NPDemers.net

Remember the project I mentioned a couple months back? Wondering how that’s going?

The Queer Film Festival is in full swing. Last night I they showed The Coast is Queer, a showcase of shorts by local filmmakers that’s become an annual tradition. There was so much excellent material this year that it’s hard to pick a favourite, but I’d have to go with David C. Jones’ Laugh At Me. Which, good news, has been on YouTube for a while

Well, damn.

I guess part of me thought he’d live forever, or at least long enough to see all the marvels he imagined or predicted. Hell, he saw geostationary satellites and global telecommunications become reality, why not space elevators or Martian colonies or deep-space travel as well?

It was the August long weekend so you know what that means? The Vancouver Pride parade. The sun was shining, the rainbow balloons were floating, the leather queens were buff and be-harnessed. The idea this year was to have a moving game: a few players would bump the ball around while two held up the net, and a few more would run around giving out free junk to the crowds.

Chrystos is a Native American lesbian poet. I went to one of her readings shortly after I moved to Vancouver. I’d never heard of her before, and was deeply moved by her work. It speaks of the harsh realities of life, poverty and racism and sexism and love and activism and spirituality, and how all these things interact.

I’ve just returned from the first meeting of the Accidental Community project. There was a photo slideshow by local artist John Kozachenko, a very brief overview of the history of gay men’s communities in the West End, Q & A and interactive discussion, and a look at future directions for the project.

…while accompanied by a woman dressed like a volleyball and a man wearing an itty-bitty speedo, with volleyballs painted on his ass cheeks.

Yes kids, it was Pride Day, and I walked with the VGVA posse. Since most of them were in Montreal for the Gay Games, it was a pretty small production this year, just a small truck with rainbow balloons and streams and music… nothing too special.

Hey, that was fun.

Here’s the thing: I hadn’t been to the Pride parade in six years. I swore off in ’99 because I was disgusted at how commercial and corporatized the whole thing was, with the huge floats for the bars or mainstream sponsors (Air Canada, CIBC, Royal Bank, VanCity… come to think of it, is there a single major bank who’s not hot for gay money these days?), with less and less visibility for community or political organizations.

Equal Marriage Bill Passes Final Hurdle

It’s times like this that my cold, cynical heart thaws a little, and I’m proud to be Canadian.

Every year around this time, it hits me: the nagging urge to write and post something for the anniversary of my coming out. I’m not sure what to write about, exactly: something deep and meaningful where I’d explore issues politics or identity, or just how I’ve changed and grown in the time since coming out.

And a warm welcome to visitors surfing in from GayVancouver.Net. Seems I’ve been chosen as the GayVancouver.Net Proud! Out Loud! Web site of the week. Thank you to those who nominated me! It’s quite an honour to be counted with such excellent sites, but don’t worry: I won’t let it go to my head. Much.

What originally got me interested in Alpha Flight was the fact that (a) it was a Canadian superhero group (in fact, the only Canadian superhero group in the Marvel Universe), and (b) it was the only series I knew of then to have an openly gay main character. Being gay myself, I was naturally curious to see how a superpowered queer would be treated. I got into the series only a few months before it folded in early 1994 and, over the next couple of years, collected most back issues, the two annuals, and a couple of team-ups with the X-Men.

I’ve lived in Vancouver for over eight years, having moved here from Ottawa—where I was born and spent all my life—and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be. In fact, I believe moving out here was the best thing that happened to me since I came out of the close twelve years ago. I’ve changed a lot in that time and, looking back, I feel very far away from Ottawa, and the me who lived there.

It happened in late May of 1992 and became official on May 28^th, the day I started my diary to come out to myself on paper; I was seven weeks away from my 21^st birthday, having just finished my first undergrad degree. Suddenly, without warning, denial took a permanent holiday and I accepted the simple truth: I was gay. Had been all along.