We’re here! We’re queer! We have clean dishes!

The boyfriend opened the dishwasher this week to find: 1) clean dishes 2) a broken glass and 3) a wheel that looks like it belongs on one of the dishwasher racks but none of the wheels in our dishwasher is missing. How spooky is THAT?

We’re thinking the whole thing is the perfect metaphor for pride weekend in Chicago because: 1) gays like clean dishes 2) “broken glass” sounds kinda like “assless chaps” and 3) the boyfriend has to work on pride Sunday so I’ll be the extra wheel in the unlikely event I pal around that day with four round people who share a nice rack.

I’ve never been a huge fan of pride parades because anymore they just seem like an excuse for people to get drunk and obnoxious but with even less parking. Don’t get me wrong—I love the pride parades’ Book-of-Revelation displays of nakedness and debauchery simply because they send the thumper crowd into paroxysms of self-righteous apoplexy. And in some cases I just like the displays of nakedness. And I most certainly share in the community pride we feel after surviving another year of hostile attacks from butt-stupid religious freaks and sleazy politicians who trade our rights and equality and access to insurance and health care for hate votes.

But as I careen toward my dotage, I’m becoming less and less of a fan of crowds and noise and rowdiness and sparkle shoes that rarely go with anything. And since I’ll be all alone on pride Sunday (sniff) I’m not even going to go to the parade. OK, and since my boss’ wedding reception is during the parade, I’m not going to the parade either. But I have no plans to go from the reception to the messy parade aftermath. At least not in seersucker.

I’m not a total Eeyore, though; I am running the Big Gay 10K (which I think is a better name than “Proud to Run” but nobody asked my opinion when they were namestorming) on Saturday morning with the boyfriend and a bunch of people from my marathon pace group. And we may go to Crew (the gay sports bar with the fancy pub grub) afterwards to fill our bellies with celebratory food and drink. And I plan on painting the non-tiled walls of the kitchen this weekend, but we’re going with a light gray-green, which isn’t one of the rainbow colors in that ugly pride flag so I guess that project doesn’t count.

And once I make sure that wheel isn’t some vital part of the dishwasher, I plan on doing some more dishes. As we learned above, gays like clean dishes. So I guess I will be doing my part for pride after all.