Monday in the Park with Gays

On Monday, the Department of Unexpected Coincidences gave both the boyfriend and me the day off from work. As a bonus, the Department went even further to make Monday the unofficial Gay Days at Six Flags.

And—though we had never had The Roller Coaster Talk—we abandoned our grouting project, filled our baggy cargo shorts with emergency sunscreen and headed north (which is mysteriously called “west” on 90/94) for a day of big gay fun.

Gay Days at Six Flags used to be nothing more than a barely noticeable demographic shift—a few additional adult gay men wearing modest shirts and baggy cargo shorts filled with emergency sunscreen, all traveling unobtrusively from ride to ride in small, well-groomed groups. You know: the predatory child molesters that homo-obsessives like Jerry “Finally Dead” Falwell warned you about.

But somewhere along the way—maybe when the priests started getting caught buying season passes to Little Boy Land, maybe when conservatives’ breathless the-world-is-ending predictions at the dawn of Massachusetts’ legalized gay marriages failed to come true, maybe when Ted Haggard got caught crystal mething in the arms and butt of a male hooker—things have changed.

Because Gay Days on Monday was an endless parade of gay kids. And not “kids” in the sense that I’m almost 40 and everyone looks young and irritating to me—these were actual high-school and college kids traveling in we-don’t-care-if-you-know-we’re-gay groups, casually draped all over each other to the unfazed disinterest of their heterosexual friends.

That’s not to say they weren’t irritating. While I have serious reservations about the way these kids were dressing and behaving in public—wholly unlike the respectful, mature way kids dressed and behaved in my day—I have to say I was impressed. And heartened. And more than a little jealous. I spent three years scouring my high school for a single gay friend without finding one. On Monday, we waited in line (for over an hour for a roller coaster that gave me a headache*) behind a group of five affectionate lesbian couples who all looked too young to vote against Mitt Romney. Granted, they were mostly dressed in black on a hot summer day and they had more holes in their faces than Romney has in his campaign speeches, so I’m not saying they were totally living the dream. But they’d found each other and they were happy and they weren’t forced to grow up alone and terrified of being outed in Jerry Falwell’s world of Gay People Are Evil And Deserve To Be Abandoned By Their Parents And Die Alone Of AIDS Just Like It Says In The Bible Praise The Loving Lord.

* I must be too old for thrill rides. If they’re not noisy as all hell, they jostle me around and bang my head painfully against the padded things that are supposed to offer protection. But I’m not afraid of them, which is more than I can say for the boyfriend. To his credit, he rode every ride I dragged him on, but the poor boy looked positively ashen through every seatbelt check, twist, loop and plummet. Which was actually adorable, but a little shocking to discover for the first time the moment we climbed into our first coaster. So with my headaches and his abject fear, I guess we’re in a roller-coaster-concordant** relationship. But not for the usual reasons.

** Boys and girls (and boys and boys and girls and girls)! Make sure you have The Roller Coaster Talk before you start to get serious with each other. The same applies to The Good Decorating Taste Talk and The Pleated Vs. Flat Front Talk and The Mitt Romney Drinks The Blood Of Puppies Talk. Mixed marriages are nothing but heartache.

Why you should always carry a firearm in a theme park:

Reason No. 54: Gaggles of junior-high girls. They travel in packs. They sit right in front of you on the scary rides. They scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream.
And then the ride starts.

Reason No. 72: Glamour Smurfs. They show up in discount couture, gravity-defying hair and cologne. They carry backpacks filled to bursting with what one can only assume is more discount couture. They stand in front of you in long lines and they keep hitting you with their backpacks every time they spin around to exclaim ohmyGODyouguys! to their friends.

Reason No. 105: Ted Haggard. You never know when he’s gonna pop up and demand a bump of meth and a fingerbang.

I’m too sexy

Check out this throbbing hunk of man meat:

Nothing says high-class rent boy like an unbuttoned polyester Hawaiian shirt.

Nothing says my body is your playground like a poochy little tummy.

Nothing says 15 will get you 20 like the dubious charms of an awkward ninth-grade Lolito.

And nothing exudes sexual chemistry like the seductive chewing of a plastic lei—especially when it looks more like the lei is being vomited up than playfully licked.

This, I’m afraid to report, is what I looked like in 1983. Our class trip that year took us to St. Louis for a tour of the arch, some cheesy dinner theater on a boat and a day at Six Flags, where I coughed up way too much money (not to mention a green lei) for this picture in one of those put-yourself-on-a-magazine-cover photo booths. Worst of all, the shirt and the leis were smelly old props previously worn—and chewed—by legions of germy Midwestern tourists. I’m lucky to be alive even to talk about it.

And sorry, ladies: As much as my smoldering glare makes you want me to be the bananas in your cream pie, I’m as gay as a picnic on a Sunday afternoon. Worst of all, I even knew it way back when this picture was taken. Which makes me a pie tease bad choice from the dessert menu.

But I have been in the arch. If you know what I mean.