Pride in a Small Town: A Musing on Visibility

[AtLast]

I so support this. I know that I would have preferred to live in more rural areas throughout my life and being queer was just easier in or very near major cities.

[Random]

Dusa,

Thank you for bumping up this thread.

Mitmo and I made a hard decision last month.

After the last health crisis with my family down missouri way.. (Little brother on life support, then mom crashing and being hospitalized in ANOTHER hospital due to her being a hard ass and NOT taking care of herself.) we made the call to move to missouri. Part of it is me being selfish, I don't want to miss the last couple years of my mom's life, and another part is unselfish... They need help... They won't ask for it, won't recognize it, but my parents need help.

I've never been partnered or even dating*gay* in a small town... I left about six months after I came out and moved to a large city. It sort of worries me a little.. I'm out and can't go back into the closet. How will that affect jobs and renting a house... Small worries, but not something I've had to think about before...

We will see and as mitmo says.. It's by an army base, we are NOT going to be the only queers around... But I'm a worrier by nature and change bothers me... so we will see...

Thank you for a lil glimps... Conway isn't that different from Waynesville....

[Bit]

Hey, Random, for what it's worth I've seen for myself that the more matter-of-fact a person can be about being gay, the better the people around her will accept it. It's much easier for me to be out and I get much less reaction here in the Small City Bible Belt than I did in metropolitan Phoenix. Partly that's a function of time--Ellen, Rosie, Melissa, and shows like Will And Grace have all changed attitudes all over the US--and partly that's because in Phoenix I felt like I had something to hide and people picked up on it.

My experience has been that if you have nothing to hide, if you're just who you are right out in the open, people might not like you, but they're pretty much likely to leave you alone and let you live your life.

I'm sorry for the reasons you're moving back--sounds like your family's going through a truly difficult time right now--but I sure do hope that you're pleasantly surprised and that everyone around you just takes it for granted that you have every right to be yourself.

[Quintease]

I came out in a small town. When I say small town, I mean small city with a small town mentality. I remember leaving the one gay bar to walk to the one gay club, worrying about being gay-bashed all the way.

I ran away from there as early as I could, which was quite late as I was scared and didn't want to leave my family.

The bf and I are now talking about going back, but it still scares me. What if it's still the same? What if the apparent growing acceptance of LGBTQ is just a sham. Do we really want to be stuck in a small town, far Far away from the big city we both really love? I miss my family though, I feel like I've been away for far too long.

[rustedrims]

Medusa i thought you said what everyone in this lifestyle feels at one time or another..It is a good feeling to be around the communitity and accepted..

I live in a "farmer town"..Been here all my life..The only Gay Bashing i have experianced was a word spray painted on my mailbox..That was a few years ago and come to think of it cant remember what the word was but i do remember it was spelled wrong..There were other mailboxes spray painted that night but mine was the only one with a "word" on it..It did come out who the kids were that did the painting..

I would be proud to be a neighbor to that Pink House..

[Medusa]

Jack and I stepped out to Pride in Conway today. It's the same town that I spoke about in the first post where, 9 years ago, I rode as the Parade Princess in Conway's first ever Pride event.

Some things remain the same even after 9 years.

John and Robert, the super flamboyant Gay couple who are now in their 70's, are still wearing their signature white tuxedos which pick up a little more adornment every year. The first year they were just white.
Nine years later, the cuffs of their shorts and sleeves of their coats are affixed with rainbow trim and there are dozens of rainbow stars rising across their backs. They remind us every year that Robert was a Vietnam Vet and fought for rights that we still don't have and John was at Stonewall, raising Gay hell.

There are still dozens of beautiful gay boys in all manner of shaved bodies wearing skimpy little shorts, speedos, thongs, and leather chest harnesses. They have slight noses and the boyish chests of men who have never done manual labor. They dance with pure joy and don't give a fuck who is watching - their energy infectious and arousing.

Mean old Dykes stand around and gruffly eyeball one another, daring you to approach with their downturned mouths and begging you for a kind word with their eyes. They wear starched-stiff wranglers, cowboy hats, ballcaps, t-shirts with ironic vagina-related sayings, and cargo shorts.

There are babies and dogs. Rainbow flags, rainbow umbrellas, rainbow everything covering every square inch of the town square.

Yes, I said town square. Because John and Robert aren't having any of that whispering bullshit where we do our Pride event out in a field somewhere, hidden from the judging eyes of old ladies fresh from church. No, they get a parade permit every year for a Sunday and march a steaming line of faggotry right down the middle of Main Street in Conway and end the parade on the fucking town square where techno music blasts and vendors have adorned their tents with gay fuckery that twirls and dazzles in the wind.

Every year, dozens of Queens brave the makeup-melting heat in spandex and corsets, huge flapping black eyelashes, and wigs jacked to Jesus to twirl and pump their way into the pocketbooks of the adoring crowd. Dollar bills fly while those giant sisters point and sashay, dip and pop, and grind their asses off to Lady Gaga, Pink, and Donna Summer.

I can always count on at least one performance bringing me to tears and this year it was a giant Drag Momma in an orange spandex dress with the kind of old-school training that dictated that her drawn-on eyebrows almost sat on the back of her head while her lips mouthed words in a red lipstick line the size of Ohio.

It takes a lot these days for a drag Momma to give me pause because I come from the land of Miss Gay America and I have seen the best there is but this woman, Britteny Paige, stomped the stage for her first act and then the music trailed off into a whisper. We all thought the act was over but could hear the stirrings of a timid guitar humming out the first few notes of "Man in the Mirror".
An acoustic background reminder from Britteny that it takes a lot for a man to put on a dress and heels in public.
I was moved.

Every year I tell myself that I won't cry and every year I feel sheepish when I feel the tears rolling down my cheek when some little skinny gayboy gyrates on stage to "Born This Way". Every year I look around at the babies and the dogs and my heart swells with the bigness of our family. Every year I am thankful beyond anything I know that I can be there to see it all and feel the energy of all of the hands that have paved the road before us so that we can be standing there in our ridiculous costumes in small-town Arkansas, mostly without fear.

Don't get me wrong, I had one moment where I was sitting on a bench with my back to the street and when I went to look over my shoulder, there was a large black truck rolling silently by with dark-tinted windows. For a split second I made a contingency plan to hit the ground if someone were to put a shotgun through the slightly-cracked window.

Because those are the kind of things you think about when you go to Pride events in small towns.

Still, the other thing you think about is that not one. single. protester. showed up this year.

Not one.

Every year for the last 10 years there have been groups of protesters sometimes holding megaphones and quoting the Bible, sometimes holding signs. One year some of Fred Phelps crew showed up but John and Robert hiked up their white shorts and ran them off.

This year it was just us. Just the fags and dykes, the bisexual folks, the Trans folks, the weird Queers, the tomboys, the straight people who came out to show support.

It was just us in all of our fuckery, our finery, and our glittering Gayness.

And me, sitting on a backless bench holding hands with my beloved, thanking the universe for being a part of it all.

[ArkansasPiscesGrrl]

Medusa, I felt SO very bad that I missed Conway Pride today! I had really planned and intended on coming. But a certain butch had an unexpected opportunity to come home for a couple of hours only, and I had to drive down to NLR to pick her up. We have to grab our fleeting time whenever we can, and Conway Pride had to come second in line.

I had moved to Conway in March 2011, and had NO idea that we had our very own Parade and celebration. I had been looking forward to attending today.

Wolfz7 and I just celebrated our Pride in our own way today! And next year? You and I may have to look into wings again! LOL

Thanks so much for your words, because I was THERE, right along with you and Jack!

APG

[genghisfawn]

Originally Posted by Medusa

We have speculated that maybe country folks are used to seeing "tomboyish" women because of all of the women who do farm labor here or all of the "country girls" who wear camo and hunt. Or maybe its just that country folks do they whole "bless their heart" thing and move on.

I understand this entirely! That's what living in Saskatchewan is like... you can't tell the butches from the farm women from the hunting women from the ones who are all three or a combination thereof or... ugh, my head is spinning.

Saskatoon is not a small town, at 265,000 people, but it sure feels like one sometimes. The pictures of your parade remind me of the first Pride parade I went to here, in 1999. The protesters were in full force. There was violence. We got egged. The cops were in beat-down mode. It wasn't as scary as it sounds because it was spread along the parade route, but people were cautious.

That year there were 200 people at the parade. Last year there were 2,500.

The times, they are a'changin'. From one girl in a bumpkin town to another, Medusa, you look FUCKING GORGEOUS in those pictures!

[rustedrims]

Hey Medusa..

While i was reading that it was like i was there..
Wish i was there..Great story..
Gotta throw this in there..Noboby can say Fuckery like you can..

s..

[pynkkameleon]

Your words and pictures have completely captured, seduced and reminded me of what I am missing. Thank you so much for sharing!