An Exhaustive List of Queer Things I'm Doing for Pride Month
and/or exhausting
June 1 is Pride Month. You can say you love it, you can say you hate it, and either way I still won’t know if you’re queer because there is no one harder on queer culture—from Jojo Siwa to RuPaul—than queer people.
I love Pride Month, even if it’s not hip for corporations and cops to celebrate it anymore. Austin celebrates Pride in August (homophobic, honestly), so there are technically Pride events all throughout the summer here. Take that, Texas!
Most people I meet (outside of fellow Austin LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce members) assume I’m straight, but now I can hit ‘em with the “my wife” and clear things up really fast. Plus, I’m doing a lot of gay stuff for Pride! Here’s a silly little list.
Going to Rehoboth Beach. Katelyn and I have been debating a move there for a while, but can we handle the 120 Minute Dogfish IPAs? We’ll find out!
Performing a dramatic reading of This Is Not My Hat for my one-year-old nephew. Silas loves his gay aunts. He’s going to love us even more when we show up in big hats and kaftans to read this book aloud.
Reading old murder mysteries with a glass of chardonnay and gasping at twists. I visited Murder By the Book this month in Houston and screamed in “I can’t wait to tell Nana!” I’m really looking forward to reading The Mill House Murders, a Japanese locked room mystery.
Judging from afar. It’s my right!
Watching The Birdcage again. Allegedly, this is one of my parents’ favorite movies. I did not see it until two years ago.
Sitting on a panel about publishing queer books at the ALA Annual Conference. I will probably write a longer Substack post about this later. For now, I’ll say, “Yay for queer books! Did you pre-order The Barefoot Followers of Sweet Potato Grace yet?!”
Enjoying married life. There has been no reason for us to say, “Hey buddy, that’s my wife you’re talking to!” but it hasn’t stopped us from saying it to each other nonstop.
Pride is a celebration of all that queer people have overcome to have our marriages legalized, our love validated, and our history not burned by the Nazis. But Pride is also an excuse to get dressed up and dance to fun music in the street. It’s a lot of things!
What does it mean to you?