Pride 2008

if there's a nicer crowd than the one at pride every year, i don't know it. disco and beer unite everybody in a glowy feel-good afternoon: greens, queens and the NDP, organic grocers and leathermen, cops, anarchists, sissies, butches and bears. even the MCs aren't very bitchy.

i feel conflicted about pride. every year i'm undone by the "i love my gay daughter" t-shirts, and i resent it. i am moved by the old queers, who were fighting for recognition years before it even occurred to me to kiss a girl, and i love them. then i see someone in his teens and i realize, god, i'm closer to the old folks than the young studs. the HIV banners always make me cry, reminding me as they do of the late 1980s in san francisco, when pride "parades" were actually endless funeral marches. and i don't know what to think about the hordes of queer teenagers chanting "we love gay camp! we love gay camp!"

i feel ambivalent, i should say, about edmonton pride. i've done pride in a bunch of other cities, and i'm full of untainted, sentimental memories. my first pride was san francisco 1988, shortly after i came out. my security-guard girlfriend and i rode helmetless (and me, shirtless) in the dykes on bikes contingent: i was 24 years old, sporting a skirt and a flat-top. in london for a conference a few years back, i took myself to pride, which wound around and around the old city, everybody getting drunker by the block. toronto 1996, shortly after mo and i got together, and were staying at her ex's place: i wore a leather dress and bought mo some big black boots. at vancouver pride one year we ran into rob, whom we hadn't been able to reach by phone, and then adam, his freshly-ex-boyfriend. dublin pride 1998: just when i thought i would die of loneliness, a few lesbians took me out for a pint. stonewall 25, 1994, new york: we walked with the ACT-UP counter-march (who can remember, now, the dispute), and so arrived at central park in time to watch the mile-long rainbow flag wend its way in.

there's a familiar sense of sincerity and warmth at all these pride events: it's a pride thing, to set aside your reservations for the day and feel the love. so i don't exactly know why i am ambivalent about edmonton's pride. it's not that it's small; i actually liked edmonton pride when it was even smaller, a few dozen of us risking harassment walking around the block in old strathcona. and it's not that it's quiet, though it is that. (note to floats: music! play music! especially if you run a radio station or own a bar!) it's not even that the floats are always a little disappointing, though, again, the floats are usually a little disappointing. and i can look past the insulting fact that edmonton schedules pride here to accommodate toronto's, which will happen next week.

as best as i can tell, it's that edmonton's can-do love makes me feel chary. i want edmonton pride to be better -- bigger! louder! more fabulous! -- but it feels downright mean to want that when everybody is clearly doing their best. on a day characterized above all by non-judgmental warmth and generosity, who am i to stand back and sniff about new york 1994, corporate toronto glitz, or the feisty irish?

in this way, pride is continuous with every other aspect of edmonton. criticizing the city is a no-win prospect. the response is either, "oh, but you're not from here, are you" or "oh, but you're from here." let me come clean: i use both of these responses myself, regularly. we're suspicious of people who choose to stay here. "but why?," i've asked, bewildered, imagining that even a refugee would choose detroit's mean streets over edmonton's soft landing. on the other hand: don't tell me there's no culture here; you just don't know how to look for it. and then, on the third hand, i worry that we're used to being second-rate, and so we expect to be second-rate, and so we accept being second-rate.

my hope is that this blog will help me develop a critical take on the city that's not just critical. i hope it will help me see this place more clearly. if we're lucky, "walking in the city" will become a site for other edmontonians to stop in and speak their minds. in this way, it might become part of the cultural fabric of this place.

so i'll close with two of this year's surprising sights: first, the quakers. yeah, that's right: quakers marching along in the parade, holding a banner advertising quakers in support of same-sex something-or-other. second, a group protesting L ron hubbard's homophobia. they stood in a small group on churchill square and handed out flyers denouncing dianetics' approach to human sexuality in general and to homosexuality in particular. now, you don't see that in vancouver.

(do you?)