Why Pride Month?

This was my "coming out music" - reminds me of happy times, hot summer nights, and one very hot guy in particular.  Much fun.

Today's Google doodle celebrates the beginning of "Pride Month" with a spinning disco ball:

I got to wondering, just when did this Pride Month business start, so I looked it up on Wikipedia.  To my surprise, I find that Bill Clinton first recognized Pride Month in 1999.  I must have missed the memo.

I've never changed my belief that gays and lesbians make up about 3 percent of the population; that's 3 out of 100.  You can look at the whole field of statistics on this subject and debate it all you want to, but I'm not going there.  So by very simple arithmetic, that tells me there are about 10 million gays and lesbians in the United States, the population of which is 342,543,550 as I type this sentence.  

(See the  U. S. Census Bureau's Population Clock for up-to-the-second figures on the U. S. and world population.  See Statistics Canada for Canadian figures.  And here's a cheat sheet for you:  roughly speaking, the U.S. population is about 8 times bigger than Canada's, and about 3 times bigger than Mexico's or Russia's.  However, both India and China have about 4 times more people than the United States.)

Well, anyway, is a whole month of Pride really necessary?  It matters not to me, because I'm an old man who doesn't get out of the house much anymore.  I've never been to a Pride parade.  M.P. and I did go to a Pride celebration at the county fairgrounds on a June night in 2019 - we got there in the cool of the evening about 9 p.m., when it was all winding down.  

We nibbled things from the food trucks, listened to a few speakers and singers, and bought some trinkets to take home:  a friendly, pleasant, down-home crowd of all ages, very like what you'd find at a real county fair - plus a lot of rainbow flags.  There were even some straight couples there, pushing babies in strollers - why, I have no idea.  The next year, it was cancelled on account of the pandemic, and we've never heard any more about it in this vicinity.

But I guess there has to be a Pride Month, because you just know that 10 million screaming queens could never agree on a single week, let alone a single day!

P. S. -- M.P. is offended by the disco ball.  He says it only represents the little twinkly barflies, and leaves out the butch gays and the lesbians.  I guess he's right.  We are thinking of suing Google now, and we will certainly file a discrimination complaint with the Grand Gay Cabal.  Stay tuned for further updates.

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In Memoriam: Olivia Newton-John, 1948-2022

Beloved Australian singer and actress Olivia Newton-John has died at her home in California, aged 73.  Despite her personal struggles and sorrows, she brought joy to many millions of people around the world, and though her voice is silent now, her songs will live on for generations to come, I'm sure.

I remember when she started out as an unlikely Country singer in the early 1970s, and went on to evolve in other directions.  I particularly recall going to see Xanadu in the summer of 1980, when I had finally finished my long-delayed bachelor's degree and was starting grad school.  And had just come out of the closet.  

My date for the movie was my summer romance, Prince Charming:  a slim, suave, brown-eyed, mustachioed, very handsome voice major, about my age, whose dark looks were intoxicating, and who was all I could have wanted physically.  He was more experienced than I:  a willing teacher and an eager student.  We fit together very well, I thought, in that pre-plague time when safe sex was not even thought of.  A fairy tale come true . . . 

But it was not to be a Cinderella story, after all.  He broke off the relationship at the end of the summer. I called for a date; he said he was seeing someone else.  I didn't ask why, didn't want to know.  Just cowboy up and move on, I told myself.  Don't mind the pain.

At the end of the decade, I noticed his name in the alumni magazine - "Deceased."  I assume it was AIDS.  I remembered he had said he didn't want to live to be 100.  He didn't even live to be 40.

The Xanadu soundtrack takes me back to that sweet, sensual summer when I was young and hopeful, and it was still possible to believe in magic.  Here are some of my favorites that Olivia sang then.  Perhaps she is still singing somewhere, beyond space and time.

Odd coincidence:  Xanadu was released on this day in 1980.

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Sunday Drive: Magic

Your Head Trucker in his salad days, far too many summers ago.

This lovely song transports me back to the idyllic summer of 1980, when I had just come out and, after a long, hard struggle, just graduated from college too - a time when it was easy to believe in magic, love, and destiny.  Ah, youth!

Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?





Really, it was like coming to life, a sleeper awakening, full of light and song and hope, while the enchantment lasted. I can yet recall, when I hear these tunes, the happy anticipations I felt, the future a shining road at my feet. Ah, joy!

Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?





But age we must. In the end, of course, memory is all that remains of smiles and tears alike, and that too must sink into oblivion one day and leave no trace - and who can say what becomes of the soul, once shed of all its precious freight of earthly hope and desire?  Ah, humanity!

Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?