DAVID LE/Staff photoMichel Coty is arraigned in Salem District Court on Wednesday morning.

SALEM, Mass. — Just days after taking part in the North Shore Pride Parade, an event he helped create four years ago, the activist known as the “Queen of Salem” was spit upon, slapped, bitten and repeatedly referred to by an anti-gay slur outside a Salem gas station Tuesday afternoon. 

Gary Gill is better known around Salem as “Duchess Gigi,” a statuesque drag queen who is also the city’s best-known LGBT activist. Gill was at a gas station, when he noticed a man berating a woman. 

The man, Michel Coty, 50, soon turned his focus on Gill. 

“He turned around and looked at me and gave me a look, and said ‘What the (expletive) are you looking at?'” Gill recalled Wednesday. 

“I said ‘I’m looking at you being mean to her and belittling her and I don’t think it’s right, and I’m going to call the police,'” Gill said he told the man, whom he did not know. 

But, Gill said, it appears Coty knew who he was. 

What happened next has resulted in Coty being charged with assault, two counts of assault and battery and a civil rights violation with bodily injury. 

Coty, of 144 Bridge St., Salem, pleaded not guilty to the charges during his arraignment in Salem District Court. Through his attorney, Paul Woods Jr., Coty insisted that he was acting in self-defense. 

According to a Salem police report, Coty admitted to Patrolman Sean Andrus that he used the slur — but he insisted that Gill had used it first. 

That’s not, Gill said, what happened. 

“He looked like he was wigged out on something,” Gill said. “Very verbal and aggressive.” 

Gill said he was having a conversation with a friend when he saw Coty harassing the woman, calling her names and then taking her photo with a cell phone camera as she sat on the ground.

After Gill told Coty he was going to call the police, “He went berserk,” said Gill. 

Coty — who is 5’9″ tall, according to court documents — approached the 6’3″ tall Gill, who was not dressed as Gigi. 

“He got right up in my face, ‘You’re nothing but a (expletive and slur). All you (slur) think you own this town,'” Gill said Coty told him. “He says ‘I know who you are and what you are,’ so apparently he knows who I am and what I am,” said Gill. 

Gill told the man “If you know who I am, then I think you need to back away. You better back off and get out of here.” 

Instead, Coty started to spit on him. 

Gill again demanded that Coty turn around. Instead, Coty took a swing at him, missing. Gill pushed him away several times, he said, but Coty kept coming back. 

Then Coty took another swing, hitting Gill on the neck. 

“That’s when I lost it,” Gill said. “Something clicked in me, ‘either you take care of this or he’s going to hurt you really bad,'” Gill recalled thinking. Gill hit Coty, trying to push him away, and eventually got him into a headlock and pinned him to the hood of his car as others called 911. 

While he was being held down, Coty bit Gill on the arm, and Coty’s dog began nipping at Gill’s pants-covered leg, Gill said.

While he was able to defend himself, Gill wonders what could have happened if he’d been in drag, trying to balance on high heels.  

“Thank God I wasn’t in drag last night,” he said.

But he also said he looks at what has been accomplished in Salem.

“I’m not going to let one person ruin it,” Gill said. “We really have worked too hard.”

Coty has a 12-page criminal history that includes violent crimes and an escape conviction, Salem Police Lt. Conrad Prosniewski told a judge. 

Because of that, Salem District Court Judge William Fitzpatrick set bail at $25,000 cash for Coty, warning him that if he manages to make that bail, he must stay away from Gill. A pre-trial hearing is scheduled for July 22. 

Courts reporter Julie Manganis of The Salem News reported this story.