The Stonewall Inn was a dump. That's a direct quote from our guest today. You'd go there in the

60s and dance and have a blast, but what you wouldn't want to do was order a cocktail or mixed

drink. Now, this is a detail that I'd never heard before. J-Tool says that the Stonewall Inn was such

a rundown bar that it barely had

any running water, and so none of the glasses that they served drinks in really ever got clean.

Jay was nearby in Washington Square Park when the uprising began that night in 1969.

She'd been living there since the age of 13 after her parents kicked her

out of the house, and when she and the others who lived in the park heard what was going on,

they rushed over. Jay describes it as one of the best nights of her life. It was just utter

madness in the most exciting way. She got to yell at cops and throw things at them,

and for once she got to see them scared of her. By that point in her life, most of her ribs

have been broken by cops, some multiple times. And so this night was something special,

something to celebrate and take advantage of. For over 25 years, J-Tool lived on the streets of New York City, and the miraculous part of her

story, literally miraculous, is that the girl she had a crush on and dated for a brief

but intense moment back then.

That relationship, through the blessing of the internet and chance

was rekindled just recently 55 years later. I cannot wait for you to hear that story and get

to know Jay, so let's do it. From The Advocate magazine in partnership with Glad, I'm Jeffrey

Masters and this is LGBTQ and A.

I want to start off with when you were 13 and kicked out of your family's home for being gay.

Going back to that time, 13 is so young in terms of, like, development and

conception of sexuality, that young, what kind of understanding did you have of your own

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