THE ONLY STRAIGHT IN THE VILLAGE

The message was clear. At least, they thought it was. On a glorious hot weekend in Los Angeles, rainbow colored flags, clothes, scarves, jewelry, dogs (you name it, rainbows owned it) took to the streets to celebrate Pride.

   

Except for THEM. The tiny group being penned in behind a metal barrier and being carefully watched by the police. They were like the Cybermen, sinisterly lurking in wait to attack the Tardis of pleasure. Their banners said it all - or would have done, had one man not also had a microphone, into which he bellowed the terrifying message. God’s pronouncement on the ten plagues of Egypt could not have been more sinister. I tell you, ten minutes later I could barely keep my cost price Pride Special Breakfast down.

   

Putting things in your “rear end” is WRONG! the beast declared. God is going to punish you for using your bottom as a parking lot (my words; you really don’t want to hear how explicit he was). So there. Engaging in this heinous activity will give you AIDS. “How many of your friends have DIED. . . Do you WANT HIV?” The capital letters rained down like a plague of locusts.

   

Then he got started on lesbians, for whom he had saved most of his wrath. “Wait till you get licked out by God!” (To be honest, he seemed to know a little bit too much about it all for my comfort. Does God even know what licking out means?). “Your vagina was not meant for a dildo!” he declared. Hey, mate, it wasn’t meant for yoghurt, either, but sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

   

I was in two minds whether to go over and bring him up on a point of order: straight women use dildos, too - usually when pricks like this make us lose all hope of ever finding a man.

   

Here was the legal issue: was it lesbians per se who were going to hell, or just the dildo-wielding lesbians? Or was the dildo itself the real crime of the drama? If a straight woman uses a dildo, does she stand more chance of passing the pearly gates than the heinous gay one? If a straight woman’s man is away on business, is she allowed to indulge as a point of desperation? I was so anxious to try to clear this up; it’s a moot point.

   

And back to the rear end. The voice boomed out that there were all sorts of unspeakable things that men were putting there (dildos suddenly sounded the least of everyone’s problems). Indeed, we wouldn’t believe what men were capable of in their uphill gardening (ok, the gardening bit is again mine, not the speaker’s; he had all sorts of words for the unsavory trough awaiting planting). The suspense was killing me. For the love of God, mate, tell us! My imagination was running riot. What goes up there? A toaster? Air con unit? A condo?

   

I have a lot of gay friends, male and female, and rear ends hardly ever enter the conversation; in fact, a lot of my gay male friends are rather averse to that part of the proceedings. Maybe they need to buy a toaster.

   

Apparently, the God Squad group gets smaller every year, which is a blessing. On a day celebrating diversity and tolerance, it’s ironic that it was only the Born Again Christians yelling their messages of hatred. If cars had been allowed on the street, I’d have been sorely tempted to...well, rear-end them.

   

How do people find the time to worry so much about what others are doing in their sex lives? I can barely get it together to think about whether I can be arsed to reach the remote for the telly, let alone hire a speaker system to discuss what people get up to amongst themselves. Who cares? Unless there is evidence of abuse, you can build a multi-storey in your vagina or rear end and you won’t hear any complaints from me.

   

Homophobes and lunatics aside, it was a joyous weekend. T-shirts backed their various causes - “I support planned parenthood”, “Lesbian single mom strong” - and strangers mingled with likeminded people as if they were long lost family.

   

I will admit to having felt a little bit out of it though - The Only Straight in the Village (the opposite of the UK’s Little Britain show featuring The Only Gay in the Village). With the exception of the friend I met for drinks, I didn’t meet one straight person the whole weekend. That’s nothing new, really. As friends have pointed out in the past, if I will take up residence in Soho (London), West Hollywood (Los Angeles) and Hell’s Kitchen (New York), I’m not going to meet Mr Right or, as I now prefer to say: I’m going to have to kiss a lot of toasters before I meet my Prince. And, let’s be honest, time’s running out. I’m 60 years old now: at the rate my underused innards are shrinking, I’ll be lucky if I’ll be able to harbor a cocktail stick, let alone a dildo.

   

One thing I took away from the day was what a family day Pride has become. Rainbow-decked kids were out in force with their families, gay or straight (I didn’t ask), and I felt proud (yes, pride with a small “p”) to be living in a time (at least, in our part of the world), where being gay does not make you an outcast; where those young people I saw on the street will know that being gay is not an affliction. To thine own self be true (Shakespeare). Be good to one another (Jesus - so stick that up your rear end, arseholes!).

   

Alas, much of the world and much of our own society in the so-called civilised world does not concur, as witnessed by the fanatics behind the barrier. But that barrier served as a metaphor: the bigots are behind bars, screaming to ever-decreasing circles as the world changes and evolves. Be proud.

   

And if I ever do meet Mr Right, I don’t want an effing toaster for a wedding present. Goddit?

PS for my UK friends, I now write with US spellings!