slaughter house pink

When I decided to move, there were conversations about certain problems that travel with you, and changing cities would not make much of a difference. This seems to be true about the police state. I came to SF to take a break from LA. I wanted to travel with the current of a city, to be with its energy instead of constantly struggling towards possibility, to be enchanted instead of disenchanted. It has been difficult to juggle a move and a film festival and my gay pride and Saturday night it all exploded.

Not on the cell phone, not on the cell phone Jess kept repeating to silence me without silencing me - and so after every anti-establishment punishable offense I added the phrase in my movie, in my movie. Easily taken out of context after a humiliating and dehumanizing experience - I would be taken to one of those secret prisons in the U.S. if I had kept up my urgent need to spill out every thought that came to mind -- extraordinary rendition was not far behind. I wanted to go home and cry or set things on fire or both, but I was trying to meet Mattilda and I didn't know how to cancel our annual date in front of the Harvest Market. I didn't want to reconcile the fact that this was my home now, and it had turned from the Sesame Street lot to a militarized checkpoint.

In years prior, the Pink Party ends at the Castro, and Mattilda and I amused ourselves with the aftermath -- the trickling stream of people going in and out of the little outdoor party. We were set on the outskirts, and at a safe distance until we wandered through at the end of the night. Last year had the addition of some of Milk's set facades still in place, and I also remember some boy tried to pick up Mattilda and spun a tale of having just returned from wandering into an open limo to do drugs and have sex on the seats...something like that. It was funny and that was how I remembered our traditional gathering. I walked up a near empty side walk on Market Street, just a few storefronts down from Harvest, and three security guards in orange jackets puffed up their chests. One yelled at me that it was "exit only". I said I wasn't going to the event, just trying to go to the food store. He would not let me pass, and it was not the kind of person to ignore and push onward -- this guy would tackle me or worse if I continued to perceive and act as if it was public space. I debated screaming "Mattilda" from the line he drew, but decided to go through on the other side. I was guided into a sea of individuals trying to go thru a tiny checkpoint. I cut the line and squeezed to the front, and I was met by SFPD or some augmented police force. There was a Sister, as in a cross dressing nun, yelling through a bull horn in some kind of approving voice, as the security identified our gender for us and sent us to the "women" or "men" line. At a queer event? Really?

The "women" line was on the other side and much longer so I went to the men line where security refused to frisk me until I demanded that the "men" line was the one I had chosen -- so he felt me up and then told me I could not enter with my backpack. I tried to argue, tried to plea, and then after an intense refusal I parted through the crowd. As I pushed through a guy started some male posturing thing with me, with this non security straight guy I was passing as a faggot that he could bully, hey buddy say excuse me -- what did you say? what did you say? And I turned and said, I said please excuse me, and I felt like I was back in grade school again, trying not to get beat up in yet another way before going home.

Mattilda doesn't use a cell phone unless she's on tour. I debated calling information for the Harvest Market to page her to cancel. I wanted to go home and cry or to take down that nun with the bullhorn. The most clever thing I could come up with in my low blood sugar (since I could not get to the market) rage was to go home and drop off my backpack. It was on that trip that I called Jess and was ranting about the binary line, and the consent of the homos to this kind of policing. Why didn't everyone just turn and go home? Why wasn't there more fuss over this straight aggro security frisk show? Was this really San Francisco in 2009 -- the self congratulatory life affirming film festival movie of our lives? Yay for Stonewall progress, cops and gays working together to keep the streets safe for consumerism.

I ranted and cried and made my way back through the line because I don't stand people up. But wondered if I should just go back home, since Mattilda carried a bag. It wasn't back pack shaped, so I thought maybe they would let her in with a purse, but which line would she have gone through at the checkpoint? Would she still be there now that I was so late? My cell phone rang and she had made it inside the perimeter, but had also been just as galvanized by the time she reached the market.

We met up and shared our respective journeys. She had to throw away her water bottle and also shared words with one of the Sisters. The Sisters holding their suggestive buckets didn't say a word to either of us about donating. They must have seen the blind rage in our eyes, and I had a specific suggestion for them if they had come within a few feet of me.

The rest of the night I was exhausted and saddened. And the next day I bailed on the new tradition of attending the parade. It was a year ago when I started this blog, and partially it was about this time of year and the parade and the energy that comes from being in SF. The writing energy I draw from this city. And I guess the rest doesn't matter, it simply continues to validate all prison abolition work and the struggle for expanding public space.

I was sad to see so many homos behaving like docile creatures to be gendered and stamped like cattle. Not that I feel okay about cattle being treated like domesticated cattle.

I did not have much energy left for closing night of Frameline. I went to the film and felt a glitch in the Matrix q&a moment -- the same person from opening night stood up and asked the same question, framed the same way, and staging the same response -- it goes like this:

"I noticed the main character seemed to have themes of gender variance..." and at first I got annoyed because it was like a line being drawn of needing verbal recognition for the sake of the trans community - but then once the stupidity of the response started my allegiance shifted to the questioner -- the response went something like, oh I'm just a simple lesbian from simpler times when we did not struggle with our genders. Can't their be space for butch lesbians? She's just a lesbian.

It was this Michigan's Women Fest response, the inability to share space with younger generations (as well as people who came long before) who recognize a failed system when they see one, that binary doesn't cut it and there was never a simpler time. Fortunately, instead of just the simpler playwright from cut and dry times, (who obviously was a super control freak about the adaptation so that we watched a play for hours instead of a film), wasn't the only one who answered, and the actress who played the character expanded the definition of the role and of gender variance by saying that she was playing a multi-layered complex character.

In that moment, I could once again see the boxes and definitions that put everyone into the acquiescing line at the Pink Party. We are simple. We are this. We will get in line and buy beer and are happy because we can get married some day and that's all. We just want our space nevermind about the gender queer because space is somehow limited. Or not somehow limited but limited by the lines of non-profits and privatization, and cozy little binary security frisks to buy beer and celebrate our some day marriages. The urgency to compartmentalize and unify into one thing is a problem that keeps cropping up and it goes against nature. Nature is a spectrum, light is a spectrum, and all of this other stuff is like a violent pair of scissors gone wild on our livelihoods. I feel cut up about it all and keep trying to piece it back together again, but it hurts.

Here is a photo essay from the Pink Party Gay Cattle Prod: