PRIDE and stuff

So, I think Pride Week just ended with the Pride Parade in downtown Toronto, and guess what, I went. Pretty much dragged along, a nothing-better-to-do sort of thing, but I might as well while I’m not doing anything really that productive at home.

What I regret, is that I didn’t go with an intention, or much of a motivation. For me, there wasn’t much of a goal. Being heterosexual, and more so, being me, I found it hard to connect with a lot of what was going on. PRIDE Week might as well be Healthy Nutrition Week in my books—pretty much a detached, apathetic observer than a participant, or an activist, or a community member.

I regret it because I didn’t get to appreciate a lot of what I saw. I saw a lot too. There were drag queens, transsexuals, gays, lesbians, straights, couples of all types, topless women, pantsless men, the old, the young, the middle aged; firefighters, policemen, gamers, DJ’s, dancers, singers, school groups.

Saw them all, and I regret not getting to feel something along with them. Because the more I think about it, the more I think about how proud they really are for having the life that they have, and being able to express themselves the way they do.

I’ve never had the privilege of having a close gay friend. I wouldn’t have called it a privilege a year ago, maybe even a few months ago. But if I could talk closely with someone who has gay, I’d learn how to be a better person, absolutely.

I deal with problems—external, internal. I battle with myself, my emotions, past and present decisions. I beat myself up. I hurt.

But it’s obviously nothing compared to someone who is gay. That’s what I regret not taking to the PRIDE Parade.

To be gay, is to be labelled immediately. Without your knowing, and with the inevitable realization—at least in a society where it can be labeled—that you will have to walk with it wherever you go, either waiting to burst through your skin, or having it come out by itself and facing the consequences without preparation, mental or physical.

So much of what defines Western society depends on what someone or something else has told all of us, and we’re conditioned to listen, to the letter, until something or someone different happens and we’re too damn scared to face it that it leads to hatred, ignorance, suicide.

I don’t know what it it must be like, but I know the emotions that a gay adolescent probably goes through. Intensified, I’m sure, much more vivid. Much more concrete and convincing. Not only emotions, but thoughts. To have that kind of seed planted, and the potential of having it planted so damn early in one’s childhood—those roots stay with you. Stay with you into your early adulthood, if not you’re whole life.

It takes an army to pull out that kind of root. Gay people rarely have an army behind them. Surely, it’s quite the opposite. In America, definitely. In Canada, I’m thankful it’s not that bad.

Gay people take more shit from others than I had my entire high school experience. For most, it’s started earlier. And it starts with the first bully—themselves. They ask the questions of their sexuality first. And then others ferment it, reinforce it, and convince them of what or who they are. I may not know it first-hand, but I can relate.

Bullying, ironically, is all-inclusive.

And to fight back from that, to be one of those that crawls, hands and feet, up from the mile-deep hole that others—friends, enemies, parents, strangers—dig relentlessly for them and shove them in it, that takes a fucking powerful person to do.

Gay people are shoved with adversity and hardship right out of the gate, and I’m surprised the child suicides aren’t higher now. In fact, I’m proud they’re not high. Because I know, thankfully, that most of those gay kids who are fighting for that place in a society that mostly shuns them, are succeeding.

The one way I can relate to someone who is gay is that they’re constantly getting back up. There’s no doubt in my mind that they probably feel there’s little left in the world for them, when they’re in, or were in, that place or time, and there’s but one tether, one anchor keeping them from falling off the face of the earth, as if its what they deserve, because someone tells them it.

I thought I had it hard. I didn’t. I still don’t. Yes, it’s hard to stay humble when you’re given such a privileged life. But thinking about something like this gives you those moments. I’m choosing to record it, so I can come back to it, and realize all over again, why there’s something to be happy about in the world.

Gay people are tried and tested. They come out on top, more often than not. I know God would be proud, if he’s out there. If he’s not, all of us that support them are proud, and that’s enough.

I regret not thinking about all this while I was there. While I was there I was indifferent. Detached. Not realizing that what I’ve gone through, and sometimes, what I’m still going through, is an infinitesimal fraction of what someone who finds out they’re gay has to face. Daily, yearly, perhaps for a better part of their life.

But things are changing. Snail’s pace it may be, they are changing. We’re moving progressively, in the right direction. Albeit, it’s often one forward and two back, but I hope with a large quantity of my hoping ability that the veils of ignorance and prejudice pull back one day.

Fuck, if there’s one thing you should be irrational about, it’s hope.

And if you’re reading this, and you’re not sure of your sexuality, or if you are sure, and you’re regretting it, please, don’t. I regret not caring. I regret not being able to walk down a hallway and stop it the moment I see it, and at times, being a part of it. I regret not having the chance to help save a life. I regret not feeling proud for you.

Feel proud. You should. You’re going to beat out everybody else, you’re going to take the worst possible punishment and you’re going to come out on top.

And if you already have, then I’m sure you were at the PRIDE Parade.