Pride Roundup
Last weekend was Pride in my hometown. Not that we’re not proud year-round…
Anyway, here’s how it went down.
Friday evening ~ hair cut.
Gotta look good for Pride, right?
T had a light trim and I had the
clippers.
Left side: shortish but swoopy
Right side: super short!
(I have a cowlick in front... can you tell?)
Saturday I had planned a busy but doable evening for
us. Before we could start on the gay
fun, we had a backyard party for a friend to attend. Got that done. Then went home to don our gay apparel.
Next up was the Dyke March.
Now, let me give you a little history on that one. Every year I say that I want to go to the
Dyke March and every year T objects. She
used to say things like, “You just want to look at other women’s boobs.” Or, “Why, are you looking for a new
girlfriend?” Yes, I know, she’s
painfully insecure. She doesn’t say that
anymore, but this year it was, “It’s such a ridiculous spectacle. I just hope the rest of the world doesn’t
judge all lesbians by that.” I mean,
really. I can’t spend the time going
over these pointless arguments. It’s … never mind.
So, this year we were going.
A friend of mine was going to come with us. My friend the jumper. She needs to stay busy these days and I
thought that our busy evening would be perfect for her. We had a complicated arrangement logistically. She met us at our house. Then we took our car to the place where we
would end the evening and parked it. We
got in her car and drove downtown to watch the March. Only, when we got there, we discovered that
we had missed it! Argh! Made T happy, though.
We went out for a bite of dinner. There were two more things on our itinerary:
the Hot Flash/Inferno Pride Party which was slated for 8pm to 4am. No, we were not staying for the whole
thing. And the other entry on the itinerary
was the World Naked Bike Ride. We saw it
last year and unbelievably T said, “Let’s do that next year!” Of course she changed her mind, but still
wanted to see it.
So, at this point, sitting in the café having dinner, I said
“look, if this is too much for one evening, let’s skip the bike ride and just
go to the Party.” Yes, they agreed with
that. Fine.
So, we drive back across the river and arrive at the
warehouse for the big Pride Party. Holy
smokes! The place is teeming! Teeming and Steaming! We danced some, we had a drink or two. We saw lots of friends, lots of gals who we
typically only see on Pride weekend. My
fragile friend left after a couple of hours.
We stayed on a bit longer but eventually the heat and noise drove us out. When we were leaving, maybe 11:00ish, there
was a line down the block to get in. I
love that.
On the way home, we got up to 7th and Burnside
and found traffic at a standstill. We
drove up a few more blocks and parked the car and got out. What do you know, we got to watch the Naked
Bike Ride after all! In fact, we couldn’t
get across Burnside to go home for probably 45 minutes. There are thousands, literally thousands of
people participating in the ride. Wow.
On Sunday, my fragile friend was picking us up to go to the
Parade. We got downtown in a timely
manner and found a reasonably good spot along the route. T and I nipped in to Hobo’s for a couple of
quick mimosas. We met up with another
friend and the four of us watched the parade together. Afterwards, we walked down to the Waterfront
and strolled through the booths and enjoyed a couple of beers. My fragile friend left and we caught a ride
home with T’s friend Donna. I would have
liked to stay longer – the people watching is fantastic and we hadn’t seen some
friends that we usually see there. But,
overall, we had a pretty good time.
Who else has a Pride story to tell? I hope you are all out there waving your rainbow flags!
