American Pride
When the world is on fire, is dancing still defiance — or just denial?
I’m writing this from the middle of a New York City heatwave, gearing up to barrel through the end of June at full throttle. That includes, of course, Pride Weekend—which I’ll be observing in the time-honored tradition of attending sweaty, crowded parties set to relentless electronic music. But this piece isn’t really about Pride…it’s about the uniquely (gay) American feeling that starts to bubble up around this time of the year.
This year, Pride bleeds into a perfectly-placed Friday Fourth of July, creating two back-to-back weekends of highly programmed social events. If you’re part of the LGBTQ+ community (or love someone who is!), the time in between these two holidays can only be compared to that sticky-yet-slippery week of No Man’s Land between Christmas and New Year’s Day. All bets are off. No rules. No routines. Bedtimes? Shifted.
Clothing? Same sweatpants from the day before (and probably the day before that... and the day before that).
They are both the time for PTO and automated OOO replies. Those who can, simply stop. While the week between Christmas and NYD usually embodies a sleepy, lethargic creature prone to hibernation, it’s Pride-to-Fourth of July counterpart takes on a more frenetic energy. Everyone who can afford to escape is either ferrying to Fire Island, flying to Provincetown, or jumping off a yacht in Mykonos. Or—if you’re like many Professional Homosexuals™️ I follow—you’re somehow doing all of the above.
At some point this weekend, I’ll inevitably end up in the middle of a dance floor, surrounded by the people I love most, under a disco ball. Donna Summer’s “MacArthur Park” will play - usually timed perfectly with a confetti drop. It’s happened pretty much every Pride weekend I’ve ever experienced in my adult life, and although it is predictable, the moment is still magic. I always take a beat (as in, I literally stop dancing) to consciously observe and absorb it. How lucky am I to dance freely and openly like this? How many queer people around the world will never experience this kind of joy or safety? How many in this country don’t have the luxury of purchasing overpriced tickets and attending Pride at all - albeit a corporate-sponsored, shrink wrapped version? I’ll then become hyper-aware that I will never be as young as I am in that moment and that someday, I’ll wish I could move my body and celebrate like this again. Which makes me want to dance even harder. Stay for one more song.
And yet, as the rainbow flags come down and the American ones go up, I can’t help but feel the floor shift beneath me. The music’s loud, the bodies are beautiful, the lights are shining, but underneath it all, there’s a quiet tension I can’t shake. It’s hard to name, but I’ve started to think of it as The Tightrope: the delicate balance we’re walking between freedom and fear, visibility and vulnerability, pleasure and politics. We’ve come far, thanks to the generations who protested and marched defiantly onto that tightrope. In some ways, the progress has been so successful that many queer people (especially those in big cities) don’t even realize the tightrope is still there, much less that they’re standing on it. It’s more like a hum. A background frequency. One that gets louder the minute the party ends.
These days, one of the only parties that keeps me up all night night is the GOP.
The irony of dancing among perfectly manicured (and, let’s be honest, often pharmaceutically enhanced) bodies while lawmakers try to strip women’s bodily autonomy and deny affirming care for trans people is hard to ignore. The juxtaposition of my body in motion on the dance floor while the bodies of others are being legislated and controlled is jarring. We’re dancing to Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way”, while Senators introduce bills to outlaw IVF. There it is, do you hear that? The hum.
I’m not trying to perform guilt, by the way. I know where I fall on the privilege spectrum. But I also know that queer joy, especially hard-won joy, doesn’t need to be apologized for. I distinctly remember the discourse during the summer of 2017, a few short months after Trump was inaugurated for his first term. People were afraid.
Many asked, How can you dance during times like these?
The better question was, how could you not?
The first Pride was a protest, after all.
And they didn’t throw that brick for me to stay home.
So I mount the tightrope for another round, because what’s more American than launching air strikes in the Middle East one week, while lighting fireworks the next?
I may be numb to the news cycle and increasingly cynical, but if the urge to dance stems from a place of nihilism then so be it. At least I’m dancing.
We’re often sold the idea that “coming out” is the finish line—when in reality, it’s only the start of the tightrope, one that stretches into the foggy atmosphere of identity politics, parties (both circuit and political), and, worst of all, Instagram.
And still, we show up.
We book the ferry. We stand in line. We dance.
Maybe it’s defiance. Maybe it’s routine.
I don’t want to stop dancing.
I just want to know I’m not the only one hearing the hum.