Pride!

Well, as you'd expect, it's been a rather mental weekend, and it turned out, for better and for worse, not quite what I expected.

I got myself out of bed on Saturday morning, bought some booze in Sainsbury and headed for the seafront. There I met up with the Brighton Uni GaySoc and their float. Out of the five fucking spangly fucking beaded curtains that we worked on last night, only three were hanging up. One of the girls assured me that amongst the three was the one I had worked so hard on the night before. Or maybe she was being nice.

As I stood there, texting and trying to get people to meet me (it was only 10:30 that morning), one of the float participants came upto me and said that they needed 'Wheelwalkers', people who walk alongside the float and make sure that no little shits try to run under the wheels. The float couldn't proceed without them, so I 'volunteered'. I was provided with a fetching county council-esque dayglo orange vest to denote my newly elevated status, and off we went.

In due course I was also provided with a bagful of biros, bearing the sponsors logo, to hand out to the spectators as I passed them buy. Most of the children were eager to have one, although I suspect it was because the biros looked like sweets from a distance.

As we proceeded up West Street and turned onto North Street, I saw a crowd of bible bashers, sectioned off by the police, most likely for their own safety. One old man, the shape of his mouth making it highly likely that he was completely toothless, stood motionless, holding a placard in each hand. I can't remember what one of them said, but the other was that old faithful, Leviticus 20 Verse 13. I was genuinely startled. After living in a place like Brighton for any length of time, you tend to think of these people as only living elsewhere.

As we passed the Grand Pavilion, I saw Phil in the crowd with a camera, and the work that I didn't see myself doing when I got up that morning was recorded for posterity.

Once we got out of the city centre, and passed through Preston Circus, I spied two hot leatherbears and cruised them ruthlessly. In fact that was one of the upsides of the job: I got to see quite a lot of talent (the guy who was wheelwalking in front of me wasn't half bad either), and I let them know my opinion of them in no uncertain terms.

Once we got to Preston Park, where the main festival was, there were more morons with placards. One of the guys I live with made the all-too-familiar but no less flawed point, that in a democratic society these people should be allowed a voice too, which is horseshit: They use their freedom to impinge on other people's freedom. The only thing they achieved was to affirm the need for a yearly festival like this.

At this point, I made the ill-advised move of going back into town to meet Dan, and things got quite messy for while, so I didn't get to see as much of the Preston Park part as I would have liked. Alcohol, once again, is to blame for this, and I'm attempting a boycott for a while.

Later that evening, I cruised the streets of Kemptown, and bumped into a rather hot biker bear who told me he worked in Nuclear Physics, for the government. I didn't quite remember his name, so I've christened him Nuclear Physics Bear. We swapped e-mail addresses and have already been in contact since. Who knows where this might lead?

After that, I met up with MizzFlee and Slagella, before chatting up a bear from Bognor Regis and inviting him back to my place. It was then that things went tits up. Once I got home, I was way too tired to do anything, but invited him to stay on anyway, seeing the morning as another opportunity. He took great exception to this and left in a huff. Moral of the story: If your body says you are too tired, don't let your brain tell you otherwise.

The one bit of comic relief was that, on our way home, we passed two girls, one of whom was on the phone. She loudly complained of boredom, saying that all the men in Brighton that weekend were gay.

Duh!

Sunday, I woke up dying, but headed out to catch some more eye candy anyway, along with some open air jazz in the New steine Park. The street party, the sunday night climax of the event, was cancelled this year for legal reasons, and the police re-opened the roads around the town centre at around 8pm. That pretty much put an end to the atmosphere of the street, and along with the fact that I was tired from the night before, I headed home at around 10:30 that night.

This was my first Pride, and I had built it up to be a huge thing beforehand. That kind of thing inevitably leads to disappointment, but I still enjoyed myself, and have learned from the mistakes I made at this one. Next year's will be planned with military precision. A massive beach party took place on Saturday night/Sunday morning, but I was oblivious to it, and was too tired to go anyway. Oh well, I'll know next year...

This morning I was watching a history of Brighton on a video cassette left lying around the kitchen. In it, the commentator siad that there was no other city quite like Brighton in Europe. It's nearest equivalent, he said, was San Francisco. That, along with the whole weekend, brought home to me how right I was to move here, how much I was missing out on before: I never went to a single Pride when I was living in Dublin, and it's only now, since I moved here, that that whole aspect of my life has come to the fore.

Roll on next year...