Sanfranchrisko

Big Chrissy and I made it to the gay parade today. It’s been several years since I’ve attended the festivities, and usually the experience is fairly consistent year after year, but it seemed really different this time. I think that the idea of a gay movement doesn’t mean that much to anyone anymore. In the mid 80’s and 90’s, when everyone I knew was dying and the community was so united in protecting and helping each other, the parade had meaning. We were united and we were going to survive, and we were going to have a lot of fun, too. All of the sudden it seems, there’s no more urgency, we’re just proud. I see the gay community now disintegrating into little pockets of sexual preferences and single colors on flags. Proud to be a bear or a twinkie or a dyke or a femme or a leather daddy, etc… There’s even a community and support network for guys who don’t wear underwear. Free-ballers. Nancy Sinatra and Ian McKellan rode by in their convertibles and everybody roared, and they were pretty fabulous to see, but there was Harry Hay, the founder of the gay movement, and no one even recognized him. History is just history now. We aren’t making it anymore, there’s nothing to fight for. When a pro-Palestinian contingent passed, the crowd around me starting booing them. One guy angrily yelled “Why aren’t you carrying an American flag?” My gay brothers and sisters could no longer identify with or support the other. And they were proud of it.

Sure there’s still prejudice and discrimination against gays, but we’re an economic force with GAP ads.

I just took a little walk down the street, into the chaos that’s developing on Castro. Scantily clad go-go boys in the window of All American Boy gyrating and beckoning to the passers-by, a gaggle of leather clad daddies in front of Daddy’s, dancing bears—and me shopping for DVD’s at Tower. I can’t remember exactly when the term “pride” came to encompass the entire celebration and activity surrounding the anniversary of the Stonewall riots, but I miss going to the “Gay Parade.” That’s what it was when I first moved out here in 1984, actually, it was called the “International Lesbian and Gay Freedom Day Parade.” Freedom meant something to me then, coming from Pinson, Alabama, where you didn’t walk down the street with your boyfriend in bottomless chaps. In my first parade I was surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people who were so much weirder than I, dressed outrageously, having so much fun, being themselves, and feeling free. We could be ourselves and celebrate our differences, and feel safe and loved and welcomed.

At a parade with Manny one year, he suddenly leaped into the street and joined a flag corps at the tail end of the parade, grabbing the lavender flag from a much-bemused carrier. He waved that flag and danced in the street and kicked up his heels and laughed and sang. It was beautiful, to see him so free and happy, almost delirious. And in the middle of Market Street. At that moment I thought that there was no way that a soul like that could ever be repressed. Or die.

I’m not particularly “proud” to be gay. I’m proud of how I’ve helped raise my stepson, of what I’ve given to the art community, of how I care about other people, of how I’ve eased the suffering of my friends who’ve died. I’m not proud to be different, I’m just awfully glad.