July Fitness

July is almost half-way done and our yard is flowering. This year we have an abundance of artichokes blooming; their purple crowns are a favorite with the bees. The gladiolas Mark planted earlier are growing taller than the foxglove; the hummingbirds love them. And the iris has given way to purple phlox.

After about six months of Mark dropping hints that I could join him for yoga at the local YMCA (yoga isn’t my cup of tea, though), I’ve re-started my fitness regime. This involves wearing a fitness tracker that talks with my mobile, and spending time on a health app keeping a food diary of weighed out serving portions. And waking up early and going to the Y to either swim, or run on an elliptical, or clink weights. Or sit in the hot tub.

I want to say the increase in activity has been good for my mood, so yay. If I can continue to exercise consistently through September, I’m hoping habit will carry me through the Very Very Long Grey Months around the Winter Solstice. I also want to say that my body is thinking about beginning to look a little more toned, so also yay.

I’m surprised by my sleep patterns: based on motion and heart rate, I wake up a lot more during the night than I realized and I actually sleep a lot less than the seven or eight hours I thought I was getting. It would be interesting to correlate when the tracker thinks I’m in REM sleep with an actual EEG.

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The other weekend I went dancing. Mark opted out. The producers of the dance were the same folks who produced the Pride After-party.

I arrived at a local Queer/Pagan bar a little after 9 PM, when the event started. The music was pumping out, folks were around the bar and tables, and the dance floor was empty.

The theme of the dance was “Hanky Panky”; folks were supposed to wear a colored bandana in one of their back pockets to signify what kind of sexual activities they’re into. Since there is no hanky for “My husband stayed home, and I’m just here to dance,” my back pockets were bare and I wore a black T-shirt with a rampant rainbow unicorn on it. In retrospect, I should have worn a mirror-ball keychain… perhaps with a T-shirt reading “My ball-and-chain is a disco ball.”

I ordered a cola product and inspected the decor. This is somewhere between a theatre production of the Addams Family, an occult bookstore, a Hot Topic shop, and a leather bar—with a covered and fenced-in porch on the side.

I finished my drink, figured someone had to be the first person dancing, and headed to the stage end of the bar. The DJ, smiling, left his control panel, bounded past a Saint Andrew’s Cross and a bondage bench, underneath the big screen showing campy and risqué videos, through the strobing and whirling stage lights, past a dancer’s cage, and met me on the dance floor. “You’re early!” he said, and then introduced himself. Technically the dance’s start time was 9—but things wouldn’t get started until about 10 or 10:30.

This was fine by me, because I wouldn’t have to worry about stepping on somebody or thwacking them with an upthrust arm accidentally while I shook the rust off of my dance moves—which I’ll be the first to admit are a cross between cha-cha, the fox-trot, an aerobics routine, and a ritual summoning.

The music was a fun repeat of the mix during the previous week’s After Party, and, luckily, not quite as loud, as I had forgotten my ear plugs at home. The video on the big screen was a slightly more X-rated version of the previous week’s PG-13 video.

The dance floor filled up, and then go-go boys in day-glow fetish-wear jumped onto the stage. I’m not sure if they were dancers who strip, or strippers who dance, but at least they seemed to be having fun. Especially in the cage. My sense is that they had friends in the audience.

I danced and danced, and briefly re-connected with a queer pagan acquaintance I hadn’t seen in about two years; he went back to dancing with his partner, who was in a wheelchair.

Just a quickly as it had filled up, around 11:30, the dance floor cleared. I remember this used to happen thirty years ago at Perry’s On Pearl: you’d be dancing to the music, look up, and realize that about half of the dancers had left, presumably with each other. The energy of the room would shift from summer lovin’ to autumnal lean and prowling.

When I stepped out onto the smoking patio looking to chat up my acquaintance and his partner, I realized A) it was cooler out here; B) oh yeah, this was where people actually smoked, and; C) a bear in a leather jockstrap and harness wasn’t just waving hi, he was offering me a joint.

Actually, I’m pretty sure he was offering my hair a joint.

I smiled and said, “Thanks; I don’t smoke.”

“What?” he said in mock-horror. “A man dancing with long grey hippie hair doesn’t smoke weed?” (See, I was right; my hair had scored.)

“It’s true,” I said. “Thanks anyway.” —Not realizing until the next day when Mark told me that the leather bear was flirting with me that I missed the sub-text and was completely off script.

Note To Self: Next time, compliment a leather bear on his gear and ask him where he shops.

I went back inside. While the fantasy cater-waiter dance scene from the movie “Jeffry” played on the screen behind him, a lone go-go boy whirled some LED poi in front of a mostly empty dance floor. Which was too bad, because if I had to choose, the go-go boy with the whirling lights was the most interesting one on stage, and he deserved more of an audience.

The night had reached an inflection point. A long time ago, someone taught me the difference between staying at a party because you’re having fun and staying at a party because you’re waiting for something to happen. If one is waiting for something to happen, one either needs to make something happen or leave. Even with the disco nap I’d taken that afternoon, I was feeling a little tired after about two and a half hours of almost solid dancing. So it was time to leave.

The next day my fitness tracker reported that I’d taken 6,183 steps and that I’d burned through 586 calories during my 95 minute “Aerobic Workout.” I can tell from the graph of my heart rate when I was enjoying dancing the most, but, alas, I can’t tell from the valleys and peaks where the poi-whirling go-go boy or the leather bear are.

I can, however, find Mark.

Eugene Pride 2025

Last Saturday, I wanted to march in the Eugene Pride parade while holding Mark’s hand. Retrospectively, I had an unconscious desire to recreate the magical NYC Pride float experience of 2023, only with Mark this time. This was probably at odds with Mark’s disinclination to participate in public events, like dancing, or the Saturday Market, or Eugene LGBTQ+ choral performances, or the Eugene Bright Parade. Which can bring out his contrarian side.

On one hand, two over-fifty, gay, married men holding hands while one of them waved a small rainbow flag is a political statement about gay life, gay liberty, and the pursuit of gay happiness; on the other hand my imagining of the moment involved fast-paced 1970’s disco, and gauzy rainbow on the edges—I’m pretty sure in my vision we weren’t marching so much as gliding. So probably more fabulous than what was going to happen.

This year the Pride Celebration was moved up from August in Alton Baker Park to June in the Lane County Fairgrounds. Of course this caused controversy. I prefer having Eugene Pride in June when it’s typically cooler; and I’d much rather march in the rain at the end of grass pollen season than under a 95°F August sun in the middle of wildfire smoke season. Security was also a concern: it’s easier to put up fencing around the fairground venues than it is a city park. The security measures also meant a bag-check for non-clear bags and no signs, banners, or flags larger than 11X18 inches.

Mark wanted to skip the rally at Kesey Square and just join the 10:30 parade from the square to the fairgrounds. Since dealing with the car would probably be a rigamarole, we opted to walk downtown—which takes about twenty-five minutes. Between yoga, looking after a neighbor’s animals, dealing with some of The Child’s childhood junk treasures, slathering on sun screen, and taking the dog to the dog park—but no gay brunch—we started out not quite as early as I would have liked. Which necessitated a brisk walk—water bottle swinging from my belt; 12X18-inch pride flag in my hand; and keys, tickets, mobile, and wallet in my back pockets. It was already a clear-skied 72°F.

Somewhere along Willamette Street my paper ticket to Pride worked its way out of my back pocket.

We got to Kesey Square at 10:32. It was quiet. And empty. An abandoned, pink, open, VooDoo Donuts box did its best tumbleweed imitation next to the statue of Ken Kesey. I still don’t know if the parade started early, or if the rally decamped to a different march staging area.

We walked west on Broadway Street toward the fairgrounds and met some other folks also looking for the march.

Mark noticed my rising Sun-in-Capricorn-Moon-in-Virgo-You’re-Doing-It-Wrong-This-Is-Why-We-Can’t-Have-Nice-Things sense of frustration and advised me to breathe out frustration and breathe in calm. Or something. We found a bakery with chocolate brownies, macarons, and coffee for Mark.

As we were paying, someone behind the register took in my black T-shirt with a Progress Pride flag on it, my Rainbow flag, and very likely my Hair and asked for a social media photo.

Fortified with the photo-op and some little white bags of baked goods, we soldiered on, ever westward.

As we neared Franklin Street, I caught the sounds of drums, and we could see police blocking off streets. We were just in time to insert ourselves into the tail end of the parade and jockeyed for a space between various other groups based on whatever it was their signs and banners read. No one resurrected the chant, “Hey-hey, ho-ho…”.

I waved my little Pride flag. “Hey, Mark,” I said. “Give me those bags.”

“I can carry them,” Mark said.

I eyed the small cup of coffee in his other hand. “But I wanna hold your hand.”

“Where’s your brownie?” he said.

“I snarfed it as soon as we left the bakery.”

I held the flag and the bags in one hand and Mark’s hand in the other. It was nice for about sixty seconds until I had to let go of Mark’s hand to push my hair out of my face. Which prompted mock-protests of a typical Leo nature from Mark about being abandoned.

Five blocks later the parade transmogrified into a fairground entrance line. After an interval of shuffling, during which I realized that I could display my ticket on my phone, we made it through the Event Center back entrance doors and emerged next to a stage where dancers we wanted to see were scheduled.

We sat down in the audience section and got blasted by loudspeakers during a sound system accident.

Mark thought having Pride in the Fairgrounds venue made it seem like a combination of the Eugene Holiday Market or Boat/Home Show, which was a little cramped and overwhelming for him. He would have liked vendor booths arranged circularly around a central performance area instead of the grid layout they used. He also missed being able to picnic on the grass (which is hard to have inside).

I did like being in the shaded, if not air-conditioned, indoors; but it would have been nice to have picnic tables set up.

The dance groups were entertaining and interesting.

Prompted by the experience with parade, I made a point of asking someone at the information table where the after-party dance was going to be held (since the location wasn’t clear). We bumped into four folks we knew and had quick updates with them.

And then we were done.

We walked back home.

I spent the afternoon digging through an unorganized collection of mostly papers looking for my party ear-plugs. I found them behind some coffee-table books on Ancient Egyptian Art.

Around 7 p.m., I drove to the 21+ after-party dance event, which was located next to the Lane County Events Center, in an old Quonset hut. In some ways, it was a throw-back to the dance floor, twenty years ago, at Perry’s on Pearl; only with newer songs. And much less clothing. With go-go boys.

The music was danceable, and I was glad for the earplugs. I had fun, and I was dancing by myself in a Quonset hut filled with people. I thought about braving the long line to purchase a soft drink or mocktail, and wound up paying $3 for a 16oz bottle of water. I danced to the four quarters, and stayed in my body. I danced and danced, and only realized the music kept on playing a half-hour after the dance’s official end when I looked at my phone.

The crescent moon hung above the western horizon as I walked past folks breaking down chairs and booths; past the deflated rainbow arch at the Event Center front entrance; through the main parking lot and over a creek, to where the car waited in auxiliary parking.