2005

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2005 goes down as the year I got scolded. Twice.

Up until this point nobody had ever said anything negative about my outrageous attire. And it didn't happen again until one minor comment in 2009. But I got two negative comments at Pride 2005.

I bought this one off-the-rack. Well, it was a web purchase. My alteration to it took about 20 seconds, so it was very simple. It was sold as the right-half of a thong swimsuit. As it came in the mail it had a clear stretchy strap that ran around the left side. It really was well done to be practically invisible but I decided that just wasn't quite right. So I chopped the clear strap off leaving nothing on the left side whatsoever.

Shortly before the parade I headed to the fair grounds to drop off some stuff at one of the booths. While locating the booth I ran into one of the volunteers working for Pride and he immediately lit into me something fierce. I mean it was really rough. He had three sticking points:
-- straight people come to the parade and we don't want to alienate them.   My response was that the straight people come to the parade because they want to see wild and crazy stuff. If they wanted another ordinary plain parade they'd go to the PNE.
-- people bring their children. Think of the children!   I countered that children wouldn't even notice. Until an adult teaches them, kids don't even recognize the difference between clothed and naked.
-- it's illegal.   I pointed out that it is legal: I'm completely covered; and what's more, I'd already passed right by two cops on the way down.
He stuck with his demand though, really trying to impress me that I had to do what he said. So I finally said, "I know you want me to change but you're going to have to accept that I will not. You don't have a chance. I'm just going to ignore you. Sorry!"

The second person was a guy I casually know. He confronted me at the fair grounds shortly after I'd returned there following the parade. He just barked at me, "put some clothes on you pervert!" When I ignored that he physically moved to confront me and started lecturing me about how "idiots like you" ruin things for all gay people. We need to conform to what is normal so straight people will accept us.   I didn't want to get into it with him there, so I merely continued to ignore him and walked around him. He yelled some very crude things after me. The poor guy didn't have a clue how flawed his reasoning is. There's a difference between conforming to appropriately fit the situation; and conforming to fit in. The first one makes sense. The second one is selling out. If I was to buy his philosophy and dress 'right' so that straight people would accept me, then what's to say the next step shouldn't be that I should date 'right' and marry a woman so that straight people will accept me? And of course I could come back to the simple argument: the straight people come to the Pride parade because they want to see wild stuff!

I still had a fantastic time. This was the year I really dove into action in the parade. I jumped out and stole a giant ball from some guys in the parade at one point. They thought it was funny--thank goodness--and ran after me to retrieve it. I describe it as 'harassing' the parade, but I'm careful to do so in ways that won't piss off those I'm harassing.

After my second incident I was still wandering through the fair booths and coming the opposite direction towards me was a family. As they neared me the mother grabs her 5-year-old (I'm guessing) son's hand and said, "Look Jason! That man has his bum bare." Jason glances my way for about two seconds before his head turns to seek out something more interesting. Vindication is sweet! Mom didn't give a rats ass that I was exposing her or her kid to my almost-naked body. And Jason wasn't the least bit traumatized by the human form (chances are he didn't even remember it within two minutes). Meantime Jason's dad walked up to me and asked the same question I'd been asked about my right-half thong a hundred times that day. "How do you keep that thing on?"
I was ready with my answer: "Will power!"
The truth was much less interesting. I had purchased a bottle of theatrical glue. It was glued on.

It was a fantastic day, and to anyone who has hang-ups about somebody running around almost naked--or even totally naked, I'll put my message here in blunt shorthand: fuck off and deal with your hang-ups on your own time. Believe me, I was really tempted to say it that directly to both those guys that day. The only two people with a problem on my attire, and they're both gay men!

This was the year I started getting a lot of questions in advance about my Pride attire too. A couple months before Pride and becoming more frequent as the day got closer I started getting questions on what I'd be wearing this year. By the time the day arrived I must have fielded the question from at least 40 or 50 people. And of course I wouldn't tell!