Chrisonomicon

Tuesday, June 24, 2003

Another Pride weekend come and gone. It felt less like Pride, however, and more like an excuse to hold Mike?s hand in public for a few days, enjoying the sun and the noise, and surveying the social landscape together, isolated in a way like two archaeologists studying a foreign country. Of course, we didn?t appear foreign at all; we blended right in with our tank-tops and camo shorts. When in Rome...

Occasionally, we?d reconnect with friends that would surface from the crowd, having drifted off during the past year with new loves or new jobs or new friends, and it was strange to me that we should still have some connection based solely on our sexual orientation, otherwise having nothing in common. But it was gay day, and so that was the idea I suppose.

Dave was there with Barry, serving vodka drinks at the HRC tent. Neither Mike nor I drank at the Civic Center, which was one of the main reasons we felt like oil on water, I believe. Later, we pulled Dave from his element at the Fox Hole tea dance because Mike and I were hungry and Barry was feeling equally unsociable as the crowd multiplied by the half-hour. Steaks on the grill at home. The warm summer breeze on the patio, ceiling?d by a steady roar from the interstate over the hill. Talk of work and Houston and old times when we would have stayed at the Fox Hole or actually drank at Pride. "Good times," we?d say, and that would scare me.

I bought a pale-blue glass bowl at Crate and Barrel on Saturday morning, a housewarming present for Ricky. Standing at the register to pay, I turned around and spotted Mike examining candles a few aisles down. He bought a few for my friend and the gesture made me smile. Later, we drove by his first-floor apartment and peered into the open windows, but he was gone. He has a new cat -- a kitten, actually -- who pressed its ears against the screen when I walked up to call into the window. I scratched its ears and tried to figure out why I could feel so affectionate towards this cat, but not Mike?s or even the cats I see on TV commercials.

I?m reading volume two of Anais Nin?s diary. It makes me wonder why I?m writing all of this stuff online.