  Pride is always a wild rollercoaster of emotions for me. Every year, it's probably the loudest and happiest that I get about being gay, and still, it turns out to be one of the times where all of the problems of being gay (or at least my being gay) get magnified into some larger-than-life spectacle of ridiculosity. Normally, that means that, despite all the cute boys I see on the parade trail, I just don't get laid. This year, however, it was extraordinarily weird. I was marching with the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender People In Medicine group. Queer doctors and medical students in Chicago are either so few and far between (less likely) or ridiculously lame (more likely) that our contingent is usually only about 5 to 8 people. There was an unexpectedly large number of people winking and smiling at me as we were marching down the parade route, and many of them were cute, too.
But, where are these people for the other 364 days a year? I swear, I am taking a pad and paper and just taking down phone numbers next year. What's even funnier about the parade trail is that everyone who has never called you, or has stopped calling you, or never will call you, is on the trail, and very happy to see you now that you're marching around in a pair of ill-fitting medical scrubs.
One of my Matts – friend with privileges Matt, hasn't called me in like a month, Matt – was there. And I have never heard Ryan's voice on the phone, yet somehow, he was there, screaming my name louder than anyone. In order me to partake in the party fun, Jen, whose car I rode in to go to Pride, left to go home, leaving me admittedly stranded in Boystown. Trouble, of course, ensues. So, I went to Paolo's party. I saw this guy there, Luis, whom I haven't seen in a few months, since Paolo and I had been studying together. I just blurted out (and at this point, I am not even drunk) that I think that he is totally sexy. It's fine though, because I am under the impression that this guy was straight, and you know how straight guys love this kinda talk. He immediately started blushing and guffawing: "I never get that! No one ever tells me I'm sexy.
" Paolo, of course, popped in: "EVERYONE tells you you're sexy. " This man, then, took his cue to begin flirting with me, very, very hard. As I'm enjoying this attention, stuffing my boner away unsuccessfully in a pair of scrubs, another guy, some 19 year old Puerto Rican kid came up between us being like..."Why you flirtin' with my man? " I thought it was a joke, but the guy was totally serious. I watched the way Luis looked at him; he was totally flirting with both of us, at the same time, in each others' presences. By this point I have noticed that there was a six-year-old kid running around this party full of 20 something year old drunk homosexuals. Really cute kid: smart, bright. He showed me his glow-in-the-dark button that he got at the pride parade. We talked about how it's dark someplace else on the planet because it's light here in Chicago. We talked about the planets and everything. Real intellectual shit. Of course, I am secretly six years old, so this is all wonderful for me.
Meanwhile, Luis continued to flirt with me so much that I am compelled to tell him that I have always thought he was extremely sexy, and I didn't say anything because he was straight. "I've explored one part of my life, and now I would like to explore the other part. I'm thirty-one years old, and I haven't figured it all out...but you know what? I could fall in love with a man. Physically, emotionally, I am capable of falling in love with a man..." He said this, to me, looking deeply into my eyes and touching my chest.
Which, mind you, is still covered in scrubs. And it's very difficult to hide the, ahem, intensity you're feeling at a particular moment in a pair of scrubs. "One of these days, I'm going to kiss you so hard. " I said to him. He responded by telling me to go get a drink. By this point, I was plenty certain I was being toyed with, so I leave Paolo's party to go to another party, and I'm sorta just ready to relax. I hung out at the party, which is just another extension of the Boystown shallow waiter/retail/still a bitch for no good reason crowd. I'm plenty bored by a waiter who wouldn't give me the time of day if I didn't have the balls to talk to some guy he had been checking out across the room.
He was not interested in conversing with me any longer, the host is not talking to me, and the only person I know there was not talking to me, so, nonplussed by the vapidity of this party, I leave. I figured I would stop back by Paolo's place. I'm pretty sauced by this point, but not so sauced as to ignore the fact that Luis and the Puerto Rican kid were off in the bedroom cuddling or something.
Whatever. They were out in a quick hot second, so I didn't mind. Then the six year old kid offered me a glass of water (this kid is seriously pretty brilliant, as he realized I needed water at this point) and asked if I would like to come over to his house and have dinner. Sure, I said; this Luis guy is not inviting me anywhere, why not have dinner with the only guy at the party who is paying me any attention. He, of course, has to ask his mom and his dad. And so he ran up to Luis shouting "Dad! Dad! Can Thom come over for dinner? " I gave my phone number to papa. He asked me if I liked pasta. So I guess that's what we're having. 
