A Gay Old Time

Another Pride weekend has come and gone. It was packed with tons of activities, which started off with the Trans March Friday evening. I met up with a few friends there, hung out, walked around with a bucket taking donations, and then brought up the rear of the march with Safety Kurt. It's the second year in a row that we've brought up the rear.

The entertainment for the Trans March...hmmm...well, let's see...how do I put this. It wasn't my flavor of entertainment. There was a distinct punk tint to most of it...that, and the usual woe-is-me tranny speech or two. I don't think I heard any 'I have a dream' type speeches, or positive aspect speeches. It all comes down to 'he wouldn't respect me or fuck me cuz I have a penis' type speeches. Sorry...that's just the way I'm going to describe it because that's how it hits you. Of course, I didn't catch the entire afternoon of activities, so I can't really talk about all of it...only the parts I caught. And, I dunno....I'm just not big on lip synching...on either side or between fences. I just find it boring.

The organizers can only do so much, though, because there typically aren't very many sponsors for T stuff. The advertisers are just now tapping into the last big 10% by hitting gay and lesbian stuff...do they really want to throw that much money into the 0.04% transgender population?

On Saturday, I hung out with some teammates at the Dyke March before some transgender friends joined me there. I think I previously mentioned that worlds would collide this weekend...and they finally did. And, so far, it hasn't really been that bad.

Here's the thing...I think a lot of transgender people that live stealth or something close, worry that knowing a transgender person or introducing a transgender person to their own friends, will out them as a transgender person, too. But in fact, as we walked along in the Dyke March, one of my transgender friends knew plenty of non-transgender friends...and greeted them along the way with hugs and hellos. One can be transgender and living fairly stealth, and still have transgender friends.

I guess some of us want to put it entirely out of our minds...that anything transgender related will either out us or remind us of our own past. But ya know, they are my friends, and I'm not gonna ditch them because I'm insecure about who I am.

This was my first time for such an occurrence, so I will admit I was nervous. I pointed out my teammates to them and some of my teammates introduced themselves in return. My teammates are pretty cool, and were very warm. I totally love my teammates...they rock.

As we approached the Castro, I kinda ditched my teammates, though, since they most likely were just going to drink...and I was starting to get hungry. We had a 45 minute wait to get in, but we finally had a very nice dinner at Nirvana. Good food. If one is visiting the Castro, definitely give it a shot.

OK, so Sunday was the actual Pride parade. I was signed up to volunteer with TGSF, and worked the northern gate for a couple hours before Amy and Tiffany showed up. We walked around a bit...looking at the sites to behold, and the booths to visit. Tiffany snapped a few photos of the weekend, including one of yours truly during my little volunteer stint.

Since I rode public transit most of the weekend, and since MUNI was shut down at 10pm, I probably ended up walking quite a bit during the weekend. By Sunday evening, I was quite tired...evidence of a very eventful weekend.