I’m writing this from a Gastown café in Vancouver as rain falls and thousands of people in the city are, no doubt, hoping it stops within the next three hours. The Pride parade begins at one o’clock. I’m not going. I’m not fond of crowds unless it’s part of the kinetic madness of walking through New York City or hopping on The Tube in London. Part of my parade apathy, I suppose, is I don’t like standing in place and peering between people’s shoulders just to see a lot of gay men walking around shirtless. I don’t know how this became What Gays Do at Pride.
Think I’m exaggerating the propensity of gay men to turn a celebration into an opportunity to go shirtless? (Yes, my entire post last week was on the topic.) The Vancouver Pride Society Events page includes a single photo of the parade. Yes, it’s a shot of a buff man in a Speedo, with other Speedo-only dudes walking behind him. I’m beginning to think there needs to be a clothing drive for gays. We have a shirt shortage, folks!
I’d be more inclined to attend if the focus were more political and not yet another event in which the gay men seek the most attention among those in the LGBTQ+ community. Yes, I said it. I’ve been out to various degrees for four decades now and gay men always take centre stage. I’m sure that’s why VPS also had a trans march two days ago and the Vancouver Dyke March & Festival was yesterday. Had I taken more initiative to be informed, I might have gone to the trans march—but then it’s been a challenging week for me as depression and anxiety have persistently needled me since Monday.
My first Pride parade was in 1990 in Los Angeles—West Hollywood, technically. Still being the peak of the AIDS crisis, I was drawn to groups calling for more funding, more action, less stigma. Attending alone, a group of lesbian nurses welcomed me into the fold and together we cheered these marchers, along with the contingent from AIDS Project Los Angeles and various PFLAG participants holding up handmade signs that said, “I love my gay son” and “I support my lesbian daughter.” It was also kitschy cool that Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (Cassandra Peterson) was the grand marshal.
But back to shirts. I know exactly what I wore during that day in June 1990. It was a white tee with an inverted pink triangle emblazoned on the chest and the phrase “1 in 10,” a figure that goes back to research by Alfred Kinsey in 1948 that stated 10% of American males were homosexual. (As time went on the 10% figure was applied to the broader LGBTQ+ umbrella even though Kinsey’s research only focused on gay men.) During my coming out years, I always felt the number was inflated. I remember sitting in classes of thirty and wondering who the other two gays might be. I needed to feel I wasn’t alone while in high school and university in Texas. (Oh, did I feel alone!) The statistic offered comfort—somewhere out there are gays—but, even when I moved to Los Angeles, my gaydar signal only activated 2 or 3% of the time. I bought the shirt because it offered some form of hope and suggested solidarity if ever 10% of men stepped out of the closet.[1]
My shirt also listed famous people in history reputed to be gay, their names running across the pink triangle in pale green block letters…people like Tchaikovsky, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Harvey Milk, James Baldwin, Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman. It affirmed I wasn’t a freak or a pervert as had been the derogatory labels in society while I was growing up. Respectable, talented, intelligent people were gay.
I loved my shirt. There was no chance I would take it off at any gay event. It said far more than my pecs or my six-pack-free midriff. (So many sit-ups, all for naught.) It was a no-brainer that that’s what I would wear to Pride.
I bought the shirt at A Different Light, a gay bookstore in West Hollywood, the same place I would buy copies of Advocate magazine and books like Paul Monette’s Becoming a Man. I only wore it when I was venturing into West Hollywood. It felt daring, even risky, when I’d stop somewhere in Westwood or Woodland Hills on the way there or heading home. Did I really need more gas? The shirt only offered comfort and confidence when I was among my people…and I mean in numbers larger than 1 in 10. While I rued much about West Hollywood—the superficiality, the dismissiveness of all the models/actors/waiters, the plain ugliness of that stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard—it felt like the only world where I could wear something that announced, “Hey, I’m gay.”
I’d like to think the t-shirt is still in my possession, in a storage box under the bed with extra sheets and lesser worn sweaters. In the back of a cubby in my bedroom closet. Perhaps in the storage space under the stairs. But, alas, I suspect the memento from my earliest years as a sometimes-out gay man likely got tossed during one of my moves, probably in 2020 when I was supposed to move to Toronto and I ruthlessly got rid of so much. I’d decided nostalgia wouldn’t be coming with me. Goodbye all Christmas decorations and CDs; so long, boxes of teaching memories; and, gasp, adieu to boxes and boxes of clothing. Five days before the movers were scheduled to come, COVID shut down the everything and the move never happened.
I just Googled my prized shirt and it doesn’t come up. It was the pre-internet era. I can order a plain white tee with an inverted pink triangle but it’s not the same. Maybe I didn’t chuck the shirt in haste but out of a sense of pride and practicality. I didn’t need it anymore. I am now gay to anyone and everyone. I don’t care who knows or doesn’t know. I don’t need to glance down at a shirt I’m wearing to feel empowered in some places and in danger in others. I’ll wear what I want whenever, wherever.
In the café right now, I’m wearing a short-sleeved purple shirt with buttons, white shorts and some razzle-dazzle on my feet: rainbow-striped socks with rainbow peace signs and rainbow Converse high tops. As established at the outset, I’m not going to a Pride event. I’ll finish my oat latte, then grab blueberries and ketchup at the grocery store and walk home along Water Street past cruise ship tourists and several unhoused people. They can look at my footwear or not. Society has come so far, especially in Canada, and so have I. Turns out I’m feeling some pride today, after all. It comes with a lowercase “p,” nothing organized, nothing chest baring, but that’s all I need.
[1] An article from 2014 on a queer Canadian website noted that the actual percentage of gays and lesbians is far lower, but a poll from last year found that, when all LGBTQ+ identities are included, the figure comes close to 1 in 10, coming in a 9.3%.
