Dancing in the streets

I danced my ass off this past weekend.

And the amazing thing is, I was sober the entire time, though few people could tell. I was consistently the guy with his hands in the air, jumping about, loving the music and the energy.

And I feel great today. :-)

On Saturday I went to the Love Parade, which I can best describe as the straight equivalent of gay pride (though there were gay people there, of course). Dance music fans and clubbers followed twenty floats into San Francisco's Civic Center; the floats ringed the Center, and the whole space was filled with people dancing from one DJ to the next.

There were youngsters and some of the world's oldest living disco dancers. There were people in all manners of costume, from fairies to those inspired by Dr. Seuss. There were naked straight men (and just like gay pride and Folsom, they weren't necessarily the men you wanted to see naked). But to paraphrase my friend Michael's line of many years ago: hey, it's their Love Parade, too; let 'em have it!

And there were so many bunnies... too funny. A few months ago I was at the End Up on a Saturday night, which is predominantly straight, and two guys came in dressed in head-to-toe bunny suits. I kept hoping to catch them standing together so that I could get in between them, throw an arm over each of their shoulders, and ask, "Hey, guys, what do you say we go home and f*ck like bunnies?" :-) Alas, I never got the chance... but since then I've been seeing bunnies everywhere. Someone fill me in, please!

Oh, yeah, that reminds me of another comment from that night at the End Up: "Well, there goes 5 years of post-Donnie Darko therapy down the toilet!"

Near the end of the afternoon as our group gathered near the main stage, I saw a club kid wearing a paper bag hat. I walked over and told him it was the nicest paper bag hat I'd ever seen. It felt like a perfectly natural thing to do; I didn't feel the slightest bid self-conscious in doing it, and the guy beamed at the comment. I can be really playful when drinking, and complimenting a stranger on his makeshift hat wasn't something I would normally do sober. And I loved doing it.

I'M DATING SOMEONE NEW... a beautiful young man named Anthony. We've seen each other a few times over the past month, but something "clicked" last Wednesday, and we spent a lot of time together over the weekend. We slept in on Saturday night, skipping Magnitude, the main event of Folsom Street Fair weekend, in favor of getting up at 4am and going straight to Aftershock, an afterparty held a few times a year.

We arrived at 5am and danced until 10:30am when it closed. It was a wonderful morning. One of my favorite DJs, Abel from Miami, was spinning. (My best friend and I used to say that Abel was seated at the right hand of god. :-) Aftershock, as always, was held at City Nights, my favorite SF dance space. The crowd was hot... so many sexy, masculine men. I saw lots of friends. And most importantly, I had a great time dancing with Anthony.

I noticed how different it was to be with someone when I was sober. I didn't go into my head and get caught up in wondering who he was looking at or what he was thinking. I didn't de-generate into some child worried only about getting attention. I got to be an adult and still have fun...

A little over a year ago I realized how much I've fought with the men I've dated when we've gone out. The one exception was Tommy; he was truly unique, the most generous and accepting husband someone could ask for. And as I looked at this phenomenon of fighting with boyfriends more closely, I realized that at least nine out of ten fights I have had with people I've dated have been while I've been drinking.

I almost never fight with friends when I drink. Rather, I'm usually a lot of fun, the life of the party. But inject someone I'm romantically involved with and my insecurities move to the fore. Am I cute enough? Do they want someone else? Do they want me?

I've learned so much about myself and the things I get hooked by in the last few years. Spending this weekend of partying with someone new, and doing it sober, really opened my eyes. There were seveal moments where, had I been intoxicated, I would likely have spiraled downward into some nasty episode. What a gift to see that.

AFTER AFTERSHOCK WE TOOK A BREAK to shower and change before heading to the Folsom Street Fair. I've heard Folsom is one of the largest annual events in California, with around 400,000 attendees each year. The thing I love about it the most is the opportunity to dance in the sun, and getting to do that for a second day in a row was awesome. Anthony and I had several groups of friends, and it was hard to keep everyone moving in the same direction, let alone together. Yet we managed, and we danced, and once again 10th Avenue became our little street fair, a world separate from the scene 50 yards away on Folsom.

Sunday evening I had been planning to head to Real Bad, the final party of the weekend, and I had two of the coveted tickets in my pocket. Anthony and I left the Fair around 5pm. He wasn't going to Real Bad; I was going to go shower and change and meet up with my gang.

But sitting there on Anthony's couch, talking about our weekend, heading back into another dark club wasn't sounding too attractive. I had surprised myself by how easy it was to venture out sober into a world that I had only inhabited while imbibing and find it to be just as fun, to find that I was still me. Now I was ready for some downtime. We ordered Chinese food; we watched a movie. We slept.

Oh. Writing that last paragraph, I just remembered sitting in a chair sharing with the person sitting next to me at the Landmark Forum in January, 2003. I recall saying that what I wanted was the ability to feel happy, relaxed, and uninhibited around people as easily when I was sober as when I was drinking.

And I'm getting that I've found that.