Toronto PRIDE has been a difficult thing to get my mind around. I have walked up and down Church Street among the thousands and try to imagine why I am there, what it means to me, how I relate to all these things that have nothing to do with my life style or former straight world. In fact I would never want to stand in the extreme heat, on cement, and watch a parade on Young Street.

I meet three people that I know while wandering. They are dressed very conservatively with two of them in white business type shirts. Then there was the TNT men in their display tent. Two of the nude pictures on display feature myself. They are going to march naked down Young Street while a million people (who knows?) observe. My mind is not quite prepared for that.

Last year as the parade got ready to start I ran down the street to the parking lot south of the BARN and asked the cops to please let me drive away and they did. This year I went to the SPA and thought I would watch on TV and take in the air conditioning. While doing that three guys came down to the bar TV area and said "HI!" to get my attention. This has not happened before so I guess they were desperate or it was a slow day. I linked up with a nice 25 year old young man who was rather fanatic about the concept of "clean." We shook hands and then talked while washing them twice in the sink, drying, and then using the hall hand sanitizers of the type you see in a hospital. No one would want to know what happened next or about the three showers we had after from three different shower heads. I started to squeak while I walked and left back to the heat of Carlton Street.

Portable gates were up in my parking lot and I was drawn over to the people on the side street. The afternoon shade flooded this area and the crowd was only one person deep while they watched the last of the parade. This I could take and saw everything right to the end including TNT men.

While watching TV at the spa an older man came on and was interviewed. He said that many years ago a gay and lesbian group asked to meet with the chief of police in Toronto. The chief said, "Why???? .... they are just misfits and criminals." Or something to that effect.

As I watched this segment of the parade I suddenly was not bored and lost among all "them gays" but rather transformed. I saw dancing people on the floats as the walking wounded that Dan Savage (gay columnist ) has written about in the past. People that have been a bit damaged by society but that have come out the other end, almost whole, but never the same. This was their day to jump, gyrate, and thrust their pelvis at the rest of society ..."Screw you, we have survived electric shock therapy, burning at the stake, and everything you have been able to throw at us .... and this is our day to dance in your face."

I saw a group with signs from past events in Ontario history, from 1981 bath raids to recent milestones that relieved a little more oppression in their lives. One sign was even addressing today and the sitting of parliament that very moment. It was very political and I could feel my chest shake as they walked by and it went up into my throat and my glasses hid the water forming in my eyes.

I think I see the PRIDE event as more important, now, than the gloss surface that vision only reflects off. Society needs a fist waived in its face once a year to grab up the airwaves and pulp press and remind it that nothing was given but, rather, everything was fought for in order to just be able to walk on a boiling hot gray tar surface to celebrate an existence that some would deny. I think that next year I might be marching with them.

Regards ....... Bill Long

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