Happy PRIDE everyone!

Last weekend I enjoyed the Toronto PRIDE festival. Although the weather was on and off w/scattered showers all week, overall the weather was great for the weekend.

Friday
On Friday, I got my SBF and another friend to see a comedy show called 'HOMO NIGHT IN CANADA', hosted by the B-Girlz. For those of you know don't know who the B-Girlz are, they're a very popular Canadian drag queen group. They are involved in Film and Television, Theatre, Festivals, and Cabaret shows. This night was fundraising for the Inside OUT queer movie festival as well as another group that i don't remember.

Most of the comedians were hilarious. It was great to be in a queer positive room where the jokes about every stereotype were made with queer references flying left right and centre. It was great! I was busting a gut throughout. It will be impossible to deliver the jokes over a blog, so you'll have to trust me. Here's a few lines paraphrasesd that made me laugh, however i'm sure it was a "had to be there moment".

1. "Are there any vegans in the house?" "...or is it you don't have the energy to put your hands up."
2. "What's with vegan cookies? Word of advice: Just becuase it LOOKS like a cookie, doesn't mean it will taste like a cookie. You need a LIQUID to keep it together ... looks like I'll need to order a pitcher of saliva to wash down those tasty treats"
3. "When i left to move to Toronto, it took me half as long to get over my bf then when we were actually dating.. so that was saturday afternoon"
4. "Twinks! Stop metabolizing!"
5. "It's so great to be at a queer positive space for a change. I'm used to performing at straight clubs where after the show these straight men ask, 'So are you REALLY gay??' (shrugs) I now have a response for them: 'No, actually I'm just still full from eating the last pussy" (under breath)"and a little SODOMY on the side!" :)

So yeah, it was good times indeed. The B-Girlz also had a few skits of their own, which were also hilarious. I have never seen them before and didn't think they would be THIS funny. Perhaps when I first saw them a few years ago I wasn't as deep into the queer culture as i am now, so i missed some of the embedded humour. They aired their "Toronto! Toronto!" promo movie, which was made to help attract people back to Toronto after SARS, West Nile etc. It was great! I was (again) busting a gut. Check out the trailer, or look online for the full version.

Saturday
On Saturday I was down enjoying the festivities on Church. The weather was fantastic and the energy was bubbling. I was super happy to see families down (gay or straight parents) on Church celebrating as well. It gave me that "warm and fuzzy" feeling inside :P. I spent the first bit by myself walking down church, allowing me to check out what i wanted and go at my own pace. The street food was also great- put to gay people to not just have hot dogs, but roasted corn, jamican cuisine, venecin, grilled chicken/vegetarian fajitas and home baked carrot cakes as options! As expected with the gay community, I ran into a bunch of people during my stroll. I even ran into 2 friends from Waterloo! It was great to see them out and to catch up on what they were doing.. 'Course, that just leads to a "we should get toegether sometime" type talk, and more dinner / coffee dates to schedule. It will be a busy summer indeed! :)

After meeting up with some friends we headed to see my SBF perform on stage. He was with Swingin' OUT, a Toronto-based queer swing group. It was so much fun! They had choreographed a number of pieces as well as taking a few moments to explain the history and type of dance they were performing. It was eduational and entertaining!

At night I went to a hotel party held by a wicked lesbian couple. We see them once a year (PRIDEs). Gotta love those hibernating lesbians. The hotel party was super cool b/c one of the ppl who I met there just graduated from Laurier Psychology! She was AMAZING! She had hilarous weed stories to share. She smoked up and devoured food with the best of us :). My friend put it best when he said:

"Excuse me darling, we 3 fags are taking applications for a Fag Hag... and YOU'RE the one chosen for the position!"

The party got really big as ppl kept coming and coming and coming. By about 11 a handful of us left to go to the clubs. By this time the lines were tremendous so we just chose a place and lined up.. for over an hour! Oi. Ah well. The music was pretty fun, being gay top 40 stuff -- from DIRRTY to Barbie Girl to Shiny Disco Ball! (We decided not to go with the usual gay circuit music this time around).

Sunday
On Sunday I actually skipped the parade. Heh. I was on the TTC right before and it was great b/c at least half of the riders were queer people! It was great to see a guy with his arm over his bf's shoulders on the car. I'm still too terrified to get the guts to do something like that, and i commend those who did so (even though it WAS during PRIDE :P). I wish we had our own queer car that ran say every hour, with good old gay music and rainbow colours. We'd employ the only 3-4 hot TTC guys/girls employed by the TTC to run it, accepting grahpically designed queer TTC cards to get on. I'm sure if we had that it would just become a moving circuit party though! :P

I did hear it was very big @ 1 Million people, and lots of families who came out to enjoy it as well. Isn't that great? I also read that it wasn't as risque as other years -- did anyone see it? What did you think?

Some Thoughts
My experience here just reminded me of how much more i need to stay in touch with the community. It's hard b/c i have to make a consious effort to keep active. Just sitting back will just pull me back to the regular straight status quo. It's a part of me that I have to keep active, yearing to come out (no pun intended). Sure, it has its SERIOUS down falls; I know you're saying, "What about dealing with all the saucy queens, drama, more drama, uber drugs/sex and more drama?" I say, "It'll give me more juicy stories and things to complain about w/my friends!" :) :)

May be it will involve working in the community for a year or so to "get it out of me", or perhaps just hanging out with some of those gay friends that i've lost touch with (okok let's not get ahead of ourselves here - of course not ALL of them). We'll see.

Happy Pride!

RE

"Eat drink and be merry"

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Answer to WiWCC: Spadina / Bloor area (specifically Spadina and Sussex)
Congrats Adam!