Pride Is a Many-Splintered Thing

In the summer of 1995 at the age of 15, in my hometown of Chapel Hill, NC, I attended my first Gay Pride festival.  Maybe there was a parade, I'm not sure.  Still, I remember having my mind blown at the thought, much less the reality, of having so many gay people in one place.  Who knows how many there actually were.  Hundreds?  Certainly not thousands. This being a very self-consciously progressive town, who knows how many of them were even gay?  In any event it didn't matter at all.  To have so many gay people, or at least such visible gay acceptance, in my hometown was enough.  That there was even more than one (me) was cause for celebration.

I befriended some people that day, two guys and a girl who must have been in their very early 20's.  They sort of adopted me for the day and I have a very vivid memory of being driven around town in the one boy's Jeep.  I don't remember much about the boys honestly except that they seemed very tall to me at the time and were both naturally blond.  The girl, a fat femme lesbian with glitter make-up, bleached blond pigtails and fairy wings was leaning out the window waving both a wand and a small gay pride flag while shouting at passersby, "Be gay!  Show your colors!"  No Doubt's "Just A Girl" was blasting over the stereo.  I was both mortified and exhilerated.

At the end of the day I bid my new friends farewell and never saw them again.  I wonder now if they remember me and if so, how.  I don't remember having a lot to say that day.  I just remember being relieved that anyone was paying me any attention at all.  I recognized in their dandy swagger and lack of inhibition a certain possibility.  There's this great line from a Sinéad O'Connor song: "There's life outside your mother's garden/there's life beyond your wildest dreams."  It seems incredibly silly, which must mean it's true, that I started believing those words on that day.

Contrary to the Book of Morgan, this child was not given a choice.

With the exception of last year I have not missed a Gay Pride since.  I have heard and support all of the arguments about body fascism, lesbian/trans denial, political opportunism, corporate vampirism and racial erasure and I still can't help that dammit, I love a parade.  I am a Mexican-American man who has struggled with gender identity and body dysmorphia.  On the rare occasion I visit mainstream gay parties/spaces I feel at best marginalized and at worst invisible.  When I hear that a political candidate supports "civil unions" I cringe.  These issues mean a great deal to me indeed but they do not stand in the way of my Gay Pride.

By way of some kind of magical thinking I am able to enjoy Pride in spite of its flaws partially because those flaws to me represent some serious first-world problems.  Whenever I think of all the ways Pride seems to have been compromised I think of Russia, Uganda or even the places in my own country where our people must live in fear of persecution.  Such people don't have the luxury of complaining about corporate sponsorships or political opportunism because support, however flawed, from these entities is hard to come by if even imaginable to begin with.  I think of how we are among the last acceptable punching bags and how Tracey Morgan is totally going to get away with his homophobic ranting despite the outcry.  I think of our rights to our partners and loved-ones' legacies being routinely voted down year after year (if you need a hyperlink, you need a lobotomy).

I think of all of these things and I understand why being gay and having gay pride still matters.  Maybe there is a place in Canada where it's all just a cute memory of Will & Graces past but repeat after me: "Toronto is not the world."  There is no post-gay reality anymore than there is a post-feminist or post-racial one.  There is life outside your mother's garden, babe, and for some people it ain't wine and roses.

Horoscope performing at last year's Gay Rage/Gay Magic NYC Pride music show.

Pride is a concept open to interpretation.  It is a tool we use to let others know how we feel about ourselves and our community.  It is shapeless and very much without focus until you give it one.  I missed my first NYC Pride parade last year because I had organized an event called Gay Rage/Gay Magic featuring four gay bands including my own playing live at the East Village's Phoenix Bar.  With soundchecks and everything I wasn't going to be able to do both and how bummed I was.  But how thrilling it was that by the time we took the stage the parade had more or less come to us.  I couldn't believe my luck.  I had had a vision of pride and carried it through and people had responded in kind.  It was one of the most complete joys of my whole life up to that point.

However you celebrate, please know that it's important that you do.  Whatever your feelings about the big parades and overpriced festivals, remember that it is completely in your hands to foster your own unique vision of pride.  If you can't create your own event for whatever reason you are always welcome at mine.   In a way I'm personally rather glad that gay pride parades are so often so big, so flamboyant and so tacky, however little they speak to my life in particular.  I continue to be both mortified and exhilerated but the meek will not inherit the earth, darling.  The hidden thousands are watching around the world and here at home and they need to know this is possible.

Come one, come all!  Sunday, June 26 at the Phoenix in NYC.