Happy Pride Month
Sorry to have been MIA of late. I have a new role at the same International Behemoth Corporation (IBC) I’ve worked at off and on for so long, that when I told a new co-worker the other day the year I started, he said “Oh, that’s the year I was born.” He didn’t mean it as a joke, and I didn’t take it as one.
do I LOOK like I’m laughing
Anyway, this was a minor promotion and I am, of course, both finishing projects from my previous gig and frantically trying to stand up in my new job. So I’ve had time for little more than 140 characters of snark, lately.
Years ago, back in the 90s, when I started working for IBC, it was just a local Chicagoland behemoth, and we had a very strict corporate identity. The fact that I was allowed a mustache was put down to me being that crazy computer guy, who wasn’t client-facing anyway.
NOT IBC HQ
but you get the idea
At least once a week, my manager would stop by and say we had a meeting that afternoon in conference room K, which was code for Kevin’s, the dimly lit bar downstairs. We had a core group of 6 of us, including a young foreign-born man. One afternoon, in hushed tones better suited for the Confessional, he confided to us that he was gay. In a company where too much facial hair was a professional risk, such a secret, spilled to the wrong folks, could have had heavy career impacts. Of course, I would not have been friends with any of these folks if this had, indeed, been a risky confession. We were all supportive, and discreet.
actually, none of us was
Flash forward to today, and the current incarnation of International Behemoth. My mustache has long since been joined by a beard and, now, a pony tail. People in suits and ties – de rigeur, in my early days – just look plain weird. I had something to tell a woman in my new group, and she asked me to email it because she was heading out for a brief vacation.
“Oh, where are you headed?” I asked.
“Washington, DC,” she said to me, a virtual stranger, “my wife and I are attending the Pride Parade.”
I revealed that my first attendance at a Pride Parade was also in DC, accidentally, as it was right outside my hotel near DuPont Circle, way back before I joined IBC the first time. Crossing the street, I briefly was part of the parade itself.
with my mustache, I fit right in
And later on I marveled: in the space of my own career, the United States – as exemplified by my bread and butter, International Behemoth – has come around to the view that being gay is now water cooler chat; you know: No Big Deal. And in the words of the greatest Vice President of my lifetime, that’s a Big F***ing Deal.
Yes, there are millions yet, blinded by ignorance, benighted by intolerance, brought up to hate what they fear, the Other.
But, albeit with a few reversals along the way, the arc of the moral universe does indeed bend toward justice, and their fulminous fallacious fury is no longer welcome at IBC; their intolerance is no longer even tolerated, much less institutionalized. And that’s a Behemoth F***ing Deal.
Happy Pride Month, my friends. Love is Love is Love is Love. It’s something we can ALL be proud of.
e Pluribus Unum
truly
You really said everything, and said it well.
1Yes, they are just a friendlier evil than they used be.
2AMEN and AMEN, Primo.
3Thank you Primo. Since I am in the first wave of the baby boomers, I too have witnessed great transformations in my lifetime. Born and raised in the deep south, inclusiveness came later in life. My first introduction to integrated schools was in college, a Southern Baptist school, no less. Little by little, as self awareness evolved, I began to understand and appreciate the changes that were happening all around me. In my lifetime I’ve gone from segregation to living a middle class neighborhood with Asians, Latinos, a black gentleman (a former FBI agent with great stories to tell) and myriad other backgrounds. All good and enlightening. Of course, I am concerned about the backward steps we are enduring, but have sufficient faith in humanity that this too will pass. My fear is that I will not live long enough to witness the furtherance of this arc. But, given the monumental changes I’ve witnessed, I will try to not be too selfish.
4Oh, and my closest friend is a former student, openly gay with an MBA from Harvard. An absolute example of the finest in humanity. (I’m done now)
5As I tell people now, I’m ex-gay. (Oh, hiss and boo yourownself.) I’m homosexual, just not gay. Gay was too much work! Couldn’t keep up with the food and fashions and trends. Whew… that’s tiring. And I like me now, so… I used to be fabulous, but got comfortable with fabu-less.
Primo, thank you for that. And the mustache pic from your Village People days. *wink*
6My best friend has 3 kids, now adult and two of them, a boy and a girl, have come out to their mother and father who are loving and accepting of them. Her kids are able to live freely and happily because of the support they receive at home. If only all kids, even those of us who are grandparents, could have this loving acceptance from family, friends and employers how much better all lives would be. Thanks for the eloquent reminder, Primo.
7Everybody should watch this at least once. If you remember the “kissing skeletons,” you can watch it again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQorCdD-KWw
(No idea why I got “moderated” and erased an hour ago.)
8Thank you so much, Rhea, for providing that video link. It’s amazing!
9I had a conversation with a couple of acquaintances just this morning…one was talking about a condo her brother owned, at a fancy resort somewhere. She said they’d been invited to use it, but declined, because it was in a “very gay” area. She then said (and I was pleasantly surprised) that she had no problem at all with that, but that apparently there was “reverse discrimination” against straight people.
I said, well, that might be good for the straight people, to see what it felt like!
Please realize that this was actually a fairly enlightened conversation, considering that I live in Tom DeLay’s old district.
10Rhea – I checked, there was a typo in your email addie
11JAK – Queen, baby! Tho my stash was more Cliff Clavin than Freddie Mercury.
JAK, you remind me of someone who said he thought that the “homosexual agenda” that people kept talking about was a datebook you got when you came out. “Lunch on Tuesday? Let me check my Homosexual Agenda….”
(Checking for typos this time, Primo; thanks for the explanation.)
12Rhea, did you include that link just to make me cry?
In 2008, I think, MN citizens voted on allowing marriage for all. Of course the wingnuts had plenty of rotten things to say, though they’d learned to make themselves sound a little less vile. I found it very painful. Then one summer afternoon I went bike riding down the streets near my home. Houses were festooned with rainbow flags! I cried then too, and did my Sally Field thing, “They love me! They really love me!”
The haters are losing rapidly, but until it’s complete they are determined to inflict as much pain as possible.
13Thanks, Primo! Happy Pride Month, all!
14Rhea – Yeah, I also got a bit weepy. Thanks for the link!
15Primo,
Happy pride, brother! It still does this old heart good to meet other members of the tribe. My first pride event was LA in 1978, and my “best” pride year (and my 15 minutes of fame) was 1991, when I helped shepherd the first lesbian and gay officers of the LAPD escape their closets and meet their community. (I came out in the St. Louis Police Academy in 1976.)
We have a lot to be proud of, but work aplenty still to do. So, I’m happy to join you in the battle for full equality for all, not just our very large extended family. Big pride-filled hugs from the southern California mountains branch of the family!
DJW
16I think my dad worked for the same International Behemoth Corporation almost all of his adult life. He started in 1959. It was about another 20 years or so before his office was allowed to wear very pastel shirts with their Official IBC Blue suits. So pastel that you weren’t sure if the shirt was meant to be that color or if it was accidentally washed alongside something new and colorful, in hot water. Anyway, he was what IBC called a Customer Engineer, who had to actually leave the office a lot, go meet a customer, and fix stuff. It was important to be seen in blue attire. Image was extremely important at IBC. Unless you were one of those strange creatures called a “programmer.” They were from a different planet and were allowed to dress differently, since they weren’t familiar with Earth customs.
Anyway, as conservative as IBC was back in the 50’s thru 70’s, I’ve always heard that it was very progressive about trying to hire folks who were Not White. I remember being about 7 or so, would have been around 1962 or ’63, Dad was working out of the St. Louis office, and he had a guy working for him named Rocky. Rocky was from El Paso, Texas. At that time, I don’t think I had ever been in the home of anybody from Texas. Rocky’s last name, if I recall, was Gonzalez. We visited the Gonzalez family a couple of times in their apartment in St. Louis. All of the Gonzalez clan appeared Not White. They weren’t black (I went to an integrated school and knew black kids), but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what they were. But they had two daughters who had long jet-black hair and were very brown, and I was enthralled. Even at the age of 7, the first stirrings of male desire. It is said that IBC also started hiring black folks early on, just on general principle, long before the rest of the corporate world acquiesced to the call for inclusiveness.
Later in his career, Dad was in upper management at IBC. I don’t recall him ever mentioning any co-workers’ sexual orientation, so I’m in the dark about that, and this post is an interesting insight into how things were then, and are now.
One in my little trio of high school best pals revealed to me, 25 years after graduation, that he was gay. We never had the slightest clue. Phil only seemed to be attracted to ham radio, while Dave and I were generally only attracted to a ham radio setup if there was a woman operating it. Out of the three of us, I think Phil has had the most stable life partner relationship. And I think this brings up a very important lesson: ham radio operators are much more level-headed than you were always lead to believe.
Anyway, Happy Pride Month, and as an old wise person I know of used to say, May All Beings Be Happy!
17Do the walking wounded of International Behemoth Corp sometimes referred to it as “I’ve Been Moved”?
18IBC is a descriptive, not approximate, anonym. As it is, indeed, my bread and butter, I decline to discuss it further. Though, truly, there are many, many businesses larger than a bakery or pizza restaurant whose corporate culture has undergone a similar enlightenment over the same time. Think of IBC as a generic example as to how the times, they are a-changin’
19The Minneapolis police chief is a sister lesbian, Janaĕ Harteau.
20