:biggrin1::biggrin1::biggrin1::biggrin1::biggrin1: you've unmasked me! I'm a fascist-commie-evil-modnazi from hell and I'm drunk with power and I'm coming for you and I hate America :biggrin1::biggrin1::biggrin1::biggrin1::biggrin1::biggrin1:
You're funny. :tongue:
That's why I love you, darling: that and your fa-abulous fashion know-how. Between the two of us and a $500,000 "clothing allowance", we could have our own reality series on E!
It's the urban male gay culture that has given you the opportunity to sit back and criticize them with your partner without being arrested for violating anti sodomy laws
You know, TC, there are times when I genuinely love you: this is one.
All this talk about loathing the "urban gay male culture" makes me want to fucking vomit. I came out in high school in 1977, and moved in with my BF straight from HS into downtown Boston one year later. At that point one had two options: stay in the closet or move downtown and be the gayest you could. If there were any "third alternative" it certainly never met my life's path.
Back in 1978, Disco was at its peak, everyone had sex everywhere (the men's bathroom at the Boston Public Library was an infamous tea-room) and everyone felt so very fucking free. Except...
I was repeatedly denied apartments and jobs (no feather boas or solid-silver platform shoes, just lil me) and told outright it was because I was a homosexual. That was when I learned to rent from gay landlords and work for gay business-owners. At that point, what's now the uber-trendy South End was 3/4 boarded-up abandoned buildings, with the balance either occupied by African Americans or The Gehys. I know, because that's where my first apartments were.
We homesteaded blighted urban areas and, with waves of our wands, loads of pixie dust and fucking hard work transformed an area that, as late as the early 90s, still didn't have a bank branch office. It was thrilling, quite dangerous and the only place I felt at home.
When I lived in Manhattan, I always said that I could only start breathing again below 14th Street; not that there weren't pockets of gay living on the Upper West Side, but they were all so...
Will Truman-esque. And I simply wasn't. We won't discuss the Upper East Side.
It wasn't until I lived in Paris in the early-mid 90s that I learned that one needn't live in a gay ghetto to enjoy The Better Life. But nothing compares to Paris, never will and never could.
Fact remains that the only time I've lived outside of the "gay urban" bubble, I felt like a cross between a museum oddity and a zoo creature. I did four years in North Haven, CT in a house on an acre and 1/2 of land, two vehicles, a husband and a dog. I was bored senseless and entirely out of my element. I didn't encounter any hostility, just a lot of odd glances and off-putting stares, especially in supermarkets. After a while, I learned that we'd best do shopping in turn to avoid attracting attention. An anniversary dinner (involving no PDA whatsoever) at an otherwise lovely oceanside suburban restaurant taught us to only eat out together in downtown New Haven, and even then <sigh>
So now I'm here, sitting at my computer in my perfectly fine one-bedroom apartment in the middle of one of the country's most burgeoning gay ghettos, long-shorn of house, husband and dog, steps from the main drag/epicenter of gay SoFla, complete with gay landlord, gay employer (I work in a gay bar), gay barber (who makes insanely convenient housecalls) and shop at a supermarket which is staffed fully 40% by gayfolk and patronized 85% so.
I participated in this year's parade, though more demurely than in years past. I wore very low-rise jeans, boots an armband and a harness (last year I wore black leather hotpants with a built-in codpiece which, truth be told, is a trifle snug where it shouldn't be), carrying the Leather Pride flag of black and blue.
It's hardly the first time I've participated. I was so taken by the excitement of what was, at that time, a demonstration, I was among the marchers in '78, '79 and '80. I watched the people march with pride (though I was working and couldn't attend) for the next few years, but from '84-'90 was always there, more than once with ACT-UP. I marched with the sober group (in support of my sister) in '92, '94 and '95. After that, my then-husband and I watched and cheered from the sidewalks from the parades in Boston, Montreal and (twice) Toronto. We chose our honeymoon to coincide with Europride which, that year, was in Paris.
Some say Pride got too commercial and went from demonstration to "event": I'll ask when you realized this. I remember Pride in Boston in '89, standing at an "official" event which was sponsored by Coors and featured Donna Summer's "new"
Rick Astley-
produced album on
heavy rotation and asked my friend when we faggots lost our memories