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| Dyke March - Love Wins! |
Originally posted June 2016. Re-posted July 2016
David and Charles, and Jean and I started Pride weekend with a
birthday dinner for David at my apartment, including the last bottle of
champagne from their wedding. There were tears for the 49 people murdered in
Orlando. There were stories of David’s epic John Muir Trail trek, reminiscing,
Berkeley, San Francisco, music, good food, just being together. It was a
beautiful evening.
The Dyke March started at Dolores Park on Saturday afternoon – a
huge gathering of Shiny Happy
People dancing, loving, laughing, being,
and sweet, sweet vibes – including Jean and me. I’m blown totally away by this
freedom and love vibrating through so many people. An unimaginably beautiful
repudiation of hate and negativity and judgment. And an all-time great party!
Jean pointed that this was a be-in. It was – a fine and true Human Be-In, a
Love-In!
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| Dolores Park - Dyke March |
We left the park before the march started. People were still
just pouring into the park. We went back to my apartment, then met David and
Charles on the corner, where we talked for awhile and a half block away Market
Street was packed with marchers. We tagged on to the end of the march (Bom!)
and I couldn’t stop dancing onward to Castro where these/us truly shiny happy
people blocked the intersection of Market and Castro to dance and talk and BE
and the police stood back and gradually the crowd dispersed. It was
intense.
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| The end of the march |
Sunday we went to a Pride Parade viewing party above Market
Street. There were lots of people and drinks, food, music, two men in brief
briefs dancing on tables. On the street below the parade kept coming and coming
and coming. We went out to the street to be closer to an endless stream of
people saying again and again “No!” to oppression and fear and prejudice and
all of that.
Saying again and again Love is Love is Love is Love – there were
Dykes on Bikes, SF Lesbian and Gay Freedom Band, Cancer Survivors (one sign
said “Fuck Cancer” and another said, “I Don’t Have Nipples” – cheers of love
all down the street), Transgender Veterans, Age On (“Life’s a Stage”), Oakland
Fire Department Stands United With Orlando, Naked and Sacred, Google, Apple,
“Eat me – try Vegan,” Facebook, Oracle, (“Be proud of who you are”), all the
tech companies, Walmart(!), a gay couple who had been together 50 years,
Lesbian and Jewish/Gay and Jewish/Bi and Jewish, Muttville Senior Dog Rescue
(“Muttville Pride”), and so deeply moving – all the flags of the countries of
origin of the people killed in Orlando. And more and more and more…
And as they kept on coming, there was a growing sense of
overwhelming power and Love is Love is
Love is Love is Love!
On the train (N Judah) back to the apartment a bunch of people
piling in at the Montgomery stop and it’s getting very crowded and one of the
people who just came in has a cool little music player with decent bass and the
music starting and 4-5 people dancing on the other side of the couple kissing
and kissing next to us and the guy with mental illness getting really excited,
laughing and yeah, me too. This IS the train. (Everything happened exactly as
described, but it's also allegorical.)
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| Charles Kemp and Jean Cacicedo |
The Sunday afternoon at the end of Pride, Jean and I went to
Duboce Park a half block from the apartment to take a nap, lying on sarongs
under a tree in shifting sun-dappled shade with a background of happy voices,
laughter, N Judah train rumbling past, music somewhere up the hill, leaves in
the wind, bouncing ball, opening my eyes seeing four people playing a gentle
game of bocce – “O00hhh,” they were saying when someone made a good throw – and
20 feet away a woman dancing barefoot in the grass, breastfeeding her baby.
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| Duboce Park |
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