Dead Letter Department #62

weather report

Youth Pride was on Saturday, & just like last year, it was basically the cutest shit you’ve ever seen in your life. I knew it was going to be good when the first thing I saw was a pair of kids in enormous rainbow wings setting up their camp chairs in the Habitat for Humanity parking lot, and a little Girl Scout excitedly unfurling her huge lesbian pride flag. We set up in an empty parking lot with a conveniently shady overhang & drank iced coffee & watched all the teenagers run around & shout happily at each other.

“Oh, you’re making me look so good,” the Girl Scout leader said when she found us there. “I was supposed to sponsor this block & get people to cover it, but I didn’t, & here you are!”

“Do you want us to say we know you?” I asked her. “Tell everyone you asked us to be here?”

“Yes please!” she told me, and then she made us an official part of the Girl Scout contingent by giving us pride pins & bottles of bubbles to blow, which is the most pleasant induction ceremony I’ve participated in recently.

Her husband sat with us, proudly wearing the badge with his Girl Scout camp name, & we watched his stuff while he tried to find a bathroom, & talked about how great it was to see so many people turning out. The firefighters were there for some reason, all hugging each other with great enthusiasm, but I didn’t see a single cop, or any protestors, & there was only one politician.

There were groups from a bunch of the schools, with a particularly loud crew from Parkview Elementary, a huge number of kids on roller skates from the youth roller derby group, the aforementioned Girl Scouts, a group of dancers in long, beautiful traditional dressers, an entire, slightly wobbly marching band with an extremely serious looking drum major, and a lot of little groups that seemed to be mostly affiliation: teenage furries in partial fursuits, looking extremely killer; a bunch of goths; a few kids flying long asexual pride flags off their shoulders and holding hands. The kids were buzzing with energy in that way I remember, when you finally get around your friends, around people who speak the same language, & for a minute you don’t have to be scared.

“None of them are on their phones,” my mom said, & I realized she was right.
It also had the immense advantage of being approximately an eight block circuit for the route itself, with groups of excited, bunched up kids all crammed together, which makes it a delightfully short parade—just long enough to clap & blow bubbles & get overemotional at the sight of the Youths, not long enough to get sweaty & sunburnt & regret my choices.

The thing about Pride is that if you’re a too-online person, it’s possible to get overly wrapped up in discourse & dumb social media shit: who’s allowed, who’s not, should there be kink or should it be 100% friendly for the under 18 set, is there still too much biphobia, is polyamory queer, how much attention should we pay to the temporarily rainbow-striped corporations who are busily profiting off us for the month, etc, etc, bloody etc.

When I actually go, though, I’m not thinking about any of that. I’m looking at the sixty year old lesbians holding hands with almost-matching grey crew cuts, & wondering who at the Senior Center decided to give out flags this year. I’m watching the nine year old girl with a lesbian pride flag as tall as she is & wondering what it would be like to be so loved, to feel so safe at that age, with her whole family marching along with her. I’m watching the middle aged white dad in chinos & a button down who had a big handmade neon green sign & kept trying to start chants, very My First Pride, but I’m Here, Damn It energy.

Also, because my memory is for shit, I’m looking up the various flags that I don’t remember—oh, that one’s gender queer, that one’s poly sexual. Those are the Bellingham city flags with rainbows I see everywhere now.

I hate crowds, & I worry, & I sweat, & also am bad at parking in chaotic situations, so this event is not a natural fit for me, but I go anyway. Bellingham’s not a big town: there are still enough of us to fill the streets around the high school for a few hours to make sure the kids know we love them. There were more of us there this year than the year before, even with the terrifying news, maybe because of the terrifying news.

If you missed Youth Pride, regular Pride is on July 10th. I’ll see you there.

one good thing

If, like me, you periodically try to convince yourself that you are the type of person who finds a hot cup of herbal tea soothing & you have filled your pantry with various concoctions that you never actually prepare, it is now herbal iced tea season, which is somehow more achievable, because you can make a bunch at once & keep it in the fridge. I’m big on hibiscus right now, but with the first jar I made the misstep of putting in a spoonful of fancy raw buckwheat honey that my friend gave me when she was dismantling her temporary kitchen, which sat there in a horrible, immovable brown glop, looking like nothing so much as a kombucha corpse—so don’t do that. Use maple syrup instead, & ice cubes, & take it outside with you in a jar.

Thank you, once again, for being here. If you like the newsletter, please share it with a friend or consider subscribing to the secret edition, where I’m writing my way through transition. Write to me anytime at departmentofdeadletters@gmail.com.

I hope to see you here at the Dead Letter Department again soon, & in the meantime, may all your parades be exactly the right length.