It becomes a sense of pride, not inherited but earned. It indeed wasn’t in your DNA, or the book of the month club while in the womb, nor at first sight after noticing your own toes, those tall, gangly folks who coo, and ahh, and ooh you (if you were lucky enough), but somehow along the way when inclusion could be taught or exclusion insisted upon, you realized that somehow someway a Flag, a piece of cloth with an assortment of colors and shapes, had some kind of human invented destiny, that was to become yours. There were, you were lectured, good Flags and bad Flags, as if the Flag itself was another human being.
Opening the closet door was difficult enough, stepping outside, of the dark, self imposed prison, was spooky enough, and hearing the splash of news that self-esteem belonged to you or had to be earned carried so much weight that some of the average citizens felt more comfortable running back, pretending the real safe place was to hide. Not in Provincetown, the Flags wave in unison, and at the same time with the wind under their wings, they can demonstrate unique tricks, trappings, and terrific feats of strength, surprise, and certainty that there ain’t a thing wrong, having a rainbow lead your path forward!
I am of course a concoction of a recipe so ridiculously filled with a variety of ingredients, each day, yet each way changing but staying the same, but still unique and original, like the people around me. There are those who are brave enough to say so, to be proud enough to brag about their lives. I am not a clone or cultists. I have become less fearful! I CAN salute many flags, take a knee demonstrating my mistrust or refusal to be intimidated, or initiated into thinking one way is right one way is wrong. It neither the color of my skin nor the colors of my flag which genuinely project the purpose of my being. Trump Land wishes and hopes we stand in line, be good little boys and girls, hate the same, and scapegoat the newest names on a list destined for a railway car to some end of the line. Provincetown, Day Two, and I salute what makes us unique, not what we must find as ugly!
