26/06/2016
Last night at the Current Block Party, we performed an ode to the gay district to celebrate Pride Weekend. Here is the text:
On The Strip
We laughed at the young kids, slipping through the crowd, all wide eyes and giggles. Too much eyeshadow, too much coffee. They couldn’t quite muster the courage to sneak into a bar. It’s cool. They’re not hurting anybody and nobody’s hurting them because we all remember what it's like to just want to escape the parents and the churches and the schools for a night and find out what it’s like to be gay.
We nodded at some acquaintances. Not friends, exactly, but close enough to drink with if no one else is around. They talk too much about work and it's almost always a call center somewhere. They wear business casual five days a week so they can dress to the nines on the weekends. We heard them laughing and arguing about where to go next. More drinking? Anybody else hungry? Sarah’s barbecuing at her house a few blocks away. Yeah, but all they talk about is politics and Game of Thrones. Majority decision was to do another round of shots, then dance until the club turns the 2 am lights on.
The Moneyed G**s were already calling it a night because they had to be up early in the morning. They always have to be up in the morning, but it was important to be with their people, even if for just a little while. They missed the struggle and the alienation. They missed the liberation and the cocktails that were a shade of blue that existed nowhere else on the face of the planet. We congratulated them on their one-year anniversary and they reminded us about how one can’t understand true responsibility until one has a child. Q***r or straight, new parents are insufferable.
We couldn’t believe how nice it was outside and maybe we should just find a bar patio, but ended up following the crowds into a dance club. We deserved this. Sunday through Thursday, we fought for the right to exist so that, on Friday and Saturday, we could return to the strip and feel like we truly belong.
Chandler’s cologne smelled like a slap in the face and Nancy was already way too drunk, but we’d look after her. We were family, after all. Eventually the lights would come up and we would all return to the hetero-normative society. We would hold in our gay and make mama proud. But here. Tonight. We were safe. We were accepted. On the strip, we could finally breathe. Within our neon-lit sanctuary, we were the normal. We were the moral majority. We were free.
