Totally Gay

   Yesterday was Gay Pride Day here in San Francisco, and the celebration for hundreds of thousands left Civic Center looking like this (above) round about 8:30pm. Heavy hangs the head that wore the crown the night before--or even that partied earlier that afternoon.
   I didn't make it down to the Parade or Civic Center celebration; I was tired from working. But by this point the only reason to do it would be to offer a silent nod to my fallen brothers of the 1980s and '90s and the dykes who stepped up to help them. And I can do that here.
   I first attended the Parade sometime in the mid-80s. By that time, AIDS had already claimed thousands. That doesn't mean the day lacked a sense of celebration. One year, an hour before the Parade, a friend and I dropped MDA, a precursor to Ecstasy. There followed the psychedelic onset of the Parade-opening Dykes on Bikes, a demented ten-minute onslaught of thunder and gas fumes and leather and tulle.
   But, for many of us, the Parade in those years--before corporate sponsorship and gay TV characters and LGBT marriage--simply provided a show of solidarity and a suggestion of possibility.
   More to the point, by the mid-to-late '80s it was a chance to see who still stood, given the indiscriminate ravages of AIDS. Solemn applause trailed the People With AIDS contingent down the route. Spectators clapped for those who still walked, who yet lived. And they clapped as if applause, like garlic a vampire, might keep AIDS at bay. A question hovered in the silence beneath the pitter-patter: Who among us is next?
   When talking about the Parade, then, it's tempting to ring the curmudgeon bell, to piss on the modern version's seemingly empty sense of spectacle. But there's no point. That was then. This is now. Hell, just last Friday New York state lawmakers approved a bill legalizing same-gender marriage. That's some kind of progress, right? Anyway, for at least one friend, this parade, his first, marked a kind of coming out: I'm here, they're queer, I'm getting used to it. 
   For us War Vets, then, it's enough to take a moment to remember the fallen, to blow a kiss up to the high blue sky where they may yet reside. And as we do so, so do we keep the feet firmly planted on the ground, be they shod in combat boots or stilettos, and appreciate the fact of our still being able to walk a'tall.