Max's Pride 2025 Webzine

Introduction

This is decidedly a webzine piece; it's something I would make into a perzine if I had that kind of energy (maybe some other time).

This gives me the opportunity to do something I've been thinking about doing for a while, but haven't quite figured out when or how to implement. Am I making a series of web zines about different experiences? Am I just making a little collective of websites about topics relevant to my life? I have no idea.

It takes me a while to remember the best way to find out how you're going to do something is to just do it and see where it goes. So I can't tell you if I'll ever make something like this again, but here is a website I'm calling a zine.

Note: This is sort of mobile friendly but not as fun and is intended to be viewed horizontally like on a computer screen with a mouse.

Max's Pride 2025

This year I tried to do a few things to actively participate in Pride, but I didn't succeed that well with any of them. I started and then forgot I was doing many things, but it means I still did many things!

First I'll go a little into my approach to Pride since I think it's probably different for everyone.

If I buy stuff, it's usually at an event I went to, or from someone who posted their stuff online and I liked it and bought it. I usually get artist Tshirts, stickers, and frog things.

I'm generally indifferent to the official events and feel no need to go to the parade or anything like that. The only thing I like about parades is marching bands and I don't need to see one every year (I'd rather go to a parade that has global percussion groups in it if I'm going to one). Until this year I had never done an official World Pride event.

Early in the month I try to do at least one outside/social event, especially if it's something I can put money into to benefit something. (I'm begging you to sell shorts in your merchandise selection.) Anyway, it's gotta be early because I don't often leave my house for non-routine things once the heat arrives. This is usually a show but it could be a dance night or one of those themed bars with a friend (this happens less and less as we all drink less and less...).

As a later-discovered community member (I'm 40, it's been less than 5 years) who spent their life "intrigued" but focused on other things, I'm feeling distant from the culture, and everyone keeps telling me the best way to edge my way in is to go to Pride events and introduce myself with pronouns to everyone who catches my eye. I do my best (I attend and if you talk to me I will talk to you and I always forget my pronouns). I fear I won't be able to keep up with the pace.

Instead, I used my usual approach to holidays and the stuff that I celebrate: I try to thread it into my days in various ways, sometimes random, or I just "notice." I do something creative. I read or watch a lot of documentaries. I engage in art created by significant people or about related topics. I reflect on how my lifelong experience without gender has been bubbling under the surface, waiting for the right combination of words to come together, given all the context.

In other words, my celebration is not usually very formal or visible unless I make it so by writing about it, which is what I'm doing now!

Liberation

The first event was on a weekend in May, but I'm counting it anyway. It's been too long to talk much about it, but there were a few very powerful moments during Ted Leo, Downtown Boys (new to me this night), and Speedy Oritz. This was at a "Liberation Weekend" event in benefit to the Gender Liberation Movement. The event went on all weekend, but my friend and I had various conflicts and only went for a few bands.

Ted Leo played a new song he'd been working on which caught me and had me tearing up. Throughout the show I internally battled on recording (should I record so I can listen to it later? or should I STFU and stay in the moment?) so I don't have anything to show for it. I haven't found it but I can't wait to find it again.

Downtown Boys had me energized and full of RAGE. During and after that band I was ready to fight, though I did not participate in the mosh pit. I haven't since I saw Architects in Baltimore and injured my ankle (it's fine now but the flashbacks still come). It didn't look too intense but I was fine flailing my arms in the space of standing a little further back. When I was younger I always wanted to be up front in the crush, but now I'm finding myself moving back to find empty spaces where I can really move.

My friend told me the names of the songs I liked by Speedy Oritz so I didn't even take many photos, but I liked the sparkly and colorful dresses. At some point they revealed it was the drummer's birthday and this was the highlight of the night! I love it when performers do this kind of stuff on stage, especially if it's both planned and unscripted, so it comes out a little more vulnerable. The drummer was pretty amazing and played for two bands, so I was happy to give my toast.

"Our Bodies, Our Genders, Our Choices, Our Futures!"

Pride on the Pier

One of my cousins was in from out of town to do DC Pride with his friends, and I inserted myself into their Friday night plans at Pride on the Pier. Per usual I was very awkward, felt very out of the loop, didn't know most of the music, and in addition to all of that, had a beautiful moment where I felt alone at a party with 800+ strangers who understood me. They didn't have to meet me or talk to me, they already get it.

I love going dancing and I can dance to basically anything, but I am not a good dancer. I really enjoy moving my body to music. Once I learned how to dance in front of people without drinking first, there was no stopping me. Then several years later I started learning drums and now I can count and catch onto things quickly so it's much more fun dancing to songs I don't know.

During this party I met my third girlfriend; the girlfriends I've had in my life lasted only two seconds and I ruined it by getting scared that a girl liked me. She said I could get the gay discount to the kayak lessons at the pier, which she was saying to everyone she found cute, BUT THAT MEANT SHE FOUND ME CUTE.

I am not ready to be in public again yet, mingling with strangers who don't totally ignore me. I do not want to give up my solitude. It was still a nice moment to be seen by someone I see.

My cousin's friends were wonderful, but they had other plans so after we danced and chatted and celebrated together for a bit, they were off to their next adventure. It was exciting to see him whisked away in his carriage to the weekend's magic. Even though we only had this one event together for a few hours, it was so awesome connecting and going to an "official" Pride event with the only other person in the family who GETS it.

I stayed for a while longer thinking there were going to be fireworks (there were not, they were on the next day), and once I figured it out I slowly wandered away from the energy until it was just flashing lights on a pier down the way. On this little walk I got to admire everyone's outfits and gear (many beautiful sparkly light accessories) and enjoy the night life pass by without me. I had a fun and fulfilling night (it was only 9pm).

Writing Challenge

At the beginning of the month I challenged myself to reflect on something vaguely related to gender during every day in June. This lasted 3 days until I forgot I was doing it. Still, I ended up with two things I was comfortable sharing with people I knew to explain where I was at.

The third was the beginning of a story where I got stuck on a major logic point, but last weekend randomly thought of the solution. I haven't picked it back up yet but I'm excited to find where it might go!

It was on the same day I discovered Figwasp radio and they were playing Elliot Smith albums, so I think it definitely came out in a certain mood. I think I will seek to listen through those albums again as I continue writing. I'm excited that this brought me a little further into the depths of what our little community on Neocities has to offer! I love that the music inspired me in different ways (including a character named Elliot) and it never would have happened if Figwasp hadn't been broadcasting that night I randomly thought to start this story. So cool.

It's about 908 words so far which isn't bad for one night of writing impulsively, and I even outlined (vaguely) a few things I'd like to happen in the story. Anyway, I won't be posting it yet because then I'll never finish it, but if I don't finish it I will eventually post it as a fragment.

One of the things I didn't do was write basically any other day in June, but I did find these two posts that offer (I think) some interesting prompts for reflection.

Random Thoughts from the Month

This month I did more internal exploration on how to accurately describe my relationship with gender, now that I understand myself better and have been reading a lot of other experiences with different genders for a while. After much reflection I found a few new ways to arrange words to describe me best, for now at least.

First: You feel like a pretty princess. I feel like a 🪨 rock. So it might not be that you are explicitly feeling "womanly" or "more feminine," at least not in the way that you'd describe it, but the binary genders have you (stereotypically) feeling like a 🦄 graceful unicorn or the 🫅 king of the world, while my gender is moss (as a compliment). (A friend told me this helped her understand a little better, somehow.)

Second: I am non-binary like a grayromantic person and a hypersexual gay man living as roommates in my soul. (This was fact-checked by friends.)


I watched Stonewall (1995), which I haven't seen since I was a kid. I liked it then, though I felt like I didn't understand it. Now I feel like I understood it! That was a very cool feeling. I read the summary on Wikipedia and noted how a high-level description so easily makes the movie seem like everyone is sex-obsessed and there's no meaning or love behind this at all.

Later in June I was watching a documentary with my family (I don't remember what it was) and there was a moment in the intro where they summarized American values, something like: equality, liberty, freedom from the constraints of religion, whatever, and when they said "freedom from religion" they showed a clip of a group of people holding a Pride flag in what looked like a parade, an oh-so-subtle bit of imagery that might imply that being in the LGBTQ+ community is the opposite of being religious. Someone selected that clip for that part of the script.

Noticing stuff like this is discouraging. No one else in the room even blinked, but they did react to other stuff.

I BOUGHT A POETRY BOOK

When that US East coast heatwave kicked in the same week my A/C went wonky, I stopped doing everything. The next weekend my family went to North Carolina for a short romp to a funeral and 1-day Outer Banks vacation and there were so many pride flags in the Historic Corolla Village (where you may catch the rare wild Toyota Corolla among the dunes). Now I really want to go back when it's not a million degrees or a sad weekend.

While we were there we stopped in the Island Bookstore which had both an LGBTQ+ section and a Pride display (not pictured) and that's where I found the book Love is For All of Us: poems of tenderness and belonging from the lgbtq+ community and friends edited by James Crews & Brad Peacock. I love Lisa Congdon's art so of course that caught my attention immediately, but it wasn't until I remembered that I actually made it a goal to read more poetry that I snatched it off the shelf.

It's an exceptional collage of poetry, art, and writing. It was a pretty emotional journey going through it and I had a small notebook next to me where I collected my own thoughts and writings (as recommended by the book itself).

I'm not a very good poet and I don't feel that they always accurately represent what I'm trying to express, but I am finding it to be a fantastic way to push a feeling further than I ever could writing like this. I am excited to give it some space and thought and then return to these poems again and again.

Here are some of my favorite poems from the book, or at least the ones that were available online somewhere.

🦈 (fin)

I do too many reflection projects at once and when they all collide I need to make some sacrifices! This month instead of doing a "June in review," I made this page and only wrote about this stuff. Another idea I had was to make a static website every July that dives into what I've been thinking and learning about in regards to Pride-adjacent topics. This isn't the full scope of my "webzine idea" but they kind of meshed together because it made sense.

So here we are.

I hope you enjoyed this! I had a lot of fun making it and playing with different layout ideas. Until next time!
xo Max