Pride

I remember Pride from when I first moved to New York, back in the early 90s; Keith and Michael getting ready s-l-o-w-l-y; Lynn getting mistaken for Melissa Etheridge every twenty blocks or so; marching past the main branch of the library at 42nd St., and wondering what Patience and Fortitude thought of all this. Bumping into Urvashi Vaid yet again¹. The unending admiration I'd feel for the drag queens, leathermen, ponies, and others who would wear their clothing symbols, head to toe, even in the blistering, muggy heat of late June. The thousand, thousand people I'd bump into along the way every time. The whole city would feel like that XKCD cartoon ("There must be Taft slash fiction!"), with everyone laughing, and smiling, and hugging each other.

Now, I'm looking at a dayful of fact checking, on a Sunday; of walking down Hudson Street past police barricades, and people already laughing and celebrating. I'm looking around, and smiling, thinking of the version of the Doors's arrangement of the Brecht/Weill "Alabama Song" ("Oh show me the way to the next little girl...") I did at karaoke for a friend's birthday last night, and of getting through "Walking in Memphis" earlier in the week. All right; to work, now; I've had the chance to enjoy Pride before, and will again. In the end, the core of Pride is in the heart.




¹For a couple of years in the mid-90s, we were randomly bumping into each other every six months or so. Strangely enough, although she grew up in the same small town in rural northern New York as I did, and lived between my house and the library, I never ran into her in Potsdam, not once.