Little Feats

So what was your most enduring memory of Pride 2008?

About three hours after this photo was taken last Sunday, I’d packed Champ off home and was still feeling a little… partyish. Heading out the door to the gaybourhood, I passed the photo location outside the Co$ and where there were once parade-cheering multitudes there were now two lone, masked Anonymi, just kids, scribbling anti-Hubbard slogans in chalk on the sidewalk.

To one girl who looked up as I passed, I muttered a “right on!” and her male cohort, in a rainbow-striped Guy Fawkes mask, said “we’re protesting the Church of $cientology and the way they tell lesbian and gay people they can be cured. And they can’t! Because it’s not a sickness!” and I dunno whether it was the margaritas or the other stuff that was pulsing through my gray matter, but that was just about the funniest thing I’d heard all day.

Seeing me laugh, the girl (wearing a regular Guy Fawkes mask) stood up and very close to my face said “you know, you should really pay more attention to what’s going on in the world as a gay man and speak up for what’s right and against what’s wrong and this is very, very wrong for an organization that claims to help people and… you know all of this, don’t you?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why did you let us rant?”

“Because hearing you guys say that stuff means the world to me. Happy Pride, you two!”

“HAPPY PRIDE!” they both shouted and I kind of got choked up because they screamed it real loud, louder than they needed to, and with “pride” as one syllable, too.