Another year, another Gay Pride
Yesterday was the Gay Pride Festival in Baltimore. Best Beloved and I started the morning by reading this article in the NY Times Magazine. Blech. It kind of reminds me of when I first learned that Harriet Tubman was from eastern Maryland and not from Mississippi or someplace equally scary and remote. One of the anti-gay activists profiled lives in a nearby Baltimore suburb, Catonsville, heretofore known as the home of a nifty Asian supermarket, a very nice yarn store and my friend A. My first thought was to look this woman up in the phone book and go picket her house. My next thought, seconded by BB, was we'd better get our lezzie/bi asses over to Gay Pride and make a check out to these people, stat.
Weirdly enough, the good people of Equality Maryland were nowhere to be found. We did see folks from the Community Mediation Program, the groovy shul we attend from time to time (many churches had booths, but BT was the only shul -- a good reason to keep going there rather than try to find one that's more conveniently located), and the host of the party we attended Friday night. Also got to hear the music of the fabulous, outrageously sexy Melissa Ferrick, who squeezed in a 30 minute performance before heading to a gig in Philadelphia. I had never heard of her. I am now a fan. Stop reading this and go buy a CD, now.
We had left the stage area and were almost finished looking at the booths when we ran into, of course, X, accompanied by her latest, the unfortunate D. BB and I shook hands with D. D looks like a retired gym teacher turned therapist. But I'm not bitter, no siree Bob! X and I did the little "should we or shouldn't we?" dance and I finally hugged her. X asked if BB and I were living together. I reminded her that the last time we saw each other I told her we'd found an apartment. She professed to be thrilled at this news. I asked about our cat, about her family. It felt like a game of 20 Questions. I told her I'd tried to call her about a month ago. She said she never got the message. I said "Good, I'd rather think you aren't getting your messages than that you're blowing me off." She asked if we were heading back to the stage area later and I said maybe.
The weirdest thing about the encounter was that I felt nothing. There was no spark. There was no happiness. There was no anger. We had nothing to say to each other. I discovered I'm not even attracted to X any more -- although that may have been aided by the fact that she was wearing an unfortunate baby pink polo shirt that looked nothing like her. WTF? I could not remember why I had once thought her beautiful.
Suddenly all I wanted was to go home. We abandoned our search for funnel cake and trudged back to the subway station. When we got back to our street a light drizzle was falling. Went in the house, ate a snack, put on the Melissa Ferrick CD I'd just purchased. I lay down on the sofa and in short order fell asleep with my crocheting in my hands. Woke up briefly for a conversation about dinner. The next time I woke up it was 9:00. I got up off the sofa and went to bed.
This morning Best Beloved said "You're depressed." Said "Don't let her win." Said "We have a good life together." I suppose I am depressed, a little, although I'm not sure why (I'm tempted to blame it all on PMS). I suppose it's the strangeness of having loved someone so deeply for so long, then seeing her and feeling absolutely nothing. The fact that so much passionate feeling could be replaced with nothingness. It's happened to me before, although not to such an extreme degree. I don't think I'll ever understand it.