Mahmood's letter arrived the last weekend in June. It was ages, maybe a decade, since I'd gotten an actual piece of mail. I studied
the crumpled letter like a curious relic, with its sealed lip and that quaint, smudged postmark. I could just barely make out the date, but
it had been mailed from Cairo on May 29, 2025. It had taken nearly a month to arrive, thanks to the deteriorated U.S. Postal Service.
The crippled agency has been on its last leg for years, and it's only the zealousness of a few staunch Congressional liberals that
keeps it going. Yes, they say, we know virtually no one in this country uses mail anymore, that everyone's got one of those portable,
electronic, instantaneous, improvident Personal Information Gadgets ( PIGs ) . No matter, the die-hard liberals contend. We still need
the Post Office so we can be connected, even if ever so marginally, to the Other Worlds. Calling them the Third World is so passe.
Besides, as the economic divide between the rich West and the poor East exploded in the early part of this century, the difference
between 'us' and 'them' really does seem other-worldly.
Mahmood lives in Cairo, Egyptdefinitely part of the Other World. I've known him for a quarter of a century, since I first began
making trips to Egypt to write about the struggles of the gay community there. History dates it back to the Queen Boat, a floating disco
on the Nile that in 2001 was raided by police, resulting in the jailing of 52 gay men and touching off a subsequent rash of Internet
stings and private party raids that landed hundreds in jail during the Dark Years.But then there was The Revolution, and though
Egypt's current democracy is imperfect, it grudgingly allows for freedom of speech and some dissent, including a nascent gay
movement. It's certainly better than the situation in Iraq. The Revolution there was ugly. After the CIA-backed government fell under its
own corruption, the people's palpable anger swerved to support the only opposition that had survived the political brutality of the
puppet regime: the Islamic Freedom Party. Now, Iraq makes the Taliban look like it was a progressive social experiment.
And who could have guessed about Saudi Arabia, that it would turn into the world's biggest gay resort? The heat just got to be too
much for the women in their burkas, and they violently overthrew the government. Of course, Human Rights International and other
groups condemn the thongs-only forced dress code for men as equally demoralizing. But it's done wonders for gay tourism.
Back to Mahmood's letter. I knew he was writing to tell me about the first gay pride march there. Only a few hundred showed up, but it
was the most gay men and lesbians who ever congregated in one place there at one time. Mahmood looked around in amazement at
the sheer numbers, and they somehow gave him strength to overcome his fear of walking publicly down the street that day. The group
carried banners, chanted badly written but heart-felt political slogans, and had a few skirmishes with both the police and religious
fundamentalists.
As I read his account, I could feel the energy and excitement jump off the pages, and it made me yearn for the gay pride era of
more than 30 years ago here, when it was still exciting and seemed to matter to people.
In Europe, of course, they've eliminated gay pride. It probably started with the advent of marriage for gays, and then the
protections instituted by the European Assimilationist Union. But what really ended it, I think, was when The Netherlands elected as
their leader the world's first transgender drag queen. Gay pride just be came obsolete.
I wish it was that way here in America. Back in 2020, cities like New York and San Francisco did try to do away with pride, due to
the fact that there were so few gay men still living in places like Chelsea or the Castro or the Village. The renovated homes got too
pricey, so everyone moved to the burbs. We all became so utterly modern and post-gay.
But the corporate sponsors wouldn't let go of the gay market. Now, advertised with the cheap double entendre as Pride
Packages, the events have followed the desirable demographics, and are held in suburban parks. Last year, the country's biggest
Pride Package was opened in Chappequa, New York. I got ticketed by the Corporate Image Police. They cited my blue dress as
being 'in bad taste.' They were right, of course, but that's the point we've gotten too. We've gained so much equality that we've lost
our irony.
Perhaps I'm getting old and crotchety, but it made me yearn for the messy, hectic, overcrowded, testosterone-laden days of pride
where muscle men and leather daddies and drag queens with Carmen Miranda fruit on their heads would defiantly march down Fifth
Avenue for an interminable five hours. Where dykes on bikes and bare-breasted lesbians showed off their jiggling sisterhood. And
where, for at least one day, that amorphous notion of a gay 'community' became overwhelmingly, wondrously tangible. I think I'll
spend next year on the beach in Saudi.