In the next instant, he found himself in unimaginable pain as the fireball exploded, pushing upward and into the bar. Perhaps Boggs, after he pulled the door open, had just enough time to smell the Ronsonol lighter fluid that the attacker of the UpStairs Lounge had sprayed on the steps. Bartender Buddy Rasmussen, expecting a taxi driver, asked his friend Luther Boggs to let the man in. To answer it, you had to unlock a steel door that opened onto a flight of stairs leading down to the ground floor. Just before 8:00p, the doorbell rang insistently.
The atmosphere was welcoming enough that two gay brothers, Eddie and Jim Warren, even brought their mom, Inez, and proudly introduced her to the other patrons. That Sunday, dozens of members of the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), the nation’s first gay church, founded in Los Angeles in 1969, got together there for drinks and conversation. They had their own gathering spots in the sweltering city, places where people tended to leave them be, including a second-floor bar on the corner of Iberville and Chartres Street called the UpStairs Lounge. You couldn’t really have an open celebration of those events - in ’73, anti-gay slurs, discrimination, and even violence were still as common as sin - but the revelers had few concerns. For New Orleans’ gay community, it was the last day of national Pride Weekend, as well as the fourth anniversary of 1969’s Stonewall uprising.
