Recently, I, a fabulous gay man from New York, was standing in a sparse dressing room at the Nordstrom Rack in Salt Lake City – my mother’s favorite outlet store. She was taking me on a good ole’ mother/son shopping spree for my upcoming birthday.
I stood under the unflattering florescent lights trying on various shirts that had been on the rack for too long and contemplating turning 40…
…I looked at my round belly in the mirror and the hair on my chest which is turning white. White. Chest hair.
I’ve stood in this dressing room before. With my mother knocking on the louvered door. “How’s it going in there? How are the pants? Do you need a larger size? Aren’t you going to show me?”
I looked at myself and thought: how am I here again? Who AM I? Who is this person? I moved to New York to become someone else. Someone fabulous. Who doesn’t need his mother to buy him clothes.
I need the clothes.
Outside the Nordstrom Rack, Salt Lake City was about to burst with gay pride. June 6. One day before my 40th. I would drive past the bustling festival preparations - rows and rows of white tents and rainbow flags, right there at the City & County Building – right in the center of town!!
20 years ago there in Salt Lake City I experienced my first gay pride day. It followed my first gay pride parade –really more a march – down Main Street – sticking close to our fellow marchers– because unlike in New York where throngs of well-wishers cheer as you walk by – you would be scowled at, or worse, spit on, or called a faggot. And young fellows like me trembled in fear that the news cameras might catch us and all our aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents would see what we had been so carefully keeping from them. The truth.
The festival was held at Murray Park – the third-string Park in Salt Lake. Sorry, Ms. Murray. In the part of town which boasted the largest number of auto dealers and pawn shops they could hide us, to do whatever it is we might do, far from the eyes of the moral majority.
I had never been in a gathering of so many gay people before, there must have been over 800 people. And I was astounded. There were men AND women! There were OLD people! And mothers with children! Freaks sharing snow-cones with “regular”-looking people! And everyone seemed so happy together!
The drag queen on the stage had just introduced a butch lesbian singer-songwriter when there was a disruption from the rear of the crowd. The piano stopped and a hush befell the assembly as we watched with horror, a truck crawling menacingly close, overflowing with tough-looking men and women wearing swastika armbands and proudly waiving a Nazi flag. Yes. A Nazi flag.
They didn’t look invited.
Instinctively the crowd contracted and some began to flee. But the drag queen did not withdraw. She stepped forward, took the mic and said “It looks like we have party crashers.”
“Well. There are more of us then there are of them.”
And the Queers, naturally possessing great timing, took each other’s hands right on cue, We reached out, and grabbed each other, and the mothers and the leathermen and trannies and dykes and freaks and the “regular”-looking people…and the queer little Mormon theatre majors…became one. And en masse we moved towards the lil’ truck o’ Nazis. There may have been some shouting and some name calling and there was definitely some chanting(“were here, were queer, were proud of it, get used to it”) but most of all, there was this quiet, awesome POWER. Power. And peace.
Because we knew, for sure, right then, that it was all true. That the redundant rhetoric of unity, and inclusiveness and community had a real and tangible…point! When we became one, for that fleeting moment, we were unstoppable. And we gathered speed and moved toward the truck, and the little band of Nazi’s, having realized they had underestimated their target, jumped back in their truck and drove away. And at that moment, the rules changed. We had scored one for the queers and we were, legitimately and profoundly…proud.
I think we changed gay pride in Salt Lake City forever that day. I do. There were over 25,000 people at this year’s gay pride festival. In the city’s center.
And for a fleeting moment in the florescent-bathed mirror at the Nordstrom Rack, I looked…proud.
I feel so lucky. To have been born in these times in this country. Take a country like Uganda. The estimated 500,000 LGBTQ persons living there are forced to hide. Because those who are caught face arrest, detention, beatings, and even death at the hands of the authorities, or even their own communities.
On June 25 and 26 the New York Neo-Futurists perform their fourth annual gay pride benefit: “Too Much Pride Makes The Baby Go Gay” with proceeds benefiting LGBTQ activism in Uganda through the Fund For Global Human Rights. It will be an evening of raucous comedy and unbridled celebration of love. We’re doing it for the freedom of those in Uganda and around the world. I invite you to come. I couldn’t be more proud.
Yours,
BORG
Come to the FOURTH annual Pride benefit show:
Too Much Pride Makes the Baby Go Gay!
(30 gay plays in 60 straight minutes)
June 25th & 26th @ 10:30pm
Proceeds to benefit LGBT Activism in Uganda!
www.nynf.org
For tickets: https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/698325
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