The Long Beach Pride

“Good morning, Gay Days Hollywood.”

This is how I have to answer the phone at my current job working as the assistant to an overworked, overwhelmed first-time event producer. The event is not worth going into, but suffice to say it is pretty gay. As part of my work schedule, I was forced to go the Gay and Lesbian Gay Pride Festival in Long Beach this weekend to work a booth and promote our event. If you have never been to Long Beach Gay Pride, count yourself lucky. I learned several valuable lessons and several lessons that, while I can’t find an application for them yet, surely will come in handy one day.

1. Lesbians don’t own mirrors. If they did, they would never leave the house.

2. Kilts are not sexy on anyone, especially a 65 year old leather daddy with a paunch and stick legs.

3. If you are offended by the smell of burning pork, do not attend. I tried to escape it for hours before finally giving up. If I were Jewish, I would have had to write away to get my foreskin back. I’m not sure who you write to about that, but I’m sure once they got a whiff of my pork-smoked clothing, they would want me to give up my membership to the ‘chosen people.’

4. Drag is dead. Poor drag queen. Droop your head in shame. Your makeup is a mess and I have better cleavage.

5. There are only 3 attractive homos in Long Beach and I have already slept with all of them.

6. Fags and dykes are so desperate to find acceptance in this world that they will line up in a parking lot at 9AM on a Sunday to attend what is essentially an Orange County Fair minus the Christians. But never you fear; Gay and Lesbian Christian Alliance has a booth set up right next to the Dildos-R-Us tent. You can stick something up your butt and immediately be forgiven only five feet away.

7. Contrary to the ‘Queer Eye’ image of quick-witted fags in designer duds zinging each other playfully while casually jockeying for the down camera position, most fags are actually overweight, balding and slightly drunk, even at 11AM. By 4PM most fags take their shirts off whether you want them to or not. And believe me, you don’t want them to.

8. Los Angeles is the ‘Pretty People' capital of the world. Long Beach is the ‘Who Cares if I’m Pretty, I Have This Steak and Cheese Sandwich’ capital of the world.

9. For some reason, the Gay and Lesbian community is like a garbage disposal in your sink; people who have failed to find a sense of belonging in every other major oppressed group eventually find their way to a gay pride festival. Maybe they are excessively tan; maybe they never gave up Mohawks; maybe they are black on the outside and white at heart. Gay Pride is like the garbage disposal of fringe society; whatever you can stuff through the opening, we’ll take it.

The week before the festival, I did a favor for a friend of mine by doing an extras job for his independent film. My friend is a big ol’ Jew and I’m a big ol’ Mo. We like to tease each other by calling each other Kike or Fag. It’s fun. So when he wrote this small line about a gay guy in a ridiculously tight shirt, naturally, he thought of me. The scene was an office scene, in which I wear a skin tight lycra shirt. The joke in the short scene is that ‘skin tight lycra is not appropriate in the office, or anywhere.’ I didn’t have to say anything; I just had to react to being scolded for wearing what was essentially a Bike racing shirt to the office.

I tell you this to illustrate my final point. Upon arrival at the Gay Pride Festival on Saturday morning, my boss opened up a box of shirts and said, “we’re all going to wear these shirts that I had made up. Here, this is a small…put it on.” And of course, it was a skin tight Lycra Shirt with the words “Gay Days’ on it. Like that wasn’t obvious already.

Jimmy