Where You Belong

If Gay Pride delivers nothing, beyond boobs on bikes (San Francisco, primarily) and queens in convertibles, you can't help but leave a parade with a sense of belonging. In the worst hungover, crystal crashing moments of a life, one can cling to the knowledge that they belong somewhere. That doesn't relieve the dehydration, cramping and that pleasant, lingering tingle down south....I hear. But it is nice to know.

I belong in Kansas. I lived in all the other places: Chicago (too cold for a skinny queen), San Francisco (too kinky for a squeamish queen), Des Moines (too rural for a suburban queen) and Omaha, where they sound like North Dakotans only without the charm or a movie to their credit. I also belong to a people....the queerly deviant fringe who only make sense in context. (e.g. The leather daddy with cod piece in line at Taco Bell is a juxtaposition that tarnishes both the subject and the locale.)

My Hell's Kitchen agent, however, has taken my name and work to the streets of New York City. NEW YORK CITY! This morning comes the report that he had strolled the sidewalks of New York (and not the nicer ones, if I catch his drift) with not one, but a bevy of drag queens with microphones in hand. They were, no doubt, mesmerized by his effortless Carol Channing impression that pops out anytime he gets excited or drunk. He does a lot of Carol Channing.

Said drag queens, whom we revere at Gay Pride Time if at no other, were recording for all posterity his drunken rambling about a blog (the one you see here) with which he was quite taken. Now I have been pimped to New York Magazine and the good people at The Occasional Fag (http://www.theoccasionalfag.com). I am a quiet, relatively serene homosexual on the prairie with an ever-burgeoning fan club on the streets of New York City. Whatever will I do when they realize I'm just a poor man's Garrison Keillor with a cock ring and a thing for Malibu Rum?

My point is, it's important to not only know THAT you belong, which I do, but also to know WHERE you belong. Many years ago, when I was young....er, my best and dearest friend was a Queen Under Nubian Transport (QUNT, for short). Her people had been traded for molasses in the 18th century and she ended up wearing a dress and high heels, lip-synching to Patti LaBelle in 1989's Kansas City. Who says progress doesn't march right along?

Ms. Ramona Baker, as she was known on the less tasteful stages of the Midwest, had encountered an unfortunate accident as a child that had left her mildly mangled on one leg. She could still dance, play third base, get to third base (wink, wink) and kneel for hours on end in bookstores of ill repute. But she was obviously hobbled in some unfortunate way. The pharmaceutical haze of the early 90's prevents me from sharing with confidence just how she came to be imperfect in her lower parts, but I believe it to have been from either a vicious dog or a car accident. It earned her the nickname La Gimp.

Upon purchasing my very first new automobile, the 1990 Ford Festiva, our QUNT informed me that she had a cousin in New Orleans who fairly insisted that we visit for an extended weekend - free of charge. Being young and marketable, particularly where the light was dim, I leaped at the invitation and drove the two of us to Nawlins for a weekend of debauchery. Somewhere around Memphis, La Gimp let it casually be known that she might not remember her cousin's phone number, address or name. At the Louisiana State Line, she confessed her sins and said she had never known anyone south of Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

There we sat - parked in the Not Nicest of The Not Nice Places in what used to be Nawlins. At long last, she revealed further that while she may never have had a cousin in Sin City, she did have the phone number, address and several schematics for the Bath House written on her bra. The queen was nothing if not resourceful.

We were, as she'd planned, past The Point of No Return and destined to sleep in a Festiva in New Orleans or trick our way in to a soft bed and a warm shower. While I was not born pretty, I can accessorize well. Suffice it to say I was not observed sleeping in a Festiva at Louis Armstrong Park. Ahhhh...the good old days.
I digress.

We debauched for 3 full days and headed back from whence we'd come when the QUNT decided that she needed - NEEDED!! - to stop at the rest stop near Columbia, Missouri - 2 hours from home - in order to change into her drag. Her hope was to catch one of the shows upon our return and be stage-ready by the time we hit the edges of home. I pulled into the Pretty Potty on the Prairie and she disembarked with drag bag in hand. I turned up the radio, leaned the seat back and had thought to catch a brief nap while she painted, tucked, and teased her hair into an unnatural shape.

I was awakened from my shallow slumber by what sounded like a bus bearing down on my petite, gentle Festiva. I squinted my eyes and confirmed that, indeed, we had been joined by a big, yellow school bus. That was a nice, pastoral tableau, particularly when the stream of little Webelos began to exit the bus followed by their fully grown and identically dressed Den Daddies. I smiled as I beheld the half-Aryan Dream, half-Prairie Paradise scene before me.

Until I realized that they were heading into the loo where La Gimp was fast changing genders.

I knew this was going nowhere good and fast. Me, in rural Missouri, with a black man dressed as a black woman trapped in a rest stop toilet with 30 little boys and 2 grown men in neckerchiefs, shorts and black socks. As my instincts are normally spot-on, it must have been the first uniformed tyke through the door who alerted La Gimp to the impending doom.

I started the car and revved the engine praying to Jesus that if they had guns, they hadn't earned their merit badges fair and square. Out the opposite door bolted our QUNT, waving her wig in one hand and her boy clothes in the other. Her Tina Turner fringed mini-dress was waving like the Kansas Wheat as she squawked, "Stawt the goddamned caw!" On a full run - in substantial heels - she caught me as I rolled along the parking lot toward the on-ramp to I-70. She caught the hatchback, lifted it and flung her belongings and herself inside.

Two grown men in neckerchiefs, merit badge sashes, and black knee socks were chasing after her as though her drag were any more egregious than their own. She lost nothing more than a pump in the chase. The men had left their dignity behind when they put on that silly uniform and enticed little boys into the woods with promises of iron-on badges and smores. As usual, the Queen was triumphant, even in the least dignified of circumstances.

And isn't that the real message of Gay Pride? Whether you're marching in the parade, fouling yourself on a float, or slinking out of a bath house at 6 a.m. on The Lord's Day, we do tend to triumph despite all. So should you hear of me on a podcast somewhere, sitting among the wheat fields, baring my ass to the world, figuratively speaking, remember that it's where I belong. And may you belong, too.

Happy Gay Pride Everyone!