Hello everyone!
Today is a wintry, damp Saturday. I just handed in my match rankings, and my patient (a generally nice but older-than-usual racehorse)
tried to slam me into the wall when I pulled his catheter this morning. He is a fine example of the thing that
happens when you inject a horse with great frequency: the horse assumes that
every time a person touches his neck, it will involve a needle.
However, today I want to tell you about my first pride
parade. PRIIIIDE!
fuckyeahbutchlesbians
Pride is great.
In fact, pride is so fantastic that I must resort to an elaborate
analogy to explain its awesomeness:
Imagine that you’re in college (won’t take much imagining
for some of you). Finals time is approaching. You decided to take an extra
class this term for some reason, and you are currently regarding your
last-semester self with some potent rage.
Your classes have been unreasonably challenging, and your level of
burnout is truly epic.
The Friday before finals week begins, you get e-mails from
three of your professors. They all say much the same thing – they’ve been very
impressed with the work ethic put forward by the class this term, and as a
special treat they’ve each decided to cancel their final exams. So now you only
have two finals: a paper that you’ve all but finished (look how prepared you
are), and an interpretive dance performance for that strange comparative
dramatics class. You smile. You go out for a cup of hot chocolate to celebrate,
which the barista at the coffee shop gives to you for free. Then you find ten
dollars.
That is how excellent Pride is. Actually, it might be
better.
I vaguely wandered through the Pride festival a couple of
times during my first years in college, but since Northampton Pride happens in
early May, ALL THE FINALS are always happening the week after Pride weekend. I
engaged in a certain amount of internal scolding about how I “really should be
studying”, and allowed myself a quick stroll through the tents before returning
to my desk. This is how I missed out on Pride (mostly) until my senior year.
During my last semester of senior year, I was having rather
a good time. I had been accepted to vet school, and I was finishing my degree
credit/ vet school prerequisite requirements in a pretty gentle manner. I was
riding lots of horses, dating lots of ladies (cough), and also randomly taking
an EMT class off-campus.
Pride weekend arrived. I was psyched. I was in a brief lull
between ladies, and I had prepared myself for a weekend of wild adventure. Alas, having never attended a Pride
before, I actually had no idea what that meant. No matter - when in doubt,
forge boldly ahead!
The first event on the lineup was the Friday night Dyke
dance. The Dyke dance occurred in the event room of a defunct railroad-station
side restaurant overlooking a bike path. When I arrived, there were piles of
leather jackets in the entryway and a trail of glitter leading to the bathroom.
I unbuttoned my jacket, straightened my flowered dress, and paid my $5
admission.
You guys, it was intense. There were butches in Oxfords and
ties lined up at the bar while their femmes twirled in a group on the makeshift
dance floor. Rainbow streamers and twinkling disco balls hung from the ceiling.
Balloons gently bounced around tables loaded with cheese cubes and pretzels. A couple of shyish ladies wearing
tucked-in tee shirts and jeans leaned carefully against a wall, watching the
dance floor with hungry eyes.
Since I love to dance*, I planted myself amongst a group of
ladies on the floor. They graciously accommodated me, and then watched with
some amusement when I was double-teamed by a couple of butches. One was a tall,
burly, silver-haired gym teacher-like woman with a striking resemblance to Jim
Carrey. Later, I found out that she was actually a high school field
hockey/soccer/lacrosse referee. The other had golden-grey hair and twinkly
eyes. First they sandwiched me between them, then the referee swung me around
and we dirty danced while she crushed my knee with her thighs.
I danced with everyone. I danced with lithe, gym-going
butches, wild and dirty femmes, teachers, chiropractors, androgynous bois and
shy architects.
I slipped away to gulp a glass of water every now and again.
By the time it was over, my knees ached as I walked and my right high heel
clicked on the pavement.
*This is an understatement that is hilarious in its
magnitude. I will spend the entirety of a dance either dancing wildly or
boycotting the bad songs by sitting pointedly at an adjacent table.