Pride, Hon!

This past weekend started with me sending my clone to Titan on Friday night as by requested by my buddy Greg, The Bowie Bub. I'm not sure if my clone made it to the bar though. He came home late, completely trashed and said that he had a good time under the pool table. I, on the other hand, stayed home to look after my little boy Max and my big boy Bubala.

Pride Day #1

Saturday morning was spent doing last minute workouts and shopping for Father's day presents. We had already decided to take the light rail up into Baltimore. There is a stop just a couple of blocks away from home, and by taking the train, we could avoid the city parking hassles. So, we get on the train and a few stops later, this guy gets on with a cell phone. He's talking really loudly, and as I listen to his "mother fucking this and that" and as I watch him talking into the phone, slowly I realize that there is no one on the other end of the line. He's talking to and answering himself. I was able to catch scraps of the conversation from my end, and he did a real good job of answering imaginary questions from the non-existent other end of the phone line. Mostly, he was talking about Glenn Jones, and he was singing some part of some song all while yelling into all the different parts of the phone and banging the phone against things like the windows and the seats. I could understand him saying things like "Yeah, I told you that the cop said don't worry about that damn ni***r, he ain't talkin' to no one." Then, there was the story about the time that he saw this girl on a bus and she pulled a knife on him. So, he pulled his knife out and they went at it. And, there was his comment about having a little woo woo before leaving and how he was getting off at the Camden Yards stop. Now, keep in mind that Baltimore has a pretty big heroin problem. So, after awhile, I realized what I was seeing was just our local form of drug induced surrealism played out as a public performance art piece for our traveling entertainment. After he got off the train at the Lexington Market stop, the rest of the passengers and I had a good laugh.

We made it to our stop in one piece and walked the couple of blocks from the light rail stop to the Pride events. Last year, our surprise guest for pride was Bubala's mother, my mother in-law. Oh, you should be so lucky. This year, not only did we have Mom, but we also had Bubala's sister, Anne and his nephew, Baby Braeden along as well. I'm just sorry that they got there a little earlier than us and missed the pre-parade entertainment on the light rail train.

The parade started and Mom and Anne collected all the candy and beads and goodies being tossed from the floats and cars so that we didn't have to. They kept saying that it was all for the baby, but, it was really all for us. They even got Max a blue rubber ball from the Pretentious Pooch float. My in-laws both wore matching rubber rainbow shoes, so I think that everyone just thought, "Oh, what a cute little Lesbian couple with their baby." I, on the other hand, knew that they was just sneaky straight people dressing up like gays and coming to the parade to get all the Pride candy and beads for themselves. So, after the parade, I was over it and ready to get away from them, take my shirt off, grab my husband's hand and enjoy the rest of the day being gay.
We ran into so many people that we know. Some of whom we hadn't seen in quite some time and others we see here and there and everywhere. We finally met some of our online buds in person which is always nice. We hooked up with our buddy Greg, and he hung with us for most of the day and evening. He was over at this private bear house party happening on one of the side streets. We went over to this party after a while and ran into the always very friendly Carl from D.C. Bubala tried to sneak us into the bear party house based on Carl's suggestion that since we knew a lot of the guys around, we would fit right in. So, this fuckin' hottie watching front the door puts a wristband on Bubala and then he says to me, "You know, we usually we make the guys whip it out before they can come in." So I say, "Oh, well, that's Ok I'll just wait outside then." He told me that he was just kidding and handed me a wrist band, but I wasn't too interested in going inside. Besides, there was plenty to look at outside. So, Bubala went in and found Greg, and we took off back to the block party.


I drank alcohol for the first time since last December when Tim, Donn, Jason and I went to the Green Lantern one Thursday night for Shirtless Men Drink Free, and I got trashedsickasadog. This time I was drinking strawberry daiquiris. They were sweet and fruity and summery, and I had a good time. We ran into some other friends of ours, Ron and Larry along with a few of their friends and decided to wait with them for Tiffany. We had a special way of keeping track of the time with the help of Greg and the moon. The time passed quickly enough, and soon Tiffany was on stage. I had this plan that if I could get close enough, I could throw rocks at her. Only, after Bubala and I got close enough to take a few pics we realized that someone else must have already pelted her with rocks. I guess Baltimore is just a quick stop away from her vacation trailer in Ocean City. She sure looked like she should be pushing a baby stroller down the boardwalk with an ice cream cone in her right hand and a huge cup of Thrashes French fries in her left hand. I saw drag queens in the parade that looked better than she did. (I'm such a mean bastard sometimes, but the truth has very sharp claws.)


Oh yeah, my favorite quote of the day on Saturday came from one of our more interesting friends, TJ (No, not the Durban Bud!) When the subject of going camping came up, he said "When I go camping, I just go to be a whore."

Pride Day # 2

Anyway, so the next day was a "try to fit it all in" sort of day. First, it was down to Annapolis to see my family for Father's Day brunch. Then, we headed up to Baltimore again to Druid Hill Park for day #2 of Baltimore Pride. We got there late and the parking lot we usually park in was filled. We realized that this event had grown in population since last year, a reflection of Baltimore's growing gay community. It was hotter then hell and, being a bald guy, I just turned into a waterfall of sweat.

I noticed a lot of different churches out in force pimping their places of worship using whatever means possible to try to draw us in. One booth had this really scary guy with a hand puppet on that looked like a blue Ernie from Sesame Street. The puppet was saying, "do you want free cookies and free lemonade?" and pointing to their booth where all the scary church people were waiting to hand you pamphlets. It totally seemed like a child molestation moment just waiting to happen. Someone handed me a fortune cookie at one of the booths with no fortune inside, just a scrap of paper saying United Methodist Church. Confucius say that is a rip off! I didn't eat the cookie.

We saw some of the same folks as the previous day plus we had the pleasure of meeting up with my favorite park ranger, Adam. When we first moved to Glen Burnie, I would go for walks or ride my bike or walk the dog on the B&A Trail and I would see this park ranger who is REALLY cute and very friendly to me. I always wondered about him until a few years ago when I saw him at Pride. He has since changed job locations so I don't see him that often anymore so it was great to see him at Pride.

We walked around the festival a few times and checked out all of the booths. We even sat down on the lawn and listened to a couple of the bands perform a few songs. But, the heat was just too intense and, even after sitting in the shade and drinking a cool, non-alcoholic drink, I was still too hot to want to hang out for too long. So, we went home, cranked up the air conditioning, got naked and did it. Just like any other good and proud monkeys would do.