21:38 - June 30, 2002
(missed) pride parade
I stayed up until about 4 AM last night watching the Rocky Horror Picture Show (for the first time, can you believe how out of the loop I am?) (incidentally, I found it just to be mediocre), and so this morning I wasn't up until 11:30, and wasn't lucid enough to call Nora and yell at her until 12:30, but it didn't matter since she'd fallen asleep at Erik's house. Needless to say, we missed the Pride Parade. When we arrived at about 2:30, there were bouncy people in brightly colored necklaces and hats clamoring to get on the train in the other direction; back home, or wherever. We saw Kim, who had spiked her (green) hair. We wandered down to Halsted anyway, where the streets were still blocked and filled with fliers, beer bottles, beads, ribbons, and various costume paraphernalia. There was also a noticeable overabundance of cops; cops on horses, cops with billyclubs, cops on mopeds, cops in cars, cops on motorcyles, cops on corners, cops shouting through megaphones for us to clear off the streets 'for our own safety'. We looked for a friend, assuming, since he always is, that he'd be in a massive harem of admiring gay boys.... however, the search proved fruitless, as the entire parade AREA was, for lack of a better term, a harem of admiring gay boys. In my black shirt that says 'Bad Kitty' on it, I had twelve (count em) twelve people meow in my ear. My raverpants with the hanging cords was stepped on my at least half the parade population.... my fault entirely. The GayMart was so packed there was a line out front to get in. Men in cutoff tank tops and tight jeans and colorful beads and silver jewelry and abundant tattoos and impeccably styled facial hair sailed by, with women with mohawks and shaved heads and body jewelry and leather pants. Where did they all come from? The woodwork? Do they feel they need to hide? I mean, I've been down this road countless times, and it's always been toned down five hundred percent. I felt it was far more beautiful today.
I stood next to a tall woman with so much silver hanging from her ears that her lobes nearly fell to her chin. Her hair was dyed all colors of the rainbow, and her heavily waxed eyebrows were orange, along with her eyelashes. She wore bracelets all the way up to her elbow. She was yelling into her phone, 'No, we're at Clarke's. No, we left. We were hungry. Food. No, they're not there, they're at Clarke's. What? For food! To Eat! What? No, to EAT! We're in line at Clarke's so we can eat. It's on Belmont and Sheffield. What? I did say Clarke's! What? No, Belmont and Sheffield! S-H-E-F-F-I-E-L-D! Not Clark street, Clarke's, the restaurant! Sheffield! To eat? What? To eat!"

I was going to get that second hole in my ear, but the place was so crowded I didn't even bother. (Sidenote: is getting tattooed and/or pierced a celebratory, parade-like thing to be doing? And... um, why?)

So I fell asleep on the train on the way home. Nora was worried she wouldn't be able to wake me up enough to get me off the train at the transfer from red to purple. However, I awoke at Jarvis. I slept through Granville... how am I supposed to know if the Granville Gnomes kept us at the station for longer than ten minutes? My life cannot be fulfilled without that knowledge.... maybe all this time my hypersomnia was just an evil plot devised by the Gnomes so I wouldn't see what went on...

I'm sure all those people whose feet I tried to throw or whose asses I grabbed or whose backs I tossed ice down or on whose beds I drooled upon or whose brothers tried to get me out of it by throwing pillows will be thrilled to hear that.

previous - next