Dykes and Tikes on bikes: celebrating Pride with my family

We celebrated Pride weekend in August this year, and it was a hot one. Saturday was the Dyke March, which we tapped into later in the day. Like I said, it was hot. Very hot. It was far. Very far. But there was a park full of our beloved queer community awaiting us, and so we trudged on. After one long block after another long block, scurrying from shady spot to shady spot, coming up with new and fun and creative ways to tell our daughter Esmé that I was absolutely not going to carry her beautifully decorated bike up the slightest suggestion of a hill, we finally got there!

I had zero intention of braving a crowd of 650,000 people with a fiercely teething and mobile infant and his fearless three-year-old sister — so I decided to lay low. As in, except for seeing my partner Jack off with the Dykes on Bikes, we stayed home. We walked up to the Drive to wave off the posse of biker butches and their compatriots, and that was it for Pride 2012 for myself and the children. Jack rode downtown with Dykes on Bikes and opened the parade with them, and then she headed for work.

Back in my twenties, Pride was about volume. Do more, see more, flirt more, be more queer. Now it’s about making sure the children don’t get sunburnt or overwhelmed. Which is why we stuck close to home and made art and watched Tortoise and Hare in the middle of the day. It was lovely — there weren’t any rainbow flags or thumping bass or waxed-chested gay boys dancing in their underwear, but queer enough for me.