Pride floats we'd like to see

When homo becomes ho-hum, what is to be done?
A parade wish list

by JOHN CUSTODIO

Last year, I happened to be near a family that had clearly made a special effort to arrive early for Divers/Cité's main event. They had folding chairs and a cooler and prime curbside seats, but halfway through the parade Dad and the kids started complaining that they wanted to leave. Mom protested feebly that she wanted to see more floats, but Dad, who wanted to beat the traffic, asked "Why? They're all the same!"

‘Great,' I thought, ‘We're here, we're queer, they're used to us. Where do we go from here?'

Now, I don't do sequins and feathers - or rubber and leather, for that matter; I'm not that kind of queer (though there's nothing wrong with that). Donning a bathing suit to bump and grind to disco anthems on a flatbed truck disguised as a battleship is not something I'm ever likely to do, even on the best drugs - and certainly not in front of half a million spectators.

There was a time when I carried placards and banners, but not anymore, not since Divers/Cité became a parade (even organizers don't call it a march anymore). These days I watch from the sidelines and worry that it's getting more tedious with each passing year. Nevertheless, I keep going, mostly out of a sense of duty and solidarity, but also in the hopes that somebody will have designed a float to take my breath away. It's in this spirit that I offer the following ideas.

Corporate wieners

People often grouse about how corporate Pride has become. What they don't understand is that even though it generates more tourism revenue for the city than both the Jazz and Just for Laughs festivals, Divers/Cité doesn't get a penny of government funding. They need corporate sponsorship. If anything, I'm surprised they haven't courted it more aggressively.

How hard would it be, for example, to convince the makers of Nair to sponsor a float? Circuit fags doing the cancan to "Who Wears Short Shorts?" is such a natural fit. Pre-op F2M trannies dancing to the tune of "I Wish I Had an Oscar Meyer Wiener" might be a harder sell, but people would, uh, eat it up, I'm sure. My point is that with just a little bit of imagination, corporate floats can be fun - and inspire product loyalty. Imagine, for example, a Molson float with a "Drink Till You're Bi" theme, on which participants would re-enact archetypal "first-time" experiences!

Corporations get a great deal for promoting their products at Divers/Cité; $4,000 gets them a float in the parade and a captive audience of hundreds of thousands of potential consumers. The very least we can expect from these same corporations is some queer entertainment value.

Church of the poisoned mind

Perhaps the most memorable float in last year's parade featured a tranny in leather tied to a cross. Clearly intending to shock and offend, Lola, as she was called, bared her breasts to the multitudes under a banner that read "Stop Crucifying Us" - visually compelling, perhaps, but I would like to suggest a different strategy to combat religious prejudice.

Gay church groups display a shocking lack of imagination when putting together their floats. They give themselves names like Dignity (Catholics), Integrity (Anglicans), Honesty (Baptist), and Affirm (United Church), but they don't live up to them at Pride. What better way to do that than with floats that highlight the homoeroticism of their faith? Queer images from the history of Christian art could be mounted as sexy tableaux vivants: Reni's "St. Sebastian," del Piombo's "Flagellation," or almost anything by Michelangelo or Caravaggio.

Or how about staging vignettes from the Lives of the Saints - Sergius and Bacchus, for example? Lovers and martyrs for their faith, they are also the patron saints of same-sex unions. (Once upon a time, the church recognized our relationships with official ceremonies.) And we mustn't forget John the Baptist; Salomé's striptease couldn't tempt him, and he gave great head.

Jewish groups could follow suit with tableaux of David and Jonathan or Ruth and Naomi. So many Jewish fags I know wished they could have been Purim queens when they were young. Here's their chance! After all, who better to honour at a Pride celebration than Esther, who by coming out saved her people from annihilation? (ESTHER would also be a great acronym for a Jewish gay group: Empowered Sodomites, Trannies, and Homos for Equal Rights.)

Whatever floats your boat

You don't have to be a corporation or a religious group to have a float in the parade. Divers/Cité encourages all kinds of groups to participate, so long as they meet the stipulations of their anti-discrimination policy. Two years ago, a small but festive gaggle of queens marched in the parade decked in Marilyn Monroe drag. The cameras loved them, and they obliged by striking some of her most famous poses.

I was thinking it would be nice to see more of an artfag presence at Divers/Cité. Now that Montreal has no queer bookstore, I'm feeling a real need for evidence of a literate community. L'Androgyne Books had the right idea with their "What do queers do in bed?" float, but take it further, I say. Beneath banners with slogans like "Benchpress Your IQ" and "Eroticize Intelligence," show bookish nerds (in Oscar Wilde and Gertrude Stein drag?) reading in bed and ignoring the desperate, seductive ploys of their more traditionally beautiful partners.

The gay divorcé(e)s

The campaign for marriage rights has been the single most important item on the gay activist agenda since the mid-'90s. Given the recent ruling handed down by the Ontario Court of Appeal, victory on this front seems inevitable. This means, of course, yet another cavalcade of happy newlyweds in the parade.

I don't want to spoil their nuptial celebrations, but I do think it would be prudent for us to look ahead. Why not a Gay Divorcé(e) float? Sponsored by the legal firm Cleaner, Cleaner and Cleaner (as in "Take him to the Cleaners, honey!" - get it?), this float would feature newly single queers cruising with a vengeance and dancing to angry break-up anthems like Streisand and Summers' "No More Tears," Mary J. Blige's "No More Drama," and Alanis Morrissette's "You Oughta Know."

Straight pride

Okay, I have to admit, this one's got me stumped, but I doubt even the best Madison Avenue spinmeisters could work with this idea. Still, it has to be done, if only to put an end to such banal complaints as "Why isn't there a straight pride day?" and "Where's my parade?"

The Divers/Cité Parade begins at the corner of Guy and René Lévesque on Sunday, Aug. 3 at noon