my name is robert fieseler and i'm the author of "tinderbox: the untold story of the up stairs lounge fire and the rise of gay liberation." "tinderbox" is history about an arson fire that took place at agape fire just a few blocks away that direction. a few minutes away on the board of the famous french quarter. "tinderbox" is also a meditation on consequences of closeted life in america, and by closeted i mean homosexuals hiding from public view and a shared conspiracy to turn away. by shared i mean heterosexuals and homosexuals of the times of the 1970s all conspiring to not address what was really in front of everyone's noses, which set the stage for a lot of what happened here. the fireeye write about which took place at a gay bar called the up stairs lounge claimed 32 lies and injured 1 15 others on the night of june 24, 1973, 45 years ago last weekend. no culprit was ever publicly named were charged for these murders, and yet 43 years later in 2016 when an armed citizen named omar mateen gunned down 49 people and injured 53 others in a gay nightclub in orlando called pulse, and