Bro-time, SLC Pride, & Gay Bar Round #3

This trip to Salt Lake City has been extremely healing. 

I feel like I’ve found new pieces of myself — or maybe pieces of me that were already there have fallen into place more clearly, more coherently, with more confidence and peace. 

I’m feeling more at peace, more centered. 

Today I went back to the SLC Pride festival at The Gateway by myself after having been there yesterday afternoon with the two cis-hetero friends (& allies) who are hosting me. There were booths and stands and three stages with music, apart from food-trucks and drink stations. And so many flags, flags everywhere. I was particularly struck by the fact that the most prominent one, together with the Progressive Pride Flag, was the Trans Flag. In a similar way to last summer’s Pride events, once again I felt lots of intense, overflowing, and even contradictory or mixed emotions. But this year I was less overwhelmed by the emotions and was able to feel the nourishing ones more deeply than the ones connected to sadness or loss. And when I went back by myself today, I found the courage to go up to the “Dragon Dads” stand and asked for, and received, a “squishy bear hug”. It made me cry, of course, but it brought some healing — for all the hugs I would have wanted/needed and didn’t get (& will never get) from my own father. When we went by the “Dragon Dads” stand yesterday, I got very emotional and cried and my buddy from Ragnar (who knew the reason for my intense sadness) came and gave me a kind “side bro-hug”. 

It’s been very nice, and healing, to get to know my buddy from Ragnar better. I really hardly knew him, having spent only the Ragnar weekend together before this visit. But in the past nine days here we’ve gone on four runs, two hikes, and multiple walks with his dogs together. We spent a lot of time in silence but just as much talking openly about deep and intimate topics in the way that “good guy friends” do and it felt really nice. Very validating and affirming to me. And healing to both of us, I’m sure. 

Last night we even went out to a gay bar just the two of us. His wife was too tired from the afternoon activities so my Ragnar buddy went along to be my wingman. And that also felt wonderfully nice — and so new to me. In many ways, from the practical viewpoint, it could be partly counterproductive for me to go to a gay bar with a straight guy friend — I know this and actually my buddy & I joked about it yesterday. But still, it was fun and healing. We got drinks, chatted, and then even danced. And I felt more comfortable with the people and in my own skin in this type of space. I still had two little moments of panic when it seemed that someone was beelining towards me — I felt myself tense up and then relax as I realized that in both cases the guy was going somewhere else along my path. So there’s still work for me to do there, or room for growth, but overall I really enjoyed myself and felt quite comfortable (dancing outside in the parking-lot-turned-dance-floor like Friday night). And at the very end, just as my buddy & I were leaving, the DJ put on a remixed version of “Girls just want to have fun” by Cindy Lauper and I finally got to do what I had been wanting to do all night: I took off my gay-boy-tank-top and danced bare-chested! I felt a bit self-conscious but especially I felt super-liberated. And comfortable/confident enough to actually do it, even if for only a few minutes in a corner of the parking-lot-turned-dance-floor: I let my beautiful trans-gay-boy self dance bare-chested — Heck Yeah!