10.6.16 Editor’s Desk

Betwixt the cacophonous roars of television-news hurricane paranoia – “It’s comin’ right fer us!!!” – and the horrific thought of a swoop of pumpkin hair covering a megalomaniac with a distinct lack of scruples – also, coming right for us, if we’re not careful – it’s hard to imagine that this issue finds us straddling two pride celebrations in their own whirlwinds of flux. Maybe that’s a good thing. It’s a life of surprises, after all. We don’t always want to read the last page first.

For me, personally, Pride celebrations carry with them so many memories of letting go, feeling free (to be, you and me, etc.) and sweating my ass off until the rain comes and turns my head into artificial crab meat fit for the breaking, wanly dripping down a drain. But this year, of course, is different.

As much as we’ve belabored the point – the tipping point, even – of the June 12 Pulse tragedy, grief has a way of forming its own ellipses, exclamation points, commas and periods, all muddled together into a fragmented history of the past few months in Florida and, indeed, gay America. Things just don’t feel the same. The barometric pressure is dropping as I write this noodling piece of prose, but the feelings are still there. Every night is a nightmare, every morning a new beginning. We’ve been through shit before, but this shit isn’t going away very quickly, not this time.

And so we rise.

This week’s issue complements our previous Orlando Come Out With Pride effort in which we explored the difficulties of bringing peace to a broken community wrapped up in the blanket of tragedy – and that was before the threat of a hurricane raining on our parade even materialized. This week, we focus on Sarasota Pride, its history, its folksiness and its heroes. The string that holds these pride events together is fluorescent, apparent and strong, globally. We see you. We see each other.

If it weren’t for Pulse, there may not have been a Sarasota Pride this year. Cindy Barnes, whose sweat equity has carried the event for years, was looking to put down the baton. She didn’t, though. She couldn’t. “We are all Orlando,” the posters read almost whimsically, but it’s true. She stayed on because this year is more important than any in getting the message out that we are still here, we are still queer and you ought to be used to it by now.

But people aren’t. And so we rise some more – far above the clouds, far above the rhetoric – in order to regain some sense of stability, even if our feet may never touch the same ground again.

This issue, like those preceding it in recent history, has plenty of healing salve wrapped in it. The Orlando Anti-Discrimination Ordinance Committee has been resuscitated in order to tackle the gun issue in a nonpartisan way, the global theater community is coming together to celebrate the strength of the Orlando community with monologues and shorts, Come Out With Pride continues to grow in its entertainment capacity in order to nurse us from our residual gloom and, in essence, we’ve got this.

But wait! There’s more!

In addition to the pride of proudness and all of the other alliterative references available in our lexicon (Pulse, politics, privilege, pecuniary practices, penises (!)), we’re moving forward. In this issue you’ll also find stories about how our transgender brothers and sisters are climbing toward fairness, starting with birth certificates and racing toward health coverage from Planned Parenthood. The All Hallows Masquerade Ball is (lordy-lordy) 40 this year and lighting up the Tampa Bay area brighter than ever. Our viewpoint columns pop in to let us know what it’s like to live out of a suitcase and, gasp, create a John Waters-inspired “hatchet list,” tomatoes and tits included. And, speaking of tomatoes, we throw a few where they should be thrown politically, because at this point – this desperate point in our political pathos – they need to be thrown directly.

Mostly, though, we cheer on our families, both natural and self-created. We take our pride seriously and joyfully, and we do not let our guards down. We run into the swirling winds with our smiles cracked and our “stamina” at the “full” marker on our internal dashboards. We look back, we look up and we keep on moving. Thanks for coming along for the ride. And for the rise.