Madonna performs during WorldPride NYC 2019
Madonna performs during WorldPride NYC 2019 (Photo: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images)

Pride is back…sort of. Mostly? This weird, transitional, hybrid Pride season has me thinking back on Pride 2019, the last fully in-person Pride 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. On Day 1, we tried to drink all the champagne at 30 Rock. On Day 2, Grace Jones rocked our world. These are the final entries of those mostly accurate, entirely true diaries.

Sunday, June 30, 2019
3pm: Spent the morning watching Grace Jones’s documentary Bloodlight and Bami and trying on different tank top and shorts pairings. Decide to head into the city and just wander the West Village around the outskirts of the NYC Pride March with my friend Slam.

I always forget the weird mix of mayhem and magic on the streets on Pride Sunday. It’s utter chaos. The vibe is celebratory, but also it feels like something awful could happen at any moment. People are in a great mood, but they’re also mostly at least a little drunk. What would it take for all this exuberant, joyous festivity to tip over into pandemonium?

Slam and I are killing time in Jackson Square Park. I spot a sexy, muscley shirtless blond across Eighth Avenue. “Oh Lord,” I pray aloud, “Bring that blond youth unto me that I may attempt to have congress with him. Bring his perfect butt close unto mine eyes.” And then weirdly, the blond and his friends do an about-face and head across Eighth and into the park. The blond guy is looking right at me as he enters the park. “Hi!” I say.

“Hiiiiiii,” he says in a comically deep voice that makes me laugh out loud, and one of the girls he’s with laughs at me laughing.

My godless prayer answered, I find myself wondering if I have to be a Christian now.

6:30pm: Slam and I go to his private house party benefiting the Trevor Project. It’s at a first floor loft on 13th Street, and Slam describes the gays who live there as starving artists who bought the place in 1998 when they used to have money.

There are cute guys at the party, some of them I recognize from Instagram. An editor from Buzzfeed is there wearing the same wide mesh tank top as me, only it looks better on him because of the way his pecs…exist. Billy Porter is apparently supposed to stop by later, but I have to leave before he arrives so I can get to Pier 97 again to see Madonna.

9:11pm: Oh god! Please don’t let me die on this pier! AAAAARRGHHHH!

Madonna performs during WorldPride NYC 2019
Madonna performs during WorldPride NYC 2019 (Photo: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images)

11:15pm: Huh. That was…a thing I experienced. Unsure how to feel about what just happened.

The crowd on the pier was almost intolerable. Like last night, the stage was set up in the center, so that you had to pass through this impenetrable wall of testosterone, steroids and glitter to get to either end where the bars were located. I managed to stake out a spot towards the back, just under the nearly empty VIP booth where Donatella Versace sat calmly as the crushing mass of shirtless, muscley gays squirmed just below her. Part of me thought the whole thing should have seemed a little bit sexier, being squashed against so many rippling back muscles, exposed nipples brushing past, the air thick with sweat and pheromones. But that was all drowned out by the part of my brain that kept sounding the alarm: “This pier is a death trap! It is going to crumble into the river! Or someone is going to yell, Fire! and we will all be crushed in the stampede!”

I’m not complaining though. It is historic and notable to have seen Madonna perform at Pride on the 50 anniversary of Stonewall. She opened her set with “Vogue,” wearing her Madame X eye-patch, which even she admitted was a bit ill conceived — “When I started wearing this eye-patch I should have realized I wouldn’t have any peripheral vision.”

Next came “American Life,” then a speech about gay rights and the significance of the occasion. “I know this pier has a lot of history,” she quipped, “but don’t you guys feel like you’re in a parking lot right now?” No, actually, I felt like I was in a meat grinder.

She had a leather daddy come onstage to help her change into a pair of combat boots that Donatella had designed for her. And then she did a couple songs from the new album, “God Control,” and “I Rise.”

“I wish I could keep going,” she told the crowd after taking a bow with all her backup dancers. “I wish I’d rehearsed more songs!” I kinda wished that too, but also was relieved to shuffle—ankle deep in discarded water bottles, plastic cups and wine cans—off the pier with the rest of the herd as fireworks burst overhead.

Walking through Hell’s Kitchen to the subway, the streets were crawling with roaming packs of scantily clad homosexuals on their way to Alegria, etc. There was a line down the block at Rise on Ninth Ave. All these fine young gay boys venturing off into the night looking for adventure, love, sex. I wondered how many of them would find what they were looking for, how many would be surprised by what they’d find.

Monday, July 1, 2019: Pride Resolutions
I’ve been thinking about Pride as the culmination of the LGBTQ calendar — kind of like New Year’s Eve. In June we march and make our voices heard and we celebrate our accomplishments and the work still to be done. So, I think it’s worth taking the time to consider the work ahead.

Of course, being heinously shallow and brain damaged by the sight of so, so many shirtless dudes with perfect bods on the pier last night, my Pride resolutions are mostly about significantly changing my body.

  1. Eat only fish and veg for the rest of the summer. Eliminate carbs and sugar. Or reduce anyway. (Salmon, spinach, kale have additional benefit of vitamins etc. which combat depression, or so I’m told by the Internet.)
  2. Do exercising. Seven min workout app is fine for now probably. Explore home pec exercising as well, as am uninterested is actually going to gym.
  3. Maybe take up yoga? Or running? Or pole dancing classes, as they seem fun and good for one’s “core” — whatever that is. Possibly buy small weights?
  4. Explore volunteer opportunities at Ali Forney Center, Trevor Project or similar.
  5. Also, read seminal queer liberation texts like Larry Mitchell’s The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions and Larry Kramer’s Faggots and Andrew Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance.

Now, must start thinking about what to wear for the Fire Island Pines Invasion on Thursday…