This is the first of three enties that I'll be doing tonight. This will also be the first time I use images on an individual entry. I hope it works out.
On my way to New Orleans I stopped in Denton to have some pizza and think about the past in my favorite pizza shop in all of Texas. This is it here:
It used to be called "The Flying Tomato", but I suppose that since everyone called it "The Tomato" anyway they decided to shorten the name. Personally I liked it better the way it was. It conjured up all sorts of funny images in my head.
While I was sitting inside eating my peperoni pan pizza slice, I noticed that there was something odd going on at the campus across the street (NTU). There were a bunch of people out there holding signs, some of which looked like gay pride signs, others of which, well I had no earthly idea what they were supposed to be. My curiosity, as it is often wont to do, got the better of me, so I decided that once I finished eating I should go across the street and see what exactly was going on.
When I got across the street I started asking the usual questions when faced with this sort of situation. "Is there anything specific around here that prompted this protest, or is the a general all-purpose protest based on long-term discrimination?" (I had figured out that this was by and large a gay rights thing, and that the other signs were just odd variations of that same theme). I found out that it was an all-purpose one that also was supposed to commorate the aniversery of the Stonewall Riot/March thing. The only question of mine that didn't really get answered while standing there was why, if this was supposed to be a protest, everyone was just kind of standing around lacklusterly. Well, I got my answer to that just as I was about to leave.
As I was saying my goodbyes to the few of these people I had met, the entire crowd started moving at once. Prompted it seems, by some guy in a pink shirt with a megaphone. This guy as a matter of fact:
His name, I find out later is Josh, but first things first. Let's not get too out of order.
While the crowd is moving, I try to make my way back to the car, so I can get back on the highway. "After all", I thought, "I've wasted enough time here, haven't I?" Well as I'm doing my best to make my way through the crowd so I can get back to my car, someone notices that some other people need help with a banner sign. So she promptly hands me hers, and asks me to carry it. I look at the sign. It says "Stop spiritual terrorism." So now I realize I have to at least stay long enough to parade with these people. So with a joke on my lips and a sneer on my face I join in. I'm told that this is not a parade however, but rather a march. This of course makes me a bit nervous, but I figured what the hell, how often do you get a chance in this day and age to say that you were in any kind of march. So we marched up ash for what seemed like a really long time, the banner sign that the girl had abondoned hers for started falling apart due to the wind. So I decided to help out as best I could. So that was kind of cool. I was holding together part of a banner sign with one hand and holding up my "spiritual terrorism" sign with the other. All the while making little jokes like "stop spiritual terrorism, huh? Well, I guess I'm sort of against that, or the cause of it, I'm not sure which...". This caused all sorts of little giggles from the people around me. All the while this guy Josh is way ahead of us yelling things like "Stonewall was a riot, not a parade" which is a dead cool cadance, and "We're here, we're queer, we're not going shopping" which is also...wait a min here. "We're not going shopping"? What the fuck...who the hell thought this one up. What a stupid f'n thing to march to! I mean of all f'n things, what kind of battle cry is: "We're not going shopping"? All that's going to do is make your opposition laugh at you. Or just be puzzled as hell. Anyway, enough bitching about that. There are other things to direct our attention to presently.
So we march on like this for quite a while. Then we made one complete circle around the courthouse, which makes no freaking sense to me. Not even on a sybolic level. If we were going to march circles around it, we should have done so four or seven times. No other amount will suffice. Then we stopped there...at the courthouse. I'm thinking at this point that by the time it gets to a courthouse, it's all ready too late. In other words these people are marching on the entirely wrong branch of government. Couldn't they have gotten the local legislature or mayor's office to let them march there? Still, split hairs I suppose. I least they were doing something, and that's really the point after all. When we get all settled in there, Josh gave a pretty good speech about not giving in to oppresion and all that. Told us some of the things we were in for, that sort of thing. So I go to talk to him for a second, and then help them set up, which was fun, and made me feel a little less like some random guy who came in off the street to bask in some of thier protest glory and then disapear (which is exactly what I was). Afterwards, I walked all the way back to the car, and thinking about the situation, remembered that I not only didn't have my camera with me, but no film in it either. So I decided that since I was late already, it wouldn't hurt to stop at a store, pick up some film, and then go back and take a few pictures. I only wish I could have gotten one of the sign I had been holding, but it was buried under a bunch of others by the time I got back. Here are some of the other shots I took:
This was the speaker they had when I got back. Mainly she talked about the history of the gay rights movement in Denton. It would have been a very fascinating speech indeed, if she had put a little more emotion in it, but she seemed more conserned about figures and dates. Now, those things are important and all, but so are the emotions behind those facts, but I suppose that wasn't the reason she was there.
Here's a sign that was there:
I don't know if you can read it, but it says "Do you know where the pink triangle comes from?", reffering to the way the nazis tagged the gays to differentiate them from the Jews. As if it really mattered to those fascists, but that's a bitch for another day. I really like this f'n sign for some reason.
After I took those couple of pics you've seen on the diary so far, I hopped in my car and made my way as far as I could towards New Orleans. I ended up losing (or so I thought) the little slip of paper that I had wrote Emily's phone number down on, but it turned out I had just placed it in an odd place in my wallet. So I called her at about 2:30 am or so and told her that I would make it that night. She said she figured as much, so that was all good. I slept in a rest area about 45 minutes from Lafayette for a couple of hours. Then I got back on the highway and was in NOLA by 9 o'clock or so.
I'll continue with the NOLa trip stuff and pics some other time. As for the other two entries tonight, I have some poetry for you, so hang on for a few minutes and the first of those two will be added.
~Matt Magus
