Pride Away

It feels funny, that on Gay Pride Sunday I am nowhere near the peripheral of a Pride Parade. I have more or less gone every year for the past twenty years. When I say "more or less," though, i means I have at least seen a portion of it.  Honesty, I have only seen the whole parade once, in 1992.  It's terribly long, and a lot of it is boring. And I find later on it's exactly the same thing year after year. For the past couple of years, I have even mocked it, but still I went. My friend Mike and I go to the same exact spot - in front of Manatus Restaurant on Bleecker Street - and there have been years that we stood there for only five to ten minutes. There was even a year we stood in the rain. Actually, there were a couple of years we stood in the rain - weather on the last Sunday of June seem to be pretty erratic. But now I sit here in my room, thousands of miles away, and with a slight fever because of a bad cold, and I kind of wish I was there. I kind of wish I could make fun of the B& T gays, kind of wish I could people watch and roll my eyes at the hot mess queens.  I kind fo wish I could have brunch at Sammy's, although every day nowadays I wish I had brunch at Sammy's. I would imagine that the energy today would be palpable, what with the historic vote on Friday. But am I just romanticizing all this? I hate crowds, and I could see myself getting disgusted by the hot sun and wanting to go home right away. Either way, I think what I really want is the choice to be there. That, in the end, is what I am missing.