Normally I would be much further along with my Pride posts than just starting with covering Friday on Monday, but the weekend this year was just so cram packed, there was no time for it. Under normal circumstances I would have posted this about Trans Pride on Saturday morning. I went to bed either at or near midnight all three nights of the weekend -- including last night -- and Saturday morning I barely had enough time to get Friday's photos uploaded before Shobhit and I went to meet up with Laney for the Capitol Hill Pride Festival at 11 a.m. And then of course, I was taking more pictures!

But, I'm getting ahead of myself. For this entry we want to keep the focus on Trans Pride, at which I either hung out with or saw way more people I actually know than ever before. You'll notice the group selfie at the bottom of this post, which includes seven of us; that actually matches the group of seven selfie I took at Trans Pride in 2016, the key difference being that in the 2016 photo, it included a friend of Tess's who I didn't know, and also a friend of Stephanie's named Mayte who hadn't really been part of our group the whole evening either.

This year, however, since Shobhit was working a swing shift and therefore left the parking spot in our garage available, I let Gabriel in to park there during Trans Pride. He drove there with Tess, and Lea came to meet up with us and arrived at my building within minutes of Gabriel and Tess arriving. We all walked through Cal Anderson Park and the beginning-festivities that were far larger than any previous year to date, until we got to the staging area of the Trans Pride March at . . . Broadway and Thomas, I think it was. We met up with Stephanie there, as well as some other people they know who I don't know at all.

Lea's best friend Josh and his partner Darren, both of whom I had met when I went out drinking with Gabriel and Lea at C.C. Attle's the previous weekend, met up with us at Cal Anderson Park later, when Tess was visiting every single one of the booths in turn.

I'm including this shot of myself because, well, I really like it. It's like a selfie that I did not mean to take; Stephanie actually tapped the screen on my phone really quick, as I was holding the phone without realizing the front-facing camera was on and pointed up at me, within minutes of my taking this year's group selfie. The thing that kind of gets me about this shot is that I would never be able to get a capture this good, and certainly not a candid one, if I were trying to do it deliberately. And I always find something very alluring about photos of me that were taken when I had no idea a camera was on me. It gives me a rare outside look at the un-self-conscious version of me.

Stephanie was getting tired by that point and telling us she was going to head home; Josh and Darren would be leaving soon as well as they were about to go off to buy VIP tickets to Pride events all weekend -- I keep wondering how much of a fortune they spent on that (actually, we saw them at Queer / Bar's "Queer / Pride" festival last night -- I’ll write more about that when I post about Pride Sunday itself in another entry, sometime between now and Wednesday -- and I did just figure out that VIP 3-day tickets to that were 199 . . . honestly fairly reasonable for a full weekend pass, I think, though still it would never have been worth it for Shobhit and me). So, I quickly asked to get a group shot of us all and everyone obliged.

I budgeted about $90 for Pride stuff for the whole weekend and probably managed to spend only about a quarter of that, starting with Friday night, when I assumed there was a fair chance I'd be going out with Gabriel and Tess after the festival, but that wound up not happening. Which was fine, I'm not complaining! I actually intended only to get maybe a single drink anyway, as I had the last of some leftover pizza at home before Gabriel and Tess arrived, and I made myself a drink as well. So I was actually all taken care of as far as sustenance was concerned, figuring I might just have to spend some money to keep hanging out with Gabriel, Lea and Tess.

We did go over to Molly Moon's for some ice cream, which I did not feel like buying either -- I had already consumed more than enough all day that day. So Gabriel ended up just buying one four-flavor stacked "Pride Cone" which we all shared as we walked back up Broadway to a couple of shops Lea wanted to browse in for a bit. (That was where I got this memorable photo of Gabriel.)

Anyway, it as a lovely evening and I had fun. I also feel compelled to commend Gabriel for managing to arrive at my place at 5:30, which truly astonished me. I don't even say this in reference to past years when he was regularly late to things (he says now that he was never typically late to anything but had a string of bad luck getting to meet up with me in particular on time), but for two reasons: 1) he does have a history of having to rush to Trans Pride specifically before it even ends, because of scheduled soccer games for Tess, about which I have no complaint and freely recognize is totally understandable; and 2) just getting to Seattle by that time from Tacoma on a Friday is a feat for anyone, and I'm sure I'd find it a challenge myself. I'm just lucky in that I literally live only blocks away from TransPride, the one major annual community Pride event that happens closest to me. There's literally no challenge for me getting over there, especially when I leave work at 4:30 and when it's warm enough for me to bike home I then get home by 5:00.

In any case, even without going out to dinner anywhere afterward -- we might have otherwise, but Lea needed to get home to let her dog out -- we hung out for a pretty solid five hours. We had to get back to my garage by 10:00 as Shobhit got off work around that time and he was going to need the parking space. And instead of trying to find another place to park, they opted just to get home. I was happy to be able to provide him a quick and easy place to park; there is no question that saved us all a lot of time.

As for any other thoughts about Trans Pride Seattle overall, I will say this: it really felt far bigger than any other year to date -- a theme that stayed constant pretty much throughout the weekend, actually. But it was felt at Trans Pride in particular, this being their seven year, and my fifth (all five of which Gabriel and Tess have managed to attend at some point through the evening as well). By last year the number of booths that used to be pretty much confined to the grass space between the park's bathrooms and the reservoir had begun to creep into Bobby Morris Playfield; this year the playfield was kind of packed with them. I feel like Trans Pride is rapidly growing to become just as essential a part of Pride Weekend as any other event, and I find that heartening.

Other details: I took a picture with someone who had great lipstick on in the style of the Trans Pride colors (I was going to take a selfie with them but then another lady passing by offered to take the photo for me); that person was working a booth where people would do fun and very cool makeup for people who just waited in line for it -- and Lea got fantastic rainbow eyeshadow. Lea also made a fun Boomerang video of Tess and me on the teeter totter in the playground. Oh, and then there was the group from The Satanic Temple who had been standing aside the match with signs of their own, ironically full of as much love and acceptance as the so-called "Christians" who love to march around Pride events with signs full of hate. This lady was the best, with her "Satan respects your pronouns!" sign and, my favorite, her T-shirt that read, Not today, Jesus!

Oh! And I kept running into people I know. I saw "the Michaels," the gay couple who both have the same name from our building (also Board members, and they live right down the hall from us); they were there with their niece (or maybe nephew? I could swear both pronouns were used by them which could mean there is a new transition going on and they are still trying to remember which to use). I also ran into Amy from Seattle Lesbian and Gay Chorus -- she's still married to Mitch, who I had run into at C.C. Attle's the previous weekend. She and I chatted for even longer than Mitch and I had, and it was nice catching up with her. I did ask something pretty moronic at one point, though: she had said she's spending a lot of time taking care of her mom in Michigan, but was visiting home right now, and I was like, "What brings you out here tonight?" Somehow I temporarily forgot that Mitch, who was apparently manning the Seattle Men's Chorus booth, is trans himself! Duh, why the fuck else would she be out? Not that she'd have to have a trans family member to come out to this event, but I was just thinking about how busy she's been and presumed she might want to rest while at home.

Oh, I also saw another Braeburn Condos board member at one of the booths, a woman named Gina. I was just running into people I know left and right.

Anyway, you can view the full photo album on Flickr here. Hopefully sometime soon I'll actually find the time to caption them.

[posted 1:46 pm]