pride

a deeper love

It was Pride here in Atlanta a few weeks ago. In the US, Gay Pride happens in June but a severe drought back in 2008 forced Atlanta to push it to October. Something about not wanting to ruin the lawn in Piedmont Park. The experience was so much nicer than the ass-whooping heat of June that October became the permanent home for Atlanta Pride.

So when Pride rolled around this year, my weekend consisted of going to the gym, napping with my dog, getting pizza on the BeltLine, and having family dinner. None of those things were particularly queer. Instead they looked a lot like all my other weekends. The good ones at least. And though it was a most perfect weekend by my accounting, there was a twinge that something was missing. A guilt that something wasn’t.

I’m tempted to say that I have a complicated history with Pride but that isn’t exactly true. I’ve attended some years and haven’t others. Either way it’s always been fine. It’s more accurate to say that I have complicated feelings around Pride. There’s a sloppy mishmash of excitement, longing, shame, and disappointment that churns in my gut when I think about it. Similar to a big holiday I feel some unspoken pressure to make Pride and all it’s accompanying festivities magical. Or at least meaningful.

The first layer of stress is easy to unpack. As I’ve written about before, I get highly anxious when physically in queer spaces. I can’t pinpoint an exact origin to this. It’s not as though I’ve have any kind of traumatic experience in those spaces before. I don’t have a bad history. But even at age 34 the thought of being around lots of queer folks, specifically gay men, raises my cortisol.

One cannot separate the dual roles that gay bars simultaneously play: as community center and as meat market. The same spot where queer folks can safely (in theory) gather with friends and exist is the same spot where queer folks look for love and sex. Imagine if the library also held speed dating for straight people. Not a perfect analogy but you get the idea. Whenever gays gather, there’s community building and hunting.

To be fair I don’t necessarily hate that aspect. It makes perfect sense why community building and cruising are inextricably linked. And while I don’t love being gawked at, it isn’t the worst thing. Depending on who’s gawking it can be fun and affirming. “Flirting” I believe it’s called. The part I don’t like, when I’m being fully honest with myself, is that I’m unable to turn off my own hunter instincts in those spaces. There’s something in me that takes over and renders me incapable of just having fun with no agenda. Instead I gawk. I become a gawker. I size people up. I scan the room. There’s a perpetual motive running on the back burner.

When I’ve gone to Pride before I’ve found myself walking around unable to shut that instinct off. I’ll stroll the aisles of booths offering church communities, sports leagues, and dance classes all while a sizable segment of my brain tabulates every passersby fuckability. It’s my baser nature and I hate that I’m somehow not more evolved. But it’s the truth. I’m unable to stroll with ease. Instead the primate in me strolls with a mission.

In my defense there’s a fair amount of peacocking at Pride (pun intended). Whenever gays gather, body parts somehow start exposing themselves. Chests, abs, and asses suddenly unsheathe and find the light of day. If people are going to look, then some folks will gladly offer their sculpted body to look at. Some folks will gladly offer their unsculpted body to look at too. On a deep level it’s all a beautiful act of rebellion. The queer body is shamed and trivialized for existing. The queer body is the site of violence by a hostile government and society. Exposing those bodies is a proverbial middle finger to the establishments that seek to harm us. And to that I say, “keep being naked.”

The problem is what happens in that reptilian brain of mine when I see those lean muscled bodies. A thick cloak of shame wraps itself around me when I see what other men are working with. Rather than celebrate the liberation, the middle finger, the vast array of body types (and they are vast), I’m reminded of the many things I am not. Not tanned, not single-digits body fat percentage, not built like a porn star, not brave enough to ever take my shirt off in public. My body dysmorphia, a term I don’t use lightly here, rears its ugly head. It’s bizarre to be so titillated by something that makes me hate myself.

The beautiful gays tend to travel in packs too. They find each other like magnets. For some reason these gays travel in packs of 3, 5, or 6. Never 4. They roll deep. And it’s not just the muscled hunks. It’s the twinks, the bull dykes, the leather daddies, the bears, the fem girls, the circuit gays, the Gen Z queers, and everyone in between. Like finds like. Thousands of friendship pods bounce and giggle their way to Midtown Atlanta every year, each one securely nestled in the safety of a group. Each one reminding me that I don’t have that.

I’m sure there are a plethora of reasons why but I have found myself in my mid-30s, having been openly gay since Bush was in office, with no tribe of queer friends. I don’t have a crew who will coax me out to dance parties and drag shows and game nights and gay bars. The result being that I don’t really do those things. I’m not tapped into the larger community because I never found or built a smaller one. At my age there’s a feeling that the shipped has sailed and it’s too late to find that. I’m too deep into the life I’ve been living. And to be clear I don’t say this to elicit sympathy or pity. As I’ve written about before (and before), my friends are absolutely stellar humans who make this life I’m living so unspeakably rich and meaningful. They’re just not a pod of queers. And without that pod, Pride feels too vulnerable to do alone.

All that leads to the mishmash in my gut whenever Pride rolls around each year. I’m nervous around queers folks. I fear perceived judgment for how I look. My brain berates my body for not having abs. It’s impossible to relax while I scan the crowd for hotties* and potential lovers. At every corner I’m reminded of how few queer friends I have, how much of an outsider I am, how unconnected I am to the greater community. Pride makes me long for what isn’t.

And that’s okay.

Looking at the origins of Pride, the brutal and violent fight for a space in the world, makes me think my own personal mishmash of feelings is actually right on brand. The first Pride, led by queers and femmes in NYC, was nothing if not the manifestation of longing for what isn’t…yet. They rose up and marched because they saw a different world was possible. They took beatings and scorn because they believed there was something beyond beatings and scorn. They believed they had the right to show up in the world just as they were.

And isn’t that the essence of it all? To show up just as we are? For me to show up as I am might mean going to the gym and cooking out at my sister’s house instead of going to a pride party. It might mean that napping with my dog and late night pizza on the BeltLine is more authentic, more me, than going to a parade. It might mean that my way of showing up, with introverted tendencies and a love of alone time, looks different than how other queers show up. I’m just me, fully me, as I am. And at the end of the day I suppose that’s exactly what our queer founders would want. They would want every queer for generations to come to be wholly and totally themselves.

No parade necessary.

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*I’m trying to bring back this late-90s term fyi