll let Jay start!
Jay Toole: Well, I was thrown out of my house when I was fourteen and I lived in Washington Square Park for a long time. I met this guy Jimmy who was in the mafia and had a pizza place on Bleeker Street and I started working for him running numbers. You know what that is? So, running numbers is like today if you go into the store and you buy lottery tickets with numbers that you want to play, back then there were people who would give you numbers and write it on a little piece of paper, give you your money and that would go back to the pizza store. So, that’s running numbers. So, I did that for a while. Me and my friends, another butch, and we got into some trouble with the mafia. So, we stopped for a while. I think I was about fifteen and I ran into Jimmy again and he was running the club Bohemia and he asked me if I wanted to work and I said sure and he made me a bouncer. (Laughing) I was a fourteen-year-old bouncer! (Laughing) He wanted to give me money for something so he made me a bouncer! (Laughing) It was diagonal from Stonewall. It was an amazing club. It was just amazing. You would walk into the front door and it looked like a regular bar but if you kept walking towards the back and opened up the door it led into a room that was like, as a kid, mesmerizing to me and I was like: Oh my god, I finally reached it. (Laughing) It had a little stage and I would sit on the stage and when the cops would come a red light would flash in front to let us know that the cops were coming in and my job was to make sure the girls weren’t dancing together and all the alcohol was hidden and you would hope that the cops would leave. It was an amazing place. I was doing a film and we were around the corner from Bohemia recently and I went to have lunch in the place where Bohemia used to be. I told the waitress that I used to work there when it was a lesbian speakeasy and she told me that I needed to go downstairs. So, I went downstairs with these guys and they had this whole painting on the wall of Café Bohemia! It was so cool! Working for the mafia, you know, wasn’t detrimental to my health or my finances they actually helped me, except for when I got in trouble with them but that’s another story! (Laughing) But the club was amazing. It was always packed.
Jay and Lin reunited. Image courtesy of Jay Toole and Linda Battaglia.
GS: What years did you work there Jay?
JT: I’d say ’63 or ’64 and I was just a kid! That guy Jimmy seemed to like me, maybe he felt sorry for me because I was homeless and living on the street. He was really good to me.
GS: Do you know how long the club was open?
JT: Well now it seems to be called Café Bohemia again. I guess they went back to the old name! I’ll have to go back there and revisit it. It was open in the early ‘60s! I’m not sure when it opened or when it closed unfortunately. There aren’t that many people who remember it now! In all these years I think I’ve ran into altogether maybe three people who remember it. (Laughing)
GS: How did you know of the club Linda?
LB: Me and my friends went there! We lived in Brooklyn and I guess it was just word of mouth really! We would take the train up there and it was a beautiful experience when you’d come in you’d just know everybody! It was just a very nice community to be involved in with all the lesbians and the dancing! We used to dance the two step and dance slow dances. There were a lot of drugs! It was the sixties. Jay should tell you about Stormé [DeLarverie]!
JT: Do you know about Stormé?
GS: Yes! Of course!
Lin when Jay first met her. Image courtesy of Jay Toole and Linda Battaglia.
JT: I remember the first time I ever seen them! They entered into Bohemia and I’m sitting on the stage, right? Stormé entered with these two beautiful gays on each arm dressed to the nines, you know? I wanted to be just like them! That was the first time that I met them and it was quite an experience. There was a lot of drag kings coming in and some drag queens would come but it was mostly lesbian and mostly white, a few people of color but very few.
GS: Do you know where women of color were going?
JT: The only place I knew of which I loved was the Hilltop in Harlem. That was an amazing, amazing place. I think I was one of the only little white faces up there. I can’t remember what train you took to get up there… you took the train to 125th Street and walked up the hill… I wish I remembered more about it. I remember going up a flight of stairs I think? It was big! It was pretty big! There were a lot of house parties up in Harlem. That was a big thing back then too. I must have been seventeen or eighteen.
GS: Was there dancing?
JT: There was lots of dancing there. But I remember it being big. Like a hall. But Bohemia I remember so clearly. The tables and the benches were all black. Looking back on those times they were really hard but we had some good times too! Now you can go anywhere to meet up, you can go to cafes together, but back in those days a bunch of butches couldn’t just get together at Starbucks if they had had Starbucks back then. They would throw us out! There was one restaurant… I can’t remember what street it was on… there was a restaurant that after all the clubs were closed all the butches, femmes, drag kings and drag queens would go to.
LB: But you know all I can tell you is what I told you about just dancing together and friendships I made due to the bar that I stayed in touch with! It was just a really nice sense of community. And of course I met Jay there!
GS: I was going to ask!
JT: (Laughing)
LB: We dated for a couple of years back then! The funny thing is we just lost touch and we just reconnected with each other in July! Jay was interviewed on Democracy Now! during the Liberation March and I reached out to her and now we’re back together after fifty-five years! (Laughing)
GS: You’re kidding me!
LB: Not kidding you! (Laughing)
JT: (Laughing) We never broke up or anything! Fifty-five years ago it was a brief involvement and we were attracted to each other!
GS: Wow! That is an incredible love story!
LB: Now we’re trying to relive our memories – what we can remember – so we’re really into history and everything. We’re glad you’re doing this.
GS: Do you remember the first time you met?
JT: I do! (Laughing) I was sitting on the stage as usual and she came walking in with her friends and sat at one of the tables and I just thought she was gorgeous! So, I got off the stage, asked her to dance, put my hand out and started dancing with her and I was smitten! I fell in love! Ay yai yai! (Laughing)
LB: You know about the mafia obviously if you’ve done research. The mafia is what kept those bars open.
JT: I think you talked to Lisa [Davis]? Have you spoken with Karla Jay?
GS: Yes to both! Karla was one of the first people I’ve interviewed. You know both of them?
JT: Oh yeah! I know both of them. We don’t know each other from back then although all three of us really don’t remember. (Laughing) We probably traveled in different packs. I was very wild and, you know, street. (Laughing)
GS: Was Bohemia the first lesbian bar you both ever went to?
JT: Yes!
LB: Yes!
GS: Where do you both live now?
JT: Two places! My place is still in New York in Manhattan and right now I’m down here at her place in Florida and I’ll be going up – well we’ll be going up – to New York for the summer!
LB: We got reacquainted with each other over the phone and then she came down in, what, September?
JT: September.
LB: September for a couple of days and we kind of, you know, picked up where we left off! (Laughing) Then I went up to New York and then she came back down here. So… so far, we’re doing alright! Jay’s a Stonewall survivor and she does lectures at schools in New York all the time and she does tours of the Village. When I first looked her up after hearing her on Democracy Now! I thought wow! She became a real activist!
GS: I’ve been wanting to go on your tour for a long time Jay!
JT: Cool! Cool, thank you!
GS: I don’t know how much time you both have right now but I’d love to ask just a few more questions…
LB: I don’t know if I can add too much more to it but…
GS: Well, that’s ok! I would still love to hear about both of your backgrounds a little bit, for instance where you grew up. Jay, if you’re comfortable talking about it I’d love to hear more about why you left home and ended up living in Washington Square Park and Linda, where you great up and how you ended up living in New York!
LB: I’m going to go first because mine’s much shorter. (Laughing). You know, I was a straight girl when I was twelve or thirteen and then all of the sudden my friends became acquainted with other lesbians who were going to Bay Ridge high school and we started hanging out in a place in Brooklyn… it was really more of a candy store called Coney Island Joe’s. So, we hung out there and when we started getting a little older we went into the city and the only club that I really remember is the Bohemia. After the Bohemia I graduated from high school and got married and had babies and that’s my story in a nutshell.
GS: You were dating women at Bohemia though?
LB: Yeah! (Laughing)
JT: (Chuckles)
LB: I did date some women before Jay but the whole story is that my mother was against me going there and she knew what was going on so I ran away from home to be with Jay and when I came back home she thought she’d teach me a lesson and she put me away into a youth house in the Bronx. So, that’s really how me and Jay lost touch because she was trying to get in touch with me and she didn’t realize that I was put away for six weeks and in those days we were without cell phones and we just lost contact and I went on to finish high school and you know. That was the end of all of that.
GS: Wow! Can you tell me more about the youth house?
LB: It was a sponsored youth house with a girls section. It was rough, you know! It was a place where girls went who were armed robbers and murderers and all of that stuff and I was in there for running away from home.
GS: That sounds really scary
LB: (Laughing) It was! It was. But I managed. I got through it. That’s pretty much my story. If anything its part of a path because we got reintroduced.
JT: After Pride and the Gay Liberation March they interviewed me on Democracy Now! and on July 1st I get this email, right? The subject was “Are you her?” And I sort of rarely check my emails, I just delete, delete, delete, but that email looked curious and I opened it up and it said, “I heard you on Democracy Now! I was wondering if you were Junior Toole?” Because my nickname was Junior back then because I was a baby butch. She went on, “You lived in the Bronx and you had monkeys!” So, I wrote back and said: Yeah! That’s me! (Laughing)
LB: I also told her that we used to go to this hotel, the Broadway Central Hotel, which was you know… a lot of people went there.
JT: (Chuckles)
LB: You know, it wasn’t the fanciest place in the world but that was one of the things I mentioned so that she might remember me and who knew that she remembered me as well as I remembered her!
JT: I’ve been looking for you for fifty-five fucking years! (Laughing)
GS: Oh my god! (Laughing) This is so amazing!
JT: It’s totally amazing. My upbringing: I was born and raised in the South Bronx. I went to Catholic School up until the sixth grade and then I was thrown out. I had an older brother. My mother had a lot of health issues and was put away a lot. A lot of incest went on during my young years with my father and my brother to me. So, anyway. Fast forward. I met this person and her name was Frankie, right? I think I had just turned thirteen. None of the kids were allowed to play with me because of this one kid. She brought me home to her family unit and she had like a million brothers and it was a railroad apartment so as I’m walking through she’s like, “This is my brother Billy, this is my brother John, Jack blah, blah, blah, blah…” through all of these bedrooms and then we pass through another room and she’s like, “This is my sister Florence.” I stopped dead in my tracks. I stepped back and looked in and there was this person that had an Elvis Presley curl coming down over her forehead dressed in boys clothes and I was like: Wow! I started going to their house all the time and eventually she brought me out. She was much, much older than me. Her and her best friend took me to the Village and they got me a haircut – they got me a flattop, which is like a crewcut – bought me a boys shirt, bought me boys pants and later that day I went into my father’s house, my mom was put away already in an institution, my father took one look and threw me the fuck out. In hindsight when I look back it was probably the best thing that had ever happened to me. I didn’t have to go through the abuse of him and my brother anymore. So, they had taken me to the Village, right? I knew there was a place for people that looked like me. So, I went to Washington Square Park and slept in the bushes there until some other kids came over to me and asked me if I was hungry or thirsty and I joined that little family there. I just fell in love with the Village. It wasn’t like it is today. Back then it was all filled with queer youth. When you come on my tour you’ll see. There was nothing but queer youth and there was every shade of us, every type of sexuality. We were all kids and I would say that ninety-percent of us were homeless. Some of them were younger than me and up until twenty or twenty-one years old. From twelve up to that age and we all just took care of each-other.
GS: How did you all get food and water? How did you take care of each-other?
JT: We panhandled a lot and we shoplifted a lot and the girls would turn tricks we busked tables, little places would let us busk the tables and they would give us food or money. That’s how we took care of each-other and then when I got older that’s when the crimes got bigger. You know, armed robberies, grand theft auto… (Laughing) I did time for not having the three articles of clothing on [people could be arrested for not wearing three or more articles of “gender appropriate” clothing during bar raids in the 1950s, ‘60s and into the ‘70s]. It was a lot of different things.
GS: What an incredible story, god!
JT: (Laughing) Yeah!
GS: When you mentioned you got in trouble with the mafia was that part of trying to support yourself and your family there?
JT: Well, my friend and I were running the numbers and we got this brilliant idea to collect all of the money from the people running the numbers and not giving it back to the mafia. (Laughing) Yeah, that was, you know… always pay them back. (Laughing)
GS: (Laughing) What happened?
JT: Well, we were sitting in the park the next night and I see the guy come in through the park and it was dark already but I knew he was one of their guys and me and my friend took off running. We were running towards the fountain and all you could hear was pop, pop, pop, you know? If they’d wanted to kill us they would have killed us. The next morning we went literally on our hands and knees waiting in front of the pizza shop for them to open it and when they came we were like: Don’t shoot us! Please don’t kill us! And, you know. He didn’t! We woulda done anything to make money back then. I started dealing heroine. I did that because I was a junkie already and I had started using already so it was alright I didn’t mind selling it because I was doing it at the same time.
GS: And I’m guessing that wasn’t connected to the mafia?
JT: The drugs? Oh, absolutely.
GS: Wow. Ok. And Linda mentioned you were there when the Stonewall riots broke out?
JT: Not when they first started. We were all sleeping in Washington Square Park. Back then things moved fast through the Village if you were queer. You know? Word of mouth was better than a cell phone today. The word just spread through the Village and got down to Washington Square Park that something was jumping off at Stonewall. We all went up there but people were already put into paddy wagons… police vans… I don’t know what you call them today. But there were so many people out there and it wasn’t just queer people. I tell the young people that today. It wasn’t a bunch of white gay men that was there, you know? The word trans wasn’t around either then but there were trans people there. There were people of color there. There were homeless people there. There were drug addicts there. There were straight people there. The Black Panthers were there. All of us had felt oppressed at some point or another in our lives no matter what color you were or what sexuality you were we all felt that oppression. For that one fucking moment we all came together. It was amazing. I didn’t know it was the start of a gay movement because I was a junkie and I was homeless and my friends were too and everything so we didn’t even really know what was going on. We didn’t know that it was the start of something, we just knew it felt good to yell at the cops and to not get arrested for it. (Laughing) Even though some people did get arrested and hit with billy clubs and then the second brigade came out with shotguns.
GS: It sounds like the wild west!
JT: It was! It really was! It was awesome! It was fucking awesome!
GS: Were you living in the city when this was going on Linda?
LB: Oh no, I was already out of that scene by that time finishing high school. I wasn’t aware of the riots.
GS: It’s so interesting how your lives have intertwined through all of this history. Have you lived in the Village since then Jay?
JT: No, no. My drug addiction brought me to different places. I used to love stealing cars. I stole a city taxi cab once and drove it all the way to California but did jail time on the way. (Laughing)
LB: A story within a story.
JT: Yeah, that’s a story. I spent a lot of time on 14th Street and 3rd Avenue which back in those days – I guess this was the early ‘70s – there were a lot of butches there with their women… the girls prostituting… but the guys hated us butches, you know? They thought we were stealing their money. Which we were! I got off of heroine at some point and then I found crack. (Laughing) That must have been in the ‘80s. That brought me to a whole other life. I used to be one of those nomad people in the tunnels of Penn Station and Grand Central. I lived down in those tunnels. I stayed in Pennsylvania Station, if you go not on the subway but on the commuter train on the platform if you look under it its covered up now with metal sheets but there were rooms there where all the sweepers sweep the garbage when they clean the tracks. So, I lived in those garbage rooms for a while. Crack totally had me then. I don’t know how long I was down there. I don’t remember anything. (Laughing) Yeah… I had a lot of arrests for robbery, grand theft auto, drugs of course.
GS: Were you still involved with the mafia through all of this?
JT: No. When I left the Village, that was the end of the mafia. Then there was a different mafia uptown. You had Frank Lucas and Nicky Barnes. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the movie American Gangster? I knew Nicky Barnes… that was a different type of mafia. (Laughing)
GS: Wow. Yeah. How did you get clean eventually?
Image courtesy of Jay Toole and Linda Battaglia.
JT: Oh… well… I guess I was in my fifties… I was on the streets for twenty-five years, over twenty-five years, living on the streets and I was dying. I was like ninety-five pounds and they put me in the New York City shelter system, which was another experience! (Laughing) I got cleaned up and then I went out and drank and smoked again and I was going past Madison Square Garden and these kids said something derogatory to me and I said something back and they had these metal pipes and beat me in my head and face badly, you know? I had to walk from 34th Street back to my shelter which was on 45th Street and 3rd Avenue. I would look into store windows and all of this blood is pouring out of me. Nobody said anything! Nobody asked me if I was alright. I was in front of Grand Central and a rookie cop stopped me and asked me where I wanted to go instead of just taking me to a fucking hospital. “Where do you wanna go?” (Laughing)
GS: God, that’s awful!
JT: I said I was trying to get to my shelter around the corner and he brought me there and they immediately put me in the hospital. I called up my case manager from the hospital and said: I don’t wanna use anymore. Can you send somebody up for me? They didn’t have anybody to send so it was the middle of June and I left the hospital with a couple of dollars in my pocket and I thought: I can buy a couple vials of crack, I could buy a six-pack of beer… I just kept thinking I’ll do it on the next corner, the next corner and I ended up never smoking crack again. My whole life has been quite a journey.
GS: I’ll say! You’re an insanely resilient human being.
JT: Super butch! (Laughing) That’s what the guys called me: super butch.
GS: What was it like to live in the shelter system as a butch lesbian?
JT: When I first went into the shelter system you have to go into an assessment shelter and they sent me to a facility called the Brooklyn Women’s Shelter. We called it BWS. That’s what everyone called it. But when we talked about it BWS stood for “Butches with Stems”. We used to buy our crack from the case managers and the maintenance guys. It was crazy. The first time I ever walked into that shelter the security guards were like, “Oh fuck. Another dyke.” I knew I was in trouble. So, when I was there I was jacked up in the bathroom, security threw me down a flight of stairs, you know…
GS: God. That’s so fucked up.
JT: It wasn’t the best. The word on the street was – and it still is the word on the street because I still interact with street people – is that you should never enter the shelter system if you’re queer and all the stories that I heard were absolutely true. It’s a nightmare. I left that shelter and a couple years later I had to re-enter again and they sent me to a place called New Providence Women’s Shelter which is probably the best thing that ever happened to me. I felt ok there and I had a great case manager and then this woman came in and she was inspecting the shelter and she saw something in me. I was just a couple of weeks off of crack and she saw something in me and dragged me, I mean literally dragged me because I didn’t want to go, to the LGBT Center to hear these people talk. It was the Queers for Economic Justice network and it was Amber Hollibaugh, Sylvia Rivera, all of these people talking about alcohol, drugs, homelessness, and I just thought: Oh my god! They’re talking about me. So, I kept going to listen to these people at their meetings and when they decided to form their own organization I became a founding member and then they made me a director! (Laughing) I was the first person they ever hired! Here I am, I’m a felon, I’m a drug addict, I was homeless, jail time, and now I’m a director and I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing! I never finished fifth grade! That was an amazing time in my life. I learned so much from all of these amazing people. That was eighteen years ago!
GS: God! What an amazing life you’ve lived! Please let me know when you lead a tour next Jay I would love to come on it!
JT: Ok! I’ll be doing them almost every weekend once I hit New York!
GS: Ok! Awesome! I’ll be there. Thank you both so much for letting me speak with you!
