Pride

Meet us on the northwest corner of 11th Street and 7th Avenue, SC says.

Boarding the 1 train at Times Square, there are a flurry of Pridegoers along with me. A beautiful boy whose face is beat for the gods with pink and green eyeshadow, a small star on his cheek, Pucci-esque print on his torso. His girlfriends wear glitter and unicorn headbands, and some other beautiful boys further down the train show off their muscles under barely-there neon tank tops. A person wears a transgender pride flag like a cape, pink button-down shirt tied just above their navel. For the most part, we are all getting off at similar stops: 18th Street, 14th Street, and, if you’re crazy enough to attempt to make it through the crowds, Christopher Street.

I exit at 14th, taking the 13th Street exit, and am greeted not by Miss Rose at the door, but our friend Johnny Five-O. That didn’t actually happen, but I can’t resist a good Scissor Sisters reference. What did happen was that I exited into a throng of people and police barricades, everyone kitted out in neon, mesh, glitter, rainbow regalia as they always are on this particular Sunday in June, which is always New York’s biggest Pride event. I am modestly dressed in a bright red tank top--today is not my day, of course, but I am still so proud of and full of love for my queer friends and colleagues and family that to dress without color would be, I think, to do them a disservice. I am forever glad and grateful to be able to show up and support them.

It seems there are more and more young people at the parade every year in their fishnets and leather collars, rainbow tank tops and suspenders and pasties. Though there is still so much that needs to be done in terms of acceptance and equality in this country, it gives me hope that young people who want to can make their way to an event like this and feel free to be themselves. Love is love, their shirts say. Kindness is magic. Queer and proud. A smile crosses my lips and stays there.

Making my way to the corner of 11th and 7th is a task, not just for the twisty-turny nature of the streets in the West Village, but for the cascading array of rainbowed humans I will soon be joining to watch the parade. They lean against barricades in front of restaurants while brunchgoers call over particular costumed individuals and sing the praises of their outfits. They stand on benches in front of coffee shops, obscuring the windows like a human curtain. And in this maze of people I eventually find SC, in the hot pink “Fierce” tank top from our Spring 2010 dance show in college. Cardi B blasts from a float passing by and he breaks out into song and dance, the streetlamp’s electrical box acting as his partner: “Said little bitch, you can’t fuck with me if you wanted to,” each word another bump or grind. Floats throw rainbow beads and K offers us beer cloaked in a brown paper wrapper. It’s hot and I have a sip of the stuff for the first time in what must be years, my mouth thirsty for anything, even a 24oz can of Corona. It’s cold and bubbly and I remember why people drink beer again.

A few more floats pass, a few more beads are thrown. Sweat dripping from foreheads, we head to the icy cool of The Hangar, a gay bar on the west side of 7th Avenue festooned with Pride flags and televisions playing the parade. We sip tequila and soda and dance, alcohol slowly beginning to pulse through our veins along with blood. I leave to shove a Philly Cheesesteak down my gullet while sitting outside of a bodega, because I’ve only eaten half a grapefruit thus far that day. A group of teens sit next to me shouting “Happy Pride” at anyone they find attractive which, given the West Village during Pride, is a lot of people. “Y’all look fierce!” I say to the boy on my left, mid-sandwich. His hair is platinum blonde and he has the words ‘Die Alone’ tattooed on his right leg. “Thank you!” he says, as his girlfriends in rainbow stripes and short shorts dance to Cardi B’s “Bickenhead” pumping out of the speaker someone is rolling past in a red laundry cart. Soon other strangers join in on the sidewalk and there’s an impromptu dance party, with everyone shouting the lyrics in front of the bodega. “Don't matter if you fuck with me, I get money regardless.”

I go back to The Hangar, past people with a cooler selling “Diet Water,” and J buys us a shot of Fireball. I wince, because the last time I was supposed to have that was 8 years ago in college when I didn’t know better and just wanted to be drunk. But five of us shoot it just the same.

From there, we totter our way up to Chelsea gay bar Barracuda, a tiny space in what looks like it may have once been a brownstone or a clandestine front of some kind or parking garage or all of the above. Aaron Jackson from The Opposition dances next to us and I don’t say hi even though I’ve photographed him several times (he was in Broadgay, the live retelling of Sex and the City I love featuring all gay men, before he was on television/all of them got famous). We sit on a covered pool table and shimmy while we rest our feet as Prince and RuPaul and Lady Gaga play over the speakers, light so sparse it could be nighttime inside save for flashing beams of color overhead. The bar is packed to the gills with men of all stripes, some with long beards, some with the smoothest faces you’ll ever see on a living human, some wearing wigs so brightly colored you can see them even in the dark.

“Today is like Christmas and New Year’s and Halloween all rolled into one,” M says, his shirt swinging from his pants pocket. “But gay!”

Everybody Say Love!

Love!

Some scenes from the 2017 New York Pride Parade.

Empire City Pride

I realize this post is coming a little late in the game, but I was excited to share it with you nonetheless.

This year, the kind fellas at the Empire City Motorcycle Club--a motorcycle club for gay men which last year celebrated its 50th anniversary--asked me if I would be a marshal in the NYC Pride March with them. Having spent a few months getting to know them, writing about and photographing them, I was more than happy to oblige. I planned my outfit a week in advance, then woke up early and got into my parade drag--rainbow eyelashes, a red rose in my hair, lightning bolt earrings and all--and headed down to 41st Street and Madison Avenue where all the bikers would meet up before entering the parade. It was an unusually cloudy and chilly day for the end of June. I wore a bright orange shirt as all marshals are asked to do, handed out ribbons and confetti blasters to the gents for their motorcycles, and walked--and occasionally ran--with them in the parade as it started. As ECMC turned onto 5th Avenue, a whirr of motorcycles roaring in unison, I marveled at the sheer badassery of these leather-bound men on motorcycles, waving giant American flags, pride flags, and equality flags. ECMC was a part of the larger motorcycle contingent, made of the Sirens MC (an all-lesbian motorcycle club) and many other clubs and individual bikers.

When we made our way down 5th Avenue, right in front of the main branch of the New York Public Library, they all honked their horns like crazy to a crowd of excited people waving rainbow flags. That was, I think, the thing that got me most: all of these people on the sidelines celebrating other people simply for who they are. As if to say, who you are is so beautiful, so exciting, I just have to cheer for how amazing and wonderful you are. This made my eyes water in the West 30s as we made our way downtown. It was humid and rainy, but it didn't matter. I was glad I was wearing sneakers so the other marshals and I could run when they got too far away from us and we had to catch up. We passed out water to the bikers and cheered right back at the crowd. During breaks, the bikers smoked cigarettes and some even let me put glitter on their faces--sometimes only one cheek, sometimes both. 

I had never walked in a parade of any kind before, save for those Halloween parades around my elementary school as a child. I felt honored to be a part of something bigger than myself, celebrating pride people take in being who they are, and how much they deserve to celebrate it after dealing with far too many years of inequality, judgement and closed-mindedness from others.

Here are is a video (where it gets really shaky is where I'm running...) and a few pictures from the parade. Thank you so much to the ECMC for having me. I wish you 50 more fantastic years.

 

Think Less, Fierce More: Or, The Gayest Weekend Ever

“I’ve never been to a gay bar in Manhattan,” SC, my gay husband, said. Visiting from the not-as-gay city of Boston for two weeks, I made it my mission to make all his New York dreams come true. I would accompany him to whatever gay bar(s) he chose, but neither he or I knew any and he asked a friend. What’s funny, though, is that even though this was NYC Pride weekend in New York, this would really just be a typical night out for me as a proud hag.

We wound up in the East Village, at a place called The Cock. A bright red neon rooster hung subtly outside of it, black doors locked until 11pm. Not wanting to be ‘those people’ who showed up at the gay bar right when it opened, we had some cocktails elsewhere then eventually made our way over with a gaggle of boys we knew. Inside, giant signs condemned sex on the premises and warned against pickpockets. Lights above swirled red in the blackness and men in jockstraps danced on the bar, bare bottoms displayed to the gathering crowd inside. While most of the men stood there, either looking at the dancers or at each other, I danced to the actually really great playlist inside: Deee-Lite, Donna Summer, etc. Werk. SC, who is in a loving, long-term relationship with another boy, danced with me. We drank drinks and fended off men (from both of us, strangely enough). At one point I asked one of the jockstrapped dancers if I could dance on the bar with them, but he responded, rather politely, “No, sorry, sweetie.” I bet the ladies who come to the bar ask them that a lot (though I think I was one of two in there at the time).

A bit later, I had to use the bathroom, but there were no stalls. “Where is there a place for us gals to go?” I asked the lady bouncer. “Ah, right next door dahling,” she said in a thick Irish accent. “At Urge their bathrooms are even nicer than ours!” I made my way over to Urge, which I found out was also a gay bar. Sneaking past the man asking for cover, I dashed past the boys dancing on poles in tiny underwear and even more jockstraps to the unisex bathroom. Whew!

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Also this weekend, I had the pleasure of photographing a gay wedding in Fort Tryon Park. I imagined informal acquaintances of the grooms asking them what they did for Pride, both of them responding casually, “Oh, nothing, we just had a gay wedding.” If such a situation did in fact happen, it would be the best answer ever. All of their family and friends gathered in support of their love, and it was so beautiful to feel the support for their loved ones.

It was a casual chic wedding, none of that cheesy two-grooms-on-a-cake thing. Children waved rainbow flags, and we all wore Marriage Equality bracelets. A perfect addition to Pride weekend.

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Last but certainly not least, though, was the actual Pride parade. Having missed out on it last year, I was determined to go and take some pictures this year. My partner in crime for all things gay, AS, and I made our way to the crazily barricaded West Village. Thinking we would be able to stand at the parade’s end without a crowd we made our way to the Stonewall Inn, but HAHAHAHA we were mistaken. We instead wound our way to the very, very end, at Christopher and Greenwich, where it was still packed but we were able to see all the fabulousness. Drag queens, gay nudists, gay Jews, gay Peruvians, gay cowboys, self-proclaimed ‘Lord Lovin’ Lesbians’, and just families showing their support for one another. In AS’s brilliant words, “Everybody’s gay today.” It certainly had the best soundtrack of any parade I’ve been to since I’ve been in New York, and there was fierceness abound, not just of body but of soul. The fantastic Gay Men’s Health Crisis, the first organization created in response to the AIDS crisis in the early ‘80s, marched out strong in bright pink, as did organizations of all flavors, shapes and sizes. The crowd was out in full fierce (pun intended), too. It's actually the first parade I've been to in New York that I would definitely go back to. Even as a straight lady I felt proud to be there in full support of everyone to love whomever they choose. I could go on and on, but the pictures below will have to suffice :)