It’s Homo Overload…whoops, I mean Gay Pride Week here in New York, so I guess it’s only fitting that I chime in on the subject. But before I do, I just want y’all to think about this question posed by the Paris ACT UP chapter: “Proud of what?”
Gay Pride doesn’t inspire any particular pride in me. In fact, it makes me cringe with embarrassment and loathing. Not the idea of it, but the actual event in all its glitzy, our-way-or-the-highway madness. I don’t even know where to begin. (Paul Baker’s Burn Your Jockstrap site articulates my frustrations with gay culture much better than I ever could, anyway, so go look at that.) The homos are pretty homogenous — at least within each of their cliques — and it irritates me that there’s a parade to prove it.
The thing to keep in mind is that I love being gay. I mean, there’s no question about it. I’m really, really gay. And yes, I’m proud of it. I don’t mean that I’m a prancing nancy, or a pumped-up pretty boy, or straight-acting bear (all of which are terms that could be used to describe people I love). I’m Sparky. I am, among other things, an enthusiatic lover of other fellas. And goddamn I’m proud of that! It’s a part of me, and a pretty significant part, one which influences a lot of the other parts.
Coming out wasn’t a huge dilemma for me, even though I did it at the ripe old age of 21. I did it when the time was right for me, when I had the insight and energy to deal with that aspect of life. No trauma, just a couple of awkward conversations. But to get to that point, I had to figure out some stuff about my life and the world around me, and that’s good. If I weren’t gay, I may not have thought as much about what makes me the person I am. I’m proud that I had to ask myself difficult questions, and proud that I sorted out some sort of direction in a sea of conflicting opinions. I’m proud that I chose for myself what I want, and didn’t hold myself to what my folks or my school or my friends naturally assumed would be the way things worked.
I didn’t shut off that way of thinking when I confronted gay culture, which is why I get so incensed by this feeling that the so-called gay counter-culture would, if it could, impose the same kind of rigorous expectations on me as the so-called mainstream. screw it. I’m not any more likely to go to the gym to beef up my tits than I am to marry the girl next door and settle down in a house in Nutley, New Jersey, or shoot heroin in a crack den. I said “no” to all that. And I don‘t wish to be told I’m a loser for not making any one of those things a priority.
For me, gay pride is an everyday fact of life. An excuse to say, “That’s me, dig it or ditch it,” just like any other aspect of myself. I don’t want to be like every other gay person in the world, especially not if they’re trying to be just like everyone else (except, of course, for more inherently fabulous because they’re gay). If I were to let that happen, I’d be a whole let less Sparky, wouldn’t I?