Our day in the park

The weather was gorgeous, though, and thousands upon thousands of homosexuals (including a couple hundred with cute pooches in tow) flocked to Tower Grove Park for the doings. After four years in this locale, they've finally gotten the layout right: booths lining a shaded walk, mainstage in the sunny circle of the park, necessary services off to the side.

I must admit to skipping the parade (call me when they start calling it a "march" again, please) and I will also skip my rant about the fact our St. Louis festival was organized, in part at least, by a marketing company based in Seattle. In the end, the manifold corporate sponsorships were appropriately played down, and I guess if it keeps the festivities free, I can't grouse about the rare event held open to everyone in town, regardless of their pocketbook.

It was a decidedly non-political day all around, save for fine speech by Barbara Smith, with the obligatory reminder of the interconnectedness of oppression and the moral necessity of "all for one and one for all" in political organizing. Other than that, even the folks getting ready to launch the whimsically named MONA (Missouri Non-Discrimination Act) stayed in their booth and waited for folks to ask them what's up. I practically had to beg the sole referendum huckster I saw on the grounds to show me his petition. The gay agenda, it seemed, had adjourned for the day.

The "-fest" portion of the event, though, was very much in evidence, passable cover bands, a decent DJ in the dance pavillion and enough rainbow-encrusted crap available for purchase to keep me stocked for the next 365. It certainly warms the cockles of my cynical fag-activist heart to see gayboy larvae gyrating to the sounds of Labelle, even if they do recognize "Lady Marmalade" only from the recent Moulin Rouge movie remix. Giuchie, Giuchie, ya ya dada, boys, "Hello, hey Jo, you wanna give it a go?".

There should probably be some sort of rider in the contracts of mainstage performers spelling out a limitation on how many covers of "I Will Survive" and "We Are Family" are permissible in a four-hour period. I danced or at least wiggled a little whenever they were played, anyway. An anthem is an anthem, after all.

As always, I ran into people I hadn't seen or dated in ten years, and others I had hoped to avoid. I caught up with friends I see only once or twice each year, and made some new friends besides.

I used to believe that the only way gay people were going to be accorded civil rights and respect were if we collectively began to act as though we already had them. That isn't the case, of course, but it certainly felt like it on Sunday.

How delightfully distressing. How distressingly delightful. What a swell party it was.

A Conversation From the Bar Scene

Brad: He doesn't have much of a personality, does he?

Tim: Well, as personality goes, what he lacks in quality, he makes up in quantity.

Look at these jazz hands!

The touring company of the musical The Civil War -- or, as I like to call it, "Up With All People Being Created Equal" -- opened tonight in St. Louis. This led a couple of us to wonder, "What might a show tune based on Lincoln's Gettysburg Address sound like?"

We decided it would be something akin to the theme song from Gilligan's Island. No, really. Try it...

"Fourscore and seven years ago

our fathers brought forth on

this continent a new nation..."

...and so on.

OK, perhaps it works better after a few beers.

Departmentalized

The sign near the grocery door apologizes for the dust and says they're "remodeling our store for your shopping convenience." As it turns out, this does not mean they're moving the beer closer to the entrance or training the bag boys to be more receptive to amorous advances. Instead, they're installing a mini-branch of a bank at which I do not have an account, a florist, a coffee bar, a one-hour photo lab, a video rental department and an booth where I can get fitted for glasses or contact lenses while the seafood department steams a lobster for my dinner.

This is happening everywhere. A once-cozy bookstore I used to frequent has expanded to three floors in a massive building occupying a whole city block. Now, in addition to books and newspapers, there's a smart bistro on the mezzanine overlooking a vast selection of specialty clothing, adjacent to sections where they sell cards and overpriced gift items, videotapes, computer software, DVDs and compact discs.

Not to be outdone, the store where I buy compact discs has begun stocking t-shirts, assorted leather clothing, magazines and books. They also have a coffee bar...but so does my dry cleaners. No, seriously.

Yes, the record store sells books! The bookstore sells records! The Sam's Club store down the street sells a case of Comet cleanser -- more than anyone could possibly use in a lifetime -- for $14.99, underpants by the 144-piece blister-pak and radial tires that they'll install for you while you have your hair done at their in-warehouse salon.

I don't want to come off sounding like an old fuddy-duddy, but I plainly remember when bookstores sold books. Just books. At music stores, you could find records and tapes without tripping over a tapas bar on the way the jazz section. And what might you expect to find at a food market? Food, as astonishing as that might seem.

There were stores that sold more than one type of item. I recall it distinctly: they were called department stores, huge structures looming over the urban landscape -- two, three, sometimes even five or six floors of clothing, music, appliances, even radial tires.

But such old-fashioned merchants were outmoded, we were told. Specialization, m'boy! That's the wave of the future. Why settle for a small selection of books here at Sears when you can patronize this gleaming monument to literature down the street? Every title you could possibly want and more! Why choose from only one or two leather jackets on display at JCPenney's when The Leather Barn has racks and racks and racks of just leather jackets?

Well guess what? The Leather Barn now stocks blue jeans and jewelry and cocktail dresses, none of which feature leather as a component. There's a coffee bar in the back, I just know it, and it's just a matter of days before they wedge some Kenmore washer and dryer sets in behind the belts. Everything's becoming a department store again, but nobody's talking about it.

Happy, really

It's a lazy afternoon, a stark respite in the middle of the glorious, exhausting go-go-go I've committed since arriving Friday. But here we are poolside, smoking and soaking up sun, gazing at the distant hills in a place where fifteen minutes takes about a day and a half to pass. I'm thankful for whatever anti-entropic force has wrapped us up in time and made us the beneficiaries of forever.

Patrick is sitting on the tile poolside, Indian-fashion with his head between my knees, so he has to reach up and behind him to pass me the pipe. I toussle his hair and take a deep drag, then lean back and slowly, slowly exhale into the endless, impossibly blue Texas sky.

"You could move here," he says.

"No," I say. "I couldn't."

"No," he agrees, "I guess you couldn't. It'd take a damn crowbar to pry you out of your safe little happy life, wouldn't it?"

"My life isn't all that safe."

"But is it --"

"Yes," I say. "It's very happy, thank you."

Patrick shifts and wraps his arms around my left leg, resting his face against his clasped palms and staring out on the rippling water. "I love you, you know," he says. "Can you believe that?"

I take another long pull on the pipe, feeling it now, willing myself to relax and pleased to find myself complying. "I do. I believe that," I say. "Of course, I believe in a lot of things that may or may not be real. Unicorns. Santa Claus. Bisexuals."

He turns his face toward me.

"I love you too, Patrick." I touch his face with the back of my hand, feel the warmth of his cheek and wonder how things might have been different had he decided to stay, had I not been gunshy of crossing another line.

We have a complicated relationship, this man and I. A complicated relationship, as if there were any other kind. A long history between us that's really little more than an eyeblink, and a deep, abiding affection that, distilled to its essence, is equal parts longing, need and complementary neuroses, with a soupçon of sex.

Matt returns from the house where he's been involved in a long phone conversation. He takes the pipe when I offer it. He tilts his head toward Patrick. "Is he proposing marriage again?" he asks.

"Yeah," I say. "Crazy Mormons."

"No one's living in the guest house right now," Matt says. "You could move here."

"Don't you start," I say. "No. I couldn't." And, plucking the pipe -- now down to the dregs -- from his hand, I push him into the pool.

Alpha Male: E

Elevators: I have this attraction/repulsion thing going on with elevators. As a child, I loved elevators, everything about them. I loved pressing the button to call for them and begged my mother to let me do it every time we approached one, even if she had to put down her parcels and hold me up so I could reach it. I loved riding on elevators and I was especially fascinated by the glass-enclosed sort that run outside a shaft and ascend in an office or hotel lobby so you can see and be seen while you ride. In high school, I did an entire history project on the Otis Elevator Company and learned more than most people probably care to know about the technology behind the elevator: how the cabling works, the sophisticated electronics in modern elevator traffic systems, how a relatively crude but effective safety mechanism keeps the car from plummeting to the bottom of the shaft (most of the time) in the unlikely event the cable from which it is suspended snaps.

But, oddly enough, armed with all of the knowledge, my most frequent recurring dream is of being in an elevator car when it begins to descend unchecked and at a high rate of speed. I always awake before the car reaches the squishy-splat-sub-basement, but the next time I approach a lift after one of those dreams, I seriously consider steering away and taking the stairs. It is not a full-fledged phobia; I never wuss out entirely. And -- thank St. Otis -- I have never been trapped in an elevator, felt as though I were in danger while riding in one, even so much as had a car in which I was a passenger arrive slightly out of plumb with the floor and had to step up or down while disembarking.

I accept elevators as a fact of modern life, venerate them as a remarkable invention that enabled majestic mountains of steel and glass to soar ever skyward. But I guess, on some subconcious level, I don't entirely trust them.

Gone South

The Daily Brad is on vacation while we head down to Austin, Texas for the South by Southwest Interactive Festival. It promises to be a fun, informative week -- filled with panel discussions, parties and opportunities to connect with friends old and new. Updates resume here on Thursday, March 15. In the meantime, why not take the opportunity to sample of some of the delectible dishes o' fabulousness served up by our friends listed in the column on the left. You'll leave satisfied, that we guarantee.