Pride, the month, the holiday...what does it mean to you?

[Estella]

I have to say, over the past ten years or so I stopped really feeling the whole Pride thing. I work pretty much every weekend and never make it to the parade anymore which, in Boston at any rate, was becoming mostly church groups and corporate clubs, i.e., "Citizens Bank Wishes You a Happy Pride!" Right. Even the Ramrod toned their float down.

But this year, for some reason, I was really feeling it. I work at a hotel filled with gay men, and this year something just sparked. We were all passing each other in the corridors wishing each other a happy Pride - it was very sweet. So a group of us got together after work at the Fritz block party and met each others' partners and spouses and friends - very impromptu, very casual - and I realized, I haven't done this in years!

I think that living where I live and working where I work might have led to a certain degree of complacency on my part, whereby Pride has turned into a sort of "beentheredonethat" moment. But I remember when I was sixteen and trying to come out in a rural Wisconsin town without getting killed. My girlfriend and I snuck away to go to Pride in Madison, and it felt like such a subversive, political act. And in too many places, celebrating Pride is still a subversive, political act.

So I'm re-embracing Pride and all of the cultural heritage that goes along with it. Because I am proud of who I am, and proud of my wife, and proud of the state I live in, and I'm even proud of Citizens Bank. And I'm intensely proud of all of the remarkable gay people who paved my easy, easy road and made it possible for me to be complacent about Gay Pride.