Pride was like an acid trip to Oz

So wild in fact that I only have time to write about it over a week later. I did all the things I said I would and more. Let’s be clear here… a bender is when you continue to consume tasty fun toxins repeatedly and don’t come up for air by choice. It’s pretty hardcore if your body can handle it. An acid trip is a commitment that you can’t sober up from for a long time and you just have to ride it out. A good acid trip is one where you are an active passenger of the ride and you just let it happen. I said Heath Ledgers‘ ‘Joker’ was like a bad acid trip and it’s true you just have to ride the drugs until they take their course. If you fight it, you’re in for some serious mindfuckery. This was my pride. However it was a good acid trip that was still threatened by some amazing mindfuckery. It was full of hot lesbian parties and even hotter lesbians.

To wind down and make sense of my intense week, I went to an out door screening of The Wizard of Oz Put on by Fresh Air Cinema. Which I now equate with a walk through Vancouver during pride. Let’s think about this… Queens and Tourists and Bears, oh my! Everyone is in bright obnoxious colours, Davie Street is all lit up and it’s impossible to deviate from the rainbow streamer filled brick road. There is a parade of people looking for a heart, some casual sex (otherwise known as the brain) and the nerve to act on their brain. They dance and march to the electronic beat of gay melodies while all the straight folk of the Emerald/Vancouver City (the greenest city in the world) join in on the gay frivolity. And then you get to the end of the yellow brick gay parade and find out that the gay party at the beach (the end of the road) is nothing but a mini donut stand and stage full of bad performers. Pride is hidden behind a boring beach party that is made for the straight folk of Emerald City and not for the gays. And all the while Dorothy acts as a beard for her three hopelessly incapable, fabulously bizarre new friends.

Let’s face it, all straight folk come to pride hoping to see a Queen or a Leather Bear or a Pretty Fag or the Indian from The Village People… this is common knowledge. And for the gays on a good trip the parade part of pride might actually be fun. Dorothy on the other hand goes through what can only be explained as a drug induced hallucinogenic experience on her way to and at Oz. Just like straight folks visiting pride for all the bizarre queers. Okay the only part of my pride that was kinda like Oz… was the drugs.