The Prism Festival
DT-IX: A [Depressed] Report from the Front Lines of the Pride Discourse (Part I)
I decided I’d skip Pride this year. My job would have some employees marching in merch and I’d been encouraged to go by more than one friend—but it was a busy weekend. Not one but two birthday parties plus a date on Sunday? No, there was no way I could pencil in any parading, no sir.
The first birthday went well, but I learned that basically everyone was going to be at the parade tomorrow. Even the heterosexual attendees! My queer boy friends made plans to carpool, and of course one of us was already walking in it. Two of us would be go-go dancing at the club that night after all the day’s festivities were concluded.
No, I wasn’t planning on it, I said. I’m really busy this weekend. Just getting to this party was hard honestly. I have no energy.
Earlier that day I’d had a breakdown in my office, crying silently into my hands. Ruining my makeup. I was late to the party because I had hastily erased and reapplied that makeup as soon as I got home.
What’s more, I’d been spending every night this past week fantasizing about my own death and dreading my future and dreaming microcosmic dreams about the pains and mundanities of my life—little tableaus of stress and pain. And so much crying.
No, there was no time for a parade. Not when my despair was growing like a tumor on my heart, a tumor threatening to metastasize.
I woke up hungover, having slept in.1 I was jocked up in my bed scrolling my apps. I chatted with a visiting trans masc guy about Pride. “I can’t go, I’m just a little too busy today,” I told him.
And then a call to adventure. An old group chat containing some of last night’s party goers lit up on my phone.
K: I’m getting ready!!2
K: J were you picking me up? I don’t remember what we were planning lol
J: Yes! I was planning on coming over to swoop you and J2 up! Is 9:30 still good?
K: UMMMMMMM
K: Make it 9:45 lmao
J: All good haha
K: Or ask J2 if he’s ready you can pick him up first lol
J: He’s in the groupchat lol
K: Omg lmfao
Me: Nah u got da wrong one
K: I’m dead
J: Oh did I? Fuck. My bad. Lmao
K: Tommy are you not coming??
I didn’t know I wanted to go to Pride this year. How could I when all I could think about was failure and death and dead kids in Texas and trans kids fleeing for their lives from hateful policies sprouting like flowers, like tumors, like little fires everywhere?
But then I saw the boys planning and the ol’ FOMO activated. The previous night, yes, but it really flared up because of that group chat. I semi reluctantly agreed.
I rolled my depressed \ass into the bathroom and showered and lotioned and makeup’d.
I wore a black tank top decorated with a gradient of gray-to-indigo-to-pink stripes, plus the skimpiest white shorts I own, and my platform docs. And a maroon jockstrap—you know, for me. Just in case.
And I looked in the mirror.
What a f****t.
I added highlight powder to my collarbones and a shiny faux-gold necklace. And then I made my way.
To Be Continued
I normally sleep until 6 or 7 A.M. because I spent high school straightening my hair in the hour before the school bus showed up at six oh fucking clock and then I spent my twenties waking up at 3 A.M. to work the opening shift at Starbucks. Sleeping in for me is about 9 or 10 A.M.
Names have been abbreviated or changed.