eoe-0605-005 lots of loot

(LOS ANGELES, POSTED JUNE 11, 2005)

gay pride 2005 in los angeles. saturday.

had a good time at the gay pride festival today. picked up a lot of loot. squirt guns, plastic rubber-band pride bracelets, a white yo-yo, several mardi gras necklaces, a fake marijuana lei, fake tattoos, 300 free hours on a chat line, popcorn, nerf balls in several sizes and colors, a nifty red avis backpack from the geffin theatre group, some rediken shampoo samples, a vaguely blue nylon pouch from cedars sinai with sunscreen and lip balm in it (there’s a place on the front for a buspass, and a string to wear it around your neck). x-rated gay dvds. 20 pounds of printed materials—magazines, newspapers, phone books, flyers, brochures, bumper stickers, post cards, business cards, paper napkins with scribbled phone numbers. enough lube and condoms to keep a small third-world village safe for a year.

i also purchased a fabulous rainbow-colored three-foot-long thirty-two-inch-tall double-masted twig-framed hand-built indonesian schooner-sailboat-kite that actually flies when you tie a string to the front. it’s got big stripey sails and even little flags on the masts. i’m going to assemble it and hang it in my room—i’m just not sure where. i suspect there might not be enough room in my room.

to get all the free stuff you have to do one of two things. either you pay a dollar to spin a wheel, or answer questions for a survey.

the wheels are easy, but the surveys? inane questionnaires on more topics than you can possibly imagine.

this year’s most memorable? a guy from the gay and lesbian center wanted to know if i’d ever been gay-bashed before. he had a survey for me.

(second place? a woman called out to me in the crowd from a booth. she wanted to know if i had a gay brother. i said no, but asked her if she wanted me to go find one. she said no, she was doing a study on gay brothers. at least she laughed.)

i told the first guy no, not really, but i’d been trashed fairly regularly by doctors and dentists not wanting to treat me.

he looked puzzled for a second and then said “oh” as it sunk in that i had aids. it’s not hard to figure it out.

“how do you handle it?” he asked.

“well,” i said, “i don’t really want someone giving me medical treatment who can’t bear to touch me. it just seems like courting trouble to force some panicky, fearful fool of a dentist or opthamologist to work on me. dentists are the worst. so i just roll with the punches. there aren’t really many other choices.”

“well,” he said, “you’ve got a good attitude, i guess.”

i studied him a second—he seemed to be young and blonde and blue-eyed and very earnest. he’d kept on his official t-shirt—how much more serious can you be? then i said, “but i did meet a guy in my hiv-positive support group once who talked about being bashed. he said he was attacked by four or six latino kids with straight razors.”

the survey taker—his name was vince—flinched.

i continued. “he said they sliced his face and hands and arms and legs and nearly severed his dick off in a ralph’s parking lot.”

vince turned a bit green.

“i was really impressed at the courage it took just to get himself to the group. i couldn’t tell he’d had endless reconstructive surgeries—he looked pretty good to me. handsome. but he told us that all he could see when he looked in a mirror were the slices everywhere. he showed us the near-invisible scars on his face. he traced them with his shaky fingers—you couldn’t exactly see them, but you could feel them. we traced them too, a couple of us. the scars ran from his scalp over his forehead into his right eyebrow, across his nose and deep into both cheeks. his lips. once we could spot those, we could also pick out the thin, thin lines—ridges, really—on the backs of his hands and along his forearms. i could feel them in his palms when i held his hands. when he held mine. i was astonished he could bear to show us anything.”

i peered at vince. “that’s probably more than you wanted to know, isn’t it?”

“no, no,” he said. “i’m glad you told me.” he tried to say something else, and couldn’t get any words out.

“thanks,” i said.

“yeah,” he said.

i never filled out a survey with him, nor did i get a free prize like a pharamceutical pen, a gay pornographic keyring or sunscreen.

i hope he was able to weep. i did, a long time ago. i still do.

i’m marching in the parade with aids.org tomorrow. last year i marched with shanti, and it was more fun watching people watch the parade than it had been in prevoius years watching the parade. last year, along the route, a way-cute long-haired jeans-only continental-looking guy with a great smooth-chested dark-nippled tan and most likely a french accent came and danced with me in the street for a bit. he liked my hat. i found him very entertaining as well, but i think chris, one of the shanti staffers, was terrified that i was going to fall over.

so it wasn’t a thrill for everybody, i guess.

we had a good time, though.

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