Astropride

It’s almost July and I am still gay. Pride Month has come and gone once again, and so then the corporate Pride memes and ironic homophobia that clog gay social media and keeps us distant from our own pain. Sometimes you just need to like a tweet by some fag in Bushwick featuring a video clip of the Westboro Baptist Church choir or a tweet by a Gen Z they/them Ariana Grande stan account saying gays should have our rights taken away after a homosexual from DC posts a screenshot of a text message where some other homosexual praises their hole. Ironic homophobia is all in good fun. Love your haters by becoming one. To the two guys in my class who said “Hey, faggot” to me every day after school, almost to the minute, in the same place out front near the hedges for my entire sophomore year of high school… I say Mama, kudos for saying that. For spilling. I love when the FBI says Happy Pride. I love when muscle gays pose with police at parades. We have gay porn moguls signing air-to-air missiles with a sharpie. Let’s fucking go.

Every year on June 30th, at 11:59 PM, every queer across the globe waits by their grandfather clock for the stroke of midnight with their eyes closed and fists clenched, bracing for being turned into a pumpkin until next June, just like the legend says. For some it happens. In a single cloud of glittery fog, they are transformed into a eunuch gourd, used as the head of a scarecrow that’s placed in front of the crops on their family farm to ward off bad spirits and possums through the harvest, then placed in an icy hope chest until next June, when they are thawed out and turned back into a slutty LGBT— unleashed upon the world for an entire month to drink Svedka and suck d*ck and p*ssy.

I am grateful for Pride, I say this with my heart. Even though every Pride Month I feel sad and old and friendless for exactly 24 hours because I am sober and don’t go to parties. I think about the last Pride before I got sober, during my relapse— my final summer tour as a lava-lamped face drug addict wino —where I started my Pride Sunday taking a black cab into Bedstuy at 5 am to a man from Grindr who had a lot of cocaine and ended the day in the East Village having beer at a honkey tonk bar with a hot closeted guy and a dead phone. I woke up that Monday to about forty texts and voicemails from my family who were confident that I had either died or been arrested. To me, that’s Pride.

This year, I woke up on Pride Sunday at 8 AM with my husband, having stayed in the night before to watch Summer House. I walked our dog to Starbucks on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood where employees with pronouns pins on their green aprons handed out rainbow flags. Through the window, I saw an actual Starbucks float in the parade holding area with a sign that said “You belong here.” Next to that, a Hulu float. I walked back home with my dog and got yelled out by a tweaker outside a Quality Inn while a LAPD helicopter hovered above us. To me, that’s Pride, too.

Last night was the first presidential debate of the last election in US history. The parameters of the debate included no audience and muting mics if a candidate began to interrupt the other. The debate became a scalding meditation on death and time. A Michael Haneke film seen by 50 million Americans. Biden Boo Radley’d the fuck out of those 90 minutes, wide-eyed and unblinking, slack-jawed and whisper-yelling, muttering things about golf handicaps and how fat Trump is and rapey in-laws. Trump managed to not do his standard dog and pony show of wagging his tongue around and jamming a crucifix into his bussy while spinning his around at 360 degrees; as a result he appeared more normal and at least 10,000 years younger than the incumbent president.

At a debate “after party,” the First Lady—standing with her husband—screamed to him like one would their grandfather that he did great job and answered “every question.” A victory in itself. The crowd roared in agreement. If I was a political strategist, I would suggest Biden take a key bump every time he speaks outside of his bedroom in the next few months. I’d crush up some addy, slap his ass and send him on his way; I know there’s a national shortage so they need to begin stockpiling for him. November will be here sooner than they think. If not Adderall, then they just find him a little meth. I want my presidents PnPing.

Naturally, despite all our best efforts to vanquish Trump back to the labyrinth hell dimension he was conjured from, he remains and may very well win again. Our only options now are to replace Biden with someone even older or start preparing for the water and bread wars. The good news is we can still have Pride in the bunkers.