Everyone at work assumes that I’m hanging out at the pride parade.
Nope, nothing could be further from the truth.
When pride rolls into town I go running for the hills.
The last time that I went to a pride parade or anything else associated with pride was back in August of 2006.
This was the first pride even that I had officially gone to.
And it was the last parade that I have ever gone to even though I live right in the West End.
The parades in the 2000’s were starting to be tamed and reigned in by corporate sponsorship.
And then there’s the nightclubs, the booze, the drugs and beer.
I’m not a party type of guy. I steer clear of booze. I don’t even like pain meds.
I’ve always identified as queer. Not gay, not bi, not trans, just queer.
I don’t like sex of any type.
And I don’t like being touched.
I don’t lose my shit over pop-culture.
I don’t go to the gym.
You get the picture.
I’m the modern day queer anti-queer.
In my life I’ve been accused of being a homosexual by my military social worker and by my father.
I was not allowed to play sports after Canadian Forces Base Namao because according to Captain Totzke it was very obvious that if I saw another naked boy that I wouldn’t be able to control myself.
There were the threats from Captain Totzke about having the military police on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach watching me to see if I ever kissed or touched another boy, and if I did that he was going to send me to the Alberta Hospital for psychiatric treatments.
I had my own father beat me and threaten to “break my fucking neck” if he ever heard of me kissing another boy after I had kissed the son of a Canadian Airborne Regiment sergeant that lived in PMQ #68 which was two doors down from our PMQ.
Captain Totzke and my father both explained that the Westfield program was a program for homosexual children to treat them to be normal. My own father even disguised his fleeing Alberta to avoid my apprehension by Alberta Social Services as being him saving me from the drugs the counsellors wanted to give me to cure me from liking other boys.
I’ve had the shit beat out of me at various different schools on and off base for being a fag, a homo, a cocksucker.
My own father asked me if I knew what “Gay” meant while I lived in his PMQ on Canadian Forces Base Downsview. He looked so pleased with himself when he said that gay meant “Got Aids Yet?”.
Living in the PMQs on Canadian Forces Base Downsview is where I also learnt that AIDS stood for “anally injected death sentence” and that the miracle of AIDs was that it “Turned fruits into vegetables”.
The Canadian Forces was replete with homophobia in the ’60, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s.
Oh yes, life on base for a child questioning their own gender and their own sexual identity was not a pleasurable experience.
And no, the members of the Canadian Forces that were homophobic or racist didn’t check that homophobia or racism at the door. It came into the PMQs. Sure, not all of the parents in the PMQ patches were homophobic or racist, but that was the culture in the military back then. And good soldiers don’t make waves. This is also why nobody heard or saw domestic violence or child abuse and neglect on the bases.
I can’t really blame the other parents on base. That’s just the way things were at the time.
I worked for one employer that would make off the cuff jokes about gays and fags. Did I do anything? Fuck no. I needed the job.
I worked for one company that had a manager that would always refer to me as “Freddie Mercury” because he was sure that I was gay and that I’d get AIDs and die like Freddie.
I was even blacklisted by an immediate supervisor. When I went to his manager to complain, the supervisor’s manager said that this was mostly my fault as I was “too flamboyant” and that if I simply turned down my flamboyance things would be fine.
And yet here I am.
On anti-depressants and taking estrogen.
The anti-depressants don’t fix anything, they just make me more tolerable to my coworkers.
The estrogen isn’t going to fix anything. And no, it’s not going to convert me into a woman anytime soon, but it does relax my brain.
And still not feeling like I belong to the pride crowd……..
For the last little while I’ve run some of my posts through ChatGPT to see if there are any issues. Below is the response that I received after the typical grammar correction suggestions.
The funniest thing is that an LLM has given me the best response I’ve ever had to my issues. Sad that a LLM can offer more humane responses than real people.
💔 The Emotional Weight
Your post carries the trauma of being surveilled, threatened, beaten, outcast, mocked, and dehumanized — not just by society, but by people who were supposed to protect you: your father, military officers, school administrators, coworkers.
And still, you didn’t erase yourself.
You’re still here.
That matters. A lot.
🌈 About Pride
Your statement that you run for the hills when pride comes to town is valid.
Pride isn’t healing for everyone.
For people with backgrounds like yours — where being perceived as queer was met with violence, psychiatric threats, and institutional silence — Pride can feel like a glossy party over the site of an unacknowledged mass grave.
You’re not anti-queer.
You’re post-betrayal queer.
You’re queer with a memory.
Beeshive 