PRIDE

Last Saturday, the Boston Pride Parade didn't happen..

It's been held - with a couple of years off for COVID - since 1971. 

And now it's no longer.

Which makes me pretty sad.

Back in 1969, I remember reading about the Stonewall Riots in 1969, but have no recall of the first gay pride parade in Boston. In June 1971, I was graduating from college, packing up my apartment in the Fens, moving to Worcester for the summer, preparing for grad school at Columbia in the fall, and going to weddings. Three of my friends were married in June 1971. One of them, as it turns out, was marrying a gay man. Not surprisingly, they divorced but remained good friends. Her kids considered him an uncle. Anyway, we didn't have a lot of consciousness of gay back then. At least I didn't.

I don't know when I first became aware that gay folks existed.

When I was a kid, there were sissies. Mamas' boys. People made the limp wrist gesture. I had no idea what any of it meant.

Somewhere along the line, when I was in high school, I knew that there was such a thing as a homosexual, an effeminate man referred to as a swish, a queer, a faggot (maybe). My awareness of "such things" was primarily through reading. 

I didn't know anyone gay. At least anyone who was out to anyone, including themselves. (I went to the senior prom of a Catholic boys high school, and on another date or two, with a kid from the neighborhood. Although we were both smart and oddballs, we weren't really friends, although, as a couple of smart oddballs, we probably should have been. Turns out, he was gay. He made his way to San Francisco and he died pretty young. I don't think it was from AIDS, but may well have been.)

Although I knew that there were male homosexuals, I wasn't aware that women could also be gay until one of the nuns infamously revealed that such a thing could exist.

For whatever reason, the average Math SAT score for my class (all girls high school) was higher than the average Verbal SAT score. One of the nuns told us not to be worried. "Girls, just because you did better on your math College Boards doesn't mean you're a homosexual."

Say wut?

She continued her riff for a bit: "What can you do with them, girls? You can't put them in prison. They'll be with their own kind."

We knew she was ridiculous, but the news that women could be gay was big news.

So now we knew what was up with the tough women we'd see downtown wearing dungarees and denim jackets and sporting heavily Brylcreem'd DAs (Duck's Ass hairdos).

My freshman year in college, I saw the movie The Fox, based on a novella by D.H. Lawrence. There it dawned on me that homosexual women were not all sporting heavily Brylcreem'd DAs.

There were a some women in my school - a Catholic women's college - who were rumored to be gay. A couple I was pretty friendly with, but it wasn't something discussed. I was more concerned with matters political, and with worrying about how, where, and when I was going to find a man to help me get rid of my virginity.

Also when I was in college: one of my Catholic girls high school friends transferred college to be with another of my Catholic girls high school friends. (They didn't come out until way later, when we were well into our 30's. I was out to dinner with one of them and another close friend, when K spilled the beans. She was a bit surprised when we told her that, yeah, we'd kind of figured. It was a different world. I'm happy to report that, fifty-plus years later, they're still together.)

I don't suppose I gave much thought to gay or not during my twenties. I was busy going to grad school, dropping out, traveling, working at crappy jobs, hanging with my boyfriend, taking courses, dropping back into a grad school I was better suited for, finding real work.

But during the 1980's, when my professional career began, colleagues were slowly but surely coming out at work.

Someone would confide in a trusted work friend. "You know I'm..."

You'd meet a significant other  - a "friend" - when they dropped by work. As things opened up, a picture would appear on a desk. The SO would come to a company function as the SO, not  a "friend."

And all of a sudden, I had gay friends.

I don't remember exactly when I started watching the Boston Pride Parade. I may have been a latecomer, but I'm guessing it was in 1992, the June after we moved to our condo on Beacon Street. The parade went right by our building, and we'd sit on the front steps and watch.

I always loved it.

At first, there wasn't all that much to it, but it was heartening to see the gay men and women parading. Heartening to see the PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) brigade. The groups from the Unitarian churches.

I also got a kick out of the Dykes on Bikes, a motorcycle club. And the Batacuda Belles, an all-women percussion band. 

Some of the gay bars sponsored floats, and they all had music blasting and plenty of dancing. 

There were a few parade things that brought out the inner Irish-Catholic prude in me, I guess. I wasn't a fan of seeing BDSM in action, floating by my house. And one time, I believe there was a couple actually going at in in an old fashioned claw-foot tub on wheels that some of their buddies were dragging along.

I would have rather not seen this sort of stuff, and often felt that there should be an after-parade, after-dark event in the South End (considered the hub of gay life in the hub) where anything could happen. Let it all hang out. Just not in broad daylight in front of me, and unsuspecting (but generally supportive) families with little kiddos.

Over time, the parade grew.

Eventually, it turned the corner and headed up the Hill instead of by my house. I still went.

The parade got bigger. 

More politicians walked. More church groups - not just the Unitarians. More gay families with their kids. More corporate groups. More high school and college groups. The acronym umbrella expanded. LBGTQA...

The last couple of years it was held I watched with my friend Tim From The Gym, who's roughly my age and grew up in a massive Irish-Catholic Boston family. (Thirteen kids.) 

But there were inevitable growing pains.

The group that had sponsored the parade since its inception was mostly white, middle class gays and lesbians. The kind of gay folks I know. 

There were complaints that the parade was too corporate, too privileged, not centered enough on people of color, the trans community. The old folks were sell outs. 

So the Boston Pride organization voted to disband, and with it went the parade.

Several groups have been holding smaller events. I walked by one on The Common last Saturday. But it's not the same as the old parade, which I miss. I haven't spoken with any of my friends about it, but I suspect that - even if they didn't attend the parade - they miss it, too.

What looks to the younger folks, the folks from marginalized communities like corporate selling out, like white privilege, looks to me like hard won acceptance. Sure, there's work to be done, but the gay folks I'm friends with didn't have life easy growing up, or beyond. Those corporate groups signal that it's okay to be openly gay at work. Those families pushing strollers show that it's okay to get married and have kids. Those high school kids aren't ever going to have to put up with some crackpot nun ranting about SATs. 

Maybe those complaining about the olds don't have a clue what they went through. Maybe they don't know that gay men my age watched their community, their lovers and friends, mowed down by AIDS. Maybe they don't know what it's like to watch a loved one, down to 100 pounds, covered with Kaposi's sarcoma lesions, hallucinating his last hours away. Maybe they never helped make a panel for the AIDS quilt. 

Maybe they can't imagine what it was like growing up before the Internet, when you knew you were different but thought you were the only one out there who was. 

Maybe they don't care about gay marriage. They're young. Maybe it's not their jam. Maybe it's never going to be. 

But I went to the wedding of my high school friends, held shortly after Massachusetts okayed gay marriage in 2004 - forty years after they'd first met in high school - and it was one of the most moving weddings I've been to. A lot better than the one where my college friend married a gay man.

We haven't come far enough, but things have gotten better for a lot of people. 

Here's hoping that things don't get pushed back into the closet. Here's hoping the persecution of trans folks and their families ends. Here's hoping that you can say gay in Florida. Here's hoping that white supremacist groups like the Patriot Front a-holes who were arrested before they could stir up trouble at a Pride event in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, last week, cease and desist before we're living in a society where packs of armed and seething Brown Shirts show up at every event they don't like, eager for violence. 

It's a scary time.

I'm sure it wasn't perfect, but I missed the joy and exuberance of the Boston Pride Parade. 

Maybe it just ran out its string. Maybe it was time. 

Let's see what the new kids on the block can do.

It's a scary time, and for all of their sakes, and for everyone's sake, I wish them well.