Albuquerque Pride MMV.

So here roughly is my recounting of the last several day's happenings. All of which you may file under "Gay Pride MMV". This year's official theme: "Equal Rights: No More, No Less". Which is a big part of why I felt legitimately a part of it this year and wound up so sorely disappointed at almost having missed the march with Mr. Hay eastbound on Central. This year's unofficial, personal theme: "The Drunken Binge, or, an Introduction to bitchy queeniness for those likewise inclined".

Thursday: big night at Albuquerque Mining Company. You know, AMC, the place with three bars in one, the best dance floors, the best music, the best patios, the best bartenders. Just a smattering of breeders here and there for us to taunt mercilessly lest they dare forget their place, and invade our space a bit too far because after all, everyone knows (a) we do have the best music and lights (b) we do know how to dance and (c) already oppressed females can dance with us quite safely.

Thursday's the last night I wrote about. Thursday night, I had actually wanted to go out more than Charles did; and while I won't say I exactly "dragged" him away from the eiderdown mattresses and comforters of his Art Nouveau bed, he started out downright morose. Charles wound up going home with a very kind and handsome young Pueto Rican fellow from New York who took quite a liking to Charles -- and nowhere near last call, I might point out -- making his day by picking him up after he'd started out all in a funk at being "fat", "ugly", and "old". (I assure you, he is none of these things.) They got on quite well and I was genuinely happy for them both as I drove them home, vastly less drunk than either one, though truthfully not thrilled at bouncing off the walls alone all night from all the red bulls that I drank, not that I can blame anyone for that but me. Besides which I couldn't possibly have hit the high notes in "Ave Maria" at four AM like Charles does so very naturally, should I have chosen to to play the Bach prelude at home at such an hour.

The next day Charles and I worked at Sissy's. One day working after one practically sleepless night has surely never killed me yet. But men are pigs. All men.

On this occasion, true to the form of all men, Charles was about as close to a perfect boor as our kind are capable of producing. Yes, wholly worthy of a straight man's locker room. Gloating about his prowess in the barroom. I'll be so kind to you, dear reader, as to spare you the details he refrained from sparing me regarding what passed between these two young men that night. Of course with not one word of thanks to me for having taken him out against his "better" judgment. Just worrying for hours over whether Marco would call back, or whether he wasn't in fact ignoring his own "next morning" call while busily engaged in some wild orgy in the Sauna at the gym, alternating with moments of gleefully rolling about in the grass as I tried to dig holes through the buried grass for impossible, hopeless transplants. Which is fine by me, we're all a bunch of self-absorbed bastards in our own ways and have to live with eachother, if only on these few days every year surrounding the annual Christopher Street Celebrations.

What put it over the top for me was his insistence -- his decree, his dictat (his words) -- that I go with him out drinking Friday night as well -- not that I wouldn't have anyway, if given half a chance to rest a bit beforehand. If he'd just been self-centered, and hadn't explicitly threatened not just my job but my employability I wouldn't have minded a bit, although I knew it wasn't wise to go but did want to go out again regardless on this final night before Pride which wouldn't roll 'round for another still shortening year, if only to stand at the bar at Foxes and reverentially utter the magical phrase at the magical hour. I had to work at Gertrude's the following morning, and didn't want to be out long past midnight. But basically, when I asked half-jokingly "what if I'm asleep when next you call me?" he responded that he would slander me telling everyone everything he knew about whatever he pretends to understand about my bathhouse stories and how I apparently "stole" a restaurant towel and kept it "hidden" in the backseat of my car, where I throw everything I wind up with at the car not needing. So basically not just a slut am I, but an untrustworthy slut who deliberately steals valuables from his employers. Whether he was serious or not I honestly don't know. (I doubt it, now, in retrospect.)

In other words: he threatened me with slander in the same exact historic vein of stereotypes you'll encounter upon reading the "examples in context" section of the Oxford English Dictionary's definitions of such hotly disputed terms as "gay" and "queer". (Worse things could happen.) Briefly: avaricious, oversexed and dandified effeminate young city men intent on self-advancement at all costs. Next, no doubt, comes Lillian Gish upon the train tracks. Too bad my moustache's not long enough to twirl yet.

Very interesting, linguisticallly, or from a "history of ideas" type perspective. But the height of arrogance in my sorely sleep-deprived eyes, and a near-perfect example of what people mean when they say "there is no gay community" because at times we're at eachother's throats more visciously than any dogs.

What a perfect ending to it all. Just now from my front door, and through the lovely stained glass window that I bought today, fireworks. The most beautiful that I have ever seen. For me. Can you believe it?

So of course he dresses in Barney's cashmere, hoping to outdo me in my little working class, 50 Franc shirt from the market outside the Roman Colliseum in Nimes at the time of Feria. One adequately well-timed "Barney Rubble" comment quite suffices so that not only doesn't he insist that all passerby feel his vest, but I'm not asked to explain the cotton weave "de Nimes". Fine with me.

I'd been forced to wear it after a long conversation using 78 precious daytime minutes when I'd tried, again half jokingly, to say I couldn't go out because I had no idea what colour I should wear. I was, at this point, becoming just as bitchy in my own way as Charles can be in his. Thus began the conversational equivalent of trench warfare, or attrition, which started out something like this.

Charles: "Whatever you wear, don't wear black."

Myself: "Why not?"

Charles: "Because I'm wearing black."

Myself: "What if I wear black?"

Charles: "Then I'll wear taupe."

Myself: "What if I wear taupe?"

Charles: "Then I'll wear black."

Myself: "What it I wear black underneath a taupe sweater?"

Charles: "Then I'll have to wear taupe under black."

Myself: "And if I do the same?"

And so on until I get him to recommend I wear chartreuse and crimson, by which time I know he's mostly cornered and fishing for the impossible. Actually I have some rather wonderful red shirts I would have worn, but he specifically said that if I wore anything even remotely red he'd tell everyone within earshot that I was a slut. (As we were drinking red bulls in a remarkable drink known as "the redheaded slut", I thought it would be an appropriate coordination.) I of course demand a range of wavelength readings from the spectrograph so that I know what he considers say a brownish red as opposed to a reddish brown. Poor man, I think I wore him out before we even started out. At any rate, the only colours we had not discussed were blue and yellow, so I wore my blue Provencal shirt with the honeybees print.

I take him right off the bat to Foxes, actually "Foxes Booze 'n' Cruise", as it's best known by its famed sign overlooking Central, into which attached bar we both walk quite outrageously overdressed. I explain why I love this particular place. The casual, conversational atmosphere. The institutional memory. Glass glasses, even on very busy nights. The total, absolute lack of pretense on anyone's part. You've never heard of Harry Hay? Let me tell you a story. Yes, he walked down this very same street in the very same times that this same business existed right here where you're sitting. Quite possibly he sat at this very same bar. Then without finishing the story I practicaly insist that he leave before he's quite done with his drink. Yes, how terribly rude of me; but he wants to go bar hopping? OK, it's time to hop! We simply must get to AMC, to have one of Bill's redheaded sluts. He started at Foxes. As did every single other bartender you love in this town. By this time the poor man's practically speechless. Unheard of.

Then to AMC where we indeed get Bill's drink and tip not well enough (it being quite impossible to tip Bill well enough). Then to sit in on Chip's quieter bar (no dancefloor) without so much as tipping him for having taken up his space and leaving him two glasses to clean up. No wonder he's cynical! People walk in with drinks from outside and don't tip. But still he tends the bar and is courteous to all. Why? I'd love to know. I do admire him.

Then to the obscenely popular twink bar (which shall go without naming, though pseudonymically it might be reasonably called "strobe/fewsha", so absurd is its actual name and supposed colour scheme) which is positively overrun with predatory breeders pretending to be us in order to prey on young women who do not yet know enough to know which ear piercing means what -- much less the people pretending to be us, apparently. Pay five bucks cover just to earn the right to pay $6.75 for really big drinks made almost entirely of ice. Not to mention enough chicken to keep a busy soulfood restaurant and its attached tearoom overstocked for half a year. We wind up at the Bubble Lounge, the newlly opened hookah bar on Central. (Only in Albuquerque could this happen.) He and his out of town freind and his own freinds.

It's turning east from where we'd parked onto Central from Seventh that I feel it. Hay is with me. Not long this time, but he's definitely there. I'm about to have my moment. Two blocks, maybe. Probably less.

The little middle-eastern restaurant is delightful, although the young, presumably Muslim men working themselves thin are clearly less than thrilled at having to serve a whole bevy of drunken homosexuals at 3am. (Quoth the oak stick tortilla guy: who can blame 'em?) The food, the tea, the hookahs, everything's amazing. The New Yorkers say they can get better hookahs back home, which of course I don't dispute. I tip the bellydancers a measly two bucks for their skill and grace. I find the place very relaxing, very pleasant, so aparently does everybbody else. The others pay the bill, "forget" to tip the badly overworked waiter they've chosen none too kindly to dub "Mr. Nasty" (ahhem -- racism, anyone?); I run back in to tip generously -- I do expect to go back there, since they have wireless internet service late into the night.

Then up at 9am to work at Gertrude's starting at ten. Dusting furniture, answering the door. Helping to move the occasional table and whatnot. Cleaning mirrors and blown-glass paperweights, arranging them to catch the sunlight brilliantly. Help to sell a thousand dollar dining room table. Get into a conversation with the scientist husband of the purchaser about Biedermeyer period furniture, the grain of wood, and the differing molecular structures of glass and crystal. Fascinating, and I would never have dared do it but for Charles' influence on me.

Long story short I was OK with having to work that day and wound up rather getting into it. Got another clock running that hadn't been. But Charles did manage to work me up into such an emotional froth over the whole thing in the days leading up to Pride that I can quite understand why he says he loses freinds. Next time he asks me "what's wrong with the gays in this town, or is it just me?" I'll have an intelligent and compassionate answer. Not that he's responsible for my emotional state these few days of the year, but he didn't exactly go out of his way to make it any easier on me, at least until it was practically over. I haven't spoken to him since early Saturday morning, when while getting out of my car he admitted he'd probably have more enjoyed staying at Foxes.

Business in the antique store is slow on that day so they let me go at about 3h30. I drive over to the state fairgrounds and get into the Pridefest to see all the exhibits before they're taken down. Lots of booths, some selling things, others trying to convince passerby of the rightness of their cause, whether it be gay square dancing, AIDS services, log cabinism, christianity, or leather. The Delmas Howe exhibit is the most profoundly moving part of the whole thing for me this year. Religious iconography in the renaisance vein recast into a series of queer stations of the cross upon the Christopher Street piers. On my way out I spy a stained glass window worthy of Mr. Wright. The flag colours neatly inset into bevelled, prismatic crystals, just the perfect size for that bottom horizontal panel of the casement window in my living room which the blood-stained venetian blinds (which I fished out of a dumpster at a notorious crackhouse on the eastside of town last year) don't descend to cover, leaving me quite exposed to traffic when going between bed and bath. It's either that or new venetian blinds, I figure, so I go with the window. Good thing for me the man made only two or three, for this particular event. I'd love to know who else got one.

So: two nights out on the town at the very tail end of my six months of living like a monk did not kill me, nor anybody else, apparently. I had one hell of a good time. Of course it's over now, like anytime you gather thousands of people in the streets. The dragon has gone back to sleep, for now, and nothing remains but to live this next year.

One year ago it took all of my courage just to go. This year I could not be kept away though heaven and earth conspired to make it anything but so. Last year I had to go between graveyard shifts with no sleep. This year I worked a properly gentlemanly shift at the antique store between the various celebrations. Last year I was terrified I was dressed wrong ("how *could* I have worn this tan shirt? they're all going to think I'm some sort of nazi."), or would run into the crazed stalker who had already hounded me for months. This year I turned heads wearing just what I had on, and encountered nobody the least bit unpleasant. Last year I had to listen to the comments of coworkers; prove them wrong, at every turn. Do the imppossible, each and every night. Outdo yourself the next night. Make them have to play catch-up. I was getting sucked very deeply into living far beyond my real means by virtue of a job that paid quite well, but demanded every bit of my energy. This year I was in the crowd being turned out at 2am when they called out "to the Frontier!", a desperate battle cry. I didn't have to be there for my shift and so I didn't go to stand in line, get checked for weapons, stand in line again and pay for food. I do need to go in Wednesday or Thursday, though, to clear up my last paycheck. Back to the day-to-day world.