Making Pride

Amber and I begin with our bimonthly Queer Boardgame Night at Megabrain Comics, formerly of Rhinebeck and presently in Red Hook--and conveniently within walking distance from our apartment. Per the request of Roxy, a softly grinning mainstay of these events, we brought Last Night on Earth, as the group pretty much has the hang of it through repeated attempts.

Michele, the president of BeckHook Pride and (I think) the originator of this night, is present. However, she has to skedaddle for a bit to iron out some hitch for the annual Pride event on Sunday. I promise to play her horde of zombies until she returns and otherwise act as a quisling to help her in the game.

Unlike in Rhinebeck, more chattering queer teenagers than there are adults beset the shop. There is a sharp divide in the back room. We run our game on the big table, and the teens avidly talk over several smaller ones, playing quick, light games that are barely a side dish to the main course of laughing with one another. I love them all, though I know none of their names. Our interactions mainly involve smiling at one another and occasionally interjecting into the other's conversations. I put myself in their position, imagining our table as unforgivably distant and old.

Cutie

Amid fighting the hero characters--we are better organized this time, and the scenario is a more lenient one--Michele confesses how draining this weekend is to plan. I ask if she would like a hug. Her eyes light up. "I do if you have hugs to give?" For that expression, I always have hugs to give.

I firmly hug her, and in a second, others at the table join me. This might be where Michele and I become actual friends, and I transition to being more than another person grateful for her efforts.

Given my previous faltering attempts, it is odd to be a member of this community--or any community. I am witchy and have always felt a wall between that community and me, even though I ran the Mid-Hudson Pagan Network for years. Amber suggests this is because witches do not hold board game nights or have a Pride month. I say that they do, but it is called October, and people largely don't believe queer people are fictional. Amber retorts with violence against me by pronouncing Samhain phonetically.

Meow?

Amber is pansexual and nonbinary. Given that my lasting interest in a person tends to mean they are not straight or totally cis and that I have always skewed a bit more feminine than was strictly understood by my peers, I may belong under the rainbow umbrella. Still, I do not have a label as such. I am attracted to femininity in others and find masculinity sexually repellant, so I'm straight enough to pass in most quarters. It always amused me when boys in high school would call me gay while my lips were chapped from making out with their sister or erstwhile girlfriend. I could do with better hair distribution now (less there, more here). Still, I am otherwise not too interested in swapping parts (as much as I might like being able to occupy different bodies as my whims manifest; then again, I am a writer, better defined as a gaggle of characters sharing a skin suit).

While I am at Poughkeepsie Pride the next day, I see a text from my family's group chat where my elder brother states queers want to turn everyone gay and trans, which will cause human extinction. No one wants that. Queer people want to be able to be queer without hate. Ordinarily, I let these intolerant comments slide off me, but this gets under my skin. I am married to a queer person. Many of my friends are queer. Several of my family members are--including his second oldest child, Eli. I don't see how my brother can know this and still maintain this extreme view. Moving to Texas has not ameliorated his opinions any.

Poughkeepsie Pride was nothing I had not seen before or likely will again. Beyond a short parade smattered with corporate Pride and marchers from BeckHook (I declined to join them, though Michele asked), it was the same people on trucks and those extravagantly dressed. I understand the need to express oneself, though few people wear anything that could faintly seem to be inappropriate. Overall, it is a child-friendly affair, and there are enough children to back up this statement. Still, there are booths on sexual wellness because STDs never cease being an issue, especially when one may be keeping the nature of their sex under wraps, as it were.

How'd you do? I see you've met my faithful handyman

Last year, I felt uneasy at this Pride, in part because I was having a mental health issue, but also because I did not feel the belonging I wished for. The pain of being lonely in a crowd rips me to shreds. I could not immerse myself in their colorful ocean. Now, I feel more in the flow. Nothing external changed. I believe I opened myself up to it and became less self-conscious. This is generally the case, but more so here.

Yet, as I work my volunteer shift at BeckHook Pride the next day, I have this malignant sense I need to be independent, as though I am preparing to be alone for the longer term. It is a reaction against my anxious attachment, my desire to cling and then feel rejected when I cannot. I do not need to hang around Amber as we go about chores to help this event, in no small part because we do not need the other to make this day happen. Amber's overalls and face end up covered in chalk from coloring Pride flags into paving stones behind the church. Soon, I am sopping with water and Country Time Lemonade mix from filling up jugs.

I liked the contrast

I don't know if Amber will stay with me forever. They have so far, but there is an increasing sense that maybe they shouldn't. I have been struggling for close to a month, having been triggered yet again. I don't know how I can keep subjecting Amber to this.

The thing that triggers me has been closer to the surface. Even when I think it has subsided, a tiny thing pricks it again. Perhaps my immediate reaction isn't as severe--that may be why Amber thinks I am doing better--but it lasts longer.

Amber says they are happy with our life. I crave to believe them. What they want fundamentally means they are unfulfilled. This is a topic on which relationships crumble, though we are communicative. I hope we can survive this crisis (in an Ericksonian way), but I do not want to keep confronting it.

I want to give Amber space, though they have not said they want this--or even subtly suggested this aside from being occupied by tasks. I feel I cling to them because I want reassurances, but I do not want to be pesky slightly more than I do not want to cling since it is easier to get no reaction than to misread a microexpression into a slight.

Amber comes up behind me at one point. I am startled because they did not seem near me when I walked. They say that they followed my body thetans.

I do not want to pull away from them, but I am scared to be too close. To them, there is no issue. I try not to assume there is one, and they are not telling me, which is where madness lies. I cannot constantly look for them to reject me, to decide I am too much of a burden, or to prevent them from doing what they want to be doing. Thirteen years in, and you would think I would know better, but my insanity does not.

Drag story hour

My mental health is additionally screwy in that someone at the event asks a question, and, in a literal way, I answer without thinking. The words come from my mouth with authority, and I know after hearing them that they are correct, but I do not believe they came from me. It has happened a few times recently that something came out of me that did not seem to originate from my mind. It is usually cheerier and charming, so I cannot fault this temporary possession. I am not telling people what their grandmothers enjoy in Hell. Still, it is curious, even if it makes my interactions slightly easier. One wants to feel control of one's behavior and statements.

In the Key of Q, an all-queer and ally acapella group, comes on stage in the decorated community room. I set to photograph them because I belong better when recording in some way. They open with a version of "Level Up," a Vienna Teng song, a musician Amber loves so much that they helped kickstart the album on which the song appeared. Halfway into the song, I stop taking pictures--not that I was capturing anything stellar in this light and distance--because I've started crying, and I don't know why. I like live music, and the song is touching, but I cannot justify the mistiness. It continues into "Space Oddity" by David Bowie, though less so. When they get to what I take as the theme song to Steven Universe, my tears have dried up, and I cannot say I am sorry.

As Amber and I sit at a table, a trans boy, P, freshly twenty (I was at boardgame night when Michele brought him a cake), asks if the seat beside me is taken. Most of the seats are empty, and I tell him he has taken the seat. I feel the same way I do when a cat decides to sit near me. I do not know that he would necessarily agree with that.

We don't directly interact, but I like his energy near me. He is socially anxious and gangling but also boldly outgoing. It is hard not to like him.

Amber informs me that I cannot adopt him as he likely has parents, although my wife thought he might be the child of one of the organizers, given that they bought him a cake.

Michele and Debbie

He reminds me enough of my favorite student, my protege, a year graduated into his collegiate life. I may be projecting overlap. P does cosplay--because of course he would--and blooms whenever he is around people who accept him. With my former student, I might have been the first and only person to entirely accept and embrace him from the moment I met my damaged little genius. The difficulty is that I cannot have any contact with any former student, per the contractual decree of my job--and it is a justified policy 99.9% of the time, except the one time I wish it weren't necessary.

I do not think P needs me like my former student did. I will appreciate him from across the room, happy that he is part of this community, and I can see him blossom. (He is in college, so he doesn't need to grow much.)

Soon after, I sit on the lawn, waiting for Mattie Mae and the Trans Agenda to finish tuning up. Michele walks by and asks if they have just wrapped up. I explain that it was the opposite.

"They were supposed to begin half an hour ago and be done now."

Mattie May and the Trans Agenda

She speaks to them, but her energy is flagging, so she concedes to let them play for half an hour before she hands out the raffle prizes since no one else is scheduled for this stage.

She flops down next to me on the blankets atop the tarps. "I am so tired!"

I roll over a little, asking, "Why? Is there something exhausting happening to you?"

She had been here since 8 AM, setting up tents in the rain. I do not know what the rest of her life entails beyond having met her child. She must have a job other than this. I wonder if one of the women in the group is her partner, but Amber thinks she is or was involved with a man. To give so much of herself to create this is astounding, and I am perpetually grateful to her for having made this space where I can feel welcome. I cannot imagine I am close to alone in this. However, I likewise cannot imagine that she is aware of the total gratitude she is owed.

last watched: Adventure Time
reading: Luda