Okay, so here's my take on Pride. For me, Pride is one of those great ideas like Black Lives Matter that is executed so poorly as to defeat the purpose of its own existence. Because all I see around this annual bacchanal is one big, tired circuit party. The ontz ontz music, the drugs, the cult-like homogeneity...I will never understand what it is about the circuit scene that is so seductive and how it came to be the most emblematic cultural mainstay in the urban gay male experience. It's like this cult or tribe that kidnaps the vulnerable, fragile, beautiful, socially and romantically neglected young and then destroys them with the Faustian promise that they have finally found a home, a family. A community. Then again, I didn't experience feeling like an outsider before I entered this world. At least, not because I knew I craved man butt. Somewhere around 19 I got over the fear of that and just waited for the right time and right guy to do it. It wasn't easy, but I attributed my uniqueness to other things, mostly: to being an artist among future doctors and lawyers and bankers or being the only chip in the cookie, so to speak, in my social network, and an alien around other black folks when my presence around my own culture was required. I always felt a little more clever and worldly than most people around me for living in so many spaces that didn't Venn or intersect or, rather, because I was the Venn or intersection. I moved among the hets with ease, convincing myself I was one until I was just downright bored and horny enough to throw that away and get into the scene. But I never liked the scene. The meanness, the cattiness, the way sex was either thrown at your face or ruthlessly withheld, the obsession with hotness when I had for so long been trying to perfect coolness. In the gay scene, I didn't feel I belonged. I still don't. I just wanted a dude. To this day, I don't really care for much more from it and nearly 30 years after first stepping into a gay bar, I've watched little good come out of that world and a lot get eaten alive by it. I wish we'd worry more about how our culture eats its own young than what corporate sponsor wants to pander to this community's increasingly bottomless need for mainstream acceptance. That said, I didn't necessarily earn being gay so I can't say I'm proud to be. And as the culture becomes increasingly "queer" and gender obfuscating and obsessed with drag queens, I don't even know if I am as gay as I am simply same-sex loving. But I wouldn't trade it because I very much like who I am. And I don't need Bud Light or Target or a parade or being tweaked out and dancing shirtless in a tribal sea of identically insecure people to reinforce that and neither should anyone else.
No comments:
Post a Comment