Cowboy Confessional

Dykes on bikes need to put their shirts back on.

The lead entry in every year’s San Francisco Pride Parade are the dykes — motorcycle riding lesbians, anyone of whom is more of a man than most men I know. A number of the DoBs ride topless. Now I’m not objecting to bare boobs — I’ve always liked those. I’m not offended by the fact that some of the shirtless DoBs have the type of physiques that should remain covered. Nor am I worried about the mammary road rash they might suffer if they had to lay down one of their hogs.

However, riding topless in the freezing June San Francisco weather will make a women’s nipples protrude further than a pair of #2 pencils, and could poke some-body’s eye out. See, it is a public safety issue.

Today was San Francisco’s 38th Pride Parade and clothing optional sexual expression fete with occasional fetishes fostered. Footage from past parades have been broadcast across the country, scaring millions of middle Americans out of their television comas. Nothing like footage of a young, buff and all-but-naked Latino thrusting his sequined g-string into your face to make a Kansas farmer believe the Apocalypse has arrived.

The changing name of the parade says something about the oddity that is an open-air asylum called San Francisco. Back in the 1970’s, the parade was the domain of homosexual males who came out of their closets and immediately filled those closets with evening gowns. In those comparatively quaint times, the parade was called “Gay Freedom Day” and later “Gay Pride Parade”. It was all about being male, gay, unashamed and undressed in public. In San Francisco, ass-less chaps count as “reasonably covered”.

This simply would not do! If San Franciscans believe in nothing else, they believe in tolerant inclusion of all peoples, lifestyles and beliefs … except for conservatives and Republicans who are lynched on sight. A parade devoted to only gay men was completely unacceptable said the gay women of the town. Lesbians insisted on being allowed in the parade, and given that they were bigger, stronger, and a damn sight meaner than the average effete fairy, the gays instantly acquiesced.

Propensity for rapid surrender is why generals don’t want gay men in the military.

So “Gay Pride” became “Gay and Lesbian Pride”. A couple of syllables longer, but you could still fit it on a bumper sticker, which the parade organizers did. These bumper stickers attracted the attention of the transgenders. With great pride they demand their inclusion rights as well, threatening to throw a collective hissy fit until men in dresses, women in work boots, various hermaphrodites and people part-way through surgical conversions were allowed in the parade.

I’ll admit, it is a little disconcerting when for the first time you see a person with bulging boobs and a bulge in their boxers.

Now the event was called the “Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Pride Parade”. Bumper stickers were out. Even the parade billboards were getting a little wordy. Television reporters could not recite the sexual orientation roll call with flubbing a line or laughing out loud. Undeterred, the parade continued each year despite it taking longer to say the name of the parade than the parade itself lasted. Say it loud, say it proud, we are out of time!

All the shouting from the accumulated boinking branches got the bisexuals to look up from whomever they were doing and ask why they were not in the parade.

(Just a brief aside: Not much in this world scares me, but the bisexuals do. I’m one of the most lustful libertines I know. Despite having a sex drive that would make a migrating salmon blush, I’m content having half of the human race as possible bed mates. The bis are not, which means they are actually hornier than I am, wanting to bang everyone they meet. This is truly frightening.)

Since the parade had already become a sexual orientation lexicon, adding yet another group was the simple part. Fitting them onto the marquee was something else. The common abbreviation for the “everything except heterosexuals” community — LGBT — cannot be pronounced in any known human language, and thus lacks marketing appeal. In an inspired move the parade committee abandoned cramming the entire carnal catalog into the press releases, and called it “Pride Parade”. Simple and not straight.

The event has been a “must see” for San Francisco Bay Area citizens and startled visitors. To say that some of pride parade’s participant are “colorful” is akin to saying thermonuclear warfare is noisy. Like legions of oppressed people before them, liberated gays allowed their emotional pendulum to swing far to the other extreme. They didn’t leave their closets, they exploded from them as if their leather harnesses had grown teeth and were chasing them out. The parade was a moment every year where gays were surrounded by people more or less like themselves and in a city where eccentric behavior is mandatory. Thus nothing, including clothing or discretion was necessary. “Pride” gave way to public predilection replete with feathered boas, burly boys in leather, and a growing mob of spectators encouraging ever more flamboyant behavior.

Shame really that the Pride Parade has peaked and is now heading downhill. Gayness now suffers from mainstreaming.

This year’s parade bordered on boring. Most of the parade’s color has been licked off thanks to mass acceptance. When the populace at large accepts you, there is little use in jumping about naked and demanding to be recognized. Gay marriage finally became legal in California, driving the first of the nail into Pride’s coffin. The parade route was littered with the newly wed and the children they had been creating all along. Raunchy and raucous has given way to matrimony and diaper changes. Pride has gone parental. If you never had a chance to see San Francisco at its most flaming flamboyant, well you’re too late. Those days are in decline.

Gay marriage has produced a new class of humor however. A large number of couples walked down the street carrying signs that read something like “Together 12 years, married for nine days.” My thought was “There you go ruining a perfectly good relationship by getting married.”

But my favorite were a lesbian couple who had not yet tied the knot (no, not in their bondage-and-discipline gear … the marital knot). They shyly carried a home-made sign reading “We’re here, we’re queer, and we’re registered at Macy’s!”

click here for more entertaining photography from Pride’08

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