I love the pride festival, because it's SO MUCH FUN!! Last year was pretty fun, but this year I could DRINK LEGALLY, so no more secret sips of beers while everyone else gets into the outdoor dance club set up in Library Square. Although I never actually entered the festival (since it cost $10 and I was pretty much broke at that point), I DID get to dance, drink, and support the LGBT community, which is what's the most important.
The party part of the weekend started on Wednesday night, in my opinion, since it was BOOK CLUB! We discussed Joy School, drank wine, and ate DELICIOUS desserts out on the patio. I love all of the people in book club so much, I'll miss them when I'm gone :( I've grown up with 60% of the girls and women in that club. The funniest part of book club was someone casually bringing up 50 Shades of Gray, which I bought on a whim after graduation. It is basically Twilight with lots and LOTS of sex in it. Kinky sex. It is hilariously bad, but also really addicting (kind of like Twilight, what do you know!) So I let Megan borrow it for her trip to Costa Rica. Thursday night was when the real party started, since it was THIRSTY THURSDAY GIRL'S NIGHT!!! It started at Megan's and Kristy's house, where I arrived with my leftover jungle juice in slushee form. I met Kacie, one of Blayde's friends (Megan's boyfriend), who immediately saw 50 Shades of Gray (since I'd brought it over for Megan to borrow) and we launched into a discussion about the sex scenes. No better way to bond, in my opinion. Finally I told her I didn't think I'd ever met her, or if I had then I didn't remember her. After that we got drinks and sat down to talk some more.
At one point, Kacie couldn't remember my name. We had just talked about my job interview with the Audubon Center of the North Woods, so Audubon was the first thing she could think of. Cue everyone calling me Audubon for the rest of the night. The best part was that most everyone thought that she was calling me AUTOBAHN, like the roadway in Europe. This was after a couple of drinks. Drink count thus far: two vodka sprites, one Mike's Hard Lemonade, and two jungle juice slushees. Megan had two HUGE glasses of the slushees before she asked if there was everclear in there. Why yes there is. Once all the jungle juice was gone, we got an irritated phone call from Jill, who was meeting us there, asking where we were. We stocked up on hidden alcohol (hidden in our sweatshirts) and headed off to Trax. Halfway to the train station (which is two blocks away, keep in mind), we all stopped at a gas station to pee and piled into the one bathroom they had. Already so drunk. Finally we reached Trax and were off.
At one point on Trax, Kristy said she wanted someone to take a picture of all of us, but the only other person nearby was an old, slightly terrifying homeless man sitting across the way. She simply said, "NOPE" and decided we'd wait till we got to the stadium. When we reached the Ballpark stop, we stumbled towards the stadium and tried to find a scalper. We beat one into submission enough so that he'd sell the tickets to us for $5 instead of $7 and then we bought some soft drinks, which we took into the bathroom to doctor (except for Jerica, who did it right under her seat while pretending to rummage in her purse for a full five minutes).
Here in Utah, we have a lovely minor baseball team that has changed names about twenty different times, but has since settled on The Bees. Games are actually pretty damn boring, but are hilarious when you're trashed. We drank rum and cokes and vodka sprites while we heckled the visiting team, the Colorado Sky Socks. We heckled the shit out of them.
We did this anytime they played catch with each other (or practiced, whatever). We had nicknames for a few of them, including Bubba/Bubblicious, who tossed us bubblegum at one point while we made fun of them. We also got a lot of balls thrown to us.
One time I was staring at one of the pitchers, who glanced over at me. I raised my arms in an awkward "hello!" wave-type thing, and he threw me a baseball! I was a bit surprised, but Jill's dad (who snuck into girl's night somehow) told me to throw it to him, which I did, and he gave it to one of the kids nearby. Every single child sitting in the vicinity of us got a ball. GUESS THE FAMILY WHO WAS OFFENDED BY OUR DRUNKENESS MISSED OUT. By the end of the game, no one even knew what the score was, but apparently The Bees won. After the game, we decided to go do karaoke! I have never done karaoke before, but I was pretty drunk and completely psyched to go for it. For some reason, we all decided to RUN to Trax. I had to stop a block before the train, since I was so exhausted from running. Luckily, the train had not left yet, so we weren't left behind. While ON the train, Tasha started doing flips on the loops hanging from the ceiling. A boy from the group of guys across the aisle challenged her to a flip contest, betting that she couldn't do three flips in the row. We immediately said, "YOU'RE ON!" and started making a huge ruckus (oh yeah, it was a ruckus). So much so that two police officers decided we were having too much fun.
What a killjoy. He then started checking to make sure we had all paid fare (which I think is such bullshit, I mean I know we were breaking rules and whatnot, but that automatically qualifies us to be ticket worthy in their eyes). Unfortunately, Kacie was actually NOT a U of U student, so I slipped her my ID while I used my bus pass to show the police that I was a golden child. It was like a bad sitcom though because no one who was actually a legit U of U student had their bus pass work while everyone who was using a fake or an expire one totally had their's work. In an effort to save ourselves, Kristy told them that we'd ridden the bus earlier and they said that was probably why so many of the cards weren't working. Then it was our stop, fortunately. Ugh, police officers.
We walked a couple of blocks, while I tried to do my version of Parkour (jumping off of benches and trying to slide down concrete planters). We even did some planking and owling before we reached Bourbon House, our karaoke destination. We ordered some drinks and began planning what songs we should sing.
I was a lil bit drunk.
Our group name was "Jam Out With Your Clam Out" (all class, all the time). We sung "Wannabe" by Spice Girls, which is a staple, and then "Hit Me Baby One more Time" by Brit Brit. I have always been a little bit hesitant to do karaoke, even though I daydream about singing and dancing and preforming on stage all the time, just because I am naturally a little bit inclined to want to stay out of the spotlight. However, the other half of the time I'm sassy and funny and wanting to be the center of attention. So my two sides clash a lot. With alcohol in my system and my friends by my side though, I ROCKED IT. A girl even complimented me on my singing! This gave me the confidence to sing a song by myself. I searched through the book for Carrie Underwood's "Cowboy Casanova", but it wasn't there, so I opted for "Don't Impress Me Much" by Shania Twain, which I always said I would sing at karaoke. When I was trying to find the first song though. I couldn't remember Carrie Underwood's name, so I asked Tasha what the country blonde singer was and, after Taylor Swift, she miraculously said Carrie Underwood! Drunk connections. Finally, it was my turn.
It was so awesome! All the girls were right up front, singing along with me and dancing while I sung my heart out. It was such a head-rush, being in front of those people and seeing them sing along and enjoy my show! After I was done, I bowed elaborately and then high-school musical jumped off the stage. A random guy started singing a Queen song after I was done, to which I started doing some air guitar moves to. He then shouted into the mic, "COME ON AUTUMN, I NEED SOME BACK-UP AIR GUITAR UP HERE!" So OF COURSE I leapt on stage with him and played dramatic, exaggerated air guitar. I fell to my knees for the dramatic finale and did a fabulous flourish of strumming, for which people burst into applause. More inflation for my ego. I have a huge-ass bruise on my knee though, plus a little bit of skinlessness since I originally tried to slide across the stage, which doesn't work in shorts.
We watched some other tag teams sing songs, like Megan and Kristy singing
"L.O.V.E" by Ashlee Simpson. I decided I wanted to sing "Birdhouse in Your Soul" by They Might Be Giants, so I signed up for it and got up onstage. This time my friends were noticeably NOT there, so I sort of got nervous and didn't perform as much as I had before. Also, as fun as the song is, it's not such a well-known song so no one was singing along or dancing. When I was finished, I tried finding my friends to no avail. At first I was really upset and started crying because I was so angry that they'd ditched me. However, ten minutes later I FINALLY found them with no one else but the Colorado Sky Sox! THE MINOR LEAGUE BASEBALL TEAM THAT WE HECKLED THE SHIT OUT OF SHOWED UP AT KARAOKE. What. WHAT? It was so hilarious and amazing to me that I forgot my anger and delved into conversation with them. We forced them into singing a couple of songs and I sung a rap duet with Tasha (that I had never heard before in my life) and then I sung Super Bass chorus for Lauren. So much fun! At around 2 AM we decided to start walking home, ignoring the Sky Sox'es pleas for us to continue hanging out with them (at your hotel? Yeah, no). On the way home, we stopped by the local taco cart stationed outside of Bar X and Megan and I shared a taco, which tasted fucking DELICIOUS (probably since we were drunk). While walking, some kids on bikes offered us a ride home on their handlebars, which was tempting since walking home took FOREVER. Once we got to Megan's and Kristy's house, Lauren drove me home. Not before going by McDonalds and purchasing chicken nuggets though! The leftovers of which we gave to a homeless man on the street. Thus ends an amazing Girl's Night.
Friday I was so hungover. SO hungover. For reals now. Gillian and I were supposed to hang out, so I tentatively asked her if she wanted to hang out later that night. Fortunately for me, she said she had a last-minute engagement, so I spent Friday night in a stupor watching Rupaul's Drag Race. So good.
My favorite is JuJu
SATURDAY, however, was a true and blue PRIDE day! Well, the second half of it. The first half was spent shopping with Natal! We went to Old Navy and Barnes and Noble, where I bought a shirt for myself and presents for Jill (since it was her graduation party that night) and a little cute sea creature book for me. Then we headed to the mall to go to GAP, where Natal bought cute, colored shirts and pants and I got a scarf for Gillian (since it was her birthday on Thursday!) Then we got some breadsticks and a calzone thing to share and tried to find some plain T-shirts for Natal. We didn't find any really, but it was still a damn successful/productive shopping day! She dropped me off, we tried to fix my phone's issues and I taught her about blogger (since she started a new blog!), I prepared Jill's present, and then my mom and I headed to Jill's party. We hung out, drank Shock Top and Mike's, ate A LOT of spinach dip, visited, told jokes, and enjoyed the evening. After we left, Gillian and I met up and went to Green Pig with the intention to get some food. It was SO CROWDED though, since it was Pride weekend, so we went up to the roof and got some drinks. We sat at the bar and hung out until we decided to head to Johnny's on Second, since Gillian's friend's boyfriend was playing a show there.
Things that happened:
-found out that Phil from Modern Family was at Bar X, which was next-door
-got some kind of gross nachos from a bartender who kept telling people with me that my name was Autumn. Pretty sure they know, dude
-$4 beers and shots! I was supposed to be the DD, but I accidentally drank a lot...and was drunker than Gillian. I got two shots and beers, cheap whiskey!
-Dylan, Tiffany, Elliot, and Megan came and joined us and shared in our nachos
-Dylan kept saying he didn't want to go to the bathroom because he was afraid he'd get date raped to death. I told him to smear the nachos on his pants to deter such attacks. He suggested making a chastity belt out of knives
-listened to dubstep, which we assume is alien communication
-Megan's boyfriend was a good guitarist
-I convinced Elliot that there are natural wells of whiskey that bubble up from the Earth's core and that Johnny's on Second was located on top of a prime one, which is why their shots were so cheap. He believed me
-Dylan and I discussed our favorite things (aka the worst things). These include:
Sushi carts (especially when they are called "Fish Lips")
Public water
Waiting in line
Ball pits (specifically, queefing in ball pits, which Dylan assures me he does on a daily basis)
Syringes full of drugs. FULL of drugs (this one was more like something we just kept saying throughout the night because of something I said, though I'm not sure what it was...)
aaaand the last one is pink sores. NOT going to include a picture, but it started because Megan said something about her "pink sore" to Dylan, who responded with fake throwing up. I thought she said "pink sword", which I thought was a hilarious word for penis, so I kept telling people to sheath their pink sword. Finally, Dylan figured out what the hell I was talking about and corrected me. Which I'm sort of unhappy about, since pink sore is SO GROSS. We made a lot of comments about it that involved gross adjectives. After watching Megan's boyfriend's show for awhile, we decided to all go to Club Jam (a gay club) for some dancing before last call. Dylan's boyfriend drove us there, and we stopped for a second to pick up cigarettes for the boys. At one point, we saw a group of gay guys, which Dylan proclaimed was scientifically called, "a gaggle of gays". And then he kept saying, "speaka de homo?" which I thought was SO FUNNY (prolly because I was drunk as shit). We got to the club and we immediately started DANCING.
We danced, we went outside for air (since it was SO hot and we were dripping with sweat) and met up with Gillian's friend Braden and his boyfriend to hang out, we danced some more to some really fun songs, I went to the bathroom to find an incredibly drunk girl peeing in the garbage can, so I guarded the door for her, and we topped the night off with one more song. At one point, a guy tried to lead me over to him by grabbing my hips, but I gestured that I wanted to dance with my friends so I left him and danced with Dylan, Gillian, and John again. When I looked behind me a couple of minutes later, the same guy was making out with another guy. PRIDE WEEKEND! When we were done dancing, we left the club with some waters, dropped Dylan and John off at their next party, and then went home and crashed.
The next morning was the PRIDE PARADE! Basically it's an amazing parade that supports the LGBT community that runs all over downtown. Last year, the Grand Marshall was ROSEANNE BARR, one of my favorite people EVER. This year it was Dustin Lance Black, who I wasn't really sure who he was, but whateva. It was still an amazing parade and I got a ton of pictures of it. I'll post the best ones in the next post. I got a killer sunburn, Taffy made friends with the gay couples behind us with rainbow umbrellas that gave her shade, we all got a bunch of free stuff, and at the end of the parade we ate sandwiches at Toasters and accidentally spilled Dr. Pepper on Taffy. WHOOPS! The rest of the day was spent napping and going to the POOL, where I swam and played with two little girls I made friends with, and then hanging out with Gilly and Mia and watching Chocolat. Thus ends an AMAZING weekend! I am so glad I got to go to the parade, since I might not have, considering I technically had to work (but it turns out I didn't, and I still got paid!). I got to be there to support all of my gay and lesbian friends and it was so touching to see the group of LDS people marching in the parade with signs of support and love for the LGBT community in their sunday clothes. It was also amazing to see everyone else not afraid of being who they are and to support their loved ones and neighbors. I am so, so happy I was a part of that.
No comments:
Post a Comment