Hurricane Pride

 

A sale at the Historic Macon Foundation last weekend in Macon. Photo by me, October 2026.

There is a hurricane coming tonight. Hurricane Isaias is visiting this weekend. It is also Atlanta gay pride as I was reminded a week ago.

Last weekend I was in Macon for an event put on by the Historic Macon Foundation. I was about to leave for Warner Robins when the crowd parted and there appeared someone I had not seen in twelve years like magic. It is funny how random, small and strange life can be. Twelve years? That could not be right, but I looked it up and yes, it had been twelve years since I had seen him at Oscar's in Atlanta during gay pride. So much had happened in our lives in those twelve years, he had moved to New England for a time then moved back then moved to Macon which is his hometown. I had left Atlanta too for the hinterlands in the direction of Athens. There in an old warehouse with exposed beams in downtown Macon we hugged and caught up.

“I'll be coming up to Atlanta next weekend for Pride,” he said.

Perhaps the astonished look on my face betrayed me as I asked, “Is that next weekend?”

“I suppose that means you won't be going?”

I had to search my mind to remember when I had last went to gay pride. “I stopped going out ten years ago,” I replied.

The gay pride parade down Peachtree Street in Midtown Atlanta. Photo by me, October 2013.

A few days later and looking through old photos I found that the last one I attended was in 2015 when friends had come to visit from New York and California. The last parade I went to was even further back in 2013. Gay Pride and nightlife I outgrew and traded for different activities. Atlanta changed as cities are meant to do. Pride changed with the younger generations and attitudes and I changed as people are prone to do with age. Yet, I realize change in relation to the city, nightlife, attitudes and gay pride does not mean progress.

Half the bars and clubs I used to hang out in have closed or moved. Bukhart’s is now the Eagle? That does not sound appealing, the Eagle was always interesting just for its decrepit location on Ponce, not to mention what went on inside that dark, gritty place that was a mix of leather queens and the most down to earth softball playing gay guys in Levi’s.

Somewhere in my mind I have connected Joy Division with the Eagle. Have you ever paid attention to the lyrics of Shadowplay? I am convinced that they are about the hunt for an encounter in a gay bar, a dark gay bar in the middle of a city. The Eagle was that kind of place. That is my spin, my imagination and the reality I knew.

A rainy night out front of the old Eagle on Ponce de Leon Avenue in Atlanta. Photo by me, August 2012.

I do not have but a few distinct memories of the old Eagle. There was one gay blogger, Curt, I knew twenty years ago who was this beautiful blonde computer programmer and was always inviting me to join him there on Friday nights when I would run into him on Saturday nights at Jungle. “You must come. Dude, it's hot,” he would say. I doubted it was as hot as he was. I liked the old Eagle well enough, but it was only an occasional place for me, Heretic, with a more ready for anything crowd, was my spot.

One occasional Eagle night, there was that young thing in a too tight Hollister tee from Panama City, Florida with his sugar daddy. Mr. Young Thing spun and danced like a cheerleader with imaginary pom poms directing planes on the deck of an aircraft carrier as the rest of us watched in amusement and embarrassment for him. It was Pride Sunday night, the night where everyone goes for one last night to let loose before checking out of the hotel the next morning with a hangover and their darkest sunglasses before driving back to whatever smaller and less gay place they live. They swear they will never do that again and after a few miles down the road vow that they cannot wait until next year's Pride.

Panama City Beach, Florida the afternoon after when I had met those guys at Splash. Photo by me, August 2009.

I had met the sugar daddy the year before in a raucous night on Thomas Drive in Panama City Beach in their sole gay bar called Splash. People I had traveled with danced atop the bar and I met a stripper I knew from Swinging Richards in Atlanta who was on a “stripper tour” as he called it. His next stop was New Orleans. I hung out on the patio talking with an older attorney in a suit from Lower Alabama. He liked to talk about his dogs and cars. The next afternoon I sat hung over on a beach towel on the powdery white sand determined to swim too far and too deep in the Gulf of Mexico.

That last visit to the old Eagle was a showery and windy August Saturday night. Puddles collected, it might have been the remnants of a tropical storm or hurricane that night but I do not remember, on Argonne Avenue where I parked. I made my way up into the back entrance through the house portion of the ramshackle place. I do remember the twink. I was thirty-nine so I remembered twinks when they appeared. I was embraced and kissed by a softball playing skinny twink of a stranger on a stairwell. He was still wearing the his team's tee shirt, seemed sweet and looked like the type that had a jungle of houseplants in a tiny one bedroom apartment somewhere off Moreland. That apartment was probably the first one he had after graduating college.

The Eagle that I remember would seem like an ill fit at Ansley. I looked at the photos posted on their website and it does appear the crowd has changed. The Eagle at Ansley appears to be nothing like the one I remember. They are also charging anywhere from $33 to $97 to get in for gay pride weekend. That is nothing like the old Eagle. That is severe inflation. In the past, it was not uncommon for gay bars and clubs to jack up prices during pride, but now it seems like taking advantage of the community. People go along with it, look the other way, complain about higher prices for everything else including basic necessities, but this goes unremarked about. Gay pride is now a luxury, VIP experience. Fools or suckers? You do not need a high priced ticket to celebrate gay pride, you can do it every day of your life for free.

I am glad to be out of the scene as I am an ill fit that believes that not all change is progress. I have brown hair, not blue, with some natural gray. I do not have tattoos. I have never done drag or even watched a single episode of Drag Race. I stopped watching Project Runway after season four and that was in 2008. I am an over fifty gay man and I have other priorities. Sitting in a bar that plays thumping auto-tuned music is as appealing as watching Johnny from Easley, South Carolina twirl in his cut offs and a neon green crop top until he hurls rainbow vomit in the corner next to a meth dealer. Gay pride is no longer my scene. Hurricane or not, I was not going anyway.

The Middle Of Somewhere

 

January 2024

Crossroads, seem to come and go, yeah
The gypsy flies from coast to coast
Knowing many, loving none
Bearing sorrow having fun ...

A bird sang on a cold Sunday morning and a week began. My head was empty and that is the best way to roll out of bed, go downstairs and make coffee. Nothing except coffee needed to be made, not the bed or decisions. This was a planned week off from novel writing after a very productive week before.

It was a week that I wanted it to snow, but it did not. Instead I enjoyed the snow in Louisville at the end of my fingertips. It was a week dressed in wool in the wind, the sun and the rain that stretched from Woodstock to the northwest, Dawsonville to the north, Gainesville to the northeast and Warner Robins to the south.

Roads had me. It was a week of being in the middle of somewhere in the middle of something. The unfamiliar and the familiar were all the same like the double yellow line. I really am the character Chris M. Rhodes from my books as much as I am Chris M. Vise.

Bennett Street Atlanta. January 2024.

It was a week of buying furniture and art. Legs were stretched, a salesperson carried a lamp for me assuming I was too old and a stranger talked about cell phones in an old mill. It was the South as it was long ago faded like jeans hanging from a clothesline. I could love it again like watching Coal Miner's Daughter for the thousandth time. Somewhere Dew and Loretta were cutting up and ordering sliced bologna in a general store.

Again the morning's come
Again he's on the run
Sunbeams shining through his hair
Appearing not to have a care...

 

Pretty roads were traveled and the miles climbed only to be erased by a head on a pillow and a quilt pulled up high. Georgia Highway 11 between Gray in Jones County and Monticello in Jasper County was some of the prettiest two-lane country road I have seen in Georgia. We drifted through places called Round Oak, Wayside, Adgateville, Hillsboro and places that once had names, but only the road, the train tracks, the pines and broken down homes remain. It was a nice stretch of road from Flovilla by Indian Springs in Butts County down to Forsyth in Monroe County on Georgia Highway 42 too. The quiet was as persistent as the January cold.

It was a week that reminded me that the moments I ever loved Atlanta were few and gone. Sitting in traffic, hunting limited detours and holding back the frustration of being inconvenienced by careless drivers who needed to crash into each other on the interstate was enough.

 

Monticello, Georgia. January 2024

 

Long shadows on the town square in Monticello came from the sun and history. A teenage couple walked into a local coffee shop, cars circled the square to get to some place else in four directions and my head filled.

Crossroads, will you ever let him go? No, no, no
Will you hide the dead man's ghost?
Or will he lie, beneath the clay?
Or will his spirit float away?

 

I began jotting down thoughts about Confederate monuments and the darkest part of my family's history that I have never whispered or hinted. I had a thousand words before the spell broke and I needed a break. I was uncertain if I wanted to write that. I suppose it means I should. The easier something is to write, the less interesting it is.

Macon was a city that I only knew from I-75 going to Florida or I-16 going to Savannah. It was a place to get gas or use the rest area. Many times I had said that I was going to the cherry blossom festival there and many times I found a reason not to go. Macon could never seem to capture me. It was odd for me, I had walked on the streets of the other small Georgia cities such as Columbus and Augusta, but never Macon.

A river and a railroad passing time. January 2024.

I liked how lost in time and left behind it felt. The states of decay that the South has cannot be achieved elsewhere as if the red clay and the kudzu are special ingredients mixed with the heat and humidity. The impression that Macon had on me that once it was important and now it was a relic. In the smaller places of Georgia you see the connections and similarities the state has to its Southern neighbors that metro Atlanta does not have. I could have been just as easily in Gadsden or Fort Payne or Meridian instead of Macon, but those places did not give us Otis Redding or Little Richard or Ronnie Hammond (lead singer of the Atlanta Rhythm Section) or The Allman Brothers Band. There must be something special about the crossroads there and rolling down Highway 41.

Warner Robins, Georgia. January 2024.

I-985. January 2024.

The sun set on Saturday and a week ended. My feet went on my desk and outside as I write this it is nineteen degrees in the backyard. My lips are chapped and I am a little sore. It is time to be home again and to empty the head that is in the middle of thinking about something.