Not Proud (Again)

As the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots approaches, I’m filled with not pride but dread. Actually, I’ve been dreading this month for about a year. I read somewhere that the city was expecting six million rainbow-clad tourists to descend on the city for Gay Pride Month. As a claustrophobic loner, this doesn’t make me excited. It makes me terrified.

I suspect that more couples break up on Gay Pride Day than any other day of the year, just because there are so many hot men flooding the city, it forces one to reconsider one’s life choices. Ironically, it’s this same influx of hot new faces and bodies that makes it impossible to actually hook up with any of them.

If New Year’s Eve is a day that people are supposed to be happy and celebratory, Gay Pride Day is like gay New Year’s Eve on steroids. And this year is even worse because, everywhere you look, businesses are sporting rainbow flags and companies are making their corporate logos rainbow-hued. That doesn’t make me proud. It makes me feel like a failure for not measuring up to the popular image of gays as being financially successful. (The fact that I got “laid off” from my temp job three weeks ago isn’t helping, either.)

In fact, so great is a portion of the gay community’s disgust with the corporate takeover of Gay Pride, that this year there’s actually a counter-march to the official Gay Pride March, and it’s banning corporate sponsorship altogether.

The truth is, there’s not much to be proud of these days, whether you're gay or not. We currently have a president who, on a daily basis, is breaking the law and destroying the institutions of democracy in plain sight, and a Democratic Party that’s too spineless to do anything about it.

Right now, it looks like we’re set for a replay of the 2016 election. Joe Biden, the Democratic front-runner, is seen as the “safe” choice, but no one is actually excited about him. (Sound familiar?) Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are being labeled by Trump as “socialists,” as though “socialism” was a dirty word and we didn’t already have a number of socialist programs (Social Security, Medicare, etc.) that are wildly popular.

On his show last night, Bill Maher suggested (jokingly, I hope) that the Democrats nominate Oprah Winfrey, because America is now a nation of ignorant starfuckers.

So forgive me if I’m not in a celebratory mood this week, but right now I’m too worried about being able to pay my bills to celebrate.