However, we made
it in good time. Greeted the small turn out. And chatted with
Sean who has hurt his ankle walking round Paris
for Euro-Pride the previous weekend. Serves him right for being so devoted to
The Car.
Well, it's difficult to comprehend that a whole year has passed by since I met Ross at Pride 96. Reading through that journal entry takes me back to a time of renewed energies and new hopes. However, I really don't think that if you'd told me on the Friday night before that Pride that I was about to meet someone who would become my partner that I would have believed you and yet there it is; it has happened.
So, what of the day? Well, we started well, Ross, Chris and I, with Buck's Fizz on the
bed and talk and plans. When it came down to it, reaching Oxford Circus by 12 noon
was only just about manageable. It seems to be a rule of thumb that the total amount of
time required for possession of the bathroom is a Fibonacci series where gay men are
concerned. However, we made
it in good time. Greeted the small turn out. And chatted with
Sean who has hurt his ankle walking round Paris
for Euro-Pride the previous weekend. Serves him right for being so devoted to
The Car.
The march is fun. We keep losing people and meeting up again as is the way. The march grinds to a halt at one point. Ross and I pass the time with his hand in my pocket making my eyes grow as big as saucers. At the end of the march, we peal off into the back streets of Belgravia rather than get marshaled by the police through to God knows where. I strike off boldly to a pub I know near St James's Park tube station. We get there and order lunch just before the crowds arrive. Fun, fun, fun.
We get to the Carnival via Brixton and do the circuit of attractions ending up just Chris and Ross and I watching the music from a distance. Ross and I are glued together gently eroticising each other. Chris and I have our arms round each other. I'm stroking his arm. He's caressing my neck. It's the closest I've come to an infidelity all year. And no, nothing more outrageous did happen later but it's nice that that closeness happened at the Carnival. We're all pooped. So the three of us battle through London's crumbling transport infrastructure to get home. Frankly our capital no longer has the capacity to stage large scale events such as this.
Fabby day? Yes, of course, Pride always is. Better than last year? No. And that's Ross and Chris speaking also.
I spent a lot of the day feeling very disenchanted. The march was really two events. A Carnival Parade at the front followed by a political demonstration behind. And the organisers and the media have forgotten or neglected to remember that to be on the streets as an out gay or lesbian person is still a political act and an act of courage for many. It's always brilliant to see those for whom this is a first time in amongst so many of their own kind and to draw a strength from that sense of liberation from isolation. But that sense of the political achieved through a multitude of personal triumphs just got lost in amongst the sense of conspicuous, organised display.
The Carnival too is now billed as the world's largest free music festival. Well, it's nice to know that gay people can still throw a good party but again the Carnival is losing a sense of what its roots are. There are now so many hetties there that it is no longer a specifically gay space. And OK they're not there to be against us. But they're not there, mostly, to be positively for us. They're there for a free day out on our time. The release of the red balloons to mark the numbers who have been diagnosed HIV positive over the past 15 or more years elicited many comments from around Ross and I about how lovely the balloons were. Those people weren't there to celebrate gay pride.
Oh, I know I sound like a real curmudgeon and honestly I would rather that people had a good time rather than not but I want Pride to be handed back to the gays and lesbians again.