2016, while being one of the most bizarre years for all of us across the board, has also been one of great lessons that have made us all way more self aware than we were as a culture before. The same goes for me personally. I've had more personal jaw drops this year than my spiritual face can handle. And I've heard wiser friends talk before about how every now and then in life you have years that close up different parts of your life. Things come in full circle. You get closure on issues you've been carrying around for years from something random that happens. For me, 26 has been that. Take Atlanta Pride for example.
If you meet me now, you know after about two sentences that on the gay/straight scale I am somewhere between gay man and magical giant cupid sucking on a sugar free lollipop. But up until I went to college and actually discovered other kids like me, the tribe of gay youngin's who thought they were alone in the way they felt, I hid who I was. Not completely - I was involved in theatre and dance and loved clothes, but as obvious as I guess it might have been in retrospect, I still withheld a great big part of who I was to everyone in my life except four people. Four people. People outside of the LGBTQ community sometimes, and reasonably so, don't think about the perspective of someone having to hide more than their sexuality from someone. When someone is in the closet, they're not just keeping their "bedroom life" from their friends, they're keeping a major part of who they are, how they think, how they view the world, where their song comes from. Georgia isn't an easy place to be a gay kid. It's even harder to be a gay kid who doesn't come out of it messed up or ashamed of who they are. I somehow did, and I guess when I fled Georgia for college I took a chip on my shoulder with me. One that wrote off Georgia as ever having an environment where I would feel accepted and safe. That was hard for me, because Georgia is one of the most lush, beautiful oasis's of nature we have left in this country. Part of Georgia is still just that. Untouched by man, untainted by structure, just Georgia. But nonetheless, I was done because She was done too and always would be.
Then I experienced Pride.
I've been to Pride in Oklahoma City I think, I've been involved in Orlando's and went as a proud citizen of the Orlando LGBTQ community with my close friends. But I had never been to Atlanta's, because Georgia. I've never wanted to go and be a part of pride in the middle of the battlefield I shielded myself from all through adolescence. But that's my close-mindedness seeping through as it does occasionally. I had been gone from the area for so long, things couldn't have possibly stayed the exact same. So this year, 2016, the year of uncomfy, I wanted to go Atlanta on Pride weekend and feel just that- uncomfortable. I wanted to be boisterous and ME. I wanted to go as myself without being bridled down by what I felt I had to look like or wear and experience it as an adult. I still feel uncomfortable in Thomasville. Part of me instinctively wants to subvert myself when I'm in public in the south. Part of it could be called manners, but that's false. I can be a perfectly polite flamboyant gay man. It's about making others feel comfortable so that I'm not seen as a threat or as grotesque. But Atlanta already had a little step ahead just in numbers of LGBTQ in the area, and it's strong artistic demographic tends always to be more accepting (go figure). And if it was pride in Atlanta, that meant for a little while, I would be Cinderella and would be able to dance around within the mass of other magical giant cupid's sucking on sugar-free lollipops until the clock struck Monday. So I made arrangements to couch crash at two of my loving friends' houses ( featured in the photos below) and I made the trip.
The feeling I had during the parade leaked out of my eyes multiple times. When I experience too much of any emotion: happiness, sadness, awe...I bawl. Not only was I amongst my people, my tribe, I was surrounded by others, just there showing love and support for us. My crew and I nudged ourselves next to a straight couple with their young girl and baby, just there showing love and receiving it back equally. I saw a gay dad with his daughter, her anxiously crossing the parade lines repeatedly to high-five marchers and show her love to each of them. I saw an older man crawl up onto a lamppost, not out of outrage or protest, but to get a better view of the celebration. Atlanta had magic and I was Cinderella with blonde hair and eyebrows, dawning suspenders and a Wizard of Oz crop top.
Every time I form assumptions, just like anyone else using restricted perspective without paying respect to others, I'm proven wrong. I'm always shown how wrong I can be when I doubt love. Atlanta Pride showed me that while not all areas are as accepting as others, Georgia has grown up just like me. She's opened her heart to more viewpoints than what she was surrounded by growing up. She's reemerged as an adult who doesn't want to continue what she's experienced in her younger years. She loves more now... and that's something I can definitely hop on board with.
photos by me
