Hope & Helicopters: A Pride Story

Hello and Happy Pride, y’all!

I had every intention of writing my personal short list of favorite LGBTQ+ movies for you this week but I think that will be a fun way to close out pride month next time. Instead, I am going to reflect on my pride 2023 experience mainly because my city’s pride weekend just happened.

The older I get the more large crowds inspire me to say a pretty quick “nope, no thank you” or scope out the emptiest and shadiest spot from which to people watch. Maybe it’s just a phase or the aggressive sunbeams attacking my fairly Norwegian skin but I don’t seem to be able to handle masses of humans like I used to. That doesn’t make me any less prideful but it could and probably makes me less fun. Which is a tough pill to swallow as I’ve always considered myself pretty fun.

We decided to forgo the parade this year since last year’s took no less than three hours and probably more - I lost track. Don’t get me wrong, I love me a good parade and last year was a great “welcome back!” to pride gatherings post Covid, but it definitely was a lot of stimulation. This year, instead, we hit the festival of vendors and entertainment the Saturday before. It was full of thousands but still more manageable than last year and what I assume post-parade times looked like. It was great. People were jovial and feeling themselves, albeit their sweaty and sunburned selves.

As we were heading home I saw the only two protestors I knew to be around the perimeter. They were silent and held signs declaring some bible verse I am sure was about my future damnation but at no point did I feel threatened. It made me think, however, of my personal experience of being an out member of the queer community and if I have ever felt a fear for my safety for that alone. I can only really think of a single time.

I have been fortunate enough to have limited personal experience with feeling any sort of hatred or ill will towards me for who I am. Even though I grew up in a very small town in the woods of Maine, I was never not accepted or loved. I was definitely prepared for the worst but genuinely surprised to encounter the best. It wasn’t until I went away to college that I experienced fear and bigotry.

I quickly became involved in any LGBTQ+ club or group I could find on campus. I was even elected president of one of them the second semester of my freshman year. I was invested. In the fall of my freshman year just months into my college experience I, along with about 15 other students from my school, went to Milwaukee for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s Creating Change Conference which brought groups and organizations from all over the country together once a year to have a meeting of the minds through lectures and other topic-specific group settings. It was absolutely amazing. Until you stepped out of the conference hotel and onto the sidewalks where masses of people of every age were there yelling and screaming and picketing my existence. 

I remember taking pause. No one had warned me they were out there and I had only ever seen anything like it on the news or fictionalized in the media. I stood and watched them. When I said that was the first time I ever experienced fear for who I was, let me be clear; I experienced their fear not my own. I don’t know if that was naive on my part or not - for some reason and to this day I believe in the good in people. Has the world given me a reason to? Not really. Does it get me into some kind of shady gray areas sometimes? Absolutely. And maybe it is in part from growing up in that small town akin to a Norman Rockwell painting but I still want to believe that I can leave my doors unlocked and walk down the road safely any time of the day. I still believe in kindness and conversation and sharing a meal and stories with strangers over a meal. 

Trust, I know there is evil and hatred out there. There’s also fear and confusion and even hope. We are a fucking mixed bag of humans all struggling on the same damn planet as each other. I am not ignorant to this. I am reminded daily. Most recently from my patio in the morning of the parade while drinking coffee out of rainbow-themed mugs, people walking by with their pride flags and celebratory outfits… voices washed out by the sounds of helicopters patrolling the skies. Because we live in a world, a country, where LGBTQ+ events need patrolling. For safety. Because we aren’t safe. Maybe we never have been and maybe we never will be but I try to remember the hope and wear it as my own sort of invisible pride flag that is felt if not seen.

So, whatever your pride experience is this year, I hope it is a safe one. I hope you feel seen. I hope you can be surrounded by those like you who love and support you for being singularly you. I hope you feel hope.