This Could Be Us But You Playin’

First published in the July issue of PQMonthly as the first post of my new column, This Ends Badly.Click here for more pieces in the Single Gay Time Traveler Series.

Here in the PNW, it’s Pride Season, or as I like to call it, Summertime Sadness. I’ve gone to a couple Pride Festivals in Los Angeles, where I moved from a year ago, and then my first Portland one last year. It was fun, but I usually just go to the parades and daytime festivities, and I found myself shrugging off Portland Pride 2014. It seems I had lost the spirit of Pride; so this time, I summoned the ghosts of Pride Past, Present, and Future to get it back.

Other guys may get ready by underwear shopping and tanning at Sauvie’s. My pre-Pride rituals include plucking my ear hairs and washing and shrinking all my clothes so they fit tighter. I also avoided the bread aisle at the grocery store…for about an hour.

I text the Ghost of Pride Past: “hey gurl, meet me @ the Bodega.” Then I go out. I start out Friday night at Panty Raid, a crowded, sweaty party thrown at a tiny convenience store on Belmont. The guy at the door asks for Pride Past’s ID, looks at it, looks at him, and waves him through. Then he looks at me. I offer my ID. He shakes his head slowly, sadly, stops making eye contact after he looks at my weathered face, the crow’s feet near my eyes, my outfit that’s trying a bit too hard to be youthful (concept: Spinster Chic). “Please, here,” I offer my papers again. He takes it, looks at my birth year. His eyes get wide, and he gently hands the ID back to me, taking care with my precious relic from Ye Olden Days. He takes my wrist gingerly, as if afraid I didn’t take my Boniva that day, stamps my wrist, and calls me “sir” as he waves me in.

Inside, it’s a mix of tank tops, sweat, and lip gloss. Panty Raid feels illegal; it feels like a secret, it feels like a party that finally gets it right. And oh yeah, there he is: the dude I’m crushing hard on. He’s surrounded by his friends. Hmm, not tonight.

I check my nearby Scruff grid. Oh shit. An ex, one I definitely do not want to run into, is less than 250 feet away. Time to get outta here. One catch: I am literally incapable of starting a tab somewhere and closing it out. A decision to open a tab automatically means another trip to that same bar when it opens the next day at three. No, I don’t get so faded that I forget my card, it’s just that I’m committed to The Exit Strategy. The scary thing? The Bodega doesn’t even take cards. Somehow I left it there anyway.

The next night I drag the Ghost of Pride Present to the White Owl Social Club for Control Top. I park in Beaverton, at the end of the line of people waiting to get in. I planned it right: I shaved before I got in line, and have a full, bushy beard by the time I finally get to the entrance. My clothes have gone out of style and then back in. (I kid; they were never in style.)

We get inside, and there they are: Katey Pants and Kevin Kauer are on their stage, backlit by fire, behind their turntables. Like the puppeteers of fun. Like a dark High Priest and Priestess (don’t assume you know which is which) who are about to sacrifice everyone to their vinyl god. Like Daft Punk, but actually cool. DJs are the new storytellers, the new shamen.

On another stage inside, Rye Rye is shouting incomprehensible beautiful gibberish into a mic, and her wig is slipping and the crowd is going vertical because there’s literally nowhere else to go. I realize I dressed like someone’s chaperone, or maybe a member of the clergy. Drinking beer to “pace yourself” works until about the 8th beer, and things start slowly going fuzzy, then furry. Oh shit, there he is: Secret Crush. I stumble in his direction, slur a sloppy “Herro” and offer to buy him a drink as his friends look on, horrified.

I don’t remember much about what happens after that, except I think it involved what the kids call an “afterparty”. I wake up in my own bed drooling on my cat, and of course I left my card at White Owl. The Ghost of Pride Present makes a shitty wingman.

The next day I wear my Hangover Sunglasses at Disco Brunch, where I chat with lovely friends, and then I make a beeline for the Big Gay Boat Ride as the heavens open up over Portland and dump a lake’s worth of water on me. The boat disembarks, and for two hours it’s dudes with nice legs, and laughs over drinks, and drag queens named after food.

Later, I go to Dickslap after Snapchatting the Ghost of Pride Future to meet me there. Adore Delano is predictably amazing, and the party reaches critical mass: the air becomes thick, people start to literally combust, and the walls buckle. I make a hasty exit and stand in the middle of the street as Holocene sucks into itself like the “Poltergeist” house. You didn’t move the graves, Nark, you only moved the headstones.

I look over: there they are, all my friends, about to hit up Robo Taco (people in Portland talk about burritos the way people in Los Angeles talk about yoga). And it’s there that I really discover the true spirit of Pride. Whatever Pride becomes in the future, it will always be a relevant celebration of not taking what happened before us for granted. And in the far future, when Gay Pride becomes a National Holiday (along with #ManCrushMonday and Throwback Thursday), we’ll tell our kids not to take their rights for granted.

Secret Crush slides into our booth next to me as I muffle a scream with my burrito. We talk and then he whispers the five best words ever: “Wanna get out of here?” And as we walk away from the steaming rubble of Holocene, hand in hand, that’s when I remember:

Shit. I left my card in there.