Pride

Pride 

Sunday, June 27th. Gay Pride day in Denver. Beginning in Cheesman. Always beginning in Cheesman. Ending in Civic Center Park wedged, there, between the City and County Building and the State Capitol.

Cheesman. It has, for me, always been there. From the moment I stepped deliciously from the U.S. Army and into my life, my queer life, Cheesman has always beckoned, welcomed, soothed, loved. And, the men, the many, many men I have met over the years in Cheesman have, to a man, beckoned, welcomed, soothed, loved. Cheesman has always been the warm and comfortable bosom of a loving mother of beautiful sons.

Cheesman always seemed to cajole us to examine the worth of the world with the heightened sentience of our pathological selves, our queer selves. Cheesman was always grandmother's house where the cookie jar was never put on a high shelf but left, there, on the kitchen table for us to explore and savor, bulging with what in other circumstances, other surroundings were denied us as indiscretions, infractions, sins, aberrations.

Cheesman demanded a deeper commitment from ourselves, our queer selves than just the obvious, the sensuous, the frantic, addictive, consuming craving for cock and ass. Cheesmann demanded a rejection of the insouciance of tea rooms and downstairs orgy rooms. Cheesmann demanded a recognition of the essential worth of our selves. Or, so I believed then, so many years ago.

Now, thirty years after having first stepped into Cheesman, I do believe times have changed. Duh!

I remember the joy of entering Cheesman near dusk and sitting there on the knoll below the pavilion -- as so many others did -- waiting for the sun to set, there, behind the purple juts of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. And there would be others; boys so beautiful that you wondered if you had not stepped into some magical queer kingdom where the conspiratorial glances we exchangedd with one another surely became the rite, the key to entry into the kingdom itself. Oh, we shared a queer conspiracy then. A pristine and exciting queer conspiracy against the rest of humanity; against the mere lives of the non-queer.

Being queer in those days was exciting; an adventure that, today, has all but disappeared.

And, now, today, Cheesman, is simply the place where the Pride parade begins ... as it should; as it always should.

We had a wonderful day with our friends John and Fred, beginning the day with bloody Marys at Cary's new condo. We watched the parade make it's way down Colfax and we visited the menagerie of booths set up at Civic Center. We then, David, John, Fred and I had lunch at Racines.

Gay Pride. Yes, I am proud to be who I am. Parades are good things to affirm the essence of who you are.