Pride is back…sort of. Mostly? It’s hard to say what it’s going to be like this year. New York is well on the way to fully reopening after more than a year of COVID restrictions kept most of us housebound and isolated. But while in-person LGBTQ+ parties, celebrations and actions are happening — and selling out fast if my group texts are any indication —NYC Pride’s official events remain mostly virtual for the second year in a row. This weird, transitional, hybrid Pride season has me thinking back on Pride 2019, the last one before the pandemic — which also happened to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising. That year, I kept a diary of all the nonsense my friends and I got up to during what, in the two years since, I’ve come to think of as The Last Pride on Earth. This is Day 2 of those mostly accurate, entirely true diary entries.
Saturday, June 30, 2019
11am: Scrolling texts from friends about their further adventures after leaving the Rainbow Room for other, far-flung parties:
The only problem with last night was not being able to get f*cked on the dance floor. It was perfect other than that.
My shirt changed color. I went in with a yellow tank top and I left with a red one.
The Daily drops an episode about the tension between inclusion and corporatization of Pride festivities. Someone who does marketing and PR for NYC Pride argues that the org. is able to hold their corporate sponsors accountable for policies that affect LGBTQ employees (though cannot name an instance in which they have done so) and that these sponsorships and brand activations are spearheaded by actual LGBTQ employees. Here’s what I’d like to know: all month I’ve seen rainbow flags in stores and banks around my office in midtown, major national brands rolling out the rainbow carpet, hoisting the Pride banner. But did they do the same at their stores outside of major metropolitan areas? Are people in malls across America seeing as many rainbow flags and Pride t-shirts as I am? Or did these brands just show support for the LGBTQ community in cities where they wouldn’t get any blowback? If so, that’s not advocacy.
2pm: I check my email one last time to see if I’ve been approved for a press pass for Pride Island, NYC Pride’s big music festival/dance party on Pier 97. And I have! The confirmation email was sent at 7:57am this morning, meaning some poor soul at NYC Pride was up super early — or super late — approving press credentials for an event happening literally in a matter of hours.
Scrolling Twitter, Cher’s tweet about Pride gives me the hangover feels. I don’t generally love when “gay icons” tell queer people how much we’ve been through and how far we’ve come. It always feels condescending or pandering. But I guess I’m a little more susceptible in my fragile morning-after condition, and I actually tear up a little.
Can’t Believe It’s 50 YRS SINCE STONEWALL 🙌🏻.Don’t Have Anything Witty Or Smart 2 Say..actually I’m in tears
writing this😥.U HAVE FOUGHT SO LONG,BEEN SO STRONG,IM BEAMING WITH PRIDE🌈. WE HAVE HAD EACH OTHERS BACKS SINCE I WAS 9.WE WILL CONTINUE 2 WALK THE ROAD 2GETHER.
— Cher (@cher) June 28, 2019
Here’s the weird thing though: Last night I was at a chic-as-f*ck gala, had a fantastic time, and yet I’m still feeling a little FOMO because I wasn’t at Susanne Bartsche’s Love Ball, or the Out Magazine party at Boom Boom Room, or Ladyfag’s music festival LadyLand.
5:30pm: I meet some friends at Elsewhere in Bushwick for the Wrecked/Carry Nation party. There’s a bartender working on whom I’ve had a crush for probably the past 10 years at least. But he doesn’t even know I exist. Sigh.
7:30pm: I take a $35 cab ride from Bushwick to Hell’s Kitchen for Pride Island. Day 1 of the event is kind of like a mini music festival. More performers, fewer shirtless circuit boys. Definitely fewer guys with eyes like saucers, who seem like they’re so high they might fall down at any moment. I wander around sipping canned Pinot spritzers and chatting with random friends, acquaintances and colleagues, killing time before Grace Jones performs.
I run into a publicist I know who has worked on LGBTQ marketing campaigns for some of Madonna’s albums. Everyone seems a little unsure of what to expect from her performance tomorrow night. NYC Pride’s announcement said that she is “expected to perform.” So…what does that mean? A couple songs? Or a full mini festival type set, like Kylie Minogue did last year?
“I can guarantee you, Madonna is not going to do a mini festival set,” my publicist friend insists.
Somebody else says they’ve heard a rumor that Madonna is going to do a song or two and then Lady Gaga is going to do a full show. But then, literally everywhere I’ve gone this weekend, someone has heard a rumor that Lady Gaga is going to show up: the World Pride Opening Ceremony at Barclays Center, the Rainbow Room. She did make a surprise appearance at the Stonewall Commemoration, so I guess it’s not an entirely unreasonable expectation.
Everyone seems to have either a plastic bubble-blowing unicorn wand or a fan. The fan situation at Pride has really gotten out of control over the past few years. The sound of fans snapping open has kind of become the immediately identifiable sound of gays being sassy. I don’t mind it so much, but it drives my friend Cosmo crazy.
I stake out a spot to watch Grace Jones. I’m just standing there minding my own business when this handsome silver fox wearing magenta lipstick starts talking to me. Mike is a chef who recently sold his catering business and now leads a life of leisure. “I used to hate all that flamboyant homo stuff,” he says. “But now, look at me, I’m wearing lipstick.”
“Congratulations on shaking off the shackles of toxic masculinity,” I tell him.
Grace Jones’s set is breathtaking. She plays all the hits: “Nightclubbing,” “Warm Leatherette,” “Pull Up to the Bumper,” “Slave to the Rhythm.” Her performance is flawless, but her banter between songs is hilariously unhinged. “I took a little piece of ecstasy,” she says at one point. “Don’t tell the cops!” She doesn’t pander to the audience. She doesn’t make some speech about progress and equality, which I kind of appreciate.
There are more costume changes than you’d think she has time for. At one point she comes out wearing a strap-on. “That…wasn’t there before, was it?” I ask Mike the Silver Fox. During another song, she taps her crotch with a drumstick. “That’s going to be me when I’m 70,” Mike says. “Beating my pussy!”
After the show, I take the subway back to Brooklyn. The train is full of queers, both heading home and heading out. More out-of-towners with their rainbow flags, queer hipsters heading to the next party of the night. At Metropolitan, this African-American butch gets on with two absolutely stunning femmes. Everyone’s in a celebratory mood and it feels like we’re all in this together.
Tomorrow: Madonna and a near-death experience on a pier.
