the calm before

I'm having a quiet morning listening to meandering sexually ambiguous ballads, drinking coffee, and contemplating ( the six to eight hours of chaos upcoming. )

Yesterday was a good day, for the most part, although it was a strange Pridesday Eve. stitchinmyside and I went for a fine run in the morning and ended up at the Moss St. Market for doughnuts and fruit freezes and the excellent company of sugarpunfairy and chromemagpie.

("The State that I Am In" just came on... sigh...)

[Pause for discussion with inlandsea about whether to capitalize this usage of 'that' in a title.]

Then Drag Ball. Approaching the field, it just sounds like a softball game, the sort of wholesome entertainment you'd find anywhere in this large occasionally bumpy nation on Canada Day. It's only as you crest the ridge that you see the outfield full of wigs as high as Dog.

(There was in fact a boxer that kept getting ahold of one particularly ample blond fall. Madcap theatre ensued.)

From there a brief stop for Pride essentials (fishnets) and then a siesta before the ( Fetish Show. )

When we left, we walked into some other dimension. The show was at least a friendly vibe. We were half-talking about going two doors down to Prism, there being no third choice, even on Pride, in Victoria, but the line was gigantic.

Out on the street, gee. Zus. Hordes of drunk angry men with Canadian flags. I mean, what the fsck?

Apparently there'd already been a fight out front of Prism when some patriot tried to jump a guy in line. Jump in the punchy sense. A friend of Leirdal's got clocked in the melee. While we were there, there was some shouting of imprecations at the bemused crowd. (One drunk idiot... sixty queers in good boots.) As Leirdal pointed out, though, a block away -- not so much with the big gay gang.

An interesting result of transition is that, while for the most part I am safer or at least more anonymous in the street, it is now significantly more dangerous for me to walk around in a pair of fishnets at night on Canada Day. I still wouldn't call it giant risk-taking, but last night I was glad to have insisted on putting on my jeans before we left.

Which kind of sucks.

I'm generally ambivalent about Pride. It's rarely inclusive and often offensive, and the faux camraderie is about lipstick-deep. Last night, though, trying to trudge home through the aggressively patrotic revellers, I thought, fsck, I'm glad this shit isn't the only party going.

{rf}