“Who has let the wild ass go free?  Who has loosed the harness of the swift ass?  It is I who gave him the wasteland as his home, the salt flats as his habitat.  He laughs at the tumult of the city, for he is not driven by the shouts of a driver.  He ranges the mountains as his pasture, and he chases after every green thing.”  Job 39: 5-8

As I lay there half awake, my hair reflecting the fire of the morning sun as its rays dance through my curtains, my mind slowly drifts to the wadded up bag shoved to the back of my cabinet. . .  Am I going to wear it?!?!  “YAAAASSSS Queen, you better werk it!!!”  “Hell to the NAAAAHHH!”  “Of course I’ll wear it AND post all the naughty photos on my social media.”  “But my mom might see it?!?!”  “Definitely not going to wear it!” “Well, she’s wiped my ass, and this shows less skin than just going shirtless.”  “But people might think I have a leather fetish or am a slut.”  “Well, . . . oh shut up!”

. . .

“Come on Gingercakes,” I tell myself, as I stuff the contents of the wadded up bag into my backpack, still unsure if I am actually going to wear it.  If I’m going to get downtown in time to make it to the Pride mass at St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery, I was gonna have to shift my swift little ass into high gear.   It was NYC Pride, and I was stoked, but I wanted to start the day off in church giving thanks that I was a hot gay ginger and that I had lived long enough to finally appreciate and love that about myself.  For a significant portion of my life, I would have rather died than be gay or ginger.  Indeed, I had spent many nights praying that death would come.  But now for the first time in my life, not only did I not hate myself, I actually believed that I was one of the most beautiful and amazing creatures to walk this cruel planet.  And I was ready to strut my stuff, chest puffed out, with all the other gussied up queers, faggots, dykes, pussies, trannies, whores, queens, butches and bitches at the Pride parade.

Pride is the only festival I’ve ever been to where people of all body types, ages, ethnicities, genders and sexualities get together and dress up, or rather undress as unicorns, drag queens, and leather daddies, donning feather boas and stillettos or just a jock strap, and throw glitter on each other.   It is kinda how I used to imagine heaven might be before those Christians barred its doors to me while trying to strain out a gnat. [Matthew 23: 23].  It never made sense to me how we were barred from paradise just for being born with internal wiring a bit outside the mainstream, but yet all those Christians could, without condemnation, wear pride as their necklace, always free of care, amassing wealth, their mouths laying claim to heaven, as their tongues take possession of the earth.  [Psalm 73].

Whatever, we have created our own heaven, where everyone can feel affirmed, loved, and accepted as beautiful and worthy, and we did it by embracing all of the negative stereotypes thrown at us and turning them into fabulous costumes and floats.  We took the stones thrown at us to kill us and turned them into gemstones of adornment.  Kinda like the disciples did with the cross that killed their Jesus, we made the objects of their derision of us, a source of our Pride.

But was I really going to wear it!?!?  Hell yeah!!!  I had to!  It was Pride and I had finally found my freedom.  “Who has let this wild ass go free? Who has loosed the harness of my swift ass?”  God did!  That’s what their Scriptures say.  Those religious pricks derided Jesus as a lawbreaker and a blasphemer, too.  They even murdered him for it.  They are still murdering trans women and trying to stone us.  Well those fuckers can just keep throwing their stones at me.  I’m not their slave anymore.  My harness has been loosed from their chains.  I kinda like how it looks on me.  It makes me feel sexy.  And now that the chains are gone, its really not that heavy.  This yoke is easy, and its burden light.  Maybe next year I’ll find a jock strap to match. . .   (just kidding mom!)

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.  Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. . . .  You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. . . .   The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”  Galatians 5:1-6

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