PRIDE

Here we are now entering the 6th stage of Jumanji, otherwise known as June 2020. June marks an entire month of LGBTQ+ PRIDE month, prior to Covid-19, the murder hornets, a need to remind society that Black Lives Matter and Hallmark’s version of PRIDE through Corporate America pretending they even understand, other than a rainbow flag means symbolism for this community.

The question of why this community needs an entire month or day for that matter to celebrate PRIDE. A question, I will often admit that myself did not mind a need to explain, but now I have time to reflect and I will do my best to give reason through feeling. You know those things I have no problem talking about but anyone else seems emotional inept to describe.

I choose this song, as an equal approach. It still instills the feeling when a gay person walks into a club and Whitney is playing and no one can control that inner gay when a great fantastic song comes on. I also chose this version specifically, because a it has more modern twist to a classic that most can relate to. The energy, this song brings is equivalent to one experiencing a PRIDE fest for the first time and walking down the hill into the park, or into the Tracks.

The overwhelming complete and utter shock of the pasty nipples, pure nakedness from every which one. Your head in a tailspin, thinking like what am I walking into other than a whole bunch of fucking love. Darting between the Dykes on Bikes, to the leather clad chaps of the cowboys, from the Drag Queens to the twinks, to the lipsticks to the ultra fem and just pure what the fuck is happening, honestly, but I will guarantee it’s fabulous and you do not care what is happening.

It is a day where skin color, sexual preference, gender, or any stereotypical biases seen daily, is forgotten. Walking down the hill next to the capital seeing hundreds of thousands of people just meeting in one great area to love, live and be happy. It is our vacation from reality. It is the reason, whether you are gay or straight Whitney invokes feeling within you. It is the one day that we can forget our lives and have one day where nothing else matters but you and you and only. We remember we can love ourselves for everything we are.

So do not ask why we need an entire month, or one special day, that is like asking why you enjoy your birthday or Christmas. The feelings baby. The happiness felt in one collective energy that makes anything else happening disappear, just so the next day we can all go back to our 9-5’s. The woman in full drag on Sunday doing her best lip sync to Proud Mary awakes the next morning to become Dan and sells insurance and carries an extra Sharpie on him for his auditing of accounts hiding himself, out of fear what will happen to him if the truth is revealed.

It is one day we do not fear this.